WaterWar

I lurk and occasionally post. But WotLabs is definitely not what it used to be back in it's prime. Lack of new "end game" content seems to have stopped the need for higher level discussion about tactics and such. Unfortunately.

I like this idea. Let there be some skill/warning to avoiding arty. It would be a good addition if they then made the tracers even more visible, so you could see them from anywhere (akin to how some trailers show them).

This. I use Frontline as a way to grind my tier 8's without worrying too much. It is quite fun to have a big open map to drive my Lynx around in.

I am part of the camp that feels that Frontlines is not particularly fun for long periods of time. It is fun for a couple of battles a day. I don't find it so interesting becuase I feel it gets a bit monotonous as you play the same map, from the same positions, against the same (premium) tanks. You don't have much "room" to influence the battle, and the lovely arty and airstrike consumables are a bit of a pain in the behind to deal with. It is not a bad mode, dont get me wrong. If they added a second or even third map, and allowed different tiers to play, then it would be great (and removed/nerfed the arty and air strike consumables). I like randoms because of the increased variety of maps, tanks/team compositions and me having more tanks to choose from to play with.

You might all be complaining about it, or find it a stupid addition to the game - but I think it is good to see that WG is trying out new monitisation models. Alternatively they would pump out more stupid OP premium tanks. The more cosmetic monitisation we get, the better. All of the whales can get a crew with Mr Lobster, Unicorn and Tomato and be all happy and cheerful about that, while WG makes some easy money. I also like the idea of the blueprints. Yes the RNG is probably going to be for lines you dont want/need, but the alternative is nothing at all. And who knows, if you get a "free" tank in a line, you might want to try it out for the shits and giggles. I know that I will be doing that if I get enough blueprints for lines I haven't completed yet. Before people counter by saying that they rather saw WG focus on balancing the vehicles already in the game: I am quite confident that the people drawing unicorn masked men are not the same people figuring out how to rebalance different tanks. So the two processes are not mutually exclusive.

My enjoyment heavily depends on the consumable-spam again. I found the arty and airstrikes to be annoying - more than regular arty as you were never safe anywhere because of the near-vertical impact angle. Also pure same-tier MM is kinda boring in the long run - which is why tier X is a bit dull at the moment because you are so often in pure-tier games.

What I've made so far with only using the Italeri WoT ling (incl. their paints) is the following: https://imgur.com/QzptJsH I did the crusader first, and decided to try and weather it and probably went a bit overboard. I used a wash from "Army Painter" to try and give it some weathering. One day I'll redo the road wheels as they aren't painted particularly nice (or evenly for that matter). But since this was my first ever attempt, I am quite happy with the result. Second tank was the Sherman, and here I was surprised at how dark the Italeri OD actually is. It is the same brown as the actual brown included in the paint set, so I was highly disappointed by that. I was going for a more dark green shade than what I got. So this Sherman is repainted and not very well. This also needs some more love down the road when I am more experienced. It might even be demoted to test bed for different techniques and colours. https://imgur.com/ST5PVq3 Thirdly and most recently I've painted a Chaffee in plain OD. I've done some light weathering/brushing of lighter shades to give it more depth, but I have limited colours available so It's limited what I can achieve. I am more happy with this than the Sherman. https://imgur.com/VAg0YN7 I am planning on buying a bunch of pigments and washes for future projects and I might go back to these and give them some more love. Also sorry for not the best pictures. I just took what I already had on my phone

I am personally not too bothered with historical accuracy in my models. So if a bolt head is the wrong shape or in the wrong position in relation to what the rest of the body is, then I don't care too much. So I go for ease of installation/assembly and then painting. I'll look into the Vallejo model colour - although I'm going to be brush painting it, but it shouldn't make a big difference.

Thanks for mentioning my FC guide.

Very impressive! Mind sharing how you got this nice snow camouflage effect on it?

Looks very nice. I for one like the now too worn look, as I feel that sometimes people go a bit over the edge. What colour did you use for the main body? I plan on doing something very similar at some point, although I'll go for making Tiger 131 (but not through the Italeri/WG kits).

Please no. I would be bored out of my mind if I only saw that game mode. Those arty and air-strike consumables are just frustrating to play against (even more so on top of normal arty).

How easy/difficult did you find 3-marking the S-tank? How is it to play in tier X games? I'm on my way up to it, and considering if I want to try and 3-mark it as I quite like the playstyle of the UDES and 103-0 (in smaller doses).

Ah ok, sorry to have misunderstood you in that case.

What is up with that tone? Don't understand why you go passive-aggresive at me. My point was that I think whatever Polish premium tank they release will sell well, simply because of the fact of it being Polish. Whether WG can/will balance it properly is anyone's guess. I like to think that they won't make it OP because they think it will sell better that way. If they do end up making it OP I prefer to think it is through incompetence rather than an active choice - as I find the active choice as a worse thing.

You could argue that it will sell no matter the stats because of the large representation of Polish tankers. As long as they dont make it balls, then it should sell quite well.

I care about game balance, but I also care about not being bored and only having a small selection of maps is a good way to turn this into a boring game. I personally dont mind if a few maps are unbalanced, as it is utopia to expect all maps to be 100 % perfectly balanced. I already find playing the current maps in a given map rotation pool to be a bit boring as there isn't a whole lot of variety. Sure the new Fjords is not great in the balance department, but my experience tells me that random teams are not good/aware enough to take advantage of the imbalance. I am yet to win a game spawing east, out of about 10 games (granted I've played the UDES, so that doesn't help). Each time my team decided to lick windows and give map control to the west spawn. Small sample size, but shows that what the better players sees as a crazy imbalance, it not something that is seen by the average player.

Yea, the "supercum" community is a shadow of it's former self unfortunately. You guys on NA always struggled a bit with lower server populations, so I suppose now it is just even more noticeable. The EU servers seems to be doing well with plenty of people playing. I saw 300k+ people online yesterday evening which surprised me!

I'll add a disclaimer. Maybe if I can be arsed I'll update this guide down the line with the new stats, but let's see.. :3

So the graphical update didn't pique your interest? Because that is what got me back to the game after a 15 months hiatus. I had been walking around in a nostalgic haze for a few months, thinking back on the grand days of WotLabs and the social shenanigans in the game with my clan, LAVA. Then I saw that they updated the graphics to catch up to the more modern games, and I decided to plunge back in to see if the game was any better than when I left. Also I had a little itch for some short competitive games of some sort, which WoT fits perfectly. I must admit that I actually enjoy the game a good bit now. I like almost all of the changes that they've made with the 3-5-7 MM, change of the MM of light tanks and arty rework. I still find RNG to be a bit annoying at times, but I'm not too bothered by it. Taking a 15 month break made me realise that no-one gives a damn about your stats out in the real world. So it makes it easy for me to just pick a tank and zoom around and have fun without really giving many damns about how well I (don't) play. When did you stop playing? Any particular reason, or just the game growing a bit stale?

Hello Rexxie. It's been a long time and I just want to pop by and check if everything is good and well over on the NA side of world of tanks? I can see you are still active on WotLabs - so I assume you are still playing semi-regularly? :3 What tanks are you enjoying driving around in at the moment, if any in particular?

I have everything to the max. I like my games to look pretty when I can run it. The only two things I've removed are: motion blur, as I don't see the purpose of fake blurring; and then also grass in sniper mode as that makes it easier to see where hills start/end.

Without de-railing the thread too much: Yes, I am back in business - although without even being close to the same level of commitment and dedication as before :3