Author: sp15
Hi everyone,
as you might know, I’m sp15, one of the volunteer researchers for the EU tree and the author behind the Swedish tanks series here on FTR. Today, I want to talk about the prospect of the Swedish branch or even tech tree and how it could work in World of Tanks.
A Swedish tech tree?
Unlike the other European nations, Sweden meets the requirements set for a full tech tree implementation, which simply means that there are enough tanks to reach tier 10 in every tank class (except light tanks). I don’t necessarily think that this requirement represents WG’s current view on the matter, since things like the size of the market needs to be taken into account, but in any case, it is certain that we will see Swedish tanks in the game either as part of the EU tree or as a separate nation.
Here is my interpretation of how a Swedish tree could look:
Tank designs by the nation of Sweden have been shaped by the need to keep up with larger, more powerful nations like Germany and Russia with limited amount of resources and the emphasis on mobility over armor and firepower. In general, Swedish tank designs have very low weights and are also in many cases smaller, compared to their counterparts. The armor of these designs is often decent frontally, but very bad on the sides and rear, which means you will have to use their good mobility to avoid hits. When it comes to firepower, Sweden has an interesting mix of options: at the low-mid tiers, the guns are conventional ones with decent firepower, penetration and good gun depression, but on the mid-high tiers, you start getting the option to mount autoloaders on some vehicles like the Strv m/42 at tier 5 or the tier 6 and 7 artillery. In comparison with the nations already in the game, Swedish tanks can be described as a blend between French tanks with good mobility and autoloaders and American tanks with good gun depression and decent frontal armor.
Light line
Swedish light tanks are generally slower than other nations, but tend to get bigger guns. They could also get better mobility to make up for their lower top speed. The armor of these tanks is generally quite poor, but there are some exceptions at low-mid tiers, that have good turret armor. We don’t have a lot of really solid data on it, but the line is to end with the Lansen 25 ton, which was the last Swedish attempt for a light tank in the 1950s. It can be described as a long range sniper with its powerful 10,5cm gun, but with bad mobility (for a light tank) with only 65kph top speed and only a 450hp engine. One last thing I should mention before I move on is that the line ends at tier 9 with the Strv T medium tank and ties in with the medium line at tier X.
Lansen 25t with the long 10,5cm gun
Medium line
Swedish medium tanks have a mix of interesting characteristics. The low tiers are generally unremarkable, but at mid tiers, you get a blend of good gun depression, mobility and some really interesting gun choices. For instance the tier 7 Strv Leo is likely to get a 10,5cm gun, that should be on par with the 10cm on the Chinese T-34-1, but with slightly better alpha damage and worse RoF. In general, the armor on Swedish medium tanks is passable at best, with decent frontal armor but bad side and rears you need to use your mobility and remember to point your front towards the enemy at all times. There are however several exceptions at high tiers with the Strv K, which shares the hull with the tier X heavy and has up to 145mm of armor on the lower glacis and 95 at a very steep angle on the upper. However, side and rear armor are still very bad.
At tier X you will unlock the Strv A, which was a projected medium tank, that was in development alongside the S-tank. It can be described as a cross between Batchat 25t and M48 Patton. Strv A has armor in line with the rest of the branch, at 120/50/50 it’s not great, but not terrible either. It however only has 100/60/50 turret armor and -7dg gun depression, which is worse than all the previous tanks in the medium line. To make up for this it has pretty good mobility at 17hp/t and it also gets an autoloader, this should lead to a very interesting play style that would be unique among high tier mediums
My interpretation of the Strv A based on this armor scheme
One additional thing I should address about the Medium line is that currently, tier 8 is occupied by the Strv 81, which was the Swedish designation for the Centurion Mk 3 & 5. Sadly, we currently have no other candidate for that spot. In the game it should be almost identical to the British Centurion Mk 1 but without the top engine and with the 20pdr type B at tier 8.
