Haswell

All of them are desert maps, global warming is in effect.

The article also included a neat little scavenger hunt leading directly to the secret objective. Here is how it goes (spoiler alert!): Tl;dr the campaign now has -20% difficulty. Special shout-out to LABS for cracking the code!

Mod note: I hereby designate this thread to be a megathread for the Campaign, seeing we are going beyond the prologue now. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/storyline-campaign-prologue-additional-objective List of registered players as of this article (super long spoiler, open at your risk):

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/maintenance-june-24

Blarg. Blarg blarg blarg. Object 640 has "pretty good stats", so its HEAT ammo likely won't get buffed. 5 new PvE missions coming in 0.36, in late July to early August. No new progression vehicles this year. SS is proposing to extend the T-80 branch to end with the T-80BVM or Object 292, but with a different progression system to prevent people from unlocking everything on day 1. There is one South American tank in mind for this year. (note: maybe Osorio?) There will be more SPAAG vehicles. No current plans for the M-84AS1. Next BP will start "soon". (note: most likely July) There are reports of performance issues with AMD GPUs, but no luck so far. No current plans for new heroic missions. CATTB will be buffed, most likely between the upcoming BP and the next Raid. No current plans to add more Stryker variants. Some older vehicles are underperforming and will need to be addressed. Chinese tanks in particular are have winrates in the low 40s. (note: really? They are bad but they aren't THAT bad...) An "unstuck" function (note: manual respawn) is proposed, but nothing confirmed yet. No current plans to add the S-tank. If added, it would be low tier, difficult and expensive to implement due to the casemate mechanic. Tiers 1-6 rebalancing in 0.37 or later. Even SS don't know. No current work on T-80U and BMP-3 remodeling, dev resources are focused on BP content. A new game engine is not going to happen. Too much dev time and resources are needed for that. 6m splash damage for arty shells belong in hell. (note: I suspect the only reason it got changed is to fit arty into PvP.) Highly unlikely for more "alternate" progression vehicles like the Leopard Evo to get released. PvP maps are getting worked on, both new maps and fixing old maps. No plans for North Korean T-14 clone or whatever it is. No plans for Arjun. If the T-80BVM is to be added it would be above tier 7 at least, perhaps tier 9. An ODS skin for the Bradley was originally planned for the Raid, but got scrapped because it needed remodeling and the vehicle performs very poorly. It may get looked at in the future. (note: Bradley isn't bad at all, other than the missile launcher that won't move.) No plans for top-down ATGMs to deal full damage to unmanned turrets. (note: weren't they supposed to deal full damage if the penetration is enough to go through the turret and into the hull?) The new General Dynamics MPF prototype is a good candidate for a high tier light tank. Limited angles for coaxial MGs are modeling considerations. No roadmap reveal is planned. New features are being pushed back or canceled all the time for various reasons. No plans for modding SDK or statistics API. M113 with the autocannon MIGHT come back one day, but it's not a high priority since it's a tier 1 vehicle. Free skins are meant as rewards for staying with the game, not necessarily "free". Some skins were meant to be sold but released for free, like the T-90MS Nakidka. The loss in potential sales made SS not want to propose more cool new skins. No current plans for Zolqafar and Olifant. No plans to nerf "OP premiums". No plans to revert to pre-0.33. No plans to nerf arty or infantry. No plans to make PvP more skill-based. Optimizations and fixes are being addressed. No plans for adding more vehicles to the AI pool. No plans for players to be able to select Spec Ops missions instead of playing through them all. This is intentional to increase the replay value and to keep the player count high. (note: nobody wants to play the crappy spec ops maps, so they have to be forced to play them.) Crew rework is planned, but likely not this year. No plans for more battalion content. No plans for more commander and crew voice overs. Payment issues with PayPal are known, but cannot be resolved on the game's side. More Asian content might come in the future. Progress counters for the Storyline campaign and other events may or may not appear in the future. SS knows it's annoying. The outcome of 0.33 is mixed. It's successful because the game became easier to understand for new players, but also failed because vehicles with problems before still have problems after, like the Chinese tanks. No current plans for the Ikv 91. It could be a low tier vehicle in theory. No plans for more Terminator prototypes this year. Ammo swapping times being bugged for vehicles without fast swap is known. ATGM chip damage is controversial, but right now it's working as intended. After this burst of Scandinavian content, there won't be more Scandinavian vehicles for a while. Customizable decal locations won't come this year, if ever. It's a painful topic. M163 VADS was supposed to be in the Last Patriot BP, but the gun is too weak. It would likely be tier 1, not likely to be added. Solo PvE never. (note: sad.) Too early to say what the next Raid theme will be, but it will be high tier. No current plans for LAV-25 or LAV-AD. Challenger 3 won't be added this year. Base feature was test about 2 years ago, results were poor. Likely abandoned for good. IT-1's lack of machine gun will get looked into. The Leopard series aren't doing great statistically, there were discussions with the lead balance dev about this. SS wants to get rid of the Leopard 2AX "abomination". Concerting PvE maps to PvP requires a lot of work. Easier to do the reverse. Storyline campaign registration exceeded expectations by 2-3 times. There are 4500+ unique registrations. (note: this is significantly more than expected, given the CCU of ~5000 players.) Centurion AVRE would be tier 2-3 at best, if added. Horde mode won't be coming this year. Nobody wants M60A3 skins. (note: possibly because the vehicle itself performs poorly, so nobody wants to play it anyway.) "Not enough heavy vehicles" with MBTs in platoons is being looked into. Permanent skins for some vehicles (ie. T-62M, T-14-152) will stay unless new skins are made for them. More profitable secondary objectives can be looked into. (note: just make them impact gameplay in noticeable ways like punishments for not completing them or buffs when completed).

