Extending the WOT german tech tree - artillery branch

By Zarax

Disclaimer: 
This is a purely speculative article that takes into account WOT german tech tree and uses historical tanks to speculate possible new tank additions.
While trying to keep the articles faithful to history some room for inaccuracy is allowed within these rules:

1) No tank or tank part will be 100% made up, at least a mention about tank role and vague specs are needed

2) Components not planned for the tank are allowed, provided it wouldn't create grotesque inaccuracies like putting a gun that would obviously cripple a tank under its weight

3) This will be limited to WWII plans, anything post war risks to be too arbitrary to properly balance

No serious expectation of anything listed to appear in WOT as described is applied, but as we're discussing about implementing history into an arcade game some items will be controversial.
This is unavoidable as WOT tech tree rules need a tank to be better than the previous one and ergonomics are not exactly cared about, meaning that most designs are over-performing their real counterparts.

In this article we will tackle the most controversial WOT tank class: artillery.
Right now there is a full branch spanning from tier II to tier VIII, however we do already know that WG will extend it to tier X, rebalancing tanks in the process.

Starting from this, we'll try to guess how this will happen:

Tier II: Sturmpanzer I

No radical changes are expected other than minor tweaks.
WOT made its gun unhistorically weak and used it as low tier artillery, while in reality, the SIG 33 was a quite powerful gun made for infantry companies.

The heaviest gun in its class, it was a very powerful howitzer, although inferior to rivals of similar bore due to low range. The short barrel was the price to pay for having a high caliber howitzer manageable by non motorized troops, which made it powerful but short ranged.
It ended up being replaced by a copy of the russian 120mm mortar, which offered only slightly inferior firepower in a lighter and longer ranged platform.

The very first attempt to motorize the gun was based on the obsolete Panzer I chassis, but it resulted in an extremely overload vehicle.
Somewhat compensating this was the fact that the original mount was kept, making the gun easily dismountable should the chassis break down (as it often happened).

Tier III: Sturmpanzer II

No radical changes are expected other than minor tweaks.
WOT made its gun unhistorically weak and used it as low tier artillery, while in reality, the SIG 33 was a quite powerful gun made for infantry companies.

Historically, WOT configuration was only moderately more successful than its predecessor.
Production was pretty limited and most Panzer II chassis were converted to use the 105mm L/28 field gun.

Ironically, the Sturmpanzer II with SIG 33 was found to be most effective in a direct fire role, with the 15cm shell angled in a way that made it ricochet over soft ground and explode in mid air, becoming deadly against infantry.

Unfortunately the vehicle was still under powered for the weight and its weak engine ran hot in the African climate, resulting in the following report in late October 1942:

The weapon has proven itself to be very effective, especially when using ricochet fire.
The Panzer II chassis is insufficient and didn't proves successful.

Tier IV: Grille

Unlike its predecessors, the Grille has been upgraded beyond historical parameters.
In WOT it's a tank both loved and hated: it packs a strong punch for its tier, yet the limited traverse makes it difficult to use.

We can also speculate that MM will be made slightly easier and the tank itself nerfed, but how?
Going into a stricter realism path, the 10.5cm LeFH 18 is the closest option in weight and would basically make the tank a faster-firing Wespe (which would be likely rebalanced by lower ROF as well).

A less likely but still possible alternative would be to use the 12cm GrW 42, which actually is a mortar, but it has a preceding case in WOT already (crusader's howitzer was a mortar) and would allow the tank to retain a reasonably stronger punch than the Wespe.

Tier V: Heuschrecke 10

Su-26 OP! Nerf it!

I'm sure most of you read that sentence at least once in WOT.

The Heuschrecke (Grasshopper) 10 was a prototype tank that brought both the concept of self-propelled gun and german over-engineering to new levels.

Not only the 10.5cm LeFH 18M cannon was supposed to be in a fully revolving turret, but it was also planned that it would be dismountable and used as a separate field gun:

Don't be fooled by the pic above, firing while on board was in the specs, which of course made them complicated enough to produce that it never went beyond prototype stage.

The GW Panther in WOT  that many players love is part of the same family of vehicles.

