World of Tanks – Murazor’s wishlist

Source: Rykoszet

1. What I constantly wish for – changes in shell mechanics and their differentiation. No hardcore changes, just increasing their amount and changing their algorithms. I wrote about it once already – shells which you can only buy for real money are a shitty idea in gameplay terms (P2W), economy and historically accuracy. Allowing to buy prem ammo for silver was a good decision by the devs, but they forgot to make necessary changes.

Currently, they’re distorting the game balance because of their unhistorical characteristics. Implementing differences between full-caliber AP shells (blunt nose, pointy nose, tapered), differentiating sub-caliber ammo (APCR vs APDS), lowering alpha damage for sub-caliber premium shells and modifying their ballistics (according to ‘Armor and Gunnery’ the dispersion difference between full-caliber and sub-caliber shells was visible, the latter losing). Their alpha damage also should be lower as full-caliber shells tended to do more damage in general (according to W.G. Grigorian). Hollow charges should instead have a greater chance to set a vehicle on fire because of the characteristics of the molten copper jet.

Let’s take the M4A3 (76) as an example. Aside of smoke shells, it had four types of ammo – standard APCBC, solid shot, HE and APCR. You chose a set of your own shells to cater to your playstyle – APCBC because of the historical 5 inch penetration will cause greater damage than a higher penetrating, heavier solid shot, because it will lack a powerful shockwave and fragmentation. A sub-caliber round will be useful only on short distance because of low accuracy and a great penetration loss over distance. In the case of the M103 the AP shell with the same pen should have a greater alpha than a HEAT round. This will enrich the gameplay and balance the ‘SerB Premium’ ammo.

One more example – the T-34. You can mount a plethora of guns on it, according to historical data, and balance with the current logic. But you could give the F-34 an alpha of around 150-160 because of the powerful shell and with this make it different from the long-barreled 76.2 and the ZiS-4. Slava Makarov already talked about it and I’m waiting.

2. A tech tree not only for guns but also for ammo types (if there’s a need for it) as a soft of last ditch effort. For example the T-54 and the D-10T2S gun in the place of the now-reduntant D-54TS. Instead give the ability to unlock the BP-412D ammo – a 100mm APHE round from the year 1953 with 225mm pen on 100m.

3. Some vehicles like the Panther, Jagdpanzer IV, M46 with the M47 turret lack ammo. According to drawings and taking all sort of data into account, the Panther should have about 160mm effective UFP armor, but it has 145mm. This would positively influence the role of armor in the game and stop the armor value inflation on some tanks.

4. Introducing a not a few vehicles but a whole premium vehicle tree at once.

5. Introducing smoothbore cannons with new ammo – APFSDS. Two vehicles need to be mentioned here – T95 Medium and T-62. This would enrich the gameplay thanks to new mechanics and new vehicles, and would help segregate soviet top tier meds a bit.

6. When introducing new graphics, all the moving parts on tanks should be animated.

7. Diferentiate an ammo rack fire from an ammo rack explosion. Why do tanks have wet ammo racks? This would help the tanks which have something like this installed. A trip to the garage from an ammo explosion is one things, but putting out an ammo rack fire should be a thing.

8. Add sounds to ammo choice (inb4 LOAD AAAAY PEEEEE SEEE AAAR)

9. Tanks with limited MM should have less MM weight so they land in top tiers more often, which would be better than manipulating the penetration values of the KV-5 or IS-6.