Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2871920.html

Hello everyone,

Maiorboltach from Russian LJ brought us interesting statistics for World of Tanks in 2013.

- in December, World of Tanks registered 75 mil. registered players worldwide
- online peak (for all servers?) this year was 1,152,261 users
- 17 billion tanks were destroyed in 2013
- 201 billion shots were fired in 2013
- the amount of WG employees worldwide exceeded 2200

Hello everyone,

today, we are going to have a look at what Russian players AndrasD and Devilhunter did to find out the camo value of vehicles in game. Original thread can be found here, but I won’t put everything they wrote here (it’s some very detailed analysis), I will stick to the most important parts.

To begin with, in 0.8.6 the camo system changed somewhat and old camo values could no longer be applied (the factor got hidden even for the tanks we already knew the camo factor of). That meant that datamining was no longer viable in order to find what type of camouflage that respective tank has. That left testing as the only real option. The players mentioned above thus devised a following system – I won’t pretend that I understand how exactly it works, but the general idea is following:

You take the viewrange of a vehicle (please keep in mind however that maximum spotting range is 445m), you deduct 50 meters from it (the range where you get spotted automatically) and the rest, you apply the “camo percentage bonus on” (or camo factor) by deducting the percentage from the (viewrange – 50m). Basically, if a vehicle has a standing camo factor of say 10 percent and you are spotting with a 350 viewrange tank, that means the vehicle will under ideal conditions, you first deduct 50m: you are left with 300 – and then reduce the 300 by ten percent. In other words, you’ll spot the vehicle at 320m instead. That’s of course without camo net, bushes and all that other stuff.

In reality, it’s much more complicated than that, so the following tables are meant only to show you what vehicle has relatively good camo and how its camo does compared to, say, Panzer IV or other vehicles of its tier – or how shooting influences the camo factor (note that for example standing WT RhB has very good camo factor like StuG, but when it shoots, it drops significantly).

Japanese tank camo is at the end of the list, Soviet new med camo is there too. All camo measured for top gun and top turret.

Germany

Type   Tier     Name                       Standing      Moving         Shooting   Gun

LТ      1       Leichttraktor              13,4%         10,1%          3,4%       3,7 cm KwK 36 L/46.5
LТ      2       Pz.Kpfw. 38H 735 (f)       15,7%         11,8%          4,0%       3,7 cm SA 38 L/34
LТ      2       Pz.Kpfw. II                15,1%         11,3%          3,4%       2 cm Flak 38 L/112
LТ      2       Pz.Kpfw. I                 16,2%         12,1%          3,8%       2 cm Breda
LТ      2       Pz.Kpfw. 35 (t)            15,2%         11,4%          3,9%       3,7 cm KwK 38 (t) L/47
LТ      3       T-15                       19,7%         19,7%          5,9%       3,7 cm KwK 38 (t) L/47
LТ      3       Pz.Kpfw. II Ausf. J        17,4%         13,1%          4,9%       2 cm KwK 38 L/55J
LТ      3       Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t)            18,0%         13,5%          5,2%       4,7 cm PaK 38 (t) L/43
LТ      3       Pz.Kpfw. III Ausf. A       18,0%         18,0%          5,2%       5 cm KwK 38 L/42
LТ      3       Pz.Kpfw. II Ausf. G        18,6%         18,6%          3,9%       3 cm M.K. 103
LТ      3       Pz.Kpfw. I Ausf. C         19,0%         19,0%          5,3%       7,92 mm Mauser E.W. 141
LТ      4       Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t) n.A.       17,6%         17,6%          4,6%       5 cm KwK 39 L/60
LТ      4       Pz.Kpfw. II Luchs          17,1%         17,1%          3,6%       3 cm M.K. 103
LТ      5       VK 16.02 Leopard           16,9%         16,9%          3,5%       3 cm M.K. 103
LТ      6       VK 28.01                   14,3%         14,3%          3,0%       10,5 cm KwK 42 L/28
LТ      7       Aufklärungspanzer Panther  10,9%         10,9%          2,8%       7,5/5,5 cm Waffe 0725

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to announce the cooperation between FTR and Rita Gamer. For those who don’t know, Rita is a streamer on Twitch (a very active one) – and I somehow felt lately that something is missing on FTR. Something like an endorsed streamer.

Now, I sometimes watch Circon (he’s really cool), but he’s really famous and all that and truth to be told, I wanted to cooperate with someone new. Relatively speaking. Obviously, that rules out Jingles (those of you who read FTR frequently know what I think about him anyway) and Quickybaby (WG EU endorsed… ugh). But Rita is perfect – she plays well and it’s fun to watch.

So, from now on, you’ll be able to watch her stream by clicking the STREAM button on the upper bar (link to it is also here). Go check it out :) Rita also has a Facebook fan page, so that’s nice too. In the future, there might be some events together, I’ll be passing her some info I haven’t published yet and all that. Worth watching.

Enjoy!

