Hello everyone,

as it happens once in a while, new pictures of Sturmtiger emerged in this thread:

Are they fake? Are they real? Is Sturmtiger coming soon?

Well, first and foremost it doesn’t matter whether they are fake or not. Sturmtiger is not coming in 2013, that much has been confirmed numerous times. In fact, it was mentioned in Q&A today that the Sturmtiger might be a part of a whole new German branch of assault guns. It’s not even sure yet whether it will be a tank destroyer, or an arty.

The pictures could be “real”, because Sturmtiger was supertested several times this year (and in 2012), or it could be “fake” (there are a bunch of models and skins, that can turn any vehicle into a “Sturmtiger”).

Either way, the Sturmtiger will not come anytime soon I am afraid – we’ll just have to wait a bit more.

Edit: The pics are a fake, the author of the thread (Ilosz) is a modeller, who wanted to get some “fame”.

Hello everyone,

as you might have noticed, there is a new “Donate” PayPal button on the right side under the rest of the bars/menus. Here’s a little background explanation.

Every since FTR started (and I mean the old FTR in January, not just the wot-news incarnation), a lot of people asked me, whether they can contribute somehow and if so, how. At first, I thought – “okay, cool, I really appreciate your support” so after moving to wot-news, me and Edrard (the guy who is hosting this site) did set up some banners.

What happened afterwards was I recieved a bunch (well, okay, maybe more than just a bunch) of e-mails, saying basically the same thing: “I like FTR and I’d like to help, but I hate banners and I won’t turn my Adblock off.”

Well, after recieving one more mail like that just yesterday, I decided to introduce the Paypal donate button. Huge thanks to Edrard for helping me set the thing up (to be fair, he practically did it himself, as my IT skillz can be compared to those of an average gorilla).

As with the ads, the money raise (I am an optimist, I know :) ) will be used for FTR purposes: I was thinking something along the lines of a nice, summer competition for August, with prizes and stuff. You’ll like the rules, trust me :P Please note that coffee for myself IS a FTR purpose.

Anyway, I am not so sure what I did there with that button, but I think it lets you donate to the FTR paypal account an amount of EUR

Well, I hope you guy don’t mind this whole thing and as always, thanks for any and all support you give me :)

Edit: I just replaced the CZK currency with EUR not to confuse people, sorry for the mess :(

Hello everyone,

today, we are going to have a look at some of the weirdest (but most interesting) Panther variants there were. Most will come from W.Spielberger, so the info is as solid as it gets – no fakes here :)

The Panther is the ultimate medium tank of the Second world war. Despite being plagued by its own problems, it was a perfect blend of mobility, armor and firepower. Where other famous mediums lacked quality and made up for that by sheer numbers, the Panther was facing the opposite problems. There were simply too few. Despite the fact there were never enough Panthers around however, a number of interesting projects and upgrades were developed for the Panther chassis.

Obviously, thanks to the game, everyone noticed the Schmalturm – the “narrow” turret for the Panther. This was of course a real project, but the 75mm L/100 is… well, semi-real. In early 1943 (January, in fact), Hitler demanded this gun to become the Panther armament. At that point, the gun was not even developed I believe (long barrels have problems of their own – most notably the vibrations, in fact reducing the gun accuracy, they are also very expensive and notoriously difficult to make) and nothing came of it. But, it was proposed. What WAS however developed, was the Panther with autoloader. Basically, Škoda Pilsen developed an autoloading mechanism for the Panther KwK 42/2 (to be ready in April 1945) – so yes, Panthers with autoloaders could roam the battlefields of WoT one day. This is sort of conencted with SerB’s remark that eventually the E-50 and E-50M might merge, with the “Turbopanther” jumping to tier 9.

