Author: AgaresTretiak (NA)

Introduction

Like many of us here, I play games with tanks in them. Not just one game, like World of Tanks, but others. Some, like Darkest Hour and the original Red Orchestra, provided many a happy hour of game-play (though not strictly the most accurate at times). Others, like War Thunder have provided me with equal measures of frustration and triumph. Yet others, like World of Tanks have been a long standing source of entertainment and fun with friends through Clan Wars. One of the key aspects however, of any presentation of World War II armored vehicles for myself, has been the accuracy and detail of what was being displayed.

Part of this, I suppose, is in part due to my training as a historian, part due to my love of modelling, and I suppose a third is my pretention of artistic ability. Regardless of the motives though, I find myself irritated by inaccurate representations or information. Authenticity can be replicated through details, and when it comes to any fighting vehicle from a given nation, there can be quite a few details involved. Things like the right colour for camouflage, the placement and correct tactical markings on a vehicle, and even little personal touches crews might have added are all part of the details that can bring that much more authenticity into a game, a model, or even just for the pleasure of knowing someone took the time to make it that detailed.

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Source: http://www.noticiasautomotivas.com.br/blindado-passa-por-cima-de-chevrolet-s10-e-motorista-sobrevive/

Thanks to PzBarkhorn for this one

Hello everyone,

check out what happened in Brazil recently.

The 79 year old farmer Lusardo Ottaran was returning to his property trough a non-paved road, that connects the BR-290 highway to the “Campo de Instrução Barão de São Borja” (a Brazilian Army tank instruction camp), located in Rosário do Sul, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, when he found a column of Leopard tanks. He was instructed by the column recon officer (who was there to ensure people’s safety, making them move away from column’s path) to move his Chevrolet S-10 pickup to the side, so the tanks could pass, which he did. The first 2 tanks of the column passed without any problems, but the third one couldn’t maneuver fast enough due to the slippery mud, and ran over the pickup. The driver was able to jump to the right seat moments before being crushed, but he suffered injuries to one leg and to the fingers of both hands.

The driver of the tank helped rescue the farmer, who was taken to the city hospital. He passed trough a surgery to reconstruct his fingers and another one to reconstruct his leg. The tanks where supposed to be carried on trucks, but due to the conditions on the road, the military decided to drive them trough the muddy area, since the trucks would just get bogged in the mud.

Hello everyone,

a bunch of pictures from the Minsk office of Wargaming, how it was “decorated” during yestarday’s Day of the Defender of Fatherland holiday (held in Russia and Belarus as well). These photos were posted on Wargaming instagram.

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Hello everyone,

a few bits and pieces gathered from various supertest sources, as presented by VK Ekspress community (it’s a must for every serious WoT portal to have their own supertester “agent” :) )

- it’s possible that this week (possibly today or tomorrow), videomakers will release first “official” (approved) videos with new, improved physics
- a new map (city map) was brought to supertest, pictures and minimal leak will come later. It’s possible that it will be limited to tier 1 to 8
- a completely new team will start working on World of Warplanes. Their task will be to revive the game.
- physics test will go “as planned”

Hello everyone,

time for another week-delayed contributor review and a few explanations. First, I’d like to thank the following contributors, who help out via Paypal:

Michael H. (United Kingdom)
Taugrim (Californa, USA)
missile742 (Colorado, USA) – read below, mate
Tim F. (New York, USA)
Fraser H. (Canada)

Now, missile742, before we go any further – you asked me a question in the “donation message” part about skill MM. Well, since you took the effort to contribute, I took the effort to ask around, especially for you. No, it is still not planned, not for random battles anyway, but it’s possible a special “ranked” mode will appear in the future.

Several points I’d like to make.

I know some of you hate me. I don’t lose any sleep over that. But I have a good advice for you (the several of you): do NOT fuck with Paypal. Paypal is not like Patreon, it’s a regular banking service (some idiots seem to have the impression that it is some lulzy site – no, Paypal is registered as a banking house with all the obligations). Trying to fuck around with it (won’t post how not to give people any ideas) will not only make you known to me, but you can also get in legal trouble, as this kinds of stuff actually does cost Paypal (not me) money and it could be classified as attempted fraud. Consider this a fair warning. It was a stupid idea and I won’t destroy your lives for that by reporting you or publishing your names (if you get contacted by law, it was Paypal, not me), but do not EVER try this again.

Moving on.

You might have noticed that there have been a lot of typos lately. That’s because I am busy. Really, really busy, as in “FTR is now not a second job but a third” busy. As it happens in life, there are some personal issues to add to that as well, so I’ve been sleeping for 4-5 hours there last weeks. I am trying to keep FTR up to speed with everything to all that, but it’s hard. As I write this, I have 125 unread FTR e-mails for this weekend alone… will spend some time parsing through them, but realistically, I will not answer some. I am sorry. There’s one thing connected to that:

Please, do NOT send me any replays with the sole comment of “look at this”. I won’t. Especially lately I have been getting a lot of “IM rigging” replays and there is simply no way I can watch even a few when you don’t even write me exactly what went on and when. If you have a rigging suspicion, contact WG support – they are lazy and will not do anything, but apart from putting them in Hall of Shame, there is not much that I can do either.

So that’s it. As for FTR, it goes on as I promised – but you have to excuse the typos and all that. Sorry. I will keep you informed.

Hello everyone,

just like in the case of the previous post, I usually don’t deal with World of Warplanes stuff – that game is dead and everyone knows it. The basic idea behind it was that unlike tanks, the USA have a huge tradition in warplanes and thus the game just has to be successful there, right?

Well, wrong.