Heavy line
The Swedish heavy line starts at tier 8 from the medium line with the EMIL 1951 and focuses on frontally well armored and also well-armed but also fast heavy tanks. Their major weakness is the lack of side and rear armor and long reload times for the autoloader magazines. In general, the Swedish heavies should play like slower and less mobile versions of the French heavies, but with more frontal armor and with a smaller size and weight. In fact, the Swedish heavies are so light that anything bigger than a light tank can potentially be a serious threat when it comes to ramming. Another thing Swedish heavies excel at is gun depression with all of the heavies having more than -10dg of gun depression, but this comes at a price and gun elevation is usually very poor. When it comes to armor, the front is usually good with thick armor at steep angles. For example on tier X, the “Kranvagn” heavy tank has a hull armor of 145/40/40 and turret armor of 170/70/40, which should be enough to bounce most tier 9 and 8 shells, and when you consider the -12dg gun depression, you get a very competitive vehicle.
The tier 8 EMIL 1951 tank, as modelled by Brokenstar from the US forums
Tank destroyer line
Sweden, can actually produce two very unique and different TD lines. The first and more conventional line is based on various Swedish assault gun and TD projects at early tiers and then the different stages of the S-tank development on higher tiers. At lower to mid tiers, you should expecs t good frontal armor and mobility as well as gun depression and gun traverse, but bad side and rear armor and on some vehicles bad power to weight ratios. Perhaps the most interesting mid-tier vehicle of this line is the Motorlavett m/42, which was a planned heavy TD version of the Strv m/42 (considered for tier 6) with a rear mounted casement and a huge 105mm L/50 anti-aircraft gun, that should be able to knock out anything of that tier, basically it would be a Swedish version of the Dicker Max.
Here is how the Motorlavett m/42 might have looked (based on the Pvkv m/43 superstructure)
At tier 8, the line switches over to variations of the S-tank, which will have very good (near medium tank) mobility and very small profiles, which will make them hard to spot and hit. In addition, they get either a conventional gun with very high DPM, or possibly regular autoloaders that should set them apart from other TD’s. Of course, these designs also have some problems, mainly that their well sloped frontal armor will be unreliable and prone to be overmatched, and even the tier X Strv 103a will likely have serious problems with this.
Strv 103a
The other TD line is based on the development of the Ikv series of self-propelled infantry guns between 1949 and 1970. In general, this line will feature vehicles with armor no thicker than 20mm and with very good mobility, bordering on light tank territory. At low tiers, you will get vehicles with big derp guns and extreme gun depression as high as -25dg, but with poor gun traverse. But on tier 6 you lose some of the gun depression to gain 40dg of gun traverse and later fully traversing turrets. The firepower on the higher tiers will go from 90mm guns on tier 6 and 7 to 105mm ones at tier 8 and 9 and finally to a 120mm gun at tier X. That might seem a bit lackluster, but you need to keep in mind that many of these have fully traversing turrets and some even autoloaders, which, combined with extreme mobility, should make for some very interesting gameplay.
The tier X Ikv 120 would be a version of this vehicle with a bigger gun.
SPG line
Swedish SPG’s are on lower tiers based around mobility and stealth. On low tiers, you will see vehicles that are small and fast, with smaller than average guns but very good gun traverse and some even get turrets. On tiers 6-7, you start seeing turreted autoloaders, that should be very powerful even if they only mount puny 10,5cm guns. And on their 8-10 you will see bigger guns and slower vehicles, armed with 15cm guns. In general, the line should play like the French one, but with more turreted vehicles and possibly more autoloaders as well and with a much bigger and slower tier X. Speaking of tier X, it will be the Bkan 1a SPG, which was a 15,5cm autoloader artillery piece, produced in 26 examples for the Swedish army. It had a 14 round magazine, that could be fired under a minute and it could be reloaded in just 2 minutes. At the time it entered service, it was probably the most powerful SPG in service in the world, it was also the heaviest at 53 tons and it wasn’t exactly fast with a top speed of 28kph. In the game, it should play like a slower version of the BC155-58, but with a bigger magazine for the autoloader (obviously not its full historical load) and 15dg traverse to each side.
