Note: The 0.5.6 patch turns on your collision avoidance setting by default so remember to turn it off.
Thanks to Carnotzet & Babykim
1. Out of curiosity, when a player buys a premium account and plays both WoWs and WoT, how is the money split between the two projects, and what is the reasoning behind?
A. Both projects are made by th same company, Wargaming.net. It’s like subscribing to a theater, the shows are different but you pay at the same till.
2. Are citadels only possible through side armour penetrations or through deck armour as well? If deck armour is modeled, it should naturally be thinner than side armour and more prone to penetration at longer distances (since shells comes from the “top”). Is it thus possible to hit citadels through the deck at longer distances? Such mechanics would encourage players to fight at shorter distances.
A. In game, armour is modeled with high fidelity, deck armour included. It happens that players hit citadels through the deck. However, you must remember that shells don’t always fall vertically since the firing range we set in game is the effective range of the ship and not its “theoretical” maximum range. That is why for many ships the so-called “immune zone” falls on the furthest section of the firing range and thus it’s harder to penetrate the deck.
3. Are you working on improving AA and dual purpose gunfire visuals, since shells seem not to come from gun barrels and the guns don’t rotate towards planes?
A. We’re working on it but, like with all the other visual improvements, we’re limited by the game performance since it must run on many different system configurations. With time, all visual aspects of the game will be improved but it’s a long and slow process. Regarding the time at which they will be done, I suggest you follow the patch notes.
4. Do you plan to give CV players the ability to manually use their secondary armaments so they can better defend themselves against DD’s?
Thanks to Carnotzet & Babykim
1. Out of curiosity, when a player buys a premium account and plays both WoWs and WoT, how is the money split between the two projects, and what is the reasoning behind?
A. Both projects are made by th same company, Wargaming.net. It’s like subscribing to a theater, the shows are different but you pay at the same till.
2. Are citadels only possible through side armour penetrations or through deck armour as well? If deck armour is modeled, it should naturally be thinner than side armour and more prone to penetration at longer distances (since shells comes from the “top”). Is it thus possible to hit citadels through the deck at longer distances? Such mechanics would encourage players to fight at shorter distances.
A. In game, armour is modeled with high fidelity, deck armour included. It happens that players hit citadels through the deck. However, you must remember that shells don’t always fall vertically since the firing range we set in game is the effective range of the ship and not its “theoretical” maximum range. That is why for many ships the so-called “immune zone” falls on the furthest section of the firing range and thus it’s harder to penetrate the deck.
3. Are you working on improving AA and dual purpose gunfire visuals, since shells seem not to come from gun barrels and the guns don’t rotate towards planes?
A. We’re working on it but, like with all the other visual improvements, we’re limited by the game performance since it must run on many different system configurations. With time, all visual aspects of the game will be improved but it’s a long and slow process. Regarding the time at which they will be done, I suggest you follow the patch notes.
4. Do you plan to give CV players the ability to manually use their secondary armaments so they can better defend themselves against DD’s?
A. No since CV’s should fear such situations and DD’s, for their part, should have a well-deserved advantage after succeeding in coming close to a CV.
5a. Do you think Moskva is overpowered? Firing range, rate of fire, turret rotation speed, caliber, penetration values, ability to tank 460mm shells from the bow, her only downsides are concealment and big silhouette.
A. I don’t think so.
5b. Have you considered giving US DD’s two different slots for their Engine Boost and Defensive Fire? Since half the time, one of them is useless. For example, three times in a row I chose Defensive Fire but there’s no CV’s in the battles. So I decide to change and take Engine Boost and join a battle with 2 CV’s on each side.
A. We thought about it, but decided not to do it.
6a. How is the battle against bots going? Are you making any progress?
A. Bots are not a problem for the game. Currently, we look at all of the reports regarding bots in order to identify their behaviours and prevent the mass appearance of bots in the future.
6b. Do you plan on adding higher tier Soviet BB’s, like for example the class Sevastopol is of, equipped with torpedoes; of course, she wouldn’t compete with Tirpitz but I think she would be fun to sail.
A. We plan to add many more ships, including Soviet ships.
7. Diana is missing half of her secondary guns (12 x 75mm secondary guns instead of 24). Why don’t you fix it? [follows a detailed explanation]
A. Thank you for your detailed explanation, now I understand your point. I will discuss it with my colleagues and we will give a constructive answer in a post when we’ll have one to share.
8. In the patch notes [mind you, only Russian patch notes because reasons…], it is written Hindenburg‘s engines are immune to be disabled from the explosion of HE shells up to 203 mm of caliber.
