MK_Regular

A few things of note about the reward vehicles that I'm not sure got picked up since their announcements CV90105 TML The TML's heat round is fairly competitive compared to the Stingray 2, with 520 damage and 744 penetration (stingray 2 gets 510 damage and 770 pen) giving it slightly more damage per shot but slightly less penetration. The AP rounds are identical The reload time for the TML's guns was reduced by 2 seconds (28s/16s for the 12/5 shot guns) and the optional upgrade for the 12-shot gun now reduces the cyclic time from 2.5s to 2.2s Aim time on the TML is 1.41s, meaning that you can just about get a fully-aimed shot off without any delay when using the 5-round clip (1.3s reload) The ability to use vision control of the TML is better than the Stingray 2, with an extra 2% camo (32% with paint) and 30m view range (450m with the view range unlock) before retrofits and skills Armour seems like it will be fairly reliable against autocannons from the front, with a few minor weak spots (290mm gun mantlet, 120mm turret ring, lower glacis of 210mm/180mm/145mm at tope/center/bottom) CV90 Mk IV Base camo and view range are superior to it its peers at 480m (510m when stopped) and 36% with paint. Probably good enough to give the VBR a run for its money Armour seems surprisingly good on paper (better than Marder on stats card!), can probably stop a lot of autocannon AP from the front if it doesn't hit the few weakspots (125mm turret ring, 205mm/180mm/80mm lower glacis) Gun stats are copy-paste from Marder (same accuracy, aim time, reload, and damage) but trades the PELE for HE (as previously mentioned) with 95 damage and 40mm pen CV90120 Ghost The ghost gets access to the upgraded transmission for the tier 9/10 LTs, allowing it to reach 85 km/h The upgraded AP round for the single-shot gun only increases the penetration only offers increased penetration (850mm instead of 800mm) for the same damage (600) The ready rack gun has significantly less damage per shot (510 vs 600 for AP and 610 vs 720 for HEAT) as well as reduced penetration (780mm AP instead of 800mm, 855mm HEAT instead of 880mm) There is a built-in flash suppressor upgrade that reduces the camo penalty from firing by 50% (this is in addition to ADAPTIV) Reload times for the ready rack got buffed from 5.6s per shot to 5s per shot and 2.8s cyclic to 2.4s, while the single-shot gun got buffed from 5s to 4.4s Turret armour will not resist large-caliber AP/HEAT rounds, but should be able to resist all auto-cannon AP from the front (>400mm). The weakest points of the frontal armour are the turret ring (190mm), the parts of the lower glacis not covered in applique (210mm), and the rest of the lower glacis (290-310mm) Strv 2000 Armour seems strong from the front, but far from invulnerable. Lower glacis is 800mm/700mm/600mm against AP (with the 800mm and 700mm portions being covered with three segments of 600mm NERA) and 880mm/770mm/900mm against HEAT (880mm and 770mm parts covered in the three segments of 900-1200mm NERA). The turret ring is venerable to HEAT and ATGMs with 920mm of protection. Turret sides are >400mm except for the rear-most part (250mm) and hull sides are between 200mm and 400mm (the rear-most section is 200mm and is covered by a piece of 35mm spaced armour, the 400mm and 250mm sections are covered by 9 segments of the same NERA as the front). Once the NERA is gone, you have comparable protection against large-caliber AP and HEAT as a light tank, but maintain complete resistance against autocannon AP for most of the frontal arc The known stats for the 140mm gun are unchanged, but the stats that were previously unknown are directly comparable to a stock XM1A3 (accuracy of 0.129 and aim time of 2.38s are the same as the stock XM1A3). The upgraded XM1A3 will still have the superior 140mm gun since it has access to upgrades that the Strv does not (10% accuracy increase, 20% aim time reduction, an improved AP round and a RoF upgrade) that more than make up for the extra 40 damage on the Strv's HEAT round DPM on the 40mm is around 11.4k before retros, with the first/second/third shots of each burst having 230/~310/~400 penetration at 100m. Note that for every shot of the burst that does not penetrate reduces the DPM of the autocannon by ~3.8k (11.4k if all 3 pen, 7.6k if 2 pen, 3.8k if only 1 pen). This seems to be an acceptable trade off compared to the Obj 195's 30mm autocannon since it trades anywhere between ~37% to ~79% of the 195's autocannon DPM for 15% to 100% more penetration (although how acceptable it actually is remains to be seen) tl;dr: The TML seems like it will be a good alternative to the Stingray 2 The Mk IV is probably going to be exceptionally good once it is fully upgraded The single-shot Ghost is on par with or better than both the Thunderbolt and Anders nearly across the board (aim time is a notable exception), while the ready-rack Ghost trades sustained DPM for a lackluster amount of burst DPM The only thing that might make the Strv OP will be the autocannon (if anything, it seems like the Strv would actually be underperforming if it didn't have the autocannon)

