Haswell

Delays and tidbits from SS: Also a nice surprise:

As a general rule I don't use rammer on squishies under tier 9, the vision control capabilities are much more impactful than faster reloads. If the TML and Cent 105 can hit those numbers without using rammer the TAM will have a lot of catching up to do. Stingray 2 isn't just borderline, it's straight up overpowered and have been this way since 0.33, never once touched. I don't see the nerf it needs coming any time soon, same for the Cent 105.

Hopefully the laser ability will do something more useful than giving unnecessarily high accuracy.

From the TAM article, we can now revise our estimates for 0.37 to be pushed out on 21-23.

No HEAT, that means it won't beat the TML or Stingray 2 in terms of damage output. Stingray also already has the ready rack and does it much better, making the TAM's overprogression pointless. A shame, I had better hopes for it. Edit: comparison with current peers:

Try this table. It might not be complete or accurate because it's simply what people reported to have seen, but it should be a good enough reference. Fahrzeuge Farzeug Kosten BP-Coins Name Tierstufe Gewöhlich Selten Spezial Einmalig T-55 Enigma 3 3.699 Ontos 4 5.999 ZSU-23-4 Shilka 4 5999 XM247 Sgt. York 5 5.999 Type 74 5 5.999 5 5 Sabre 6 12.999 MOWAG Taifun II 6 12.999 MT-LB S8 6 12.999 RDF/LT 6 12.999 Seon'Gun-915 6 12.999 Exp. Panzer 6 12.999 Scorpion Kastet 6 12.999 KPz70 6 12.999 M1A1 Storm 7 21.999 Type 90 7 21.999 K1A1 7 21.999 BWP-2000 7 21.999 Objekt 187 7 21.999 Zubr PSP 7 21.999 Sabra Mk.2 7 21.999 M60-2000 7 21.999 Type 89 IFV 7 21.999 Bradley AAWS-H 8 35.999 BMPT 2000 8 35.999 M-95 Degman 8 35.999 Vickers Mk.7/2 8 35.999 Khrizantema-S 8 35.999 Marder 2 8 35.999 SBS Pindad 8 35.999 Challenger 1 Falcon 8 35.999 Griffin 120mm 8 35.999 Type 96B 8 35.999 BMPT 2017 8 35.999 AGDS 9 55.999 ZTQ-15 9 55.999 QN-506 9 55.999 VT5 9 55.999 Stryker ADATS 9 55.999 MSTA-S 9 55.999 Bm Oplot 9 55.999 Hunter Afv 9 55.999 Altay 10 75.999 Type 99A2-140 10 75.999 Objekt 640 10 75.999 AFT-10 10 75.999 Obekt 490 10 75.999 Objekt 195 10 75.999 CATTB 10 75.999 T-14-152 10 75.999

Welcome to the game, hope you can avoid the temptation of spending money! All low tiers will be rebalanced very soon in the coming weeks (could even be next week), so any advice based on the current meta may not survive for long. That said, I still personally feel the T-series MBTs are more newbie friendly than the Merkavas and Magachs, because of their combination of high alpha, relatively decent protection and mobility. They aren't necessarily the best at surviving a lot of damage, but learning how to avoid taking damage and capitalizing on your mobility and alpha advantage will significantly improve your skill level faster than playing safe. I would start with the PT-85 > T-62 > T-72, after that you get to play the "good" vehicles. The T-series from tier 6 and above are all consistently good performers. Alternatively you can go down the Type 62 > Type 69 > Type 80-II > T-72 path. This takes slightly longer, but you get to have a good tier 4 vehicle to play. Another alternative is to simply play whatever you like up to tier 6, afterwards you can start investing in the branch of vehicles that interest you the most. Hopefully by then you will have developed your own preferences based on your skill and experience. Armor is most effective if you angle slightly, aiming at weak points is crucial, vision control and mobility are extremely important. The biggest difference is probably the ammo types, ammo is completely free here and there are no premium variants. HEAT ammo almost universally deal more damage at the cost of less obvious weak spots, AP deals less damage but could be easier to use. For PvE I'd use primarily HEAT ammo, and only switch to AP if I'm feeling exceptionally lazy or desperate.

Small tidbit that I forgot to repost here:

Answered in the megathread, locking.

Broken images.

So now we know what the ability does. Pretty lackluster IMO unless the TAM comes with terrible base accuracy, in which case the ability is just a solution that is looking for a problem.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/preview-autumn-armored-warfare Looking forward to the rebalancing, but also scared to hell knowing the mess that is 0.33. More vehicles, yay. Lootboxes, boo.