Does it mean it includes 203 mm shells? And what happens with Moskva‘s 220 mm shells ? I saw a video where a Moskva disables Hindenburg‘s engines five times in a row. Do you think it’s fair to be unable to move for so long?
A. It includes 203 mm shells (so engines won’t be disabled from 203 mm HE shells).
Yes, Moskva can disable Hindenburg‘s engines. But, on the other hand, she can dish out a lot of damage. By the way, I would recommend you to read the comments on that video and the purpose of this kind of “tests”.
9a. When activating Defensive Fire without any planes around, AA guns still start to fire blindly into the sky. Is it a bug?
A. It’s a known issue, we’re in the process of fixing it.
9b. Can Defensive Fire hit allied planes when they come into our AA zone?
A. No, AA normally don’t hit allied planes.
10. You already implemented Dx11 support in WoT and it improved FPS and game stability on many systems. When can we expect Dx11 support in WoWs?
A. We’re constantly working on implementing new technologies aimed at improving graphical fidelity as well as performance. Though, I will say that this process isn’t very fast and easy. There is no reason for us to disclose our current plans in that regards for now, but you will be informed on our progress in the patch notes.
11a. It seems that certain classes of ships have absolutely no chances when fighting certain classes. For example, a high tier BB simply cannot win against a CV if the players are of above average skill. Do you imply that a BB cannot win because it was so historically speaking or is there a balancing process involved in that decision?
A. Technically, all things be equal, a ship of one class can fight a ship of another class. However, each ship has its preferred and worst enemies. We try to detect cases where a ship have absolutely no chance against another and fix this situation. On the other hand, we don’t want to give players equal chances when fighting every ship without having to think about whom to engage and whom to fear.
By the way, for all of you Hipper owners, the new Hull C added with the patch prevents some turrets to fire at certain arcs.
Developers have been notified and they will rearrange AA guns so that main turrets have a wider arc of fire. This change will probably come in 0.5.6.1 or 0.5.6.2.
In other news, Yubari may receive her planned improvements in 0.5.7. Emphasize on the word may.
1. Why did you nerf Concealment Expert? Why not add in the description that it affects all kind of concealment modifiers, including the penalty for firing? Why have you decided to nerf so many ships, including premium ships?
A. We don’t think this change is a nerf to any ship, including premium ships. We simply improved the game logic and, for that matter, this change slightly reduced the ability of certain ships to stealth fire.
I noticed that widespread use of this tactic is not very well received by most players. Concealment should first and foremost be used to move under cover and not attack other players without being seen.
On the other hand, we think this tactic is a valid one and, as you should be aware of, we haven’t made any changes to the penalty for firing, so ships that could stealth fire still retain their buffer zone. It’s just that it was slightly reduced. Concealment expert is still very useful as it reduces the detection range (which was always written in the description).
The following question includes technical aspects I am not familiar with. That is why the terms used may very well be incorrect. I apologize for this.
2. If I understand correctly, water physics aren’t implemented in the game, correct? Could you please explain how water works in game (technically speaking)?
A. Fully modeled water physics aren’t implemented. The map base is modeled and drawn with offline tools, and then we add in real time a dynamic sea on top of it. We start by adding wind formed and deformation waves (also those created by guns shockwave), and then, with the resulting waves, we create geometry, the polygon mesh. Finally, we do the shading (reflection, refraction, light attenuation effects, subsurface scattering, shadows, fog).
3. Have you considered adding maps shared with other WG projects, such as the El Halluf map, which can be found in both WoT and WoWp?
A. We currently don’t plan to do that but we’ve already thought about it.
4. What fait awaits Cleveland? What changes can we expect? Will she be transferred into another branch?
A. For a long time, we considered putting her on a higher tier by giving her some improvements. However, at the current moment, this question is postponed indefinitely. You should not expect any changes regarding this ship in the short or medium term.
1. Why can’t Tachibana’s third gun rotate all the way around? This issue also concerns several other ships. Fixing this would help them a lot in certain situations.
A. Certain ships turrets cannot rotate all the way around because of technical limitations (by technical, I mean in real life, they couldn’t rotate all the way) but it very well may have been an oversight on our end. We will look into this issue regarding Tachibana and other ships. We will then decide what to do.
2. With AA defense being improved on a lot of ships, why Arkansas wasn’t changed?
A. We don’t plan to change Arkansas in the near future. Firstly, her AA setup (or rather lack thereof) reflects her historical setup (very early on), secondly, she has a lot more upgrade slots, which balances out this drawback.
