USS Atlanta World of Warships, Guns of Fury.

Hi all,

This week I have a review of the USS Atlanta, a tier 7 Premium Ship for the US Navy.

The Atlanta Class Cruiser was commissioned by the US Navy in 1941, displacing 6000 tons and was 541 ft in length. The Atlanta class was closer to exisiting destroyers than its cruiser brethren, carrying torpedoes and having an armament of 8 Dual 5 inch (127mm) guns. These 5 Inch Guns were also doubled up as dual purpose anti Air Flak guns as well. This made the Atlanta a formidable ship in putting a lot of fire out in short periods of time. Unfortunately the Atlanta in World of Warships is consigned to only shoot at water borne targets with its main Turrets. Besides this draw back and slight inaccuracy these guns have a almost ridiculous fire rate.The Arch of travel for these shells is pretty big giving a fair amount of air time for shells at maximum range, however in a broadside firing, at maximum range you can fire 3 full salvoes before the first salvoes shells fall on their target. In the grand scheme of things this makes surprise attacks on tunnel visioning enemies at range quite effective, being able to out 42 shells before any impacts occur. The range on the guns is a bit disappointing sitting at about 10 km mark but once within range you can batter the hell out of your opponents with a withering shower of high explosive or armour piercing rounds. The top speed on the Atlanta sits at about 37 km which is respectable but the turning arch is pretty bad so keep this in mind when positioning your ship against torpedo bearing ships or in narrow channels.

As a Atlanta captain you have to keep in mind this is a light cruiser and for the most part has paper thin armour.  Predominantly this ship really falls into the hit and run or support category as being in sustained fire generally ends up with knocked out turrets and critical damage across major drive components (All Atlanta Captains at this point will be nodding their heads in agreement having turrets knocked out on the first salvo hitting the ship).

The Standard screen after taking a few hits.

The Atlanta can be a real power house if left unnoticed on the open sea where surviving to the end of a battle regularly gives well over 300 individual shell hits per match. This ship poses a massive threat to any destroyer that happens to get caught out unaware as the turret rotation if pretty fast. This is the only cruiser in the upper american line  have any torpedoes, catching many players with their pants down with a lethal surprise strike as they close the distance. Like all American they are pretty crap but I would rather have them and not need them, than need them and not have them.

Over all I would say this is a great cruiser that excels in its role of bullying battleships that have higher priority targets to focus on and tearing destroyers and cruisers in a new one in a hit and run attacks. This cruiser is unique in that the turrets are of a smaller size than its equivalent tiers (the same size as many destroyers) but the sheer number of guns on this ship makes for exciting game play. This guns firing speed allows players to really hone their skills in leading their target where missing the target doesn't matter too much as another round will be loaded before you know it. The range of the guns are a bit of a let down at first but once you learn to play this ship to its advantages you find that causing increasing damage to health and components with multiple hits is not hard to achieve.

That's all for this week, feel free to comment and leave feed back. If you think that the Atlanta is balanced or that you think that the amount of times that the ship takes critical turret damage happens far too much? If you found this review useful again I would like to know?

Till next week, catch you on the open sea.

The Fearsome Tiger Tank

I mentioned in my last post that I had started modelling one of my favourite tanks of all time, The Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf E or  Tiger as  it was officially nicknamed by Ferdinand Porshe

The Order for the deveopment of a 45 ton heavy tank with a 88 caliber gun was put forward to Porsche and Henschel after Nazi Germany ran into trouble fighting T-34's and KV-1's in Operation Barbarrosa. The Current Panzer 3 that the Germans were fielding had the 5cm KwK 38 L/48 which was only capable of beating the armour of a T-34 at close range at the side or rear.

The KV-1 was impervious from every angle the panzer 3 shoot at it from, even at close range. The Flak 8.8cm was the only gun that the German forces had deployed that had the power to defeat the T-34 on its frontal armour and stop a KV-1 dead.

So the after the designs for a 45 ton Heavy tank were submitted it was the Henschek tank design that was taken forward to mass production. With 100mm of frontal armour, the Flak 8.8cm modified for tank use and the 21.35 litre 650hp engine even in its early stages it was a formidable beast.

The Tiger Tank although a superior weapon was famous for how complex its design was. The Tiger Cost double the amount that a Panzer 4 cost to produce and 4 times as much as a Stug 3. This accounted for the short number that were deployed in World War 2 and also why so many Tigers exist in decent condition today (not many survived the war and post war scrapping).

Bovington Museum houses the only running Tiger, the 131 that reciently featured in 'FURY'. A movied up untill the last fight scene believably reconstructs a tankers life in combat.

