[WoT] Extra 8.4 Stuff

You must have already seen the updated "in development" section on WoT portal with the announcement of major features and content. I will share some of the details:

• Pz V Panther: lower front plate slope INCREASED to its HISTORICAL (you see what we did there?) 55deg
• T-44: lower front plate slope DECREASED to its HISTORICAL 45deg
• Caernarvon, Conqueror and FV215b: front seam (between lower and upper plates) increased
• Added support for NVIDIA SLI
• Exterior button is no longer blocked for tanks with incomplete crews
• Added chat functionality: autosaving for message recipient  (or without it)
• For auto-loader tanks: Intuition skill will now reload the entire cassete
• For some configurations fixed performance drop when using server-side reticle in arty mode
• FPS in hangar is now limited to 60 
• Reworked and optimized exhaust effect for vehicle engines
• Returned option to retrain crew to a vehicle that is missing in player's hangar: there is a separate warning window for it as well 
• Added full-screen windowed mode (maximize button)
• Fixed vehicle gun going up along with turret traverse when taking hit on the turret
• Fixed vehicle gun going up along with turret traverse when aiming at close object
• Fixed "noise" in left speaker after shooting for some configurations
• Fixed ammo order when changing turret or gun

That's it for now.

[WoT] Feel the Soviet Power: Q&A with Yuri Pasholok. Part 1

So you had a chance to ask your questions to World of Tanks warfare expert Yuriy Pasholok who has got outstanding knowledge of tanks in general with his primary specialization being Soviet tanks. He is also the co-author of recently published Maus book.

      Here is the first batch of his replies. Pasholok's replies are bolded (just in case).

1. Much has been made of how advanced and technologically superior German armor was to everyone else of the time, especially against Russian armor. I loved reading the comparative armor reports on www.battlefield.ru, but are you able to give us anything more definitive about how armor quality changed over the years of the Great War? Especially of Russian armor, of course ;)

The Military Scientific Research Institute in Leningrad, also known as the  Research Institute-48 (Open Joint Stock Company “Koplin Scientific Research and Project Designing Academy of Metallurgical  Machine Building” today), handled the armor sphere in the USSR  before and during the war. Besides the armor composition improvement worked on the armor protection: for example, the IS-6 hull, the IS-3 ‘pike nose’, the  IS-7 tank, and several other renowned machines number were designed there. Armor and its quality will be discussed in detail in future blog entries and my articles.

The armor quality didn't depend greatly on the situation at the front, and differed from factory to factory. In spring 1944, for instance, the Red Army faced the issue of inferior in quality cast armor, cracks in turrets, and welds of inferior quality. The problem was related to a number of tank production facilities, but not all of them.  There was a case, for example, when the IS-3 frontal plate broke in two pieces, while a similar hull, produced at a different production facility,  did pass the test.

2. The typical western thinking is that Russia used so much HE shells because their AP shell technology was inferior to the task. What is your insight on this, and as to how effective HE actually was against German tanks, especially in relation to the above question, as armor changed?

By the summer of 1941, the Soviet Army faced an acute shortage of armor piercing rounds for calibers of 76+ mm. Things were changing fast in June, 1941 and several Soviet Army tank units ended up with absolutely no armor piercing shells, and they often fought with nothing, but high explosive rounds. The 85mm anti-aircraft guns often fired high-explosives shells for the very same reason.

3. Mr. Walter Christie appears to have had a great influence on Russian tank design beginning in the inter-war period, though not so much in his own country. How is he perceived from your perspective?

I’m positive that John Walter Christie deserves to have a monument erected in his honor. He designed the first vehicle for maneuverable combat that combined high mobility and descent for its time firepower. Christie’s tank concept gave the ground base for the German PzKpfw III, while Soviet and British vehicles built from it became most mass produced machines of World War II.  Even nowadays, the main battle tank used in one particular country, the Merkava tank comes with the suspension, similar to the Christie model.

Christie is an example that genuinely talented people can often be unlucky. His research suffered from the military budget  cuts after World War I, the Great Depression made it even worse, and his competitors wrapped it up.  Christie’s designs and suspension faced heavy criticism even though some of its major shortcomings had been eliminated by the engineer himself. His competitors took a hand in it. No wonder all American tanks from the late 1930’s had a very similar design to Chistie’s model. By the way, all of them were built with the support of the same person who is called  "the Chief Designer of American tanks" in Soviet documents of 1941 and was among Christie’s most harsh critics. That is the story of tank-related non-transparency and corruption, I don't like it.

