I MIGHT have found the best replacement for premium Chi Has

We all know and love the Type 97 Chi Ha and Chi Ha Kai, not necessarily for their stats, but because they represent THE most iconic japanese tank of WW2 (with the Ha Go too, maybe). Problem : the regular Chi Ha is a premium you have to buy, and the Chi Ha Kai is an event vehicle that not everyone can get (I did not grind the event to get it, and I didn’t get it with the lootboxes either). And, rightfully so, many people ask for these tanks to be in the regular tree, and so they try to find other japanese tank models with similar stats to replace them as a premium and event vehicle.

What I suggest has probably not been done before (I didn’t see anyone suggest that), but I suggest to replace the premium Chi Ha and the event vehicle Chi Ha Kai with exactly the same models of tanks, but they would still be unique vehicles.

See, I like to browse the internet to find additional stuff to add to Japan, and I came across something when I searched for japanese tanks : there were two hull types for the Chi Has : an early one, and a late one. And ironically enough, these two hull types are already in the game : the premium Chi Ha has the early type, and the event Chi Ha Kai has the late type.

You can see the difference between the two types when you check the rear of both tanks : the EARLY type has grids on each side of the rear, which serve to exhaust the air for cooling the engine, while the LATE type had a different cooling system which did eliminate the grids on each side of the rear of the hull.

The main visual difference, as you can see, are the famous grids, which are inclined and clearly visible on each side of the early type, with the addition of vertical metal plates on top of these, which create an empty space between the plates and the grids. While, the late type however, doesn’t have these grids anymore, and has angled metal plates instead of the grids, which give a continuous silhouette to the hull of the late type, instead of the gaping holes between the grids and the vertical plates found on the early type hulls.

I could find a quote on Wikipedia in japanese, which provides way more details to the tank than the english version. I used google translate so the translation might not be the best :

« The cooling air was sucked in through the intake window on the top of the engine room by two fans attached to the outside of each of the left and right cylinder rows of the engine, and was discharged outside the vehicle through exhaust windows with wind shields on the left and right sides of the rear of the body in the early type body, but in the later type body, the exhaust windows on the left and right sides of the rear of the body were eliminated, and the exhaust was discharged through exhaust windows moved to the back of the left and right sleeves of the rear of the body, improving defense and cooling efficiency. »

If you are interested, it is found in the « Mobility » section of this page :

I found some pictures to show you the difference :

image

image

Here you can see the big hole between the horizontal metal plate on the top and the not so visible angled grid inside the space of the early type hull

image

As you can see here, there are no grids anymore, and the silhouette is continuous, whitout the hole, so it is a late type hull

And the Chi Ha Kai, same deal for these two pictures, as you can notice at the rear of the tanks :

image

EDIT: I thought I had written it, but I forgot, my bad. :sweat_smile:
But anyway, I forgot to mention that the two hull types are already modeled in the game: the ingame Chi Ha has the early type hull, while the Chi Ha Kai has the late type hull. The tank models in Enlisted all come from War Thunder, so you can inspect both in detail if you have that game.
But basically, it would require little effort from the devs: just swap the turrets of the existing tanks, and also swap the shell types along with the turrets, because, the 57 mm and 47 mm shells are different in size/length, so it would require a little update of the internal modules too, but nothing too crazy. I will post pics further down the topic. :slight_smile:

12 Likes

Just so you know, you’re linking to local files. Those links are useless on the Internet. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Fix your images.

2 Likes

I fixed the images. Sorry for the inconvenience. :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Here are some links to back my proposition; the first one comes from the tank encyclopedia, which is a pretty solid source, because you can see in the drawings that there are some of them that are labeled as “late”:

The other one might not be the most accurate one, because it is a modeling website made by a japanese guy some time ago, where the guy particularly makes models of japanese weapons from WW2. As you can see, he is not the most fluent guy in the english language, but his models look pretty solid, even if they are not HD, and generally the japanese people have more access to informations about their own stuff than us because of the language barrier:
http://gunsight.jp/c/english/tank-e-3D%20type97M.htm
Feel free to check his entire website, his models are pretty cool for japanese WW2 weapons enjoyers. :slight_smile:

And lastly, the Type 97 Chi Ha (the one with the 57 mm) with late hull or the Chi Ha Kai (47 mm one) with early hull are sold as a models to build and paint yourself in some places, so I guess they are pretty confident that this particular tank existed, because the ones who buy these models are, among other things, history nerds.

image

image

3 Likes

This is one of the best Solutions I’ve heard for this problem. I support this 100% even as someone who bought the premium Chi-Ha.

Just for the Interest of having other solutions heard I will summarize the other solution I’ve read:

Simply give the Event Chi-Ha Kai a unique, historical skin and move it the regular green skin Chi-Ha Kai(47mm) into the Tech Tree, and then add a Chi-Ha(57mm) with a regular green or brown skin into the Tech Tree.

This way people with who bought/grinded for either Chi-Ha still have unique vehicles but the rest of the player base doesnt miss out on Japan two mos effective tanks of the war.

Additionally Dark Flow doesnt have to spend precious time working on a new 3D model.

2 Likes

Thanks, I thought it could be a good idea, because it wouldn’t require much work from the devs: basically, all they have to do is to swap the turrets between the hulls of the two Chi Ha variants and call it a day, they would basically have two new unique vehicles.
They would also have to swap the ammo modules (visible with the X-ray) between the two hulls, because the 47 mm and 57 mm shells are not the same in terms of size/length, and would probably require even less work than the “turret swapping”, and would not change anything to the tank 3d model, only the damage model, but I like attention to detail. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

Oh, I never realized that we already have all the models. In that case i think your idea is better.

1 Like

Yes, in game, the Chi Ha has the early hull, while the Chi Ha Kai has the late hull. Those who didn’t get the Chi Ha Kai can’t inspect the model in Enlisted right now, but given the fact that these are War Thunder models, you can watch the models without any issue in this game if you have it.

1 Like

Models in game, so you can see the hull differences:

image

image

1 Like

Internal modules of the tanks (as you can see, the shells are different):

image

image

1 Like