Let's talk specs: 

The base gun would be a slightly improved version of the 105mm L/28 used on the Wespe (and on many tanks in the german tree) and historically an improved (L/35) version was proposed by Krupp.

This would give it lowish alpha for tier V, but one has to consider the advantages of a turret and the fact that MM spread will be lower in a full tier configuration.

Unhistorical but possible options would be the 12cm GrW already discussed for the Grille or the 15cm STUH 43, used historically on the Brumbarr:

This would be a powerful gun, balanced by lower ROF and shorter range.

Tier VI: Skorpion

After planning a turreted SPG on Panzer IV chassis as Heuschrecke 10, an Heuschrecke 12 based on the Panther chassis was discussed in 1943.

Krupp and Rheinmetall both proposed different designs, respectively called "Grille" (which was part of a planned line from 10 to 21, with the numbers being the cm of gun caliber to be carried) and "Skorpion".

The pictured design, classified as Gerät 5-1213 is very close to the original Panzer IV based concept, while carrying a 128mm cannon capable of indirect fire.

This was a variant of Jagdtiger's gun, which was extremely accurate even in indirect fire, to the point that it was often pressed into the counter-battery role.

Again, this would be a design with a lowish starting alpha but decent upgrades.

The starting gun could be the top one of the previous tank (as often with artillery), with a 128mm L/55 as first upgrade.

As top gun, I'd like to consider two options:

The first would be the historically planned 15cm SFH 43, aka Hummel's gun. This would entail a very short grind for seasoned players and give a familiar gun in a very powerful platform.

A less realistic but still not impossible in WOT would be to follow Rheinmetall guns and use their long 128mm (aka Sturer Emil's gun) cannon as alternative.

This would give a very flat trajectory gun with excellent range and short travel time, although with less punch than a 15cm howitzer.

Tier VII: Hummel

No radical changes are expected other than minor tweaks.

Historically the Hummel was  born as an interim solution to the necessity of a self-propelled mount to the 15cm heavy howitzer.

In WOT the tank is portrayed as a well-rounded mid-tier artillery and fulfills its role pretty well with its historical gun.

Tier VIII: GW-Panther

No radical changes are expected other than minor tweaks.

The Heuschrecke 15 (known in-game as GW-Panther) was the natural follow-up of previous Panther-based proposals.

The design in WOT was made by Krupp and classified as Gerät 5-1528.

It was initially designed to use a fully enclosed turret, but as this would have made the design too heavy, a partially open superstructure was chosen instead and use of the Panther II chassis was planned for production.

Gun-choice wise, it was planned to use a 15cm howitzer, just like the Hummel.

A 21cm mortar (21cm GRW 69?) was discussed but it's likely the chassis would have needed to be redesigned for the purpose (plus it would be OP in game or balanced by horrible accuracy and travel time).

Tier IX and X: GW-Tiger and GW-E

No radical changes are expected other than minor tweaks.

Historically the GW-Tiger in WOT is the Grille 17 and 21 designs mixed in one tank.

The project started in mid-1942, where an heavy self propelled gun based on Tiger components was requested.

It was then delayed in order to be redesigned for the use of Tiger II/Panther components and the first prototype was to be expected in mid-1944.

The allied bombing campaign however caused further delays, with the single prototype not yet complete in early 1945, when work on it was ordered to be ceased.

There were plans to extend the Grille series to 30 and 42cm heavy mortars (likely related to the sturmpanzer Bar project, which will be covered later on), but those were eventually abandoned in favor of rocket artillery like the Sturmtiger or railroad cannons, while the Karl-Gerät covered the self propelled siege mortar needs.

"Buff my tank!" - Panzer IV

By Zarax

Hello and welcome to the third edition of "Buff my tank!"

The "Buff my tank!" articles are meant as an historical way to look at some tanks considered underpowered in game and ways to improve their combat abilities discussed by the original german engineers.
Beware that while being sometimes ironic in tone, the article treats about both costs and benefits of every choice and it most likely will never be listened by WG as suggestion.

 Panzer IV is yet another excellent "MMO tank", which saw a good deal of upgrades and plans during its service life. Even in its WOT life it saw a pretty big transformation, where the turret often mentioned as "vaderturm" with the 75mm L/70 removed and replaced with a close combat focused configuration.

