War Thunder News

ZTS63 is a Chinese amphibious light tank created on the Soviet PT-76 platform. The vehicle has an 85 mm rifled gun with a laser rangefinder and armour-piercing fin-stabilised rounds.

[h2]ZTS63 (1980), light tank, China, rank V[/h2]
Features:

• 85mm gun with APFSDS rounds
  
• Decent mobility
  
• Light armour
  
• Amphibious
  

Modern amphibious tanks have become especially demanded in the People’s Liberation Army of China due to the growing tensions in the southeastern borders. For a long time, obsolete American-made tanks filled this gap, but they were obviously no longer suitable for the conditions of modern warfare. The Chinese military decided to start their own development by reverse-engineering the Soviet PT-76 amphibious tanks imported in the late 50s. During the development, Chinese engineers improved seaworthiness and reliability of the engine.The tank received a domestic 85-mm rifled gun. Type 63 light amphibious tank entered service with the PLA in 1964, it was intensively used in service and actions. During the 1979 upgrade program, the tank, which by that time was designated as the ZTS63, received improved traverse mechanisms, a laser rangefinder, and other improvements. The production of these vehicles was discontinued by 1983.



The later modification of the ZTS63 will be one of the first rank V armoured vehicles in the Chinese tech tree. Despite the silhouette familiar from the Soviet PT-76, the vehicle offers new combat tactics and will become a good help to move up your armoured setup from the rank IV.

Enthusiasts of Chinese armoured vehicles are familiar with the early version of the vehicle, the Type-63-1 light tank. Unlike the Soviet amphibious PT-76, the vehicle is equipped with a Chinese-made 85mm cannon with punchy HEAT rounds, which most tanks at its rank have no protection against. The later version of the vehicle, ZTS63 (1980) comes armed with an armour piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot rounds with good penetration values, as well as a laser rangefinder. The smooth ballistics of these rounds, coupled with the ability to quickly enter the range corrections, make the ZTS63 a full-fledged sniper that can do deadly damage at long distances.




Now the light amphibious tank can try deep flanking, long-range camping and will feel more confident against tanks with ERA protection or spaced armour. The Chinese scout does not have any significant armour that would interfere with its mobility, so ZTS63 commanders need to rely on surprise, speed and a good understanding of the battlefield.

The new Chinese light amphibious tank ZTS63 (1980) will appear in War Thunder hangars with the release of the next major game update. Keep an eye on our devblog where we tell you about the most interesting new vehicles and features of the incoming update. Fresh fare tomorrow!

Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to spend a romantic evening together in your favorite game, give out gifts and compliments, and, of course, get new decals in War Thunder.

Decorate your vehicles and share your love with others!

[h2]

From February 14th (12:00 GMT) until February 17th (7:00 GMT)

[/h2]

[h3]Play 3 battles (rank III or higher, with an activity of not less than 70%) to receive the “Cyber Cupid” decal.[/h3]



"Cyber Cupid" decal.

Complete the task in random battles, except for Enduring Confrontation missions and [Assault] mode. Track your progress in the hangar by clicking Nickname → Achievements → Holidays → Valentine’s Day.

You can find the decal in the “Holidays” tab in the Customisation menu.

[h2]St. Valentine’s Trophy with 3D Decorations[/h2]
During the event you will be able to purchase a trophy with unique 3D decorations for Golden Eagles in the Item shop. In the St. Valentine’s Trophy you will find a naval decoration “Anchor of love”, as well as ground vehicle decorations “Compound bow” and “Teddy Bear with heart”. Upon opening the trophy you will receive a decoration that you don’t yet possess.





[h2]Temporarily on Sale: MK-IX “Valentine” [/h2]
Per our tradition, the Premium Mk-IX “Valentine” tank will be available for purchase with Golden Eagles during the celebrations. You can find it in the USSR research tree: it is a compact British tank that was shipped to the USSR as a part of Lend-Lease.

We will soon move to a new game client file structure that will reduce the size of updates and speed up their installation.

Hello!
Today we would like to tell you about the transition to the new file structure in the War Thunder game client that the development team has already planned for in the upcoming major update.

In short: the new file structure will speed up the installation of updates on your computers and consoles, as well as reduce the size of download files!

The goal of the restructuring is to break up a number of heavy game files into smaller ones so that when these files are changed, players on consoles and the Steam client will download smaller volumes. On a PC, for those who update through our launcher, a partial file update system has been available for a long time, but this file structure change will speed up the installation of updates. In fact, players will receive War Thunder updates faster - we save bandwidth for users with slow or unstable Internet connections on Steam, PlayStation and XBox versions, as well as speed up the installation of updates for all players.

