Author: Karika

Hello everyone, I’m Karika, a Hungarian military historian and volunteer consultant for WoT. Recently Sebastianul asked me to revisit one of my earlier articles about the insignias and colors of the Hungarian WWII era tanks, so here it is:

Today, we will take a look at how the Toldi III light and Turán III prototípus medium tanks, (or any other armored fighting vehicles of Hungarian origin than might come in the future) should look like in World of Tanks, even if they are part of the German tech tree. Because, as some of you might have noticed, they are slightly wrong right now.

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

One of the first things you might notice on the HD renders from the pictures above is that these tanks are painted in the game with the standard German grey color and have the Balkenkreuz – the emblem of the Wehrmacht – on the turret sides and on the hull front. Why is this a problem? As you might have guessed, this solution is completely unhistorical, not even a single Hungarian-made tank received German paintings or insignias, all of them used original Hungarian ones. And why not make a tank as historical as possible if it would not require that much effort?

In my opinion, it was a bit lazy from the developers to use the basic German settings. There already are tanks in the game which have different colors, insignias or emblems from their original tech tree siblings. Such as the German Panther/M10 with its American colors and white stars or the green T-55A with the East German coat of arms or the Type 64 with the Taiwanese ’blue sky with a white sun’ emblem. Also, let’s not mention now the flood of silly, clown-like camouflages that were released recently on some tanks…

Therefore, as the colors and insignias are tied to individual vehicles, adding visuals that are different from the ones of the regular tree is more than possible. Probably it would not be hard to use this method on the Toldi and the Turán as well.

But without offering a solution, pointing out a nuance is not really enough. How the Hungarian tanks should look like then instead?

Let’s take a look at the insignias first.

Continue reading “Possible Hungarian emblems, insignias and colors for World of Tanks” →

By: genfunk

First notes:

Hello everyone,

Back in 8.2, Wargaming surprised us (in a way) by adding Chinese tanks to WoT; fast forward 11 patches later (now 27, this was written at patch 9.1), I have had a lot of fun in them. However, one cannot help but notice the lack of completeness for the Chinese trees – no TDs nor artillery. One of the reasons the Chinese tree is hard to complete is due to the notorious lack of reliable data and information regarding these types of vehicles. However, that does not prevent us from speculating, or creating, a possible Chinese TD line. A previous discussion had occurred, but for this series both the previous discussion, and proposals by lujunlin001 on NA forums will be consolidated and worked upon.

Originality:

A common complaint (and cause of disinterest) for Chinese tanks are that they are straight copies of Russian tanks, and thus are not worth playing. To an extent, that is true – Chinese tank development took off in the 1950s with a lot of Soviet assistance, so it is not peculiar to see Soviet design influences in Chinese tanks. However, to keep things “interesting”, the TD line discussed here will not reflect, or be similar to the Soviet TD lines in World of Tanks. Out of the nine tiers, 7 vehicles will be unique while 2 will be modifications.

Historical Accuracy and Balance:

The mentioned 7 vehicles are all historical, but for many of them their mentioned specification in game cannot be verified. Due to the lack of reliable information, historical accuracy is hard to prove or verify on many of the tanks here. Many presumptions and ideas will be based on lujunlin001’s discussion. When possible, historical specifications are factored in to the design of the line. In the discussion of every tank per tier, I will include a relative percentage of how historical they are, and comment on the accuracy. Being a fairly seasoned player, I have also tried to balance the tanks à la Wargaming (via HP, gun traits, mobility etc.) to make them competitive in their respective tiers.

Other notes:

Names of some guns may feature “FT” at the end as it stands for anti-tank; in Chinese anti-tank guns are called “反坦克炮” (fantankepao). This is similar in style to the AT versions of the American guns; I am using this as a balancing factor.

Okay, let us begin!

Tier 2: Renault UE 37

Historical background:

In 1936, China (then Nationalist China, under the KMT) ordered 10 Renault UE chenilettes from France, armed with a 7.7 mm MAC machine gun. However, many were intercepted by the French Indochinese authorities en route, under Japanese pressure. By 1940 these original vehicles finally arrived in China. By then, Renault also received a new order from China for 200 more, but with modifications for an external mount for the 7.7 MAC. The modified vehicle is shown below.

By the end of 1940, the Nationalists had purportedly received 20 of these to replenish their losses from the Battle of South Guangxi. The vehicles were used successfully in combat.

Continue reading “Revisiting the Chinese TD Line” →

http://worldoftanks.asia/dcont/fb/image/wot_screens_tanks_renaultft_image_03.jpg

Remember this post I made over a year ago? I’m writing again about Amazing Ace’s project of collecting all the Renault FT variants in a single book. Because it went a long way since then. Lots of foreign variants were added to it, including Romanian, German, Lithuanian, Japanese, and Chinese versions of the tank (and even more!). In the beginning, the book had only French variants.

The website of Amazing Ace: Link

Check the book out here in PDF form: OpPri v2.1