Hello everyone,

today, we are going to talk about a topic that I intentionally avoided for a very long time, because to say it’s a mess would be an understatement. The history and designation of Praga export tanks is very confusing and… well, you’ll see. Trying to untangle the convoluted web of 1930s manufacturing contracts, canceled orders, and renamed prototypes can often feel as overwhelming as navigating the modern internet; you follow one promising link only to find yourself lost in a maze of dead ends, translated forums, or a random online casino cz popup before you finally find the single archived document you actually needed. In order to start, we have to return back to early 30′s and Praga’s TNH design.

It was a good time to be a Czechoslovak arms producers. Military production of Czechoslovakia was always of top notch quality (especially the Škoda artillery), but this all culminated between 1934-1935. In those years, Czechoslovakia was the biggest arms exporter in the world. While most of the production was sold to European countries, we exported armor to some quite exotic destinations, such as Iran and Peru.

The tanks, exported by Praga, are generally referred to as “Praga export tanks” and in this article series, we are going to have a look at them in detail. Or, rather, we will continue to be looking at them, since I actually already covered three of them in my previous articles. Those were:

TNH – export light tank, sold to Iran
LTH – export light tank, sold to Switzerland
LTP – export light tank, sold to Peru

The export light tanks were all based on the original TNH design, but the vehicles differed in a number of aspects. For one, they were generally smaller than the other TNH designs (specifically the TNH-S, accepted into service as LT Vz.38). They can be easily told apart from the LT Vz.38-based designs by the suspension: the roadwheels are smaller and there is an extra return roller.

The main difference of course was that the export tanks were made specifically according to the wishes of the customer. Most of the time, that included the engine and the main gun (plus the armor specifications), the suspension was always of the Praga type. Today, we’ll have a look at what Praga developed for Lithuania.

Lithuanian LTL

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

thanks to LegendarySpecies from ASIA forums for noticing this :) Basically, in your player profile, you have two new medals, both for a feature, that is not yet in the game: attacks on enemy clan strongholds (in Stronghold mode).

First medal – Retaliation

Second medal – Fortress Crusher

You can check these medals on your player profile as well, amongst the unfinished achievements. Someone got probably too fast with putting these on the portal when the Stronghold attack mode was delayed.

…British!

through the history, Great Britain was perhaps the most influential navy in the world. From their island country, the British forged an unparalelled empire through the might of their navy and therefore, it’s only fitting that the British line would be the third one (since the first two were American and IJN).

Like that? Logical, no? Looking forward to sail with the HMS Hood? Well, fuck you then, because the third line will be Russian.

Yep, instead of possibly the mightiest navy in human history, we’ll have the Russians, whose naval achievements include losing to the Japanese at Tsushima and that’s pretty much it. The reason for this decision is purely economic one, since there are simply many, many Russian players and they have a “sense of national pride”, as one developer puts it. Don’t believe me? Check this out, here’s the original post:

The Stalin dev butthurt made me chuckle. But seriously though, this part is important:

Russian and British ship models are being developed in parallel and while we originally planned to release the Royal Navy first, we’ve since changed that decisions for business reasons. We are currently planning to bring in the Russian Navy as the first nation after release, followed by the Royal Navy.

To be honest, I believe that if we manage to create an immersive and fun game, fans of British ships will play it anyway. If they don’t like it and, as a result, don’t stay in the game then introducing those (or any other) ships won’t change that. The oldest Alpha Testers are painfully aware that I am quite passionate about the ‘gameplay vs. history’ line of argumentation. However, we do have a very large Russian community, who have a very strong sense of national pride, which in essence means that they like to play Russian tanks, planes or ships. Therefore, we see no compelling business reason why the Royal Navy must be the third nation.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

new invite codes are here. First, a couple of invite codes from Elijahbiker from US server. I am not sure they work for both EU and US servers, but they contain a M22 Locust and a week of prem an 1k gold.

DRT8X-H5WMH-YWBT2
STV26-GUZD9-FSAAT
DR9EH-YZR8Z-X6PN2

And a couple of CD-Action invite codes for EU by nurek11, Petethegrinder, Kookacz

DWRTB-7Y973-7UPDN-YRDDU-DGC3N
DWRT9-ZG3HX-A2G3D-N8RDK-EK7BA
DWRTX-TRX35-84VSD-PNM95-PG8S5

Hello everyone,

here’s a World of Tanks Blitz interview with Darya “Knopka” Klimchuk (community manager) from Igromir 2014. The sound quality is really bad, I didn’t understand some things.