4.  Your favorite tank of all time?

T-34, victory tank, that has served faithfully for 50 years.

5. Can You tell us more about characteristics of each tank in IS series? In-game they are pretty much mixed up, as IS-8 is considered weaker than IS-7, and IS-4 is far greater than IS-6. To sum up: they are in a very random order that does not match their real development. Is that because some versions were made from scratch, and not by further development of previous versions, or maybe these projects were just a bit to complicated and had to be "dumbed down" to simplify and reduce potential costs?

Vehicle  indices don’t always correspond to the order the tanks were developed. The first tank with the IS-3 index is The Object 239, which was the first IS prototype with the 85 mm S-31 gun. The Object 701 received its index “IS-4” in 1946, while its first prototype was built in the summer of 1946 –six months before the IS-3 pilot (Object 701). Moreover, the work on the IS-6 tank (Object 252 and Object 253) began at the Plant # 100 in strict secrecy in the winter of 1944. In 1945 engineers from the plant moved from Chelyabinsk to Leningrad, where they produced the IS-7 tank (Object 260). The IS-8 (Object 730) that would later become the T-10 tank was designed in Chelyabinsk. That is why it’s so similar to the IS-3. In a way, the epic battle between the Plant#100 (later the  Research Institute-100) and the Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant is similar to that of the Experimental Plant#185 and the Kirov Plant in late 30’s.

6.  We have alot of new Chinese tanks just on their way. We all know that most of them were licensed versions of soviet vehicles, so many parts of these tanks should be nearly the same. At the same time the Chinese had to make some changes to fit their own technology, and I suppose some things were kept secret at that moment, so they might have not gotten the entire vehicle technology, but some sort of "basic elements" that were lacking a finishing touch. What exactly were the nuances and tiny differences that make these machines different?

Chinese school of tank construction shall be treated with understanding and respect. Lots of people in Russia and other countries around the globe are carping at Soviet industry of 1934-1940’s while not considering the country of that period was pillaged in World War I and Civil wars, and Russian people were hardly able to write or to read at that period. Regarding Chinese nation, they suffered even more. People went through perpetual hostility against their nation tearing their country apart for decades. Chinese had to create their industry from nothing. It explains why the technologies of that time were just the worse copies of the original. However, the Chinese engineers made a number of uncommon solutions, with some of which players will be acquainted later (or already acquainted). Modern China is one of the few countries able to build a decent tank from the own-produced components. England, for example, has lost its tank industry. It remains to be seen if they made the right decision, since the tank hasn't said the last word on battlefield yet.

We are working with one of the leading experts in Chinese tanks. I hope to see his publications on the tank-construction of 1940-1960’s to come out one day. You can trust me, there are lots of surprises.

7. Some tanks were designed for a totaly different kind of warfare after the second world war (like Object 279 that was focused on surviving a nublear blastwave), did this pursue of making them resistant to new kinds of weapons make them a bit more vounreable to the traditional armor piercing and high explosive rounds? These bizarre projects looks very much like a compromise, and it is clear that they had to be inferior in some categories to gain these totaly new atributes in other matters.

The studies of Research Institute-48 mentioned above ended up in the Object 279 project. A-22 and Object 907 medium tanks were also designed there in collaboration with the Research Institute-100 , as should be noted. The specification included the requirement to protect the turret sides from the penetration with 128 mm shell – and it was fulfilled. The feature was implemented on the medium tank, for the record. As post war documents are being slowly declassified, we are just going to face new revelations.

8. With the characteristic late war speed and low profile on most russian tanks they would obviously be hard to hit tank vs tank, however would it be realistic to believe those tanks on average could withstand more direct hits than a western tank of similar comparison before being reliably knocked out?

Specification for the Soviet tanks in the second half of 1942 included quite strict weight requirement  with ever-growing demands on armor protection and equipment improvements. So the T-44 medium tank appeared, that was lower and lighter than T-34, while having enhanced armor. The price for the revolutionary design, however, was high –T-44 needed a lot of time to become really battle-capable and worthy, that happened only in the late 1945. Till then the tank failed performance tests with admirable regularity. Every innovative tank developed has always faced this.

A low profile didn’t mean to be the main point in T-34 creation, but later it had been always considered in the Soviet tanks design.  As a result of this improvement stride, Soviet and Russian tanks have the lowest profiles. Other countries came to this as well, for the record: “Abrams” MBT, which is higher than T-72 for 20 cm only, replaced the massive M60 with more than 3m in its height. Obviously, Soviet engineers moved in the right direction.

