Previous Q&A is here.

A long time ago (well, not too long), I received a question that was very long and very thorough. It could be split up into two questions:
1) Were specific Soviet tanks designed to withstand specific German guns?
2) What was the quality of steel used by the Soviets?

The questions were asked about specific vehicles, but I thought it would be more interesting to spread out the scope of it, partially because this is an interesting topic, and partially because I didn’t have (and still don’t have) all of the information that was requested.

The first part of the question is easy: yes, but not only German. Resistance to certain guns from a certain distance is a common requirement. For example, the KV-3 was designed to resist the German 88 mm AA gun, and the KV-4 went one step higher, resisting the 105 mm AA gun. The Shashmurin IS-2 was designed to meet the requirement of resisting the Panther, Tiger, and Ferdinand guns at any range from the front and at 500 meters from the side. The meek  MS-1 also had a similar requirement: resistance to .30 caliber AP bullets at 25 paces. That requirement migrated to subsequent T-26 and T-37 tanks, so I see no reason to doubt that the above requirements of resisting German cats were not applied to other tank designs of the era.

Some projects also come with hard armour requirements (ie. 180 mm instead of “impenetrable to 88L/71 gun at 500 meters”), but it is very likely that these figures were taken from the penetrations of real guns.

Continue reading →

Source: VK Wot_Leaks community

Hello everyone, here’s what awaits us award-wise in 8.11

For random battles

Main Caliber

Storm:

“This award will be given to the player, that dealt the most damage of all the players in the battle. The player must deal damage that equals no less than 20 percent of the sum of the entire enemy team hitpoints and no less than 1000 damage. If more players meet the requirements, the award will be given to the player with most raw XP in the battle.”

Continue reading →

Source: http://yuripasholok.livejournal.com/2648975.html

Hello everyone,

as continuation of the “chat” I referred to in the morning, Yuri Pasholok posted a comparison of the drawings of a Tiger II roadwheel, that are supposed to prove the inferiority of the German drawing school. Of course, he couldn’t have done it without insults (he does mention we (FTR readers) “masturbate to nazi Hugo Boss uniforms”), but that is his way I suppose. Sorry for having two posts on the same topic, but I generally use his stuff as “fluff” (when there is nothing more important to write about) and apart from the next Hall of Shame, I have nothing in the queue right now (still have to read a few mails though).

On the left side is the German drawing of the Tiger II roadwheel by Henschel (dated 2.7.1944), on the right side a part of a drawing of the same roadwheel by a Soviet engineer from February 1945 (he admits there are minor mistakes in the Soviet version, “unavoidable in the absence of factory plans”). Apparently this comparison proves the superiority of the Soviet drawing school.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

you might have noticed the comments under the last post are locked, I did that last night in order to stop the arguing about German and Soviet tanks and whatnot – and then I went to sleep. Little did I know I would have an interesting conversation with Yuri Pasholok this morning.

It started with a nice greeting from Yuri Pasholok to you, dear readers :)

Crueldwarf: Your post caused quite a stir in the English part of the forum because it was reposted on FTR
Yuri Pasholok: Yea, I’ve read it. I have a feeling that there are faggots sitting over there, for whom the Cold War is not over. I will have to write a post to piss them off even more.

Very classy, isn’t it? :) And this guy wants to be the next Hilary Doyle. Just for the record, “pidaras” (faggot) can also be translated like a “retard”, so noone bashes me about it again. Also, feel free to correct my translation, but I think I got it right. So, I told him to come comment on FTR, that it might be fun. Anyway, he replied with a longer post, the highlights of which are:

- we (FTR readers) are Russophobes
- they (Russians) know their history, we (apparently we all are Germanophiles) can’t even name the designers of the Panther
- we are all nationalists, while nations are dead, you can hang a Turkish flag over Germany and half of British colonies are living in Britain (and French in France) – “you deserve that, it is the fate of all empires” (he notes that the same thing happens in Moscow, but that Russia was a multi-national country even before)

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

think bad MM balance and leaving KV-1S OP is a sign of Russian bias in World of Tanks? Let me show you some real Russian bias.

Some of you, who read the historical articles and follow such stuff might are familiar with the name of Yuri Pasholok. He’s the main historical researcher for Wargaming (after you read what he wrote, you will probably be able to imagine where this is going). He recently wrote a post about Tiger II (resp. its prototype, VK4503(H)).

