knutliott

Super glad I didn't waste gold trying to get one last Eastern crate completed.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-msta-s NOV 20TH | 2020 Commanders! The final vehicle of the upcoming Battle Path will be the Soviet Msta-S Self-Propelled Gun. 2S19M2 Msta-S The Msta-S SPG was developed as a replacement to the older 2S3 Akatsiya. The goal was to match (or surpass) the newly developed NATO artillery pieces with long 155mm guns that were designed to offer enough range to keep Soviet infantry from actually reaching the front. The Soviets needed the same type of weapon in their arsenal. Adapting a long 152mm gun for vehicle use turned out to be a long process. The general development started as early as in 1976 with several projects running parallel, but the actual MSTA-S project was opened in 1980 and it would take almost a decade for the vehicle to see service. The MSTA-S SPG is based on a heavily modified T-72 chassis and is armed with a long 152mm gun, allowing it to fire at extreme distances (especially when using modern ammunition). The production began in 1988 and is currently ongoing with a modernized variant rolling out for the Russian military. More than 500 Msta-S SPGs are still in Russian service and dozens were exported to several other countries. It has seen some combat during the Second Chechen War and the War in Donbass. Even though the exact production numbers aren’t available, it is estimated that around 1000 Msta-S howitzers have been built to this day. Click the image to open a larger version In Armored Warfare, the Msta-S will be a Tier 9 Premium SPG. Indeed – it will be the first vehicle of this class to be introduced in years. We’ve decided to add a new vehicle of this class partially because some of you have been asking for one, but also because we are planning to finally return SPGs to the Global Operations mode, making them useful in PvP as well as in PvE. This change will happen at some point in the near future (not necessarily with the launch of Update 0.34 though) and will be permanent. As for the Msta-S, it will be about what you’d expect. As is customary with SPGs, it will have poor mobility and practically no armor whatsoever with only a 7.62mm machinegun being available for close combat. Click the image to open a larger version What it will have, however, is a long 152mm gun (no magazine, 8 seconds reload time) capable of firing two types of HE shells (apart from the usual White Phosphorus and Smoke ones, of course): Standard shell (300 m/s) with high trajectory that will make it easier to fire at targets behind cover Fast shell (600 m/s) with low trajectory that will make it easier to fire at moving targets (but not over obstacles), available via additional Battle Path progression Otherwise, they both will have the same properties similar to other high-caliber and high-Tier HE shells: 50mm penetration 1200 points of damage per shot The faster shell will also come with a special ability of nearly instant switch, so you’ll always have the option to immediately choose, which shell suits your purposes the best. Click the image to open a larger version We hope that you will enjoy this Self-Propelled Gun as well as the entire Battle Path and, as always: See you on the battlefield! Read: tracked Centauro 155 with less maneuverability but 2 HE shells. For reference, the Centauro 155's HE shell is 400 m/s, 55 pen, 1298 dmg, and reloads in 9 seconds.

Yeah, at my rate of play I've found that I never want to spend coins early just to progress. Get as far as you have to in order to unlock the easy stuff, but then just stop spending. There's nothing useful in the intermediate levels, so until you have all the coins you need to go directly to level 40 this time you should just hang onto them. That way if something interesting pops up for a limited time, you have the BC on hand to buy it. It normally takes me at least 2 months to get the coins for level 50, and it could take 3 months depending on how much time I have to play. I'm in no rush, I just want to get all of the prizes by the end of the event.

I'm not quite sure what this means. Does this mean that the Shop has a random selection of goods that you can buy, and those 5 items automatically "re-roll" periodically, but that for 300 Battle Coins you can force those 5 items to re-roll at any time? Note that 300 BC is a not insignificant cost - that's 12-15 missions playing PvE. In some ways this is a good thing, but I do have a major concern if the above is accurate. If the re-rolls are random, and there's one last item that you want to buy, you might have a really difficult time getting it to show up in the shop if you have to rely on random re-rolls. TL;DR - random rewards are bad. Question - does the Biohazard camo work with base paint? I can't tell from the pictures. I really hope so, otherwise all those base paints we've acquired are less useful.

