Source: https://ritastatusreport.live/2019/04/16/patch-1-5-skoda-t-27-final-textures-and-stats/

Hello everyone,

it’s been a while, hasn’t it. The appearance of the newest Czechoslovak premium MBT prompted me to make a post because, in case you haven’t noticed from all those years before, Czechoslovak tanks are kinda my thing and I was involved in the creation of the CZ branch all those years ago. So, let’s get the most important message out of the way first:

T 27 is a fake, much like most of the Italian and Polish branches. It never existed, even on paper, it was made up by Wargaming to fill the premium slot.

Furthermore, the article I linked above states:

The Škoda T 27 (Czechoslovak, Tier 8, premium, autoloader) is already in the patch 1.5 files. It was originally slated for release with the Czech Medium tech tree branch. Something went wrong and it has made it into the game two and a half years late.

This is also not true to the best of my knowledge. This vehicle was never intended as a part of the initial line, even as a premium, because the line was supposed to be sort of realistic, possibly sort of as the last one (not sure about the Swedes but the guy who helped with it, sp15, was also critical, hard to say). The autoloaders, for example, are a huge stretch but hey, whatever helped bring them in, right.

What happened was, roughly a year ago, someone from WG came to me and asked vaguely for possible hightier medium candidates. I was like uhhhhh… there aren’t that many. There was that turret developed for Porsche’s Tiger, there was the T-51 tank by ČKD (sister project to the T-50) and that was pretty much it. The latter – well, not much is known about it, but I suggested it as a possible candidate. Then nothing happened and next thing you know, we get this tank.

So, what I think we are looking at is basically an upscaled version of the T-17 light tank.

Even the official description says so (in Russian):

My main gripe is that the T-17 was never developed or considered for conversion into a medium tank. There are no resources or documents that would support this theory, to my knowledge anyway.

This is, furthermore, supported by the following:

• 88mm autoloader was never considered or developed for any project, the gun was not very historical, its addition to the Czechoslovak line was suggested by me as one of the early drafts but a German trophy gun would definitely not be used for an advanced project like that (keep in mind that T-17 is the zenith of Czechoslovak tank design, one of its last projects)
• Whoever named it just assumed the wartime nomenclature carried over at Škoda (2 signifies Medium Tank, 7 signifies 7th project of the weight category). It didn’t and the name makes no sense because T-17 was the 7th project of the light tank line (T-16 was a heavily modified T-15), while there was no Škoda T-26. Its predecessor at Škoda would be T-40 or T-50 even.
• Come on, it’s just an upscaled T-17

Now, you might be asking, why does this even matter? So Wargaming produces fakes, who cares. It’s a game. Well, yes… it is a game, but one with tremendous cultural impact. I wonder how many Polish kids will grow up with fantasies of amazing post-war heavy tank projects when the reality was… let’s say not as kind.

Anyway, enough ranting. I should come up with more interesting topics I guess.

So, here’s just a status update.

For the last few months, I’ve started several FTR posts but never finished them. Lots of different topics – Czechoslovak weapons exports, some new stuff that I found out, some thoughts about the gaming industry in general (and how I am every day genuinely amazed it actually works) – but I never finished any of them because the truth is, when you write for a living your whole day, you don’t really feel like doing that every evening as well and for the last three and a half years, I gave Armored Warfare 100 percent of my time because I just can’t split my attention to more projects and I don’t really want to be in the same situation I was when I was writing FTR – to do something I didn’t enjoy for a living only to put my energy into my hobby.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t keep an eye on what’s going on around tanks in general or in World of Tanks, mostly through Rita’s blog – or perhaps I should just say “the blog” since Rita doesn’t seem to be working on it anymore. Can’t blame her really, everyone gets burned out eventually. I know I did. But, in the end, WoT and everything around it is more of the same – the novelty’s gone it seems with the things being introduced are more of the same. Well, there are the fake made-up Polish tanks and half of the Italians is made-up too, but hey, nothing we can do about it, right. As long as it sells, it’s gonna go out. And it will sell, I am sure the Polish players are dying to play some awesome “Polish” tanks, even if they didn’t actually exist. That’s how this stuff goes.