Currently this tank is not exactly seen as weak but it is still controversial as many consider it dependent on HEAT rounds to be truly competitive, an extra edge that some even consider excessive.
Still, this popular tank was the object of many engineering projects, often left in the drawer.
Panzer IV & its variants by Spielberger plus some material from Panzer Tracts 20-1 will be used as historical support for this article.


 This time we will take a slightly different approach and divide the possible upgrades by section.

Protection:

One often heard complaint is about insufficient protection, leaving the tank vulnerable to almost anything that shoots at it, especially with the new top turret. Side skirts were often suggested, but their contribute to armor against direct shots would be minimal, while artillery is not yet a problem at this level.

Another problem is of course the flat armor, something that makes shot deflection even more unlikely and angling discarded due to weak side armor.
In this respect, an alternate Panzer IV H was proposed in drawing W1462:

A sloped 80mm front would have given the tank excellent protection and with the long gun it would have been competitive until the end of the war, and Hitler asked this to be increased to 100mm.

Unfortunately this design was estimated to bring the weight to over 28 tons, which was too much for the suspensions.

This would of course leave the turret still weak, but there is room for improvement.

The best known project is the Panther narrow turret on Pz IV chassis, but this configuration was already deemed not balanced by WG:

A more realistic although still effective solution would be to use Krupp AKF31941turret drawing:

This would still give an excellent turret front without looking like a certain famous helm, although it's likely there would have been just a manual traverse system for it.

Mobility:

The late war Panzer IV was already an overweight tank and WG took all possible steps to improve it from historical stats.
One historical plan was to install a torsion bar suspension on Panzer IV chassis. This was designed by Kniepkamp, who later will be one of the inspirators of the E-series.
This could have helped with the increasing weight, as well as the interleaved wheels and larger tracks discussed later.
However, all of this is already in WOT in one form or the other, thus making this section nearly redundant.

Firepower:

Historically, the best cannon mounted on a production Panzer IV was the 75mm L/48.
The experimental 75mm L/70 is the most known configuration and this was also attempted to mount in the standard Pz IV turret.
Tests gave negative results, although it's possible a rigid mount like the one tried in the Hetzer could have worked.
This wouldn't be without drawbacks though, as a much heavier gun coupled with the necessary turret reinforcements would result in a significant hit in tank ergonomics.

A possible realistic alternative for large guns would be to use the Heuschrecke 10 turret:

This would realistically allow for larger guns (including the 105 L/28 as shown) while keeping weight acceptable.

Of course there is a price to pay, in this case a maximum turret armor of 30mm.

The last, more exotic solution would be to opt for something completely different:

A Mk 103 autocannon coupled with two 75mm recoilless rifles would have given this prototype a pretty respectable firepower, but we'll never see this configuration in WOT (although it would be a decent grinding gun). Twin 30mm as in the "Kugelblitz" configuration would make the tank a feared "knife fighter" as well.

Going into extremes, the 3.7cm flak 43 could be used as well, possibly in a similar configuration as the Mk103.

Nearly going into science fiction but still possible: Tungsten APCR used as silver rounds would have decent penetration, while uranium rounds were also available:

It also is very likely that the 8H63 and 10H64 guns were proposed as well in the Krupp november 1944 panzer rearmament project, but by that time all Pz IV plans were discarded.

Conclusion:

Historically, the Panzer IV was optimized to the very limits of its chassis and any further improvements would have necessitated of a deep redesign, something that the germans never afforded during the war, especially later on when the Panther chassis was only slightly more expensive for vastly better performance.

By combining various proposed improvements one could make a compact heavy tank with great firepower and armor but bad mobility or an excellent but very vulnerable sniper.

This leads for the final verdict: 

Any improvement in one area would lead to weakening something else, thus only a "focus shift" would be likely.

Something very similar to Heuschrecke 10 is planned for the open top TD tree, while combining the sloped chassis with the Panther turret and 75mm L/70 would imho make a slow but rather interesting possibility for a tier higher, although with extremely bad mobility.

Thank you for reading and see you in the next article!

"Buff my tank!" - E-100

By Zarax

Hello and welcome to the second edition of "Buff my tank!"