There should be no change in the game's load speed: on SSD, the speed will stay the same, on HDD there may be a slight increase or slowdown in the speed of installing files, depending on the history of use and receipt of updates (due to fragmentation of data on a disk).

The new file structure will be applied to the installation directory of the War Thunder client in the next major update. If you participate in dev-server testing (see post here), you will receive a new structure in the first session of testing the update. To switch to the new file structure, you will need to re-download about 15 GB of data (the exact data volume will be known closer to the release of the update), but only once. In following updates, the volume of traffic for consoles and the Steam client will be significantly reduced compared to the current file structure.

In one of the next major game updates, we also plan to restructure the texture data, the heaviest part of War Thunder files. Details about the second stage of the transition to the new file structure will be announced later.

It was a pleasure to see all of your screenshots from last week! There was a great assortment of vehicles that could have been seen in the Battle of Stalingrad, and many vehicles from more modern times! The three most popular and three selected by us will get 300 GE. See the winners down below!

[h2]Let’s begin the 54th edition of our competition![/h2]

Create a stunning screenshot and submit it on the War Thunder Steam Community Hub with the tag #WTscreen54. You have time until 17.02.2023 to submit your screenshot.

After that date, 6 winners will be selected (3 of which will be the highest rated by the community and 3 selected by our judges), each of which receive a reward of 300GE.

[h2]Important addition: Screenshot theme - Loving the Unloved![/h2]

St. Valentine's day is upon us this week! We wanted to ensure all of our vehicles felt loved this week, especially from nations that tend to be less popular than others.

[h3]Terms:[/h3]

Your screenshot must feature one or more vehicles from the Japanese, Italian, or French tech trees!
You must add the #WTscreen54 tag (title cannot have any other text in it).
• Screenshots need to be compliant with the War Thunder rules.
  
• You need to be the author of the screenshot.
  
• Screenshot needs to be new. You cannot use those which have previously been published or used in other competitions.
  
• We will only accept raw screenshots from the game. You cannot use any editing software nor any other visual enhancements (like Nvidia Ansel filters).
  
• You can use filters and settings built into War Thunder.
  
• You can use the replay functionality built into War Thunder.
  
• Rewards will be delivered to the author's account within 14 working days.
  

[h2]And now, time for the winners of the competition’s 53rd edition - Stalingrad![/h2]

[h3]Winners selected via community votes:[/h3]
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929693474
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929665603
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2928322615

[h3]Winners selected by our judges:[/h3]
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2930257837
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929000737
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2928774102

Each winner will get 300GE! Congratulations and see you next week!

The Sd.Kfz.222 light reconnaissance armored vehicle was one of the most successful vehicles of this type in service with the German land army and saw intense use in combat during WWII.

[h2]Sd.Kfz.222, SPAAG, Germany/China, rank I[/h2]
Features:

• High mobility
  
• 20mm autocannon
  
• Shoots both ground and aerial targets
  
• Light protection
  

In War Thunder, the Sd.Kfz.222 will become one of the initial vehicles in the German and Chinese tech trees. The main difference from its predecessor, Sd.Kfz. 221, lies in its magazine-fed 20 mm automatic cannon, the real game changer. The early Chinese version comes with a KwK30 cannon, while the German version wields KwK38 with higher fire rate and punchy sub-caliber AP rounds.



The automatic cannon, coupled with the vehicle's good mobility on hard ground and roads, completely re-energise gameplay. The vehicle is well suited for flanking breakthroughs and supporting allied tanks from the second line of attack. In urban battles against lightly armored targets, which are the majority at the initial ranks, a rapid-fire cannon with armor-piercing belt is always more effective than non-automatic guns of larger calibers. Another huge plus for Sd.Kfz. 222 is the ability to shoot down enemy aircraft, thanks to the high elevation angle of the gun.



The Sd.Kfz. 222’s light armor can be pierced by any heavy machine gun, especially in the area of ​​​​the battle compartment. Although this is not the biggest problem at the initial ranks, you'd better remember that this armored car is one of the most vulnerable vehicles in the German lineup, yielding only to gun trucks.

In War Thunder the Sd.Kfz. 222 will arrive with the release of the next major update, among other vehicles, aircraft, features and new locations, which we cover in our Devblog series - so don't miss it!