knutliott

Awesome job guys! These are fun to watch. :-)

Negative posts will always outnumber positive posts because people who feel spurned are far, far more likely to bitch about it. Based on past events and what I've seen - meaning data, not bitching - about this one, my guess is that you may have had as much as a 50-50 shot to get the ZTQ-15. I suspect that it was probably lower than that, perhaps around 25%, but it's difficult to tell. Either way that's lower than past Battle Path crates where the bell curve seemed to peak at about 50 crates and 3 sigma was between 40 and 60, but it does seem like it's a reasonable interpretation of a "fairly decent" chance.

Well it is October, you know. That's the Halloween Zombie font.

Way back, they gave us each 2 free Object 640 crates. The first one I opened dropped the tank, so I kept the other one. I'm now on my 3rd "page" of crates in inventory, because I keep at least 1 of every type of crate that I get. Or at least I try to... I think I've accidentally opened all of a crate type once or twice. But for example I still have really old crates that were just "random chance" drops for the Object 640, T-14 152, et al. And of course I still have Steel and Bronze crates. It's fun to look through them once in a while. By the way, the "extra" crates also drop parts of special crates. So you should have been able to create 5 special crates and then have 9 parts left over. That's where I ended up (except that I only opened 55 crates, so have 5 crates left and 4 special parts).

I don't buy crates either. These were free from the Anniversary event. I got about 1500 gold from the first batch of rentals that dropped, but haven't sold the 20 new ones yet. Should get around 2000 from these since I don't own some if them. You've missed 2 days, but luckily you have 3 opportunities left.

Got the final 35 creates. For the record, at this point I had 19 parts from the first 15 crates plus the first special crate. I was also sitting on 5 special crate parts, which was to be expected having opened 15 crates so far. First 10: 7 parts, 4 useless stupid 1-day rentals Next 10: 5 parts, 6 useless stupid 1-day rentals Next 10: 6 parts, 5 useless stupid 1-day rentals, ONLY 9 SPECIAL CRATE PARTS Next 10: 13 parts, 5 useless stupid 1-day rentals Last 5: ... wait, what? Check again. Yep, still have 5 crates left. I'm now sitting at exactly 50 parts (19 from before, 31 from this batch of crates). I have 44 Special Crate parts, 39 of which I just received by opening crates, and I already used 10 from the earlier 15 crates received to build (and open) 1 Special Crate. WTF? Okay, forget the 5 remaining crates for now, let's build the 4 Special Crates that I can build. First Special Crate: 50 parts. SMH. ZTQ-15 achieved. I still have 5 crates, 3 Special Crates, and 4 parts of a Special Crate. I have no idea where the 10 extra crates came from. I wasn't paying that close of attention to what was dropping other than to count the parts and rentals, so it's possible that the drop that was supposed to be the 45th Special Crate part was instead 10 extra crates. In fact, that pretty much has to be what happened as nothing else really makes sense. Wish I'd noticed it so that I could have taken a screenshot! Anyway, ZTQ-15 looks pretty cool and I can't wait to dress it up in the Roman skin this weekend!

They do. I'm not sure why, but they definitely do. Or at least did... I haven't actually tested it for some time, but I tested it by checking my ownership bonus, then activating a rental, and then checking again after the rental expired. The rental added to the bonus and that added bonus did not go away when the rental expired. I have something over 20 rentals in my "Reserve" list for exactly that purpose.

Looks like 2 extra days, unless I put it in my calendar wrong when the event started. It was going to end at 02:00 Pacific on Sunday morning, and now it's going to end at 02:00 Pacific on Tuesday morning. What's weird to me is that I've already seen people talking about getting their 35 crates, but that isn't possible for me. I can't complete Stage 8 until 5:00 pm Pacific tomorrow, and I haven't missed a day yet. There were originally 36 "days" in this event, though the last "day" is only 9 hours long. (It was going to start Saturday evening at 17:00 and end Sunday morning at 02:00. It now starts Monday evening at 17:00 and ends Tuesday morning at 02:00.)

So... still worse ATGM performance than the Terminators. The Terminator 2017 has the same missiles, but on that vehicle they're 4 seconds between shots and 24 seconds to reload 4 missiles. The Stalker should be 2 seconds between shots and 14 seconds to reload to be comparable. (Or 4 and 12, to be even more comparable.) And as a reminder, the Stalker's gun is significantly worse than the same gun on the Terminator 2000, too. I.e. the Stalker has worse missiles than the worst Terminator, and a worse gun than the worst (different) Terminator. It's the worst of all worlds.