Bkan 1a
Premiums
When it comes to possible premium/reward/gift tanks, Sweden is no slouch either. On lower tiers, you have your typical 20mm armed light tank with the L-100 as well as many others, there is also a possible premium tier 2 TD in the 37mm armed L-120 TD. On tier 4 (although it should probably be tier 5), we find the Strv m/41-S/III which was a planned modification of the Swedish version of the Pz38t light tank with a new turret capable of fitting a three round autoloader for a 57mm gun. On tier 5, we find the Pvkv II which was a turreted TD also based on the Strv m/41 (Pz38t) chassis armed with a 75mm gun, but with no turret armor. At tier 6, you have the Strv 74-A2, which was basically what you would get when you put an AMX 13 turret on a Strv m/42. Also on tier 6, you find the Sav 12cm Bofors assault gun, basically a lightly armored but mobile TD with a 120mm autoloader, only firing HE shells (or possibly low pen AP as well). On tier 8, you have one of the turreted Bofors proposals for the Ikv 91 with an autoloader 90mm gun and finally at tier X as a Clanwars reward tank, you have the Strv A in its heavy gun tank configuration with a conventional 120mm gun. I could go on with more premiums, but I don’t think you want to hear about Premium artillery or even more low tier stuff so I’ll leave it at that.
Bofors Sav 12cm
Problems
Hopefully I have now shown that Sweden can produce its own unique tech tree (or branches) without resorting to the use of clones (with one exception) and that Swedish tanks would be an interesting addition to the game. There are however a few problems with doing this, especially if you want a full tree. Here, I’ll try to address these problems.
- A Swedish tree would compromise the integrity of the EU tree
While this was initially true since Sweden was the only EU tree nation with access to high tier heavy tanks, I don’t think it is an issue anymore. The reason I think that is because the recent statements regarding the Polish Czolg Pancernik, which means a full Polish line with tier 10 heavy is a possibility. As for the other classes, they can be covered by the other Euro tree nations like Czechoslovaka who on their own can cover everything but the heavies.
- There isn’t a big market for Swedish tanks
While it’s true that the Swedish market itself isn’t very big, you also have to consider that other nations used Swedish tank designs (Norway, Finland, Hungary) and also that Sweden is a rich country, where the average user is more probable to spend money on a game like WoT. Besides this, the addition of a tree full of original unique designs should draw some interest even from players outside Sweden, and if not you can always put branches on hold like with China and France.
- Not enough info
As with all trees there is information lacking for certain vehicles, this is common and is the reason behind stuff like the delay of the Japanese heavy branch. We know the knowledge IS out there and we know of a archive of 70000 drawings from Landsverk, which was the major Swedish armored vehicle developer between 1921 and 1965. This archive is the Landsverk drawing archive and should contain anything they worked on from the 1920’s and forward so the information is out there and really close.
- Too many paper projects
There are a lot of paper projects in this tree since Sweden is a smaller nation that didn’t have the resources to develop a lot of prototypes for vehicles, but most of these projects in the tree did lead to a production version so I think it is justified. I personally think it would be a shame to dismiss a full tree simply based on the there is too many paper tanks argument, especially as the game is already full of paper (end even worse) made up tanks.
Conclusion
I think that Sweden should get the full tree implementation because it could provide players with unique vehicles and play styles not currently in world of tanks, the European tree does not need Sweden as it can be a unique and interesting tree by itself. I’m not against a EU tree implementation of Sweden, but I think it would be a shame to cut the tree down to the maybe one or two branches we would see as part of the EU tree. This is my opinion and you are of course entitled to your own, so please share your thoughts in the comments.
The Swedish tank series will continue next part with the development of the Ikv 72 TD so stay tuned.
nice, a complete tech tree!
