A while ago, I wrote a Q&A special on Soviet tank armour. Since then I have gotten periodic requests to do a similar special on German tank armour. Initially, I did not intend to write such an article, but duty calls. However, this is no ordinary article.

Usually, archive materials do not particularly surprise me. I see a “that’s interesting” here and there, maybe a “huh, I didn’t know that”. I’ve even come to terms with ridiculous things that happen when you try to compare reports from the two sides involved. But this, this is something unprecedented. Many things I have written shocked my readers, but this discovery shocked even me.

It all started, as it usually does, with an argument on an internet forum. As it often happens, we were discussing a DTIC document, specifically “Metallurgical Examination of Armor and Welded Joints from the Side of a German PzKw (Panther) Tank“, to be precise. This report says lots of things one would normally expect to see in a report about late-war German armour: “The steel quality rating was “D”…which is borderline acceptable”, “the fracture was extremely brittle in nature, with a bright flat crystalline surface”, “inferior toughness, as evidenced by brittle fractures and low impact resistance”, “extremely poor shock properties”, etc, etc. If you looked into German armour in any serious manner, you’ve seen it all before. However, WoT forums poster Daigensui brought something unexpected to my attention, a claim by American intelligence that the quality of German armour did not deteriorate from 1942 to 1945. I did not believe my eyes. How could that be? Surely German armour in 1942 was not as bad as it was in 1945? Let’s take a trip back in time, through many years of armour samples, to see where it all went wrong.

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Hello everyone,

System98, Locastan and St0rmshadow prepared for you something quite interesting. A mod, that will identify known botters on your and enemy team. The mod is really simply – whenever one of those assholes is in battle, it will identify him in team roster like this:

The best part is, the botter list doesn’t require any updates, it’s updated automatically. Requirements:

To show the little boticon besides the playername in battle you will need XVM with activated clanlogos in the config. If you don’t want to install XVM, you will miss the little icon, but still see the fantasy clan [BOT!] if a convicted bot is found in your battle.

You can download it from here or here.

And in case you wonder, who are the known botters? These are the botters that have been caught by St0rmshadow in last two weeks. Note that in order to see them botting in the replays attached, you will need freecam in most of the cases.

In case you encounter a bot yourself, or you have your suspicions, send the replay to St0rmshadow at st0rmshadow@t-online.de, he will have a look at it. ALWAYS include the replay, best uploaded to wotreplays.com.

Hello everyone,

ever tried cheating in a casino? I hope not – that’s illegal and you will be lucky if you end up only with a ban from the venue. However, same strict rules don’t apply for Wargaming it seems.

Some of you might remember Rasco4000 from ASIA (SEA) server. He’s the guy that got caught in competition rigging. He was stripped of his Type 59 he “won” and banned for a week. Well guess what: Rasco is back with vengeance.

In the recent Art of War (Japan) competition on SEA server, Rasco4000 won TWO Type 59′s. How did he do that? By platooning with high tier vehicles. See where this is going?

Now, I asked Mick42 from SEA server, how the hell this guy wasn’t thrown out. Apparently, he didn’t recieve a global competition ban (like cheaters did on US and EU server for example), instead, he was just punished by a regular week ban and that was it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure how he “won” this contest – but even if it by some strange twist of fate was all legit, don’t you think that competition riggers should be simply blacklisted? I do.

Wargaming apparently doesn’t.

Hello everyone,

no doubt you have already noticed the “Let’s Battle” Wargaming Magazine. For some weird reason, Wargaming decided to distribute it only for Android and iOS – not sure why, personally, I don’t use my phone for any kind of such crap (plus, the download has like 130 megs, fun on mobile connection). It’s possible they did it so as to have control over its distribution. Fear not however, you can run the magazine on PC too (thanks to several FTR readers who suggested it).

First, install Bluestacks application. In it, register your google account and then download the magazine (it’s all pretty automatic, even a barbarian like me managed to do it). The magazine itself is graphically pretty, but seems hard to use – I had some problems finding what’s where, but maybe it’s the clumsy PC interface

So, what’s in the magazine? Is it worth downloading?

- first, there is a foreword by V.Kislyi. “We’re the best, 75 mil accounts, have fun.” Bla bla bla. Next.
- next, there is a letter from an editor. Like I give a damn. Next.
- some pictures from Kursk and Parola museums. Interesting, but not new.
- a nice Battle of Kursk feature. “Russia stronk” and all that. Nothing new.
- e-sports stuff, no mention of the screwed up finale at Tychy. No wonder.
- some “funny” videos, next
- interview with P.Bityukov – quite interesting, how he started and all, worth reading, but no new info, very generic
- interview with some WoWp guy from Paris
- interview with Storm (M.Zhivets) – very short, absolutely nothing new
- Japanese tank introduction, quite generic, the guy who made it mentions Girls und Panzer for some reason, he translates “Panzerfahren” as “Tankery”. Ugh.
- World of Warships stuff, nicely done actually, there is a Battle of Philippines Sea introduction
- tactics, guides, nothing new

Conclusion

I don’t know. Graphically, it’s very pretty and I think it will appeal to people, who are really into the mobile tech and all that. I am not, I use my phone only for… you know, calling. And SMS. And reading e-mails. I guess I just have a personal problem with not being able to use my primary gaming platform (PC) to read gaming stuff, I like to have everything on one pile.

Installing Bluestacks fixed the issue for me partially, but some of the pages didn’t work properly. Either way, for how big the magazine is, there is surprisingly little info. I can only guess it’s meant to appeal especially to western audience (American?) and new players. It’s shiny, but for experienced players, apart from the historical articles and the life stories of Storm and P.Bityukov, there is very little of interest. Even the historical articles are quite… I don’t know… bland. Stuff you can find on Wikipedia mostly.

If I was asked, whether it’s worth downloading for a FTR reader, I’d probably say “no”, but feel free to check it out. It’s not THAT terrible, but the fact it’s not distributed via PDF (which would probably not be so hard to do, given the fact the only “not compatible” element with PDF are the videos) hurts it a lot I’d say.

My personal taste would be less graphics, less programming thingies (interactive windows etc.), more text. MUCH more text.

Hello everyone,

recently, there has been a lot of talk about changed FOV in 8.11, so let’s have a look at it.

FOV stands for Field of View. It’s basically the area you can see in the game on your monitor. Previously (or rather as it is now), Field of View was different for each resolution. Now, they have been unified. And what does it mean practically?

Russian player Tikhonovetskiy made a comparison (made on 1920 x 1028 on a 24in screen, 16:9) – basically, in 8.11, the field of view for wide screens will be somewhat limited.

Thanks to Kickass119 for pointing this out. One minor change I missed in 8.11: WZ-132 is getting a different (more natural) track shape.

Here, a practical use video, courtesy of Wargaming RU :)