This is a pretty good list of the maps in Armored Warfare. https://armoredwarfare.gamepedia.com/Map The maps listed in the left column are the full-size PvP versions so they're not 100% useful for PvE purposes, but the links in the right column contain the mini-maps for the PvE missions. I'm not sure how useful these will be for finding good spots, but they can at least get you familiar with the map so that you can come up with possible ideas for spots that you can then look for the next time you do the mission. Sometimes you just have to spend time driving around in a mission to see where the sight lines are, but when doing so be careful of random spawns!

MBTs don't need to be the "MMO tanks" of AW, but they do need to have a defined role. As do the other vehicle classes. And those roles need to be balanced. Without defined roles, some vehicle class as a whole is going to be too good or not good enough. Right now MBTs are pretty clearly too good because they can basically do everything and honestly don't need to have any other vehicle class on the team at all - 5 x MBT is by far the best "single class" platoon that you can put together, rivaled only by 5 x Terminator which is really an OPAF class by itself.

But you could make the same argument about the player that's just trying to grind out a vehicle to get it done: They're intentionally taking a sub-par vehicle into a match - which affects everyone else in that match - simply to complete an objective that only matters to them. And if they do that in a match where Haswell is just trying to get this stupid 10x mission done as quickly as possible, that may result in a loss and that means Haswell didn't get his objective completed.

Whatever gave you that idea? Most PvE missions can be soloed by a good player, or at worst duoed by a couple of reasonably competent players. The ones that can't be soloed/duoed require only the barest minimum of input from some other teammate to complete. He's helping you in your quest to become a self-reliant PvE player.

The more I think about this the more I like it. In a way it would be just an aggregate total (i.e. get 50,000 spotting damage), but the amount of credit you would receive for a single match would be logarithmic. Laying it out like you've done would make that logarithmic progression transparent and easier to understand.

Agreed. But honestly, its opposite (the one where you have to kill infantry) is worse because there aren't enemy infantry in PvE. This mission was put in when they first put enemy infantry into Spec Ops, but it still shows up in rotation even though there aren't any enemy infantry to kill anymore (and never have been in PvE).

I may be the only person, but I like this. Super APS isn't as useful in PvE where you're facing overwhelming odds, but a 30mm coax sure will be!

You're talking real life. This is an arcade game. The primary role of the MBT in AW is to distract the enemy, soak damage, and generally be a nuisance in order to allow the primary damage dealers on the team to engage from safety. Yes, MBTs can also kill enemies. That's just not their primary role. The problem right now is that MBTs are too good at tasks that are not their primary role. To balance the game and give every class a reasonable role, the power of MBTs should be dialed back in the ways I've described above. Reward them for doing their job, but not for doing other classes jobs. (The same is true for the other classes - they should be rewarded for doing their job, but not for doing anyone else's job.) This is pretty basic game design theory.

I can see that. I guess there's no need to make it an MBT-specific bonus since the other classes probably won't be able to get the bonus often if at all. The real point, though, is to reward MBTs for doing their job. If you've ever played an MMORPG, "tanking" is a role in a raid where your entire job is to keep the attention of the monsters that you're fighting. If the monsters are attacking you, they're not attacking your teammates who are squishy and can't handle being attacked by a raid boss. The situation is similar in AW - the MBTs can handle being shot at by the bots, and so should be rewarded for attracting their attention. That gives the other vehicles a clear opportunity to do their jobs, which in the end results in a victory for the team. To that end, I would argue that an MBT shouldn't be given a lesser bonus for tanking AC fire, because that's exactly what you want the MBT to do. That AC could rip apart the non-MBTs on the team, so it is very much to the team's advantage to have that bot T-15 (or whatever) firing at the MBT instead of the M48 GAU-8. Remember that as I've proposed this, MBTs would no longer be getting spotting damage so it's actually okay for their "tanking" bonus to be fairly significant. But yeah, all of this would have to be tuned to encourage vehicles to be played to their strengths. The trick is to define roles and then provide bonuses for fulfilling those roles. You aren't required to play to the defined roles, but you'll score better if you do. Just to toss out some other ideas, you could also give a bonus to damage dealers for doing damage to a bot that's targeting an MBT. That's not explicitly a TD's job, but it's pretty analogous. TDs should be doing fire support damage to kill the bots that the MBTs are tanking. If they do too much damage and attract the bot's attention then their bonus goes away, which would be appropriate because the TD shouldn't be taking fire if at all possible.