Doesnt matter – as long as there are new tanks. Arty can be deleted.
+1
Some arty could be repurposed to waffentrager-like TDs ingame?
Considering the size of some of the guns on the artys, if you did turn them into waffentrager clones, you’d also have to majorly buff the HP’s and armor of them also, because the alpha wouldn’t change any. 210mm or 240mm is still a bigger gun than the 170mm or 183mm we have in game, and thus, would still do damage comparable to what they do now.
Then that opens the door to the discussion of the Sturmtiger being now viable under that premise and a lot of people do not want that. Me, personally, I don’t care, I say bring it on, I’m not scared to face it, but then I have more cajones than brains to start with…
yes, i want the tanks too! running out of them to grind, and i hate arty!
but still if sweden could have it’s own tech tree, and perhaps poland too! we must rethink EU tech tree!
I dont care!! Give me this Swedish tree NAO!!!
And also use Swedish girls to voice the crews too \m/
i think swedish girls are stronger and bigger than you :))
Dedication, nice. Nice work too.
I say yes to Swedish tech tree ! Who’s with me ?
I say yes to removal of arty ! Who’s with me ?
ME! That would make me play WoT again!
Not me .I dont play arty . but i like shooting at arty
Woras pls, u whine like a noob. Man the fuck up and play.
+1
Shud i defend my klanu mate or say +1 xD
+1
Arty is not needed in this game and you fucking know it.
Nothing is needed in this game. This game is in general not needed. Your point?
Get REKT :D
Here, you see the Woras in it’s natural state of Whining like a lil ***** about a group of vehicles made of pixels in a game.
Yes to both Sweden and arty removal!
Me its painfull to grind that boring clicker sh*t :P
Buff Arty, NerFf TonKs!
I say Learn to play the goddamn game and stop crying
Who’s with me?
yes!
No.
Yes WOT don’t need skycancer .
I am with you! that tier 10 arty looks awsum.
YES to this. The entire line looks fun to play in SPG, plus, I need another X arty to grind for, give it a couple of weeks and I’ve got all the X arty if I play solidly, need a new end game.
(Yes Woras, sorry, I’m a career clicker…)
Arty line looks promising, it all does. I will grind through it all.
Bring it on.
Appy
Pretty damn cool looking tanks. Especially the strv 103a. To me it looks like a E25 on steroids with some actual armor and a similar fast firing gun.
^
Intresting
I don’t want Sweden as a separate country. It would, just like you said, compromise too much of the combined EU tree. I would rather see it there so we can get EVEN MORE tanks.
That said, my entire paycheck will disappear the day they release Swedish vehicles.
i frankly don’t care if separate or together, i just want them!
So swedish tanks are like french tanks, but a bit smaller, a bit slower, with better armor and slightly bigger guns?
Yup, from what we’ve seen that’s positive.
Given that speed is rarely a factor (I mean, 50B is faster than your average heavy, but not fast enough to compete with meds), it means those will be simply better than the french autoloaders.
One just has to look at the T57H. Slower, smaller, but better soft stats make for a much better tank than the 50B.
The only redeeming feature of the french late heavies is the 50 100 and its lolilol 6 shells.
But then, WG has clearly stated that they don’t give a fuck about french tanks, so heh.
I think it would be an interesting tree to play, minus the arty of course, certainly more interesting then Chinese and Japanese trees where to me.
+
Nice one. I would like to try that tree myself.
I say “YES, PLEASE” to the 8th nation of this game. I’d even like to see a fully developed Swedish tech tree than the EU crap that still raises lots of questions.
I don’t know about the market really, but are players that obtuse to ignore a tree because it’s not from their native country?
I think most players will go for the tanks that are OP, and those are neither chinese or japanese which also explains a bit why no one gives a rat’s ass for those nations’ tanks.
Just look at the german tanks like one and a half year ago, lots of whining about lousy tanks then months later lots of whining over OP TD’s. Why? Because everyone was playing them.
