knutliott

That's the thing, though. On Leviathan, and Leviathan only, you won't lose. The bots are so stupid on that map that the whole team can hang out on either of the Arty hills and just plink away until the game ends. There are a small handful of bots that will actually shoot at the rocket, but only a handful and not if there are any player vehicles detected. You can deal with them easily from either of the Arty hills. Most of the damage that the rocket takes is scripted when you fail a primary, but failing all of the primaries combined still isn't enough to destroy the rocket and cause the mission to fail. (And even if it was, you'd only have to do one of them to avoid failing.)

I'm still not certain how Assists work. (Not assist damage, Assists.) There are various rumors floating around, but I just finished a game that blows the most prominent of those rumors out of the water. The current belief seems to be that the person who does not get the kill and does at least 51% of the damage to a target gets an Assist. This is a fairly recent change (earlier this year?) because I can show plenty of old screenshots where there are more assists than kills in a game, which isn't mathematically possible under the current belief. Nowadays the total number of assists is always lower than the total number of kills, at least in PvE. But then you see a game like the attached. It's mathematically possible, but extremely unlikely that I could get 30 kills out of 36 tanks, do 60k of 95k total damage, and yet somehow there were 29 assists in the game. If the current belief is to be... uh, believed... then that means that the other guys did at least 51% of the damage to 29 of the 36 tanks while only doing 35k total damage vs my 60k total damage. I mean, I find it a little hard to believe (based on the way the game flowed) that they did more than half damage to any of the bots in that game. Maybe a handful, but absolutely no way it was 29 of them. So with this game as evidence, I think it's pretty clear that you don't need 51% of the damage to get an Assist. What I would believe in this game is that an Assist goes to whoever does the most damage but doesn't get the kill. Which means that a clean solo kill would not result in an Assist, and there being 7 clean solo kills in this game feels totally possible.

That's because on Leviathan you don't need to do anything but snipe the final cap. None of the primaries or secondaries matter - just sit up there to shoot and keep the few bots that actually do shoot at the rocket busy long enough to kill them. It's really a pretty stupid map. Great rewards, but stupid.

Yeah, it still works. I haven't pointed anyone to it this month, but I have done so this year and it worked for them.

Yes, these unlocks count missions from the next (and so on) Battle Path. I didn't manage to fully unlock my ZUBR PSP until I think the 2nd Battle Path after I'd earned it. I agree that it's a stupidly annoying mechanic. I suspect that the intention is to get people to play (and complete missions in) Battle Paths, but at least for me it just means that I discard the vehicle as underperforming until some random time in the future when I happen to stumble upon it again and take a look. The mechanic doesn't change my play at all, it just makes me think the vehicles are bad and unsatisfying as rewards. Same thing for the huge overprogression unlocks on tanks. 1.6M additional XPs to unlock Trophy on the XM1A3??? "Stupidly annoying" doesn't quite cover it. These are just bad mechanics masquerading as incentives to keep playing vehicles.

I've been experimenting with it and see its usefulness now. I realized that I was aiming at my "normal" AP spots on vehicles, and PELE needs to be aimed at different spots. I still basically don't use it against MBTs because in PvE there's almost always another target. The roof or front deck on an MBT seems to usually only do 13-15 damage per hit, whereas any other soft skin except a PL-01 or Anders is going to get you 35 per hit. When facing an MBT, just back out and find something else to shoot. Killing an MBT from the front isn't your job in an AS21. But yeah, now that I've remembered that it requires different aiming, I've switched to 1600 PELE / 400 AP as my loadout. That said, standard ATGMs on the Hunter is still going to be an upgrade over the AS21's top-downs. Top-downs are pretty bad in PvE, so in many situations the AS21 is a cannon-only vehicle. Being able to fire double-shot Spike missiles every once in a while should be a pretty dramatic DPM boost.

I don't use the PELE on the AS21 that often, so this mostly seems like an upgrade to me. I carry 1500 AP and 500 PELE on the AS21, and tend to 'Q' to reload when I run out of AP rather than use the PELE. On some maps when there are hordes of Bradleys or other soft skins, then I'll switch to PELE for the extra damage. But I don't find it useful at all against anything that has any kind of reasonable armor. (PvE only.) Having useful missiles will be a huge bonus, as the AS21's missiles take so long to lock and fire that targets tend to be dead before they arrive. And there are a frustrating number of vehicles that bounce the AS21's top-down missiles anyway, so the fact that you can't aim them yourself to go for a weak spot is really annoying.

