Source: VK Wotleaks community

Hello everyone,

the supertesters is currently busy with testing the new “referral” (player invite) program. Basically, if you invite a player:

If you and the player will play together (platoon), every “successful” battle, you will get XP bonuses of the following style (the multipliers are placeholders for supertest):

- for the first hour from first successful battle together – x3 XP (once, doesn’t reset)
- the following days, after the x3 period is over, it’s x2 XP
- after the recruiter gains 10000 referral (bonus) XP from the x2 event, it is reduced to x1,5

These bonuses add up to all the other XP bonuses (premium account, missions, first victory). Furthermore, the recruiter will be awarded for reaching X amount of referral XP as such (the numbers are placeholders, will differ on real server):

- certain number of XP: 1 million credits
- certain number of XP (step 1 x 3): T95E2 special loader crewmember with enough crew XP on him for 2 perks
- certain number of XP (step 1 x 5): T95E2 special driver crewmember with enough crew XP on him for 2 perks
- certain number of XP (step 1 x 7): T95E2 special gunner crewmember with enough crew XP on him for 2 perks
- certain number of XP (step 1 x 10): T95E2 special commander crewmember with enough crew XP on him for 2 perks and a free T95E2 tank + garage slot

Furthermore, if the “recruit” buys a tier 10 tank, the “recruiter” immediately gets a T95E2 tank with a free garage slot. If the recruiter continues to gather the referral XP and reaches the last stage (commander + free tank for step1x10) while already having the T95E2, he will get just the commander.

Thanks to AN225 for linking me this video.

Hello everyone,

Brazil recently undertook a large military excercise. That by itself wouldn’t be that interesting (all the armies do that), but in it, we can see some… vintage equipment. The Bofors is amazing :)

Hello everyone,

ASIA player (and moderator) Mcmole recently visited the newly opened Carins Australian Armour and Artillery museum – there are some pretty interesting vehicles there and he was kind enough to share the pictures. Check this out!

For full version of the picture, right-click it and select “view image”

Chieftain MBT (this one comes from Western Australia)

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Author: Renhanxue and sp15

Hello everyone,

yet another brand new tank was found in the Swedish archives – and yes, it’s a proposed upgrade of the m/41 (TNH-Sv) light tank, originally manufactured in Czechoslovakia.

Renhanxue:

In mid-1943, the strv m/41 (TNH-S) and strv m/42 deliveries were in progress but judging by disturbing intelligence reports from Finland and Germany, they really weren’t up to the latest modern standards. Some army people had been allowed to study captured Soviet T-34′s in Finland and were particularly impressed by its powerful diesel engine and heavily sloped armor. A successor to the Swedish tanks then in production was needed, and soon. Some people at the Royal Artillery and Ordnance Administration were convinced that it was necessary to lift the 22 tonne weight limit (imposed for the sake of strategic mobility, since most Swedish bridges could not tolerate any greater mass), but it was also recognised that lighter tanks had a role to play.

Because of the need for a speedy development process and to avoid re-tooling existing production lines, Scania-Vabis (which was ordinarily a manufacturer of trucks and buses, but also contracted to license build the strv m/41) was asked to investigate in which ways the strv m/41 could be improved without losing too much time. The result was described in a letter dated July 21st, 1943, which contains the two photos above.

Scania-Vabis (seemingly inspired by the T-34 and similar modern designs) proposed two hull alternatives (1 and 2) and two turret alternatives (a and b); the turrets were compatible with both proposed hulls. Hull 1 (the first photo) attempted to keep parts commonality with the existing strv m/41 as far as possible; the main changes were slightly wider tracks and road wheels, sloping the armor, switching to welded seams in many of places and improving the driver’s position in a few ways (better periscope and a bit more room). The resulting tank was calculated to weigh 13 tonnes, two more than the strv m/41.

Hull 2 was essentially a new tank; the chassis had been redesigned to be able to fit a new 8-cylinder engine capable of producing 220 HP. The hull armor was improved and the tank was calculated to weigh 15 tonnes. The road wheel arrangement had also been modified, and the bottom plate of the tank was curved to help protect against mines. Scania-Vabis admitted that in order to get production of this proposal going, quite some engineering effort and retooling would be required.