Type 96B, Tank Biathlon edition: https://i.imgur.com/bMQM0Ks.png Turret bump stops, I don't understand this. Probably a competition-specific modification. https://i.imgur.com/rKQ9kuB.png

Now I have to copypaste stuff from Discord, which may suddenly go poof if people delete messages and stuff. Ugh. Why no links? Source is always good. K2 https://i.redd.it/m9dm9o65w7s41.jpg

Bear in mind that given the recent trend of completely unrealistic vehicle stats for gameplay purposes, I don't think it will mirror real-life armor numbers. The overall dimensions look similar to the TML, so I'm assuming it will have similar lack of protection. Not that the Stingray 2 has any protection against anything bigger than autocannons anyway.

Post from VK.com: https://vk.com/wall-68420747_1368503 Looks interesting, I'm hoping it's a single shot gun so that tier 7 has a "normal" light tank option. Wonder what the laser lock will do, and how it will be different from designates?

I'll start watching and recording, how many rolls did you get out of all that?

Likely won't be easy for the players. Not necessarily super grindy, but might take some thinking and awareness for the entire campaign.

The date is now set for sure, mark your calendars (and brace for delays).

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-special-operations-mission-death Split spawns will be entertaining, if I'm to take the "no surprises" at face value I'm willing to bet this will play out similarly to BSI1, except players will have to progress from both sides of the map. This isn't anything new since the starting objective for CC4 also featured defending two different locations simultaneously, seeing this sort of semi-independent gameplay is a good thing. September will also bring a new contract vehicle as well as the Storyline Campaign resuming. It will be a busy month for sure, I'll be glad to see the BP over by then.

People play heroics at any time of the day, provided there are enough people around. There's no actual schedule for most people as far as I know. There should be heroic runs forming on the Discord server all the time, just hang around and join them or host one yourself.

Players can fall into three categories here: too good for teamwork; not good enough for teamwork, and; just good enough for teamwork. It's a delicate balancing act to maintain difficulties that won't result in a massive skill gap, unfortunately I don't feel AW has done a good job in that regard.

