Thanks to Vipez for sending me this one.
Player Pesusieni from the Eye for en Eye (EFE) clan managed to score 15 kills on T1 Cunningham. Pretty impressive overall!
Here’s the video:
And here’s the debriefing table:
Author Archives: Silentstalker
1.7.2013
First some info from the developers from a recent post on the RU WoT blog:
- apparently, the fact that The_Chieftain did measure the mantlet of the T29 to be thinner than what Hunnicutt suggests does not imply that the T29 mantlet will be nerfed, it will be re-checked eventually
- IS-4 (SS: frontal) armor was not nerfed in 8.6, according to Storm
Regular:
- it is confirmed that there will be NO tier 5 Soviet light tank after 8.7: T-50 will remain at tier 4 (SS: it was leaked earlier that it will lead to T-34) and the MT-25 will move to tier 6 (SS: and will be unlockable from KV-1S, to which the T-50 experience will be transferred in 8.7 apparently)
- KV-1S 122mm gun nerf? “Penetration will stay, it’s historical. Other characteristics of the gun can be nerfed or buffed if needed. And we decide what’s needed.”
- Storm confirms that weight of the ammo does not count towards the tank weight (SS: ammo simply has no weight in WoT)
- the possibility of retraining crewmembers to different roles: when it’s done it’s done (but not soon)
- when considering what modules to take for a scout, the module weight does play a role in the vehicle’s maneuverability, so it is worth considering
- it is actually possible to shoot a tank straight thru (the shell penetrates, goes thru the tank, penetrates again and goes out on the other side) as long as the 10 caliber rule is observed (SS: a shell that enters the tank travels inside only the distance of its caliber*10, eg. a 150mm shell will travel 1500mm inside)
- when asked about a possibility to introduce Soviet tanks with improvised armor (skirts, for example), he stated that later tanks had overloaded frontal wheels even as it was, so any “normal” vehicles with screen armor are the late (postwar) ones
- VK4502P won’t become a T8 premium tank
- the prototype Maus design viable for T9 comes from one recently published German book
SS: you can read about the Maus prototypes here:
VK100.01P – This is how Maus started
Typ 205 – Porsche Unleashed
Typ 205A – Porsche Unleashed II
- actually, SerB states Wittman’s medal was removed at German request
- while camo factor for vehicles is assigned manually (and not automatically, based on their dimensions), width of the vehicle does play the biggest role
- Q: “Arties are overnerfed” A: “How terrible…”
- according to Storm, the piece of information that German Panther tanks lose their top engines in supertest is garbage, however – SerB later confirms it: Panthers will lose unhistorical top engines and possibly gain new historical ones, he states that overall the top configuration gameplay won’t change
- T92 lost its top engine, since “it doesn’t need it”
- developers don’t get free tanks for their personal accounts, they buy them – both SerB and V.Kisly (owner of WG) do. Only journalists do get free tanks for their accounts and only temporarily
- vehicle repair price is not tied to its performance, it’s set independently
- more detailed tank models? “when it’s done it’s done”, even object models will get improved
- the tank horn idea was scrapped
- unified account silver apparently won’t be shared between WoWp and WoT
- new tier 7 premium heavy tank? “Not anytime soon”
- the difference between 112 and WZ-111 is “hull shape”
- WZ-111 and Type 62 will most likely come to the shops (SS: the question is aimed at RU server, but I doubt it would be any different for other servers)
- the T-50-2 will not turn into a premium vehicle
- new tier 8 premium vehicles? “Will tell when the time is right”
- night battles are still planned, SerB will tell more (for example on how the lights will work) when the time is right
Greedy Goblin and WOT “cheats”
Hello everyone,
today, I’ll just post a few links for you. Some of you might already know about them, some of you don’t – the whole thing has been around for about a month, so a lot of players had a chance to have a look at it.
Long story short: a guy (from Hungary it seems), who calls himself Greedy Goblin (apparently he plays on EU server as “Gevlon”), posted 5 articles on his blog, in which he explains at length that he discovered a “cheat” (how to make more money/XP in World of Tanks). He combines it with a conspiracy theory, basically claiming that the game is rigging random battle results in favour of low W/R players, while damaging the high W/R players to keep them close to average.
