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Smudlicko had a history of prior infractions on both the official Discord and within the game. But, more importantly: I don't think any public justification of actions we take on official platforms is required. For any further info, everyone who feels they've been treated unfairly can contact support.

Since up-to-date guides for Armored Warfare are few and far between, I’ve decided to contribute a comprehensive crew overview/guide (in spite of how much of the crew system is already common knowledge). Since I will be writing it, the content presented may come off as long-winded and/or excessive. A side effect of university papers perhaps… Apologies in advance if this is the case. On the other hand, if the community here enjoys my transcribed thoughts and opinions, I may decide to create more of these posts/topics. I think the ArmoredLabs forum is an excellent platform and initiative, where perspectives, information, and discussion pertaining to AW can be shared between and archived for players, experienced or not. Note that some elements of my writing will be influenced by personal opinion, so please do not take everything here as gospel. Much of it can be classified as suggestion instead of fact. Any suggestions and/or constructive feedback would be greatly appreciated. Please notify me of any errors and/or discrepancies, edits will be made if necessary. I will strive to keep my posts up-to-date. With that out of the way, here is my AW crew guide: Crew Vehicles in AW (all currently manned) require a [healthy] crew complement to support and sustain combat capability during battle(s). The bulk of the material within this overview is not applicable to commanders. Although commanders are also technically crew members, they employ a skill and leveling system far more complex while also boasting significant/substantial distinct abilities and mechanics; therefore requiring a dedicated guide of their own. When a new vehicle is purchased/acquired, it is assigned crew members automatically, each with specific roles/duties to fulfill in their respective vehicles. Crews will also have skills and attributes related to their position. Skills: Crew skills are selectable performance improvements available to individual crew members. Different crew roles will each have their own respective sets of [unique] skills relevant to their position. Two skills can be chosen for each crew member, with the first skill slot unlocked upon reaching level 2 and the second slot upon reaching level 4. Attributes: Predetermined set of intrinsic competencies relevant to the specific crew member’s function within the vehicle. Designed to reflect a crew’s mastery of the vehicle, its percentage/potency increases alongside a crew’s level of proficiency. Attributes are maxed once a crew attains level 5. Crew Progression: Unlike commanders, which can be moved and/or shared between different vehicles, the other crew members of a vehicle must remain with their respective vehicle. Crew members gain crew experience tied to the amount of base experience (based on performance) gained from battle(s). Consequently, crew experience can be augmented by winning (in PvP), completing [primary and secondary] objectives (in PvE), first win of the day multipliers, and premium account. However, crew experience income can be further increased with certain boosts, applicable insignias, and special event bonuses as well. As a vehicle’s crew accrues experience, their proficiency level will gradually increase. Higher levels will progressively increase their [passive] attributes while reaching levels 2 and 4 will unlock a skill slot respectively. Proficiency is maxed upon reaching level 5. Crew experience required for level up: Level 1 → Level 2: 3,000 Level 2 → Level 3: 17,000 Level 3 → Level 4: 70,000 Level 4 → Level 5: 110,000 Players are also presented with an option to immediately “promote” the crew to level 3 (with credits) or to level 5 (with gold). But this is generally unadvised, as the crew grind is rather seamless and quick, occurring in parallel to the corresponding vehicle grind. Some premium vehicles come with a level 5 crew as standard: Crew in Combat: Similar to internal vehicle modules/components, crew members are modeled with a hitpoint pool and located at their respective positions within their vehicle. A penetrating shot in or around these particular area(s) may injure crew member(s). Whereas modules are [eventually] repaired automatically, injured crew cannot recover without the use of a medical kit or first aid cabinet. Crew Consumables: The three consumables relevant to crew are: Medical Kit: Heals all injured crew members in your vehicle (single use) First Aid Cabinet: Heals all injured crew members in your vehicle (3 uses, 90 second cooldown) Both medpacks feature a passive 15% bonus to crew resilience (crew “durability”). There is no reason not to equip the first aid cabinet over the medical kit (especially if you play GlOps), unless you are particularly low on credits. Energy Drink: Increases crew stats (attributes) by an additional 5% for a single battle Energy drink (and some commander skills) buff crew stats, but this only improves crew attributes, not crew skills. Therefore, vehicles with a manual loader should be equipped with energy drink. A vehicle with a level 5 loader trained with Rapid Fire combined with energy drink would see a considerable 10% increase to its rate of fire (without factoring in any additional crew stat buffs) Crew Configuration: The number of crew a vehicle seats may vary from vehicle to vehicle, from a minimum of 2 (Wiesel) to a maximum of 5 (Some SPGs, AFT-10, etc.). All vehicles require two crew members minimum, specifically: Commander Leader of the vehicle. Guides, instructs and directs crewmen during operation of the vehicle under his/her control. Responsibilities encompass communications, navigation, target acquisition, operating weaponry, etc. A commander injury disables any commander abilities and results in a sweeping debuff to vehicle characteristics, such as mobility, targeting, and firepower, even if the crew member corresponding to that function is still alive/unharmed. Driver Drivers are responsible for mobility; specifically driving and/or manoeuvring a vehicle. They steer and control the hull movement of vehicles, namely forward/reverse movement and turning/rotation. An injured driver will have significant negative effects to speed, acceleration, hull traverse, etc. Attributes: Traverse Speed (+5% max, +1% per level) Self explanatory, the rate at which a vehicle rotates its hull. Expressed in degrees (°) per second. Terrain Resistance (+10% max, +2% each level) How evenly a vehicle distributes its weight to the ground. Better terrain resistance effectively improves vehicle acceleration off-road. Skills: Smooth Ride: Overall accuracy while moving is improved by 10% Use/Function: Better accuracy while firing on-the-move Classes: MBT, LT, AFV (particularly LTs and AFVs) Vehicles: Most LTs, AFVs which are able to fire on-the-move (eg: SPHINX) Battering Ram: Ramming damage increased by 50% Use/Function: Increased outgoing ramming damage Classes: MBT Vehicles: M1A1 Storm, T-80U, Obj 640 Off-Road Driving: Acceleration on off-road terrain increased by 20% Use/Function: Better off-road mobility Classes: All Vehicles: Any vehicle which feels sluggish off-road (eg: Challengers) Spin to Win: Hull traverse speed improved by 5% Use/Function: Improving turn rate Classes: All Vehicles: Vehicles with poor hull traverse/large turning circles (eg: Merkavas) Field Repair: Track and wheel repair rate improved by 25% Use/Function: Decreasing track/wheel repair times Classes: MBT Vehicles: Brawlers and/or vehicles frequently receiving fire The vast majority of vehicles will also feature a gunner. Gunner Gunners operate vehicle weapon systems and it is their task to aim and fire upon targets. Vehicle turrets and/or weapons are manipulated by the gunner. When the gunner is injured, a vehicle’s accuracy and turret traverse speed will decrease drastically, while aim time will increase considerably as well. Attributes: Aim Speed (+10% max, +2% per level) Self explanatory, the time required for a vehicle to minimize its aim circle. Turret Traverse Speed (+5% max, +1% per level) Self explanatory, the rate at which a vehicle rotates its turret. Expressed in degrees (°) per second. ATGM Accuracy (+10% max, +2% per level) The missile guidance stability of a vehicle. Skills: Do the Twist: Turret traverse speed improved by 8% Use/Function: Improving turret rotation rate and target engagement Classes: All Vehicles: 490, MGM, ADTU, etc. Quick Draw: Aim speed improved by 5% Use/Function: Improved gun handling/targeting Classes: All Vehicles: Any vehicle with longer than desired aim time Sharpshooter: Max spread is improved by 5% Use/Function: Improves maximum (best) accuracy. Classes: All Vehicles: Any vehicle which has less accuracy than desired Preventative Maintenance: Cannon hitpoints are increased by 50% Use/Function: Making disabling weapon(s) more difficult Classes: MBT Vehicles: MBTs with easily disabled guns (XM1A3, 490, etc.) Accuracy: Accuracy decay rate while firing is improved by 25% Use/Function: Decreasing weapon bloom after firing Classes: Some MBTs, LTs, and TDs Vehicles: CATTB Some vehicles will also retain a loader, until higher tiers (especially tier 10) where they are largely replaced by autoloaders. Loader Loaders are mostly self-explanatory. Vehicles without an autoloader must rely on a human loader to manually replenish (reload) their armament. When loaders sustain an injury, both vehicle reload speed and weapon/ammunition swap time increases substantially. Hence, loaders are both potential liabilities and/or beneficial assets. An injured loader can effectively disable a vehicle’s weaponry, although (or conversely) loader effectiveness can be buffed with energy drink. Attributes: Rate of Fire (2.5% max, 0.5% per level) Self explanatory, the rate at which a vehicle is able to fire its weapons. Applies to reload times on single fire weapons, both reload and intra-clip reload times on weapons with ready-rack/magazine and the RPM of autocannons. Skills: Rapid Fire: Rate of fire increased by 2.5% Use/Function: Increasing DPM Classes: All Vehicles: All Preparation: Ammo swap speed improved by 50% (Bonus is higher on clip-style autoloaders and large magazine autocannons. Activates only if the number of shells are full.) Use/Function: Improved weapons and ammunition flexibility Classes: MBT, LT Vehicles: Vehicles with longer reloads but decent gun/ammunition Explosive Shells: Module damage increased by 10% Use/Function: Greater module damage Classes: All Vehicles: Any vehicle set up for module damage (eg: Cent 120 w/ Sabrina) Secured Ammunition: Reload speed not reduced when ammo rack and/or breech are hit Use/Function: Eliminating reload penalties for damaged/disabled ammo rack/cannon breech Classes: MBT Vehicles: Any MBT with easily damaged/disabled ammo rack and/or cannon breech (eg: Leopards) Vehicle Expertise: Repair speed increased by 10% Use/Function: Improved module repair speed Classes: MBT, some LTs Vehicles: Vehicles with modules that are consistently/routinely destroyed Safety: Chance of explosion during a fire reduced 22.6% Use/Function: Chance to preventing additional damage from ammo rack explosion Classes: MBT Vehicles: MBTs with vulnerable ammo racks (Leopards, Ariete, etc.) Notable vehicles/lines without a loader: [Most] Russian MBTs [Most] Chinese MBTs AFVs Autocannon [exclusive] vehicles [Most] Missile [exclusive] vehicles Note: Some vehicles may have a crew member assigned as both a gunner and a loader. In this case, the crew member will serve as both roles simultaneously and will have attributes and skills available from both positions. Accordingly, dual-role crew members should benefit from loader skills (trained in Rapid Fire) while their vehicles should also be equipped with energy drink. Interesting fact: Crew members can be customized in AW. First and last names can be chosen from an extensive list of different names originating from various languages and/or nationalities. Crew portraits can also be changed; another likeness can be selected from yet another expansive list of appearances of varying race, ethnicity, gender, and attire. Fin

