knutliott

They won't. The Sgt York only has low-mid 400s in AW vs 3,000 in real life in AA mode (and the DCA has low 500s in AW vs 1300 in real life). My guess would put the Shilka somewhere in the 600-800 RPM range depending on other factors like pen and damage. The T-249 and M48 GAU8 have RPM a little under 4k and a little under 5k RPM respectively in AW, but those are gatling guns. 100mm is actually not too far off using AW's alleged 10% improvement per tier calculation. Working backwards, 150mm at Tier 9 would be ~93mm at Tier 4. But the T249 is 37mm vs the Shilka's 23mm so maybe 80 or 85 would be more appropriate for the Shilka.

The DCA is probably a better comparison since the York actually has usable armor. So maybe up the RoF to ~700 (my DCA is at 510 as currently equipped) but drop the damage to 22-23 and give it around 100 pen like MK said. I said before that I thought 20 damage sounded too high, but I was thinking even higher RoF than this when I said that. My DCA has ~16k sustained damage at Tier 5... these numbers would give the Shilka ~12k sustained damage at Tier 4. If it then also had the clips as I suggested above it'd be pretty cool and unique.

1) Yes! I liked the concept of this event, it just didn't work so well in reality due to the way the queues work. Even so I still managed to play through 4 of the 6. 2) No, if the queue times were decent (they wouldn't even have to be instant) I'd probably play through this event over and over a couple of times in an event weekend. It's a fun event. Even if this were always available, I'd likely play it periodically simply because it's fun. I usually enjoy Spec Ops missions more than PvE missions, but that could be due to the fact that I've played every PvE mission so many times that they're practically rote now. 3) TL;DR I'd rather have both. It's a difficult call for two reasons. First, the rewards aren't currently the same and it would depend on what "the same" meant. Does that mean the same on a per mission basis, or the same on a missions per hour basis? Remember that there's well over a minute of "wasted" time involved with every mission just to join the mission and get connected, do the 30-second countdown, and then exit back to the garage at the end of the mission. If you add in even a small amount of time waiting in queue, the "wasted" time per mission approaches 2 minutes. So "the same" can't just be based on time spent in mission, it has to include all that wasted time also in order to be valid. Second, I believe that I currently prefer Spec Ops because the Spec Ops missions are less familiar and ergo more fun. That said, they're also much more channeled and so would likely get boring faster. I think it would be interesting if PvE gave better rewards of one type while Spec Ops gave better rewards of another type. Just as an example, PvE could give better XP while Spec Ops could give better credits. Bluntly, that's just user error. There are 10 PvE maps active at any given time, and it's trivial to get to play all of them instead of the same 3 or 4 over and over. All you have to do is wait for the next mission instead of insta-queuing as soon as you complete a mission. And if you use Haswell's queue tracker twitch stream, it's even easier because you can plan which missions to play when.

Yeah I didn't really think there would be a lot of discussion in this thread unless other people also knew tidbits about how the queue works. It's mostly intended to be information to help people understand that those numbers a) don't mean what people seem to think they mean, and b) are typically pretty optimistic.

T-249 Vigilante and M247 Sgt York both had real life RoF of around 3000 RPM (in AA mode, significantly less in ground mode), so the Shilka with a combined RoF of 4000 should have a higher rate of fire than either, not lower. If it's going to be Tier 4, I'd give it 200-round clips but let the player control how many shots are fired in each burst. I.e. it fires until the clip runs out or you let off the mouse button. It's not a gatling gun, so no "spin up" delay and no minimum burst. Then a reload, then repeat. RoF should be higher than Sgt York, but damage per shot should be 50-60% of Sgt York at best. I'm thinking 17-18 damage tops... 20 sounds too high to me with the RoF this should have. Pen should be sufficient to maul any same-tier soft skin or the rear of an MBT, but incapable of penetrating the front of an MBT. I don't recall armor values at Tier 4 well enough to pick a number, but yours sound like they might work.

IIRC the Leo 2 Evo never had an unlock token. Side progression vehicles in general never had them, at least as far as I can remember.

Could we get this split into 2 topics? The original topic that I created, which was meant to educate people about what the queue times actually means (so that they hopefully don't get quite so annoyed about it), and then a new topic for the discussion about this event? I don't feel like the discussion of this event has anything to do with the topic I created, but it is a valid topic so deserves its own thread.