Source: http://www.about-larnaca.info/2013/12/wargaming-buys-rotos-president-building.html

Wargaming, an online game expert and among the 3 major shareholders of Hellenic Bank in Cyprus agreed to buy “President” building of Rotos Developers for €20 millions. The “President” building located in the Demosthenis Severi Avenue, Nicosia is of 75 meters height and will be covered by a large disk photo-voltaic panels.

Supertall building is unique in design and technology. The high quality metal used for the construction of its skeleton, its energy efficient structure, automation machines for energy reduction and its photo-voltaic system make “President” the first energy efficient building of A class in Cyprus.

Rotos Developers, is proud for having such an innovative and unique building in its records and thanks all colleagues who contributed to the creation and implementation of the project, the company says in a statement.

The building is expected to be ready by May 2014.

Source: http://wot-news.com/main/postmsg/47984/20045/3/Pervoprokhodec-iz-JAponii

Hello everyone,

this is a translation of the article from wot-news about Tomio Hara. Enjoy!

From the moment of its beginning by the end of the 1920′s, tank development in the land of the rising sun met with considerable difficulties. Apart from the objective reasons, amongst which were the lack of resources and qualified engineering staff, one of the main reasons was the wary and skeptical attitude towards the armored vehicles in the Japanese army. Military commanders of Japan at that point regarded the tanks only as the means to support infantry and not as a separate army branch.

One of the most prominent personalities of Japanese tank development was the young military engineer-designer Tomio Hara, to whom the armor of the land of the rising sun largely owes the independence (originality) of its design and engineering tradition. He basically disagreed with the common military point of view and did put together a group of four ambitious designers, who then started to work on the first project of native Japanese tank. Since they had no engineering-design basis to work on, the development was started from scratch, independently creating both the essential parts and the details of the design.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

last week, a few guys asked me, when will I write the next post about the Turán. The truth is, I was willingly postponing it, because the sources I have contradict each other and it’s a bit annoying to glean the truth. Last night, after going through the books yet again, I decided to re-focus the “historical articles” somewhere else.

As you probably know, I am Czech and as a part of the European tech tree preparation, I will be feeding data about Czechoslovak tanks to Wargaming. Starting now, I will start working on more detailed Czechoslovak project breakdown, as there is now a secure and reliable channel (thanks to very forthcoming stance of some WG people from Minsk, which I really appreciate), how to actually feed data to Wargaming, who in turn can use it to create the EU tree. This approach has two advantages:

- first, ideas and proposals (in this field anyway) of EU/US servers will be heard
- second, Wargaming already knows this approach works from the Japanese tree

At the same time, Italian vehicles are being “researched” through the same channel. However, what is lacking is someone with very good (!!!) knowledge of Hungarian and Polish vehicles (preferably a Hungarian or Polish person, as the best sources/archive data are found only in the native languages, just like it is in the Czechoslovak tech tree). If you know of such a person or think of yourself as such a person, please don’t be shy and contact me at fortherecordwot@gmail.com

Together, we can help build the EU tree. The results of such research will be published as series of detailed articles in the future, so even you, who just read FTR, have an idea where the research is going. Please note that I do not claim to be essential for WG effort or anything: but every little bit helps, every little bit makes the tree come a bit faster.

Also, please note that the same research is going on for British vehicles, with some possibly interesting results. We’ll see.

Picture by igalantny (Russian LJ community)

Upper: War Thunder, lower: World of Tanks

Your turn, Wargaming.

The picture above comes from the leaked War Thunder models, picture below obviously comes from World of Tanks. Personally, I am somewhat rooting for Wargaming – let’s see, how the “HD” models will look like: visually, War Thunder is obviously some tough competition.

Of course, game is not made by its graphics and from what I have noticed from War Thunder (economy and gameplay), I actually prefer World of Tanks. But that all remains to be seen. However, one thing that I don’t like is that War Thunder fans seem to be obsessed by one idea: “We are not World of Tanks”. I went over their tank forums and there are all the idiotic myths that we managed to root out (especially on US forums). The point of this is not to bash War Thunder (not before I see the tanks in action anyway), but to state that the grass is not always greener on the other side…

Self Propelled 17pdr, Valentine, Mk I, Archer
Author: Captain_Nemo

Silentstalker: Hello everyone, we have another guest article from Captain_Nemo here. Enjoy!

QA: Stream with the Chieftain Posted on December 9, 2013

- Archer and Achilles British tank destroyers will come.

The Archer is an unusual tank destroyer. It is unique not just in its layout of the gun on the chassis but in the gun itself. It is the British 17pdr. Now because of the gun alone the tank destroyer will never be Tier 4 material. It simply has too much penetration with the gun but more on that in a minute. Let us look at the background and history of the Archer.

The Archer was the second in a series of self-propelled guns produced on the Valentine chassis. The first design produced was the Ordnance QF 25-pdr on Carrier Valentine 25-pdr Mk 1, better known as the “Bishop”. The second design was the Self Propelled 17pdr, Valentine, Mk I “Archer”. The Archer is not quite the expedient hack job that the Bishop is nor is it nearly as bad as the hack job of adding a 6-pdr gun and gunshield to the top of the Valentine in place of a turret. The Archer was reasonably well thought out.

Continue reading →