You can have as many Commanders as you want, at any time. The only restriction is supposed to be on Commanders over rank 10. Until you have 2 Commanders at rank 15, you must leave one Commander at each rank from 10-14. So that's where the "7 Commanders" thing comes in - you need at least 7 Commanders in order to get 2 Commanders to rank 15... 1 left at 10, 1 left at 11, 1 left at 12, 1 left at 13, 1 left at 14, and then the 2 at 15. As soon as you get your 2nd Commander to rank 15, you no longer have to leave Commanders at ranks 10-14 and can advance the ones you originally "left behind" and get them to 15, too. Or you could advance a new Commander to 15... whatever you want. Basically once you get 2 Commanders to rank 15 all restrictions are removed. The Commanders that you pay gold to obtain can not ever be advanced, but they're Rank 10 and so count as the Commander that you need to leave behind in order to build your ladder to rank 15.

My second set of crates (+10, 15 total now) brought me from 9 parts to 19, and that includes 5 received from the "special" crate that I assembled. I received a ridiculous number of useless, stupid, 1-day rentals. In other words, I'm averaging less than 1 ZTQ-15 part per crate, and 5 per special crate. Yes, special crates drop a minimum of 3 ZTQ-15 parts (as opposed to 1) and cannot drop useless, stupid, 1-day rentals.

Ah, yes that's exactly what happened. I found them and have now moved them to reserve where I put all rentals so that when they're expired they're not cluttering up my garage. And I presume that's also why I didn't receive notification of the K21, because I already owned that vehicle and so did not receive it. Thanks for the clarification.

Weird... my in-game message only said that I received a Type 96B and a VT5 - no mention of the K21 - plus the 14 days of Premium and the 5 Platinum Battlefield Glory boosts. But in inventory it was even worse than that - I did not, in fact, receive a Type 96B rental. At least not a 7-day rental. It's possible that I received a 1-day rental because I now have 2 of those in inventory, but I have no 7-day Type 96B and no 7-day K21. I do have a 7-day VT5, but can't say for certain that it just arrived. It may have already been there. I also can't say for certain whether or not I received the 14-day Premium or the 5 boosts. My totals for those look familiar, which makes me think I did not receive those. So if you have not already picked up your free gift, make sure you get screenshots of your totals before you get it and open it. I get the feeling there's something wrong with it. I for sure did not get a message saying that I'd received a 7-day K21 (and yes I checked to make sure that it wasn't just off the side of the screen and needed to be scrolled to).

I guess not? Or, more likely, this is a bug. But at any rate, that's one of the reasons to use base damage for comparisons.

I don't play GLOPS so I don't know the meta, but I'd be surprised if there aren't non-premium meta vehicles at some tiers, especially some of the lower tiers. But of course that would mean that you'd have to be able to get a GLOPS game going at those tiers, and as I understand things that's challenging.

The Stalker's missiles are base 850 damage, but can roll up to 1100-ish. Best to use base damage for comparisons, though. Roughly 1.7k missile damage every 28 seconds (3 seconds intra-clip + 25 seconds reload) is hardly meme material. The Terminator 2000 has 4 x 920 damage missiles that have a 4 second intra-clip delay and then reload in 24 seconds. So 3.7k-ish damage every 36 seconds. 60 damage per second on the Stalker vs 100 damage per second on the Terminator 2000. Yeah that seems balanced. Not. Also, the 2A42 30mm gun on the Stalker does ~14,250 damage as I have it outfitted, but does ~21,375 on the Terminator 2000 outfitted the same way. That's 475 rounds per minute vs 713. Both are single-barrel turrets, and the Terminator 2000 has actually useful armor so can actually use its AC as much as it wants. Granted I don't have the 3UBR11 ammo for the Stalker yet, but that only increases pen not damage so should not account for a 50% damage difference. And the problem in all this is not the Stalker. The Stalker seems reasonably well balanced to me at Tier 8. It might be a tad fragile, but it's useful if you play carefully. It's the Terminators that are completely over the top OPAF. 50% better AC damage, 50% better missile damage, WITH useful armor, and its only arguable downside is that it doesn't have any camo? JFC man it doesn't need camo. The only situation I can think of where you could argue that you'd want a Stalker over a Terminator is when you need spotting, but if you need spotting you're not taking a Stalker either so that's pretty much a moot point.