In later Stages of the war other nations tanks had started to incorporate guns that were capable of countering the tigers armament such as the British 17 Pounder Gun and the Russian 122 mm Gun.

So with the brief history of the Tiger out the way I can give you a bit of a update on what I have been doing to give reconstruct this beast of a tank.

I Decided that I would like to go about recreating a early production model of the Tiger Tank. Unlike the picture above which is a late model. After my usual reference finding and image collating

I decided to start with the Turret as this really gives the Tiger its silhouette a defining shape. I started modelling the turret and ended up finding too many discrepancy's with the blueprints that I had collected found. I did a bit more research and found a amazing site that I started working from. Most of my reference of Tigers have come from this site which is amazing by the way and I recommend anyone who is modelling a Tiger to check this out http://tiger1.info/ . Blue Prints are great for getting a overall shape but there is far too many times for my liking that blueprints don't line up perfectly so i wouldn't trust just one set by its self until I have done some proper research. 

Initial Block Out

 When I figured things Weren't quite right

Remodelling bits to measurements and specifications using old modelled parts

The turret is quite a interesting, the first thing to note its a asymmetric design with 80mm turret wall armour all around in one piece of  metal. The turret top armour in early models was 25mm thick, so having these two thicknesses positions and how they slotted together getting the innitial shape for the tank was pretty easy.

I then moved on to the loaders hatch and vent getting them nicely detailed up. www.tiger1.info has all the measurements by a guy that was building a CAD model so I cant fault the amount of resources this guy has put together to get a accurate result.

Being lazy or unwilling to try modelling welding  at this point really I have had to give it a shot to see what I could come up with so admittedly this is a work in progress to get the right results but anyone that has tried to get a good looking weld will know there isn't a lot of tutorials out there to get amazing result (if you know of some please throw them my way =) ) but I managed to get this result using deformed spheres welded together so they are all in quads. (I may get a tutorial together after I have finished to show you how I have done it if your lucky =P)

Im going to continue to Develop this weld technique so I can get it looking pucker as there is going to be many weld lines in this tank. My next focus is once I have a way to get welds looking nice I will work it into my hatch and air vent where required them move onto the commanders cupola and support bars at the front of the turret ready for the cheek mountings and mantlet to be introduced.

That's all for this week folks.

  

World of Warships USS Sims

Hi All,

Just a quick update on World of Warships.This week I want to give a little more incite into the USS Sims, the premium teir 7 destroyer that has made its appearance into the closed beta. I mentioned earlier that I had purchased a destroyer in my previous post. However it seems that I may have accidentally bought all 3 of the new premium ships in the beta. These are the Russian Gremyashchiy destroyer, the Japanese Yubari cruiser and of course the American USS Sims Destroyer. (The Gold I have from these purchases I am very much considering the Atlantia Premium American cruiser as it looks like a sexy ship too, bristling with guns and sleek as hell. My wallet will be hurting on this game mark my words!)

The USS Sims is pretty much the groundings for all that is great about American Destroyers. Its is a small, fast manoeuvring destroyer with a strong destroyer artillery armament shooting 4 shells every 7 to 8 seconds from its 127mm guns. The Sims is the most manoeuvrable ship in world of warships with a manoeuvrability rating of 97. With a top speed of 39 knots and Rudder shift time of 3.5 seconds, this can be a slippery character of a ship to get fire on. The rotation speed of its guns are nothing more than spectacular making this a king of close quarter combat with any opposing nations destroyers. With this destroyers combination of guns and agility it makes a very strong contender for being one of my most favourite ships I have commandeered so far.

Torpedoes in American destroyers are nothing special when compared to the Japanese or Russian counterparts, being slow and of short range. However the speed of the ship does make closing the distance to effective range on other ships easier than would normally be expected. The guns on this ship are really what make this destroyer shine but the torpedoes still pack a substantial thump to any tunnel visioning battleships or unaware cruisers. The fragility of destroyers is a factor that all captains have to contend with so closing to short range to torpedo your opponents normally means you take fire from secondary batteries before dropping your fishes in the water. The speed of the Sims makes it completely capable of catching targets unaware to deadly effect before secondary or primary have even chance to bear on you. With each torpedo causing around 14k of damage these fish leave big sore marks that opposing players won't soon forget.

I would highly recommend looking to this ship for a special desert of high tension with a icing of excitement. This ships are readily available in play if you are currently in the closed beta or are looking for a strong American style destroyer for you arsenal when the open beta gets released.

Another Mighty Jingles round up on the new premium ships in World of Warships. Stop making such good videos Jingles. Here is a link to his channel if your interested in hearing more about his stuff! https://www.youtube.com/user/BohemianEagle

For those people that are interested in World of Warships and are not in the closed beta I strongly recommend checking out their website and signing yourself up.It is such a strong game even in its current state I am excited for War gaming and other players when they finally cut the baby strings and let their baby run free in the wild.

