knutliott

I still have 5k coins to spend/squander today, but so far I've received: Shilka Kurganets-25 MSTA-S Khrizantema-S Object 195 T-55 Enigma (purchased, because why not?) QN-506 I also bought a few other packages like Premium time, insignias, and boosts, but not many of them. That's likely what I'll spend my remaining coins on later today. I get a free 10:1 refill at 4:00 pm and then a free full refresh at 8:00 pm before the BP ends at 1:00 am tomorrow morning. (I'm on Pacific time.) Shilka is good, but too low tier to be useful in any way. Enigma is weird and also too low tier to be useful, but I bought it for the silliness of it. MSTA is arty. You either like arty or you don't. MSTA is one of the better single-shot arties, but single-shot arties are generally inferior to the multi-shot arties. So... meh. Khrizantema is actually pretty decent. People write it off as a higher-tier Stalker that's missing its gun, but that's not true. The Khrizantema's missiles reload much faster, so it actually works as a missile-only vehicle. It's not memes great or anything, but it's perfectly serviceable. I actually like it better than the Stalker because a missiles-only vehicle is easier to keep hidden than one that has to use an AC to be useful. Kurganets, 195, and QN are all great fun and high enough tier that I'll probably use all of them. Huh? The 10M credit pack is something like 2650 BC, isn't it? And isn't the 1M credit pack 500 BC? Or did you spend 31.5k BC to get 100M credits? That's still a bad idea, but would make more sense.

Woot! Now I really am done with the BP, as I have less than 1000 BC left. Sure I'll spend those rather than waste them, but I can stop grinding to get refreshes.

I run reload, accuracy, aim time, and the accuracy/aim time combo on mine. It's a big, inaccurate, slow-ass gun, so cutting all three of the main combat attributes down as far as possible is a big help. Heroics requires dedicated spotters... and the 195 aint that. So don't worry about vision on it, as someone else will be spotting for you. Also don't hold your nose at the Khrizantema... it's better than it looks. People like to say it's a Stalker without the AC, but the Stalker's missiles and the Khrizantema's missiles are very different. The Khriz's reload is roughly 2/3 of the Stalker's... something like 12 seconds vs 18 seconds IIRC. I used mine for a bunch of missions when I had a combo of missions that was perfect for it - Tier 5-8 TD, HEAT dmg, 120+ mm dmg, and ATGM kills. Sure I'd normally use the Hellfire to do the latter 3, but the Khriz works just fine in order to do that TD daily at the same time. RNGesus is clearly taunting me now. I rolled the ADGS this afternoon, which of course I've owned since the storyline campaign. Also rolled a Degman, which is one of the few T8s available that I don't already have, but I don't already have it for a reason: it sucks. Next Tuesday will be the last-gasp use of BC. I'll have some number of BC over 56k to use to try to find a QN, but once I drop below 56k I'll just have to take whatever reasonable T8 pops up. Then I'll just be buying plat insignias, etc., until I run out of coins.

Ugh... missile performance at T5-6 is so unpredictable. I had a BP daily to get 150 kills in a T3-6 MBT, but wanted to continue working on the Challenges (HEAT dmg, 120+ dmg, ATGM kills) so I took an MBT-70 and loaded it up with Shillelaghs. Mother of god... 450 pen from a Tier 6 152mm ATGM? WTAF? There are T6 ATGMs with 800 pen! Bouncing one off of a fragile Pindad, Wiesel, or rocket jeep is just extra special.

MC 3, CC 3-4, and BSI 2-3 are all good. BSI 1, AN 1-2, CC 1, and MC 1 are pretty good. They're pretty structured, but the structure of them is flexible enough that you have options. AD really seemed to start the "all corridors all the time" meta and is where things really went downhill, in my opinion. AD 3 isn't too bad because you have options running back and forth between objectives, but it's too close quarters and frenetic to be considered good. Overall, BSI and CC seem to be the best Spec Ops to me. BSI 4 isn't terrible - I mean, how many options do you really need when your objective is literally to storm the castle? - and CC 2 has options even if the flow is pretty rigid. I'd probably like CC 2 better if it didn't still have a bugged achievement to this day, which I've completed twice but it has never registered. (Support acknowledged it, too, and said there's nothing they can do.)