You can check his articles here:
Part 1 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-introduction-and.html
Part 2 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-lucky-and-unucky.html
Part 3 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-lemming-train.html
Part 4 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-its-economy-stupid.html
Part 5 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-exploit.html
On Russian forums, he became quite famous, to the point of people asking SerB, whether the “winrate conspiracy” is true (of course they got trolled as a result).
And my take on it?
While the argumenting is interesting at some points, I am no friend of statistical “proofs”, I leave statistics for real life. In part 5, the great exploit is explained to be…. waaaaaait for it….. playing like a retard (rushing), so the game will carry you via its secret “you shall not drop below certain winrate” mechanism (for example by putting you on better initial spots before the battle), at which point you start gaining more money by playing good, because you’ll have the upper hand (or was it simply continuing playing like that, making games more profitable? Something like that)
Personally, I don’t believe in this. Winrate conspiracy theories are old as the WoT open beta itself (maybe even older, I didn’t play closed beta to confirm that) and even if the results were not rigged by the blogger (and I am not suggesting they are), they ALL have one major flaw: they are based on statistics by one player. That’s obviously not enough. Even if it was a thousand players, it would not be enough. Ten thousand? That would probably suffice, but I think people fail to realize, how HUGE World of Tanks playerbase is. Within that playerbase, statistically anything can happen: one of a million players could probably have a 50 loss streak, even if he wasn’t a totally bad player. And this player will then come out and say “Okay, my results must be rigged, there is NO way I am having THIS many losses.”
Anyway, even so, the articles (and the whole blog in fact!) are interesting to read. Maybe you will come to a different conclusion than I did, who knows.
8.7 supertest info
Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2172063.html
Just a few points, regarding the upcoming 8.7 changes. You’ll like them :)
- T-50 will NOT apparently lead to MT-25, it will lead to T-34
- MT-25 will be unlockable from KV-1S
- current accumulated T-50 XP will be somehow transferred to KV-1S
- Panther tanks (apparently both Panther I and II) will be rebalanced, they will lose their top engines, but will recieve a rate of fire buff (amongst other things)
30.6.2013
SerB started doing one really annoying thing: he stopped copying whole questions, so I have no idea what the player was asking, therefore I had to skip some nice answers.
- according to The_Chieftain, it’s possible (not anytime soon tho) that the T29 series of US heavy tanks will eventually be nerfed, because preliminary measuring suggest that the mantlets aren’t as thick as it was originally thought
- SerB won’t tell, how EXACTLY is the XP income calculated
- apparently, regarding the earlier announced intention of SerB to remove the unhistorical buffs of the VK4502P, while moving it down a tier or two, its replacement could be the “Protomaus” (one of the Maus prototypes the developers ran across)
- SerB states that while the HESH might be reconfigured for another mechanism, the spall liner will continue to work against it
- no new heavy lines have been introduced lately, because there are few candidates for them. They will come in time.
- it’s possible there might be a new “Interesting mechanics” video, explaining the 8.6 changes
- it’s possible the option (mentioned in March) to retrain various crewmembers to another role (for example radioman to gunner) will come in time, but it doesn’t have too high a priority, as there are “more important tasks” and implementing this would take like a month of work
- random games without platoons are not planned
- there are no plans to nerf tank destroyers for now
- SerB said he predicted that the next target of mass whining will be the tank destroyers – and that he was right
- shells in WoT are not objects, they have no mass or dimensions, they are basically just dots (so are the points of impact – they are not “holes”)
- SerB states it’s not true that a shell only has following parameters: penetration, damage, velocity, he also names caliber, base ricochet angle, base approach angle, damage to modules and splash. And that’s all.