The turrets were similar to each other, the main difference being that turret b had a rounded mantlet and the machine gun fixed in a coaxial position, while on turret a aiming the machine gun independently was possible. In the end neither proposal was accepted, although I haven’t been able to find the exact reasoning for why in the archives just yet.

Alternative 1

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- in 9.5, Sherman Firefly will be researchable from Sherman III and Sherman III from Grant (SS: the connection between new/old branches will be Valentine to Archer)
- it’s possible Churchill Gun Carrier will lose the 32pdr gun and will drop to tier 5
- Q: “Back in the day, it was possible to always find a strategy 1vs1″ A: “In +/-3 MM as well?”
- in 9.5, Challenger and Avenger will be mixed into one vehicle. It’s possible those vehicles will exist as separate hulls, when alternative hulls are implemented.
- FV4004 Conway has “frontal armor roughly like a Centurion”, only the FV4005 has paper armor

And now, for interesting news – Storm: “Most likely, we will reject HD resolution” (he means HD texture resolution on high-polygon models), he reasons as such:

“HD textures for one vehicle have cca 80 Mb. 400 tanks * 80 Mb = 32 Gb of textures only for tanks. 80 Mb * 30 tanks in battle = 2,4 Gb in video memory only for tanks. And then there are maps and environmental objects, so the number above can be roughly multiplied by two. Maybe in 10 years from now on, we will return to HD. When resources and internet channels are sufficient.”

This matter was already decided. Storm adds that the display of HD textures on your own tank only was the first thing they did a patch ago to reduce the stress on memory. But after calculating the total size of the game client, it was decided to remove the HD textures altogether.

Continue reading →

Source: VK Wotleaks community

Hello everyone,

currently, supertesters are getting their hands on the tier 8 FV4202, the new premium one. Furthermore, there are rumors that around the end of the year, some “really cool” mission will take place on RU server and that the mission might be related to the FV4202 switch, so maybe it would pay off to buy it as soon as possible. As far as I can tell, the supertesters are using the SD model as a placeholder for tier 8 for now.

The tier 8 FV4202 has following characteristics (these are VERY preliminary and might change):

Tier 8 MT
Price: 11750G (placeholder)
Hitpoints: 1400
Weight: 41,594 tons
Max speed: 35/20
Hull armor: 51/51/32
Turret armor: 170/90/90
Traverse: 42 deg/s
Turret traverse: 32 deg/s
View range: 390 m
Radio range: 750 m

Engine: RR Meteorite 202B
Power: 510 hp
Power-to-weight: 12,26 hp/t
Terrain resistance: 0.6/0.7/1.2
Fire starting chance: 20%

Gun: OQF 20-pdr Gun Type B Barrel
Damage: 230/230/280
Penetration: 226/258/42
Module damage: 118
Reload time: 7.6
Accuracy: 0.33
Aiming time: 2.4
Ammo: 50
Elevation: -10/+20 (back: -2)

Hello everyone,

following news appeared on several Russian portals. Apparently, it’s possible that (on RU server, but I do believe such a thing concerns other servers as well), the E-25 tier 7 premium tank destroyer will be removed from the regular sale in the shop (the way Type 59 was).

Now, I reached out to my own sources and I learned that while this info specifically cannot be confirmed, it is true that lead producers and developers wanted to “do something” about the E-25, so it’s possible this piece of news is true, but far from certain.

Source: http://m.habrahabr.ru/company/wargaming/blog/241083/

Part 1 can be found here.
Part 2 can be found here.

x64 Support

Not so long ago, our artists transferred en-masse from 32-bit Maya 2012 to 64-bit Maya 2014. Since the exporter is almost completely based on Python, there was practically no problem with x64 support. Only the library (.pyd), built on C++, needed some fixing. Currently, the exporter can be used both in x32 and x64 processes, as it itself performs and loads the assembly of the C++ library.

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Hello everyone,

a fresh batch of info from the Insider: apparently, a Wargaming developer *name redacted* (but it was one of those guys, participating in the skill MM discussion) got fired. The official reason for his removal was “ineptitude”.

The word was however, that he was screwing around with some models and was responsible for example for the “hole” in Panzer 38t armor from a while ago. Whether he did that intentionally or just because he was an idiot was not known. The Insider however thinks that we will see a lot less buggy models from now on.