Player Questions & Developer Answers

Chewie, on 27 July 2011 - 04:03 PM, said: 1. When you judge the credit earning of a tank (for credit reward balancing purposes), do you take into account repair and ammo costs?
Example - Tank X has a repair bill when fully destroyed of 10000 credits, and its rounds cost 1000 credits each for 200 damage (5 credits per damage point). Tank Y has a repair bill when fully destroyed of 20000 credits, and its rounds cost 2400 credits each for 400 damage (6 credits per damage point). Do you balance the credit rewards of Tank X and Tank Y to be the same, or do you compensate Tank Y for its costlier repairs and ammo? As in, do you balance Tank Y to have a higher credit earning factor because it costs more to repair and re-equip with ammo?
2. How are repair costs (for a full repair) determined for each individual tank?
Example - Tank X has a 10000 credit repair bill when fully destroyed. What determines this repair bill?
3. How are repair costs (for a particular battle) determined based on damage sustained in battle?
Example - Tank X sustained a broken track, 50% damage, and a killed driver. It's repair bill is 6000 credits. What determines this individual repair bill?)
4. Do you earn rewards (credits / experience) for damage done entirely to modules / crew? Say, I shoot a round into my opponents gun, and I deal 0%. Does this damage give me credit and experience rewards as if I had done actual damage to the tank?
5. What is the current population breakdown for the US Server? How about the EU and Russian servers?
5a. What percentage of tank population is US, German and Russian?
5b. What about the higher tiers? What is the percentage for each nation of the tank population for tiers 8 and above?
5c. What about the spread of types of tanks? What is the percentage of each type of tank (Heavy, Medium, Light, etc...) of the total population?
6. Can you change the time that the "day" resets for the players? Currently, it is reset around 7-8 P.M. Central Time (12 - 1 A.M. UTC), BUT the server resets at a wildly different time (is it 6 AM Central time? I can't remember, and my search-fu is failing me). This setup kind of screws up the events that base around the "daily first win double" bonus (like the recent event's 5x bonus). If a player received their "daily double" before the server reset earlier today, than they completely miss out on one day of the 5x bonus. It would be much more intuitive to have the player's "day" reset when the server does, so that these events coincide correctly with what the player expects.
7. How is the T23 doing? Is he dealing with his removal from the game well? Can you tell him I still love him, even if I do enjoy another tank now. I would take him back, but only if he would be ok alongside the Pershing.
This is in regards to the T34 having an abysmal gun for a tier 9 (the 105mm) until it gets the 120mm. This, from what I've seen, will most likely be the same way for the M103:
I would tend to agree [that a stock gun is not supposed to be good], BUT the problem lies with this particular gun. The IS-4 can equip the BL-9 without any modules being researched (if the gun was researched on the IS-3). The Ausf B can equip the 10.5 L/62 without any modules being researched (if the gun was researched on the Tiger II). The same is true for the T34, BUT (and this is the problem) the 105mm T5E1 is barely adequate at tier 8! While the BL-9 and 10.5 L/62 are very good guns at tier 8, the 105mm T5E1 only (barely) works because the T32 has so many other great things going for it. If the T32 didn't have its great combination of speed, maneuverability, gun depression, and turret armor, the 105mm T5E1 would not be good enough at tier 8. Since the T34 can't use these same strengths at tier 9, the 105mm T5E1 just doesn't cut it. If it had just 20mm more penetration, I think it would work fine until the 120mm, but the low penetration on a tier 9 heavy is a severe detriment to it's performance and ability to research new parts. Don't make a tank nearly useless just to make people spend free EXP to make it contribute to a battle. The IS-4 and Ausf B. don't have to suffer through the same hardship.
Can the T34 / M103 have a 105mm that they can quickly research to help alleviate the pain of having a very inadequate gun for tier 9 (that the Ausf B and IS-4 do not have a problem with)? The Patton has something very similar to this proposal with the 90mm M36 / 90mm T15EM2. Or, could the T34 / M103 just start with a beter gun?
You responded to questions about the M103's gun saying the 120mm will be using HEAT ammo. Are you saying that the M103's / T110's gun will use HEAT ammo as it's primary ammo? If "yes", surely you won't be charging gold for the rounds... right? If "no", will the other types of rounds (I assume AP and HE would be the standard ammo types) be competitive?