Part of me hopes that they have a way to separate the trolls from everyone else who actually wants to do it properly at some point (say halfway through the campaign). Let's say that they record the choices that individual players make for a single episode (they only need to do it for that episode). From there, they can give the players a choice where the good and bad choices are super obvious and will have massive consequences. Once everyone has made their choices, they could use their DM powers and go "yeah, there was a schism in the group of story people, some of them decided to leave and do their own thing" and separate everyone who picked the "bad choice" into their own separate group that gets a series of extremely hard tasks (that will only last 2-3 episodes because they're almost impossible to complete) for no increased rewards while everyone who picked the "good choice" get's to continue on as if nothing happened. Edit: In the event that some players do manage to complete the nearly impossible tasks, they could be added back into the normal group, but any remains of the in-story splinter group would not be trusted by the others, and this could be reflected in-game by the removal of the surviving trolls' decision-making powers.

Counting number of battles is the better option here, since it directly measures the amount of effort that the players as a whole put into selecting the vehicles rather than the amount of effort proportional to the normal traffic (which would heavily favour the less popular vehicles). If anything, I would say that the number of battles metric actually weights the choice in favour of the less popular vehicles (but not as much as % increase), since many of the players that are taking part in the event are already represented in the baseline numbers. I'll use the numbers you gave as a starting point: Experimentals are normally played 1000 times per week, and CW NATO are normally played 100 times 10 people taking part in the event normally play nothing but experimentals, 1 normally plays nothing but CW NATO (assuming the 10:1 ratio holds) of the 11 players taking part in the event, 3 choose CW NATO and 8 choose Experimental all 11 players decide to increase the number of battles they play per week from 20 to 30, and play all of their battles in their chosen vehicle category CW NATO increases from 100 to 170 battles per week (increase of 70 per week, or a 70% increase) Experimental increases from 1000 to 1040 battles per week (increase of 40 per week, or a 4% increase) despite nearly thrice as many people choosing Experimental, CW NATO sees nearly twice the increase in battles per week over the Experimentals

It looks like I got pretty close with this one, I wouldn't have guessed that it would have the 50mm autocannon if I hadn't looked it up. I look forward to seeing it in the game.

The Abrams series wouldn't be a bad choice either. It has decent buffs without a massive difficulty spike, and with the 0.33 changes the vehicles actually play a lot better than they used to (they tend to be tanky as long as they don't get uptiered, good mobility, good firepower, etc...). It might be worth picking them over the European MBTs since the Abrams would perform better (Challenger) or be easier to play (Leo, Leclerc) than most of them.

The cold war IFVs look like they're a complete non-starter. They've got terrible modifiers against PMCs and armies (even after taking the reduced difficulty into account), and have a requirement where 50% of the players will need to meet all of the objectives in half of the allotted time (I'm guessing the allotted time is measured in days/weeks?) or the entire episode is effectively failed (I have no faith that enough players will be able to complete the "very difficult" additional objective). The modern IFVs have a bit of unclear wording that will either make it one of the best choices or one of the worst ones. Depending on whether "at least 80 percent of players don't complete the objective in the allotted time" is taken to mean "at least 80 percent of players must complete the objective" or "the number of players that do not complete the objective cannot exceed 80 percent", the exact difficulty of this class will either be really high (the first interpretation) or potentially fairly easy (second interpretation). I hope it's the latter, but I suspect it's the former. I'm a bit peeved that most of the high-tier light tanks (Stingray 2, XM8, Dragun, XM8-120, Anders, PL-01, K-21 XC-8, etc...) aren't available as choices, but I'm not exactly sure where they would end up if they were choices...