The "Buff my tank!" articles are meant as an historical way to look at some tanks considered underpowered in game and ways to improve their combat abilities discussed by the original german engineers.
Beware that while being sometimes ironic in tone, the article treats about both costs and benefits of every choice and it most likely will never be listened by WG as suggestion.

The E-100 is often defined as "Gold Ammo" tank in game due to high reliance on the expensive HEAT shells.
In this article we will use Panzer Tracts 6-3 to explore the most extreme features the german engineers discussed during the tank implementation, while for the tank's history SilentStalker's article provides already excellent information.

As the E-100 never reached operational status and only a half-finished hull was done, we have no battlefield experience outside of virtual one to gather information from.
In the end it's likely E-100 and Maus would have worked as propaganda tanks or used as bunkers during the defence of Berlin rather than actively on the battlefield due to their logistics issues as those tanks did not exactly sip fuel which was extremely scarce in 1945 and I wouldn't want to be assigned to their maintenance.

First of all, E-100 is already somewhat above historical specs as side turret armor was planned to be a scant 80mm unlike the 150mm thickness in game, this removes a quite large potential weak spot as even scouts could have hurt it.

Of course, one could consider the original Krupp Tiger-Maus turret:

It has however the "slight" drawback of being 12.5 tons heavier and having a decently sized cupola as weakspot plus the viewports on the side, limiting tank agility and likely being slower to turn.

Another option that was considered is the MB501 engine planned at 1500HP output, which would bring the power to weight ratio from approximately 9.2HP/ton to 11.5HP/ton, making the tank slightly more agile although the torpedo boat engine was quite a bit bigger than the Maybach HL 234/295.

This means that the engine module would get bigger (would it even fit without major hull modifications? It was meant for the earlier, longer-hulled project) and I'd be willing to bet WG would also slap an higher fire chance.

Now, about firepower, what is often considered the biggest problem.

First of all, longer 15cm cannons and the 17cm one were considered for the STUG E-100, aka the Jagdpanzer E-100 we have in game.

On the contrary, during development the 128 L/55 cannon was strongly suggested as an alternative as the shells were lighter and easier to handle while more than adequate against anything it was planned to face.

The answer here probably lies in ammunition choice, but as the 15cm L/38 (which is often mentioned as L/37) does not have a penetration table from WWII we cannot realistically say. In my opinion, by the time the gun would have been ready it would have used either a modified 15cm SFH 18 concrete-piercing round or just a mix of HEAT and HE ammo, which was enough to mission kill any WWII era tank as shown by the russian 152mm howitzers.

 So, here comes the final verdict:

Very little room for improvement is left.

Unfortunately the fact that it was meant from the start to be a cheaper, easier to produce Maus means that engineers focused on things that could have been produced sooner with available means rather than making a super-tank, especially as the E-series were often seen with hostility by many both in the army and in competing firms.

Thank you for reading and see you in the next article!

"Buff my tank!" - Panzer III

Hello and welcome to the first edition of "Buff my tank!"

The "Buff my tank!" articles are meant as an historical way to look at some tanks considered underpowered in game and ways to improve their combat abilities discussed by the original german engineers.
Beware that while being sometimes ironic in tone, the article treats about both costs and benefits of every choice and it most likely will never be listened by WG as suggestion.

Panzer III... almost the perfect MMO tank.
It has been "buffed" several times during its historical operational life, but ultimately it faced its demise as it was hopelessy outgunned by T-34 and KV tanks, while being in trouble returning fire as both 5cm and 7.5cm L/24 cannons were effective only when firing special ammunition such as APCR or HEAT.

In game the situation is pretty much the same and we will be using Panzer Tracts 20-1 to showcase a possible tank modification.
While being an agile and reasonably armored medium good versus its tier IV peers, its gun selection is rather anemic against most tier V enemies.
This made many players (especially the less experienced ones) ask for a buff of the tank as it can be rather dependent on "gold" ammunition when not top tier.

Historically, german engineers faced similar troubles and of course raced to find alternate solutions.
APCR was a short term patch, although an expensive one, while operationally the Panzer III ended up being replaced by the rearmed Panzer IV with the 75mm L/43 and L/48, while the chassis itself found its second life as STUG III.