Edit: just a quick disclaimer. The information here represents my current understanding of the agro system in AW. I'm not 100% certain that the information here is completely accurate, so there may be a few things that I either missed or got wrong. If you find something that isn't written here or indicates that some of the information here is wrong, please let me know so I can update it. There was a dev article a while back (almost 2 years ago, right around the time that Heroic spec ops was released) that explained the rules for AI agro. According to the article, the vehicle that the AIs target is based on 2 things: The player in the heaviest and closest vehicle The player with the highest aggro (with aggro being generated by dealing damage to bots and deflecting the return fire according to the article) When an AI has not fired a shot and not been shot at in return, it defaults to the first setting (this can be seen when spotting a fresh AI vehicle, note how they typically face the nearest MBT even when said MBT is behind multiple layers of cover). I believe the equation that determines each player's proto-agro value takes the form of: ProtoAgro = VehicleWeight / Distance This means that a decrease in your vehicle's weight will allow you to get closer to an AI before it targets you. For example, if a player in a 50-ton vehicle is 250m away from an AI, another player in a 30-ton vehicle would need to be less than 150m away in order for the AI to decide to focus on them instead of the player in the 50-ton vehicle, while a player in a 10-ton vehicle would need to be less than 50m away for the AI to focus on them. Of course, this assumes that distance has a proportional effect on which player is focused when in is entirely possible that the effect of weight or distance is squared (placing a larger emphasis on heavier or closer vehicles, respectively). Some tests would need to be done to determine exactly what the effects of vehicle weight and distance are. Once an AI has either fired a shot (and had the shot bounce) or taken a damaging hit, the AI will change to the 2nd setting and focus on whatever player (that is currently in their line of fire) has the highest total of damage dealt to that AI and deflected return fire (I'm not sure if there are any modifiers for the total that change the weighting of the dealt/deflected damage stats). If there are no players in line of fire that have damaged the bot or deflected a shot from the bot, the bot will go back to the first setting. It is worth noting that each AI has a separate agro counter, meaning that agroing one bot will not agro any nearby bots (although they will still try to shoot you if you get spotted and have high agro on them). As far as I can tell, agro will only ever go up, which means that deflecting a several thousand damage worth of autocannon AP from single AFV in an MBT will all but insure that the AI that fired those rounds will never attempt to attack a player that isn't you (as long as it can continue shooting at you). If you break contact with the AI, it will immediately begin attacking the player with the next highest agro total that it has line of sight on (like that TD that got a bit too close and got spotted while shooting up the AI), but will go back to attacking you if it regains contact with you. What does all of this mean? If you want to minimize the damage you take from bots: Let someone with armour be the first one spotted, they can deflect damage and will draw more agro with every shot they deflect Try to shoot at the bot that the tanking player is shooting at, they are drawing more agro from that bot than the others Don't outpace the agro drawn by the player tanking the damage, otherwise the bots you shot up will try to shoot at you instead. It is easier to outpace the agro for a bot with low DPM (e.g. Challengers) than it is to outpace the agro for a high-DPM bot (e.g. Termi or T-15), so pick your targets carefully If you start taking fire, fall back and let the bots go back to shooting at the player who was tanking damage. You can take this time to relocate to a position where you will be less likely to be spotted or will be able to better support your team for the next stage of the mission Conversely, if you're in an MBT and want to minimize the damage your team takes from bots: Make sure you're the first one spotted, any shots you deflect will make the bots that fired them less likely to shoot at your teammates Focus on the bots that need to die, this will make them less likely to shoot at your teammates when your teammates decide to shoot at it Do not break line of sight with the bots if any of your soft-skinned teammates are spotted, otherwise the bots will start shooting up your teammates If a bot starts shooting at someone else, shoot it to draw its agro back to you

