The problem of classified sources for future vehicles

So as we’re entering another era of WT mechanics and gameplay, it is going to be increasingly more and more difficult to find ‘primary sources’ as Gaijin refers to them. However, foreseeing this, and the constant classified document leaks, the devs have open their leniency on what type of reports can be passed just over a year ago to include certain video types, and ‘secondary sources’ that include 3rd party testing/research, and ‘guesstimates’ based on known parameters iirc.

Now that its a year later and we have many more vehicles with much more classified documents, or are in active service, it has seem that those source rules will need to be reassessed as there are going to be many more vehicles with dubious and questionable stats and performances due to lack of acceptable sources. Furthermore, this is speculation of my own based on my observation but, the leniency of rules seem to have discreetly been rolled back some time during this year as I have watch plenty of bug reports contain well written and calculated estimates that references known numbers, sources that don’t exactly match primary sources definition but are more than secondary sources, or analysis of the in-game code that justifies a performance mismatch all be denied.

tl;dr for ^:
Compared to when the rules were first loosened, the quality of bug reports have gone up instead but the rate of which those get passed has also fallen.

So what can be done in the future regarding implementing the obscure and classified stuff? Simple. Have more transparency on what the devs has used to model the weapons, or vehicles. The biggest part of the current frustration with how things get added is that there is no communication on what numbers get pulled and where they get pulled from. Conversely, the scrutiny placed on the community to provide sources is too high for what is available out there while it appears like the devs pull numbers from who-knows-where due to the amount of articles that contradict what they implement.

For example, if we recall the Abrams DU hull debacle, it would definitely be a good step in the future to release at least a part of what they have available regarding community’s concerns over specific functions and features much earlier in the development cycle than wait until community outrage before trying to appease the masses.

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Secondary sources were always allowed in bug reports.
Nothing has been loosened, or changed. Videos were always allowed for non-timed things.

Videos were and still are not allowed for TIMED things, such as speed, turret speed, etc.

There is undeniable proof that Abrams SEP 2 and older do not use DU in the hulls at this point.
They have “improved” hulls, which is vague, and uses existing non-DU materials.
Video nor photographs of the composite in the hull has shown up as of writing this post.

There’s an easy fix, no more modern vehicles past what we have now. We start flushing out trees properly, make use of the foldering system more too.

Not always. They’ve been pretty spotty on what gets approved and what doesn’t from what I’ve seen these past years when it comes to secondary sources. Usually, nerfs come pretty instantaneous when it comes to dubious secondary sources, and buffs are next to impossible to get, with the exception of the big 3 that is. Otherwise, secondary sources have been approved less than denied from what I’ve seen.

And the main point of this is for the devs to show more of what they use for modelling because as much as I hate it to be true, it really does seem that the values they pull are very arbitrary and “I made it the f**k up”-esque

That pandora’s box has been opened long ago and community/future development are expecting more modem weapons unfortunately.

As much as I would love for them to keep doing refinement passes and improving their system at simulating the real world performance of these weapons, there isn’t much monetary incentive for them to do so unless its an issue that will actively drive away players in a large quantity.

The FotM model that is going on is able to help them get enough new players to cover the bleed off of the old guard and unfortunately I don’t see that changing any time soon

My oldest bug reports date back probably 3 years, and I used secondary sources in them.
Before then there are plenty of examples.
People using bad sources is not people using multiple secondary sources.

Devs are under contracts to keep secret a lot of what they use, and on top of that… avoiding infringing copyrights.

well thats something i didnt hear about. I thought the sources they have to model stuff were all openly available stuff that, if dug deep enough, is readily available. And with that, could be free to be shared when they want to add something new, or at least quell dissatisfaction

Some is publicly available, some is physical-access only [many National Archives], others require more contracts, and so forth.

And disseminating which is which in the database they use is expensive, let alone having to explain for each item that lacks material cited.

So yeah, if you want a document on a vehicle from your country, you’re gonna have to go through the same processes they did. They just won’t tell you cause the team that did it has to be contacted and that’s time which is less research on projects they’re working on.

Or just that they can’t be bothered to actually look for sources, which is what they did for various Western MANPADS, and assume that Russian sources are sufficient, when they are evidently lacking.

it took me all of 10 minutes to turn up the following four patents

Which indicates that the POST seeker equipt Stingers (FIM-92B and later variants) should benefit from the (Photo)contrast; lock-on range extension mechanics ( As found on the 9M37M and SAM-1C).

And for the maneuverability of said systems, we have.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3010677A

Which is in good agreement, with the contents of the MANPADS article. But relates to methods used by the earlier Redeye / Strela-2 ( & obviously the Igla, as refenced in the aforementioned article), not the Stinger / Rolling Airframe Missile (RIM-116)

in which the performance discrepancy is far better explained by by later patents comprising;

and

Which include further refined and improved autopilot & control sections to increase performance.

instead of the “experts” from the War Thunder development team claiming

However, these MANPADS systems have only slight differences in the area of aerodynamic surfaces compared to the 9M39, so a multiple increase in average achievable overload compared to the 9M39 cannot be expected.

We believe that the slightly higher overload of other MANPADS systems is mainly due to the slightly higher maximum speed of the missiles

Therefore, we assume that for the MANPADS FN-6, FIM-92 and Mistral, the documents indicate the peak overload achieved at the moment when the rudders are in the maneuver plane. With this assumption

the average available overload for the half-cycle of rotation of these MANPADS will be 63% of the peak and will be consistent with the data on the available overload of the 9M39 MANPADS.

That’s not what that statement meant.
The statement means that they HAVE the material and use it.

They problem is not that they did not have the material (MANPADS, were effectively correct when they were initially implemented), so they clearly had access to sufficient documents.

Time stamped video lists ATAS as 18G overload on the 1.91 devserver, The reduced performance was implemented with 1.97

“Igla”, “Stinger” and “Mistral” missiles - corrected flight performance and seeker parameters: engine thrust has been increased, lateral acceleration has been decreased.

So what exactly prompted the change if not documentation being acquired? But then why assume that they function the same way, especially if the quoted performance is otherwise unexpected, is it not possible that there was something else going on to explain the difference (there are a number of differences as seen in the patents, especially US4037806)? Let alone apply one set of documentation over another.

even though

The present invention constitutes another means for accomplishing the control of a rolling missile and is an improvement over the system described in (US4037806)

Is literally in the opening claims of the relevant patent, so they just might behave differently somehow.

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