If the CV90105 can be compared to any tier 9 LT, it's probably best to compare it to the Anders because of the magazine loader. Using the devs stated balancing goal of "a fully upgraded tier 7 is about as capable as completely stock tier 9" should give a rough idea of what a fully upgraded CV90105 will probably be capable of with the 5-shot autoloader. The 12-shot autoloader is a bit of an unknown since there aren't any other light tanks in that balancing bracket with such a large capacity magazine.

Looks interesting, I'll probably play around with both the 12-shot and 5-shot options. Just looking at the minimal information we have so far, it seems like you might be able to get the reload on the 12-shot option down to just over 20 seconds if you use the appropriate upgrades, retrofits, commander skills, AND use the rapid fire ability when reloading, but exactly how low you can get it will remain to be seen (although the lack of partial reload will still probably kill the 12-shot option for most uses).

Back when I played it the Sabre was very much an ambush vehicle, although that might have changed if they reworked the autocannon since then. A few things to note about the Sabre (as of over a year ago): mobility is excellent, 80 km/h both forwards and backwards with good acceleration and traverse armour is paper, it can be penetrated by 7.62mm MGs and 76mm HE view range and camo are on the better end for a tier 6 AFV, but nothing that special the missiles deal lots (800-1000 on average) of damage and can be guided in 3rd person from behind obstacles (useful considering the lack of armour), but they have a very long (28 seconds) reload the autocannon has decent penetration for tier 6, but damage output is severely lacking due to the 1.8 second reload between 6-shot bursts that deal ~140 damage (sustained autocannon DPM on my sabre is just over 3.3k, which is pitiful) the designate target ability isn't particularly useful to the vehicle since the ability is bugged (and has been for years) and doesn't work for HEAT-type ammo, which means that it will only serve to improve your anemic autocannon burst damage by 10%. It is best used on targets that you cannot kill to encourage your teammates to kill them while your ATGMs are reloading The end result is a vehicle that can decimate a single target in a very short period of time by slapping it with missiles from behind cover and then finish it off with the gun, but can only do so once every ~30 seconds. During the downtime, it would be best to use your mobility to retreat (since you probably got spotted if you used the gun) and/or relocate to a new/better position where you can set up for another attack. Overall the vehicle was OK-ish for when it got introduced, but it has been powercreeped to hell and back with the introduction of other high burst DPM vehicles that don't have many of the drawbacks (like the low sustained DPM) of the Sabre (cough XM247 and AMX-13 DCA cough). I would not recommend buying it until the low-tier rebalance is implemented and players can try the "new and improved" sabre.

I'm pretty curious to see what the devs have done with these vehicles. Looking at the renders shown and some quick google searches, I'm guessing the following: CV90105 TML: The 3D model shows 360 smoke launchers, other than that I'm stumped. The model seems to have an interesting shell ejection hole on the left side of the turret. CV90 Mk IV: Probably analogous to or heavily based on CV9035NL MLU. The 3D model shown shows the hard-kill APS (Iron Fist?), Spike-LR ATGMs on the right side of the turret, and a MG (FN MAG?) in a pod on the left side of the turret, all of which are key features on the CV9035NL MLU. One possibility that isn't entirely clear is the gun(s) that it will have access to, especially considering that the Mk III and Mk IV are designed to mount the Bushmaster III autocannon, which comes in 35mm and 50mm varieties. Strv 2000: The model for this one is a bit confusing, specifically when it comes to the APS. It seems to have the warning receivers and launchers for a hard-kill APS on the front of the turret, but it doesn't have and receivers on the back of the turret. Unless I'm missing something, I'm not sure if this is an oversight by the modeling team or if it indicates that the hard-kill APS will only cover a limited arc around the turret (specifically the front). If it is the latter, I am very interested to see how it will play out. CV90120 Ghost: Appears to be based on a heavily modified CV90120-T which was used the basis for the PL-01 mockup. I'd expect something that has the most of the stealth capabilities of the PL-01 but loses out on firepower (if only slightly) compared to the Anders. While I'm definitely happy that we're getting more light tanks (yay light tanks), I'm mildly disappointed that the top prize isn't one of them (although I understand an MBT version of the Strv 2000 is preferable to one of the TD or LT versions because the skill floor for MBTs is much lower in-game).

