28.2.2014

Hello everyone,

you might have noticed that FTR was offline since yesterday evening till today morning. The reason was a massive DDOS attack, that was targetted specifically at FTR (it wasn’t random and it ended once FTR was taken offline, leaving other Edrard’s sites alone). It’s possible the situation might repeat itself at some point. If FTR is not available, you can always find info (or notice) about it on For the Record Facebook page.

- in historical battles, a vehicle will have one fixed configuration (no options to modify it)
- apparently, arty will not be playable in historical battles (for now at least)
- in WG concept, Sturmtiger is closer to a TD than to arty
- it’s possible that realistically, with a small number of shells in the ammo rack left, the turret would not fly off during the ammo explosion, but SerB states they will exaggerate the effect for the sake of attractiveness


- regarding the support of multiple AMD (Radeon) graphic cards (SLI), SerB states that AMD solutions are weird and that’s why their support will come later
- the entire “spotting” system was developed based on interesting gameplay at the point of the beginning of development
- contrary to Storm’s statement, SerB states that premium vehicles, that really fought (like Churchill III), will be allowed in historical battles (SS: so I guess that’s one side of the disagreement)
- there was a Soviet “coastal defense tank” with a 130mm gun (not a part of the KV-4/KV-5 series), called Object 103 with a T-100 hull and the B-13 gun, SerB states that it would theoretically be a tier 7 or so tank
- regarding coastal defense tanks, SerB states that the Japanese coastal defense tank project came later than the O-I heavy one and was armed with a 140mm gun in a single turret (SS: asked Daigensui, she said 140mm was a naval gun and it would make little sense to install it when you had a better and more produced 150mm gun)
- KV-3 and KV-4 can carry D-25 gun (despite the gun being developed later than these projects) “for gameplay diversity”
- apparently (if I understand this correctly), when an ammo rack explodes, the remaining shells (that exploded) are not considered “fired” (spent) for the purpose of purchasing new ones
- SerB states that there were probably no KV-4/5-based projects with 130mm+ caliber, because the SPG projects were usually made on existing chassis
- another Soviet heavy/SPG branch (derp tanks) will not be implemented for now, not before more US, Brits, French and EU tree are implemented
- SerB states that HD models will be a “zero-level” LOD, so they won’t even be loaded on weaker computers
- when roaming is implemented, it will not be possible for example to buy gold for other server’s prices and such stuff
- Storm states that the soundtrack and sounds implementatation has nothing to do with each other: “musicians don’t do sounds”
- apprently, implementing the turrets being ripped off by ammorack explosions aren’t that manhour-demanding to implement, two guys worked on it – one on the effects, one on the physics and at the same time they both worked on other stuff too

90 thoughts on “28.2.2014

  1. “Sturmtiger is closer to a TD than to arty”

    Damn right! It should be a huge-alpha direct-fire derper. Making it arty would just be insane.

    • And yet they’d have to give it TD-like levels of accuracy, damage, penetration, HP and armor. And camo.
      Of course, they will have to tweak it around, give it the lowest accuracy of any TD, but it’d still be pretty good (They can’t make it non-competitive by giving it arty-like accuracy), and it can’t have that bad a penetration either, although hopefully not like the other TD’s.
      And the alpha… Well, any 100WN8er will be able to own with one of those. Click, don’t even try to aim, and own.
      All in all, I’m worried.

      • 38cm HEAT (which IIRC was actually designed, but can’t be arsed to Wiki It just now) ought to have plenty enough penetration. And the HE shot sounds like enough brute alpha to render the whole question largely irrelevant.

      • Well, I think these assault derpers should have a new kind of aiming system, different from arty view and sniper, a mix between.

        • SS made a post about this last year and even put up a photo with the hybrid view if that’s what you’re looking for. Check the archives, I think it was put up sometime around November 13′.