Internally, Wargaming considers World of Warplanes a failed project not worth advertising anymore and the words of gunlion, NA community manager, confirm that in a way. Here’s what he recently wrote on US forums. Bold parts are by me, it’s the last part of the post, that is important.

I’ve been quoted in this thread regarding ideas about feasible strategies to create longterm population increases, and I stand by what I said about cross-promotional incentives. What we would see is a brief burst of players coming over to earn Premium/Gold, and then leaving after the event. Certainly, you may get some who stick around, but it historically has not been on a level that makes a noticeable change. And this is just speaking to the audiences of each game; there are some players who enjoy Tanks, there are some players who enjoy Planes, there are some that enjoy both; but those who typically like one or the other do so because of the unique gameplay each provides, and offering carrot-on-a-stick rewards isn’t conductive to making lasting gains in population. And it is also not as easy as flipping a switch, there would be a lot of coordination involved from a lot of departments to properly set this up, prepare for messaging, support, etc. Then you have to factor in effect on economy, and all these things. So, you look at all of that, and ask, “What would the gains be here? Are they equal to the effort?”

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Hello everyone,

I don’t usually write about War Thunder, but this is something I can really appreciate. Kubinka tank museum has (had) a really sad looking T-44 and so, it was decided to restore it to its former glory in cooperation between the Kubinka museum and Gaijin.

This is how the vehicle looked like before the restoration. The restored version was allegedly shown to public on Saturday (21.2.), but I haven’t found any report yet. The vehicle stood in disrepair in Kubinka for 55 years and as you can see, it was in pretty poor shape (the hull was deformed and the engine was missing). Kubinka experts (with Gaijin funding) managed to restore the tank to working order in half a year, the goal was for it to be ready for the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. Very good job I’d say, it’s always good when an old tank gets restored.

And what about Wargaming restoration projects?

Yea… this info comes again from WG RU, I learned it during my meeting with the guys.

- the Maus restoration was cancelled very early on a long time ago, after WG realized the staggering costs and bad PR (they announced it close to the Victory Day, which is taken very seriously and as a result, Kubinka had a fit of rage, you might remember the affair). The “father” of this idea was Viktor Kislyi, because he’s a huge Maus fan.
- remember that KV-1 they pulled out of the river? Yea, that was also cancelled, after they dragged the wreck to the repair depot and one of the engineers told them there’s no way that could be restored, as the hull was completely deformed

As a result of these “successes”, Wargaming cancelled all restoration projects. Okay, just so I don’t sound like a hater, Gaijin had its share of fuckups, like the “T-35″ restoration, where they moved the T-35 on its own power from the museum and it was in such a poor shape that they almost destroyed its engine while doing that PR stunt. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to see more photos of the restored T-44.

Source: http://yuripasholok.livejournal.com/4172945.html

Hello everyone,

here’s another one of the really strange wartime Russian projects, found by Yuri Pasholok in Russian archives.

It was proposed by one Herman Vasilievich Rybnikov from Moscow in March 1943. The main idea was to propel an armored crew compartment by a set of large “wheels”, that would end with thin pointy “spikes” and apparently to run it into enemy infantry. The wheel diameter was around 4 meters and the “designer” proposed the speed of 150 km/h. According to the drawing, the vehicle was also supposed to carry an infantry unit riding in one of the armored boxes.

Needless to say, the proposal was not accepted by the army.

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3755522.html

Hello everyone,

an interesting post by Awasaky (IIRC he’s a supertester actually) appeared in the Ponyushnya community about the workings of the aim circle and a few other things.

No, you didn’t take too much LSD, the video is like that. This has a reason. The author basically took two videos – real battle and the same battle from a replay and superimposed them on one another. For some reason, he did not manage to actually sync the frames, but he did it the best he could. Nevertheless, the video proves an interesting point, which is: there is a difference between the autoaim mechanism behavior when you look at the live battle (server aim circle) and when you look at the replay. The replay one is the one slightly lagging behind the live one.

In order to see it properly, you have to switch the video to high resolution and preferably fullscreen.

Notice one thing: in live battle, when you activate autoaim, the aim (serverside!) automaticalls sticks to the target. Then the server “remembers” that it shouldn’t do that and moves the circle back to the correct position. In replay, there is no such thing. It’s well visible at 1:22 and 1:40. The aim circle also doesn’t get massively bigger, unlike when you move it manually. As such, using autoaim, you can “steal a snapshot” like this whenever you don’t have to pre-aim.

This also partially explains the “shots are firing beyond the aim circle” issue – the shots are flying correctly, the serverside reticle is just somewhere else. At cca 2:30, Awasaky is driving around with manual aiming, notice how the circle get bigger.

Now, this is nothing really that new, but it’s nice to see it demonstrated on video, even though it makes my head hurt. I wonder what this could be really used for.

Hello everyone,

have you heard of Warpack? No? Then listen up.

You might have heard the name before, whispered in the darkest of forum threads, or perhaps screamed by many a noob, dying from your shells. Is it really the mythical cheat for a game, that’s supposed to be cheat-proof?

Yes and no. Warpack is an illegal mod kit, that’s available for certain amount of money (monthly subscription). It’s possibly the best of the cheat mods, it is constantly developed and it contains some really nasty stuff, like:

- defoliants
- lasers
- fully functional aimbot (aims at weakspots and pre-aims tanks in motion)
- fallen tree indicators, enemy reload timers

Practically every illegal mod you can think of. It’s one of the most illegal things you can get, beyond that are only a few really ugly things and I won’t even mention those. So, naturally, you expect players abusing this to be banned, yes? Well, not quite. Check this out.

Reddit is one of the largest WoT communities and I kinda like it, but it has some very special people, like those, who openly post their screenshots, where they are running Warpack (notice all the settings and options Warpack offers):

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