Hello everyone,

in my last post about Czechoslovak light tanks (specifically the TNH-57/900), I wrote that for tier 6 I also have a candidate. This is it, Škoda T-17.

On 8.9.1948, Škoda came (likely from its own initiative) with a light tank project designated T-17. The suspension of this vehicle started the development of new “light platform”.

In November 1948, it was decided on the meeting between the Škoda company leadership and the representatives of the Czechoslovak army to create a light platform on which a light tank destroyer, a light self propelled gun and a light tank could be built. This platform was named “Lehký podvozek” or “LP”. It was based on the drawing from Škoda design bureau of the T-17 light tank.

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Source: http://war-tundra.livejournal.com/2100496.html

Thanks to Ensign Expendable for linking this :) From a War Thunder blog. Meanwhile in Gaijin office, allegedly from some head honcho of development…

“Whoever of fucking designers doesn’t fucking play the shit he creates will be fucking penalized each month! You are fucking hurting the project and I fucking will hurt you until all the shit doesn’t get the fuck out of your head!”

(sorry, I couldn’t resist posting this :D)

….because you just KNOW how national battles will end up :D

Hello everyone,

there seems to be some confusion about the announced removal of battletier 12 in 8.11 (on Tuesday), so I’d like to shed some light on the issue. Personally, I was just as confused as you are, but in the end, I think I understood what the developers meant by this and it is a pretty elegant solution indeed.

For starters, what does it mean for tier 8 tanks? Will they meet tier 10′s more often? The answer is “no”. Balance-wise, it means absolutely nothing. Why does it mean nothing? Well, because there is this rule that a vehicle has to be spread equally over battletiers, that trumps everything else. In other words, it is a game mechanism that you will spend equal amount of time on all the battletiers. Keep in mind that this rule does work over your entire tank statistic, so “streaks” of you at the top (or bottom) are completely possible (I better say this before anyone starts moaning again about “rigged” MM). By the way, remember that “famous” post by a developer, where he said the better you play, the worse MM you get? Yea, that’s garbage, it was debunked several times even by Storm.

Let’s have a look at the tier 8,9 and 10 battletier spreads.

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Hello everyone,

in the recent storm of speculation about the removal of battletier 12, one interesting piece of info kinda fell through the cracks.

Storm on troll platoons (SS: platoon with incompatible battletiers – for example one tier 1 and one tier 8 vehicle):

“We can’t ban them for several reasons. But they will be punished by recieving less XP and credits, if their battletiers don’t match. With a warning, of course, during the creation of the platoon.”

Well, there you have it. Finally, after all this time.

A while ago, I wrote a Q&A special on Soviet tank armour. Since then I have gotten periodic requests to do a similar special on German tank armour. Initially, I did not intend to write such an article, but duty calls. However, this is no ordinary article.

Usually, archive materials do not particularly surprise me. I see a “that’s interesting” here and there, maybe a “huh, I didn’t know that”. I’ve even come to terms with ridiculous things that happen when you try to compare reports from the two sides involved. But this, this is something unprecedented. Many things I have written shocked my readers, but this discovery shocked even me.

It all started, as it usually does, with an argument on an internet forum. As it often happens, we were discussing a DTIC document, specifically “Metallurgical Examination of Armor and Welded Joints from the Side of a German PzKw (Panther) Tank“, to be precise. This report says lots of things one would normally expect to see in a report about late-war German armour: “The steel quality rating was “D”…which is borderline acceptable”, “the fracture was extremely brittle in nature, with a bright flat crystalline surface”, “inferior toughness, as evidenced by brittle fractures and low impact resistance”, “extremely poor shock properties”, etc, etc. If you looked into German armour in any serious manner, you’ve seen it all before. However, WoT forums poster Daigensui brought something unexpected to my attention, a claim by American intelligence that the quality of German armour did not deteriorate from 1942 to 1945. I did not believe my eyes. How could that be? Surely German armour in 1942 was not as bad as it was in 1945? Let’s take a trip back in time, through many years of armour samples, to see where it all went wrong.

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Hello everyone,

System98, Locastan and St0rmshadow prepared for you something quite interesting. A mod, that will identify known botters on your and enemy team. The mod is really simply – whenever one of those assholes is in battle, it will identify him in team roster like this:

The best part is, the botter list doesn’t require any updates, it’s updated automatically. Requirements:

To show the little boticon besides the playername in battle you will need XVM with activated clanlogos in the config. If you don’t want to install XVM, you will miss the little icon, but still see the fantasy clan [BOT!] if a convicted bot is found in your battle.

You can download it from here or here.

And in case you wonder, who are the known botters? These are the botters that have been caught by St0rmshadow in last two weeks. Note that in order to see them botting in the replays attached, you will need freecam in most of the cases.

In case you encounter a bot yourself, or you have your suspicions, send the replay to St0rmshadow at st0rmshadow@t-online.de, he will have a look at it. ALWAYS include the replay, best uploaded to wotreplays.com.

Hello everyone,

ever tried cheating in a casino? I hope not – that’s illegal and you will be lucky if you end up only with a ban from the venue. However, same strict rules don’t apply for Wargaming it seems.

Some of you might remember Rasco4000 from ASIA (SEA) server. He’s the guy that got caught in competition rigging. He was stripped of his Type 59 he “won” and banned for a week. Well guess what: Rasco is back with vengeance.

In the recent Art of War (Japan) competition on SEA server, Rasco4000 won TWO Type 59′s. How did he do that? By platooning with high tier vehicles. See where this is going?

Now, I asked Mick42 from SEA server, how the hell this guy wasn’t thrown out. Apparently, he didn’t recieve a global competition ban (like cheaters did on US and EU server for example), instead, he was just punished by a regular week ban and that was it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure how he “won” this contest – but even if it by some strange twist of fate was all legit, don’t you think that competition riggers should be simply blacklisted? I do.

Wargaming apparently doesn’t.