      • Damage, camo and HP are entirely arbitrary and they could be set to any value for balance reasons. For example WTF-100 has almost none camo (less than Maus even). Pen/Splash Radius is being kept in the vinicity of historical values for the game to appear historical, but it is often adjusted. Tanks can be given different ammo as well with different pen values to buff it or nerf it. Accuracy is worse overall for all tanks than what it was in reality and is used as balance factor too. With a rocket mortar gun I would not be surprised to see accuracy worse than KV-2 152 troll gun. Even arty-like accuracy is enough when fighting in close combat and the fact the shell would have more straight trajectory and the player could actually use a sniper view to aim properly combined with possible quite good splash radius means it would still be competitive even with 0.7 + accuracy.
        As for armour, it would be tiger 2 armour. Nothing OP really and with lower front plate weakspot quite easy to pen even frontally.
        Also the damage is not THAT much of an issue. FV-DeathStar already has arty like HE damage but it usually does around 600 damage if it fails to pen. And it pens with HE only because it is in fact HESH with very high pen. (Note that the actual arty with same alpha does more damage sometimes because the shell is landing on the weakly armoured top of the tank).

        In other words they don’t HAVE to give it anything TD like.

        • 600 damage if it fail to pen, versus 0-300 damage if a tier 8-10 arty makes a splash not to mention 40 sec reload and 10+ sec aimtime.

  2. Re: the japanese 140mm naval gun. Fairly often old guns are used on such projects as they are hard to get hold of. I don’t have time to check Jane’s for definite backup, but with this almost certainly being a limited production series, wouldn’t it make sense to use up available stocks of 140mm guns (assuming they were obsolete). This would then save the 150mm guns for use on the cruisers that needed it more.

  3. - there was a Soviet “coastal defense tank” with a 130mm gun (not a part of the KV-4/KV-5 series), called Object 103 with a T-100 hull and the B-13 gun, SerB states that it would theoretically be a tier 7 or so tank

    Isn’t that the SU-100Y?

  4. - in WG concept, Sturmtiger is closer to a TD than to arty

    Couldn’t they just label them “Assault Guns” like they were? Sure, they behave like short-range TD’s… I’m fine with that.

    - it’s possible that realistically, with a small number of shells in the ammo rack left, the turret would not fly off during the ammo explosion, but SerB states they will exaggerate the effect for the sake of attractiveness

    Oooooobviously. C’mon man. Pamela Anderson… bit of an idiot…. exaggerated her “effects” for the sake of “Attractiveness” – I’d say …. it worked. :p

    • Might as well implement them as TDs, a number of assault guns are already in-game under different classes.

      • “Assault gun” was never a particularly precisely defined category anyway, IIRC the Americans for example considered howitzer-armed Shermans (and the Stuart-based M8 Scott) to be such. And the Soviets just used the same “SPG” index for theirs as they employed for their abortive SP indirect-fire artillery projects.

  5. “in WG concept, Sturmtiger is closer to a TD than to arty”

    Awwwwww Yyyyiiiiissssss! now i can train a TD crew without thinking they will make it an arty.

    • I’d prefer to have the Sturmtiger like the FV304: Short Range Arty.

      Why arty? Because I hate alpha-fanboys that just have to aim 3sec with high-pen that guanrantee paper-stats dmg.

  6. -The reason was a massive DDOS attack, that was targetted specifically at FTR

    you have some enemies, don’t you?

    • Im pretty sure I noticed a post about that on FTR’s facebook page.

      Some random internet turds were reported. Turds got banned. Turds got butthurt, and DDOS FTR, or arranged/paid for a DDOS and FTR went offline. For maybe half a day!

      Much turd.
      Such sad.
      Wow.

  7. if you were hosted on google cloud, DDoS would fail.. part of their services.
    as those stronk hackers needs to attack google lol and google routes 50% of internet traffic is shrugs away ddos

    • I’m not sure they will do that, since the last incident they encountered against google, but not if hosting website and ads will relate with each other

  8. Not only is the 140mm a naval gun, but it is an old naval gun as well. However it was the most numerous coastal defence weapon, so it would make sense for a coastal defence tank.