Since all of the other tier lists posted here include all of the tier 9/10 vehicles in the game in ranked positions, I thought I'd add an unranked position to the chart for transparency purposes.

I second this bit. I don't really care if a vehicle is "real" or not as long as my suspension of disbelief is not broken. I am willing to make relatively minor concessions for gameplay purposes (e.g. the 30 ATGMs that the wiesels get), but the design of the vehicle itself must at the very least be plausible (and somewhat sensible). To this end the Kornet D1 is perfectly fine imo, since it takes two existing systems and combines them in a way that would probably be functional in real life. I have no issues with this kind of thing in the future if the devs want to add some of the more obscure vehicle designs or proposals that never made it to the mock-up stage (as long as the designs would have been functional had they reached the prototype stage, designs without room for the crew or with no way to load the gun are a no-no). The only vehicle in the game (that I've seen, I haven't done SH ch4) that breaks my suspension of disbelief is the airship, which continually takes any suspension of disbelief that I might have and throws it out the window whenever I so much as look at it. There is no way that such a contraption would be able to fly, let alone carry several hundred tons worth of armoured vehicles, and yet every time we see one of these offences to aerospace engineering it manages to do both. I'm not going to get into the details about how much thrust you need in order to lift take off and land vertically with several hundred tons of cargo, but it should suffice to say that the airship's lift fans wouldn't be able to provide the required thrust (which is probably comparable to the first stage of a Saturn V rocket). As long as the vehicles (playable, and preferably non-playable) are nowhere near as egregiously physics-defying as the airship, I have no issues with them.

Without having any experience of what OP is claiming, or access to any corroborating evidence, I am inclined to wait until someone provides evidence proving or disproving OP's claims. That said, OP seems very sure of their claim that the devs are doing what OP claims they are, so I'm sure they have some kind of hard evidence (claims of "I didn't notice this happen before" don't count since human perception is notoriously unreliable) that supports their claim. In the event that OP is correct, I suspect that whatever changes the devs have made are only temporary and will be reversed or otherwise changed when low-tier gets its rebalance.

I found that the ATDU spamming PISH works quite well for Detonator if you have a commander that gives a good module damage bonus (I use maxed-out Sabrina with +50% module damage). I recommend trying to hit the ammo racks on enemies that have ~1.5k HP left (or slightly more on some MBTs), as that will all but ensure that you get enough fire damage to kill them if you don't get the ammo detonation. On side note, I'm not sure if enemies that are killed from the blast of the ammo explosion count towards the "5 enemies killed by ammo detonations", but it wouldn't hurt to try ammo racking vehicles that don't have blowout panels (a bradley is a good target because it's tall and you can usually get a shot at the turret ring) if they're in the middle of a group of low-hp enemies. Even if the extra kills don't count, the blast will destroy all of the external modules on the nearby enemies and give you a bunch of free damage/kills.

