October 22, 2020

Nicholas Moran - Tank Research with The Chieftain - Cold Star Project S02E68

53 minutes

Nicholas Moran aka The Chieftain is World of Tanks' Director, Military Relations and technical advisor, and has been so for the past nine years. In an industry where advisors are typically discarded immediately after the game releases, this is astonishing longevity--and farsightedness on the part of the developer. Nicholas is also a military historian. Following his release of a video looking at the development of Soviet tank doctrine during the interwar period, host Jason Kanigan of the Cold Star Project invited Nicholas to be on the show. Major Moran is an active officer in the Texas Army National Guard, and has been deployed to field postings.

Questions for Nicholas Moran:

* World of Tanks

let’s begin with a quick summary of your role with WoT: what do you do and how do you go about doing it?

what represents “good evidence” in tank research to you? Do you “know it when you see it” or is there a more objective standard? Are there layers of verifiability or reliability?

* Soviet armor doctrine video

in what places did you find the info, and how did you go about organizing it?

* National Archives at College Park

where is it, what’s the process of accessing it, how do you know when you’ve got something good out of a box?

if you could go back to say 1930 and alter one thing (practice, numbering system?) of the Dept. of the Army / Ordnance Branch to be followed throughout the next two decades, what would it be?

* Crawling around on tanks

when you’re taping off squares of outer surfaces and then taking pictures of it, how does that help the game model designers? How do they translate that graphed image into a 3D model?

what’s the worst case of divergence from a manual to reality (in armor thickness, or some other change) you’ve encountered? -what have been the easiest and the most difficult AFV hatch exits for you?

have you considered keeping a running “banged shin” count from getting in and out of armored fighting vehicles?

Presentations discussed in this interview:

The Unknown Impact of Albert Kahn On Industrial Architecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iwzXpaSiOc

Dr. Andy Aldrin's interview on how the Soviets beat the Americans into space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krbe1JtqdPA

Major Moran's discussion of Soviet armor doctrine development in the interwar period: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7nr83CYQ9Q

The Chieftain YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp4j9Y9L6jie44iZroCb99A

The Chieftain Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheChieftainWargaming

Archives article: https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/us-national-archives/

Can Openers book (NOT an affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/Can-Openers-Development-Anti-Tank-Carriages/dp/1635618592/

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Talk to Cold Star: https://www.coldstartech.com/bookcall

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By Jason Kanigan

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