Bottomline: will definitely play a full swedish tree if it has competitive tanks.
Also kudos to sp15, man this shows real dedication to WoT, gg.
Agreed.
Same thing with the french tree really, I bet most people who play them aren’t actually french, they just like their daily dose of autoloader bonanza.
Not swedish, but I’d grind out the full tree if it went live as this.
Big thanks to sp15 and renhanxue, we do appreciate the time you spent digging trough archives.
Yes, I don’t get this “small market” argument, I play both French and Japanese tanks, and I’m neither :P
It should not matter, millions of play (war-related)games were their own nation is not represented as units/soldiers.
That is…unless you are neo-Soviet; WoWs…
Interesting article +1,I also want Sweden to become a separate tech tree instead
As An ” clicker” i want the ” archer L-52, 155mm ” artty in the game; That Will be OP……
Turreted artys with autoloaders? I already like the Swedish tech tree! :D
first of all: nice job, sp15 .
i would vote 4 sweedish tree if there were a poll. i think this tanks can only show their real potencial as an INDEPENDENT tech tree and being JUST part of eu tree would be a HUGE mistake.
as for sweedish market being small : i see no problem. players who really like this game will grind all tanks, no matter the nation.
al least i do.
keep up the good work.
I think Swedish tanks would be alot more popular if people knew more about them.( Hint hint spread the word). I for one think the s.tank is badass
Has any of these tenks seen any real action, or is their performance just speculation?
no tank action from swedish tanks!
the only swedish tanks that have seen action are the ones made by the hungarians! i think! unless somebody knows something else!
Sweden made some tanks for Hungary that did see combat in WWII afaik.
imported and licensed included, so apart from that, nothing!
I’m for the separate Swedish tree. Or at least an EU tree which has all of the Swedish tanks. :)
“- There isn’t a big market for Swedish tanks”
I want all of them them VIKING TENKS!
I’ll call you… Lovisa. Let’s go kill a whole lot of people now, Lovisa!
Nice read, it will be interesting indeed to see how WG implements Swedish tank into the game.
i think Sweden , Italy and Czechoslovakia should all get their own tech trees and scrap the EU tree
ROFL. Did Sweden won WW2 ???
Didn’t lose, which is more than can be said for anyone but the USA and USSR, and the latter only until they lost the Cold War. (Britain and France may have been on the winning side, but they failed to achieve their strategic goals.)
Really tier X premium?! So now can any retard play X tier.. great
you know there are such things as clanwars reward tanks that are tecnically counted as premiums and are tier 10′s
“small market” y’know what WG? i forgot about the huge market the japaneese have.
The Japanese line also has significance as one of the major belligerents of WW2, even if tanks weren’t exactly a strong point for them, and also has the advantage of having its own designs. Wargaming did say while the Japanese line was being developed that one of the reasons for it was for historical battles.
At the bottom line, though, there are some countries that have enough nationalistic pride that their not playing the game unless their country is represented is a significant concern, and which are large enough markets for such nationalistic players to be worth going for. Sweden is probably neither, which on the first count is probably a good thing overall apart from in this specific context.
Personally, I’d love to see something like this implemented. Sweden may have maintained its neutrality since the invention of tanks, but in the process they’ve made some interesting designs, and interesting designs are certainly a drawcard.
i would rather not see Strv-103 in game, if they(WG) cant keep it authentic (i highly doubt they can).
- Tanks gun doesn’t move an inch, its fixed to the hull. the aiming is done by moving the tank itself using automated transmission and suspension system.
- The gun is variant from L7 Royal Ordnance, with 50 round “mag” with rate of fire of 15 rounds/min. As far as i can tell, all L7 variants in WoT do about 400 dmg per round.
- Tank has two engines (turbine), one is used for reversing, the tank is famous of its clutch and break maneuver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsz1rSQTAfA
- tanks top speed is 50km/h (both reverse and forward), not sure on what kind of terrain, im guessing on roads.