The Panzer III/IV was another solution that found itself on prototype stage while its chassis powered again some (rather good) self propelled guns, but in game it is already represented as a tier V tank.

Still, this was not the first attempt to merge the two tanks:

In december 1941 Krupp was requested to mount the Panzer IV turret in a Panzer III chassis, and by the end of the year a preliminary design was ready:

Thus, the Panzer III Ausf K was born.
As "pimp my ride" was not on TV yet, calculations were started and the price to pay was a large increase in weight, meaning new tracks and suspensions were needed, as well as the fact that mobility was surely impacted despite the best design efforts.

In game terms this is a very similar situation to the old Pz IV with Panther narrow turret.
Estimating with game stats, it means over half a ton extra weight without taking into account any ancillaries and going by "Wargaming Engineering".
As the in game improved suspensions limit is set at 22.65 tons so it could be doable and using the top 440HP engine even power to weight ratio still looks good enough so mobility shouldn't be affected overall.


It looks almost too good to be true, right?

To balance this, unfortunately reality strikes with a huge nerfbat.

Mounting a bigger turret without serious modifications to the hydraulics means that rotation will become a lot more sluggish, prone to failure or will plainly require manual cranking.
This means in game a greatly reduced turret rotation.

Mounting a more powerful gun on a lighter chassis that is already unbalanced by an heavier turret means that recoil will have a stronger kick.
This translates in lowered accuracy, increased aim time and gun dispersion.

Oh, did I mention the designers saw the modification would affect the center of gravity?
Say hello to terrain passability and track rotation nerf.

Finally, bigger gun on a smaller tank?
Less ammo of course.

The final verdict:

Doable, but it will transform german ergonomics into a disguised mid-tier french tank.

Are you sure you want to pay the price?

Thank you for reading and see you in the next article!

From VK 7001 and Tiger-Maus to E-100 Ausf B: Making sense in Krupp super heavy tank development

While Maus history is more or less known in detail, the Krupp side of the story is murky at best.
As highlighted in the first article, Yury Pasholok of Wargaming claims a direct line from VK7201 to a 120 ton tank, while I claim that it's a completely different project and the 120 ton tank is possibly a VK 100.01.

This article is an attempt to sort out the mess, although I suspect only Hilary Luis Doyle could clear it once for all.

So, as usual, here's the call:

Let's start from the Lowe development:

VK 7001/7201 were in all likeness competing designs for the same final tank, the Panzer VII Lowe which was expected to be into the 70-90 ton class as a superheavy tank.

There were several design proposal and it's likely the full list is actually lost, Panzer Tracs 20-1 reports some of them:

However, what is usually not considered is the development dates:

As you can see Lowe development started in 1941 and back then the heaviest engineering on suspension and drivetrain was based on VK4501 (H) and VK4501 (P), better known as Tiger and Tiger (P).

One also has to consider that Porsche dedicated facility at Nibelungenwerk was not completely ready until 1942, thus Krupp facilities had to be used for the Porsche design team as well.

With reports of more soviet heavy tanks pouring in, Hitler expected that a 70 ton super heavy would soon be outclassed and by mid 1942 the decision was taken that instead of a 70 ton class design a 100 ton tank was needed to maintain superiority.

Between March and April 1942 both Porsche and Krupp obtained a contract to develop a VK100.01tank, with the turret design that was to be ready by may 15, while 3 days later the order to stop work on Lowe components arrived.

It appears however that Krupp kept working on the Lowe turret until september, where again it was ordered to stop working on the Lowe and that the Maus turret had to be finished with high priority.
After this, we know that by January Porsche was able to draft a concept design with the early Krupp Maus turret and from this moment the two branches split as Porsche drew from its own expertise with the Tiger P project.

In september 1942 Krupp was informed by a "careful implication" that Porsche was having development issues due to having to use many new components and the enthusiastic reply was that they were ready to design a 150 ton hull using a modified Maybach HL 230 that reached 1000HP with high octane fuel.

To speed up development Tiger components were to be used and a maximum speed of 20kmh was estimated, reduced to 13 if the same engine was used as well.
Components from the R1 and R2 self propelled coastal artillery projects were also to be used plus a host of marine engines was considered as well.

