Author: Karika

The mass produced 35M. Ansaldo tankette, the slightly modified, Hungarian version of the Italian CV. 35 or L3/35, will be too weak for WoT, it’s not even good enough for tier 1. This vehicle did see combat in the WWII on the eastern front, but originally, it was not designed against enemy armoured vehicles. In theory, its purpose was just scouting, ambushing and to deal with enemy infantry. Because of this, it’s main armament was just a 34/37A M. 8mm (7,92mm to be exact) Gebauer twin-machine gun in a “tiltable-turret” (“bukótorony” in Hungarian, can not be translated properly) machine gun mount, as you can see here:

However, there were some Hungarian experiments to up-arm the Ansaldo to make it capable of dealing with enemy armoured fighting vehicles.

35M. Ansaldo experiment with rotating turret

In 1936, soon after the first Ansaldos arrived from Italy, the Hungarian troops suggested to create a turreted version of it to increase its very limited view range and it’s self-defence capability. The Ministry of Defence ordered a prototype, which would be able to mount a (yet unfinished) 12,7mm heavy machine gun and a single 8mm machine gun in a turret. The 8mm machine gun was a little problematic because of its relatively large magazine, as the turret would have been 12cm higher than without it. This issue was solved with a tiny cupola on the top of the turret just for the magazine. But the 12,7mm machine gun was not yet available at that time – it was still under construction – so the prototype vehicle was armed only with the original dual 8mm machine gun.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

you might or you might not have heard, but after yesterday’s 9.2 introduction, Russian servers melted down (lags, crashes) and the Stronghold mode had to be temporarily disabled (compensations will be issued to RU players). As far as I know, currently, they are working on a hotfix. This however means that I have no idea when exactly will patch 9.2 come, could be today, tomorrow or after the issue is completely fixed.

For years, SerB’s answer to a request for buffing or nerfing stats like HP or matchmaker weights was “show me a document where is says the historical matchmaker weight”. Of course, such a feat was impossible. That is, until today! Among many other interesting items in the CIA’s FOIA database, there is an alleged Soviet document giving the combat potential of domestic and potential enemy weapons. The section that interests us is, of course, “Tanks and Self Propelled Artillery, Infantry Combat Vehicles, Armoured Personnel Carriers”.

Although this was a report written in 1977, it still includes a number of vehicles we consider low. Starting at the very bottom, once we get past the IFVs, we have the SU-76 (in the “potential enemy” section, so likely a Chinese one) with a rating of only 0.32. Rather fitting for a “tier 3″ vehicle. From here, we must jump all the way to tier 5, with the Type T-34 (marked only as T-34 with 76 mm gun, but in the Chinese section) with a rating of 0.43 and SU-85, with a rating of 0.48. Seems that no other “tier 5″ vehicles made it into post-war service. So far so good, WG’s tier model seems to follow reality with two data points. Let’s move on to tier 6.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

the following video appeared on RU channel. It has English subtitles, turn them on :)

Hello everyone,

in three days (next weekend event), Wargaming anniversary event is coming. It’s usually a reason for very nice bonuses and free stuff and it seems this year will be no exception. First sneak peek can be gleaned from the upcoming anniversary missions in the “coming soon missions”.

These missions will be active from 1st of August to 1st of September (with two exceptions).

Crew is Crucial

Conditions: Win a random or team battle in tier 4+ vehicle and end in top 5 with XP earned
Reward: 50 percent crew XP

Promotions Incoming!

Conditions: Complete Crew is Crucial mission 60 times
Reward: 75k crew XP

Daily Boost

Conditions: Win a random battle once per day in tier 6+ vehicle and end in top 3 with XP earned
Reward: 3 gold fire extinguishers

Continue reading →

Source: http://habrahabr.ru/company/wargaming/blog/231065/

Part 1: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/07/26/how-xvm-was-created-part-1/
Part 2: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/07/28/how-xvm-was-created-part-2/

Last part of the article.

User Support

The developers understood from the start that XVM is more difficult to install than other regular mods and that not many would use it without the user support. In order to reduce the support load, XVM was split into XVM-full and XVM-light and as mentioned in the previous part, the light version had everything related to player statistics removed. That’s why the players with light version did not have to install neither Dokan nor .NET application, which seriously simplified the installation.

The very first user support was made via the regular World of Tanks forum. This was not very convenient – the developers did not have the option to moderate and edit threads, the players were confusing the support thread with other threads that were not related in any way to the developers. That’s why as soon as the mod started working on a dedicated server (January 2012), a new support forum was estabilished there. It was a vanilla phpBB and despite that, it fulfilled its function until that one time where there was an emeregency.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

as you probably know, but might have forgotten, historical battles mode is getting removed in 9.2 for a complete overhaul. According to Storm, it will not return this year (so play it while you can). Storm also mentioned the way it will be reworked, specifically two elements were considered:

- bots playing lowtier tanks to give you the feeling of authenticity in battles
- respawns

Either way, Evilly wrote the following about them:

“There were several reasons for removing them, one of the most important ones was the player opinion on them and the low activity in this mode. This suggests that the mode has to be completely reworked and that’s what we are doing. The mode will return after rework and it will be very different from the current one. Those, who recieved medals from historical battles will get to keep them, progress on unfinished medals will be resetted. We will keep you up to date with changes and reworks, it will be an absolutely new, completely diffent mode.”

Oh well, too bad WG EU did not allow us to play the Bryansk historical battles, I was looking forward to that one. I guess enabling it would be too much work…

Source: http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/pc-browser/9/rotmistrov_medal/

Hello everyone!

Wargaming on RU portal posted an article about the new 9.2 Clanwars medal, the “Rotmistrov Medal”. As Wargaming writes it, it was implemented “in honor of the Hero of the USSR, Chief Marshal of the armored forces, Pavel Alekseevich Rotmistrov”.

The medal is issued in 4 stages.

4th Class – for playing 3 battles on Clanwars map

3rd Class – for playing 30 battles on Clanwars map

Continue reading →

In this video – a story of the guy, whose “Panzer III” was used in the movie. It’s actually a replica (you can tell by the roadwheels, there’s just 5 of them), built on an M113 APC chassis, but it looks very convincing.

Source: http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/pc-browser/11/special_offer_for_clans/

Hello everyone,

in connection with the arrival of patch 9.2 and with it the Stronkhold mode, Russian server has an interesting event going on – the price for clan creation changed for the entire August (until 1st of September) from 2500 gold to 1000 gold and the renaming/tag changing price changed from 2000 gold to 1000 gold as well.

I wonder if we are going to get anything like that as well.

PS: and we still didn’t get to play the Bryansk historical battle :(