I really enjoyed playing Caribbean Crisis, Black Sea Incursion, Arabian Nights, and Moscow Calling through in order. Queue times were a couple of minutes for most of those matches, possibly has high as 7-8 minutes during Moscow Calling. So long queues, but not interminable. It was fun to get the story re-told to me in real time, so to speak. Unfortunately I hit a brick queue wall after Moscow Calling and was never able to get even one mission of American Dream. I was also a little bummed to discover on Sunday that War Games is only Friday-Saturday. I assumed it would run all weekend... I probably should have read the announcement more closely. So I think the concept was great. It was just queue times that caused problems, and I don't really have any ideas to solve that.

I finished Caribbean Crisis, Black Sea Incursion, and Arabian Nights last night. So I'm about to start Moscow Calling some time later today and will see how it goes. I don't personally think that MC4 is all that hard, but I know that it's a blocker for a lot of people. You'd think that anyone doing it now through this event would have played it before and should know what to do... but I guess the first 3 are easy enough that complete newbies could get carried to MC4 and have zero awareness.

I see people complain about how inaccurate the queue waiting times are, and it's almost always because they don't understand what those numbers actually are. There are a couple of key things about them that people might not realize. 1. That's historical data, not a prediction of how long you're going to have to wait. In other words, that's the average amount of time that people had to wait for some number of games prior to yours. And as they say in the stock market, past performance is not an indicator of future gains. 2. Since the last person to join your team gets in instantly*, that number actually underrepresents the wait time for most of the people on the team. So if it's saying a 4 minute wait, that's for 5 people or 20 total "wait minutes". But those 20 total "wait minutes" were actually only shared amongst 4 of the 5 players, so the average is really 5 minutes for those who have to wait, not 4. 3. It doesn't take into consideration the mission you're on. If you're queuing for Spec Ops, that's just the average time that people have waited for Spec Ops in general. If there's no one else queuing for your mission, you're going to sit there a lot longer than that average wait time. 4. And lastly, it ignores people who wait 10 minutes and give up. Those 10 minutes waited just disappear... they don't get added into the average. * this is usually the case. Sometimes the last person had to wait for a search restriction to relax, in which case the last person also added to the total. But usually the last person gets in instantly.

The average costs in Battle Coins of the last 2 purchasable reward tanks were 50k and 62.5k. That's what it cost to get 50+5 crates, and that's roughly what you expected to need in order to get those tanks (BROsat and Hunter). Which means the next purchasable reward tank will likely cost at least 62.5k Battle Coins. If their goal is really to make the next BP similar to Enigma's Legacy then there's really no need to increase the price. In fact they should actually lower it, because we received other things - notably +900% BC Boosters - from the EL crates that actually reduced the net BC cost to acquire the Hunter.

T9 Lecarry tonk WTF K21? Et tu, ATDU?

If you couldn't see your target (i.e. it was invisible due to camo) when you hit it, the damage doesn't register in-game but it does count after the match. That usually the reason.

I think it's pretty clear that the MGS1128 should still provide an unlock token. It looks like they were trying to clean things up a bit and over-did it at Tier 8. Notably, I still have unlock tokens available from both the Centauro 120 and the Centauro 120 Wolf. Since when do Premium vehicles provide unlock tokens? (Since forever, in this case.)

An option to have either a 2nd launcher or an autocannon might have been nice, though that might have just made it even more obvious how OPAF the Terminators are. If the theoretical 2nd launcher operated independently of the 1st - meaning it could reload while the 1st was firing and vice versa - then it probably would have been good. They could even be set up as separate weapons with separate ammo loads, and that you'd have to toggle between them to use them just like you currently do with the missiles and the AC. The more I think about it, the more that sounds really cool.

No, they contain random Tier 6+ premiums. You can get really lucky and score a Tier 10 out of them, but usually it will be a Tier 6 or 7 or maybe an 8.

What I'm hoping is that the map of PvP/PvE locations is fixed. The other requirements/restrictions aren't nearly as important. I.e. the goal is to determine the best route to take to Skin X if you only play PvE (or PvP).

Right, but the re-roll can only change the add-on requirements, or so I thought based on the information available. For example it specifically said that it can't change a PvP mission to a PvE mission or vice versa. That implies that the mission itself may not be variable, just the customized requirements such as the vehicle or dealer, in which case the basic missions might be fixed the same for everyone.

