knutliott

I have no idea what this means but I'm going to steal it.

I don't actually think that demonstrates an improved drop rate. Higher drops - like 25, 50, and 99 parts - have always been possible. They're just rare. It's entirely possible that you just got lucky with your 25. That said, the fact that Special Crates exist is a good sign. It means that most people will probably be able to complete the ZTQ-15 with 50 crates. And if the parts rate is actually improved, then it should be pretty easy provided you get all 50 crates.

It's a multiplier, though, which means the extra bonus feels more like 50% (because it's multiplied by the Premium Vehicle 200%) than like 25%. It's really a pretty huge advantage if you're trying to grind credits... it's like being able to run an extra platinum credit insignia at all times. I mean... it looks like you made that half a million credits without running boosters or insignias. Just with Premium Time. That means that optimized you could have made almost 1.2M credits. Which means that even without first win of the day, you'd be in the 900K - 1M credit range on every single mission, which is roughly 200K more than you'd make without the extra bonus. Since I make about 100k on a mission without any bonuses at all, I'd say that's a pretty significant improvement.

I agree that it's fine from a gameplay point of view, but it badly misrepresents what the vehicle was supposed to be and - unlike the Altay - they can't really rationalize it in in-game terms. The Altay should really be roughly Tier 6, but they've rationalized putting it at Tier 10 by saying that it's based on advanced prototypes and further includes theoretical upgrades that would have been added by this point in the future. But it's a tough pill to swallow to argue that future combatants would have taken AGDS turrets off of the M1A2 hulls they were built for and put them on M1 hulls instead. That... makes no sense. Regardless... yes, 15k DPM would be fine and reasonable for balancing purposes. That would make the range roughly 6k to 15k at Tier 10 IIRC. That can be balanced with negatives like you've proposed. But 29k DPM vs 6k DPM? That's silly to try to balance, especially as you've said when the 29k DPM is mounted on a well-armored, maneuverable chassis and has an unmanned turret that takes reduced damage. You could give Terminators zero view range it they'd still be OPAF.

The Object 640 gets an additional 25% multiplier to credits on top of the normal Premium Vehicle bonus, that's what makes it so special. That additional multiplier is treated separately, so it does actually multiply and not just add to the Premium Vehicle bonus. As far as I know it is the only vehicle that gets this extra bonus. Combine that with the fact that the Object 640 is a Tier 10 vehicle and you get a vehicle that really does print credits.

BH is really just a different kind of Premium vehicle. The preferential treatment in the matchmaker is hardly the main reason that you would BH a vehicle. Also, as already noted (and depending on the time of day you play), preferential treatment might never happen anyway. The matchmaker will discard preferential treatment in order to get you into a match, so if you're queuing for over a minute for something (IIRC) you're not getting your preferential treatment anyway. Where it can be nice, at least in PvE, is at Tiers 7 and 8 during off hours so that you don't end up facing Tier 10s in your Tier 7. The rebalance has also helped with that, but every little bit of help we can get for Tier 7s is a good thing. (If you pay for it, that is.)

So they mostly fix a major problem with a few vehicles that are OPAF, but missed a few instances (T-15, AGDS), so then decide that rather than fixing the rest of the instances they should just roll back the fix. No vehicle should have 20k+ DPM. In fact I think you could even lower than number and say that no vehicle should have 15k+ DPM. Either sustained or burst.

It kind of depends on where you are in the game and what you need to accomplish. Like dfnce said, the best way to use premium time, boosts, and insignias is all at once combined with an appropriate event. It's basically a waste to use any of the above alone because you're missing out on the stacking effect. Make sure you log in every day so that once a week you earn a free day of Premium time. Save that and only activate it when you have 2 x boosts (preferably one should be a Platinum Battlefield Glory boost or Platinum AW boost) and some appropriate insignias. Activate everything - premium time, 2 x boost, insignias installed on vehicle - and grind away! Also as dfnce said, Tier 6 is really the first "best" time to buy a Premium vehicle. Tier 6 is a guaranteed "top tier" in PvE, so those vehicles are good to have for grinding credits for the long term. My first was a VFM Mk. 5 and for a very long time it was my second most-played vehicle. Most played being my AMX-10RCR which was also a great credit earning machine. You can buy platinum Battlefield Glory boosts in-game from the inventory screen, but they're expensive. 300 Gold IIRC. You can also buy platinum insignias in-game from their inventory screen, and as I recall those are 8 Gold each. But remember that insignias are only good for one game! The implication of the math in that being that you should probably be planning to play ~40 games before you pay Gold for these boosts and insignias, otherwise you're not getting your money's worth. And it's definitely not worth buying them for Gold unless you have other boosts that you can use in the premium boost slot at the same time. Note that you cannot use 2 of the same boost at the same time - they have to be different in some way, either one gold one platinum of the same boost, or two platinum of different boosts. (Or whatever levels/boosts you have.) It's pretty easy to earn 10M - 20M credits grinding away in PvE for a day using the above, even if you're using a Tier 6 Premium vehicle. It's even easier in a Tier 8 or Tier 10, especially if you have the Tier 10 Object 640 MBT with its "special" additional multiplier that no other vehicle has.