  9. - regarding the support of multiple AMD (Radeon) graphic cards (SLI), SerB states that AMD solutions are weird and that’s why their support will come later

    Its (Crossfire) for the radeon cards btw.
    Anyway great post

    • it took them only 3 years to get nVidia SLI configs working because ATi’s CrossFireX is weird ?!?!
      I don’t think so, I’d bet my money on crappy programming team

  10. - another Soviet heavy/SPG branch (derp tanks)

    After their introduction they will be op for a few moths, until wg decides to implement herp tanks.

    Oh gawds, so unfunny….

  11. quote: “SerB states that HD models will be a “zero-level” LOD, so they won’t even be loaded on weaker vehicles”

    HUH?!!? this makes absolutely no sense

  12. - the entire “spotting” system was developed based on interesting gameplay at the point of the beginning of development

    Tanks you spotted in the middle of nothing and soon after that, they disappeared like a magic, so much fun and interesting …. NOT
    Or, enemy is shooting at you and you don’t see it, same fun and interesting …. NOT

    • And how is that a problem, its a game mechanic which is needed the way the game is developed. If all tenks would be spotted all time you would survive even less because stealthy TDs and artys would see you spotted all time and fuck you up. Thanks to this system idiot mediums and heavys can run around in the open unseen. Sure it has a price enemies also dissapear, but thats the price everyone has to pay. Actually as long as you brawl and use cover you can spot tanks all time. If you camp, you wont spot a shot or if you move in forrest areas like a fool alone, then you will get fucker also.

  13. - when roaming is implemented, it will not be possible for example to buy gold for other server’s prices and such stuff

    Basically this means that it will be possible to buy ru server only premiums?

  14. “SerB states that there were probably no KV-4/5-based projects with 130mm+ caliber, because the SPG projects were usually made on existing chassis”

    Strange, because if I remember correctly, the first time on the homepage they wrote about implementing KV-4, they state, that the top gun will be a 130 mm howitzer. And they wrote that the speed will be 40-45 km/h.

    • Pretty sure the whole KV-4 concept was *all about* sticking the 107mm gun into something effectively invulnerable to the… *slightly*… exaggerated foreign soopa tenks the Soviets were worrying about at the time.

      • I believe it, but i remember i really want the kv4, and the first time i saw that post i was really courious, and when they implement it, i really forgot that article/post. I explored it again some months ago, and it suprised me, i think i saved it in chrome.

    • Like american T95′s breaching the siegfried line whilst fighting stock pzIV and tiger 2′s? No that won’t happen

  15. I still don’t see how they intend to balance the Sturmtiger, between its armour and the enormous splash, unless they really nerf some aspect to the point where it may as well not be a thing. I imagine it might be fairly hard to use because of shell velocity and arc, but still – the thing would have a splash probably comparable to a T92 gold round, again unless they nerf it into irrelevance. Doesn’t seem like a good concept, I wish they wouldn’t do such obvious “crowd-pleasers” and would stick to tanks that are easily balanced without breaking their gimmick.

      • I agree, there should not be any fucking vehicle in the game that has higher alpha than artys and they have that alpha of a reason. Now we have TDs that are fairly okay balanced nowdays and that have alpha and pen. Why we need direct fire assault guns with arty like damage and mobilty + armor + HP. This time I say fucking no to more bullshit TD like tenks. As it is now its a okay balance between mediums, heavys, tds and artys. Dont fuck this balance up even more by adding more hugh alpha tanks.

      • We’re talking about a rather tall box on tracks with less than awe-inspiring armour for high tiers (le Wiki says 150 mm at 47 angle at superstructure front), appalling RoF and lousy agility (~10 hp/ton unless it gets engines the base Tigey doesn’t).

        Ain’t gonna be a new WaffleTrufflE-100; more like a turretless 183 at best.

