Source: RU thread

Hello everyone,

here is a translation (or more like, summary) of the official Russian developer FAQ. This info is official, it’s not my summary of developer post. This FAQ was created by developers themselves. Why EU server has no such thing, I have no idea, but I will be replacing my FTR FAQ with this. Please keep in mind, that this is NOT a regular Q&A, more like a sum of info, but there is some new/less known stuff, so you’d do well to go thru it.

I will regularily check for updates too.

Tanks

Planned

- Japanese tier 10 medium will be of the same concept as the Leopard 1

- there are few pieces of info on Japanese TD’s, but there’s a chance of such a branch appearing

- second Soviet medium branch will have Object 430 as tier 10, it will most likely not appear in 8.8, because there are still issues with tier 9 vehicle

- KV-1S rebalance is not planned for anytime soon – later, it’s possible

- SuperPershing’s properties (armor) will be changed in one of the upcoming patches, after which it will be possible to sell it for gold, there will be a deadline, after which it will be possible to sell it only for credits once again

- 112 is being balanced now, planned for 8.8

- 2nd German TD line will consist of open-topped Waffentragers with 128mm and 150mm guns on E-100 hull with autoloaders on tier 10, the autoloaders will have 3-6 rounds, the Nashorn will be a part of the branch

- Chinese TD branch is being researched by Chinese WG partners, both Chinese arty and TD branch will appear in 2014, as there are few pieces of data on it

- there will be at least (!) one more US medium branch

- alternative French heavy and medium branches are planned

- destroyed tank models are planned for rework

- premium Soviet medium tank will be tier 7 T-44 with 85mm gun, every nation will have a premium medium tank

- other nations than Germany will have superheavy tanks

- Sturmtiger is planned, but won’t come in 2013

Not planned

- second Chinese medium branch is not planned

- Type 59 will not return to shops, but it might appear as special prize in contests

- developers considered the possibility to convert any tank into a premium tank, but it was decided not to do it, because such a feature could seriously break ingame economy, premium tanks should also have obvious flaws, which normal tanks don’t have

- it’s not planned for players to be able to buy two identical tanks at the same time

- at this time, it is not planned to introduce various types of new vehicles and features: repair vehicles, tow trucks, engineering tanks, armored cars and other wheeled vehicles, grenadiers, infantry, anti-tank guns, Katyushas, minefields, mining vehicles, fuel (consumed by moving the tank), modern tanks, flamethrowing tanks and amphibious tanks

- there will be no tier 9/10 premiums and tier 11+ tanks

Clans and Clanwars

Planned

- current tanks, appearing in various campaign modes and also tier 1 vehicles will be used for second Campaign

- WoT and other WG project interaction thru CW is planned (for example, “air strike” command consumable, tied to WoWp)

- new clan functions will be available within the client

- mine fields will work as clan consumables for clanwars

- clan chat messages, showing a player entering/leaving clan, notifications from clan leadership, common clan voicechat channel and many other clan improvements will most likely be implemented

- CW will move to a new engine, there will be a complete rework in visuals and interface (the map will for example be one piece, it will not be necessery to switch between regions)

- it’s planned to tie CW primetime groups to each server (this is an issue for multi-timezone servers), this will minimize problems and ping for the players from various regions

- the CW primetime breaking will be made in preparation for CW globalization, Russian, US and European clans will play CW together on one map

- a “sabotage” clan consumable is planned, eg. the possibility to use this consumable on enemy province and cause all sorts of problems, including destruction of enemy chips, disabling the borders (SS: sorry, not sure what that means), destroying enemy income from the province, inciting a revolt. It’s possible the revolt will be inciteable even on territories not neighboring with your own

- portal CW interface will have a number of new tools for better clan management, there will be new clan statistics, clan HQ for planning the actions for the next day (in which it will be possible to distribute players by companies and assign various tech to each player) and much else

- separate CW statistics might be implemented

- mercenaries (CW without playing a clan) are being worked on

- CW interface within the game client is planned

- for every capital city, a new special map is planned (only for CW)

Not planned

- buying gold for clan for real money is not planned

- player contributions (for example a part of silver after each battle) to clan treasury is not planned

New Modes

Planned

- there will be a new company-making mechanism, at first for the 7×7 companies (7/42 format), after that it might be introduced to 15×15 companies. 7/42 format will have a system of progressive rating, where skill of each player will be essential for the battle outcome and a single mistake might mean the defeat of the team

- the platoon/company search will be heavily modified in order to be more convenient (semi-automatic company/platoon selection). Chat role in this will be eliminated, or at least minimized