By november at least 2 drawings were ready, for a 150 and 170 ton tank and both central (W1674) and rear (W1681) turret were considered, with a long Tiger style suspension made with 16 650mm roadwheels per side.
The central turret design was presented to Wa Pruef 6 in december 1and dubbed the "Tiger Maus".

Krupp was deemed as capable to be the fastest in delivering the tank and requested an immediate design update, this time using Tiger II drivetrain components and by december 8 a new proposal was presented.
This time a lighter, 130 ton design was presented using Tiger II components and a somewhat shorter hull, while the rear turret design was definitely discarded and a prototype was estimated to be ready by fall 1943.

However, a few days later in december 15 Wa Pruef 6 informed Krupp that they had to cease work on their own Maus project as the Porsche version had been selected and concurrent development forbidden.
Krupp of course protested and in December 31 obtained that their design should be at least proposed to Hitler, but all was in vain.

By January 5 Hitler replied that after a "careful evaluation" Porsche design was chosen.

Krupp was defeated and the story of the Tiger Maus seemed done, undoubtely leaving a bitter taste in their mouth.

A twist of fate however resurrected the project. Wa Pruef 6 started designing tanks itself and its head (Kniepkamp) included the old Tiger Maus in the E-series, this time using the conical spring suspension shared by all designs and a lighter derivative of the Maus II turm.

In 18 march 1944 Krupp learned that Wa Pruef 6 was playing with the design since spring 1943 and not only that, they assigned the task of building a prototype to another company, Adler, because they deemed Krupp to be overburdened but asked them to contribute to the designing and by mid may the turret was finalized, which led to the start of the 130 ton prototype powered by a 700HP Maybach HL230.

The final act however was not done and in the meantime a project B was started for a new drivetrain.
This would have implied a modified hull layout with both engine and transmission at the rear and a 1200 HP engine. Unfortunately no further data is known but it's likely the turret would have been moved slightly forward.

All in all development can be summed up this way:

Mid-Late 1941 First generation: VK 4501 drivetrain
Krupp VK 7001

Krupp VK 100.01 (170 tons, rear turret, 32 650mm roadwheels)

1942 Second generation: VK4503 drivetrain
Later VK 7001 designs
Krupp Tiger Maus (130/150 tons, central turret, 32 800mm roadwheels)

Late 1943-45 Third generation: Conical springs drivetrain
Adler E-100 (130 tons, 16 roadwheels, lighter Maus II turret)

Future plans: "Project B"
Adler E-100 (hydro-mechanic transmission, rear drive)

Undoubtely confusing, this is the best that can be obtained by using the best sources at my disposal.

Wargaming missed opportunities: Paper Aufklärungspanzers and the quest for the ultimate light tank

After having dealt with the origins of the most overweight recon tank ever planned, I think it's proper to take some time to consider the alternative designs created by german engineers.

For the very few readers that came across this blog outside of world of tanks forum, here's their current german tank development tree:

Aside from other outstanding issues that are evident to the eye of those versed in german tank history, you can see the aqua green light tanks on the left side, starting with Panzer I and ending with VK2801 (to which will soon be added the Aufklärungspanzer Panther).

Most choices are ok and historical stretchings are all around more or less reasonable, while I wrote in my previous article about the upcoming successor.
Now, the question is: was the german army so short in light tank projects that WarGaming had to resort using such a clumsy light tank design?

In my opinion the answer is ironically Speer's approach on it: it's easy to create as most model parts were already there.
Yet, history shows that several other candidates are available:

Candidate 1: VK1602 Leopard Ausf M

While the Ausführung designation is not historical and stands for MIAG, the proposed tank was the discarded VK1602 design.

Hitler himself argued for an heavier armored recon tank which would have weighted 26 tons and basically be a smaller Panther tank.
At 26 tons and sloped 80mm frontal armor and slightly over 5m length, it basically was a medium tank roughly halfway in size between the lighter Leopard and the Panther.

Candidate 2: Panzer 38(d)

A late war project, this tank was the direct competitor of the lighter E-series.
Basically a germanized version of the Skoda Panzer 38(t), it featured a slightly larger chassis (slightly under 5.4m in lenght and 2.8m wide) with sloped armor similar to the Jagdpanzer 38(t) while using a planned simplified Panzer IV turret with hexagonal design.
At 16-18 tons with 60mm sloped frontal armor and decent armament would have made this a cheap yet effective design.