Your first proposal is called skill-based matchmaking. AW had it for PvP for a while, and from everything I've heard it was horrible. At the very least it was bad enough that they discarded it and have said repeatedly that they have no plans to re-implement something similar. I also have experience implementing skill based systems, and from my experience they're much much more difficult to implement for multi-player games when some players can be grouped (i.e. platoons) while others are not. Your second proposal is somewhat more workable, provided the back end allows for it. The main thing to consider is that it absolutely 100% chance will slow down matchmaking. Some allowance could be made in this system to increase the rank of vehicles that are in platoons, but the reality is that this whole proposal only changes the meta, it doesn't fix matchmaking. The real problem with PvP (which includes GLOPS) is something that Flavio has said many times. If you're not using a meta vehicle every single time you play, you're hurting your team. You can complain that the other side had 6 x Type 10/CATTB/T-15/whatever the current meta is and your side didn't, but unless you were in one of those meta vehicles then you were part of that problem. Asking the matchmaker to "balance the teams" is another way of saying that you want the matchmaker to correct for your poor choice of vehicle. As I recall, and not including off-peak play times, there are basically always enough players to populate a match. Delays during peak playing times are caused by the matchmaker waiting for someone more appropriate to queue up, or for someone to have been waiting long enough that loosening the parameters makes them qualify for the current match. So unless I misunderstand what you're suggesting, this is already how the matchmaker works.

You just have to understand that they are glass cannons and play them appropriately. The problem is that this one in particular feels very much like a Terminator, but isn't even close. Stay back and play it as fire support and you'll do well. I think it's actually nicely balanced... the problem is that it exists in a world of Terminators and Marder 2s which are OPAF.

Just got mine today, and it's fine. I'm a little underwhelmed by it, but I think that's because it's the same tier as the Terminator 2000, Ramka-99, and Terminator 2017. Effectively no armor. Single barrel 2A42 30mm gun with 30 dmg 185 pen APDS. Good missiles (but only 2 and they have a 25-second reload). Camo is pretty good at 35%. View range is difficult to judge as I'm still getting used to the 0.33 view ranges, but it seems decent - I have mine at 465/535 with retrofits and Ophelia (who doesn't provide any VR with my build). 3 upgrades that you unlock via completing contracts - upgraded APDS (30 dmg 205 pen) at 50, radar active ability at 100, and upgraded missile rate of fire at 200. It really goes to show you just how OP the Terminators are. This is a Terminator 2000 with no armor and half the missiles (which - incomprehensibly - take longer to reload than the 4 missiles on the Terminator 2000), but with better view range and camo. And I'd always choose a Terminator over this because the improved camo isn't useful if you're using the 30mm, and the missiles are insufficient as an only weapon.

I like the Raider camo so will have to evaluate the Raid once we have more information. The skins are fine, but I'm not interested enough in any of them to actually participate just to get them.

You're forgetting to add the intra-clip delay. I don't have a Chally Falcon so don't know what it is, but without adding that you're not getting a true picture of its "OP-ness". Also as I recall it doesn't do partial reloads, correct? I.e. the reload is 18 seconds whether you've fired 1 shell or all 6 shells?

In my experience, all of the T8 MBTs are kind of soft, though I haven't played most of them since the patch. So this isn't really what you're looking for - I can only give advice based on 0.32. The best one overall (again in my experience) isn't a Premium - it's the Merkava Mk 3 Baz. The T-72B3 is also really solid, though you have to keep your enemy straight on front when playing it. Its sides are weak. The VT4 was also better than expected... "than expected" because the Type 96B is so weak armor-wise. Finally if you like the Chally style of play, the Al Hussein has stout armor. Gun is terrible, but the armor is solid - or at least it was.

You need 100 parts total to "build" the vehicle. You need 10 parts of special crates to build a special crate. Both "builds" are done from your inventory in the Goods section. Find the parts where they're listed and click on the wrench to combine them.

Since I hadn't opened my crates yet, I went ahead and did that. 4 x parts 5 x parts ASCOD rental Magach 7A rental AFT-10 rental Each crate also contained a part of a special crate. The rentals are stupid and I hate them. Like I have time to waste grinding a vehicle that I don't own. (And no, there's zero chance that a rental would ever convince me to buy a vehicle.)