3. Do you plan to add some form of punishment to players who misuse the report feature?
A. No, we currently don’t have any plans in that regard.
4. It happens sometimes that secondaries guns fire at allied ships and because of that, we can turn pink without having any control on how those guns fire. Do you plan to do anything regarding this issue?
A. We already received several reports on this issue. We will look into it and make a decision after that.
5. Why don’t you want to color shell types with different colors? Certain mods already do this. I consider seeing what type of shells are fired on me quite important.
A. It should be possible to implement that. We will develop such feature.
6. High tier US BB’s accuracy seems to be the same as before. Actually the dispersion value hasn’t changed. Is it normal ?
A. Accuracy is not only tied to size of the dispersion ellipse, but it can also be improved by tweaking the distribution of shells inside the ellipse.
There is little new in the recent getfun digest:
Source: https://www.youtube….h?v=hj_va8MAVRA
So I will be brief. He talks about the end of team battles season on June 1st and the start of the ranked battles soon. Ranked battles and team battles will not be on at the same time.
1. The guy (on the RU forum?) who discovered that the 5th level Concealment perk now does not apply to gunfire, AA and fires received the USS Texas as a gift. This information was missing in the 0.5.6 patch notes.
2. The developers claim that boting is not as widely spread as players tend to believe. After having analyzed player behavior and bot complains they say that most reported bots are actually (talented) humans.
3. Finally, 18 notorious AFK players from the RU server got a two week ban.
5a. Do you think Moskva is overpowered? Firing range, rate of fire, turret rotation speed, caliber, penetration values, ability to tank 460mm shells from the bow, her only downsides are concealment and big silhouette.
A. I don’t think so.
5b. Have you considered giving US DD’s two different slots for their Engine Boost and Defensive Fire? Since half the time, one of them is useless. For example, three times in a row I chose Defensive Fire but there’s no CV’s in the battles. So I decide to change and take Engine Boost and join a battle with 2 CV’s on each side.
A. We thought about it, but decided not to do it.
6a. How is the battle against bots going? Are you making any progress?
A. Bots are not a problem for the game. Currently, we look at all of the reports regarding bots in order to identify their behaviours and prevent the mass appearance of bots in the future.
6b. Do you plan on adding higher tier Soviet BB’s, like for example the class Sevastopol is of, equipped with torpedoes; of course, she wouldn’t compete with Tirpitz but I think she would be fun to sail.
A. We plan to add many more ships, including Soviet ships.
7. Diana is missing half of her secondary guns (12 x 75mm secondary guns instead of 24). Why don’t you fix it? [follows a detailed explanation]
A. Thank you for your detailed explanation, now I understand your point. I will discuss it with my colleagues and we will give a constructive answer in a post when we’ll have one to share.
8. In the patch notes [mind you, only Russian patch notes because reasons…], it is written Hindenburg‘s engines are immune to be disabled from the explosion of HE shells up to 203 mm of caliber.
Does it mean it includes 203 mm shells? And what happens with Moskva‘s 220 mm shells ? I saw a video where a Moskva disables Hindenburg‘s engines five times in a row. Do you think it’s fair to be unable to move for so long?
A. It includes 203 mm shells (so engines won’t be disabled from 203 mm HE shells).
Yes, Moskva can disable Hindenburg‘s engines. But, on the other hand, she can dish out a lot of damage. By the way, I would recommend you to read the comments on that video and the purpose of this kind of “tests”.
9a. When activating Defensive Fire without any planes around, AA guns still start to fire blindly into the sky. Is it a bug?
A. It’s a known issue, we’re in the process of fixing it.
9b. Can Defensive Fire hit allied planes when they come into our AA zone?
A. No, AA normally don’t hit allied planes.
10. You already implemented Dx11 support in WoT and it improved FPS and game stability on many systems. When can we expect Dx11 support in WoWs?
A. We’re constantly working on implementing new technologies aimed at improving graphical fidelity as well as performance. Though, I will say that this process isn’t very fast and easy. There is no reason for us to disclose our current plans in that regards for now, but you will be informed on our progress in the patch notes.
11a. It seems that certain classes of ships have absolutely no chances when fighting certain classes. For example, a high tier BB simply cannot win against a CV if the players are of above average skill. Do you imply that a BB cannot win because it was so historically speaking or is there a balancing process involved in that decision?