The post it titled “Engineer Hans really didn’t want to go fight on the eastern front” – yep, implying German tank designers were cowards is a good start for every post by a Soviet Russian historian. It gets better though. Here’s the translation.

I studied the Tiger II and VK4503(H) documents, thought about it a lot. The 105mm gun on KT can be explained simply – split ammunition. It’s possible the German lovers will suffer when they hear this. And in general, the German engineers, those were jokers. The VK4503(H) suspension that had on each bogey two DOUBLED roadwheels with rubber banding – that’s some sort of tank porn. 19.10.1942, the German genius was as gloomy as never before. And yes, studying German documents makes me proud about our tank engineering. I have a feeling that first grade university students were creating tanks in Germany, they were far behind our design school. Well, and technical approach of German engineers sometimes just delivers.

And this guy is responsible for WoT historical research…

Hello everyone,

after Christmas break, weekend events are back and so are WG EU fails. Look at the Slow and Steady event:

and in the game…

Yep, the retraining for credits is not discounted. I mean… a small mistake, but why does it have to happen like EVERY time?

Edit: oh, something is not working, shouldn’t it be fixed? Naaaaah, let’s change the portal news instead to make it look like the bug is legit.

Hello everyone,

when you browse various tank forums, you usually run into some threads dealing with the most interesting armored vehicles of WW2. That’s where Soukou Sagyou (SS) usually pops up. Its best known picture is this:

Let’s have a look at it a bit closer.

While preparing for war with the Soviets in the 30′s, the Imperial Japanese Army formulated a demand for the development of a specialized vehicle, capable of destroying Soviet fortified positions along the Manchurian border. And as usual with the Japanese, they decided to actually adopt an unventional solution and to add several useful functions to it. It was decided that this new vehicle should be capable of

- digging trenches
- mineclearing
- cutting through barbed wire
- mass vaccination
- spreading poisonous gas
- being used as a crane vehicle (ARV)
- being used as a flamethrower tank
- beign capable of laying down temporary bridges

That’s a lot of functions for one vehicle and in the end, the tank turned out to be probably the most versatile engineering vehicle in the world.

Continue reading →

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2946826.html

So you want to be a Wargaming employee? Better check out the tests you will be presented with when you apply!

Hello everyone,

you might remember the post about Community Manager tests (turns out it wasn’t a leak, these test questions were actually freely available). This was a part of another larger post by Maiorboltach from WG RU community (and I kinda forgot to credit him for it, sorry), who commented on the requirements to become Wargaming employee. Let’s have a look at what else do you need to know (apart from being able to spot Gaijin saboteurs and to create sock puppets) :)

An interesting fact: sometimes, the same position is offered to both the EU and RU office. While the Russians actually can see the set of test questions in advance (you can dowbload them under the job offer), the Europeans can’t. The questions are obviously in Russian. Anyway, while this post is based on Maiorboltach’s LJ post linked above, comments will be mine (I will specifically mark when it’s MB’s comment).

Copywriter

First position you can apply on is the Copywriter. His task is to:

• Craft the company’s marketing and promotional materials, interviews, and other media material.
• Manage Blog space on the corporate website.
• Collaborate with a global mass media, web resources, and representatives of specialized media.

Now, the blog part is a funny thing. Obviously, the Europeans don’t have it and we have to put up with the pile of shit from people, who actually don’t even bother to use google (and I am not even talking about the stronk translatink into other languages, like Czech).

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

today, we learned that the Foch (and Foch 155) armor is to be adjusted to fit the schematic Storm posted:

While we do not know the exact changes yet (we will know in a week, as the test starts next Thursday), by looking at this schematic, we can guess some of the values. I used the Tank Inspector software to compare the ingame Foch 155 to the blueprints and if the Foch 155 in the game was to be changed to exactly fit the plans, following changes would be made:

- lower frontal plate from 120mm to 100mm
- roof (frontal part) from 50mm to 30mm
- roof (rear part above engine) from 40mm to 20mm
- rear from 50mm to 40mm
- entire side from 50mm to 40mm (including the armor behind the tracks)

So this is what I think it will happen (maybe excluding the LFP nerf). However, the rangefinder nerf was announced too, so I think we’ll also see that, even though it doesn’t show on the schematics.

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2956678.html

Hello everyone,

apparently, more screenies were leaked from the map supertests. This time, it’s about Highway and Northwest changes.

Warning, post is picture heavy

Highway

Continue reading →