Why not both? If you aren't completely out of credits, I'd do both lines. That way you can get the daily bonus on both lines each day you play, which is a huge boost to progress. Generally speaking, though, most people seem to prefer the multi-shot magazine SPGs over the single shot SPGs. The Tier 9 PLZ is vastly preferable to the Tier 10 Centauro (as is the Tier 9 PzH 2000), for example. I also prefer the Tier 7 PLZ over both the Tier 7 Palmaria and the Tier 8 Paladin.

I submitted an application in-game some time last week, so it should be in your queue. Edit: nevermind, now that I've logged in this morning I see that I've already been accepted. Woot!

Meltdown still shows up. I've seen it in the last month for sure, possibly as recently as last week. The time-to-play information that MK_Regular is looking into plays into it. Most map rotations have a tendency to settle into a particular rhythm based on the time it takes to complete each map. Even though there are always 10 maps in a rotation, you might for example always only see #2, #5, and #8 and then repeat. That's because those 3 maps perfectly fit a 30-minute rotation, so every time you queue up you're keeping to those maps. They're a "perfect" cycle. There are obviously 7 other maps in the rotation, but their play lengths usually seem to cause 1 of 2 things to happen: 1) there's a separate 3-map cycle that also settles into a perfect 30-minute rotation, or 2) the other maps show up once but then due to the length of time it takes to play them they toss you into the 3-map "perfect" cycle. Even when #1 is true, that still means the other 4 maps in the rotation caused #2 to happen. So when you get online and start playing, it's going to rapidly appear that there are only 3 maps available. To see more maps, you have to deliberately wait for the map to change and then play, and see if that breaks you out of the "perfect" cycle. But if you wait and that next map is Ricochet, which is extremely short, you're probably going to bounce right back into your previous rotation. Or if that next map is a long one - like Meltdown - you might skip a map in your rotation but then end up right back in it.

It's freakin' huge - like, noticeably larger than MBTs. It makes sense that it would carry more troops. AS21 makes mortars worth using. In PvE, at least, I think that mortar teams should always come with 2 and that the AS21 should get 3. Otherwise mortar teams just suck except for a couple of maps.

I believe they're randomly generated, so not everyone will have the same starting missions. But my understanding is that they're randomly generated using the above list plus randomly generated restrictions (vehicles, etc), so there's not going to be a ton of variety no matter what. I strongly suspect that the real point of the random restrictions is not to "provide variety" but rather to prevent you (or at least make it very difficult) from being able to complete multiple missions at once.

HEAT-MP with 189-891 damage is 540 average (730 with 35% bonus), yes? That... doesn't sound that great. Though I suppose 891 max does mean it could break 1k against soft targets.

Yeah once I found out the price to skip I decided to completely ignore this RAID event. It's just completely stupid. These are (allegedly) the PvE missions, apparently the PvP missions are very simliar. Deal 250,000 damage. Only matches with 1st place in damage ranking are count. Or deal 40,000 damage in a match and collect a Teamwork award. Destroy or help destroy 250 enemies. Only matches with 10+ kills/assists are count. Or destroy or help destroy 35 enemies in a match and collect a Teamwork award. Win 10 matches while achieving 80% accuracy in each match and dealing the most damage of all players. Or deal 30,000 damage while achieving 90% accuracy in a single match. Collect 10 Destroyer medals. Or destroy or help destroy 30 enemies in a single match while achieving 90% accuracy. Collect 10 Blue Star medals. Or obtain the Blue Star medal and the Teamwork medal in a single match while achieving 90% accuracy. Deal 350,000 damage. Each death of yours removes 50,000 points from this mission’s progress. (AFV) Deal 350,000 damage. Received damage is multiplied by 3 and then deducted from the mission’s progress. (LT) Deal 350,000 damage. Received damage is multiplied by 10 and then deducted from the mission’s progress. (MBT) Deal 350,000 damage. Each hit without damage deducts 15,000 points from the mission’s progress. (TD) Deal 50,000 damage. Only the matches in which you are amongst the 3 best damage dealers of your team count towards this objective. Or survive a match while dealing the most damage of both teams. First off, those aren't reasonable mission goals. At least not when you need to complete 6 of those every day. Those are essentially reasonable goals for weekly missions, not 6/day missions. Second, some of those goals include accuracy requirements. They've completely fucked over accuracy as a stat because any shot that's not at a player or bot vehicle counts as a miss. I.e. bunkers, pillboxes, infantry, secondaries... you know, things you have to shoot in order to be successful. My accuracy stat has dropped from the 87-88% back when I had 7000 missions to 75% now with 9000 missions. That's because I shoot pillboxes to help the team win. They've fucked up accuracy so badly that I'm now suspicious of people who have high accuracy stats - it implies to me that they're not team players and don't help complete secondaries, or shoot pillboxes/bunkers to help the team win. Ironic, isn't it? A high accuracy stat now means you're bad at teamwork.

