To be fair that text likely wasn’t even written by her. It’s on a tank (Ho-Ri Production) she herself stated was a fictional vehicle designed at request of Gaijin for lack of alternatives and she was pretty open about that as far as I remember. This text seems to try and say it was real, which she never said.
I still think it might be wrong, but maybe not intentional. Even the Ho-Ri Prototype is the wrong design of the tank for lack of available information at the time, despite being at least real enough for the game if it was correct. There is a chance the number of 5 is either too high (maybe confused with total tanks sunk?) or it means hulls allocated to Ho-Ri projects, that wouldn’t even have to be completed hulls. And of course it might just be a different Gaijin writer as well, with little/no input from Mai.
I don’t know what the criteria to have a document added there is. Perhaps the design itself isn’t fake and was at one point considered, but all the details made up by Mai are. Regardless it wasn’t produced, there’s a photo in this forum of the produced Ho-Ri hulls at the end of the war and its very clear they have a superstructure in the middle like a Jagdtiger.
Perhaps I was being too harsh on her, but given that she admitted it was a fabrication after the fact, I have decided to treat her previous claims with some level of skepticism.
I checked her blog, she claims that one prototype was fully completed, with it even being test-driven. I don’t know where Gaijin got five vehicles being completed from, but it’s possible they misunderstood what Mai said. According to Japanese Wikipedia, five vehicles were indeed in various stages of completion. There were most likely disposed of in a scrapyard, but who knows, maybe they were dumped into a lake
This wooden model is all we have of the sloped design, but afaik, it was dismissed early on for being too difficult to produce given Japan’s bombed-out cities and factories
That’s honestly fair. I personally think she was doing fine mostly, but sometimes let both her own biases and Gaijins demands change the way she acted and researched. I’d say she still made some useful research, but it’s best to be sceptical and check her claims.
This is a fictional tank designed by military fans themselves, posted on the website Fiction Weapons House. That’s an exciting design, but I can’t suggest it for this game.
You should re-read what I said instead: the fictional design he posted was NOT produced, what WAS produced was the Jagdtiger-like Ho-Ri on the Chi-Ri hull, retaining the hull 37mm.
I’ll try to find that picture, though currently I don’t have access to my PC where I believe I kept a copy.
I guess you could consider the unmanned turret of the ICV to be a part of protection, otherwise they seem to have similar armor packages. The only other difference might be due to the different shapes of their respective hulls, but that would likely only have minor impact in game.
I’m honestly surprised the ICV doesn’t have ATGMs, since it’s literally an “Infantry combat vehicle”. The RCV not having it makes sense to me, but as for the ICV, we’ll have to wait and see what Japan does
