MT-25, the replacement for the T-50-2

Source: Yuri Pasholok - MT-25
Translated (and redacted by): Silentstalker

On 9.2.1943, two engineers - F.F.Gorodkov and A.I.Starodubcev - sent a letter to J.V.Stalin directly, describing a new very fast armored vehicle. Both engineers worked at the Factory No.200 in Chelyabinsk, which produced the hulls for KV series, IS series and other vehicles produced in the city industrial complex, aptly nicknamed "Tankograd" ("tank city"). Therefore, it's not surprising that it was the KV design that made the basis for the new tank proposal. As with many other amateurish Russian war projects, this design was also a product of patriotic zeal rather than rational engineering, the project was however made in great detail. The authors even calculated the combat weight of the vehicle with methods approved for other vehicles produced in Chelyabinsk. The vehicle was not supposed to be THAT light (25 tons, as the name suggests), but it did fit in the army requirements for a light tank, brought by the army in mid 1943. It was projected with a 47mm gun, but given the size of the turret, a 76mm ZIS-5 and other guns would fit in quite fine. Size-wise, it did fit also, the T-50 was only 10cm shorter than the MT-25. Note how the suspension was projected with interwoven wheels (like the late German vehicles had). It's unlikely the two engineers had access to a Tiger at that point, so it's assumed they were influenced by the German halftracks. The projected speed was to be 40-45 km/h on average, but the maximum speed would be 100 km/h.

Well, so much for Yuri Pasholok's article. The reason the T-50-2 is going to be replaced is that the T-50-2 (and the T-50 when it comes to that) doesn't behave as the real life original tank did. From the other threads on the RU forum, it's possible it will have various 76mm guns, including possibly the S-31. The engine mentioned for it is the KV V-2K (600hp), which is not bad for 25 tons. The armor was supposed to be the same as the T-50 (as far as I can tell at least).

Other pictures (from the Russian archive):

2.2.2013

- the controversial "Stalinec" tank decal won't be removed from the game
- Storm considers reworking the ingame hangar chat, no details yet
- premium British and Chinese heavies? "Definitely this year"
- El-Halluf doesn't have a higher chance to drop than other maps (SS: by "drop" I mean "to be chosen when selecting a map for next random battle" - sorry, WoW slang)
- the "in development" section will be updated before the 8.4 test begins (SS: the question was "can we expect the 8.4 test within 2 weeks, as 8.4 is scheduled for Feb/March? Might be a hint that the 8.4 is delayed"
- the ceiling height of each maps is very high, SerB doesn't tell how exactly, but "it's sufficient for any ballistic purposes"
- confirmed: no extra regular gold/XP per medals planned
- there are 3 "sizes" of ingame tracers, depending on the caliber
- regarding the placing of the M62-T2 gun on the vehicles, "historically, the gun was designed to replace the D-25T, wherever it was installed (IS-4, SU-122-54, T-10...) but by the time it was ready, the heavy tanks were declared obsolete
- the Indien-Panzer was confirmed to be a logical part of the new medium tank German branch
- a year is taken into consideration too, when introducing new tanks (SS: it is thus possible to find a vehicle that would fit into the game technologically, but it's "too new") (SS: so the Japanese Type 74 and the Merkava prototypes from the 70's won't fit apparently)
- with the introduction of tier 10 arties, the company allowed arty tiers will most likely change (eg. higher tier arties will be allowed for different modes), but the total company weight most likely won't. Basically there is some time limit ("and we determine what that limit is")
- SerB doesn't see any FPS issues with the sniper scope anymore
- Chinese Vickers has the engine in the back, but the transmission in the front
- Generally (SS: if I understood this correctly, not 100 percent sure), the AP shell normalisation does not depend on the caliber of the gun if the caliber is 2x as big as the thickness of the armor hit - and if the caliber is 3x as big as the thickness of the armor hit, the angle of impact counts as 90 degrees.
- SerB stated that Evilly (SS: that guy I translated the answers from) might have screwed up some of the answers, namely the one about Wargaming buying the mods.
- regarding the T-62B introduction: Q: "And what about the T-62B? It's if the same age as the Leopard" A: "Well, the Leopard will be introduced..."

Regarding the "Stalinist" issue (quick background: a player started a thread where he complains about the game promoting the dictator Stalin): Ectar (community organizer, WG employee) passed his concern to the developers directly. Developers told him to sod off: "EU community manager can express his concern regarding the issues of some individuals over certain aspects of the game. This concern is very important to us." (SS: to explain this: SerB uses the expression "very important opinion" ("OBM") ironically, as in "yea, your personal opinion is very important to us..."). And under it, SerB pasted this picture:

So.... hooray for Stalin I guess -.-

This blog, a month later....

