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New UPDOT is up! ↑↑

Source: https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-artillery-overhaul Several comments and replies from SilentStalker on official Discord server: Regarding the potential burst damage from a 4-shot clip PLZ-05, "Well obviously that's going to need tuning. Like, removing the PLZ clip or making it more manageable." He turned down the idea of scrapping the class and relabelling SPGs to TDs, saying "TDs come with some design expectations, like high accuracy." (Side note: the idea of a class merge, specifically combining LTs and TDs into Fire Support Vehicle or FSV class, had also been rejected before) Having both indirect fire and direct fire modes is also a no-no, "Because we specifically do not want indirect mode in PvP." TOS-1M Buratino's 220mm rockets somewhat influence SPG's future direction It's not possible for SPGs to behave differently between game modes; "I don't know the details, I am not a programmer. But assigning more than two POV to a vehicle breaks the game." Overhaul is still at proposal stage, "right now it's basically a "we'd like that" stage, nobody started working on nit." "The change is not supposed to appeal to the players who are perfectly fine with the way it is. It's meant to appeal to other players who don't have SPG vehoces yet and maybe make them more active." "There are more reasons for the overhaul than that. For example, SPGs actually actively decrease low-Tier retention of new players. They decrease its average because arties now suck on most maps." The idea of changing artillery into direct fire only had been tested in Balance 2.0 PTS before: The results were apparently not up to expectations, and this idea was dropped. In Update 0.19 SPG as a class was limited to PvE only, and bot SPGs were removed from all existing maps at the time (Spec Ops was not out yet, as was Desert Path which had a chance to spawn an SPG in an off-grid location in relation to a specific secondary objective). Illumination (free spotting in a designated spot) and smoke shells as well as counter-battery pings (the ability to see the approximate location where an enemy SPG fired a shot on the minimap) were also removed. From an anecdotal experience, the SPGs' firing arc was greatly reduced, and the splash radius was also made smaller since then. SPGs were reintroduced to GlOps mode in 2020 together with smoke shells. White Phosphorous shells were added instead of illumination shells, but for some reasons they do not help reset cap in that mode (they should) as they would in PvE even to this day. These utility shells now have very high firing arc, almost mortar-like. At some time high calibre HE shells dealt tremendous module damage, and while this was a problem mainly associated with high tier MBTs, SPG also benefitted from this, but it was largely reversed for Update 0.35. Otherwise they more or less played the same since 2017's Update 0.19: relatively low firing arc, small splash radius, map/terrain restrictions, and generally low utility caused some players to re-adapt and play such vehicles in direct fire mode, and this is the direction that the developers are currently going for.