I don't have the K2 unlocked yet, so this is speculation. I think there's more to the DPM consideration than just raw DPM and burst. What makes burst damage good is that it allows you to hide while reloading. For some vehicles that's not a big deal (read: Merkava 4M), but in others it is critical to survival. Since the K2 is allegedly on the softer side for MBTs, I'll wager that the burst damage will be more useful in PVE than you think. I find the burst damage of the Merkava 4M to be largely meaningless - it's useful at the start of each engagement, but then only ever reloads (for me) between waves or when moving on to the next capture point. During combat I'm simply firing the gun as fast as it reloads each shot, and that's not good DPM on the Merkava. But for something like the Stingray 2, burst DPM is invaluable. I can pop off a few shots and then hide in safety while I reload. Sure, that impacts my DPM, but DPM is zero when you're dead. I'm not sure why but I attract the attention of bots at a ridiculous rate*, so being able to hide and break sighting while reloading gives me more opportunities to pump out that burst damage. * like, I'm in my Redback following 2 teammates - a Termi 2 and a Hellfire - as we round a corner to ambush a bot PL-01. Termi rounds the corner and launches a missile at the PL-01; PL-01 doesn't respond. Hellfire rounds the corner and fires a missile; PL-01 doesn't respond. Termi switches to guns and starts firing. Still nothing. I decide to peek around the corner; PL-01 immediately shoots between the Termi and Hellfire to hit me, and it wasn't a miss the damn thing was staring straight at me and tracking me even though I wasn't spotted until I rounded the corner. This took 4-5 seconds in all, so if I was spotted I would have known before I rounded the corner. The bot just chose to prioritize me, even while hidden, over 2 players who were actively engaging it. And this isn't a one-off, it happens to me in some form in basically every game. /shrug

Since we have a general Spirithaven Megathread, I figured it might also be useful to have one to specifically discuss the Raid event. If I'm interpreting the screenshots correctly, there appear to be 96 rewards (confirmed by the center dot's tracker) and 176 missions. It's a 10x10 grid which would be 100 rewards, except that the center 2x2 is missing. Ergo, 4 missing rewards. That same 10x10 grid implies 180 missions, but because of the same missing 2x2 grid in the center the total would be 12 lower, but then they've added 12 missions leaving the center dot except that 4 of those are actually part of the center 4x4 grid. So 4 missions for 176 total missions. To finish that in 30 days, you'd need to complete 6 missions every day. And at least to me they don't look like missions that can easily be done in 1 day without a platoon of friends, and even with a platoon of friends they look challenging. And you need to complete SIX that way every day, presumably for all 5 of you in your platoon. I guess we'll see how much the tickets cost in gold, because it seems like that's the only reasonable way for 99% of players to get the final reward camo.

Yeah, it seems like a bit of a silly contest to me, in part due to the differences between PvE maps but also in part because the rentals that they gave everyone expire on April 1. So people who already own the vehicles get extra time to try to win the contest. w8wat?

Tiers 6 and 10 for PvE because they're top tier in their matchmaker brackets. Tiers 8 and 10 for SpecOps for the same reason. I also play some Tier 5 in PvE and some Tier 7 in SpecOps because they're not horribly out-classed for their matchmaker brackets, but for some reason I really don't play Tier 9 in either mode unless I'm grinding a vehicle or deliberately trying to do as many daily bonus missions as possible. Most (but not all!) Tier 9 vehicles just seem to suffer in both PvE and SpecOps, I guess because the power gap between Tiers 9 and 10 is so significant. Looking at my stats says that TDs and MBTs are my favorite types of vehicles, but I think that's skewed by 2 things - I have 3x as many missions in the RCR as in my second most played vehicle because I used it extensively to grind credits back when I was still trying to fill out the vehicle trees, so that distorts the TD number somewhat. And the game simply has more MBTs than any other type of vehicle, so if you've purchased and ground all of the vehicles you're naturally going to have more missions in MBTs than in any other type. That said, my preferred play style is fire support so I think TD probably is actually my favorite type of vehicle. MBTs and AFVs are probably tied for 2nd. The LTs, then last SPGs. I used to like SPGs a lot more (when they had utility rounds), but removing smoke and IR kinda ruined the class. Playing them as a derp gun just isn't that interesting to me.

I think you're being a little optimistic about Blue Star. I'm not the best player in the world, but I'm pretty good at PvE and I only get Blue Star medals about 33% of the time. Granted that goes up if I'm deliberately farming them in high DPM vehicles, but if that's the expectation then you might want to mention it in the notes for that mission. (Yes, it should be obvious, but as this is a guide it should probably be stated explicitly.)