Regarding speed, it wasn’t the major characteristic. Tank reliability and its capability to march for hundreds of kilometers was appreciated much higher. Tank weight for these purposes was crucial. “KV-1” heavy tank at some point was overthrown with excessive armor ended up in crashes of dozens vehicles. Tanks that were produced at the beginning of 1942 had armouring similar to  “Tiger” heavy tank.

Excessive weight made IS-4 heavy tank to fall out of the improvement race and would fall KV-3 with the rest KV-4/KV-5 out as well.  However, it’s clear why the Soviet tank designers tried not to cross the line of 50 tons after the war’d ended.

9. it is widely known, that russian armor and the t34 in particular came as a shock to the germans, the germans thus learned from this and copied the ideas of sloped armor, wider tracks and better suspension (and maybe others wich i dont know yet) into there designs after the inviasion. But wich particular design concepts from the germans where learned from and coppied into russian design? Both before the war, during the war and imediatly afterwards.

The Soviets purchased one German PzKpfw III in 1940 and during the 1940-1941 all tank plants kept study on it.  As a result, T-50 got its commander's hatch, turret traverse indicator, and color signals for the driver. The T-34 medium tank wasn’t lucky in getting commander’s hatch as well as triple turret. It got it only in 1943, though tries to implement it’d occurred much earlier. As far as further adoptions are concerned, we can't but mention "Ferdinand-type" muzzle break, that was used for early 122mm D-25T gun and 100mm BS-3 gun, and also "Panther-type" hull junction.

10.   Were there any vechicles based on IS-4 chassis?:) There should be some considering the fact that there were some on IS-7 chassis and this tanks was not mass produced.

In the late 1945 documents there are requirements for 152 mm and 130 mm self-propelled guns, for which according to their specs, IS-4 suspension had to be used. Alas, as IS-4 hadn’t seen mass production, self-propelled guns on its basis were not developed in prototypes either. Search for the best does not always results in something good.

To be continued. 

[ALL] WG DevCon 1

Early February 2013 was marked by first developer conference held by Wargaming - Wargaming.net DevCon-1. The conference (not some meeting or tech summit!) took place in Minsk, Belarus.

Two rich and informative days contained ~85 talks divided into 7 main tracks: management, programming, game design & UX, web development, QA, art, and sound. More than 500 participants arrived from WG's dev offices - Minsk (WoT), Kyiv (WoWP, WoTG), Saint-Petersburg (WoWS), Sydney (BW), and Chicago (announced console title). Quite a conference it was, even though with restricted participation.  However it is the format that allowed to make talks much more useful by including some trade secrets and know-hows.

Sure thing, it can be hard to reach GDC-level of presentation and organization, but the event was definitely comparable to any local (hereby I mean Russian-speaking) trade show. And we are definitely interested in doing more shows of the kind. Or even WG-con for players? :)

[WoT] Polling

The most recent poll showed so little love towards Chinese vehicles - that makes me deeply sad. :(
Ok, I'm giving you, guys, some more time to feel the taste.

So do you love Chinese tanks?
Haven't decided yet - 710 (42%)
No - 692 (40%)
Yes -  286 (16%)

The next poll is up.

By the way, which poll would you like to be run next? Throw out ideas, I will choose the upcoming one based on your suggestions.

By the way, we have had a long World of Warships game session earlier today. It was really awesome. May be KGB will share the details.

[ALL] Entering Console Market

Watch out! Some official info here:

Wargaming moves to consoles with $20m purchase of Day 1 Studios. Team behind F.E.A.R. and Fracture join free-to-play World of Tanks creator Wargaming.Net.

The Chicago studio will focus solely on console gaming for the MMO company, working on an as yet undisclosed title. The studio is best known for ports of first-person shooter F.E.A.R. and LucasArts' Fracture.

Link and link.

Are you excited? What kind of game do you expect? Feel free to throw ideas. :)

[WoT] The Map Thing

As I have mentioned a few times, we are currently streamlining our level design workflow and techniques. Your feedback on the existing in-game maps is highly welcomed.

Which of the current maps do you enjoy? Why?
Which reworked maps are overhauled poorly and why?
Maps of what setting/type do you prefer in general?

Let's discuss here.