I have to disagree with this. There is a significant difference between a HP buff (Obtainable by using Commanders like Douglas O'Reilly) and her shield ability. Let's compare them: For the Comparison I assume to use the commander Vincent Girard with the maximum HP buffs (14.25%) applied to a vehicle with 4000 HP. OPhelia Vincent Girard (14.25% HP Buff) Vehicle HP: 4000 4000 * 1.1425 = 4570HP Killshot: OPhelia always survives the killshot which makes the ability already toxic in the PVP modes of the game. Depending on how little HP the vehicle has left OPhelia already deflects a significant amount of damage. As an example: Vehicle has 200HP left. I hit it with an ATGM for 800HP which means OPhelia already deflects a whopping 600HP of damage even before the actual skill of hers sets in. A HP buffed vehicle never survives a killshot and thus behaves as normal vehicles would resulting in a way less toxic design. The very same hit on this vehicle with 770HP left (due to HP buff) would have led to the destruction of the vehicle. Shield: After the "killshot" the real fun is about to start: The tank gets a shield of 15% of the vehicle's HP which lasts for 5s and additionally all modules/crewmembers get resetted to default, all fires are extinguished. As an enemy you've got two choices: either waste a shot into the Shield or wait for the 5s to run out. Both options got significant drawbacks. Let's say you wait for the 5s to run out and spare your shot: If the OPhelia user has a high burst vehicle (Those are the vehicles OPhelia really shines) he can legitimately deal a lot of damage within those 5s of time while staying particularly invincible against all tanks with low burst damage and slow reloads (eg. MBTs for example). If you choose to put a shot into her shield you have to reload again to finally kill the vehicle. While this is not a too big problem for high burst vehicles and auto cannons it is a significant one for slow reloading vehicles. Within their reload time the OPhelia user has all the time in the world to deal damage to you and possibly kill you in the process. Obviously HP buffs don't feature such a ridiculous fantasy skill. Here it's different. With most guns you'd need an additional hit to finish off this tank compared to the stock 4000HP. Which means in a high burst damage vehicle the TTK is about the same as stock vehicle meaning the HP buff has not really a significant advantage. With a slow reload vehicle it might allow the enemy to deal significant damage during the reload, before you're able to finish him off. However compared to OPhelia this is not significant, as OPhelia is able to actually block all the leftover damage while with an HP buff there is no leftover damage at all. So in most situations the HP buff does not provide a significant advantage, as it cannot block damage and doesn't have a shield functionality. Bear in mind that those HP buffs are only useful for vehicles with a high amount of HP (4000HP is quite a lot) while OPhelia is useful on all sorts of vehicles, as her skill doesn't really depend on the amount of HP of the vehicle. post shield 1HP: After destroying the shield or after the 5s ran out the vehicle with OPhelia remains alive on 1HP. Again this is not really a problem for high burst vehicles and auto cannon but again a pain for all the stuff with slow reload. Additionally it gives the OPhelia user another small timeframe to deal additional damage or retreat to cover. Bear in mind that all those assumptions are based on the enemy tank hitting and penetrating every single shell. If you happen to miss one in a slow reloading vehicle OPhelia user has even more time to deal damage and stay alive. Vehicles with HP buffs are long dead now. Sorry the Editor somehow does not support tables. I think it's quite obvious that OPhelia is toxic because of her ability to magically stay alive and way more versatile and useful compared to simple HP buffs.