This is how the ultimate Panther (last historical Ausf.F) was concieved:

Following upgrades were also considered for the Panther:

- Stabilized gunsights, April 1945
- Biwa infra-red scope and searchlight and a built-in range finder, April 1945
- Gummisparende Laufrollen (rubber saving, steel-tyred roadwheels), May 1945
- Dreschflegelpanzer (mine-clearing flail tank), May 1945
- 900 hp Maybach HL 234 engine, August 1945
- Air cooled diesel engine by Simmering and water cooled diesel engine by Deutz
- Stabilized main gun
- Hydrostatic steering gear
- Hydrodynamic steering gear
- New turret with 8,8cm KwK L/71

What’s a “Turbopanther”? Well, what we can guess is: the ultimate Panther with various steering mechanism and drivetrain upgrades, sporting the heavies weaponry historically concieved for Panther (88mm L/71 in a Schmalturm), equipped with the GT-series gas turbine, giving it roughly 1200 horsepower to run around with. In real life, the turbine had a number of drawbacks and serious flaws, but in World of Tanks, it could work. Could work.

GT101 schematics:

Back to the Panther chassis, though. Four basic categories of vehicles were planned for the Panther chassis: scout tanks, anti-aircraft vehicles, self-propelled guns and tank destroyers.

Scout tanks

I will sort of skip the scout tanks, because there were only two models – the recon Panther (that is in the game), if you are interested, I wrote about its history earlier here. There is one more thing: an artillery ranging vehicle on Panther chassis. You can read about it in the article I linked, but basically, it was a Panther with all sorts of ranging equipment and a dummy gun (or a 50mm one), used to direct artillery fire. This is how it looked:

I will also skip the AA vehicles, as they have very little chance of appearing in World of Tanks. Earlier, I kinda thought one of the AA Panthers would make a cool scout (twin 37/55mm or so), but I guess we can’t really expect that, can we. Anyway, this is how it would have looked:

Now, however, we are getting to the interesting stuff: the self-propelled guns and tank destroyers.

Let’s start with the Jagdpanther. An 88mm with autoloader (PaK 43/3, 3 or 5 round drum autoloaders) and 128mm guns were both considered for the Jagdpanther (it was announced by Krupp during the November 1944 “tank re-arm” program proposal). The 128mm Jagdpanther was also considered (12,8cm PaK 80 L/55 that is). Doyle states that this vehicle would weight roughly 51 tons and would have to switch to the rear casemate design. Basically, it would be extremely uncomfortable for the crew and its performance would be limited by that. This design (along a bunch of others) was scrapped in February 1945 by Waffenprüfamt (German weapons testing office). Here’s how it would have looked:

Note that this design has nothign to do with the Jagdpanther II, it only adopted the rear casemate solution. By the time this vehicle was introduced, both Panther II and Jagdpanther II projects were long dead.

Part 2 will deal with the Waffenträgers, Panther artillery pieces and the 150mm Sturmmörser Panther assault mortar.

Sources:
W.Spielberger – Panther and its variants
H.L.Doyle, T.Jentz – Panther Variants 1942-1945
H.L.Doyle – Panzer Tracts
Posts by Daigensui (US forum)

Source: http://alternathistory.org.ua/proekt-legkogo-tanka-inzhenera-gvalova-sssr

Hello everyone,

in recent Q&A, SerB was asked about the machine, mysteriously known only as the “Gavalov tank”. SerB answered that this tank could be tier 6/7 Soviet light tank (not that it will, it would just be on that tier). After a quick search, I found the abovementioned article, which I will summarize here.

The light tank proposal from I.V.Gavalov (an engineer of some renown, he worked on several light tank designs, including the T-70) is an attempt to combine the concept of a light tank with a powerful gun. In an effort to make the vehicle more stable and easy to drive, the driver was moved to the turret and his seat was “stabilized” in order to compensate for the vehicle movement.

Despite the fact that in second half of 1943 the light tank projects were mostly stopped, some plants continued their light tank development. And so, in 1944 in the Gorky plant, I.V.Gavalov developed this technical project of a new tank.

In this project, the crew compartment was situated in the turret,w while the engine was apparently in the back in lying position. Fuel tanks and a part of stowed ammunition were located in the “nose” of the vehicle. In the turret, on the right side from the gun was the driver, the commander of the vehicle was behind him and on the left side, there was the gunner and loader. Furthermore, the engine was placed horizontally (the cylinders were horizontal), which, along with placing the crew in the turret, reduced the height of the vehicle.