Which are all just different ways of saying that the T-15 is OPAF and is the best vehicles for all of those situations. Nerf the T-15 and maybe they can then make challenges and missions more achievable by other vehicles? It still works on MBTs, you just have to get close and brawl. Which the Terminators are perfectly capable of doing, so you only have to resort to ATGMs if you're not willing to change your play style and adapt to the capabilities of the vehicle. Terminators used to be the best at any range. Now they have to get close to be the best, but they are still the best if they get in close. I agree that the 2017 is just fine in PvE now that its AC DPM has been halved. Same for the Ramka and Terminator 2. The only ones out of whack now are the Mod. 2000 and the T-15. And by the way, it doesn't take a Terminator to out-perform an entire platoon. Someone can pull up a screenshot of a crazy performance in just about anything. It's just more common in Terminators. Yes, that's why I said that if they do choose to nerf the AGDS's firepower that they would then need to rebalance its armor to its correct Tier 8 M1A2 level, not the current Tier 6 M1 level. The AGDS turret was designed to be mated to an M1A2 chassis... why AW chose to mate it to an M1 chassis instead I assume we'll never know.

Yes, good. And yes, get the Mod. 2000 and T-15 which I can only assume were missed, because it doesn't makes sense for either of them to have 2x the ROF of the others. And finally, I can't really believe I'm saying this, but if you're going to nerf all of the Terminators then you need to nerf the AGDS along with them. But if you do nerf the AC firepower of the AGDS, you really need to rebalance its armor to M1A2 standards which is where it should have been all along.

I spot checked using most of my other "still grinding" vehicles, and none of them have the bonus post-0.33. That includes the M1A1, M1A2, Leclerc, K2, and Leclerc T4 MBTs as well as the Hellfire's ATGMs. I also verified that the damage bonus is, in fact, being applied in-game. I can roll over 800 damage with these shells on the right soft target.

1 AFK in PvE is as relevant as 4 AFK in PvP. It's 20% of the team. My point was simply that - even as a whole - I'm not seeing the same number of AFK players as you claim to see. Expressed in PvP numbers, if I'm seeing 1 AFK in 10-20 games that's the equivalent of 1 AFK in 2-4 games for PvP. Not every game as you claim.

Leclerc Prototype OESS 120 F1 HEAT ammo still has a 35% max damage bonus. Looks like it has been removed from all other MBTs that I'm currently still grinding, though, including M1A1, M1A2, Leclerc, K2, Leclerc T4, and even the Hellfire's ATGMs.

I can't speak for anything but PvE, but in PvE the number of AFK players is much, much lower than 1 per game. If I had to guess, I'd put it at no more than 1 per 10 games and very possibly as low as 1 per 20 games. It simply isn't a problem in PvE.

Twin 30mm guns is pretty useless in PvE. Because 900 rounds lasts ~40 seconds. Hit 'Q' for another 40 seconds of ammo. The way I have it set up, the rate of fire is 669.5 rounds per minute. But the twin 30mm setup uses 2 rounds every time it fires, so 1339 rounds per minute. That's how you get that massive damage rating out of shells that do 18 damage each. 6 missiles seems useable in theory, but a 3-second intra-clip cycle plus a 40-second reload means it's actually pretty poor DPM. Plus they're Tier 3 missiles that fly all over the place if there's any soft kill anywhere on the map, so only having missiles is ... risky and difficult. So I like the base turret best. The missiles are useful if you pick your targets carefully, and the gun's ammo lasts more-or-less long enough to use for all other targets. But do prioritize using the missiles when you can or you'll still run out of AC ammo - both loads - before the mission is over. Even with the single barrel you still only have ~80 seconds of ammo for the AC.

It's a T5, so it can pair up with T6s. +/- 1 is normal for BH (and Premium) status. Also, eventually the matchmaker discards that benefit in order to get you into a match. It isn't a hard-and-fast rule, it's just a preference when possible.

This got me 2nd (I think? Might have been 3rd) in the AW Grill Contest.

Just played it in game, and it is both Premium and Battle Hardened. At last according to the end-of-match Details tab. Both sets of bonuses are being applied.

I noticed this also and asked about it in the Discord, and was told that it is just a UI glitch. It isn't actually Battle Hardened.

It's the crate vehicle from the event, so realistically most people won't be able to get it until basically the end of the event. Most people are going to need that last batch of 35 crates to have any chance at all, and my guess is that there will be a lot of people who still don't get it even with all 50 crates. Some few very lucky people could get it as soon as Oct 1 - they'll be the ones who luck out and get a full vehicle drop from one of their first 5 crates. I suspect that they'll sell crates after the event for the people who didn't get it out of the 50 they earned during the event. But anyway, that means the vehicle pretty much has to be done already because it's theoretically possible for people to get it as soon as the crates start dropping in 10 more days. Oddly enough, was platooned with someone last night who said that they already had the BVP M-80A. That shouldn't have been possible - you can't have completed the requisite number of missions until about an hour from now.

At one point SS said that your previous contract total would carry over after the Stalker crate is earned. We'll see if it actually happens, but if so then all of the angst is basically for nothing.

It is/was, but only if your weeklies were available. If you'd already done your weeklies and they were on cooldown for a week, then you were SOL. Mine were available so I spent the 350 Gold to complete my crate before the patch. But that was just lucky timing for me.

An interesting side effect of this is that it makes Javelins and other top-down auto-homing missiles better. They're computer guided so are pretty close to unaffected by soft kill APS, just like all bot-fired missiles.

Centauro 120 hasn't been a DPM monster since moving to Tier 9, but it's decent. I'd probably like it a lot more if the OPAF vehicles weren't around because in an actually balanced environment it's probably pretty good, but we don't have that even with 0.33 so it can feel pretty meh. Like dfnce said, don't get spotted. Definitely a sniping/support vehicle in my opinion. Haven't tried it with 0.33 HEAT - like dfnce, I have mine habitually loaded with AP and didn't think to swap it out. I'll have to give it a try, but I assume it will be as good as everything else with HEAT these days.

Because fuck you, PvE! PvE players have gotten too good at countering/avoiding the missile spam, but rather than fixing it and using more variety of opponents they just decided to make the missiles always do damage. Because that's totally reasonable when it's 35 vs 5!