14.11.2013

Posted on by

- there are many more tier 10 candidates for various nations
- there are more paper plans for “supertanks” like Maus available
- according to SerB, trees (SS: coniferous) and bushes provide the same camo bonus
- WT E-100 has worse camo than Maus and E-100? “How terrible”
- the top of the upcoming British medium branch will be a British medium tier 10 tank (SS: while this might sound like a case for Captain Obvious, it is not, as a lot of people expected the Chieftain to appear there)
- apparently, the car models (destructable objects) in game do not necesserily correspond to real vehicles, it’s possible we will see more truck object models in the future
- Q: “I’d like the tiers of vehicles in both teams to mirror one another” A: “This thread is not called ‘my wishes’”
- it’s possible Vickers MBT (Vijayanta) will appear in the upcoming British medium branch
- optional hulls will mean also different internal layout of modules for each hull (SS: for example later Panzer IV’s had more internal fuel tanks, so the – as an example – late Panzer IV hull will have more fuel tanks inside)
- if you take a regular tank (not arty) and shoot in the sky straight up, sooner or later the shell will fall down again
- tanks with M-65 gun (such as Object 770) will likely not appear in the game
- it’s possible IT-45 and IT-76 Soviet tank destroyers will appear in the game (SS: in case you don’t know, it was Basically a Soviet attempt to build a Hetzer – a cheap low turretless tank destroyer)
- pre-production T-54 (1945-1946 pattern) doesn’t fit tier 8, it’s too strong for it
- it usually doesn’t make sense to actually report a teamkiller for teamdamage too, but in some special cases (undefined by what) additional reports are taken into account
- HEAT principle in game (mechanism) won’t be reworked
- Object 705A will not appear in the game, because if it was implemented, high tier battles would consist of 12 vs 12 these tanks (plus a few arties)
- it’s however possible that Object 705 (rear turret IS variant with 122mm BL-13) will appear
- according to SerB, WoWp start was “normal” (SS: as in “fine”), apparently, Soviet planes are not underpowered

And a few more answers from Storm:

- Redshire and Highway won’t be removed from the game before they are reworked
- anti-tank obstacles and more cover from debris will not return to Himmelsdorf
- lately, average shooting distance in the game has increased
- the Hunnicutt Archive purchase was apparently mediated by Nicholas “Chieftain” Moran

Posted in Q&A

WG EU: One bug. Two weeks.

Posted on by

Hello everyone,

I know it’s probably a LOT to ask, but could we please have the portal in language we choose? Guess who’s back:

english

That’s right, the bug that got reported weeks ago. I know WG EU staffmembers can’t into space are very busy making dumb videos bringing us the lastest news from Wargaming, but surely some time could be spared to fix this?

Storm writes on maps and other things

Posted on by

Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/257546.html

Hello everyone,

Storm posted another “microdigest” post about what’s going on in the development department. Here’s what Storm writes:

We are preparing everything slowly.

Not so long ago an interesting thing happened: we bought Hunnicutt’s personal archive: 800 microfilms, 24000 photos. Now we are digitizing it. We are expecting some news on the star-and-stripes armored tech.

It’s also worth noting that all those polls about maps we made are starting to bear fruit. In the next patch, there will be gameplay corrections on some maps players keep crying about. I will say straight away that those fixes will not concern the most “painful” maps like Redshire and Highway (that will happen in the patch after this one), but they will concern those maps where it is possible to make fixes quickly:

Karelia – the map is more levelled and more similiar to the old version
Airfield – fixed the (winrate) imbalance between respawns (bases)
Steppes – fixed the (winrate) imbalance between respawns (bases) that was more than 10 percent
El Halluf – we attempted to reduce camping
Mines – fixed the imbalance between respawns

Either way, all that is planned. It’s possible not everything will make it to the patch. Tests will show.

Continue reading →

Posted in Q&A

8.9 TD line camouflage

Posted on by

Source: wotinfo.net site

Hello everyone,

the abovementioned site (Wotinfo) released measured camo values for the new German tank destroyers. These numbers do not represent the camo factor value in the game, but rather a number serving only to compare the vehicles between one another. More on how they reached those numbers here.

Now, I can’t guarantee these numbers weren’t pulled out of their ass (no offense, but I’ve seen a few such “tests”) – in general however it looks roughly legit. What it means is:

- Marder 38T has excellent camo, roughly matching the one StuG III, which is something I can confirm
- Panzer Sfl.IVc experiences a sharp camo value drop: I can confirm that too, its camo is 40 or so percent worse than the one of Marder 38T and more than 50 percent worse than the one of Jpz IV
- strangely enough according to the test, Nashorn camo is even worse than the one of Pz.Sfl.IVc (I cannot confirm that)
- Sturer Emil has pretty bad camo and only a bit worse than the Nashorn (this also I cannot confirm – I mean, it has bad camo, but Nashorn seemed much better in this respect)
- RhB WT has double the camo of Sturer Emil, yes, I suppose this is possible, the vehicle is very stealthy
- WT auf Pz.IV has the best camo of all German T8+ tank destroyers (better than Nashorn, Jagdpanther or PzSflIVc)
- WT auf E-100 has no camo whatsoever

13.11.2013

Posted on by

Not much today. As you might have already guessed (since it’s Wednesday and since I posted on the FTR FB about it earlier), there is a problem with the FTR QA. It’s almost certainly cancelled. The reasons for it have nothing to do with me or FTR, it’s an internal WG RU thing (yes, I know the real reason – I got told, but I will post it only if it becomes public knowledge, as it is internal WG info and I promised discretion).