PS. some extra info to fuel the discussion:

• Dragon Ridge and Serene Coast will be disabled in 8.4.
• Bumpy terrain of Prokhorovka, Abbey, El Halluf, and Ruinberg (rounded streets) are going to be addressed.
• Redshire and El Halluf will undergo some gameplay changes.
• Swamp and Komarin will be visually reworked and brought back to live.

[WoWS] Rare USN Designs

Hello, everyone.

While I was away during most of January, and half of this time I've spent in Saint-Petersburg, taking part in conversations, meetings, holywars and so on, I still think I have something to say. This is not about the game itself, just because everything small that I can tell, I'm telling at NA and RU forums - and big news aren't going to happen until OBT starts. But as a man, taking part into the making of ship trees process, I want to share some more info.

Today we gonna look at some rare USN ships, which were actually never-built due to some reasons.

Let us start with this one:

This is a so-called "small" battleship, year 1919 project, or, to be certain, the "Small Battleship - Design F-3" preliminary design proposal, dated April 1919.

Normal displacement - 21.500 tonns.
Speed - 18 knots.
Armor - 12" belt.
Guns - two twin 16".

Of course, Mr. Freedman's book can tell us what is it and why it was proposed with far greater detail.
I'll just tell that in my own words: Chief Constructor of USN in 1919, Rear Admiral David W. Taylor, felt that ships were started to grow into a very large ones, so he tried to let see what can be done with less effort in materials, money and crew.

The results were...not the ones he hoped for. Even the smallest of these small battleships were larger than a dreadnought, while being slower, somewhat with same protection and only with four 16" guns (which was half of the firepower of Colorado class, for example).
The 29 knot version of this "small" battleship had normal displacement of 37.000 tonns, which was a 5.000 tonns larger (!) than a Colorado class battleship. Of course, when actual numbers appeared, all of this "small" battleship designs went right to the far-far shelf.

So, you can understand why this beautiful concept of "more battleships with less money" crashed. All in all, for the country with such an industrial potential, like USA, it wasn't so attractive anyway.
While it was not the first time, when great ideas weren't in touch with a reality, this case is a rather demonstrative one.

Thanks for reading,
KGB out

[ALL] ChrisK Has Joined the Club!

I'm extremely excited to introduce one more speaker (finally native with English :)) who has just joined the blogging crowd and is going to use this resource as means of communication with you, guys. Chris Keeling aka ChrisK is Senior Producer at Wargaming.net, make him feel welcome here.

Overlord

I started freelancing in game writing and design on Panzer Elite for Wings Simulations in 1998, while I was still on active duty with the U.S. Army. After I transferred to the reserves, I continued to work freelance on games like America's Army: Operations, America's Army: Soldiers, Twilight War, and Order of War. I also squeezed in a year and a half combat deployment to Iraq, published my own World War II tabletop miniatures rules, and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Videogame Production and Design along the way. In 2009, I accepted an offer to teach full-time in the Game Design program at Full Sail University.

Things changed fairly quickly after that - I developed and taught several classes, and eventually became the Program Manager of the entire Game Design program (responsible for more than two dozen Course Directors and over 1,600 students!). I retired from the Army Reserve after 23 years of total service and continued to freelance part-time for Wargaming.Net. After the release of Order of War, the company kept growing, from about 60 developers in Minsk (plus one American consultant!) to over 1,300 developers in several studios with offices in about a dozen countries. We could only do this because of the amazing success of World of Tanks, and the potential we could see in World of Warplanes and World of Warships. 

After about four years of freelancing, I was offered a full-time position as Senior Producer here at Wargaming.Net. I have now embarked on the adventure of a lifetime working for a really amazing company loaded with vision, drive, and purpose. Among other things, I suggest Westernization practices and features that will enhance our appeal to players in North America and Western Europe (and, hopefully, everywhere else!), while working on secret new game ideas that may see the light of day in the future. On this blog I will help clarify some of the reasons behind our design decisions, predict some of our future endeavors, and occasionally explain some of the “historical elasticity” used to keep our games balanced between authenticity and fun.

When I’m not slaving away over my keyboard, reading player feedback in the forums, analyzing development plans, or playing other games (it’s research, honest!), you can find me playing as ChrisK on World of Tanks and in the World of Warplanes closed beta, or alpha testing a couple of games still under wraps, like World of Warships. 

See you on the battlefield!

ChrisK

[WoT] Do You Love Tanks?

based on 8.3 release on EU and NA

Do you love tanks as much as we do?

