Czechoslovak Main Branch in WoT Terms – Part 1

Hello everyone,

this will be almost certainly the last of the game-related articles about the Czechoslovak tanks – the ingame summary of the vehicles to appear in the first branch. I have never really made a summary, how would they behave in the game. Inspired by Karika and his Hungarian tank post, here’s how the main Czechoslovak branch would look.

After this post (resp. its second part), I will most likely stick to historical articles, unless something new/interesting comes along, that would fit the game nicely.

Now, here’s my (latest/final) proposal for the Czechoslovak branch:

hKUn34l

The “main” branch would be the blue one, with TVP as the tier 10 medium tank. After all, medium tanks always come first, when a new branch/tree is implemented by Wargaming. So, let’s have a look at them, strictly from the game perspective. Historical articles on those respective vehicles can always be found in the history section.

Numbers in brackets mean elite setup. Naturally, the soft and ingame stats are my pure guesswork.

Continue reading

Panzer 88

Hello everyone,

so, uh, now that Fury’s out in cinemas with all its “realism”, how about something, that doesn’t make any such claims and instead looks like to be some outrageously unrealistic fun? With a tank, of course.

10369113_884702248208424_864703169454458065_n

It’s October 1944 and a crew of German Tiger II tank comes across a village in Russia, whose Jewish inhabitants were massacred by Germans and summoned a badass Golem spirit to take revenge for their lives. That sounds fun :) Anyway, this is the basic story of an upcoming movie in 2015 from the co-writer of Hellboy. Damn, a King Tiger fighting a golem – that I am looking forward to :)

PANZER 88 (Preview Video) from Carnaby Films on Vimeo.

Wargaming Patents E-50M

Hello everyone,

we all knew that the E-50M is a Wargaming-invented fake, but now, we have a legal document to prove it! :) Many thanks to Alpha_Dude for finding this info.

On 24.7.2012, Wargaming filed a patent application (no. 29/427,959) to protect the E-50M design. The proceedings took more than two years and on 9.9.2014, the patent protection of the E-50M design was approved. It’s now protected for 14 years.

Funnily enough, the “inventor” of the patented vehicle is noone else than Sergei Burkatovskyi (aka SerB). There you have it, SerB is officially the inventor of the E-50M :)

The legal document follows:

patent_USD712786S1_WG_E50M_2014-page-001

Continue reading

On Map Removing from WoT

Hello everyone,

those, who follow this kind of thing on forums might have noticed that last week or two, WG staff on EU and ASIA (in this case, I am talking specifically about Tanitha, but there were several threads on EU, including the Czech section) are actively asking players, which maps do they dislike the most.

Based on that very feedback, developers are deciding what to do with the current maps. Now, the fact the developers are unhappy with some of the maps is well-known and the first result of this initiative seems to be the fact that Severogorsk and Ruinberg on Fire are getting removed in 9.5 (apparently completely removed, not just pulled back for overhaul).

Continue reading

Huge Price Increase on War Thunder Causes Shitstorm

Hello everyone,

I am sure all of you are aware of the Ukraine crisis and the sanctions the western world has imposed upon Russia as a result. This is where it gets a bit complicated, but basically – based on this sanctions, combined with questionable Russian monetary policy, the exchange rate of Russian ruble dropped drastically. As a result, for Russian players of both War Thunder and World of Tanks, the prices actually seriously increased, as both companies have the prices tied to US Dollar.

Unlike Wargaming, that was smart enough not announce this stuff publicly on the portal and simply showed the prices on RU server with the fluctuations in mind, Gaijin (War Thunder producer) announced price increases all across the board publicly yesterday.

The price increases in rubles are significant and that’s putting it mildly. For example, the prices of “golden eagles” (equivalent of WG gold):

150 GE from 29,92 to 44,99
500 GE from 99,03 to 129
1000 GE from 179,1 to 259
2500 GE from 440,05 to 599
5000 GE from 799 to 1099
10000 GE from 1549,04 to 2099
15000 GE from 2199,4 to 3049
20000 GE from 2900,2 to 3999
25000 Ge from 3499,03 to 4899

Etc. (full list in the link).