- SerB confirms that since the RU7 server works with a special matchmaker version, then yes, at any point the developers can change the MM mechanism on various servers separately
- the WoWp open beta will be launched on 2nd July, but the unified premium account will come a bit later
- SerB is playing WoWp even for pleasure (not just as a job), he plays with mouse-keyboard and
- apparently, the preferred trees in Baltic countries and in China are Soviet
- it won’t be possible for players to choose their preferable MM spread (SS: some player actually wanted a -2/+4 spread for his KV)
- keyboard indicator on password screen, tank carousel selection in the garage and aim sights with timers and colour choices are not considered too important by SerB
- there are no plans to introduce a “cyclone filter” equivalent for German and American tanks
- Q: “There are too many KV-1S, will they get their 122mm removed?” A: “How terrible…”
- Q: “Will Hetzer lose its 105mm?” A: “How terrible…”
- it’s possible that when the hulls of the vehicles are interchangeable, the name of the tank will change with them, but for now this won’t be implemented (SS: there is a plan to introduce a feature that hulls will be unlockable as modules)
- the “bamboo canes” on Chinese maps provide no camo bonus at all
- more realistic tank destruction model will come
- SerB states that since this answering is not his duty but his free time, he considers it a relaxation
- MT-25 stats? “No comment on leaks, wait for patchnotes”
- your game settings are stored on your computer, not on the server, it’s impossible for now to do it serverside
- SerB confirms: E-79 is a fake tank, invented by the Japanese (modellers)
- this situation is impossible in WoT, as the physical armor in the game is 0mm thick – armor thickness is just a number
- SerB states that while he had some threats with violence, noone never showed up
- no alternative turret designs for Indien-Panzer have been found, if some appear, the devs will add them to the game
- T-44 is moving worse than T-54 (despite having a powerful engine), because “the suspension is obsolete”
- SerB states that the implementation of Japanese tanks into the game goes slowly. Wargaming did get some data, but SerB is asking players – if anyone has any additional data on the Japanese heavies, send them
- SU-14-2 elevation angle won’t be buffed
- periodical map changes are based on Wargaming’s interpretation of map statistics, such as sides winrates, places where tanks die etc.
- the case where a new tank crew member is being added to a tank (the MT-25 case) has not happened before
- Japanese medium tanks won’t be commented for now, but SerB comments on the Japanese tanks in general: medium tanks are ready (SS: as in all found), there are some issues with the heavies (not enough credible info on the O-I variants and the T10 tank), there are still tier 4 and 5 holes (Type 91 and Type 95 are tier 3 max, while the Iwakuro heavy tank goes to tier 6). As for tank destroyers, those are theoretically all found, but the developers are looking for more credible info on them (not the one found on the internet).
- KV-1S will stay on tier 6 and will NOT lose its 122mm
- it’s possible, that the Japanese tree won’t come out with a heavy branch, but with TD’s and mediums only, or even with a light/medium branch, without TD’s and heavies.
- Sturmtiger is still planned
- Chi-He and Chi-Nu Japanese tanks will appear as mediums
- SerB confirms that the age of the tanks fighting each other is irrelevant, Leopard 1 fighting a T-44 is just fine
- SerB states that the lower penetration of wartime Soviet guns is caused not by low quality gunpowder (which was partially imported from USA, thus being of good quality), but by bad armor-piercing shell design
A-43 – upcoming tier 6 medium
Hello everyone,
the A-43 (or T-34M, as it is also known) is the upcoming tier 6 medium tank in the World of Tanks 0.8.8 patch – so let’s have a look at him, shall we? First, official Wargaming tank description (that was leaked earlier):
Developed in 1941 at Plant No. 183 under the designation A-43. A new vehicle was intended to replace the T-34 tank. The vehicle was to be equipped with torsion-bar suspension, diesel engine V-5, a new transmission and a reinforced to 60 mm front armor.
History
As the name “T-34M” (and the general shapes of the vehicle) might suggest, the story of this tank prototype starts with the original T-34 Soviet medium tank.
The thing was, for all its advantages, it had a number of serious flaws. One of them was the vertical spring suspension, that had trouble coping with the 30 ton vehicle (let alone later even heavier models). Torsion bars would have been a much better solution – a thing the Soviets themselves did realize, they however also realized that such a conversion would require massive hull re-work.