Hello all! Today will show you how to add shaders to AW. I want to thank Haswell for telling me about the program. This is very simple to install and easy to use. Important notes: - Some shaders, once enabled in game, may not let the game start after shutting it down, getting an error from the launcher. I don't know if the same happens on steam, but assume the same will happen. So I recommend testing. Enable some shaders, and then try to restart the game. To be able to start the game again, you have to uninstall the shaders, with the same program, and turn the game on again. After you can reinstall the ReShade. - You should expect some fps drop, but a few enabled should work just fine. - Shaders affect UI. I have not found a way to not to. There are shaders that seem to target UI , but haven't found a way to make them work. Any help is appreciated. 1 --) First, we need the ReShade program. Just scroll down and you should find a large button: https://reshade.me/ 2 --) After downloading, just double-click. You should see the following: Click on the large rectangle ( 1 -> ). If you dont see Armored Warfare in step2, the you have to Browse it ( 2 -> ). A new window should open. Go to your AW folder and find bin64/armoredwarfare.exe ( 3 -> ). Just double click the exe file. 3 --) After selecting the exe file, you should get this image: Directly click on "Direct3D 10/11/12". 4 --) After you can select the shader packs you want to use. Feel free to use whichever you want. Per pack selected, a new window will appear afterwards with specific shaders you want to install. After the shaders download and instal, you can start the game. The shaders will be stored in the same folder as the exe file. Also, after successfully installing, you can change the shader’s folder path, and a few other settings. Uninstal and Update: If you want to uninstal or update the shaders, open the ReShade program like normal. Follow previous step 1, 2 and 3. After step 3, you will be asked if you want to uninstal or update. Click "uninstal" to delete all shaders, or "update" to re-download more shaders. Congratulations! You can now start the game. If you did not uncheck the "tutorial" box, you will be presented with a very small tutorial. To open the ReShade menu, you use the "Home" button. You can change this in settings. Just backspace and press the new key, or combo of keys. I also recommend adding a key bind to turn off shaders, "Effect toggle key" option. First option is to open/close the shader menu, and second to enable/disable the shaders. The following is where most modding will happen. May look different depending on what packs you selected to download, but the fundamentals are the same: The shaders you enable and edit will be saved in a preset. Currently, they are in "DefaultPreset". If you want to create a new preset, click on the + sign, top-right, and write its name. To activate a shader, click on the small box left to the shader name. When you press it, new info pops in the bottom part: In this example, I activated the "Vibrance" shade, that makes the colours pop more. In the bottom, new setting specific to each shader will be visible. Each shader will have different settings. They enable you to change how they affect the game. After selecting all the shaders you want to use, click on "Performance Mode", bottom right. This will "unite" all shaders together, which should reduce how much power from your pc it takes to use. if you want to edit/add/remove etc shaders, just uncheck "Performance Mode" and do whatever you want to, but check again after. All should be done by now. There are a few others things in the ReShader, but these are the fundamentals. If I forgot something, I will edit this post. The following images are just a small compilation of the capabilities of this, to either make the game better looking, or something unique and fun. Have fun modding. And a small note, careful with the amount of bloom. Keep switching "Performance Mode" on/off to see how it affects the graphics. Memes: Edges only: Borderland/Anime outline: Blur and DoF: Several graphic shades:

Typically, they send the person back to the respective community manager, which is me or Maciek. Yes, sending anyone to support is more or less a copout from me because I know it's not gonna gelp most of the time. But such is the procedure. In some very specific cases, support can ask the community team to revert a decision. It's still my call in the end, but I will listen to them and adhere to their recommendations because I respect them a lot. This did happen in the past, but like twice in total over the five years I'm around, so you can imagine how rare this is. What also seriously (and I mean seriously) influences the outcome is also the way the ticket is formulated. Like Komi said, we generally tend to not ban people unless they are long term trouble. And even then, if someone sends me or Maciek a PM about somethng, I do read it and consider it. But the support guys and gals are human as well, just like I am. So I can guarantee you that no matter how justified your anger is at some decisions, if you rage in tickets, include profanities, start insulting Russians or threaten us with legal actions (those are our favorite), they will throw your complaint out of the window.

Yeah... no. "a history of prior infractions on both the official Discord and within the game." Sounds like that "one sentence" was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

We actually let rather a lot more go than we technically *should* per the strict interpretation of the rules, but a chat is like a conversation, and trying to run a by-the-book lawyer-type moderation is both obnoxious, and a near exercise in futility. As in, you really have to be a douche, generally, to get booted from the Discord. Typically we'll ask you to drop something, then if you don't, we'll take additional action. Bans are our last-resort option, and are issued quite sparingly. A short-duration mute of a day or so is much more common.

I'm gonna read through this discussion a bit later, it's very interesting. One thing caught my eye though, the TD vs LT discussion, so a quick response. These articles are meant mostly for non-high-end players for kinda obvious reasons. First, players who can truly see the consequences of some choices are very rare. Second, most players who read these articles are average (by the very definition of the word). Hm that sounded a bit weird, but you know what I mean. My point is, for most players, you gotta define expectations first, because that's the starting point where the opinions will come from. Most players do not think in shades of grey, they think black and white, or, more specifically, black or dark grey (black with some leeway) and white or light grey (white with some leeway). So, in this specific case, defining TDs as snipers is an important aspect because it ensures that players will try to first play them as snipers and then move towards the grey zone when they find out this isn't working all THAT well. Likewise, defining LTs as flankers is important because while the same players will start that way and then gradually move towards the TD role. The reality is that both classes basically occupy more or less the same niche of "second line fighters". TDs (excluding some weird shit like BMPTs) are better at longer distances, LTs at shorter ones, but the truth is that the role of a "flanker" is a fictional one, at least for LTs. LT flankers are a myth - they don't work because the maps are too small. So what you have instead is something like faster "marksmen" and less agile and more fragile "snipers". But, if you describe it like this to wider audience, we're getting to what I described above - players don't think in scales of grey, they think in absultes. In other words, they will understand "kinda the same" as "totally the same", which it is not, there will always be nuances, either in different characteristics or indirect ones (for example, TDs don't typically carry ERA, which is pretty significant given the upcoming changes). Getting really deep into these statistics and rebalance, you'll start discovering some really weird shit, such as the Type 16 is effectively a wheeled Light Tank and a better LT than some other LTs to boot, yet it must retain its old class because it would completely mess the basic narrative of the game - when all vehicles are the same, it will become incredibly difficult for new players to orientate (and yes, we are getting new players, every day). There were thoughts about merging LTs and TDs into one class (FSV), but this would be REALLY complex. Right now, every single TD and LT has its seprate table in developer files where its battlefield role and intended gameplay is described. In other words, we're not cutting legs to fit the shoe, we're changing the shoe size to fit the leg - or, we're assigning classes to fit the vehicles based on how we want them played, not vice versa. I guess the TLDR of it all is, you'll see what happens. We all will (that's why I am specifically avoiding giving any numbers because when everything changes, listing specific changes makes no sense).

I really still feel like they have put themselves in a spot where they (the devs etc) can't directly nerf OPhelia since that would hurt their business, but she is so toxic that they also cannot leave her unchanged. This is a hard problem to solve, one of the worse solutions could be just buffing other commanders to be on OPhelias level. However if we would want that is a second question. I believe this won't be a good solution, but I don't see what else would not screw over all people who bought her

Yes, you're right on that one.

That's a Lieutenant. Yeah, they have bonuses to pretty much everything.

This is something I always advise to people opening a ticket. It costs nothing to be polite. And honestly if I was working for support the other stuff would go straight into the garbage bin.