Right now, I am waiting (and hoping) we get to recieve the answers at least for FTR QA3, but it’s out of my hands. Just to be clear, I am grateful to all the WG staff for answering the previous questions, I know this stuff takes time and effort. I am also grateful for your patience, dear readers. Thank you all, it was fun while it lasted.

I have a contingency plan, but I am going to need a few days to figure the stuff out. For now, let’s wait and hope we get the last batch.

Regular QA from Russian thread and developer blog:

- SerB confirms that the AP and APCR (subcaliber) shells will soon penetrate destructable objects and will fly further with some loss of penetration
- multigun mechanism and multiturret mechanism both have been shelved for very far future, because there is little need for them
- apparently (SS: if I understand this correctly), making tank corpses (wrecks) penetrable (SS: as in, you hide your hull behind a corpse and a powerfull shell can – if the corpse is for example a light tank – penetrate it and hit you standing behind it) was scrapped
- tier 7 and 9 tanks in CW’s or companies are not planned for now
- no British rebalance is coming anytime soon
- you will be able to add camouflage to roadwheels too in the HD client

Posted in Q&A

Monty Python Easter Egg in WoT

Posted on by

Thanks to EndlesNights for this one :)

Well, this works for EU and NA version of the game, not sure about RU.

Check the World_of_Tanks (your WoT folder)\res_bw\scripts\common\Lib\email\test\data folder – there you will find a file called audiotest.au (sound players should be able to play it, Winamp does) – in case you are wondering where it is from, it’s from this Monty Python video.

Testing sounds with Monty Python – how terrible :)

Soviet BT tanks in combat – Part 2

Posted on by

Source: http://www.valka.cz/clanek_14913.html
Author: Ing. Radek Panchartek

Translated by Silentstalker

Part 1: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2013/11/12/soviet-bt-tanks-in-combat-part-1/

The Occupation

The biggest deployment of the BT tanks abroad was the assault on Poland, when the Soviets did set out to meet their ally, Nazi Germany. Units, that took part in the aggression against Poland were mostly mobilized in the western military districts: Belarus and Kiev special military districts to be exact. Altogether, the Soviets had about 2000 BT tanks at their disposal, 1617 of which were the BT-7 tanks.

The Belarussian Front was attacking from the north under the command of comandarm (“commander of the army”) Mikhail Kovalyov. His 15th Tank Corps of the 11th Army was equipped with 461 BT tanks, the 6th Tank Brigade had another 248 tanks, mostly BT-7. Timoshenko’s Ukraine Front had the largest amount of fast tanks, its 25th Mechanized Corps had 435 BT tanks, 23rd Tank Brigade had another 209 BT’s, 24th Brigade had 205 and the 10th Brigade had 30.

Continue reading →

WT Pz 4 – turret destroyed “bug” explained

Posted on by

Hello everyone,

recently, player Lonigus posted a thread about the alleged bug on the EU forums. According to the pictures in the thread, his turret mechanism got destroyed, preventing its turret rotation.

tur1

Only… Waffenträger auf Panzer IV has no turret!

tur2

Or, doesn’t it?

It’s like this: while Waffenträger auf Panzer IV (furthermore referred to as WTP4) has no formal researchable turret, it in fact HAS a turret module. Every tank destroyer formally has one. To explain it in a bit more detail:

A “turret module” in some cases is not a module per se. It’s a segment of data, that contains certain variable values, tied to each vehicle. These values include:

- formal turret module tier
- turret module health (this is added to the total health pool of the vehicle)
- viewrange (that usually depends on turret)
- traverse speed (includes gun traverse speed for turretless tanks)
- turret rotator (!) health (this is not the health that is added to the total vehicle healthpool, this is the formal health of the vehicle module)
- observation device health
- price

If we take as an example the Jagdpanzer IV – it actually has a formal string of data called “Jagdpanzer IV turret”, that contains the values written above. However, the important part is: this turret is virtual – you can’t research a “turret” for Jagdpanzer IV and it’s not modelled in the vehicle (unlike on turretted tanks, you can’t knock out Jagdpanzer IV’s gun traverse).

WTP4 has exactly this – only it gets more complicated: it doesn’t have researchable turrets, but it HAS in fact two turrets. One is called “Waffenträger auf Pz.IV für 12,8cm” and the other is called “Waffenträger auf Pz.IV für 15cm”. These turrets are not unlocked by the player, they are bound to the gun. In other words: if you switch the gun from 12,8cm to 15cm, you switch the turret also. In values, both turrets are identical (same viewrange etc.) – this is however NOT always the case.

Panzer Sfl.IVc (despite being turretless) also has two turrets: one for first two guns, the other for the top (long 88mm gun), they are different in the way that the second Sfl.IVc turret provides slightly less (I think, it’s just a value and I don’t have anything to compare it with) camouflage. On the other hand, the “turret rotator” module is missing: you can’t knock out Pz.Sfl.IVc’s “turret”, reducing the gun traverse speed.

Back to WTP4 – in our case, there not only are two turrets tied to the gun as I wrote above, these turrets also have a turret rotator module implemented into the vehicle model. That means you can actually knock out WTP4′s turret and make it rotate slower, like when a regular tank turret is damaged. The same applies for tier 8 (RhB WT) and tier 10 (WTE100) – they both can have their turrets knocked out. So, in our case, it’s not a bug, it’s a design feature.

All that was written above comes from datamining the WoT files, something that’s not exactly encouraged. It serves only for explanation purposes. Hope it helped.