Looks like BP is getting delayed.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-stridsvagn-2000 How to powercreep the 195 in less than half a year.

ArmoredLabs has been growing bigger and bigger for the past year, and it has came to the attention of many that the frequency of chaos have also been growing. We want to emphasis the importance of self-moderation, but sometimes things just get out of hand where mods have to step in to stop the chaos. ArmoredLabs is now recruiting TWO active moderators to keep our forum and Discord server orderly, preferably from the Americas time zones. The workload will be minimal, you will be responsible for curses, memes, floofs and headpats. The recruitment process will be as follows: June 11 - June 24 (inclusive) Nomination phase: each user can nominate other users (including themselves) to become candidates. There are no limits, but including reasons for the nominations would be nice. Note that nominees can either accept or refuse the nomination. Lack of response will be interpreted as implied refusal. June 25 - July 8 (inclusive) Voting phase: nominees who voiced their acceptance will be placed on a poll for users to vote on. Again, it would be nice to include reasons for your votes, but you can also stay silent and vote anonymously if you prefer. Don't vote for yourself obviously, self votes will be voided. July 9 - TBD Finalizing phase: ArmoredLabs staff will vet the winning candidates and contact them so they can get their mod tags. I know I have the final say, but I will respect the wishes of the community for as much as I can. That is, assuming your wishes aren't to turn ArmoredLabs into a circus. FAQ: Do moderators have to be active on both the ArmoredLabs Discord and forums? Ideally both, but preference leans heavily on the Discord side right now due to the rapid-fire nature of instant messaging. Moderators will have authority on both the forum and Discord, because splitting them up right now is just unnecessarily complicated. Can official game staff (ie. mods on the Official Discord) still be moderators on ArmoredLabs? Unfortunately not. As outlined in our policy towards the official staff, they will not hold any special permissions or authority on ArmoredLabs as long as they are staff on the official channels. This isn't due to any ill will towards them, it's simply a matter of potential conflicts of interest that I'd like to avoid as much as possible. Are there any clan/battalion restrictions for moderators? None whatsoever. You can be in any battalion or clan you want and still become a moderator on ArmoredLabs. This thread will serve as the nomination thread for the nomination phase, please nominate your moderator candidates here. Nominees can accept or refuse their nominations here. Discussions are welcomed of course.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/famine-special-operation-feedback-collection As usual, thoughts and stuff can be put here too.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-cv90120-ghost Despite what the article says, it looks exactly like a PL-01 at tier 9, with a ready rack. Might be interesting, need to see how the Anders compare to it.

More pics: From PanzerSofa: https://vk.com/wall-102237486_266626

Looks interesting, but also feels a bit weak at tier 10. Unless it turns out to be a tier 10 Nork.

When even the DM is implying experimental vehicles will result in hell for everyone, all the more reason to go for Euro MBTs.