Hello everyone,

so, it's been roughly a month since this blog came live. It started as an experiment and literally a backup storage for the Russian Q&A translations. A month later, 130k views. I am not really sure if that's a lot or it isn't, compared to other blogs, but I'd like to think of it as a success and I would like to thank you all for reading the blog and the thread on the EU forums, I appreciate when I am doing something people enjoy. I am even very much surprised how far the blog actually got language-wise - it's being read in and occasionally translated for example to Vietnamese and Chinese. How cool is that :)

As for the future of this blog, I aim to turn it (from purely translation blog) into a fullblown newsfeed blog for the English-speaking communities. More World of Tanks news, more branch proposals, more tank history.... more, more, more. I do not aim to make the same thing for World of Warplanes however - sorry, I really don't like flying in particular. Nor will I move to War Thunder, no matter how much some people praise it. Tried it, didn't like it. As for the technical future of the blog, I plain to add few new functions and to make a new design this weekend. I may add adsense commercials too (annoying, I know, I just want to see if that works), I might also buy a new domain. I am currently talking about cooperation with some other people about news sharing and possibly about a united project, sorry - no details, when it's done it's done :)

It's not all roses and rainbows however. First, there are the death threats. It's no secret I am at odds with the Czechoslovak EU server community. Naturally, I don't take them seriously - but it's a nice example of how many total morons there are. Then there is the fact the blog entries get translated into Czech (and occasionally Slovak) by the very same people who send me threats, call me a "STB agent" because of the whole Czechout affair (STB was a Czech communist secret police, known for its brutal methods, it's very offensive in fact - it's as if you called a German person a member of the Gestapo or a nazi) - it even goes so far they actively edit out the parts where I explain what the translation means and the context. I wouldn't worry too much about it, IF it didn't backfire, because some Czechs, who have absolutely no idea about the "feud" read it and then write me "OMG you translated it wrong", when in fact it's translated wrong from English to Czech. I mean - how lame is that? Truth to be told, at one point I was so annoyed I considered actually dropping the whole thing and take a few weeks off.

But there is no point in punishing myself and other uninvolved people because of the actions of a few complete retards. Naturally, by now, I think anyone can make a picture of what the forum CZK section looks like, so it's absolutely pointless to talk about this anymore. This blog will continue as it is, or rather - I will continue improving it. So enjoy, there is a lot more upcoming :)

1.2.2013

- apparently there won't be special "emblems" for Ukraine (the trident), double-headed eagle (symbol of Russia) etc. - "there are flags for that"
- there most likely be no "free tanks" during the arty tier 10 branch prologning ("there's enough arty around even without that")
- it's possible to get 2 Lion of Sinai medals in space of 10 battles - one counts as "general" for the account, one counts as "special" for that given tank
- crew skills have no effect on server spot check frequency (SS: the server checks whether the tank can spot the enemy vehicles in certain frequencies (from cca 0,5s to cca 3s) - these are not affected)
- SerB's full title is "Vice president of Wargaming for game design"
- a "wounded" crew member will always operate on 50 percent skill efficiency (absolutely, not 50 percent of his trained skill). However, if you put a crew into the tank that doesn't belong (for example a LT crew into a heavy) and the efficiency drops below 50 percent, the negative modifier will apply also on the "wounded crewmember" skill (eg it's not possible to actually BUFF skill by killing your crewmember)
- each crewmember has his own collision model (for example two loaders - one is on the right of the gun, one on the left)
- the "master" XP requirement does not depend on the day or hour of the week, the statistics for it are averaged on the week before that.
- SU-122-44 won't be transferred to tier 8 (SS: there was a rumor going around)
- if new arty vehicle is introduced into the branch a player has already unlocked, it will likely count as unlocked too (SS: in other words - if the player unlocked all 8 arties and new arty is introduced at tier 5, it'll be unlocked for the player if I understand that correctly)
- WZ-111 premium tank that sometimes appears on the RU server wasn't introduced there officially, it's a press account
- The Chinese tree is called Chinese tree and not PRC tree because some of the vehicles were used even in the pre-PRC warlord era
- after the introduction of tier 10 arties, the arties will still have specific MM, but SerB mentions he's thinking about allowing a bigger difference between arties teams (for example 3 arties in one team, 4 in other).
- 0.8.4 and 0.8.5 - changes in profitability of various tanks? "if necessery, as always"
- German heavy branch with Grosstraktor, NbFz nad DW? "no comment for now"
- SU-122-44 was made a premium tank because it was needed to push the SU-101 and Uralmash one tier up

