World of Tanks Developer Diaries: Brand New American Heavy Branch
3 min readA brand new branch of American heavy tanks is coming in early 2022! Yes, you read this first here, the new branch is not planned to be released until the first patch of 2022, just like the Italian heavy tanks, so this will give you time to gather some Free Experience and get a new Crew ready for the new Yoh tanks!
The American H.L. Yoh Company introduced these tank concepts with non-standard configurations in the 1950s. Each project had rather unusual shapes and unique mechanics, but they never actually made it into production.
The new branch will start from the T1 Heavy and introduce five researchable vehicles and one Premium. But that isn’t everything, a brand new mechanic is also coming: secondary tracks. In a very simple way, if one or even both main tracks are broken, the Yoh tanks have a spare smaller set of tracks that will allow the vehicle to keep moving, but with reduced mobility.
The new mechanic will be introduced with the Tier VII M-II-Y, and all vehicles up to Tier X, including the Premium M-IV-Y will have it. In-game, you will notice these vehicles have two sets of tracks, the main one and a small one inside the main one, that only runs the rear half of the hull. If the main set of tracks is broken, one or even both, the vehicle won’t stop and will keep moving with the backup set of tracks. To bring the vehicle to a complete halt, both sets of tracks need to be broken. Don’t worry, it will be possible to do this with a single shot, but it will be tricky.
Of course these changes will introduce some different gameplay and other changes to the battlefield, and at the moment Wargaming is working on how much mobility penalty will be implemented. One thing is certain, each track will have its own repair time, meaning that if the main track is broken, a repair timer will show to repair that track, but if the backup track is broken after, that timer will reset and will start for the backup track. Once its repaired, a second repair time shows up to repair the main track, the Repair Kit will repair both sets of tracks straight away.
Another thing to be aware of is, the repair time for the main tracks will be different if the vehicle is moving or not. If the vehicle is not moving the repair will be faster, if the vehicle is moving, the repair will be longer, this is done to balance the vehicle.
There isn’t much to learn about this new mechanic, simple to understand and will for sure introduce some changes to the battlefield. What do you think of these vehicles? Something you were looking for to be introduced in World of Tanks or do you think the game is already full of new mechanics and hull-down vehicles? Let us know in the comment section.
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Harkonnen, do you know what happened to the other lines you said were being in the making? Like British wheeled vehicles and another British line of mediums (I think those were two you mentioned)? Seeing Yoh tanks being introduced to the PC game is definitely a surprise.
I like your article but you need to do spell check I thing. Is that a new way to say I think ??? Because you typed I thing a few times.
Eheheh! Thanks for that, things done in a rush and most likely my smallish dyslexic kicking in xD
There are several branches in the works for British, they got material for loads of new ones, seems they were delayed a bit. I bet with the introduction of so many British Premium tanks we will see something in 2022.
Already implemented in wot blitz
The Tier IX and X with those thin arms connecting the turret to the hull will surely be prone to turret jams when hit. Which will probably be one of the balance factors to their ability to fight while hulldown.
Also already in Blitz: my Japanese TDs. shakes first angrily at WG