A. Technically, all things be equal, a ship of one class can fight a ship of another class. However, each ship has its preferred and worst enemies. We try to detect cases where a ship have absolutely no chance against another and fix this situation. On the other hand, we don’t want to give players equal chances when fighting every ship without having to think about whom to engage and whom to fear.
By the way, for all of you Hipper owners, the new Hull C added with the patch prevents some turrets to fire at certain arcs.
Developers have been notified and they will rearrange AA guns so that main turrets have a wider arc of fire. This change will probably come in 0.5.6.1 or 0.5.6.2.
In other news, Yubari may receive her planned improvements in 0.5.7. Emphasize on the word may.
1. Why did you nerf Concealment Expert? Why not add in the description that it affects all kind of concealment modifiers, including the penalty for firing? Why have you decided to nerf so many ships, including premium ships?
A. We don’t think this change is a nerf to any ship, including premium ships. We simply improved the game logic and, for that matter, this change slightly reduced the ability of certain ships to stealth fire.
I noticed that widespread use of this tactic is not very well received by most players. Concealment should first and foremost be used to move under cover and not attack other players without being seen.
On the other hand, we think this tactic is a valid one and, as you should be aware of, we haven’t made any changes to the penalty for firing, so ships that could stealth fire still retain their buffer zone. It’s just that it was slightly reduced. Concealment expert is still very useful as it reduces the detection range (which was always written in the description).
The following question includes technical aspects I am not familiar with. That is why the terms used may very well be incorrect. I apologize for this.
2. If I understand correctly, water physics aren’t implemented in the game, correct? Could you please explain how water works in game (technically speaking)?
A. Fully modeled water physics aren’t implemented. The map base is modeled and drawn with offline tools, and then we add in real time a dynamic sea on top of it. We start by adding wind formed and deformation waves (also those created by guns shockwave), and then, with the resulting waves, we create geometry, the polygon mesh. Finally, we do the shading (reflection, refraction, light attenuation effects, subsurface scattering, shadows, fog).
3. Have you considered adding maps shared with other WG projects, such as the El Halluf map, which can be found in both WoT and WoWp?
A. We currently don’t plan to do that but we’ve already thought about it.
4. What fait awaits Cleveland? What changes can we expect? Will she be transferred into another branch?
A. For a long time, we considered putting her on a higher tier by giving her some improvements. However, at the current moment, this question is postponed indefinitely. You should not expect any changes regarding this ship in the short or medium term.
1. Why can’t Tachibana’s third gun rotate all the way around? This issue also concerns several other ships. Fixing this would help them a lot in certain situations.
A. Certain ships turrets cannot rotate all the way around because of technical limitations (by technical, I mean in real life, they couldn’t rotate all the way) but it very well may have been an oversight on our end. We will look into this issue regarding Tachibana and other ships. We will then decide what to do.
2. With AA defense being improved on a lot of ships, why Arkansas wasn’t changed?
A. We don’t plan to change Arkansas in the near future. Firstly, her AA setup (or rather lack thereof) reflects her historical setup (very early on), secondly, she has a lot more upgrade slots, which balances out this drawback.
3. Do you plan to add some form of punishment to players who misuse the report feature?
A. No, we currently don’t have any plans in that regard.
4. It happens sometimes that secondaries guns fire at allied ships and because of that, we can turn pink without having any control on how those guns fire. Do you plan to do anything regarding this issue?
A. We already received several reports on this issue. We will look into it and make a decision after that.
5. Why don’t you want to color shell types with different colors? Certain mods already do this. I consider seeing what type of shells are fired on me quite important.
A. It should be possible to implement that. We will develop such feature.
6. High tier US BB’s accuracy seems to be the same as before. Actually the dispersion value hasn’t changed. Is it normal ?
A. Accuracy is not only tied to size of the dispersion ellipse, but it can also be improved by tweaking the distribution of shells inside the ellipse.
There is little new in the recent getfun digest:
Source: https://www.youtube….h?v=hj_va8MAVRA
So I will be brief. He talks about the end of team battles season on June 1st and the start of the ranked battles soon. Ranked battles and team battles will not be on at the same time.
1. The guy (on the RU forum?) who discovered that the 5th level Concealment perk now does not apply to gunfire, AA and fires received the USS Texas as a gift. This information was missing in the 0.5.6 patch notes.
2. The developers claim that boting is not as widely spread as players tend to believe. After having analyzed player behavior and bot complains they say that most reported bots are actually (talented) humans.
3. Finally, 18 notorious AFK players from the RU server got a two week ban.