Naturally, a huge shitstorm arose on Gaijin forums, with players pledging never to buy anything ever again, saying that it’s too expensive etc. I can only imagine the amount of rage such a post would cause on RU forums…

December/January Missions for EU

Hello everyone,

here is the list of missions and discounts, that awaits us, courtesy of the Insider.

First and foremost: there are NO specificĀ  tier 10 discounts (“Top of the Tree”) for December and for January, as all tier 10′s will be on discount.

1.12.-1.1.: Monthly Missions

- win 3 battles while driving a tier 5+ tank once per day (must be in top 10 in XP), get 75k credits
- complete the mission above 15 times, get 700 gold

6.12.-9.12.: “Winter Wolfpack”

- x3 XP for first victory
- 30 percent discount on tier 6-7 regular medium tanks
- 50 percent discount on tier 5 regular medium tanks
- 30 percent discount on Panzer IV Schmalturm and M10 Panther

- deal at least 1000 damage in battle while surviving in a tier 4+ medium tank, get 50 percent crew XP bonus
- destroy at least 1 medium tank in battle in a tier 4+ vehicle, get 50 percent crew XP bonus
- destroy 50 medium tanks (repeatable) in a tier 4+ vehicle, get 10 gold repair kits, 10 gold medkits, 10 gold extinguishers

Continue reading

On American Armour

After my articles on Soviet and German armour, I think it’s only fair to sail across the AtlanticĀ and turn our eyes at the manufacturing juggernaut that was the United States. A lot of people know that the US was good at casting armour, and that their armour was softer than that of their European counterparts, but that’s about it. While this is true, it’s far from the whole story.

To begin, let’s go far far back to the 1920s. There are no Shermans, Tigers, or T-34s. The greatest war mankind has ever known has just ended, and everyone is busy developing the latest and greatest killing machine. Huge and slow monsters did not seem interesting to the US Army, and development was focused on vehicles that were quick and agile, but paid for that agility with thickness of armour. For instance, here is an attempt to produce 6-12 mm armour plates that protect against .30 and .50 caliber bullets in 1922.

Continue reading

T-34-85M Mission in December

As per the Insider’s info, I bring you… the grand WG EU surprise.

Mission starts: 24.12.2014
Mission ends: 15.1.2015

Condition: grind 50k XP for each nation (350k XP total, premium XP and doubles count AFAIK), using a tier 6+ tank
Reward: T-34-85M tier 6 premium Soviet medium tank.

Each nation (each 50k) is handled by a separate mission. For fulfilling each nation mission, you get 3 days of premium account. After they all are completed, you get the tank.

Edit: According to Evilly, RU server will have another tank and with different dates, so it’s completely possible this mission is EU-specific.

Premium Tank XP Modifier Not Used in Crew Training

Hello everyone,

the following information is based on the investigation into this matter, that appeared in the German section of EU forums, specifically the data by Schrottkiste and General_Jack_D_Ripper (thanks for letting me know, General :) )

The outcome of the abovelinked thread is:

Premium tank XP bonus modifier (that was introduced not so long ago) does NOT count towards the crew XP, used in that tank.

That also means the “graphs”, used in the abovelinked WG post are useless, because they do not represent the real training curve. General_Jack_D_Ripper explains:

Before battle crew XP status (right-click and “view image” for full size):

After battle crew XP status (right-click and “view image” for full size):

Crew XP actually gained: 2820XP (or twice for “Accelerate Crew Training”).
Tank XP gained: 940XP * 2(daily) + 657XP for using premium vehicle) = 2537XP -> Crew received 940XP * 2(daily) *1,5(crew-XP modifier for premium vehicle) = 2820XP
Crew should actually have received: [940XP * 2(daily) + 940XP * 0,7(Tier II premium vehicle XP modifier)] * 1,5(Premium vehicle crew XP modifier) = 3807XP

The original WG post advertises, that players need * 2,55 less battles(1,5 * 1,7) in Tier II, while in reality it is 1,5 less battles for ever Tier. As a “bonus”, if a player uses Accelerated Crew Training, 100% of XP “for use of a premium vehicle” is lost.

Conclusion

This bug was confirmed by WG support staff (Mr. Luke Vos) and passed on to WG developers for fixing.