Hello everyone,

today, we are going to try to imagine, what the gamplay of wheeled vehicles and halftracks would look like and whether it makes any sense implementing them in the game.

One of the main issues with the cars and halftracks is that for a class of vehicles, they do not reach high enough, when it comes to tiers. The reason for this is that for all their firepower, the halftracks are very fragile vehicles and in game terms, they would roughly equal an unarmored Waffenträger – only worse: halftrack suspension does not have the terrain passability of a tank, nor it has its stability.

Gun-armed halftracks were in most cases stopgap or desperate measures to bring more anti-tank guns to bear (or to provide mobility for some infantry support guns for a low price yet with sufficient terrain passability). These vehicles were not fast in particular and often the limited stability of the chassis allowed for only a limited firing arc of the gun (to be fair, the lighter tank destroyers suffered from the same issues). The armor of a halftrack is, as you probably already figured out, negligible. A 20mm gunshield here, a 10mm armored plate there, any protection these vehicles offered was mostly against infantry weapons fire (and sometimes not even that). As I mentioned above, this is the same issue that the German tracked Waffenträgers suffered from, but, as we can see with the case of for example Waffenträger Rheinmetall-Borsig, it can work very well. The halftrack design is also relatively more compact. Basically, the halftracks (by their very nature) live and die by their guns and as such, they most likely are to end on tier 8 (the largest AT gun that I know of on a halftrack chassis was the 88mm L/71, but that was an extreme case). A typical case is here: this is the 88mm FlaK on a halftrack.

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Part 1: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/07/18/world-of-tanks-client-analysis/

Hello everyone,

Mr.Tiemo Jung is back with his analysis of the World of Tanks client. This time, he’ll be analyzing…

Battle Mode Rendering

(SS: the article is in its original form, I just fixed some typos)

This part will cover the battle mode rendering. The rendering is very similar to the hangar mode, so I will mostly focus on the differences to the hangar mode.

Data Streaming

The engine is almost constantly streaming vertex, index and texture data. It is mostly parts of the map and objects on the map (houses, fences, etc). The streaming system suffers from the same resource management problems outlined in the hangar rendering part. They allocate the required memory at the beginning of each frame and copy the data into it, and use it some frames later. Allocating resources on each frame results in unpredictable frame timings and sometimes stutters, especially if the data source (disc where wot resides) is slow, the copy operation blocks all calls until it’s finished.

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Hello everyone,

recently, Storm admitted that Wargaming is considering wheeled vehicles and halftracks  for World of Tanks. He however did mention that a significant obstacle in their implementation is the fear that these vehicles would not be very popular. Let’s have a look at what the popularity of this type of vehicles might be influenced by.

There are two large influences on the popularity of the vehicle: looks and gameplay. This part will focus on the looks, to, you know, lure you towards the idea, because I genuinely think that some of the armored cars and halftracks are really, really good looking.

Appearance sells.

That is not to be contested, it is logical enough. You wouldn’t eat food that looks like shit no matter how good it tastes (well, at least most people wouldn’t) for example. World of Tanks vehicles are actually no different. Some tanks look so ugly/ridiculous they are almost “cult” vehicles (AMX40), others are just really, really bland. What I am trying to say, in order to lure people to play the entirely new class of vehicles, they have to be at least attractive.

Most people imagine armored cars like this:

And you would be right. This is the Soviet BA-20 armored car and we’ll get to that one later. But that’s of course not all there is. Armored cars and halftracks can be sexy! Check this bad boy right here:

This is the T-13 Hornet B proposal, fitted with a 75mm gun. An American 8-wheel armored car, powered by a 265hp engine (for 7,5 tons, not bad). I don’t know about you, but I think this looks sexy as hell. A prototype was actually made (without the 75mm gun) and it could go as fast as 90 km/h.

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Hello everyone,

quick news – it’s been confirmed by the “Insider” that we have a new competition incoming, tied to the movie “Fury” – there will be a “Fury” Sherman in the game (I assume as a part of some special mode á la “White Tiger”, perhaps this is the “special mode coming soon” Inaki mentioned yesterday?) and you will have to do… well, that is not yet known. But there will be a competition.

Anyway, more changes coming to the competitions – this internal WG mail is roughly week and something old:

A recent policy changed is to be disclosed in future competitions (if applicable). Prizes go to the tank commanders who deal out the highest amount of damage in a single battle during the competition period for XBOX. For PC clients, Base XP will count instead. To ensure fairness, two new requirements will be in place for competitions.

• Only battles that a tier XYZ would normally be in will be counted. Players are welcome to platoon with friends, but if they pull COMPETITOR into a higher-tiered match, that the COMPETITOR would naturally NOT have access to, that battle will not count as a valid entry.

• For XBOX: Only full battles will be counted. This will alleviate any issues with players getting into small matches with only their friends, and potentially manipulating the outcome.

For PC: Enemy platoons will be checked, whereas are from the same clan or perform abnormal behaviour that would manipulate the outcome

As with other competitions, COMPETITOR only needs to play the game! All of the battles and stats will be tracked on our end. For XBOX: A leaderboard will be available on the forums and in the launch daily. Chicago Servers will handle it.

No more trollplatoons in competitions :)

Kinda interesting I would say :)

Source: VK Wotleaks community

One more picture of the untextured Chaffee – and armor. Only one thing left to leak – the T49. Unfortunately, it’s not being supertested yet. But as they say… “saved the best best for last”.

Source: Wotleaks VK community

Hello everyone,

currently, the supertesters got their hands on the new, reworked Chaffee (in HD, for now without texture), that’s going to appear in 9.3. One thing is clear: the Chaffee will recieve the same type of nerfs the VK2801 did for example, along with reduced MM spread. The only nerf currently known is that the elite Chaffee will have 420HP instead of current 580, but this is of course only the supertest version and likely will change.

Honestly, it always surprised me how people expected the vehicle NOT to be nerfed when it gets reduced MM.

Oh yea, RU251 will appear in 9.3 – more on that in today’s QA.