As mentioned earlier, the driver’s seat was “stabilized” – when the turret turned, the driver stayed looking forward – this was possible thanks to a special chain transmission and the fact that the whole turret was “sitting” on the bottom of the tank on a pivot, not unlike the one of the anti-aircraft lafettes. Effectively, the driver was sitting on the turret axis and the whole thing rotated around him. The driver was also sitting above the rest of the crewmembers, looking out via a roof-mounted periscope, which was also stabilized.

As for the armament,in player-suggested trees, this tank is equipped with either a 57mm ZiS-5, or 76,2mm ZiS-4 and S-54 and characterised as a small, fast vehicle. Historically, it was to be equipped with a long-barelled 76mm gun and a machinegun. The vehicle was supposed to be 1,3m tall, 4m long and was supposed to have 7 large roadwheels. Armor was most likely probably non-existent. Altogether, when talking in game terms, it looks like a Soviet version of AMX ELC.

Since the same plant focused on light SPG vehicles (SU-85A for example) in the war, this light tank was only further developed after the war, eventually leading to the T-100:

Source: Edrard, wot-news.com

Hello everyone,

earlier, I translated Edrard’s post, where he explains what will be done with ER to compensate for new tier 10 arties. This is what was done. The winrate borders were – as expected – moved thus:

On the left side is the earlier version, on the right side, the new one. As you can see, the border values were dropped roughly by 15 points. The XVM scale formula was changed thus:

XWN_0.8.6 = IF(WN6>2160; 100; МАX(МIN( WN6*(WN6*(WN6*(-0,00000000001268*WN6 + 0,00000005147) – 0,00006418) + 0,07576) – 7,25; 100); 0))
XEFF_0.8.6 = IF(EFF<420; 0; МАX(МIN(EFF*(EFF*(EFF*(EFF*(EFF*(0,000000000000000045254*EFF – 0,00000000000033131) + 0,00000000094164) – 0,0000013227) + 0,00095664) – 0,2598) + 13,23; 100); 0))

Hello everyone,

Czechoslovak forum section of the EU forums is a neverending source of entertainment, mostly because of the silly flamewars, that take place there. However, sometimes WG employees join the fray and that’s when the real fun starts.

Short background: the latest dramathread involves player Biggpete, who started complaining that his medium tank gold shells, which he allegedly bought for gold, were forcibly sold for credits and that he wants his gold, which he “invested”, back. The new Czechout new community organizer Karlie tried to reason with him, but the discussion escallated, with several players starting to act as tough e-lawyers (gotta love those), saying the EULA is not valid because it’s not mutually beneficial, but one-sided and other stuff.

Enter YouryBuenaventura, an angry WG customer support employee, who entered the thread with the force of a hurricane and started explaining the situation thus (a translation):

“This whole discussion is based on the wrong assumption, that you are “buying” something. To be honest, I haven’t read the whole EULA myself (SS: competent support ftw), but I will bet my shoes that it’s written there somewhere that the whole game is the property of Wargaming, and the players are getting only the temporary possibility to play it. Actually, they are simply “leasing” some parts of it. So it’s not a sale, but a lease. That’s very important to realize.

Furthermore, when you talk about investing, I will also use a comparison – this is not a commodity market, more like a Disneyland. Buying ingame MMO currency can be considered about the same “investition” as buying Disneyland tickets. To talk in this situation about a “contract profitable for one side only”, while you are re-validating it every few months and to complain about it afterwards, you must be joking right now?

Yes, some of the players did lose on this and we can’t help them in this. That’s how it is, my friends. To repeat this argument over and over, that you can buy lease the ammo again and use it is not needed. And the moral of today’s story is? Don’t hoard premium ammo.”

And here’s a screenshot:

I mean… the guy is right (at least I agree with him, but then again, I never hoarded ammo), but it does sound an awful lot like one big FUCK YOU. Nothing like kind and supportive employees, eh? Anyway, I don’t think anyone will be getting the gold they spent on gold ammo back.