As a supportive member of the AW community, I feel it's my duty to help celebrate others' successes, and console people after failures. It's all in the spirit of helping people.... it's the best I can do after all the help the community has given me. Would never even dream of such a thing. Vide supra. DVC, QR

Without seeing the actual messages you posted, is hard to know the exact reason you got banned for. But, what I can say is, we still don't know, in more detail, what they exactly gonna change about each tank. So, imo, calling it a nerf this early is questionable. Some tanks will get nerfed, while others will be buffed. And, as for calling it wot2, I have seen some people getting the ban hammer lately for saying similar things. From the few times SS said something about it, everyone is tired of people calling the game WoT2.0, so they just ban or mute, even if somewhat unfair(within reason, of course). But, like I said, there are already players crying about the changed and the devs still have not released the exact stats.

Thanks for being brave enough to post the first replay. The commentary here has been very helpful on my end - I suspect the challenges you face are actually common problems. Yep, we don't get respawns in RL... you have already noted that AW tactics are different from RL armor tactics, so perhaps that distinction will help you here psychologically. Death in PVE is not as tragic as death in PVP thanks to the respawns... the limit of 2 respawns in PVE helps control the credit losses. Thanks to free ammo and not using consumables, I have yet to have a negative credit balance at the end of over 1000 PVE matches (even playing badly, using 2 respawns, and no prem time or boosts), so I doubt there is actually a situation where you would lose credits under these conditions. YMMV if you are using consumables, as noted by Haswell in his F2P-from-scratch experiment, or if you totally go afk. Because there are no real deductions for XP (aside from afk penalties) that would make you negative, you are protected there. So now the question is when to go for the respawn. #1, it depends on your economic objectives... if you are trying to farm XP (to progress a vehicle), the respawn can only help you, as there is no risk to the XP you have already accumulated. If you are trying to optimize your credits-to-XP ratio (saving up for an expensive upgrade), you are still OK if you have a higher tier tank you can play in a later match (which could earn you enough credits to make up for the respawn even if you didn't play well.) If you are just trying to grind credits, then you have to factor in the opportunity cost (vide infra.) There is also optimization of credits/hour or XP/hour, but if you are willing to play the game over the long haul, maybe that's not so important. IMHO, there's no economic problem here that can't be remedied by playing a few more matches :-) So the opportunity cost works like this - how much more damage can I inflict/repel in the remainder of the match? If everyone else is about to cap, or there's not much time on the game clock left, then there's not enough opportunity to get another hit and create XP / earn credits. You also have to figure in the potential distance from whatever spawn point you might get, and the mobility of your vehicle. (Rather than memorize respawn points and probabilities, just estimate the time it takes to drive halfway across the map.) If you're in a zippy TD/AFV/LT, there's a better chance of getting back into the fight than if you're in a T3 Chieftain. The other opportunity cost is if you burn up all your respawns, you are permanently dead, and miss out on XP/credits for the portion of the match you view from Valhalla. In scuba diving we have the rule of thirds - use a third of your air supply to descend, a third of your air supply to surface, and keep a third of your air supply in reserve for unexpected problems. With 2 respawns you have essentially 3 vehicles for the PVE match, so I usually think about taking a first respawn without too much guilt as long as there is good opportunity. On the second vehicle once I am down to less than 50% HP I might consider playing more conservatively if I think it will prolong survival, realizing that if I get ambushed, I still have another respawn left. Looking at the even bigger picture, if a respawn allows you to experiment a little bit or discover something new, then the credit cost is simply a tuition expense. If you learn something from each time you get blown up, then the respawn will pay for itself in the long run. I am in southeastern US with Spectrum cable internet and have 110-140 ping, depending on time of day, which is fine. At peak times (~1700 Eastern) I have had lags going out to 300, which is not playable (time for a coffee break). I think 120-130 ping is decent unless you are shooting at rapidly moving targets (drones, helicopters, UAVs).. then you have to lead more (like shooting skeet or sporting clays). The other time I notice is when multiple players are shooting at the same tank, and their shots land a bit ahead of mine. If this happens frequently in a match, I'll select targets that have lots of HP left, and let others finish them off. Thanks to @Baron and respondents for this thread. Learning a lot! DVC, QR

What did you actually say? I doubt you got banned over a single comment, unless there's something I'm missing here.

I'll partially disagree with your first point. The Leo 2A6 isn't a well-armored vehicle in a Tier 10 match, so he needed to be at least somewhat conservative. My play style is very similar and I do just fine, so I don't think he needs to dramatically change his style. That said, I got the feeling that you weren't using your mini-map to keep track of targets. There were several occasions where you took fire and retreated, but then warily crept forward looking for the tank that shot you even though it had already been destroyed by a teammate. The battle record and mini-map help a great deal in this regard. Something that I noticed when he was firing at the Anders is that his reaction times were slow. There were numerous occasions where he had a green shot that should have done full damage, but didn't pull the trigger and then the Anders turned giving him an orange shot as he fired. Ammo is free... if the reticle is green pull the trigger! In addition to what TeyKey said, I would add that you're too close to the rock on your left. If you were farther up the road to your right, this position is a nearly perfect hull-down position for MBTs. You can sit on the road with only your turret showing and shoot at the incoming enemies. However, in this particular situation caused by the power of your teammates, getting that hull down position is a bit of a waste of time because you just don't need it with that much firepower on your team. ASSUMING your teammates stay close and are ready to nuke the enemies as they rush your position at the end of the runway! If your teammates run off, then you very well may need the hull down position even on a powerful team. I'd say that the others were being too aggressive, and if they want to play that way more power to 'em. I tend to use either the same spot as Baron Georg, or the spot behind the bush that's behind the friendly Anders. That second position gives a small amount of lower hull cover, but doesn't have as good of an angle into the target area so it's a trade-off. That said, you do want to start moving as each area "ends" sooner than you do. You're the slowest vehicle on your team, so you need to anticipate movement from point to point and get started before everyone else. That's about all I can see that TeyKey didn't already cover. The recommendation to shoot drive wheels when presented with the side of an enemy is particularly good. I don't think you did poorly, really, you were just out-classed damage-wise on that particular team. It happens. I can only imagine! That kind of intense training never really leaves you. It varies. That's more-or-less correct in that the Leo's armor isn't top-notch, but MBTs also generally have the most health on the team and that also serves as an "armor" of sorts. You can be a little more aggressive in a Leo especially when facing bots that fire HEAT, because the Leo's armor is generally very good against HEAT rounds. It's hard to say for sure, but it seems to me that they've set it up so that you can easily respawn once and still get a benefit from the match. I carry (and regularly use) Field Rebuild Kits, and those are more expensive than the 1st respawn yet I still almost always earn positive credits. It generally requires the use of a Field Rebuild Kit in a loss to not make any credits. I would love to have your ping, mine is usually 160-180 from the West Coast of the US. 120 is plenty good enough for PvE.

havent watch the replay. But your teams vehicles are better than your Leo as Teykey mentions. Last picture : Dont use autoaim, use auto aim only if if you are useing fast vehicles with autocannons and you are circling them. And remember dead bots are nice cover, use those to push forward so you get all that juicy spotting scores. If you use autoaim alot it will really affect your scores in a negative way. So stop rightclikcing tanks and start to manually aim yourself.