Some stuff mined from the 0.36 update. Crap ton of decals, some vehicle icons, mission descriptions. Missions and challenges look exactly the same as the previous BP, though it's anyone's guess if they will change. In case anyone wants to check them from the last BP: https://armoredlabs.net/index.php?/topic/6346-here-we-go-again-eow-bp-megathread/&tab=comments#comment-11460 BP should come some time this month after another update, the assets are not yet complete.

You can upload your images to another hoster (I use Imgur, https://imgur.com/) and link the images here. Normal users have a 5mb total upload limit (technically 5000kb), this is because of the limited storage space for the forum server.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/maintenance-update-036 Word salad title because I'm still half asleep.

Welcome to the lab!

Discord is indeed very unsuitable for holding different discussions simultaneously and and nearly impossible to revisit specific topics without knowing the exact keywords to search for. This is a major reason why I decided to host the forum here, so that there is persistence for info and discussions worth rereading. Welcome to ArmoredLabs!

1. Introduction Armored Warfare (AW) is an online video game that includes loot box mechanics. Such mechanics function through virtual in-game items under various titles (ie. Loot Crates, Supply Crates) that can be redeemed for randomized selections of other virtual in-game items. The purpose of this study is to determine all the possible rewards and their probabilities of appearing in Platinum Supply Crates. Platinum Supply Crates are desirable due to their overall abundance in availability through completing special operations in Extreme and Hero modes, daily login rewards, weekly contract mission completions and daily battalion contract mission completions. Platinum Supply Crates also offer high value rewards that may be of greater interest to players compared to Gold and Silver Supply Crates, hence this particular study will focus on Platinum Supply Crates only. Figure 1.1: in-game illustration of a Platinum Supply Crate. 2. Method Our experimenters explore the possible rewards and their probabilities of appearing on the AW Public Test Server (PTS) client via the MY.GAMES GameCenter software. The PTS client version as of the time of testing is 0.33.7235. The decision to perform observations on the PTS client and not on the production client is to ensure ease of repeatability for this study. Even though Platinum Supply Crates are abundant in availability, each individual Supply Crate is consumed permanently upon revealing their contents via opening. It is therefore desirable to not consume the stockpile of Platinum Supply Crates of our experimenters, as the time required to build up a significant quantity of Platinum Supply Crates will likely impede future efforts to replicate the study. The contents of each Platinum Supply Crate are examined and recorded in manual tallies by opening each Platinum Supply Crate and redeeming their contents. The method of tallying is at the discretion of each experimenter. Reward drops are tallied separately in order to determine the range of all the possible rewards from Platinum Supply Crates. In the event of receiving Insignia items from Platinum Supply Crates, each set of 10 Insignias are tallied as one item. Insignias are always received in two discrete sets of 10 Insignias, therefore the tallies consider the event of receiving both sets of Insignias as one item. Figure 2.1: in-game illustrations of different Insignia variants. Similar reward drops are grouped into categories to further examine whether the variance in drop probabilities are indicative of unequal weighing. Chi-squared tests are performed in each category to determine the significance in drop probability variances. 3. Results 3.1 Datasets We examine a total of 842 Platinum Supply Crates collected and distributed among two experimenters. The Supply Crates are split into samples of 565 and 279 respectively and first analyzed separately, then aggregated together to determine any anomalies in the variances of their produced contents. 3.2 Results The sample size of opening 565 Platinum Supply Crate and redeeming their contents produced the following tallies: Items Quantity Reputation (50,000) 62 Credits (10,000,000) 27 Premium Time (30 days) 3 Premium Time (7 days) 7 Diamond XP Boost 49 Diamond Intel Boost 41 Diamond Reputation Boost 58 Platinum Commander Insignia 50 Platinum Crew Insignia 73 Platinum Credit Insignia 53 Platinum Reputation Insignia 48 Platinum XP Insignia 66 Gold (13) 31 Gold (17) 24 Gold (19) 28 Gold (23) 27 Gold (29) 16 Gold (37) 17 Gold (53) 8 Gold (73) 4 Gold (113) 2 Premium Vehicle (assorted, 1 day rental) 16 Total possible item categories: 22 Total quantity of item drop events: 565 Figure 3.2.1: table of tallies of Platinum Supply Crate contents with a sample size of n=565. The sample size of opening 279 Platinum Supply Crate and redeeming their contents produced the following tallies: Items Quantity Reputation (50,000) 28 Credits (10,000,000) 8 Premium Time (30 days) 1 Premium Time (7 days) 3 Diamond XP Boost 30 Diamond Intel Boost 19 Diamond Reputation Boost 24 Platinum Commander Insignia 33 Platinum Crew Insignia 28 Platinum Credit Insignia 31 Platinum Reputation Insignia 24 Platinum XP Insignia 30 Gold (13) 16 Gold (17) 12 Gold (19) 11 Gold (23) 13 Gold (29) 10 Gold (37) 1 Gold (53) 7 Gold (73) 1 Gold (113) 1 Premium Vehicle (assorted, 1 day rental) 11 Total possible item categories: 22 Total quantity of item drop events: 279 Figure 3.2.2: table of tallies of Platinum Supply Crate contents with a sample size of n=279. 