There is a pretty simple reason: for Wargaming, any “compensations” in gold are extremely tedious to make, because gold is the ingame currency purchaseable for real money, so the transaction has to be totally bulletproof for one and second, it will probably be very hard to find out, which shells were bought for gold and which weren’t. Doing this manually is impossible – and automatically? Probably just not worth doing.

In the late 1920s, the USSR discovered that they were kind of screwed as far as tank building went. The MS-1 tank was no longer capable of meeting the requirements of modern war, not to mention the aged tanks captured during the Russian Civil War from the interventionist forces.

The way taken out of the situation was very reasonable: hire foreign specialists, have them build tanks at Soviet factories, let Soviet engineers and workers gather valuable experience. Unfortunately, the foreign specialists gathered for the task were not so reasonable. One of these specialists was Edward Grotte. Grotte worked for the USSR for less than two years (March of 1930 – fall of 1931). However, he managed to produce a number of interesting ideas in the meantime.

In March of 1931, Grotte proposed two variants of a monstrous tank. 1000 tons, with either 3 or 6 turrets, armed with 304 mm, 152 mm, 76 mm, and 45 mm cannons (two of each!). 40 people serviced this mobile fortress. Front armour was 300 mm thick, the sides were 250 mm. The tank would be propelled to 60 kph by an assembly of engines totaling 24 000 hp. The tank would have electric controls and a hydromechanical transmission. If you thought that the T95′s double tracks were impressive, think again. Grotte’s creation had three sets.

Grotte’s sketch of his 1000 ton tank project

Grotte’s main creation was much more reasonable: Tank Grotte, a medium breakthrough tank, was only 25 tons in mass, was armed with a 76.2 mm Grotte-Sechyantov gun and a 37 mm gun in a turret above it, kind of like the M3 Lee. Also much like the Lee, the main gun could not rotate all the way around. It was limited to aiming 10 degrees each way, with -8 degrees of gun depression. The 37 mm PS-1 gun in the turret could depress to an impressive -12 degrees. The tank also had five machine guns. The much more realistic 250 hp engine provided a maximum speed of 35 kph. An interesting feature of the tank was emergency brakes, meant to stop the tank as quickly as possible in the event of a damaged track. One of these tanks was built and tested, but proved too complicated and unreliable to mass produce.

TG medium breakthrough tank: with tracks removed (top) and on (bottom).

In March of 1932, Grotte was back to heavy tanks. The TG-VI 3 was only 70-75 tons, a far cry from his kiloton monster. Armour of the tank was between 60 and 70 mm, and it was armed with two 45 mm guns and one 76 mm semi-auto gun or 100 mm gun. An 850 hp engine would push the tank to a reasonable 30 kph. This tank did not go very far, but far enough to serve as a base for the T-42 project. This tank was more optimistic, at 100 tons, with a 2000 hp engine for its rated 30 kph speed (or only 18 kph, if he only had the 850 hp M-34 engine). The T-42 had a 107 mm gun in its central turret (270 degree traverse), a 76 mm gun in the front turret (202 degree traverse), and a 45 mm gun in the rear turret (278 degree traverse). Since no bridge could hold this tank, it could be automatically brought into water-tight condition and ford a water hazard of up to 2 meters deep.

T-42 tank

Grotte’s last contribution to the world of armoured warfare was the 1000 ton Ratte tank, cancelled by Speer in 1943.

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2186985.html
Author of the pictures: mars2012

Hello everyone,

so, after giant Leopard and tiny sheep on the July 2013 calendar picture, we have another case of fail object dimensions, namely on the new Belogorsk.

As you probably guessed by the silly transparents and other things, Belogorsk is modelled after a gulag (Soviet concentration camp). And not just any gulag, a gulag for giants!

Here, we have the M22 Locust tank, 1842mm tall, standing nest to the house door… a bit small, isn’t it? (The door is like 1,5m tall)

But nevermind… let’s make it bigger

That door’s REALLY big :D

Oh well, looks like Siberia (or wherever the map is located) has both giants and dwarves, no other explanation… :)