The reason that players don't care about secondaries is that there's no reward for getting them. Everyone benefits equally if anyone completes the secondary, so you're better off killing bots while someone else spends time getting the secondary (or capping a capture point) than you are doing it yourself. That's why there needs to be an incentive - so that people will want to complete the objectives rather than just kill bots. And if there's an incentive for people to complete objectives, then it should vary based on the type of vehicle that should be completing that objective. MBTs are needed to complete the primary objectives, and should be rewarded for doing so. But if they're wandering around getting secondaries they're not doing their real job, and so they shouldn't be rewarded (as much) for doing it as someone who should have been doing it. The whole system needs to be rebalanced and retuned, and this suggestion is just one part of that needed retuning.

It is definitely not worth pursuing every premium that they produce. Premiums aren't required to play the game, and in fact most Premiums are pretty "average" for their Tier, so you should only pursue Premiums that you really want for one reason or another. 50 boxes almost assuredly will not get you the 40 parts you need. The ZTQ boxes have an insane number of rentals in them, to the point that it seems like you average half a part per box. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if you only get 25 parts out of the 50 crates you have. That said, the ZTQ is a damn fine Light Tank. I like it a lot... for a light tank. My problem is that I'm just not really a light tank player, so the fact that it seems like a really good light tank is kind of lost on me. Yeah, Battle Path Premiums are really the way to go. The first couple are practically free, and even the 3rd one is usually super cheap relative to its tier. If you just spend the $8 to get entry into the Battle Path, you're virtually guaranteed to get 3 Premiums out of it and 1 of those will be high enough Tier to be useful long term. The final prize and loot box Premiums are more expensive depending on how much time you have to play, but they're generally still good deals if you're careful to watch for Gold and/or Battle Coin packages over the course of the BP.

I provided my additional feedback in the "anything else you'd like to tell us" box. I hope I was clear enough in there that you understand what I was referring to with each point. A couple of things are worth repeating/adding, though. Balance in PvE does matter, and right now it's pretty bad. I get that PvP is more sensitive to balance issues, but according to your own numbers PvP is like 7% of the games played. It seems like you're spending far too many resources trying to appease a dying player base, and in doing so you're losing members of your dominant player base to the imbalances you're creating. I think it should be possible to complete PvE missions without having an MBT on your team, but it should be challenging. It should be possible for a dedicated spotter AFV to spot for a team without firing, and do reasonably well. Right now, though, that's not possible for a couple of reasons: 1) the maps are far too small and tight for a dedicated spotter to be able to function correctly, 2) even on those few maps when a dedicated spotter could work, view ranges are so close that someone else always ends up stealing the spotting damage from the spotter so the spotter gets no (or greatly reduced) rewards, 3) MBTs are able to play so aggressively that there's no need for a spotter in missions that have a reasonably good player in an MBT, and 4) spotting alone doesn't earn sufficient credit to get you a decent ranking in the after action report (AAR). I don't think MBTs should be able to spot for the team. That said, they should have a special ability that allows them to return fire against a vehicle that has fired at it. That way they're not sitting ducks, but they also can't steal the job of the spotters. I'd also like to see MBTs get credit for taking/bouncing damage, as that's kind of their role on the team. They'd get that instead of credit for spotting damage - get up front, attract enemy fire, and let your fire support teammates do their jobs. Some of the game mechanics are broken, or partially broken. For example, drones/helis/gunships/bunkers/etc count as misses when you shoot them, and the damage you do to them doesn't (uniformly?) count in your damage total. That's stupid, because you have to shoot them to succeed. Doing something that's required in order to successfully complete a mission should never be bad for your stats! That just encourages people to not do those things, and that's bad for a team-based game mode. Primaries and Secondaries should provide some small reward to the player who completes them, not just a generic boost to the entire team, and that small reward should vary based on your vehicle type. Capturing objectives (as Primaries) should reward the vehicles that sit there to do the capture. Right now it's more rewarding to rush off and find more enemies to kill than it is to capture points, so greedy players ignore the primary objectives. On the flip side, MBTs should not be wandering around completing secondaries - they need to be up front engaging the enemy - so any reward they receive for secondaries should be minimal. However it makes perfect sense for LTs and AFVs to complete secondaries, so they should get a nice little bonus for doing so. All of that is a long way of saying that goals and rewards should make sense. Right now they really don't because they're too generic.