Meh. These are far enough apart that I really don't think Achievement Hunters will suffer at all. I got all of the achievements (that I wanted) for Plague easily and I usually struggle to finish them. I skipped completing the "play Plague on Extreme 30 times" achievement because randumbs were terrible at it and I have a difficult time putting together platoons to do things. I don't like the corridor meta, and the Panama Canal map was already pretty tight. Flooding it is just going to make it a bad map, I fear. And then they say they're putting in some really difficult achievements? Ugh. And no, also-constrained "alternative routes" don't solve the problem, so Plague is a bad corridor map also. I get why they do it... their AI is terrible and can't handle players roaming free. Doesn't make it any better. Yeah, but most people get the 4 Horsemen wrong anyway so I don't really blame them for screwing it up from the start. (Plague is not one of the 4 Horsemen - they are Conquest sometimes also called The Conqueror, War, Famine, and Death.)

LOL... so after writing this I logged on and did a few re-rolls to see what I could get. Got another tank column Unique! Naturally it was the Tier 9 ZTQ-15 which I've seen before and of course already own. I need to play another 25-30 games to finish off a few more challenges which will then give me sufficient surplus BC to go on a re-roll spree. Maybe then I'll get lucky and find a QN.

Upgrading the chassis would give it better protection against autocannons, which currently tear it to pieces. (At least in my experience in PvE.) It doesn't brawl as well as any of the Terminators due to their unmanned turret and better maneuverability, so it has to be played like a tank but can't even really do that with its vulnerability to ACs. So you end up playing it like an unarmored fire support vehicle. Oddly, Terminators all seem to have better armored turrets than the AGDS too even though they shouldn't. Probably some quirk of hit boxes and non-critical components, combined with the fact that you feel any hit on the AGDS turret since it is manned. Note that having to play it like an unarmored fire support vehicle is a problem because the matchmaker sees that it is "armored" according to its seriously defective requirements, thus might be the only "armored" vehicle on a PvE team.

1. BC do not carry over. Use 'em or lose 'em. The boosters do, though, so that adds to the value of getting to level 50 as you pick up several along the way. Then again, I currently have 44 in stock because I don't often feel like playing for 2 straight hours just to get 2500 BC playing PvE, so YMMV. 2. It's very random. Some people have seen multiples, others haven't. I've paid some attention to the differences between the "columns" in the store, and I've seen multiple "unique" offers in every column except the BC 10:1 column where I've seen exactly 1. IIRC I've only seen a couple in the tank column... like maybe 2-3? All Tier 9. I've yet to see a Tier 10. 3. I'd say that depends. It's basically a T-14 with a slower reload (but more powerful single shot) and a single T-15 autocannon to use while it's reloading. Note that the Object 195's version of the autocannon has a clip, so it also has a reload. The rhythm is pretty steady though... fire the cannon, switch to AC, deplete the AC clip, switch back to cannon and you have maybe 1-2 sec to wait, then repeat. The Kurganets is easily the best vehicle from this BP in my opinion, but the Object 195 is second and it's not far behind. So it would depend on how much you feel it's worth spending to get a pretty good Tier 10 premium. The "retail price" of a Tier 10 is basically $90 (in theory they cost 19,000 Gold, which is 76.8% of a 25k Gold package that costs 100 Euros / $120) so would you be willing to pay $50 to get one? How about if that $50 you spent also got you the MSTA-S effectively for free?

This article from ARMOR, July-August 1996, only refers to the M1A2 chassis (bottom of first column on page 20). It doesn't mention the M1A1 chassis in reference to the AGDS/M1. Of course, the whole thing is confusing because the vehicle itself is referred to as AGDS/M1 which kind of implies a basic M1 chassis, but that's actually referring to the M1 series MBT.

AGDS should have been on an M1A2 chassis. That's what it was designed for, not an M1 chassis.

