The lack of air superiority became quite a problem for the German army in both World Wars.
Very often you will hear people spouting about “invincible Tigers only defeated by enemy airplanes”, which of course was only somewhat true until the Soviets started fielding 122 and 152mm self propelled guns, not to mention the IS series, while British and Americans also put 76mm high velocity cannons to good use on the other side.
The Germans of course were aware of the consequences of loosing air superiority and developed several solutions, of which we will cover only the ones based on tank hulls, ranging from sensible battlefield modifications to daring paper tanks that never reached the battlefield, using mainly “Gepard” by Spielberger and “Panzer Tracts 20-2” by Jentz & Doyle.
WG EU fail? So, uh, the calendar says something about Happy New Year part 1 event this weekend, yet I see nothing on the WG EU homepage. Maybe it’s a new type of solution: instead of releasing buggy event, they better didn’t release it at all :)
- not all tracks act as 30mm thick spaced armor (SS: the 30mm part is wrong, tracks have various thickness)
- Israel tanks will apparently not appear in EU tree (SerB: “Israel is in Asia, or did I learn geography wrong?”)
- Merkava Mk.I will not apparently appear in WoT
- Object 279 will not appear in WoT. Yuri Pasholok states that they actually thought about it at one point, but found out, that ALL the publications have its model (projections) wrong. And to go to Kubinka (or wherever the prototype is) and to measure it by hand is expensive and ineffective use of labor, according to Yuri Pasholok
- apparently, prototype Maus (early Maus concept) had even thicker armor than the Maus itself and had 128mm L/70 planned, according to Yuri Pasholok
- apparently, Yuri Pasholok is cooperating personally with kit companies (specifically Bronco and Miniart and their SU-152 model) to make their models more historical
- Storm on incoming T10 TD nerf: their DPM will generally be kept, but their alpha will be lower. Jagdpanzer E-100 will remain the same, T110E4 will get its alpha reduced, but will recieve a ROF buff
after Wargaming discovering a Japanese hobby kit company uses the Failowe model for their kits, they weren’t happy. However, this is not the only case. Check this out (this was submitted by Vladimir_Lemon). Mobile game Tank War 2013 for Android uses the following picture as its logo:
Looks familiar? Let me give you a hint:
It is clear that World of Tanks is a very popular concept and various copycats are trying to use this to their advantage. I am sure black helicopters were already dispatched Wargaming lawyers will not be happy. Or maybe they will – depends on whether they get paid by the case or by the hour.
so, here’s a thought. Yesterday, XZ linked me this War Thunder beta video. No, don’t worry, I won’t bash War Thunder (in fact I find the graphic very, very good and it will take World of Tanks a while to catch up) and yes, I do know this is just closed beta. Just watch it.
Well as you can see, War Thunder will have flippable tanks. Some time ago, Storm announced that World of Tanks will have this too, which got me thinking: do we REALLY need this one?
It’s obvious War Thunder influenced Wargaming plans more or less – even Storm admitted so. Some things it has good, some thing it has bad, but it does have influence. I am not sure that flippable tanks is something that was War Thunder inspired (I doubt that, since it was first mentioned a long time ago, when the War Thunder tanks were not even announced), but if it was, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Let’s look at both the advantages and disadvantages of tank flipping.
Yesterday, we talked about ads, so let’s have a look at how to do a good one for a change :) This is a Russian ad for World of Tanks.
After the grandpa opens the window, the gangster says: “Grandpa, how many battles have you played?” and on the bench, the granpa said “I’m telling you, it didn’t penetrate!” and the gangster replies “No! Didn’t penetrate how?”.
I actually laughed (and I rarely do that with ads) :)
Partial source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/269679.html, Zarax’ posts and articles
Hello everyone,
this is something that kinda… bothers me. Today, on developer blog, Yuri Pasholok posted about the VK7201K (Failowe) – according to him, it was a real project with a 150mm (149mm) gun KwK L/38 and a rear turret. There was some development, the Lowe project got cancelled and the attention of Hitler and his merry band turned towards the Maus. This is how the model looked, according to Yuri Pasholok:
The picture above is a model (mock-up) of a rear-turret Lowe variant, mistakenly named “leichter Lowe” (“light Lowe”) by the site called Achtungpanzer (responsible for numerous myths about German tanks). Yuri Pasholok claims this vehicle is historical, but in a serie of articles (the Lowe history is actually pretty complicatged), it was argued by Zarax (and me (see the Tiger Maus section)) that that’s just crap. There was never such a rear turret project of such a weight, the ingame Failowe is a Wargaming fake (the picture above belongs to a proposal for a light vehicle of 70 tons).
for those who are interested in streamers, Rita is streaming right now with Jingles and will be for a while, so you might want to check it out. If you don’t know how, just press the “STREAM” button on the FTR bar below the logo.
- Storm confirms that RU251 will be the tier 8 German light tank
- it’s possible that the Malinovka “houses” at southern base will be possible to destroy by fire
- there is no different reward for damaging various types of modules (SS: as in, you won’t get more credits by damaging engine than tracks)
- there are no plans to introduce more features for premium accounts for now
- sniper medal will be reworked apparently, there will be new conditions too for the “hero of the battle” condition
- platoon search interface will not be made the way team battle interface is made now – for now
- 1vs1, 3vs3 and 5v5 battles are not planned for 2014
Storm made another blog post, where he encourages players to ask about the New Year “KTTS” edition (the one with HD graphics introduction). Here’s what was answered in the discussion:
- the turrets will fly (after ammo rack explosion) off even for those with Havoc disabled, as it is calculated server-side
- the issue whether it will be possible to shoot a house and bury someone in the rubble is still being investigated, but this will most likely not come
- behavior of the tank will not change by the introduction of the independent suspension, the independent suspension is only client-side visual, the movement pattern will be the same for all the models, because the server doesn’t have the capacity to calculate every roadwheel movement independently
- in historical battles, the amount of ammo carried will be similiar to the real values (SS: limited amount of gold ammo)
since the “Legion” series I posted here around Christmas was apparently successful, I will be continuing the story. I hope you find it to your liking. The previous Legion series part one can be found here, part two here and part three here – if you haven’t read them, I suggest you do that before you read this post.
Summer, 1918 – the city of Samara on river Volga
After the crushing Czechoslovak victory near Lipyagy on 4.6.1918 against the bolshevik forces, another obstacle to overcome on their journey east was the city of Samara. It was a fortified city, it housed the headquarters of an entire Volga district and it was home to both local military command, but also to a strong garrison under its commander of ruthless reputation, Soviet Comissar Dolgushin.
The area looked like this (the broken line from Lipyagy over Kryazh to Samara is the railroad and there is a railway bridge marked over river Samarka too):
When they heard about the fate of the bolshevik troops at Lipyagy, the Soviet staff members tried to secretly negotiate with the Czechoslovaks, because they realized in full that the bulk of the elite Soviet forces in the entire region was destroyed there, but it was also clear to the Czechoslovak Legion that with the elite of the bolshevik army gone, Samara was practically defenseless against the Legion. In a move previously unheard of, the Soviet (ruling committee) of Samara even offered the Czechoslovaks the right of free passage through Samara, despite the fact that only days earlier they called for Czechoslovak destruction and would never even consider this option. Lieutenant Čeček (the commander of the Legion force) refused this offer – for one, he had nothing to gain, since Samara was ripe for taking, on the other hand, he didn’t believe the sincery of the Soviets, fearing treachery.
