World of Warships – Interview with Ivan Morozov

Hello everyone,

this is the exclusive Wot-News interview with Ivan Morozov, one of the World of Warships developers. Please note that I tried to translate everything correctly, but I don’t know the naval terms even in English. Also, if you are confused by some of the answers (like “what did he mean by that”) – well, so am I. Here’s what he said:

Do you publish a lot of info about World of Warships?

We publish several entries per week on our blog, we do tell about the game and its development. There, you can find out about the game mechanics, get an idea about the state of the game from fresh screenshots or read regular reports from alphatest either from tester reports or from the infographics. Apart from various kinds of content posting, the developers simply talk directly to the blog readers, answering their questions using videos or interviews online. So, to answer your question – yes, we publish a lot about World of Warships. Especially given the fact that the project is still in the alpha testing stage.

Can you tell us what the WoWs ship classes will look like?

We can tell, but you have to see it with your own eyes. Of course a tanker will get the associations immediately: battleship – that’s a heavy tank, destroyer – that’s a “scout”, aircraft carrier is “artillery and cruiser is like a tank destroyer. But after even a few battles in WoWs, it becomes clear that using WoT tactics will surely lead to defeat.

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Straight Outta Supertest – “Football” Mode?

Hello everyone,

once again, this info is unconfirmed, so take it with a bit of salt, but looks like Wargaming noticed the football (soccer, if you prefer) World Cup in Brazil (12.6.-13.7.2014). A new map and a new “medal” appeared in the supertest client:

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Allegedly, it’s supposed to be some kind of special event á la Karl. The description of the medal in the test client says:

“For winning in the foodball match, while driving T-62A SPORT. Overall standings consist of longest winning streak in a row. The streak is ended by a loss. It is awarded to all players of the winning team during the time of the event, that is to coincide with the football World Cup 2014.”

The description of the map allegedly is: “Meet in honorable combat for the first place in the Himmelsdorf championship”

Weekly FTR contributor review

Hello everyone,

once again it’s the time to thank the contributors, it’s you who keep FTR running after all! This time, following people donated via Paypal:

Corthag (Germany)
Martijn W. (Netherlands)

Thanks a lot!

The best way to help me and FTR is via the Patreon service

http://www.patreon.com/silentstalker

This is the Patreon account of For the Record. In case you read this for the first time and feel like contributing, here is an explanation what it is, how it works and how to contribute. You can find a list of all those, who pledged and help to keep FTR running here.

Thank you all!

Straight Outta Supertest – Kill Marks

Source: VK WotLeaks community

Hello everyone,

one of the alleged features of the upcoming 9.1 patch (well, unless they scrap it like they did with other features) are the barrel kill marks.

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According to the leak (I can’t guarantee its legitimity though, so don’t take it for granted), these kill rings will not be awarded for kills or XP, but for average damage on this tank and will work something like the mastery badges, only with damage, not XP. They will be visible on the gun barrel.

One mark (ring, star etc.) will be awarded for having average damage better than 65 percent of the players on the vehicle
Two marks will be awarded for having average damage better than 85 percent of the players on the vehicle
Three marks will be awarded for having average damage better than 95 percent of the players on the vehicle

These marks can be recieved only on tier 5-10 vehicles, they are displayed on the gun. It will be possible to disable displaying them in settings. Only damage from random battles counts, the marks will not be displayed in historical battles.

Stronghold Mode Preview

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3291114.html

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What is the Stronghold mode?

New mode for clan players, available within the game and not tied to the Clanwars. A clan has a virtual base with buildings, road leading to it and additional constructs. Can be created by the commander of the clan free of charge, whenever he wishes, but the clan has to have at least 20 players.

The clan can develop its “stronghold”, construct buildings on it in order to access various economical bonuses, that can be activated for limited time. For example, increase of creditmaking of vehicles in the game, or increase the crew training speed – everything depends on stronghold development strategy. In the future, new features will be added to this mode, such as upon reaching a certain level of the stronghold, players will be able to attack enemy strongholds and defend theirs. During such battles, there will be unique features such as air support (bomber raid), artillery fire mission, minefields and others.

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Doom of the Titans – Königstigers in the Last Days of the War

Hello everyone,

it was in 1944, when Germany released the last of its Big Cats, the mighty Tiger Ausf.B, otherwise known as the Tiger II or the Königstiger, and threw it on the front to stop the tidal wave of the allied onslaught. At 70 tons, it was a real monster, carrying the powerful 88mm L/71 gun, but it came too late and too few (less than 500) were made to make any serious difference in the war. It was also very expensive to produce, resource-requiring and it was plagued by mechanical issues. Nevertheless, the King Tiger remains one of the symbols of the German tank power of WW2.

During the last days of the war, King Tigers were still active outside of Germany and today, I’m going to write about those, that were active in Czechoslovakia. The Königstigers were usually organized in heavy tank batallions (schwere Panzerabteilung, sPzAbt), each consisting nominally of 45 vehicles – those were further split into companies, each company was then split into three platoons, each with four tanks. The rest of the vehicles of the batallion were command tanks of the company and batallion leaders and their deputies. The batallion was also supplemented with AA tanks (Flakpanzers), ARV’s (Bergepanzers), APC’s, trucks, cars and so on. These numbers were however purely theoretical, as late in the war, full state was practically never achieved and it was common for tank batallions to be at half strength or even less. In the end, it was even decided to nominally reduce the amount of companies per batallion to two.

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19.5.2014

- Storm admits that even “real” tank characteristics in random battles aren’t always historical
- Storm states that there are almost no bad maps in the game anymore, all of them were fixed so they are playable
- Storm confirms the premium Valentine changes leaked earlier today – the armor will be nerfed to 8.11 level because in 9.0 someone overbuffed it
- roaming has been postponed for now
- tank descriptions on minimap will come “it’s done when it’s done”
- the mod that exists and does the tank descriptions on minimap is “terrible unoptimized – we have to start from scratch”
- dynamic tank characteristics in hangar (based on what modules you have installed) will come this year
- test 9.1 will be in May (SS: possibly this week)

Posted in Q&A

Praga P-IIa – the “almost LT-35″

Hello everyone,

today, I am going to write about a project, that might have ended as the LT Vz.35 (or Panzer 35t, as you know it from the game), the Praga P-IIa. In order to understand the way it worked – unlike the decentralized British or American production, Czechoslovak tank production was basically a competition between two large companies from the beginning of Czechoslovak tank design in late 20′s to 1948-1950, when both were nationalized – ČKD (Praga) and Škoda. Before the war, both companies had their successful tank designs – Škoda Š-IIa, also known as the LT Vz.35 and Praga TNH-S, also known as LT Vz.38 (widely regarded as the best pre-war and early war light tank in the world). The same system of competition was used by the Germans of course.

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Such was the case in the 1935 competition for the IIa program. Based upon a 1934 army general report on the status of tank forces, it was decided to split the earlier category II (light tanks) into IIa (cavalry tanks) and IIb (more like infantry tanks). It’s worth noting that the division between both groups was nowhere near as prominent as for example in the case of British tanks. Praga, having won the earlier competition for the category II itself with its Praga P-II (LT Vz.34), was in good position to offer its services to the army once more.

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