- The M24 Chaffee, Tier V American light tank, fully rebalanced.
- The KV-1S Soviet heavy tank fully rebalanced, its tier changed from VI to V.
- The KV-85, a new Soviet heavy tank, added to Tier VI to replace KV-1S.
- The T-34-85M, a new Tier VI Soviet medium tank, added for testing by the Supertest players.
- Models of the following vehicles reworked in HD quality: ISU-152, Т-34, IS-7, M3 Lee, M5 Stuart, Jagdpanther.
ASIA server (thanks to Tanitha, who has been very busy getting new info) posted a preview of the 9.3 light tank line. Enjoy! Text by (I assume) Tanitha.
The upcoming update will bring an array of the new light tanks (USSR, German and USA) in WoT. Thus tech trees of these nations will be extended and get more logic structure.
The top ones will be VIII-tier light tanks. Let’s see what these tanks are capable of.
High tier LTs like AMX 13-90, T71, WZ-131/132 occupy a special place in the game. Those, who have experienced at least a dozen battles on them, hardly need any explanations of “light tank fun”. Just recall that vehement feeling when you approach enemy SPG from behind to finish it off!! Or when you hide in the bushes right in front of your enemies, while they’re circling under allied fire having no clue who spots them…
The new light tanks are introduced so as to enrich these feelings that inevitably follow the gameplay on light tanks, providing even more adrenalin for their owners.
All of them are nimble, due to their low mass and passability. Good observation coupled by low signature and decent armament allow these tanks to solve wide array of combat tasks: scouting, performing raids behind enemy lines. You shouldn’t forget about their significant rigidness as well – these tanks may effectively withstand even a round fired by a X-tier AT-SPG.
RU-251 (German) — speedy combat vehicle with a decent cannon.
This mysterious index hides a German recon tank that was designed in 1960s to become a predecessor of the notorious Leopard tank. In our game both these tanks are pretty close by concept, exterior and certain engineering aspects. Similar to Leopard 1 Ru-251 is featured by rather weak armoring. Being a huge disadvantage for a medium tank, this feature is not so dramatic for the light version: you won’t rely on your armor much anyway, but the dynamics of the tank is really enjoyable – the vehicle may speed up to 80 km/h! Add here a spotting range of 400m – and you’ll get a perfect solution for active recon missions. But the main feature of the tank is its cannon possessing decent DPM, accuracy and penetration. Shooting from it is very comfortable.
Nevertheless you shouldn’t rely on Ru-251 damaging capabilities that much. Shooting at front armor plates of IX–X tier tanks will be a real waste of ammo, limited by 41 round — rather small, compared to Ru-251′s firing rate.
Summing everything up, we expect Ru-251 to be appreciated by German tree enthusiasts as it took over the majority of the upsides of Leopard 1: decent maneuverability, good spotting range, comfortable cannon.
if you are following the various World of Tanks events and news, you already know that in September, we (EU), ASIA and Russian server (and of course presumably the US server as well, although that was not confirmed yet) will get a chance to recieve the KV-220 and Type 62 tanks “for free” – well, not exactly for free of course – in order to get it, you will have to perform series of gruelling missions, that – unless you are a very good player – do require you to play for some time.
And that’s fine. You invest either money or time, that’s how it works and it gives a chance for players without money to get either of these tanks. Or both, if you apart from money lack also any social life. It’s a good thing (of course, considering it most likely originated on Russian server – it’s not like our own WG EU “specialists” would invent such a thing).
In any case, there is one aspect that bothers me a bit about the entire event: the presence of the KV-220. Let me explain.
As of now, the KV-220 is not an uncommon vehicle – not much played though, because it’s not very “noob friendly” – it’s a juggernaut when played right thanks to its massive hull armor, but the turret isn’t that good, the gun sucks and the mobility is poor, it’s generally not a very newbie-friendly tanks and many people (like me) are driven off by its sluggishness. In any case, there was however a time (last year) when there was no KV-220 on EU (or US) server, it was originally a RU server exclusive tank (there was some moaning on RU server connected to the fact the tank is given out to other servers, just like the EU/US moaned that the Russians can buy Panzer IV/V, beta Sherman or the M6A2E1 “Alien” in their shop – or at least they could until not so long ago).
- T57 Heavy nerf, that was planned for 9.3 was postponed. It’s possible it will return in next 9.3 test iteration or in 9.4
- supertesters are also trying out new “physics 2.0″ – at this moment, this “only” means the possibility to flip tanks over on their roof and to drive practically anywhere. Of course, it’s still full of bugs, but at least they are working on it
- it’s possible German tier 8 premium Panther with 88mm L/71 should come in 9.4 (for testing at least)
Oh yea, and the supertest notes are coming out today, so it’s going to be an interesting day.
FV304 tier 6 artillery will be nerfed as such in 9.3 (well, at least on supertest, stats with 100 percent crew):
- DPM nerfed from 2346,4 to 2085,7
- reload nerfed from 11,507s to 12,945s
- ROF nerfed from 5,214 to 4,635
- aimtime nerfed from 4,32s to 4,6s
- accuracy loss (aim spread) after shooting nerfed by 20 percent
- accuracy loss after moving the gun nerfed by cca 17 percent
- accuracy loss after moving and traversing hull nerfed by cca 5 percent
- massive accuracy loss from moving at full speed nerf (cca 20 percent)
- chassis traverse nerfed from 24 deg/s to 22 deg/s
- ground resistance on medium surfaces nerfed from 1,247 to 1,342
- new LT’s in 9.3 will definitely not be delayed
- retraining of crew roles (SS: as in, radioman to driver for example) will be implemented
- current stage of the Stronghold mode is only the beginning, there will be many new things
- spotting range minimap circle, render range minimap designator and spots where the enemy was seen last time on minimap will not be implemented
- 9.3 will bring new comfortable garage interface
- T57 Heavy will be nerfed a bit
- apparently, if a bot plays better than a player would, Storm does not see the issue in having such a bot in battle
- the reason why HD JT will not come with HD JT88 is that there is a lot of work to do on the HD model even when “just a gun” is changed, such as testing and modelling
- hatches will not be changed to spaced armor (as some player proposes)
- on RU server, the whine about “too many corridor maps” started after a certain popular videomaker (Murazor) started whining about it (SS: I wonder if this happened the same way on EU…)
The list of previous parts is at the bottom of the article.
While I’m working on an article about how the S-tank could work in WoT, here is something I forgot to cover
First entering the service in 1957, the Strv 74 was part of the Swedish attempt to modernize its armored force in the early-mid 50′s. The vehicle was a modification of the WW2 era Strv m/42 design, which had provided the main firepower of the Swedish armored forces between 1943 and 1953.
yesterday, we talked about the Škoda Š-III, the birth of the “breakthrough” tank progam and its failure. Today, we are going to have a look at Škoda’s competitor by the company Tatra, which was – and it is hard to believe – even worse.
Just like the Škoda Š-III, the Tatra prototype started originally as a wheel-cum-track project, started after the original wheel-cum-track vehicle developer, ČKD (with its Kolohousenka projects), decided it’s not worth the hassle and the Praga concept (P-III) was never really developed (nothing is known about it).