Candidate 3: Porsche Typ 245

Outshined (or maybe shadowed is a better way to describe it) by the heavier Porsche designs, this Porsche-Rheinmetall light tank is another pretty "original" design in line with most Porsche proposals.
Apparently supposed to double as AA tank and armed with a 55mm autocannon, it was planned to be equipped with a Porsche Typ 101 engine with an advanced hydraulic trasmission.
This 18 ton light tank was also well armored with a sloped 60mm glacis armor and interesting enough, it already was planned to use rubber-saving steel wheels, all in slightly under 5 meters lenght.

Of course, every single other candidate would bring its own question:

How much historical stretching would they need to fit in game?

This is a game we're talking about after all, for balance sake some compromises are acceptable within realistic limits and as they were mostly paper projects which were cancelled ofter very early during their development process.

All candidates would have at least one or two fictional guns from wermacht arsenal, likely one or two engines for grinding and possibly fictional turrets (although 38(d) could use the Kugelblitz 38 one).
As the road has been opened already one could speculate the use of larger 37 to 55mm flak guns, with the occasional uranium round as "gold ammo" (historically they were experimented in 3, 3,7 and 5cm calibers), while the 8H63 and 10H64 AT howitzers could also be considered as well as the 7.5cm PAK 50, which was a rebored version of the historical 5cm cannon.

What ties all of them is that they were all relatively advanced WWII light tank designs, all smaller than the typical medium tanks of the era and dedicated designs instead of jack-of-all-trades adaptations.

Again Wargaming, your turn.

Aufklärungspanzer Panther - The industrialist recon tank

What happens when you involve an industralist and number cruncher in a tank design?
The answer isn't straightforward, however it usually involves production streamlining and cost savings.
In this particular case, the belief that the Panther design could be used in a swiss-army-knife role, along with economical considerations, made Speer push down in priority the more specialized tank design.

This happened in October 13, 1942 while discussing about producing the VK1602 Leopard scout tank.
A quite interesting project on its own, in 1942 the design was in debate between Hitler (who as always wanted an heavier, better armored design) and the Heer.
After a rather lengthy debate, Hitler was finally persuaded to approve the lighter 21.9 ton design, while using many existing Panther components to ease production.
Jumping on that, Speer said that the characteristics of the tank were so similar to the Panther that the latter could be used instead.

This resulted in a somewhat lightened Panther that used the much smaller Leopard turret (which is related to the wheeled Puma design) and the soon to be inadequate 5cm K.W.K 39.
Apparently the small matter of tank size did not seem to bother him:



Following on that idea, competition arose, leading Rheinmetall to offer its own interpretation on the design about a month later, an artillery observation vehicle with similar specification called the Panzerbeobachtungswagen Panther:



Despite the bulkier design, it used the same 5cm cannon in a dummy barrel resembling the 7.5cm L/70, all in all being an equivalent design to M.A.N.'s recon tank.
Soon enough, battlefield realities made both designs obsolete when it was apparent that the 5cm cannon was inadequate for its task unless shooting expensive tungsten ammunition and Panther testing itself showed the base chassis was far from being mature, leading to a quiet termination.

Ironically, Panther's chronically weak final drive and suspension would likely have been far more useful in a tank of about half the weight, which would end up being cheaper by using standardized components (an idea that would soon resurface with later Panther design and the paper E-series) and its armament could still have had a chance to either be refocused in a different role (20 and 30mm autocannons were still very useful against infantry and soft skinned vehicles) or recycled into a prime candidate for the 7.5cm PAK 50 gun project, which was an excellent way to transform 5cm cannons into low velocity 7.5cm howitzers using the 75mm L/24 ammo, useful both as HE round and decent against tanks with its HEAT warhead.

Despite several other recon tank projects in 1943-44, in the end the old Skoda 38(t) had to soldier on in the light tank role, while the wheeled sdkfz 234 Puma with a similar turret design showed the usefulness of a well armed and flexible recon vehicle.