        • More like a turretless 380. Its hard to be balanced. If you give it slow reload, bad accuracy, make the whole tank slow, with bad armor, it would be bad to play, but it would be bad if it oneshot you.

        • The 183 is already questionable; it’s not OP per se, but it’s badly implemented. Being hit for full damage by HESH is no fun for any tank. On the flip side, having to fight its terrible gun handling, long reloads, and HESH’s inconsistency is also terribly unfun. The whole tank is characterised by exactly that – being unfun for all parties involved.

          By implementing the Sturmtiger, especially as a TD, WG are just taking that and cranking it up to 11.

          • Caveat emptor.
            *shrug*
            People play the 183 too so clearly there’s an audience for unergonomic and rather random but potentially very lethal vehicles.

            • There is a lot of comedy potential there, it’s just no fun to play against, very questionably balanced, and the thing itself is only really fun when it doesn’t fuck over your attempts to carry.

          • Problem with that? Use AP. It has 310mm pen anyway.

            Also is it just me or every FV 183 that I see uses HESH and constantly and ultimately fails?

            • Bad players do badly with HESH, better players are usually more consistent.

              AP from the 183 is usually not a good idea unless you KNOW that you can’t at least do the same damage with HESH, let alone more.

    • Yup, so many questions about the Sturmtiger. How are they going to implement it’s 380 mm RW 61 rocket launcher L/5.4 as TD ? I mean, a 380 mm ROCKET LAUNCHER … it will have the highest caliber armament in the game and it’s going to be a TD ? Also, given it’s historical stats like 125 kg HE shells and an ammunition capacity of 14 rounds, this thing is likely to have massive alpha damage and a very large splash radius. Is this really needed ? I mean, why not just implement tanks that have been requested from the community first like the Sherman Firefly or working on bring up the EU tree faster ?

      • I honestly think that the only reason it is even being considered is to shut up the swathes of howling fanboys. It doesn’t make any sense to include it from a gameplay perspective, or a historical one.

        Giving people a 380mm rocket mortar also opens the door to whining about other kinds of weapons – which is, I believe, the main reason they won’t give us the U-5TS to the T-62 or add the Object 435 as an upgrade option for the 430. Incidentally, the 115mm gun was historically *less* powerful than the U-8TS both tanks have ingame, or so I have been told.

  16. I dont really get why the fuck sturmtigre should even be in the game. There are enough of derpy high alpha tanks as it is. We have TDs and artys, thats enough.

    • “We have TDs and artys, thats enough.”
      The TD category includes what’s generally (and sometimes also officially) known as “assault guns”, which the Sturmtiger is a somewhat extreme example of.
      What a bizarre argument.

      • We dont need more extreme bullshit. Keep it simple and keep each class balanced by strenghts ans weaknesses. If you wanna high HE damane then play arty, if you wanna high AP damage and pen, play TDs. I dont like that every patch more and more tenks gets implemented that wash out the tank spercific roles.

        Like some of the second line german TDs, all too good at what they do and hence the high global WR. Turret and shit, autloaders….on TDs. Tss…

  17. I’m surprised more people aren’t commenting on the “No arty for now in historical battles” item. There’s your arty free mode for all the whiners.

    • Yah it is interesting that nobody is commenting on that. You might just see an article on SPGs in Historical some time in the next month… =)

  18. “musicians don’t do sounds” ? O Rly ? Moog synths and some virtual ones offer a pretty contradictory answer. Subtractive ones, like the SubPhatty I tried a few days ago, are especially good at “sounds”. Those heavily processed instrumental sounds have always been a common source of SFX in both games and movies.

    WG’s sound design department should try playing a bit with white noise, envelope and LFOs, as far as warfare sounds are concerned. It would be nicer to have a set of sweet generated sounds than always the same noisy samples playing… but I might be asking for too much here. :)

    Also, ATI’s multiple GPU systems are called “Crossfire”, not “SLI”, that is NVIDIA’s stuff.

    Good luck with DDsOS, those retards targeting you must be either really bored or butthurt. ^^