Allright, let me try to provide you some Feedback @Baron_Georg I don't have a shit ping as you do (I don't know how it feels to play at such a high ping), so some stuff I'm pointing out might be ping related and therefore hard to fix. Feel free to ignore my advice in this case. First of all, as this is a PVE match, we have to look at the team composition before the battle starts. It's already evident, that you're quite handicapped with a Leo compared your teammates. The Obj 640 is a very capable MBT with high dpm. You're no match to this guy damage wise no matter how hard you try (as long as the player playing it is equal or better than you). The same goes for the Hunters. Those should've basically dominated this battle damage wise but they didn't really, all the better for you. Then there's the Anders which has higher damage output than your Leo aswell. Based on this at the start of the battle you should already be aware that (as long as your teammates are at least OK players) you can't excel in damage in this game no matter how hard you try. Which means on the other hand to perform good you need to farm as much assist damage as possible, all while doing as much damage as possible too. To farm as much assist damage as possible in an MBT in PVE you should do the following (You should in general try to do this, no matter the team composition): Get close to the bots, keep them spotted as long as possible, try to give your teammates a reason to stay behind and sniping the bots spotted by you. This means you should try to stay at the speartip of your team to reach such positions before your teammates. If your teammates are constantly in front of you or besides you you won't farm any spotting damage at all. Try to track the bots with your shots as often as possible. Important: Don't trade damage for this. Damage is always better, but if you face bots showing your sidearmor shoot the drivewheel or tension idler wheel to track them and deal damage. Damage to bots tracked by you always count towards you assist damage no matter who spots the vehicle (exception is if the target is marked). As a rule of thumb if the bots keep targeting your MBT instead of everyone else you're doing it right. Ok. Let's get to the battle. In general You did OK in my opinion. As described above you were quite handicapped with this team composition. There's still some stuff I'd like to point out: Some points I've noticed: You're playing too cautiously in your MBT. It hinders you from farming assist damage. You bounced quite often on the Anders with HEAT. Try to have a look at its weakspots in the LFP. You're turning your turret in unnecessary directions (especially on the last cap) when looking around. Lock the turret with the right mouse key while looking around, it can save you some time while shooting at a target without the need to turn the turret halfway around your vehicle. In the last cap you were driving into cover while reloading. This is fine but you returned to your firing position too late which always made you loose some seconds. The bots were not trageting you at all in this situation. Return to your firing position when you have roughly 3s reload left. It gives you enough time to select your target and fully aim in so you can shoot right on time when the gun is loaded. Here you use the terrain as a cover, which would be very good if there were much bots rushing this position. However here you're facing only a handful of bots and you've got the support of the whole team to finish them off. In this situation you're rather hindering yourself with this position (tough it's a good position to bounce stuff, just not practicable in this situation) you're struggling to properly target the enemies due to the terrain. In this situation I'd push up to the marked bradley wreck and use it as a cover for your LFP. Here you can see aswell that there's no way you could farm any assist damage in this position due to the team basically staying on the same spot of the map. Here you're playing way too passive. Use your MBT's armor, play agressive. You should be at the position of the hunter with your MBT. In this case the anders and Hunter probably would've stayed in the back to farm the damage while you spot and deflect the damage. It seems like you're always in the last row of your team which you want to avoid. Keep moving and try to not get overtaken by the other players. In the last cap You were aiming for rather bizarre spots. In both cases you get to shoot the blank sides of those bots. Why do you aim at the center mass of the vehicle when there are a lot safer spots to deal damage (purple marked area) without risking a bounce or miss? Additionally to farm the maximum of assist damage, it would be best to shoot the drivewheels (marked green) of those targets to track them while dealing damage. The targets are basically screaming for you to do this when you get to shoot them this nicely from the sides. That's what I observed while watching the replay. Hope this helps. Regarding Freja as a commander: You can use her on MBTs but I'd recommend you to skill her to something like this. Her accuracy skills are in most cases useless for MBTs.

best rename it to "baron_georg.awr" or something like this. Then paste it into the folder where your own replays are stored. somewhere in users/savedgames/armoredwarfare/... Then open up the game and in the Dossier tab go to history. Now important: On the top right switch from "Match Results" to "Replays". There you should find his replay and be able to run it.

The trick to knowing which ones you can double up on and which ones you can't is to look at the icon/image of the retrofit. If the icon/image is the same, you can't double up. If they're different, you can use both. This is why you can use an accuracy refit, an aim time refit, and the level 2 refit that gives you both level 1 accuracy and level 1 aim time. That 3rd retro has a different image than either of the others, so even though it duplicates both of their level 1 versions you can use it with them.

