hear me out here… take the Black Prince as it is Right now in game, and Make it a Tech Tree vehicle, at 6.0.
Then you take the Premium Black Prince, and rework it into Prototype #3. The one that started the process of being converted over to the Meteor Engine and Merritt Brown Gearbox.
Call the Tech tree one Black Prince No.1. Since that is DIRECTLY what its model after. the Original prototype.
This would make the Black Prince much like the Tiger II, and Tiger II SLA-16. You get a Techtree version with worse mobility, and a Premium that has better mobility.
Though the Meteor Black Prince (AKA Black Prince No.3) should get a few buffs and moved to 6.3, just to be fair. Prototype #3 was different than the other Black Prince Prototypes, It was the ONLY one of the 8 to have the improved hull, with Thickened side armor on the front edge.
it also was the first of them to have a different casting and hardening Method to the turret(that being a Attempt to surface harden the turret face and mantlet), These new Turret castings were far tougher, In testing the British found the Mantlets of these new castings could stop a Panthers Long 75 at 300m. and were capable of stopping long 88s at 500m in post war testings. But were found to be more fragile to repetitive hits. (basically it could use the post war Cast armor modifiers, with better Percentages, and not the War time modifiers that make the armor weaker than it should be)
Make the current BP a Tech tree vehicle, and repalce the Premium with BP No.3
I suggest this because as with the Tiger II SLA-16, there is precedent for the Black Prince getting a Meteor engine, as not only was No.3 started down the path of the Conversion to having the Meteor engine, The Irish managed to squeeze a Meteor, and a Comets gearbox into a Churchill MKIV later on. and found it worked quite well, so if the engine fit in the Churchill, it absolutely could have in the Black Prince.
Much like the Tiger II SLA-16, where that vehicle was never specifically built, But the engine was tested in a Jagdtiger, and the plans were there to put the engine in a Tiger II proper.
OH, another thing. BP No.3 from what i can find was the start of them changing the turret roof armor as well, the 38mm slopped plate was replaced with a 50mm plate
I absolutely agree with that, I love the Black Prince but its far too slow for its armour to be slightly above average at its BR. I personally say put it down to 5.7 (your proposed tech tree one) and keep the upgraded one at 6.0
Gaijin is never going to convert a premium vehicle into a tech tree, for several reasons:
While it’s technically in keeping with the ToS, it’s opening a hornet’s nest of legal controversy that they have historically stayed well away from.
Even if said legal shitstorm dies down, it establishes to the paying consumer that Gaijin can take your premium vehicle and remove all the bonuses that you likely bought for it, whenever they want. This could conceivably mean that players who would buy a premium vehicle, decide not to. And that’s not something Gaijin will ever risk.
Even if you give them the new Black Prince as a consolation prize, it’s still not the vehicle they bought, and will play differently. I’d point you to the fracas around the M60A1 DC Ariete for how that approach went.
At best, we can hope for Black Prince No 3 to be introduced as a standalone vehicle later on, but most likely it’d be a battlepass reward. A niche, prototype vehicle that’s also a pseudo-clone of a premium vehicle, meaning they wouldn’t want it to be tech tree to dilute the value of the premium variant.
Id honestly be even more angry if it became a battlepass vehicle or something NGL.
The British already have been screwed out of some of their best tanks by Events and such. See the Centurion Mk2, one of the best tanks in the British Tech tree, locked behind a event, or a Nearly $200 Gaijin market price.
Agreed, but that’s the most likely place to see it. They wouldn’t give it out for free because it would devalue a premium they’re trying to market, but it’s also not really valuable enough to be sold, or offered as a prize for a grind event.
