Hello everyone,

Everyone knows about the success of the Renault FT-17 tank. It was the first tank ever to use the “classic” turret configuration we see on practically all tanks of today and it started the long development of these war machines, that hasn’t ended yet and is constantly evolving. Every modern tank today owes to its existence to this little fellow.

However, Renault was not the only French company, developing armor in WW1. In parallel with the development of the FT-17, other companies made their attempts as well. Notably, Peugeot came with its own tank project and the vehicle photographed above is the result of this undertaking. The vehicle development was initiated by Captain Oemichen, an engineer (developer), serving with the Special Artillery branch of the French military (l’Artillerie Spéciale). He proposed a vehicle, that was roughly similiar to the FT-17, but lacked a turret. On the other hand, the suspension of the vehicle was simplified.

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Hello everyone,

Czech player jrt5 was in Normandy last week. He took a trip through the countryside to the beaches and ended up in the “movie camp” at Sainte-Mère-Église. And there, he took a picture of the M4A2 “Fury” Sherman from the upcoming movie. He was kind enough to provide those (and other) photos for publication, thank you!

The Fury (and its camp)

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Hello everyone,

if you follow FTR or the E3 stream (or even visited the E3 expo), you might know that the WoT Blitz mobile game was announced for June 26th worldwide release. Now, here are some screenies from WG site (courtesy of wot-news) and let me tell you, they look better than WoT on my “calculator” :)

The post is very picture heavy.

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Hello everyone,

against my better judgement, I actually turned on the E3 stream for second time in the second day. Today (in the evening in Europe) is the last day of the show. So, the good news for codemongers is that the code/reward system in the stream got pretty much polished. You don’t have to repeat pointless phrases anymore, the questions are well announced, there is more time to do everything a lot of it is just automated, so that’s good. I actually like this code system, I am glad that WG guys learned. Bonus points for some genuinely funny comments from WG staff when releasing the rewards (“wow so reward very victory wow”) :)

The stream content… well, let’s start with the good stuff. I caught one plugin from The_Chieftain, American military historian, who actually has been acting as an advisor to the creators of the upcoming war movie Fury. Here’s basically what he said:

- movie is going to be no politics “5 guys in a tank trying to get through the war home”
- real life – tanks were supporting element, that’s how the movie depicts it
- movie will be realistic, so will be the tank issues in it
- uniforms are very realistic
- M4A2HVSS 76mm in the movie from Bovington (represents an M4A3 with 76mm) (standard post war tank of the US army, best of US Shermans, served in Korea)
- there might be an event with a “Fury” M4 tank in the game

The exclusive Fury footage can be found here.

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Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3338685.html

Hello everyone,

Russian LJ user Tikhonovetskiy compiled the changes in tank destroyer camouflage after shooting. Now, to make sense of the numbers – they are based on the data, gathered (via trials) by Russian players. How exactly it works is explained in this older post on FTR (I suggest you check it out), but basically, the percentage value displays the percentage, by which the spotting distance of a tank is reduced when compared to ideal case (as in, for example if the number is 10 percent and you have a tank that would ideally spot everything at 1000 meters, it gets spotted at 1000 – (10 percent, eg. 1000) = 900 meters instead).

The table is unfortunately in Russian, but here is what the numbers mean:

First number after the name of the vehicle is camo reduction when the vehicle is standing
Second number is camo reduction when the vehicle is moving
Third number is camo reduction when the vehicle shoots
Fourth number (next to the gun name) is camo reduction when the vehicle shoots, how it was in 9.0

Obviously these values are for the gun, written in the last column.

So for example the first case, AT-1 – in 9.0, the shooting camo reduction was 7,70 percent, in 9.1 it is 5,05 percent (which means a reduction to two thirds of the original value). Also, as you can see, prems weren’t touched. Oddly enough, WT E-100 got actually its shooting camo buffed if I see it correctly.

Soviets

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Hello everyone,

today, we are going to have a look at the new Historical Battle, Tobruk. You probably already noticed that unlike the Russian server, which has two historical battles (Tobruk and Bryansk 1942), the EU server gets only one battle, Tobruk (with Bryansk possibly coming later). The reason for that (according to an official post by Tuccy) is that given the extremely low interest in historical battles, there was a concern that (just like in 9.0) very few people would be playing it and these few people would further split into two historical battles (both with German involvement).

Anyway, back to Tobruk. There is a nice historical post about that battle (Russians had it for two days already, I was just about to translate it today, but for once, WG EU did their job). This post however has one small problem. Actually, the entire battle does. The battle itself ommits the obvious role of Italian forces, since, quite obviously, there are no Italian tanks in the game. Remember, how the developers said we can’t have Israeli-Arab conflicts due to the lack of those parties’ crews? Well, on the other hand, we apparently can have “historical” battles without actual historical Italian involvement. Also…

That’s not a British Valentine crew, is it? Just saying, could have been mentioned.

Anyway, to the historical battle.

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Source: http://www.develop-online.net/analysis/pc-free-to-play-s-billions/0192597

2013 data, worldwide. Pretty interesting…

….and it’s a growing trend.

Hello everyone,

Martintramvajak recently visited the well-known Czech army event at the military museum at Lešany. I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t take any photos, but luckily, he did. Here they are. This time, I think it’s not needed to add any descriptions – see how many vehicles will you guess :) There will also be a second part (with description) of some other goodies, that can be found over there…

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Gonna be interesting :)