- Tank has only 3 crew members, driver/gunner, commander and rear driver
- according to all mighty all knowing Wikipedia, the tank is classified as Amphibious Main battle tank, so it’s not a Tank Destroyer like usually turretless tanks are.
- Tank was mostly designed for defence mostly because its hard to hit low profile and ability dug itself in. http://sariel.pl/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/zzz.jpg
- Armor is from 90 to 100mm, not taking note of the angles and whatnot.
I just don’t see this kind of tank coming into the game, without major changes to it and i honestly don’t want WG adding some fantasy stats and whatnot, so that it could be in the game.
What kind of “fantasy stat” would Strv 103 need to be in the game?
well,
1) the auto loader is a headache, 50 round magazine/clip (whatever you call it). 15 rounds per minute, with my math that’s one shell every 4 seconds, dpm 6300 ? just not going to happen in WoT.
2) reverse speed of 50km/h. guessing that would get nerfed to oblivion
3) 2 engines, how would that work in game? i have no idea.. one engine goes down and the tank stops moving completely ?
3) crew. One crew member can drive/shoot this tank as the driver/gunner and commander both have the same controllers and in real life the commander can take over anytime he wants.
in wot’s rules, driver gets killed, the tank moves slower. the gunner goes down, the aim suffers and so on. Finding the balance might be tricky ?
4) the barrel itself which is fixed on the hull. every turret less tank in wot has a gun that moves to some degree. How/what would the aiming mechanics be for this tank? or would they make the gun movable?
all these little changes to this tank would make the tank something its not. In my opinion at least.
All tanks in the game are already abstracted in many ways, Strv 103 would be no different. Basically all the tanks with autoloaders in world of tanks are very different from how they are IRL with smaller magazines, higher rate of fire between shots, unrealistic long reload times etc.
Hrrrmn. Let’s see…
1) would probably be a matter of treating it as a normal reload, since a magazine of that size isn’t going to be exhausted. ROF may be dropped – currently, the tanks packing L7 or copies therof normally range from under 7 to 7.5 on medium tanks, so above 10 is possible as compensation for the difficulty of keeping the gun trained on a target. Depending on how strict they are about #4, it could even be given the high theoretical DPM on the basis that it’s not going to be able to keep the gun trained on target enough to keep that DPM.
2) Maybe? It could be seen as compensation for thin if well-sloped armour, low alpha by TD standards, and possibly poor soft stats on the gun as well thanks to #4. (Frankly, I’m waiting to see what they do with the Archer, if in fact they try to take that on at all – the British TD that has a 17-pounder mounted BACKWARDS, and thus for gameplay purposes will effectively have a higher reverse than forward speed)
3) It may be theoretically driveable by one crewmember, but multiple crewmembers does spread the load (similar to how the one-man turrets in some French and Russian tanks was a disadvantage). So losing crew will still hurt. It’s probably reasonable to say that each crew member is the best at doing their job among the crew, so losing the driver leads to lower agility (the commander or radioman can drive, but they’re not as good as the main driver), losing the commander means you lose firing accuracy as well as spotting (the driver and radioman aren’t as good at aiming) and so on. If anything, the system is too forgiving for most tanks and actually fits the Strv 103.
4) What they could do is allow for a certain amount of traversal without it counting as traversing. Visually, the tank might turn slightly (or the amount of traverse might simply be small enough that they can get away with not having movement at all), but such small movement doesn’t reset camouflage, reticle bloom, or binoculars. From a gameplay perspective… Anyone who’s had their turret jammed probably knows how hard it is to line up a target through the imprecise driving controls, so I’d imagine it would have enough ‘gun traverse’ to span half a second or so of hull traverse.
Eh, missed the engines, due to there being two #3s. From what I’ve read, one engine was used to boost the other, so a ‘damaged engine’ result could represent one being knocked out while the other is fine. The engine probably should be given a lot of health to account for the redundancy, though.