Yuri Pasholok's answers

Hello Warriors,

some answers from Yuri Pasholok:

About the Maus restoration: the first people who wanted to get Maus moving were some guys from the railway company, who wanted to stuff a diesel-electric locomotive engine into it (which apparently has four times more engine volume than the original Maus). The enthusiasm didn't last long - but the idea was given to Wargaming who jumped on it. The people who approved it however didn't take a couple of small things into account:

- They thought the Maus had some innards but in reality it's just an empty box, there is nothing inside;
- The idea to restore a tank designed by SS members didn't make some people very happy;
- Even if they stuffed the tank with modern engine and drivetrain, it won't go far, because the tracks and suspension are in terrible shape and new tracks alone would cost 180k EUR;
- The notion to put original components into it is a joke, because no German company would touch anything related to WW2, especially to SS.

The best realistic outcome according to Yuri Pasholok would be to make the vehicle look like in reality from the outside (some outer parts are missing such as the fuel tank) and even open the hull for public - it's not like there is anything to steal inside.

- Wargaming itself dealt only a little with Japanese vehicles (only those that were actually built plus tier 7-8), the rest of info came from Japan
- Swedish tanks are somewhat problematic because since the Swedish tanks are interesting mostly only to Swedes, there are no reliable projections (and the existing ones are low quality)
- Swedish branch is completely possible: sp15 and Renhaxue (two players from EU/NA community) are working with WG and they found a lot of info in Swedish archives. Additionally, WG itself is working with Swedish museums (incl. Arsenalen), Yuri wants to personally thank Arsenalen director Stefan Karlsson for his help. There are issues but they are minimal.
- There were rumors that WG disbanded the archive seeking group - in reality it was simply reformed