So of course now that I've finished the BP, I finally get one of the Unique 10:1 offers. I've seen multiple uniques in every other category, but this is the first one I've seen in this column.

Ah, I hadn't seen that. It sounded to me like the 2 rounds loaded independently, which is how I got my math. 9.4 seconds per round with 1 "extra" thrown into the first reload is much less exciting.

Crap, I did the math wrong, it's even better than that. 11.4 / 2 = 5.7 base, not 6.7. Which means it should be possible to get the average reload down to around 4.5 seconds, not 5.5. Yeah, that's gonna be really good. Although, it's interesting to note that in the demonstration the 2nd reload doesn't start when expected. After the first shot is fired there's about a 2 second delay (the intraclip delay) before that shot starts to reload. The second shot is fired at around 6.7 seconds left in the first shot's reload, but the second shot's reload has not started by the end of the animation which is at around 3.1 seconds left in the first shot's reload. The second shot's reload should start at around the 4.7 second mark in the first shot's reload if all it's waiting for is the intraclip delay.

In the GIF, the reload is 9.4 seconds. Add 2 seconds for intraclip (which you can observe after the first shot is fired) and you have a total of 11.4 seconds to reload each individual rack. So if you stagger your shots, you can get an effective reload of 11.4 / 2 = 6.7 base. Lop off another 10% of 9.4 and you're looking at 5.76 with just a retrofit. It should be easy to get that down to 5.5 with commander and crew skills. So yeah, this is going to rule at Tier 8 at least in PvE.

Do we know whether or not Super Softkill will actually have some affect on bots, seeing as regular softkill essentially doesn't?

Yep. Honestly, though, campers gonna camp. I wouldn't care if their caMpBT was counted as a TD by the matchmaker, but I guarantee you that AW won't have thought of that and so the matchmaker will be putting these on teams as the required armor.

I don't think that people will stop looking for clantags/names either, but these flags will make it a lot easier to find the clantag/name that you've previously memorized in the heat of battle. Noticing a flag at a glance is a lot easier than reading a name. So much easier that you can do the former out of the corner of your vision without even having to look at the vehicle. Vehicles with flags on them stand out. You don't have to memorize and recognize which flag is which to know that anyone who has any of them is good in that vehicle. The color coding will also make it pretty trivial to recognize the red (read: best) flags at any distance. Unless you're red/green colorblind, in which case you'll just go off of the fact that there's a flag on the tank in the first place. A decal that's identical to the flag would serve the same purpose and be more in-game appropriate. It would also allow the player to decide whether or not they wanted to advertise their excellence. I also like the sound of the WoT stars on the gun.

In games where I've played PvP, something like this would need to be able to be disabled by the player. PvP environments can get very toxic very quickly. I would not have wanted this feature in Mechwarrior Online because I would have been hunted constantly and that's just not fun. (At least not for me.) I feel like decals would be a better solution, or better yet both so that the player has the option. Those flags are going to be far too visible for my taste based on past PvP experience.

Of course. That was meant to be ironic, because AW spends so much time trying to force everyone to play PvP that it's amusing when they do something that actually encourages people to play PvE instead.

That's why you should play PvE. In PvE there's a hard break between Tier 6 and Tier 7, so you never have to worry about your Tier 6 MBT facing a rebalanced Tier 7.

It's just a bad gun all around. In addition to poor DPM (despite its high rate of fire), I've also found its pen to be poor. It might be suitable for some sort of meme-type setup like Azdule suggests, but those are pretty niche and not the foundation of a "good tank".

LOL that's awesome!

When you get the skin, please post a picture so that we can all be jealous!

CATTB won't fare well in PvE where everyone is carrying HEAT as their primary ammo load. According to what they told us when it was nerfed several times, the CATTB is (allegedly) supposed to be strong vs AP and weak vs HEAT. The fact that it has the same gun and ammo as the XM1A3 but for some inexplicable reason does less damage, has less pen, and has a lower rate of fire can only be explained as BALANS. One might be able to argue that the lower rate of fire is to offset the fact that it's packing Quickdraw on the 140, but only the lower rate of fire. The damage and pen should be the same.