4. Analysis 4.1 Proportions of Item Drops from Platinum Supply Crates In order to better illustrate the theoretical probabilities of the item drops from Platinum Supply Crates, the proportions of item drops are derived based on the tallies from each of the two datasets. The proportions are recorded as follows: Figure 4.1.1: proportions of item drops with a sample size of n=565. Figure 4.1.2: proportions of item drops with a sample size of n=279. 4.2 Chi-Squared Tests for Categories of Items Several different categories of items can be observed from the item drops of Platinum Supply Crates: rental vehicles, various quantities of Gold, Premium Time tokens, Boosts, Insignias, Credits, and Reputation. Given the similar drop rates between different Boosts and Insignias, the significances of the variances are examined using chi-squared tests. The results are as follows: Figure 4.2.1: chi-squared tests for the dataset of n=565 on the variances of Boost and Insignia drop rates. Figure 4.2.2: chi-squared tests for the dataset of n=279 on the variances of Boost and Insignia drop rates. The variances in drop rates for Boosts and Insignias in the two datasets are determined to be not statistically significant, and that the theoretical drop rates for different Boosts and Insignias should be considered to be equal in each of their categories. 4.3 Analysis of Aggregated Data Given the contextual relatedness of the two datasets, we totaled the tallies from each of the datasets in order to project results from a theoretically larger sample size. The total tallies and derived proportions of item drops are as follows: Items Quantity Reputation (50,000) 90 Credits (10,000,000) 35 Premium Time (30 days) 4 Premium Time (7 days) 10 Diamond XP Boost 79 Diamond Intel Boost 84 Diamond Reputation Boost 82 Platinum Commander Insignia 83 Platinum Crew Insignia 101 Platinum Credit Insignia 84 Platinum Reputation Insignia 91 Platinum XP Insignia 97 Gold (13) 47 Gold (17) 36 Gold (19) 39 Gold (23) 40 Gold (29) 26 Gold (37) 18 Gold (53) 15 Gold (73) 5 Gold (113) 3 Premium Vehicle (assorted, 1 day rental) 27 Total possible item categories: 22 Total quantity of item drop events: 844 Figure 4.3.1: table of tallies of Platinum Supply Crate contents with an aggregated sample size of n=844. Figure 4.3.2: proportions of item drops with an aggregated sample size of n=844. Chi-squared tests are also performed on the variances of different Boosts and Insignias for the aggregated data. The variances in each of the two item categories are found to be not statistically significant. Figure 4.3.3: chi-squared tests for the aggregated dataset of n=844 on the variances of Boost and Insignia drop rates. 4.4 Observations on Quantities of Gold Throughout the tally, it is observed that Gold item drops from Platinum Supply Crates contain fixed quantities of Gold. The probabilities of receiving each discrete quantity of Gold appear to be inversely proportional to the quantities. The only observed quantities of Gold obtained throughout the study are as follows: 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 37, 53, 73, and 113. It is also observed that the available quantities of Gold are all prime numbers, although it is unknown if this has any practical significance. 5. Discussion To our knowledge, this study is the first of its type to examine the probability of item drops from one specific source based on the loot box mechanics in Armored Warfare. Given the abundance of loot boxes in the game it would be very beneficial to players to determine the number and probabilities of item drops from any loot boxes they may come across, particularly if such loot boxes are obtained through transactions involving real currency. Although this is not the focus of our study, value on loot boxes may be derived based on the possible item drops and their probabilities. Platinum Supply Crates in particular appear to most commonly reward Insignias, Boosts and various small quantities of Gold, therefore the value of Platinum Supply Crates may depend primarily on the value of items within these three categories. Some of these items may have fixed monetary values such as Gold which can be purchased with real currency, or Insignias which can be purchased in-game with Gold. The perceived value of the items however may vary from player to player, as it may sometimes be undesirable to further obtain items of which the player already possess in abundance. Given that the perceived values of the items are highly subjective, we have elected to not provide further comments or advice here regarding the worth of Platinum Supply Crates. The results and statistical analyses of this study is only directly applicable to Platinum Supply Crates until new information becomes available, any current extrapolation to other loot boxes may not be accurate. Nevertheless, we hope this study will encourage future similar studies to examine other loot boxes in Armored Warfare, as well as official disclosure on the item drops and probabilities of the loot boxes. Further discussions are encouraged and will be hosted on the ArmoredLabs forum and Discord servers. The forum and Discord server can be accessed with the following links: https://armoredlabs.net/ https://discord.gg/scTRpBb 6. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the ArmoredLabs community for their continuing support and contributions during this study. We express special gratitude to danlambo and Qbicle for their provided data, and dark_demigod for his data analysis. This is study is motivated purely out of casual interest and hobby. We apologize for any silliness and unprofessionalism that may have entailed, as well as any chaos that might ensue.