31.1.2013

- tier 10 light tanks? "I am really not sure" (SS: apparently there was another leak from somewhere saying those might come eventually)
- WG doesn't plan to make a singleplayer game (SS: connected to the question what is WG going to do with the new console game US studio it bought)
- apparently, the Leopard's gun L7A3 might be even more accurate and have faster aiming than the one of the E-50M (SS: 0.28 mentioned)
- there is no en-masse amnesty planned for banned accounts, each case is handled individually
- no special matchmaking for platoons is planned (SS: for example for the cases where one team recieves one platoon of 3xHT8, another 2xMT6) to make them more balanced
- HE shells have no limit on module criticals damaged per shot, this only concerns crewmembers (SS: HE shell can never kill more than half of the crew with one shot, the borderline case being 3 of 5)
- SS: this is a bit indirect answer but from what I understood, there are no light tanks candidates for now for tier 10
- WG doesn't support the P2W attitude despite the fact that the Chinese (SEA) server sort of inclines to it
- T-34/100 has not yet been introduced as a premium vehicle, because there is the possibility of it being introduced as a regular vehicle
- SerB writes that the "late model" E-75 (designated "F") having a rear transmission is a hoax and that there are no existing graphic materials suggesting there was any such things, Doyle also agrees there was no such thing
- holes in tanks after they are hit have no effect on the armor (SS: eg if you hit a place where another shell has previously penetrated, it doesn't count as 0 armor area)
- both US and RU servers have roughly the same amount of people mass-using gold shells
- disabling one map from the random map pool? "Let's say we won't do it for now"
- the system where you can "forgive" teamdamage (SS: the teamdamager doesn't get "ban points" if you forgive him) is not going to be implemented
- tanks in game do not act as a arty splash barrier (SS: if a MS-1 stands hidden behind the Maus, an arty shell falls next to the Maus so that the Maus stands between it and the MS-1, if the splash is big enough to reach the MS-1, it will get damaged despite the fact it is covered)
- it's possible the British crews will get additional names in their name and surname pool in the future ("when it's done it's done")
- T-62A was introduced as the Object 165 without the smoothbore gun instead of the paper project Object 142 because 1) some T-62A's were actually built (around 100 pieces) and 2) Object 142 is practically the same as one of the T-54 versions that already is in the branch, it's possible (but not guaranteed) that the Object 142 will appear as a separate vehicle
- SerB doesn't see any suitable tanks for German premium T8 med tank
- smoke shells and generators are difficult to implement technically, they will come in distant future
- no plans to introduce earning gold in random battles
- Province will be remade "if needed"
- AMX AC 48 mantlet thickness is 150mm
- SerB is exping up the British medium branch, he's at the Cromwell now
- according to SerB, WoT works on Windows 8 just fine

SturmTiger in 8.4? A FAKE

A Russian WoT news site reported that Sturmtiger would be implemented soon.

Source: http://wg-news.ru/novaya-nemeckaya-premium-artilleriya-postupit-v-prodazhu-v-blizhajshem-obnovlenii/

Unfortunately this was confirmed by The_Chieftain and Falathi from the Polish EU forums to be a hoax. Ah well. Maybe next time :)

30.1.2013

- SerB considers the winrate of a player to be the indicator of that player's skill
- SerB confirmed the fact that when the arty branches are prolonged to tier 10, various arty branches will have new machines inserted on various tiers (SS: eg logically, it's not sure T7 will go to T9 and T8 to T10 automatically)
- 15vs15 companies won't be cancelled according to SerB, they make a great training ground for the CWs
- looks like the Fog of War won't be in randoms after all
- the devs don't introduce a bigger number of low-tier premiums into the game (despite having them prepared in advance) because sometimes, the vehicle designed to be premiums are used to "patch up" the holes in regular trees and to supplement upcoming branches
- it's not totally excluded for 3 branches of the same class to exist in one tree
- the spare tracks mounted on hulls/turrets of the ingame vehicles do not count as armor
- the 59-16 Chinese LT has an autoloader on its top gun. At the same time it can mount a rammer. The rammer reduceds the autoloader loading time, not time between shots - and it's not a bug
- tier 10 TD's have lower MM weight than tier 10 heavies
- Q: "Do you plan to improve the premium account by allowing to buy shorter period premium account?" A: "Yes, we are currently thinking about allowing the player to buy one second and one milisecond premium" :)