Inside:

- 1.3 brings two new maps: “Lost Temple” (Asian themed) and Black Goldville (US themed)
- it also brings Soviet heavy tank line (T-150 to IS-4)
- WoT Blitz currently has 3 trees (US, RU, German)
- arty won’t be added
- 1.3 brought extended post-battle statistics (scouting damage etc.)
- developers are working on new graphic effects, specifically new fog
- for high-end mobile devices, developers want to add a grass render
- currently, Android version is in closed testing phase (performance is being tested), currently there’s no ETA
- Windows Phone version is not planned

Hello everyone,

a tank, full of Russian soldiers, destroyed a bus in Prague yesterday, running it over. No, don’t worry, not in real life – despite Putin’s wishes and boasts, the Russian army isn’t capable of doing that anymore. A new Czech movie, called “Krycí jméno Holec” (“Codename Holec”) was being shot in Prague, near the Czech Radio.

The movie is of Austrian-Czech co-production and is based on a short story, called “Italská spojka” (“Italian connection”), a fictional story from 1968, using however real characters and places. In order to shoot the movie, the entirety of the street was “converted” into its 1968 look.

The movie is a story of Austrian journalist Helmut Zilk, who made some of the most dramatic movie shots in 1968, showing the world the brutality of Soviet invaders. It’s a spy thriller and drama, should be interesting (well, at least for us Czechs). It is scheduled to come out in early 2016.

Hello everyone,

during his interview at Igromir 2014 (Moscow), Anton “Evilly” Pankov showed how the new Stronghold mode consumables would work – well, one of them (the ones mentioned were air recon (basically it spots the enemy tanks), air raid, artillery fire mission and AI turrets (“bunkers”)).

Check this video:

At 8:45, you can see for a short while the artillery fire support on the screen behind Evilly. A player will be manually able to select the angle of attack in order to take the landscape into account, you can also select the area on which it falls and the power of the artillery (SS: this will likely depend on the Stronghold tier). A clan can produce consumables in SH and use them.

Hello everyone,

say what you want about War Thunder, dislike or like the game as much as you want, but whatever your opinion on Gaijin vs Wargaming is, there is one thing that Gaijin is absolutely undeniably superior to Wargaming: epic game trailers. While Wargaming trailers are usually relatively boring (comes with having no men in them), Gaijin on the other hand produces this… and it’s a beauty.

To be quite honest, I think this is definitely one of the best game trailers I have EVER seen, for ANY game. Enjoy. And Wargaming, you have some catching up to do.

Hello everyone,

you might have noticed that yesterday, we recieved yet another copy of the T-54, this time in the German tree (I wonder if we’ll ever get an American T-54 clone as well). On one hand, it’s a solid tier 9 reward tank and – let’s face it, the model is beautiful, all that I am missing are the external fuel tanks, but I can see why developers didn’t add them (they wouldn’t be a part of the hitzone and people would be confused: “why the hell does it not catch on fire, when I am firing at his fuel tanks”). Another neat part is that according to the source of the leaks, developers are even making the East German crest on the tank, just like the Leopard has a Bundeswehr one. I do not understand the designation too well – I mean, T-55 NVA DDR? In English, NVA almost always refers to the army of North Vietnam and I can already see how people will be confused (“we are having a Vietnamese T-55 in German tree?”). Why not Kampfpanzer T-55 or even Kpz T 55 (without the dash), that’s how the vehicle was designated in some German sources and books?

Continue reading →

Source: VK Wotleaks community

Hello everyone,

as announced earlier, T-55A appeared on the supertest as a German tier 9 reward/event tank. It’s official designation is “T-55A NVA DDR”. The designation reads:

The T-55A is an improved variant of the T-55 tank. It differs from the T-55 by the absence of the AA machinegun and improved WMD protection. Roughly 1800 T-55 and T-55A tanks were exported from USSR to DDR between 1962 and 1970.

Statistics for 100 percent crew:

Tier: 9 MT Reward
Hitpoints: 1700
Weight: 37,5 tons
Engine power: 580 hp
Power-to-weight: 15,47 hp/t
Maximum speed: 50/20 km/h
Terrain resistance: 0,767/0,863/1,438
Hull traverse: 50 deg/s
Viewrange: 395
Radiorange: 761,3

Armor – hull: 100/80/?
Armor – turret: 200/160/65

Gun: 100mm Kanone D-10T2S
Penetration: 201/330/50
Damage: 320/320/420
DPM: 2600
Reload time: 7,384s
ROF: 8,126
Accuracy: 0,326
Aimtime: 2,01s
Depression: -4,3
Turret traverse: 48 deg/s

Armor and more pics below.

Continue reading →