Does everyone have the same map, but each person's variable requirements at each point are different? I.e. if I have a mission (I'm totally making this up) at a particular intersection that says to destroy 200 bots in PvE using a Marat Shishkin vehicle, does that mean that everyone has a destroy 200 vehicles in PvE mission at that intersection but may be required to use Zhang Feng instead? I ask because if true, it might be very useful to publish the map as it is revealed for people so that those who have no chance at finishing can at least work knowledgeably toward one or two rewards that they might be able to get to if they push for them. I.e. what's the best route to take to get to the T4 skin if you don't want to play PvP? That kind of thing.

Okay this was worth preserving.

I assume you mean the Chinese AFT-10? If you have played the M113 Hellfire, it's pretty similar. They both have devastatingly powerful offense, and weak to non-existent defense. You'll be in it for the damage, so don't try to get kills. Trying to get kills is how you get them sniped out from under you (because the missiles are slow). Fire at targets you probably can't kill, but from which you'll get full damage from hitting. Occasionally, someone will also fire at your target at roughly the same time and you'll get a kill by accident. TDs, LTs, and AFVs are your targets. MBTs have too many defenses to reliably pen, so unless you have a safe side or rear shot there's not much point in shooting them. 250k damage won't take you more than 20 missions, and will probably take less. It could take you as few as 10 missions - that's only 25k damage per mission. These missile boats do amazing damage if that's what you're concentrating on doing and aren't worrying about getting kills. Hit 'c' to reload often. Don't wait until your magazine is empty, because that'll just mean that you're sitting around doing nothing for a long time. Emptying your magazine is a good way to miss an entire wave of enemies while you're reloading. I don't use Rashid even though I have him. I find that I prefer the same commanders for missile boats as I do for any other TD. Usually Erin or Juan Carlos depending on whether or not the vehicle in question has enough base VR to make Juan Carlos useful. If not, then use Erin and just stay hidden in back and bomb away. Last tip: learn to lead moving targets. Lead the target and guide the missile in from the target's front. Don't rely on the missile's agility to track and keep up with the target's movement, as missiles often can't track well enough to hit a moving AFV or LT.

I agree - just as you've written it out it sounds a lot better than what happened, even though it is in essence exactly the same in the end. The key difference is that your proposal would have been up front about the fact that you're not getting a ZTQ-15 as part of the Anniversary celebration, just some loot boxes to reduce your cost by some variable amount if you want the vehicle. It would have made it up front about the fact that the ZTQ-15 is just another loot box sale, albeit one with a turbo-boost as part of the Anniversary celebration. It's a subtle difference, but it really is important and I don't think anyone at AW understands either the difference or the importance.

Understood in both cases. But it's still ridiculous, especially since most people can't easily put together 5-man platoons every day for 30 days straight. Because even putting together a 5-man platoon every day for 30 days straight means that you still have to do 15-20 missions per day for everyone in your platoon to get it done (because there are 96 missions, not 60). And that's assuming that you platoon with the same 5 people every day so that you're working together. Random platoons each day will have different mission needs and so working together may not be as effective.

And this is really the crux of the issue. This was supposed to be an Anniversary celebration, yet a fairly high number of players are coming away from it disappointed. That doesn't make for a very good celebration. Yup. I understand that AW needs to make money, but loot boxes are a predatory scheme. They prey on people who are susceptible to gambling and are a generally shitty way for a company to make money. The problem is twofold: making money with lootboxes is trivially easy, and enough people will stupidly buy 100's of $$ or EUR or GPB of them to keep the company going. In most games it works out okay for everyone else, but AW seems to be so lazy that they're gearing everything toward the "whales" or "wallet warriors" or whatever you want to call them. Which makes the game less appealing for everyone else, and the sad fact of the matter is that the whales need the FTP players just as much as the FTP players need the whales. One group (the whales) provide income for the company, while the other group (the FTP players) provide the community that is absolutely necessary to keep a game going. AW still tries to coerce people into playing game modes that they don't want to play, and still sets up very basic, very obvious money grabs. Both of those practices suppress the FTP community. I'm sure AW would try to say "but we have lots of players" but that's obviously not the case. PvP and GLOPS are only available for maybe 6-8 hours a day due to the lack of population. Even PvE queue times are starting to climb... they're still good because they're measured in seconds, but they've doubled over the last several months at least during my gaming hours.

30 days to do what looks like 97 missions (est based on 10x10 grid, replace center 2x2 with a single mission), and the mission goals for Normal look like they take at least ~10 matches each? Fuck that shit. That's 30+ missions per day, every day, for a month.