- garage battles are being worked on, they will come in 2014

- the ratio of battle mode drop chance is following: normal battle – 50 percent, meeting engagement – 25 percent, assault – 25 percent. If you turn one of the modes off, the chances change roughly to 62,5 percent – normal battle, 37,5 percent – mode battle

- historical battles are being developed, the battles will be for example USSR vs Germany, USA vs Germany

- 3vs3 and 1vs1 special tournament battles are planned within the client

- 30vs30 battles might appear in the future as one of the modes

Not planned

- player separation by statistics (“skill MM”) is not planned

- bigger platoons are not planned

- hardcore mode (without interface, hitpoints etc.) was scrapped

- battles without specific vehicles (arty for example) or with battle-specific hardcaps are not planned

- one-man training rooms and shells for free in training rooms are not planned

Interface

Planned

- system for “thanking” players is planned, but won’t be implemented for now

- dynamic tank stats in hangar (for example based on crew skill) will be implemented

- it is planned to introduce armor schematics for each tank into the hangar, including effective armor based on camera angle for every point on the tank

- potential damage statistic consists of the damage the tank could recieve or did recieve from being hit (+/-25 RNG is disregarded, average damage is used)

- there will be a new scout (detecting) interface, which might include info about lighting up the target

- there will be a complete rework of the hangar tank selection (“carousel”)

- for replays, free camera, the possibility to view the battle from any tank participating, zoom out (without using mods), client replay interface and battle results after replay will most likely be implemented

- screenshots with time stamp and title might be implemented

- there will be a language icon on login screen

Not planned

- at this moment, “pause” is not planned

- first person camera after the destruction of your tank is not planned

- at this moment, the amount of slots for equipment and consumables is not going to increase

Chat

Planned

- complete chat rework is being worked on

- ingame whisper after doubleclicking player’s icon will be implemented

- the chat window flashing (when the chat window is minimized) will be possible to turn off

- it will be possible to inter platoon by clicking in the chat, including in combat

- status (“in combat” / “in hangar”) is planned

Not planned

- private messages to battle non-participants is not planned (in order not to screw the battle concentration)

- it’s not planned to prevent destroyed players from chatting

Maps

Planned

- the decision to rework a map is based on the analysis of average battle time and team winrate. The map is reworked if the winrate difference for both bases is bigger than 5 percent

- a new map takes cca 3 months to develop

- Komarin, Swamp and Serene Coast will return, they will be seriously changed

- 2013 should bring 11 new maps altogether

- it’s possible that in the future, every tank (!) will be able to de-select 1-3 maps, which it won’t get into

- all maps have the same chance to drop, except for the new maps, which, for a certain period after release, have a bigger chance to drop

- there is a developer idea of making summer/winter versions of maps, low priority

- minimap information value will be improved

Not planned

- the ability of players to directly select a map won’t be implemented

- Arizona and Savannah won’t be implemented

Game mechanics

Planned

- vertical manual aiming (without automatic distance compensator) is planned

- it’s possible HESH shells will have a separate simple mechanism in the future

- destruction of easily destructable objects will be implemented so that when the shell destroys for example wooden fence, it will continue to fly without any penetration penalty

- for every shell, a penetration at 100m and at 500m is set and the penetration between them lowers linearily

- you can have a maximum of 3 battles on the bottom of your team, after that, the MM puts you either on top, or in the middle

- a newly researched tank has preferential MM for a while – it drops more often to the top of the team

- in order to allow the tanks to turn over, the models of destroyed tanks would have to be reworked (at least the suspension), currently, there is a special mechanism preventing tanks from turning over, this limitation will be removed after the introduction of realistic track interaction with ground

- there will be dynamic (moving) objects on maps

- realistic track/wheel/terrain interaction (“independent suspension”) will be implemented

- HAVOK engine will be implemented

- the tank camo factor depends visually on the vehicle dimensions, but the official data won’t be disclosed

- camo factor is improved by more bushes in a row

- in the future, when the ammo rack explodes, the turret will fly off, it’s not yet sure whether the turret will count as an obstacle

- every tank capping a base, located within the circle, collects cap points, one point per second. If 4 tanks are capping, each gets 3/4 points per second, if 5 tanks are capping, each gets 3/5 points per second

- after a base is captured, there is a limit of 5 seconds till the end of the battle, if within these 5 seconds any tank gets destroyed, the counter will automatically reset, so if tanks are getting killed continuously, it’s possible to prolong this limit significantly

- the 30 second limit before battle starts, when 2/3 of each team are in the battle