Nevertheless, the order to convert the T-34 to torsion bars suspension was given in October 1940 – the vehicle recieved the designation “T-34T“.
The initial idea was that the torsion bar suspension would be adjustable and usable even for already produced vehicles, but that hope was not fulfilled, the hull simply couldn’t have been easily adapted. That’s why another decision was taken: to create a completely new medium tank with torsion bar suspension, which would share only some parts with the T-34. The project was redesignated “A-43” and the development was to take place in the Plant No.183 in Kharkov.
It is also suspected that when designing the A-43, the developers had a close look at the Panzer III and simply implemented some of the German solutions in it. Specifically, the A-43 was designed to have some reserves, so it could be modernized in time. Mobility also played an important part. However, the A-43 was an original design and by no means a copy of either Panzer III or T-34.
The design works on the A-43 began in January 1941. The vehicle was longer and higher, but narrower than the T-34 and its clearance was improved by 5cm. A new variant of the V-5 diesel engine was specifically developed for the A-43, with increased horsepower (600hp) and increased capacity of fuel tanks. The transmission remained the same (4-speed), but it was supposed to have a reduction, so the handling of the tank would improve. As a result, the A-43 had 8 gears for forward driving and 2 reverse gears.
The suspension was also changed a lot – instead of 5 big roadweels, 6 smaller doubled roadwheels were used, each with individual torsion bar suspension. The track width was also changed – in fact, the A-43 tracks are narrower (450mm), resulting in somewhat bigger vehicle ground pressure.
The interior was also changed (compared to the T-34). The driver was moved to the right side of the hull and the radioman/machinegunner to the left. The A-43 was supposed to be equipped with a new 3-man turret (1700mm turret ring diameter), equipped with the commander’s cupola.
The weapons of the vehicle wouldn’t change from the T-34 though, the tank was to be equipped with the 76,2mm F-34 gun (I assume we’ll see that as the stock version). The only additional armament was the addition of the portable PPD machinegun to the interior. It’s an interesting fact though that the designers apparently counted on the fact that there would be a flamethrower version eventually developed, because they did consider the installation of a flamethrower instead of the frontal machinegun.
Despite all these improvements, the vehicle was actually one ton lighter than the T-34 and its maximum speed was estimated to be 52-55km/h.
The preliminary project of the A-43 (at that point, it was still called T-34T) was presented to the committee for mock-ups in January 1941. The project was accepted warmly – in fact, it was liked very, very much. There were only two demands: one was to increase the frontal armor to 60mm and another was a different (planet) transmission. These demands were met and in February 1941, the project was officially approved by the People’s Commissariat of Tank Industry (NKPT). However, more demands (aimed at simplifying the production of the vehicle) were brought up soon after. One of them was to reduce the curves of the vehicle (in favour of sharp angles) and to replace the old welded turret either with a new welded turret (that was simplier to manufacture), or with a cast turret (designed by V.Buslov), that had 52-50mm thick sides and a hatch in commander’s cupola. These demands were also met.
In March 1941, the tank was officially renamed to T-34M and the construction of two prototypes was initiated (later increased to the initial batch of 6 vehicles). In the meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the Soviets also ran an experiment, where they (somewhat crudely) converted one T-34 mod.1940 to torsion bar suspension. This experimental vehicle, called T-34T (once again) performed about the same as the regular T-34, but the ride was smoother.
In the meanwhile, through April and May 1941, various parts of the prototypes were completed, including several new suspensions in one factory and the new pressed-welded armor turret in another (5 pieces were prepared). Three partially finished hulls were also prepared by that time.
Despite all the efforts however, the plan to create at least one functional prototype until the evacuation had failed. The main reason was the trouble with the new V-5 engine – mating it with new transmission (as requested earlier) took time and while it was supposed to be done by May 1st 1941, the Plant No.183, responsible for the conversion, pushed the date to 25th of July.