Played a bunch of PvE yesterday (20+ missions) and didn't notice the T-15s being any worse than normal. Maybe the changes only really affect PvP? I mean, bot T-15s were already auto-pen due to the precision with which bots can aim ATGMs, so buffing them from 1200 to 1300 pen is kind of meaningless in PvE. The added damage isn't really noticeable either because it's pretty minor, relatively speaking.

That seems like an odd way to release them... people are going to be really bored with the 1st mission by the time the 4th one releases. Though maybe this will give them time to make the missions longer and more flexible?

That just means that squishies have to play smart rather than just rely on overwhelming dakka dakka. The maps look great, so I'm looking forward to see how this new Spec Ops turns out!

Note: I have an upgrade and Ophelia on my BMPT 2017, which is why my missiles show as 3.53 seconds. Their base reload within the launcher is 4 seconds.

I doubt it. 150mm pen AP will pen anything up to Tier 6 except an MBT through the front, and that's the highest tier it will face. 70mm PELE will pen just about anything from the side or rear, and will at least do damage to an MBT through the front, so that'll be your go-to ammunition. Maybe carry a few AP just in case, but my guess is you'll eventually switch to full-PELE loads. 50 kph and bad maneuverability will prevent it from completely ruining games... unless everyone else is too timid. The only way to beat one of these in PvE is going to be to out-run it and kill enemies before it can catch up.

BMPT Mod.2017 30mm AP shell penetration loss over distance brought to the same value as for other vehicles Delay between ATGM launches increased from 3s to 4s ATGM minimum damage dealt upon non-penetration changed to take armor thickness more into account (thick armor hits now do less damage) The vehicle no longer fires from both autocannon barrels at once ATGM penetration increased from 1000mm to 1100mm ATGM damage increased from 850 to 900 It's already 4 seconds. Wonder how they're going to screw this up now?

That sounds ridiculously fun... and ridiculously OP. I'm torn.

Interesting. With that rate of fire it's going to need much lower damage. People whine about the Sgt York with ~425 RPM and 50 damage. This is 8 x the RPM! Consider that even if this only does coaxial MG levels of 8-10 damage but with 85-100 pen, that's probably still over 20k sustained damage. At Tier 4. Even factoring in some non-pen shots for the gun's presumed low pen that's still probably 1350 damage from a 200-round clip in 3.5 seconds. ~1800 if every shot pens.

Nah, this looks at least somewhat functional. The Brosat terrible all around. Low rate of fire, low damage, meh at best pen (due to constrained ranges on virtually all maps), no armor... it's the worst of all worlds. 1200 pen missiles that do 900 damage is at least something. And honestly if it's a 12-second reload that's not awful fired paired. That gives you a decent chance of 1-shotting a Bradley. It's basically better than large-bore MBT levels of damage with better pen, with the tradeoff of soft kill being sucktastic.