Don't bother to reply, that's rhetorical. The main reason for World of Tanks becoming a great game (apart from millions of great players all around the world) is our passion for tanks and engineering.

True that we are not aiming to reach the highest level of historical authenticity, we simplify a lot, but on the other hand, this gives us an opportunity to tell our story to many, not few. 

USSR - Germany - USA

Those are undoubtedly the "big 3". The major tank nations of the era. You can have your own favorites and the hated ones, but one can't argue that those tank schools affected modern tank development most.

France and Great Britain

That's how it all began. Back in WWI days with British Mark I that laid down the foundation of armoured motor vehicles and up to French Renault FT-17, one of the the most revolutionary and influential tank designs in the entire history of engineering.

Those two deserved their spots regardless any further contributions or lack of them.

China

I must admit that initially we did share the common opinion that China had never had its own, even partially independent and unique, tank development. To our great surprise and astonishment, when our Chinese partners brought up the idea of doing some research to prove that we were wrong - we just couldn't refuse.

The documents we got eventually are a true terra incognita even in China, not speaking of the rest of the world. Generally speaking, China is a closed (?) country, extremely reluctant when it comes to sharing its defence projects with others. The fact that we were able to obtain the information that allowed us to make up medium and heavy branches - is a great deal. It's rewarding to see how results of your hard work become "alive" in game. When our Chinese partners finish their research on SPGs and TDs, we will eagerly add those two missing branches as well. 

That's how the Chinese tree was planted. True thing that initially it was intended for Chinese server only, however when we realized it all looked great, we had no other option, but to share our results with the rest of the world.

Our next stop...

Japan, rest of Europe? ....

By the way the new poll is up.

[WoT] Global Vision: Part II

This post is the continuation of the recent Global Vision: Part I article where we covered the CW plans for the near future.

What else we have in stock.

Sabotage and how to fight it

Sabotage is a kind of special clan consumable which represents a mobile tactical unit that can be sent behind the enemy lines with the aim to ... guess what? - Perform sabotage, yes.

It works this way: using your scout/intelligence you can assess revolt chances for a particular enemy province, the higher the chance, the more likely it is that your sabotage will be successful. The outcome of your sabotage will be known next turn. Typical sabotage effects to choose from:
- minus 1 token to enemy defense in a given province
- "railway war" - disables borders between provinces for some time
- destruction of enemy HQ
- provocation - chance of starting revolt in enemy province
- etc.

Just as revolts/pillages, this functionality is likely to be tested as CWs special.

Counter-intelligence is the best way to prevent your enemies from successful acts of sabotage. The lower revolt probability of your province, the lower enemy chances to perform successful sabotage on your territories.

Global Map Seasons

The below is a bit more distant in terms of time.
The entire mode of Clan Wars will be changed due to the upcoming implementation of seasons.
Season is a sort of global event that takes place in all provinces, i.e. active throughout the Global map. Each season is preceded by wipe/reset - everyone starts from scratch on a completely virgin map.

Season starts just as CWs beta did back in 2011 - with global contest mode - all provinces are available for landing.

Each season will last 2-3 months and eventually get its own winner and, of course, losers.
Seasons will be broken into several stages with different rules, conditions, and restrictions for each of them - e.g. vehicle tier restrictions, missions and goals (gold farming, capturing specified key provinces), etc.

Depending on the functionality available that time it can be Revolution stage with higher revolt chances for one stage, with totally different rules for another stage.

Based on clan performance during each stage special Victory points will be awarded and stage winners defined based on them.

Winner of the entire season will be determined by the total number of Victory points earned throughout the season. However, this concept is still subject to design changes. Winners will get special and huge prizes (this is not subject to change).

Seasons end with another Global map wipe/reset and shuts down for vacation while everyone is waiting for another season with new rules and new prizes. 

Make it comfortable

Such a crucial mechanics change as seasons requires an overhaul and massive improvement of clan functionality available for players. This work is going to be done in parallel. We are planning to add clan statistics, leaderboards, achievements, thinking of how to facilitate clan communication and action logging.

Obviously this would require some time to be done, but there is no other way.

Let us know

In these two posts I have given only the basic ideas on what will happen to Global map in foreseeable future. Sure thing, we have got many more plans and ideas. I intentionally left out the mercenary thing (it hasn't been dumped), CWs merger, transfers, and some other delicious stuff.

Just like with client-side updates, we are planning to communicate update notes and release plans for CWs since it's an inherent part of WoT.