And so, by the time the Germans invaded, none of the six vehicles reached at least the state of 70 percent completion. According to some sources, some parts were evecuated with the rest of the plant (turrets and some hulls, but no transmissions or engines) to Nizhny Tagil, but the development and production could not continue: the army demanded mass production of inferior, but readily available T-34 tanks and there was no capacity left for the T-34M project – and that was the end of it.
It is not officially known, what became of the parts that were evacuated, but some sources state that the turrets and perhaps even the hulls were used as parts for the regular T-34 construction. Other sources claim they were scrapped.
Characteristics
Since the T-34M will be directly competing with the T-34/85, we will compare the two vehicles. The following table will take the ingame values of the T-34/85 and compare them to the historical T-34M. The T-34/85 values will be in brackets.
Weight: 24 tons (31,7)
Hull Armor: 60/45/45? (45,45,40)
Turret Armor: ??? (hard to say, but I’d wager the T-34M turred will be less armored than the T-34/85 one)
Engine: 600hp V-5 (500-600hp engines)
Speed: up to 60km/h – or 55 from other sources (54 km/h)
Gun: 76,2mm F-34 (but here I expect both tanks to have roughly similiar weaponry)
Verdict:
I guess we can expect the T-34M to have better viewrange and better accuracy when moving (smoother suspension). Thanks to its lower weight, it will probably also be more mobile. The armament will apparently stay the same, but the T-34M might not recieve the T-34/85′s top gun as a mobility tradeoff. Overall, it should be quite a nice and mobile vehicle to play with.
Sources:
http://www.aviarmor.net/tww2/tanks/ussr/t-34m.htm
Ensign Expendable’s notes on T-34M
Hitler is in Premium Garage video
A video by Darth_Woras, enjoy :) I swear I like ever new part more and more :)
New Asian map – “Great Wall”
Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2170543.html
Straight outta supertest…
29.6.2013
First, some info on US tanks from US server developer/historian, The_Chieftain
- in 8.7, US tanks won’t probably be nerfed (The_Chieftain stated on US forums that he is constantly working on measuring the armor of the US vehicles, but he won’t make it till 8.7): “No significant nerfing of US tanks is going to happen in 8.7″
- another piece from The_Chieftain: apparently, the M103/T110 won’t be nerfed, when it comes to armor
- The_Chieftain on T57/M103 supposed armor nerf, that was somewhat hinted at earler: “…..since then I found the army’s ballistic test report for the T43′s hull, which as near as I can tell is ballistically identical to the M103′s. Did moderately well, except for the lower front hull.”
Some more info from US server, regarding the Missions (aka “miniquests”) and Operations (series of missions)
- Mugsy_: there will be a special Operations (and Missions, aka “miniquests”) interface (UI) in next patch, it’s being developed
- missions can be considered WoT equivalent of Warcraft’s daily quests
- gold as a reward won’t be used too much until the testing of the whole concept is complete
- Operations (series of missions) will be historically themed series of missions (for example a “Battle of Kursk”)
- missions where you have to “do damage equal to 3-5x of your tanks health” are not technically possible now
BTW: I am not sure, whether Operations as such will come to EU server. It’s an American server thing, essentially (they have been running these for a while now, just not using this special reward system). We’ll just have to see.