- some respawn slots are reserved for certain tank classes, but the rest of the slots is distributed randomly

- repair costs are calculated as: (HP lost * repair cost of 1 HP) + (module HP lost * repair cost of 1 HP of that respective module)

- the hull turn rate is not defined only by the turnrate stat itself, but also by the suspension quality and the power of the engine, that’s why real hull turnrate can be different from the nominal one

- HE shell splash passes thru solit obstacles, as it is impossible to calculate the shockwave flow in real time

- how steep the shell ballistic curve is depends on the shell velocity and gravity acceleration

- shell object is not material (SS: as in, cannot be knocked down by another shell in mid flight for example)

- module damage does not equal gun damage, bigger guns do more module damage however (damage to modules roughly equals the caliber of the gun), module damage is subjected to 25 percent RNG

- engine fire does not kill crewmembers, it’s planned to automatically extinguish the fire when the tank drives into water, the way fire extinguishers work will be reworked

- pulling/pushing uses rather complex physical model, it includes engine power, suspension quality, tank weight and terrain slope, from all these data the motion vector is calculated

- there will be weather effects implemented into the game

Not planned

- tank render range increase is difficult to implement, won’t be anytime soon

- tank horn was scrapped

- collision damage during collisions with objects (such as stones, houses) won’t be implemented

- view from inside the tank (thru the slits) is not planned, because without some significant changes it would be unplayable

- at this moment it’s not planned to make the tank available immediately after it is destroyed

- solid barrels are not planned, as it would complicate the game in forests and cities too much

Crew, Characteristics and Equipment

Planned

- the tank nominal characteristics are valid when it has a 100 percent crew equipped. When the crew is 0 percent, the characteristics are roughly 2/3 of the nominal. The transition between these is linear – and that goes for over 100 percent crews too, it’s possible for a tank to have better than nominal characteristics, if the crew skill is over 100 percent

- when a crewman is killed, that position’s skill drops to 50 percent of the crewman’s skill (SS: eg. a 88 percent skill gunner gets killed, tank gunner skill drops to 44 percent) – the penalties for non-trained crew are the exception, they are applied AFTER this calculation takes place

- a reason to rebalance a tank is roughly a 3-4 percent winrate difference from the tier average

- tracks module does have armor (from 10 to 50mm), the collision model roughly corresponds to the visual one, eg. when there are big gaps between wheels, there will be gaps in the collision model too. When hitting a track, the shell can’t ricochet and normalisation is not applied, the track HP is also uneven, in the central part it’s higher than on the edges

- additional spaced armor modules/equipment will be implemented, but not anytime soon, it’s difficult to implement visually

- there is a rule that the NON-penetrating HE shell hit can kill only half of the crew (3 of 5 mostly)

Not planned

- moving the crew from one nation to another is not planned

Functions

Planned

- official mod portal is being worked on

- roaming (the ability to play on another server with your old account, for example RU account on EU server) will come late 2013, or early 2014

- test server capacity will be increased

- in the future, if you have a phone tied to the account, the password change will require SMS confirmation

- it will be possible soon to restore a crew, that was sold during theft account, but it will NOT be possible to retroactively return the crew that was dismissed before this feature is implemented, because the crew data are not stored

- in future, there will be other improvements made to ensure account security

- premium account does increase the penalties for teamkills (you earn more, you pay more), more teamkill system data will not be disclosed in order for people not to make up ways to bypass it

- account transfer to EU will not be implemented, because for that, you’ll be able to use roaming

Not planned

- Steam support is not planned

- Xbox and PC WoT won’t be unified

- changes in current test server system (having to download a new client) are not planned

- player statistics reset is not planned anytime soon

- ingame player-player trade is not planned and never was

- temporary premium tanks won’t be implemented

Miscellaneous

- tank being hit shell sounds will be completely replaced in the future, it’s possible the crews will have national voices (SS: as in, the French crews speaking French)

- there will be a reward for “tanking” (SS: as in MMO sense: putting your tank in harm’s way to shield your weaker teammates), it’s being developed

- sound engine is being re-worked, 5.1 and 7.1 sounds are planned

- new music is slowly added

- in the future, clan battles, company battles and random battles statistics will be separated

- no tank in game has individual XP coefficient

- the amount of XP, needed for mastery badges, is updated every day, last 7 days’ results are taken into account

- the possibility to loan credits (by temporarily selling your tank) is not planned

- multicore support is beign worked on, client physics will use other cores

Not planned

- the possibility to use decals from one nation for another nation’s tank will not be implemented

- copyrighted inscriptions will not be implemented

- the game won’t switch to another engine