Hello everyone,

as you know, 9.5 will bring the “Firefly line” of medium tanks, combined with a load of British turretted tank destroyers. Yesterday, Storm announced that it was decided this line would have a new tier 10 after all. Well, it’s the end of October and all deadlines for modelling are gone already, so it can really be just one candidate: FV4005 Stage 2

So, here’s a short post to tell you, what are you going to get for a Christmas present. Because, you know how everyone moaned about oneshotting vehicles? Well, here’s another one and this time, taken to extreme.

You see, the FV4005/2 carries the same gun as the FV215b (183). Only it is just as sluggish and it has no armor whatsoever (in brackets, FV215b for comparison):

Turret front – 14mm (254mm)

Turret sides – 14mm (101,6mm)

Turret rear – 14mm (76,2mm)

Hull front – 76mm at 57 deg (152mm at 55 deg)

Hull sides – 51mm at 12 deg (50,8mm)

Hull rear – 32mm (76,2mm)

And no, it does not have an autoloader. The vehicle weighed 50 tons and was powered by a 640hp Meteor Mk.IVB engine, giving it power-to-weight ratio of 12,75 hp/t. Its maximum speed was historically 34,6 km/h. All that in a package, that’s just as tall as the WT E-100 (which implies it will have just as bad camouflage, as camouflage factor is generally derived from vehicle height).

If we are to compare it to the FV215b (183) in the game – the armor comparison is above. To be completely fair, only a small part of the FV215b turret front is actually 254mm thick, but still, it’s quite a difference compared to the 14mm of turret. FV215b is powered by a Meteor 800hp engine, but it’s 10 tons heavier than the FV4005. Still, it has better power-to-weight ratio of 13,4 hp/t with the same speed (34,3 km/h).

What I am trying to say in this post is that the hard stats (armor, speed) are just really, really bad. That means they will be compensated somehow – and I think that “somehow” will be gun handling – accuracy, rate of fire and other balance characteristics. In the end, what I fear we will get is yet another one trick pony, a derp version of the WT E-100 – no armor, no speed, sluggish, but with ridiculous gun performance. Because, you know, that’s exactly what the game needs, a crossbreed between WT E-100 and FV215b (183), another balancing nightmare, that will always either be OP, or useless. Well, good luck to the guys, who will balance this thing.