As I wrote on the Facebook, I am currently ill, so I apologize if the translation is worse than usual, did my best.
Check out Listy’s article about Chieftain development – part 1
- SerB doesn’t often use the Soviet branch as a comparison for other branches (SS: earlier, it was posted somewhere that some Soviet vehicles serve as some sort of “base” for other vehicle comparison)
- whenever a tank moves, it is instantly considered to be moving (for camo purposes)
- the rule above applies for all types of vehicles
- a player asked, whether WoWs is being developed, or priority lies elsewhere. SerB answers that WoWs development is made by a separate independent studio and it is influenced very little by other WG projects
- shell velocities in WoT are lower than in real life in order to emphasize the skill factor (pre-aiming)
A few weeks have passed and my Hall of Shame folder is full yet again… let’s have a look at this issue’s finest candidates for the “retard of the month” award. Today’s edition is pretty rough, so enter at your own peril!
as promised, here is the overview of this week’s FTR contributors. I value all your help equally, no matter how small, so I just want to thank you all once again.
Contributors
Tugboat1964 (USA) – special thanks to him, he contributed numerous times, much appreciated
Mamizoom (United Kingdom)
L.D. (Germany) – WUBWUBWUB!!!
C.L. (Finland)
Please note that if you want your full real name or nickname listed, you have to write me your nickname (or your consent for full name publication) :)
You can also leave a message you want published.
L.D. wanted to leave a short message for you guys. It says: “WUBWUBWUB!!!” (no idea what that means….)
we talked about bots and now, we talked about what they can do and today, we will have a look at how they can screw you. This replay came from St0rmshadow and shows a typical situation, but with a twist. But let’s start first with getting the tools you are going to need to fight this.
Tools of the Trade
You will need the Freecam tool. It is a mod, that allows you to use free camera in replays (and ONLY in replays). Yes, this is legal. Without it, you won’t be able to see the botting behavior. You can get it here:
Installation – simple: just copy the file you downloaded into your World of Tanks\res_mods\0.8.10\Gui folder (it’s possible there is no Gui folder in the 0.8.10 folder, in such a case just create it)
How to operate it – it’s very simple:
- start the replay
- wait for the countdown to finish (!)
- press left mouse button once to “unlock” the camera
- press CAPS+F3 to activate the free camera mod
- control free camera with classic WSAD, mouse wheel changes your “altitude”
2 Bots, 1 Cup Battle
Okay, now for the replay – you can download it here.
So, what do we have here:
Dramatis personae:
Rostam_ (Churchill III) – a Tankleader bot
EYESOFNIGHT (KV-1) – a Tankleader bot
this post will be strictly subjective and my personal opinion only, so if you are interested in hard facts only, you might as well move on.
No? Very well then, you’ve been warned.
Today, two hours ago or so, I was grinding slowly my Centurion I. There is this mission active (today is its last day), where you have to get 25 kills to get some reward (50k was it?) or something, so I was doing that and then it struck me. Why am I playing? I don’t feel like playing. Oh yea, the goddamn mission.
When Wargaming introduced the mission concept, I kinda felt like “Hooray, this is what I remember from Warcraft, this is going to be great!”. What I meant was the World of Warcraft “dailies” – a repeatable mission, where you have to do something. What I forgot however in my eternal optimism is that the dailies in World of Warcraft were fundamentally different from the World of Tanks ones.