While I agree that increasing ERA effectiveness is a good idea, I hope they nerf the sides of some MBTs as well, since that would encourage smart positioning (for MBTs) and flanking (for AFVs, LTs). Currently, it seems the sides of MBTs are incredibly inconsistent; some are incredibly weak (Type, K2, etc.) while others are extremely strong (Chally, XM, etc.). I'm fine if some MBTs are better armored than others, but there are several culprits whose sides are unreasonably trolly, even without ERA (CATTB, I'm looking at you). That should be the sweet spot, effortlessly/consistently punish lightly armored campers/snipers while bouncing off (the fronts of) better armored (and/or angled) opponents at longer ranges. Agreed 100%. Or just give people free reign to TK camping MBTs... Of course, one solution is far more reasonable than the other. I find most of this reasonable. However, I share the same concerns as @TeyKey1 regarding the ammunition of TDs. While I agree that gun TDs should be powerful at range, I don't believe their weaponry should surpass those of MBTs. Instead, more interesting/dynamic ammunition types and pre-/post-penetration effects should be explored. Personally, I think PELE is in a great place right now. Far from its previous manifestation with ridiculous spalling and internal damage, it currently rewards accurate fire and intelligent targeting of modules, crew members and weakspots. My proposal for an improved iteration of the current gun TDs would involve a new mechanic, where TD rounds impacting within a certain [relatively small] radius of a previous round (from the same gun TD) would encounter decreased effective armor thickness and/or cause additional internal damage; resulting in a higher chance to penetrate and/or cause module/crew damage respectively. Such a design would emphasize and encourage the effective use of gun TD accuracy. While the penetration of the gun/ammunition would not change, skilled TD players would be able to target and deal damage to even well armored opponents (MBTs), especially those who are camping/immobile. Of course, such a mechanic would need to be implemented, and who knows if the dev team and/or the engine would be capable of such a task/feat. I also mostly find this to be reasonable. However, I'm concerned with several vehicles who are already armed with some of the best missile systems in the game, but who are also armed with some incredibly effective alternative weapon systems (*ahem* T-15 *cough*). These outliers will definitely need some form of compromise to properly balance their potential effectiveness. As for LTs, I can only hope that they do not extensively nerf their current capabilities. Of course I'm biased (as I main the PL), but I genuinely believe LTs are properly enjoyable to play in their current form. The current dynamic(s) between and playstyle(s) of the LTs from tier 7 - 10 are rather distinct and diverse, which definitely satisfies me. Let's consider tier 10: K21 XC8 Greater [sustained] DPM Better [overall] gun performance Significantly more camo Slightly better mobility PL-01 Better protection Greater [burst] damage Slightly better view range Infantry (sniper) Here we see two different LTs, one suited for active mobile sniping, while the other is more of a sedentary passive scout/fire support. Allowing for choice and/or player preference results in both vehicles having their supports/detractors. Ultimately, LTs are in a decent place as they are right now. Perhaps I would slightly buff the M8s, reclassify the Sprut-SD as a LT and buff the PL's DPM to at least compete with the Anders (and/or Type 10). I also agree with @TeyKey1 in this regard. AFVs are already very capable in their current forms, but many players are unable to extract all of the potential from this specific class of vehicles. As I've mentioned before, AFVs should emphasize vision control and mobility while also being equipped with weaponry suitable for hit-and-run attacks dealing sizable amounts of damage (in bursts). Many of the AFVs currently in AW can already claim to serve this function, although some excelling in certain areas more than others (of course). Instead of developing additional mechanics for an already complex class to play, I would suggest overhauling the assist damage system and it's subsequent rewards. If vision control becomes a viable (or encouraged) role/playstyle, players will naturally gravitate towards the class(es) which benefits from it most. This is perhaps the most perplexing and difficult dilemma to resolve. There are numerous outliers within a predefined "class" whose abilities and/or playstyle are either distinct or a hybrid between two (or more) classes. The classification of these vehicles are certainly a challenge, and I am interested to see what sort of solution/compromise the team can reach. Personally, I'm fine with the Terminators being classified as TDs, since their weaponry is perfectly adequate in an anti-armor role. They just so happen to feature autocannons which are rather effective against thinly-armored targets as well. However, to better balance/classify these vehicles as TDs, I would suggest decreasing the DPM of their autocannons, perhaps equipping one gun with the AP belt while HE belt for the other (as IRL)? An exception to this rule would be the T-15. Aside from its ridiculous over-performance, the T-15 is also technically an AFV, as it features infantry. Consequently, should the T-15 retain its infantry, it would most likely fit a hybrid TD/AFV classification. As for the Leopard 1s, I don't see any better solution apart from classifying them as a LT or perhaps a hybrid LT/MBT. Perhaps such a change may be accompanied with a couple of adjustments to the vehicles themselves (to better suit their "new" class)?

Brit-Crusader has a bunch of videos : Heroic videos mostly Sphinx play : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgAtz55LlwVNrSqlqMeIRmG3lNfGtTY6y Spec ops insane : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgAtz55LlwVM9w6UF7vvZUinlFUncyaui Brit crusader : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWflzehv5EurReBA0eBE58w

Yeah we are working on player settings for this (surprised they aren't finished yet) and it looks like something got borked along the way. Should be fixed soon.

So a question I haven't been able to figure out the answer yet. How does the AI prioritize it's targets? I feel I'm always the target, regardless of what I'm driving. As soon as I'm spotted I'm the target. I can be playing a heavy MBT, a light sneaky td or anything in between. I can be the first, up front to be spotted, which makes sense I'm then the target. But if I'm late to the party, fire something, and as soon as I get spotted I am enemy of the state number one again. I thought it was damage output, then i thought it was light armor, then i thought it was being lowest tier. I have failed to see any consistency, apart from it being me me me me. (which does flatter my egocentrism, but also my napoleoncomplex) I think I figured out that if there is multiple targets shooting something and you don't they leave you alone. That's about the only thing I could really test and confirm. But at the same time. I can shoot a tank once, it turns to me. It then takes 100 shots from something else before it starts turning their way, and as soon as I fire again it's back to me. So once again it feels it's me first, rest later. Disclaimer; obviously there is some confirmation bias here, but I'm genuinely curious how the targeting prioritization works.

But let's get real here, if mortar is not a problem arty shouldn't be a problem as well... Not that this won't stop the crybabies. Mortar can lob shells over more buildings shoots faster and is automatic... I mean arty has the incoming shell indicator, so this should be warning enough? You just need to move when you see it. Then again I haven't really played glops yet, so we will see

Honestly double-tap guns and missiles need to be nerfed as well. They were balanced via lower damage per shot at first, but now they got their own form of power creep, hitting for 1k per shot. Getting instantly hit for 2-3k HEAT is enough to delete non-MBT vehicles and is most assuredly not fun. The worst offender is again the CATTB. Insane armor + speed + sight + 2-3k instant burst in one package? Ugh.

We are aware of the potential "another York" or "lol ATGM spam" problems and will balance the vehicle accordingly.

Making a new theme is free, just takes work on my part because I have to edit all the colors manually. There are quite a lot of colors to edit as well, so it will take some time. I'll mess around with it some more, but this will take a while.

It might not be the tier 3 version of the Malyutka. iirc, the ZBL-08 gets a Chinese derivative of the Malyutka and is fairly effective at tier 6. looking at the wikipedia entry for the Malyutka, we could end up with a number of variants: The Malyutka we currently have in-game at tier 3 appears to be either the AT-3A or AT-3B, meaning we could see any of the AT-3C variants (460 or 520 pen, possibly with a better modifier against ERA) or the devs could completely go off the deep end and give us AT-3D with 800mm (or more, and possibly with a tandem warhead) of HEAT pen at tier 5.