For the purpose of this discussion, I shall define "teamwork" as situations where multiple players are required to perform some action in the game in order to complete objectives, and that said objectives will be failed or require more time to complete if the players fail to perform their actions. Note that the objectives do include tasks outside of matches, and might not be shared across different players. With that said, let's break down the illusion of teamwork being important in AW, and explore how the game mostly revolves around selfish play. Why Teamwork Doesn't Matter An example of the illusion held by average players. Imagine you receive a task to obtain 10 Blue Star medals, whereby you will be rewarded by completing the task. The requirement for Blue Star medals is to earn the most XP out of all players in a winning PvE match, so not only do you have to perform well enough to win the match, but you also have to perform better than other players in the match. At some point, your performance become heads and shoulders above all the other players to the point where you can secure victory and top XP by yourself very reliably, regardless of how the other players perform. Is there teamwork involved in this task, in that other players need to help you to get Blue Stars? Arguably not, if you can win matches by yourself and outperform other players. The only actions required from the other players is that they perform worse than you do, such as inflict less damage or gain less kills/assists. Would the task to obtain 10 Blue Star medals be easier if other players are not present to compete against you? Most definitely, assuming your performance alone is sufficient to win matches. If the performance of other players cease to become a determining factor in being victorious, then their presence becomes only an obstacle for you to overcome, to outperform them in order to secure top XP in matches. In other words, there is barely any teamwork involved in the task, the lack of teamwork in fact makes it easier for you to complete your objective. You'd actually need to obtain 30 Blue Star medals, 10 for each mission set in the Battle Path. There are many instances in the game where teamwork is not only unnecessary, but even actively discouraged if some objectives require you to perform better than other players. Take the Battle Path repeatable missions of racking up damage and kills/assists and XP for example, in order to complete them as quickly as possible you will want to perform very well in matches. At the same time, you would also want other players to perform as poorly as possible in order to leave more damage and kills/assists for you. Completing the objectives do not require teamwork or the presence of other players at all. Examples of possible repeatable missions in Battle Paths. Even officially promoted events and contests will often discourage teamwork, since the goals of such contests will usually be to outperform other players. It can be further argued that the game simply doesn't promote teamwork at all, and actively discourages teamwork at higher skill levels. The only "teamwork" involved here would be other players refusing to deal any damage in order to leave more for the competitor. Teamwork By Coercion For there to be instances of good teamwork, there must also be instances of poor teamwork. This not the same as unnecessary teamwork as described above nor about poor execution of teamwork, but rather about poor concepts and implementations of situations where teamwork is forced upon players. Specifically, situations where you are explicitly required to rely on the actions of other players in order to complete objectives. Assist damage has a notorious reputation for its criteria of relying on other players to damage your desired targets. The better your own performance in dealing damage by yourself, the less potential assist damage you can rack up due to you own performance depriving other players opportunities to deal assist damage for you. In order to accumulate assist damage effectively, you must intentionally limit your own performance in ways that force other players to deal damage. For a better explanation, please consult the assist damage guide located here: https://armoredlabs.net/index.php?/topic/78-how-assist-damage-works-or-doesnt-work/ Assist damage demonstrates poor teamwork in that aside from preparing specific targets for other players to shoot at (by spotting, detracking, designating), you are at the mercy of other players to deal assist damage for you. Even with careful positioning of the targets so that they present their vulnerable aspects to other players, the rate and quantities of assist damage you accumulate is limited by the performance of other players, therefore intentionally handicapping your own damage dealing becomes essential as you play a waiting game to see how long it takes for others to damage your targets. In this instance, teamwork is forced upon you and other players, and not necessarily in a good implementation. This mission is the nightmare of many players, especially good players. Assist crediting (as opposed to kills) also falls under this category due to the reliance on other players to secure kills for you, and thereby crediting you with assists instead of kills. This is commonly not too problematic as there is only one task in the game requiring assists only, the Support Fire medal. Other players will also likely be inclined to shoot at targets, therefore the limiting factor would rarely be on other players, as opposed to personal performance. The Teamwork medal has a simple requirement of no players are allowed to be destroyed even once in a PvE match. On paper that seems easy, but in practice it requires decent performance on your part as well as relying on other players to also be proficient. The game itself on the other hand do not properly emphasize the downsides of being destroyed and respawning, and sometimes even actively encourage the practice of intentionally respawning through ammo resupplying and advantageous respawn locations. This commonly lead to players simply not caring about being destroyed, thus the Teamwork medal can on occasions become frustratingly difficult to obtain if not all players in a match are proficient enough to not get destroyed, or if they don't care at all. It's not so much about actual teamwork in that players must perform some sort of action in support of each other, but rather a general issue with lack of skill and experience of players. Ironically there is another method to obtain Teamwork medals, but one that can be counterintuitive to the general notion of teamwork. Arguably the worst PvE medal to efficiently obtain. Teamwork and Personal Performance As was said at the beginning, the definition of teamwork here is that multiple players in a match must actively contribute to an objective. On the other hand, if one player performs overwhelmingly and carry the other players to a common objective (ie. victory), but at the expense of other players not being required to anything at all (thus getting low rewards), can this still be considered teamwork from the perspectives of the other players? Returning to the earlier example of Blue Star medals, it hardly qualifies as teamwork if the presence of other players become irrelevant to the desired objectives. This can either be due to other players not having the necessary skill and experience to compete, or certain vehicles in the game massively overperforming compared to others (ie. XM247 York, Terminator series). Therefore this lack of teamwork may not be due to a lack of effort on the other players' part, but rather one player or few players performing so well that others have no opportunities to contribute. In an ironic twist, players would have to perform worse in order for actual teamwork to be present. "Teamwork". The Teamwork medal fall under the same problem: players can either perform equally well and avoid being destroyed in the match, or the players who want the medal specifically can perform overwhelmingly well and prevent others from being destroyed by virtue of removing all threats fast enough. The latter method in essence disregards teamwork altogether in favor of personal performance, much to the irony of the Teamwork medal. Lastly... Actual Teamwork in AW There are few cases in AW where teamwork is actually required, either explicitly or implicitly. A lot of the PvP and Special Operations content will belong to these two categories owing to their general difficulty, making it improbable for single or few players to overwhelmingly carry others to the desired objectives, assuming said objectives do not have selfish requirements (ie. individual damage) that discourage teamwork. Examples of these include various Special Operations achievements, and Heroic Special Operations. Peacemaker is a test of how well players can survive under fire and stress, while defending multiple locations on the map, without destroying enemies. In short, the best way to promote teamwork is to have objectives that are sufficiently difficult and require all players involved to perform with some level of skillfulness. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading my overly long essay.

Mid September, so 2-3 weeks from now. Just to remind everyone, we will be playing modern Russian stuff. If you don't already have some of the required vehicles, get them soon so you can participate!

LABS have responded, please check your PM (or the Discord equivalent).