About & Contact

WG ID: ThatTrafficCone [NA]
Email: bp36012@gmail.com
Discord: ThatTrafficCone #6352
Skype: live:bp360back

So you're probably asking why...

The short answer: I like tanks.

The longer answer is that I've always found it frustrating when facts get misrepresented. I welcome having my viewpoints being challenged and I like to think they can always change, with enough supporting evidence. I'm always looking to learn new things, I'm an avid history buff, and I'm a bit of an information sponge.

Now World Of Tanks isn't just another game; it's also like an interactive encyclopedia of armored vehicles. There's popular and well-known vehicles like the T-34 and M4 Sherman, but also more obscure and fleeting projects, like the Bat.-Châtillon 25 t or the Löwe. For a game like this, it's important for the tanks to be represented authentically. Not necessarily with perfect accuracy, as game balance should always come first, but it should still be accurate enough to capture the feel of the armored vehicles being depicted. World Of Tanks is a "historically-inspired" game, after all.

However, that history must still be considered and applied wherever possible. So it's frustrating when a game like this introduces pure fabrications like the infamous Waffenträger auf E 100. Or perhaps what's more egregious: altering a tank so dramatically that it can no longer represent the very thing it's supposed to portray, such as the turret armor changes to the AMX 30 B or the mobility changes to the Centurion.

This website is aimed at offering fixes to these historical discrepancies, while still respecting the game's overall balance and understanding that this is still a game. But it's also necessary to understand that things have to be portrayed authentically. Tanks in-game are representing their real-life counterparts, so it's worth doing so with a degree of accuracy.

Furthermore, I simply would like to cram as many tanks into this game as possible. In recent years, Wargaming has made questionable decisions in regards to introducing new tanks. When it does happen, sometimes potential regular tanks are made premium vehicles, creating holes in any possible new branches, thus either preventing the entire line from being introduced (which is bad) or forcing Wargaming to invent something to fill the gaps (which is worse). Other times tanks are overbuffed or overnerfed to fit in an unsuitable tier, or made into something they're not. 

This proposal is meant to show that it's possible to respect both game balance and historical authenticity, and that there's still plenty of life left to be breathed into this game.

Being from the United States, I figured it was only logical to illustrate this with the US tech tree. For nearly the past year I've been putting this together, gather research, mulling over details, and playing with what the game already is in order to determine what it could become. Now comes the time to finally write everything up and share it with anyone whom it may concern. In the future I would like to do similar things for Germany, France, and Great Britain, but I'm taking this one step at a time.

I think this kind of thing is fun and I enjoy doing it. This project is a labor of love. Do enjoy.

What do you mean by authenticity? What parts of a tank are you willing to change for game balance?

Game balance always comes first. However, that doesn't mean hard data can be disregarded. If a tank varies too differently than the vehicle it was supposed to represent, are they really the same tank? Making a historical project too fictionalized is just as egregious as inventing something new entirely, in my opinion.

When I say I value historical authenticity, I mean to ask: does an in-game tank feel like the real thing was meant to? Is it just as fast or slow? Are its armor values accurate? This is different than historical accuracy, which is a less flexible term and often used to describe simulators, which World Of Tanks is not.

I place the most importance on a tank's armor values, top speed, caliber size of the gun(s) mounted on the platform, and the year it was designed or built. Where these values lack, I don't make information up and instead leave it blank so Wargaming could finely tune what would be necessary.

I have more leeway with engines and guns, even if they're unhistorical, so long as they remain true to the tank portrayed by the hard data.

Won't having more tanks mean more tanks that are too similar to each other?

To that I ask, so what? Why is that a bad thing? Having more options can only benefit the game.