Nope. Those are only the "keys" to the last enigma mission set. So you need to complete all three normal mission sets to obtain those coordinates and additionally reach level 50.

I feel like they don't have the dev team to be able to balance for 2 modes, so we will have to do with the same balancing for both modes. That said I indeed feel like they should make a way to make ophelia still good in PvE, without keeping her as broken as is for PvP based modes. If they actually manage to do this, I have no clue.

Yes, correct

If they want new players, make the game better to play in, not a game that looks or sounds better. After all... good looking shit, or nice sounding shit, is still shit....

While a i think better sound affects would be great, i disagree that better sound affects would attract a shit load of new players,

Kek Maybe we shouldn't have brought discord here

I didn't notice this much for the Abrams :-6 I was grinding away at the T6 M1, thinking that the T7 M1A1 would give me more joy with a 120 mm gun. Instead, with stock M1A1, I lost my HEAT, had less mobility, and the 120 mm was still a popgun against the bots that just got better at penning my cardboard armor. Sigh. I understand why a little overlap between tiers is a good thing, but the cyclic backtracking upon tiering up is probably another reason why someone might be tempted to abandon the progression game. [Obviously not a concern for those who buy into premium vehicles that are already fully upgraded, and understandably this may be the chief reason to retain the revenue from premium vehicles after the rebalance.) I don't know... for me, low Tier vehicles are a key to sanity. Yeah, you're not printing credits, but the fun factor provides a good relief from grinding. I like going back to the low Tier stuff, just because there is a certain fun factor there that isn't quite there in the higher tiers. Reload times are shorter, the upgrades are cheap, the vehicle classes are pretty distinct, and there is less spread between vehicles of the same class. Kind of like what the utopian upper tiers should be after the rebalance (haha). I wonder if the graph would more properly reflect the game if the power spread in the lower tiers was narrower than in the upper tiers. Of course, it could be that the power axis is logarithmic, in which case T10 is truly hosed. :-)

That's covered in my graph. The solid red portion of Tier 10 goes farther to the right than the solid red portion of Tier 9. The best Tier 10s would still be better than the best Tier 9s, and so on all the way down the Tiers. All I've done is make it so that the best Tier 10s wouldn't be dramatically better than the best Tier 9s, because one of the desires of the rebalance is to make it so that people play more tiers in each game mode. If Tier 10s are dramatically better than Tier 9s even after the rebalance, then nothing will change. People will continue to only play Tier 10s unless they have some external reason (like grinding to advance) to play a lower tier. Oh I don't think it needs to be nerfed. Playing one in PvE shows that it isn't the vehicle that's a problem, it's the bot programming. Bot LT vehicles seem to get specific bonuses (or perhaps just more finely tuned AI) for targeting and potentially pen, which the PL-01, Anders, K21 XC8, et al use with annoying reliability. And while I don't believe that they actually get a bonus to VR, in practice they have a VR advantage because there are more bots coming at you from multiple directions than there are players. So in the hands of a bot, the PL-01 is pretty damn potent. But it's only in the hands of a bot, so if a correction is needed (and as much as I hate the damn thing, I don't think one is needed) the way to do it would be to change the AI coding.

Hmm I feel like everyone is looking over one glaring little issue, the fact that there already is a massive gap between t6 and t7... And to not make this a baseless claim let's give an example, for example mbt pen, and since I am lazy take the leos. The t6 leo2av has 500mm pen, the t7 leo2 has 700mm pen (both fully upgraded), where else do you see such a jump. Between t7-8 it's 100mm (again for the leos) and after that 50mm pen buffs. Since the armor at each tier is based upon the highest pen values at a tier (or at least it seems that way) you can see that t6 armor is absolutely garbage when fighting t7s. So unless you get the side you can just not pen your t7 counterpart as a t6, while you often can in other classes. Or in some cases just lolpen turret cheeks as a t7 fighting a t6. (This happened to a m1 abrams while I was in a lec proto). I feel like this issue is about as big as the high tier inbalance... But I do agree this is only really an issue in PvP based modes. That said, I feel like t10s need something to offer which is better then the same tank at t9. I feel like the difference should be made smaller, but not how it's in your graph knutliott. Because then where is the reward after grinding your new shiny t10? I feel like a t9 should be able to deal with a t10 if the player in the t9 is more competent, but I feel like it should not be a level playing field. But hey this is just my late at night rambling, so it might not make any sense at all

I hate that tank in PvE. God I hate that tank. You can't see it until it's too late, and it auto-pens basically anything it shoots at. Every 2 seconds. And it has troll armor. PL-01 is a higher priority target in PvE than a T-15. T-15 sucks because if it surprises you you're dead, but if it doesn't surprise you it's pretty easy to mitigate. PL-01 is kind of the opposite - it kills you slowly enough that you have time to pop smoke and try to hide, but then it's still out there and you can't mitigate it. It's going to pen you as soon as it can see you, so you just have to hide until a teammate takes it out. Anders and K21 can be similarly annoying, but they don't have troll armor or insane camo so aren't as bad.

Do you like old or new Evangelion better? No one is allowed to like the remakes

Kon!

Cool place yeah :)

I'm assuming you haven't done Heroics before then? Wait till you encounter a Defender variant, that'll knock your socks off :P

I ran into him this weekend. He played the game of stupid with me. He crested a hill and started to back up but since he had to be in front of me the ENTIRE match so far, I let him have that position except he tried to back up into me. I came to a full stop. Since I didn't "know" what was going on I stayed right where I was and he got Bradley'ed to death. He thought he would "get even" with me until I side stepped an incoming missile volley after popping smoke and he ate both of them. Its the little things I live for....

Right now bots want to hit hull LFP more often, but as a result they more often hit the ground, leaving the gun and other turret stuff undamaged if you position the tank properly. Hull down position? Hide LFP ? Profit.

It is possible to use ReShade to implement a fairly seamless 3rd person zoom. This makes vehicles without native sniper view (ahem, arty) more pleasant to play, since it will be easier to hit distant targets with direct fire mode. Different vehicles also have different zoom levels in the game for whatever reason, this magnifying feature is a somewhat crude method to bring parity between low zoom and high zoom vehicles. Definitely has potential for good gameplay enhancements. Note that before ReShade the magnifying effect can already be done using nothing but Microsoft Magnifier (which comes with every single Windows installation since Win98), but it is clunky to use and suffers from input lag. ReShade has zero input lag, but the image quality suffers a bit.

Welcome and enjoy your stay.