I am speaking only for myself but actually finding solutions to tanks or arguing within the previous World of Tanks historicity constraints was the main part of the thrill for me. Now that they can just make shit up, meh.

I was fairly interested in the Excalibur development for two years now or so (yes, we knew about it for very obvious reasons) but things being the way they are, there seem to be a lot of parallels between it and Armored Warfare. I wouldn’t hold my breath – if it launches at all, the team that takes over might be in a very difficult position. But who knows – Wargaming these days is very different from Wargaming back when I started with World of Tanks. God, that was a long time ago, 2011 I think? Time sure flies.

Maybe they’ll just pour so many resources at it that they’ll fix it, although judging from the leaks… speaking of which: I am guessing it was some disgruntled WG Seattle employees? Otherwise they wouldn’t go to that other joke blog first… AW parallels, AW parallels everywhere…

Other than that, not much has changed. It feels like those three years went by in a blink of an eye. Honestly, looking at some of my old links, I feel I could just drop everything and restart FTR if I wanted to. I don’t for the reasons mentioned above, but some things remain the same, don’t they.

Got any pet project ideas?

Oh yeah and I am looking for someone with access to ISU-122/152 parts. For reasons.

A bit belated but… happy new year everyone.

Honestly, I thought of writing something intellingent here about how this year was and how the next one is going to be, but I can’t bring myself to do anything these days. Wrote a few sentences, it sounded like total whine, deleted them.

Anyway, to all of you who read this, three years after I stopped writing about WoT, I wish all the best in 2018. Thank you for reading this blog, thank you for sticking around. Who knows? Perhaps 2018 will be the year of great revival, in more sense than one, and we’ll start meeting regularily once again on these pages. After all, of six years spent around tank games, writing is what I enjoyed the most.

Epocha (“Epoch”) is a new Russian turret system, armed with Kornet ATGMs and… a 57mm hybrid between autocannon and a grenade launcher. Basically it’s apparently a grenade launcher with long barrel, a crossbreed between high velocity 57mm (that light chassis couldn’t handle) and low velocity 100mm.

T-90M model 2017 – T-90A modernized with Armata technology (2A82 125mm gun, armor). The autoloader was significantly overhauled to house the ammunition of the new, long gun.

- Churchills in 1940
- 50mm Panzer III in 1940
- Sherman Firefly in 1940

Someone’s smoking something. Okay, I get it, alternate history. Still…

Anyway, storyline campaign? Looks like someone’s copying AW again.

Gotta admit though, I really wish we had a fraction of these resources. AW Storyline Campaign would have looked much different…

Ahahahahahahaha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

So, Wargaming does Balance 2.0? Because that worked SO well for us at Armored Warfare.

No, seriously, they even call it that way at 2:15.

Hmm, did I mention that the former project director responsible for approving it moved from AW to Wargaming? I didn’t? Must have forgotten it.

Hahahaha. Large scale battles, now Balance 2.0… one might even think they are copying Armored Warfare :)

Good luck.

On the modern battlefield (as in, the assymetrical battlefield of Syria or Iraq versus snackbars), there are few things dreaded as much as the VBIEDs (Vehicle Borne Improved Explosive Devices) or SVBIEDs (where the S stands for suicide). In other words, suicide vehicle bombs. These can take a form of pretty much anything from standard civilian cars to actual tanks (or, more often, BMPs) fitted with explosives.

There is a really, really interesting article on the web that I just found by accident, dealing with the analysis of this kind of vehicles. Sharing it here.

https://zaytunarjuwani.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/the-history-and-adaptability-of-the-islamic-state-car-bomb/

Enjoy!

This is an M48 hull with Leopard 2 turret. It was built in Germany not as a real tank, but as a testbed for some turret testing. The fact the M48 hull can actually carry the massive turret is extraordinary.