I'm trying to get everybody here on the forum and Discord server exactly for this. I'd really appreciate it if people can help spread the word.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-special-operations-mission-famine Map looks interesting, maybe we would finally have a non-corridor map after so long. Splitting up objectives is definitely a good move for better gameplay. Big emphasis on the last part, but with the current 2hr long rotations what are the chances of actually playing the new maps? Let alone play them enough times for informed opinions.

NEWS FROM THE DERAILMENT WAR ROOM First day of the campaign, the collective wisdom from the forces of chaos have nailed down suitable vehicle categories to one practical choice: Euro MBTs. The reasoning is as follows: Second highest reward bonus Good buffs, being able to masquerade as corporate forces will theoretically be very beneficial in the lore Reduced difficulty against both national armies (compared to other options) and PMC forces Overall difficulty multiplier won't make the entire campaign unbearably grindy (up to 128 games/month), unlike prototype vehicles Campaign upgrades will be available Relatively easy to obtain progression vehicles Inclusion of the C1 Ariete and Leclerc, two of the best in class MBTs to make gameplay more bearable The most significant arguments against the prototype and squishies categories are the high difficulty that entail them. Playing prototype vehicles will increase the baseline participation from 80 games per month to a whopping 200 games per month, and squishy categories have minimum participation requirements that will likely become unsustainable as the campaign drags on, especially with the inevitable burnout following the upcoming Battle Path. The accessibility argument is also significant. Given that the difficulty of the campaign will likely be the inverse of the number of active participants (ie. more participants make it easier to complete future missions), it is best to choose a category that is accessible to more players. This immediately throw prototype vehicles out of the equation since we can't expect the majority of participants to even have the lineup of tier 10 vehicles. Squishy vehicles are excluded based on their high skill requirement for good gameplay performance, which isn't something the majority of players are expected to have. Excluding the two Cold War categories can be boiled down to a single, simple reason: low tiers are not fun to play. This leave all three modern MBT categories. US MBTs got excluded very quickly also for reasons of not being pleasant to play (low DPM, mediocre mobility, mediocre armor). Russian MBTs and Euro MBTs went on a see-saw as proponents for both sides pitch their arguments: Russian MBTs are easiest to play for the majority; Euro MBTs have higher skill ceilings and give better buffs. It is decided to focus efforts on Euro MBTs. If you haven't registered for the campaign yet, do it now! You have until the end of this episode (June 30) to sign up >>>>>> https://forms.gle/8qYXmXwwXDFFA5ny6 If you want real-time strategy chats and coordination for the campaign missions, join our Discord server and meet hundreds of other like-minded players! >>>> https://discord.gg/scTRpBb

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-cv90-mkiv Actually looks fairly balanced, basically a Marder that trades PELE for missiles. DPM definitely won't turn any heads, but the missiles will be useful for the burst alpha.

I'd say we should all play modern Russian MBTs. The difficulty spike isn't high, the buffs are generous, and most importantly the vehicles in the pool are easy to play and very accessible. If people of all skill levels are to participate the campaign, I would have more confidence in them performing well in the modern T-series than all the other categories. My second choice would be Euro MBTs, but I don't have much confidence in most people playing the Leo series well.