Overlord’s info from his blog:
- 8.7 supertest has recently started, it’s possible that we will see 8.7 public test in like two weeks
- WG still plans to release one new map per update
- day/night battles and weather are being worked on
- T-50-2 will be replaced completely, it will not become a premium tank á la T34
And regular Q&A:
- according to SerB, TD’s aren’t OP now (“statistics don’t confirm”)
- patch 8.6 is considered “nice”
- there were (and are) no plans to reduce the HP damage done by HEAT shells, while increasing their effect against crewmembers
- spall liner doesn’t work when the vehicle armor is (fully) penetrated by HE
- SerB states that Soviet RPG-7 can penetrate Abrams, it happened in Iraq and one of the crewmembers was wounded, Americans then tried to blame some “secret gun”, but it was just a RPG
- it’s possible that the Superpershing will not be nerfed in 8.7 (there might not be enough time to make it)
- old tanks (such as Panzer 35t) have detailed suspension collision models, while the new ones have less detailed ones. This is intentional – the developers considered the situation and found out less detailed models are sufficient for the game, while reducing the load on the server
- the “miniquest” mechanism wasn’t implemented earlier, because developers simply had other things to do
- map “Stalingrad” will not be apparently implemented under this name, but something like Stalingrad (a map of that type) will come
- as for silver- and XP-awarding events (like the Russians had recently with the miniquests), SerB generally doesn’t like such events, because he thinks people should play to win and not to fulfill the mission goals
- SerB is also not fond of lowtier premium tanks, because they support pedobearing/sealclubbing (SS: experienced players preying or newbies), which means Bronetraktors (SS: armored improvised tractors, the Ni tank being the most famous) probably won’t appear
- it’s very rarely possible for a hightier tank to appear in lowtier battles, happens late in the night, when there aren’t enough vehicles to fill the slots and MM adds vehicles from other tiers to the battle
- there will be no “free tank” (or other reward) for changing the VK3601H into a heavy
- SerB’s comment on 0.8.6 MM: “It’s not that bad”
- it’s possible the VK4501B will recieve historical parameters within a year, that is it gets much less armor and loses the 105mm and 128mm guns (and gets dropped down a tier or two), it was made tier 9 because WG didn’t find a historical proper T9 candidate
- SerB on why there is no British autoloaded arty on tier 10: “Oh well, evil Zlobny conjured up something else, happens. (SS: here, SerB used the word “нашаманить” – I am not sure what it means, some slang word for find or conjure up?)
- you won’t have to probably manually remove the crew from T-50-2 before its switch, but watch the patchnotes just in case
- it’s possible that the second German TD branch (0.8.9) was changed compared to the early version that was made public last year, SerB will tell when the time is right
- there are no plans to introduce the IS-7 with 152mm at this moment, but if it is introduced, it will probably be a heavy tank, not a TD
- when the new French heavy branch comes, its tier 10 tank will most likely not be the AMX50B, but something new (SS: earlier 2012 trees showed both heavy branches ending with one tank, the 50B)
- there are plans to add the possibility to change the e-mail your account is registered to
- it’s possible HESH will recieve its own mechanism, but SerB doesn’t see it as an important issue, it has low priority
- neither Ferdinand nor Jagdpanther II will most likely lead to the new German TD branch, SerB will not share details about any merges or splits however
- Q: “Why is the capture much faster on new Encounter maps?” A: “How terrible…”
- default German emblem will not be changed
- new emblems: “if necessery”
- according to SerB, in surveys, players actually prefer only partial city maps, not completely covered with streets, so that’s how the devs will do it
WG EU: Alright capitalists, you win… this time, mwhahaha
Long story short, the Wolfpack situation is fixed, players can now buy the event premium vehicles with 50 percent discount.
Aodheus:
Hey guys, seems like I finally have some good news for you.
So, as I said before, the 30% instead of 50% story was a mistake on our side. It was meant to be 50%, no trick, but due to some miscommunication only 30% discount was applied on the EU server this morning.
I’m terribly sorry it took us so long to identify the issue, but I’m also very glad to tell you this is about to be fixed. The 50% discount rate should be applied within the next 30 minutes, so that you can finally enjoy the announced discount.
As I said before, if you bought the tanks by mistake with the 30% discounts, hoping for a 50% discount instead, please contact our support to get a refund.
Again, our sincere apologies for the hick-up, and hope you’ll still enjoy the 50%!
Okay, in all honesty:
The situation wasn’t as dire as some of the players assumed and it got fixed actually pretty quick, considering it’s weekend and WG EU office is probably manned only by skeleton crew. For that, I think they deserve our praise.
However, it shows WG’s main weakness, PR. Instead of issuing a clear message that this WILL be fixed and that 50 percent discount will come, they simply backedited the original event post to 30. I guess I can understand the “okay, what now?” confusion, still… ah well, let’s just blame it on weekend.