Haswell

Moved to metagame.

This actually sounds fun, if a bit masochistic when the inevitable bad ideas come up. *notes down time to tune in*

... because Swingfire spam made low tiers so fun to play, right? It must be very fun and dynamic for new and inexperienced players to get nuked by bots that they couldn't spot. If that is considered to be a success, I have serious reservations about whatever changes they have in mind. Yes, yes, take all of my yeses, so long as they become considerably more blind and easy to spot compared to squishies. As much as MBTs are meant as a universal class, they simply can't have armor and vision control ability at the same time for the sake of balance. Proper vision control is an important skill to learn and master for squishy vehicles, but right now there's no real incentive for pubbies to learn it when they can be almost as effective simply by driving forward in MBTs. So long as this doesn't lead to situations where MBTs get pelted by unspotted bots (as it already happens at lower tiers), I'm all in support of it. One big thing I noticed from the article is that it only mentions AP ammo but not HEAT/HESH/PELE, my first thought is that all this talk of balancing revolves solely around PvP and ignores PvE completely. HEAT spam will still reign supreme in PvE thanks to the higher alpha, thus the changes to AP can practically be ignored for the most part. This is also an indirect nerf to bot MBTs since they spam AP with impunity, meaning players may be able to take less damage from bots shooting at long ranges. The lack of penetration decay in bot TDs is a non-issue considering there are very few tracked TDs with guns (ie. Sprut), though this might change if bots suddenly start driving wheeled vehicles. I actually dislike the proposal to turn TDs into dedicated long range vehicles. The current PvE maps simply don't have engagement ranges long enough for TDs to exercise their accuracy advantage over any other class as it is, not to mention the god awful armored brick corridor meta in spec ops. Decreasing their DPM will just make them more unappealing to play over lights and AFVs. That is not how lights are actually played right now, contrary to whatever vision the devs have. The vision control capabilities of lights right now are very comparable and even competitive to squishy TDs and AFVs, to the point where all three classes are practically interchangeable for vision control purposes and they all basically play the same way: run around, stay unspotted, maximize DPM by virtue of not getting shot at. Unless lights also get their view ranges nerfed, I don't see them being anything more than merely TDs on tracks as they are now. Take the K21 and Wilk for example, the only things that differentiate them both are wheels vs tracks, and PELE for the Wilk. Let me know when infantry commands get added first. Obligatory "Leo 1 has heavy armor" joke. I question why class traits have to be so limiting that they overshadow individual vehicle balancing, such as why the Leo 1 has garbage mobility just because it's classed as an MBT or why light tanks have mediocre accuracy almost universally (ie. Stingray vs LAV-600). Without knowing the exact changes to each vehicle, it's hard to tell whether the proposed changes are good or not.

Part two of the Five Year Plan published: https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/tier-7-10-rebalance-part-2-class-roles

Voting has closed, congrats to TeyKey and Seb! Both prospect moderators have been contacted on Discord.

80% of all your shots fired must hit and deal damage. Trying to do that in an autocannon just takes too much effort, it's easier with the Nork.

Some gameplay footage of the Stalker, they are going for the 2 missile config I guess. The launcher looks like it has fairly poor elevation and depression angles, and it has a long reload animation. So it's basically a Mephisto, but with a dakka and two fewer missiles without autohoming. Solidly meh at first glance.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/now-available-hunter-afv-0 Blah blah blah, boxes available again for one week. Seeing how there's still 50 days left to the BP, I predict the boxes will return again at least twice: once in August, and another near the end of the BP. Like I said, trust in their greed if nothing else.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/maintenance-july-23 Meh.

Still better than yet another armored hulk promoting the awful armor + DPM meta. Careful vision control is something I enjoy more than simply mushing my face into red things. I mean, how bad could the DPM be with an autocannon? Even if it's BMD-2M levels of alpha it would be sufficient, but who knows what the 0.33 rebalancing will shake up?

