LTB or LTTB?

Hello everyone,

player Sunny sent me a screenie from the World of Tanks assistant, where the LTTB is designated as R107 LTB.

Screenshot_2014-10-01-00-22-53

Now, you might think, it’s an obvious typo, right? Plus, that R107 (which appears on KV-85 as well as R106) is some kind of internal WG designation, showing the nation (R) and the internal number of the tank (106-107). Well, it’s not that simple. You see, for some reason, at one point, before it was introduced, LTTB was actually really called “LTB” in the game files (it was around the time the project was first mentioned as Russian light tank candidate, back then it was still intended as tier 8 LT). There’s no real reason for it – the project in real life really was called “LTTB” (literally it means “light tank with heavy armor”), so I guess somebody made a typo before the tank was even modelledand the old “LTB” designation stayed in the files.

Yea, it’s a small thing, but an interesting one I think.

Sixth Sense Rework

Hello everyone,

as you already probably know, the Sixth Sense perk (the famous “lightbulb”) is getting an overhaul. It will be tied to a radioman. If you listened to the entire stream itself, what he actually said is this:

- it will be tied to a radioman or to a crewman fulfilling radioman’s role
- it will be activated only after the main skill of the crewmember reaches 100 percent.

So, what does it mean for us, players? Well… for older players with more battles, who already have crew with perks, very little. The entire perk/skill rework (don’t expect it anytime soon) will come with a crew perk/skill reset (due to numerous overhauls), so they will just switch the perk to another one.

For newer players or those with many tanks and not-100-percent crews, it will be easier to obtain the skill, all they will have to do will be to buy 100 percent skill training (for gold) for the radioman character. Now, identifying the radioman character, that’s going to be a bit tougher, because on tanks that do not have him, you’ll have to look at crew available skills/perks or on wiki, which guy is it (unless you want to just upgrade the entire crew). Or, you can have a look at the small role icons on that respective crewmember’s panel in the garage (thanks to Viktor E. for reminding me of this one):

6ecef58fb0530cb5e37e96c1161848a5

I also guess that due to earlier access to Sixth Sense, Wargaming will have to make a special tutorial or something for everyone to know, why the hell is there an orange lightbulb lighting up above their tanks (I can full well imagine there are players, who wouldn’t have a clue the first time they see it).

So that’s it. Good change? Bad? Whatcha think?

Mini Veider Q&A

Source: Wot-News.com

Hello everyone,

some quick answers from Veider:

- Veider confirms that the new top French mediums (AMX-30 Prototype and AMX-30) will be unlocked from AMX-13/90
- it’s possible that the RU251 view range will be changed, full analysis is needed in order to make a decision
- T-54 Light would be really boring as a premium tier 8 medium tank, that’s why another tank will be picked for that slot instead. Veider likes it as a top tier LT8, it’s possible there will be some characteristics fixes
- Object 906 is an interesting tank, but without swimming, it’s very unlikely it will appear in the game

Posted in Q&A

“Meeting the Storm” Video Q&A

Thanks to Maiorboltach for the transcript.

Hello everyone,

the faster of you noticed that there was a video published, containing some information about the upcoming game changes. Then it was taken down and apparently, it will appear tomorrow. It’s nothing really new, it’s just a summary of the stream with Storm, which I already covered before. Just to sum up what was said in this video then:

- a definition of Havok: it will be used to model client-side beautiful destruction
- Havok will use a separate core thread, which will satisfy multicore PC owners, it will be optional
- the technology is ready, but now maps and objects have to be reworked for it, it’s a lot of work and it will take some time
- multicore support: right now, developers are working on transferring some client and graphic calculations to separate threads. It takes a lot of work, devs are working on it for quite some time and the work will not be finished anytime soon.
- multicore support will not be a magical solution to all performance problems, even though it might increase the performance by dozens of percent
- FV4202 will be made premium, it is not yet decided whether players will get it for free
- new motion physics will bring realistic tank movement, tanks will be able to perform “controlled drift”, it will be possible either to turn like now, or to make an U turn, but by doing that, you will lose speed
- tank “swinging” (when stopping or starting) was moved serverside and now it will be possible to shoot below or above your depression/elevation by sharply braking or accelerating (the gun will “jerk” upwards above the elevation for example)
- tanks will lose much less speed when going over small obstacles such as stones
- no ETA (when it’s done it’s done), but much of the work was finished already, currently the developers are actively testing, fixing bugs and polishing the model
- there will be a SD and HD texture split in the future the way it was made in 9.3 – SD textures have half the resolution and will be supplied as “standard” for everyone, while HD textures will be available for optional download. This was decided because there is very little difference between the ways HD and SD textures look.
- in the future, not only tanks, but maps as well will be reworked to HD model, for them, the HD textures will also be optional like for tanks
- crew skills/perks will be reworked in order to make all of them attractive, so players don’t have such an easy choice
- sixth sense will be removed as a perk and everyone will get it automatically, it will be tied to the radioman (or crewman with radioman’s role)
- it will be possible to retrain crewmen from one role to another

Posted in Q&A

30.9.2014

Nothing much today, developers are slowly getting ready for 9.4, which will bring just some small things.

- Q: “Why did you decide to reward damage blocked by armor (“tanking”) with XP and not credits, how will for example Maus benefit from this?” A: “Crew levelling”

Otherwise not much.

Posted in Q&A

Fixing the Panzer 38t Tank in HD

Hello everyone,

yesterday, I wrote about how to fix Panzer 35t and today, we are going to have a look at Panzer 38t, which is even more fucked up than the 35t. Well, let’s have a look at this mess.

Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t)_11-16-35

As you probably know, Panzer 38t is the Czechoslovak LT Vz.38 light tank, pressed into German service. LT Vz.38 was undisputably the best early war light tank in the world and it was no wonder the Germans were just dying to get their hands on it. Czechoslovak stocks and production of these vehicles helped the Germans to conquer Poland and France, but by late 1941, facing the superior Soviet medium tanks, they were already obsolete. The vehicle was thus moved to second-line service, sold to Germany’s allies or converted to various tank destroyer and SPG desings, including the famous Jagdpanzer 38t.

So, what’s wrong with it in the game? Well… several things:

- for one, the stock turret is completely wrong (I’ll get to that)
- two out of three guns are unhistorical
- the engines are problematic (to put it mildly)
- the armor is wrong (the hull and elite turret visual model belong to a late variant of Panzer 38t, the armor belongs to early variant)

Continue reading

3500 More Bots Banned

Source: http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/pc-browser/1/no_bot_2/

Hello everyone,

it seems that the new system, developed by Wargaming to fight bots (you can read about that here) is working very well. On 29.9.2014, more than 3500 botters were banned on RU server. These botters were permanently banned after ignoring the previous temporary bans (you have to be special kind of stupid to do that).

It’s nice to see Wargaming taking this seriously. According to Ectar, WG EU has the same system as well, it’s just they are not so vocal about it. Maybe they should be, RU server publishes the list of banned botters openly, that’s a nice idea for EU as well – if that’s legal anyway.