Hello everyone,

yesterday, we talked about the Škoda Š-III, the birth of the “breakthrough” tank progam and its failure. Today, we are going to have a look at Škoda’s competitor by the company Tatra, which was – and it is hard to believe – even worse.

Just like the Škoda Š-III, the Tatra prototype started originally as a wheel-cum-track project, started after the original wheel-cum-track vehicle developer, ČKD (with its Kolohousenka projects), decided it’s not worth the hassle and the Praga concept (P-III) was never really developed (nothing is known about it).

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Yo dawg, I heard you like the Chieftain so we put Chieftain to your Chieftain!

Source: VK Wotleaks community

Source: https://m.vk.com/newsblog_wot

Please keep in mind that this is just a partial list of what is going on in 9.3. Full supertest patchnotes will be available on Thursday.

KV-1S changes

KV-1S is getting split to two tanks: KV-1S and KV-85

If you have the KV-1S unlocked:

- if you have the 85mm D-5T gun unlocked, you will have the 85mm S-31 gun unlocked as well
- if you have KV-1S unlocked, you will have KV-85 unlocked as well
- KV-1S statistics are transferred to KV-85
- KV-1S crew will be retrained to KV-85 with the exception of the radioman (who will remain on KV-1S)
- XP accumulated on KV-1S will be transferred to KV-85, so will the barrel rings
- if you have the elite suspension unlocked, you will have the KV-122 suspension (elite) unlocked as well
- if you have the elite turret unlocked, you will have the KV-122 Obr. 1944 turret (elite) unlocked as well
- if you have the 122mm U-11 unlocked, you will have the 122mm S-41 howitzer and the elite turret unlocked as well
- if you have the 122mm D-2-5T unlocked, you will have the 100mm S-34 unlocked as well

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Hello everyone,

just in case some of you missed this video series (like I kinda did) – The_Chieftain, US military specialist for Wargaming, visited the American G.I. museum and the re-enactments tied to it. It’s quite interesting, check it out!

Part 1:

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Source: VK Wotleaks community

Nevermind the retarded green color, that’s what the developers use now for “untextured” stuff.

Hello everyone,

as you know, I post about Czechoslovak vehicles a lot and some readers might get the impression that the Czechoslovak tanks were perhaps the best in the world. Well… some were (LT Vz.38 is the best light early war light tank in the world according to many experts and historians), but we had our share of fuck-ups as well. One of the nastiest and most-expensive disasters of Czechoslovak tank development was the plan to develop a “heavy” breakthrough tank (category III). The word “heavy” here is not used in the traditional sense of the word, it was more like “a heavier variant of a light/medium tank”. Two prototypes (or partial prototypes) were built, based on the program – one by Škoda, one by Tatra. Let’s have a look at the Škoda one.

History

It all started in 1929, when the Czechoslovak army issued a demand via the Military Technical Institute (VTU) for a new vehicle. The problem was, it was supposed to be a wheel-cum-track design, which, in the 20′s, was the “flavor of the year” so to say (just like the tankettes – both concepts proved to be a dead end later on). The demands were very strict – apart from the suspension requirement, the vehicle was to be equipped with a 75mm gun and two machineguns, the armor was to be at most 16mm thick and the vehicle was required to weigh no more than 12 tons. This proved to be quite unrealistic and as a result, the weight requirement was increased to 15 tons quickly.

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Source: VK Wotleaks community

Yesterday in the LTTB leak, I wrote that the gun was 100mm. I was wrong, it was actually an advanced 85mm gun with high penetration. Here it is, plus a few more supertest parameters.

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3451688.html

Hello everyone,

a couple of interesting statistics from the Minsk office of Wargaming, responsible for World of Tanks.

- 73 percent of employees in Minsk are men, 27 percent women
- every third employee has children
- every month, the office works together for more than 3 million hours (342 years)
- the largest department is “customer relations” with 21 percent of employees
- there are 1288 plants in the office (SS: I wonder how much time they spent checking)
- WG has dedicated transport, moving people every day from Minsk center to the office and back, these vehicles drove 40k kilometers ever since the program was started
- WG hires over 60 new employees a month apparently
- 9 of 10 employees took part in some education programs (1264 people) in 2013
- the surface of the Minsk office is 50k square meters
- in 2013, 3400 people were sent on business trips
- the office drinks 1700 liters of milk per month and 4300 liters of kvas (SS: tasted that recently, it’s vile, no idea how they can drink that)
- the office eats cca 16 tons of sweet pastry per year and also drinks 55k cups of coffee per month and three tons of apples
- internet traffic in 2013 was more than 400 terabytes (415k GB)
- in 2013, WG recieved 25 mil of letters and sent 1,5 mil of them
- the most common names are Aleksandr and Olga

Original Russian pictures:

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Source: http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2014/08/25/wargaming-interview/1

Hello everyone,

recently, an interview with Viktor Kislyi (yep, yet another one) came out on the bit-tech.net portal. You can read it if you want to, the link is above, but here’s a TLDR version:

- more than 90 mil players (SS: wasn’t it 100 mil earlier?)
- February: record – 1,1 mil players online at the same time
- we’re constantly updating… bla bla bla… historical accuracy… bla
- WG has 3500 people all over the world in 16 offices
- apparently the reason WG moved west a lot (SS: as in USA) was the release of Xbox WoT and Blitz
- Android Blitz – “couple more months of testing” (followed by a description of what Blitz is) – “so far it’s looking good” with release numbers
- 25 percent of all users are paying players
- bots in WoT are “definitely a problem”, VK adds that it’s however a “lesser problem in WoT”, as the game contains no grinding per se like Warcraft for example. According to VK, bots are “not viable” on high tiers, because you pay too much for repairs
- the biggest spender player in WoT spent like 10k to 15k USD in 2 years, it’s “very difficult to spend more than 100 to 200 USD”
- VK thinks WG can still “analyze and fix” WoWp
- some well-known bland WoWs stuff, no ETA on anything

Overall, quite a bland review, but then, Viktor Kislyi is the CEO, he’s not responsible for micromanaging everything.