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-2t-stalker I was really looking forward to the Stalker being tier 9, but I guess that would make the Hunter too irrelevant and hurt the sales. One way to balance 4 missiles at tier 8 would be to simply not use Ataka missiles. Lower the alpha so that it is comparable to the Ingwe and call it Shturm, that way it wouldn't be out of place since the Stalker IRL can use both Ataka and Shturm missiles. Alternatively keep them as Ataka missiles, but give the launchers horrible elevation/depression similar to the Mephisto (but don't give it autohoming), that way it will be balanced by player skill similar to the Mephisto and VBL Ingwe. I'm not fond of contract reward vehicles having their overprogression gated behind contract missions, since it will mean many weeks if not months before anyone will be able to play the vehicles to their true potential. The PSP for example goes from meh to one of the best gun-based squishies at tier 7 after the reload module is unlocked. This is just tedious and needlessly grindy, but I guess that's the entire point of the stupid overprogression system? Playing into the sunk cost fallacy in existing players to keep them engaged in the game. Ethically horrible but somehow acceptable in business.

Seeing how the VT-5 is tier 9, this one would probably be tier 9 as well if not at least tier 8. Might also be a normal premium (ie. still have to buy it) considering the BVP. Looks eh, might be about as fun as the VT-5. Not enough to tempt me though since the Thunderbolt basically plays the same. If it's tier 8, the Dragun exists.

36 maps, not counting spec ops. Depends on the specific map, some of them have multiple respawn locations while others only have one. AFK yes. With 36 maps it's a bit hard to list out all of them, you'd have to ask for something specific. I did have plans to do a grand tour and detail out the specifics of every single map, including number of bots and AI behavior, bot spawn locations and timings, player respawn locations, etc. Never got around to starting it due to the amount of time and effort required, plus I'd have to slave away at the same map multiple times to identify all the possible variations. Not an easy task when a particular map would only be available once every 30 minutes cycle.

Speculate. I predict bots getting stuck everywhere.

Given that the York and DCA are currently the gold standards for DPM overload at tier 5, how would the BVP be balanced in order to make it appealing (if not competitive) compared to the other two? Having lower DPM than the York and DCA is practically a hard requirement for the BVP to be balanced, but what would it get to compensate for this relative disadvantage? Infantry? Designates? Lulzy mobility?

So far it's roughly $15/mo, so pretty cheap. I do have plans for patron stuff down the road, but that likely won't come until at least the end of the year. I feel that the forum isn't big enough yet to warrant monetization, and I'd hate to ask for donations without offering much in return.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/battle-path-contest-mystery-mayhem So you have a contest, but you won't tell what people need to do to win. Sounds like a recipe for misery. One good thing is that submissions are automatic this time, which raises the issue why it wasn't automatic until now.

Making a new theme is free, just takes work on my part because I have to edit all the colors manually. There are quite a lot of colors to edit as well, so it will take some time. I'll mess around with it some more, but this will take a while.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-bvp-m-80a My immediate reaction is one of dread, because the game needs yet another DCA/York counterpart at tier 5 right? Low tier DPM creep is real, and the BVP isn't exactly helping to curb the issue. Note that the BVP is confirmed NOT to be a BP reward, it will be a "normal" premium vehicle. It might also be the anniversary gift for all we know, since those are considered normal as well.

Pets Soren.

As outlined in the previous nomination thread, this thread will include the poll for everyone to vote for your desired moderators. Please note that each user can only vote for ONE (1) option because the forum software is limited that way. Take your time and decide who you'd want to vote for, you have until the poll closes on July 25 to cast your votes. All votes will be anonymous except to the forum staff (which is just me and Never right now). Please don't vote for yourself, because I'll just void self-votes and look at you funny. You can change your votes any time before the poll closes automatically. Candidates can still turn down the moderator positions even if they win, in which case I'll proceed to the next candidate with the most votes. Here are some questions/concerns raised in the nomination thread, with answers Do moderators have to be active on both the ArmoredLabs Discord and forums? Or are you planning to recruit one for each? 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. Any further discussions are welcomed here of course. Free face masks for anyone planning to host or join rallies. Press F to request the services of Russian hackers. Previous nomination thread: https://armoredlabs.net/index.php?/topic/299-moderator-recruitment-nominations/

I'll leave this thread open until I get the voting thread up.

So the time now is 2000 PST, I'll give it 4 more hours before the nominations are closed.

Will update OP as different parts get released. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/tier-7-10-rebalance-part-1-power-creep Part deux: https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/tier-7-10-rebalance-part-2-class-roles Part 3: ERA galore. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/tier-7-10-rebalance-part-3-era Part 4: https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/tier-7-10-rebalance-part-4-individual-vehicles