Ground Rules of Balance

Rules?

I suppose if we're going to discuss balancing World of Tanks, we do need to have some framework to work around...

1. Historical objective: First and foremost, our goal is historical accuracy. Why? Because I like facts and figures. I like playing a real tank, in real configuration. I like armour being effective against the guns it was meant to be effective against, and guns designed to counter that armour actually countering it. So when we rebalance a line, we will look to strip out the historical "mistakes"
2.  Gameplay objective: The simple fact of the matter is that not every tank is going to be unique, nor is every tank going to be good. Tank designers over the years were influenced by other designers, and built tanks to one-up each other, and also designed some fairly bad tanks. Really, the only guaranteed level of uniqueness we can really aim for is that Tier X tanks should be on fairly equal footing in some way, shape, or form.
3. Profit: This one's a bit harder to achieve. After all, there are already over 100 premium tanks in the game, plus premium accounts, gold, etc. So instead of an objective we'll use it as a way to determine what should or should not be a premium tank:
• Was it unique? If it was a one-off-prototype or paper upgrade of an existing tank, maybe it's better off as a premium. Tanks of significance as well can be set aside as specials.
• Does it logically lead to a higher tank/from a lower tank? Take the StuG III for instance. It leads smoothly to the Jagdpanzer IV, which leads perfectly to the Jagdpanther. Having a natural progression means they can fit smoothly into the tech tree.
• Is it needed? Do we really need another Tier VIII Soviet premium heavy tank? Can it fit better someplace else, like a reward tank or as a branch on the regular tech tree?

We'll start with these points as a groundwork, and in the long run probably completely forget we wrote them.