On other news I have started modelling one of my favourite tanks of all time, the fearsome Tiger Tank. I've been trying to keep this one as accurate as possible when I have been modelling it by getting my hands on as much blue print material as I can. the surviving 131 and the Fury film most definitely sparked this but hopefully I can do the Tiger some justice by doing it to the best of my ability. That will be coming in a later post to show you what I have done so far.

Till next week...

World of Warships! AMAZING!

Hi all again,

being as im lazy and haven't done any more 3D to show you I thought this would be a great point to say something about the closed beta game I am currently playing. For those people that have being following my blog you may be aware that I play World of Tanks but Wargaming have been busy with a new flag ship title, World of Warships, that is on the brink of having its baby strings cut and let out into the wild (the gaming community).

For WoT players you will instantly feel right at home with the controls of the ships and the garage configuration. There is more than enough differences to make the game feel fresh and exciting and gives a challenging new play style to master with having to really think about your plan of action before you do things.

In its current state there are 4 classes of ship that play in completely different ways. The Battleship that's all about the armour, big guns and massive damage... when they hit =) . Cruisers that are lightly armoured have high DPM guns and and fairly nimble in comparison to their Battleship brothers. Destroyers that are fragile, turn faster than a virgin's head in a whore house and pack a massive punch in the form of torpedoes more torpedoes and yes more torpedoes. Finally Aircraft Carriers that are the long striking arm of your fleet with flights of bombers torpedo planes and fighters.

(http://worldofwarships.com/en/content/game/classes_of_ships/ check this page to see more on the classes.)

I have started playing both available nations currently in the game which are the Japanese and American lines of ships. The Americans currently have access to the Aircraft Carriers but not Battleships and the Japanese are the other way around having access to the Battleship behemoths but not the Aircraft Carriers. Americans in pure redneck style have the gun advantage sporting deadly guns but the Japanese seem to have the edge in torpedoes giving them a very different feel in how both nations play. The Russian line is still in development and at the moment only consists of premium vehicles but I expect that these will soon be mashed into the fray of battle very soon. Being a tight arse I havent shelled out for any russian ships but I have just got myself the lovely american destroyer , The Sims. that will be included in the game in a few days.

Mighty Jingles is a guy I follow on you tube (who I recommend looking at his channel) who posts regularly about most of the games I currently play. He has a good sense of humour and is entertaining to watch (even if he does remind me of my grandad (sorry jingles if you read this =) I know your only in your mid 40's). He's normally very informative and is defiantly one to watch in World of Warships having served in the navy himself on the HMS Newcastle.

This video actually shows current in game footage and really you can just sit back and enjoy the pure hair raising good quality of game, both visually and in game mechanics, that Wargaming has made.

Like I said World of Warships is still in its closed beta so dont go rushing to Wargaming's page expecting to just download it and play but I would say go and register your interest as this game it truly spectacular even in its current state.

I am really enjoying the destroyer class at the moment having to be super sneaky and dangerous at the same time. they are a very exciting class to play and can be very rewarding... provided you live long enough to get within torpedo range. 

Here is another Mighty Jingles Video to show you what I mean about the excitement of Destroyers.

From previously being involved with games development I can probably say with a little confidence that the game wont be in closed beta for long as it plays brilliantly and already feels well balanced (except for ramming people which is a little over powered). Hopefully it wont be too long till I get to sink more people with my Torps and Guns in the near future! For anyone already in the closed beta feel free to add my ID on World of Warships which is dna87.

Till next time.

Substance Painter 2

Hi all again,

I said I would give you a look into some of my playing around with substance, so here it is. I started with a rifle I've had lying from poly count around and built a low poly to get some bakes off it. 

Don't pay any attention to the smoothing groups on the low poly models because Lightwave. Lightwave is terrible at smoothing groups and unwrapping so I did all that in Max before I baked everything. I just have these in Lightwave to show you the models 

Once I had all the models prep'ed for baking I took it into substance designer to get all my maps baked. I'm pretty impressed with the baker from substance as its pretty quick to get results, however you cant do bakes at the moment anything other then square textures. I unwrapped my model with the mindset of doing a 1x2 texture (2k by 4K). I found this out a bit too late which was a bit annoying but meh you live and you learn.

Having had a bit of playing around with substance before this model I have a few tricks that I know work to get decent results pretty quick and here are the results of a hours work in substance on the rifle. I still have to do some refinements before I call this one finished like some illustrations to stamp on and some texture refinements from the particles I used, but for a hours work its incredibly fast to get half decent results.

Till next time.