- Evilly: there will be an unified launcher for all WG games
- the leaver and AFK punishment system mentioned by Evilly should come in 9.1
- the captcha system, mentioned by Evilly would be like “if the amount of battles per day exceeds X, you will have to type captcha code before you can enter a battle”, this is just a concept – not a final decision
- there are pieces of the captcha code in the game files for quite a while, this is apparently made specifically for China
Also, apparently in 8.11, a certain bush was removed from Hidden Village
ever since last year, a lot of people waited for the tier 8 German light tank, called RU251. It was supposed to come along with the Aufklärungspanzer Panther (I think that was in April 2013 or so), but it didn’t. The reason it didn’t come is quite simple – there was not enough info about it. Originally, it was believed that the prototype was located in the Munster tank museum, but that proved not to be the case and the museum basically told Wargaming to sod off, not revealing any documents about it (it is believed that they don’t have any anyway). That was like second half of 2013 and ever since, it seems nothing else was found either. The prototype somehow managed to disappear off the face of the Earth and very little new pieces of information were uncovered. And so the time went on – and suddenly, the German scout line is almost a year old and nothing happened.
Maybe… maybe it’s time to start looking at alternatives, what to replace it with. Make no mistake however: this is no easy task. There are very few candidates, that could actually fit the slot. Certainly no wartime projects. The 38t hull with Panzer IV turret would be completely inferior to any other tier 8 light tank. There is the highly speculative Aufklärungspanzer auf E-25, but that is simply a theory (no plans or mentions per se were ever uncovered). We have to look for the candidates after the war.
As for myself, the only thing I found is the Spähpanzer SP I.C.
The Spähpanzer (“recon tank”) SP I.C is a pretty obscure prototype from early 60′s. Basically, what was going on – after its reformagion, the West-German armored forces (the Bundeswehr) were looking for potential recon vehicles. One of these proposals was to actually build a light tank on the Schützenpanzer chassis. The basic idea was that vehicles like the wartime Puma armored car (equipped with powerful weaponry) were quite successful – in order to be successful, a scout tank has to be very small, but capable at the same time of dealing with enemy armor. By the way, in early 50′s, Bundeswehr was shortly considering to arm itself with newly produced modernized Panther tank with upgraded armament and electronics – American tanks however “won the contract” in the end.
The SP I.C was the result of the abovementioned concept – in order to mount a turret with a short-recoil 90mm MECAR gun, changes had to be made to the chassis and the suspension. The gun, although sufficiently powerful, was however considered insufficient as a whole, because for all its capabilities, it was no longer possible to upgrade it even further. An autoloading mechanism was also tested in the turret (but rejected). The armor was extremely thin (15mm), but the vehicle was quite light (6,5 tons) and its engine (195hp Hotchkiss-Brandt) gave it quite a good power-to-weight ratio.
The vehicle was developed from 1956 to 1962 (the prototype was built in 1961). After 1962, it was discontinued for the abovementioned reasons (mainly the fact it couldn’t be upgraded further, but also due to some technical problems with the prototype. The prototype is currently located in Koblenz.
for Wargaming EU, there are no bots apparently, but Wargaming RU takes the issue seriously. One of the best known Russian streamers, Murazor, made a stream session (not only) about bots with Anton “Evilly” Pankov (chief of Russian community). The session was called “Bot Hunt” and Maiorboltach from RU LJ was kind enough to transcribe the answers. Here’s what Evilly said. You might like it.
- Russian threads about bots were purged on RU forums, because a player cannot be 100 percent sure, whether the target is a bot or a human, apparently, bots caused a hysterical reaction across several communities
- players can actually influence developers (SS: there was a petition of 200k people apprently about CW, I don’t know any details, but it did influence the developers)
- official Wargaming position towards bots: “We admit problems with bots, Warpack etc., but the alleged number of 100k botters is not serious and greatly exaggerated. We admit they are in our game, but there is no massive infestation.”
- on average, work on an entire system (for example: arty rebalance) takes 6 months
- in 9.1 a system will be introduced, where AFK players, that move very little (this condition is made softer for slow vehicles), deal 0 damage and meet many more conditions, will recieve 0 XP and credits
Okay, this is seriously cool. There is a Panzer Warriors RC club in Tokyo, where you can basically experience a “first person view tank shooter” with RC tanks. They have minicameras and tanks have three crew members (gunner, driver, commander) and… this is how it looks :)
More info (in English) and pictures in the source post.