Sabrina - stealth and firepower Completely ignoring all of the module/crew protection skills in favour of skills that make her vehicle harder to see and hit harder allows her to comfortably use any squishy vehicle (particularly TDs), but still allows her to be useful (if not quite ideal) on something like the ATDU (which is already protected enough but needs a bit of help to hit harder). sabrina=A1A2A3A6B1B3B6C3C5C6D1D2E3F2F3 Philipp - firepower with some protection This is one of my oldest commander builds, and has served me fairly well over time. The idea behind this was to improve the gun performance as much as possible, while taking a few protection skills (notably the extra ammo rack HP). I find it works well on MBTs and LTs that need a bit of extra punch without turning into complete glass cannons. holzklau=A1A5A6B1B6C1C3C5C6D1E1E3F1F2F3 Rachel - "drive me closer" with a side of low HP reload buff I've got two variations here, one that increases off-road mobility and another that gives a bit of fire protection and more low HP buffs. Both variations start as the standard "rush to the top-right corner for reload memes", but the last 4 skills are used to get to Battle Fuse II in square C1 rather than Fury Fire II in square G5. rachel=A5A6A7B4B5C1C4D1D4E1E4F1F2F3F4 (+ off-road mobility) rachel=A5A6A7B1B2B3B4B5C1C4D4E4F2F3F4 (+ fire protection and low HP buffs) Konig/Sokolov - more of the same, but slightly different The basic XP grinding build you've all come to know, but swaps out a lv 1 repair speed skill and a lv 1 ramming damage reduction skill for a lv 1 reload buff skill and a lv 1 aim time buff skill. fyodor=A4B2B3B4B5B6C2C4C6D1D2D4D6D7E2 Rashid - ATGM memes, but needs a loader A variation on the basic ATGM spamming build, but instead of going to the right out of the starting square I went to the left to pick up the crew buffing skills. The end result trades the rather useless increased fire chance and faster APS/smoke reload skills for a flat 2% increase to all crew skills (including reload speed if you have a loader), but sacrifices the increased ATGM reload speed skill for more damage to crew. This build works best if the vehicle has a loader (which also helps if your vehicle has other weapons that can use the reload buff). rashid=A1A2A3A4A5A6A7B1C1D1D2D3D4D5D6 Victor - module protection and module/crew damage Probably my first full build, this is effectively what you get if you trade Sabrina's camo/vision skills for module protection. The chosen skills help minimize any debilitating module damage that would stop you from engaging an enemy (gun barrel, turret ring, tracks, ammo rack) and allow the player to stay in the fight a bit longer to make use of all of the crew/module damage skills (there's a bonus low HP reload buff thrown in for good measure). kirsanov=A7B5B6B7C4C5D1D2D3D4E1E3F1F2G1 Ioannis - fire and firepower with some camo/vision Another one of my old builds, this was an attempt to make good use of Ioannis' inner pyro without sacrificing all of his camo/vision skills before I got distracted by the shiny crew/module damage skills. You could easily sacrifice some or all of the additional view range for slightly more firepower (or vice versa) if you wanted to. ioannis=B4C4C5C6D4D6E4F1F4G1G2G3G4G5G6

THIS IS NOT COMPLETE YET I'm using Kuntliott's map rating system for this Albatross - 8 A solid map that provides many options to the players, both in vehicle choice and in locations that they can go. These choices are further amplified by the fact that the order of the first and second objectives are semi-randomly chosen along with the spawn location and the objective locations so that the are technically half a dozen or so ways that the mission could be set up. The secondary objectives are easily accessible, and can be used to lead more mobile vehicles to positions that could be advantageous for the final objective. The only real problem with this map is that the "destroy the base" objective can be completed far too quickly by single trigger-happy player and result in the team being up to their necks in enemies and dangerously out of position for the final objective. Anvil - 6 A decent map, but fairly straight forward and lacking complexity. Engagements mostly occur at short range, so light vehicles struggle to remain relevant until the team gets close to the final objective at which point a single player (there really isn't enough space or targets for two players) can drive out onto the pier to put some range between themselves and the enemies. The secondary objectives are relatively easy to obtain, but are entirely meaningless outside of a small increase to the post-battle rewards. Banshee - 6 ... Basilisk - 8 While the single primary objective is not particularly complex, the amount of time it takes to reach the objective area partially makes up for this. There are many good opportunities for vehicles of all types to find advantageous positions that they can make use of, allowing players to use whatever vehicle they want without any major issues. The secondary objectives can be a little bit out of the way depending on which version of them you get, but completing them gives you an extra 3 minutes to complete the primary objective (which can be very useful if your team is struggling to put out the DPM needed). Cavalry - 6 The primary objective is very straightforward, although the map design provides near-constant opportunities for long range support fire. The secondary objectives don't provide any in-match bonus, but are almost trivial to take out. It almost feels like this map needs to have a second objective that occurs after the players have killed off all of the enemies or secured the capture point. Cerberus - 9 One of the more unique maps in that it requires players to kill off specific enemies instead of capturing or defending locations. This change of pace is very refreshing compared to other PvE missions, although it seems to prove challenging for players who are not used to the lieutenants. There are plenty of opportunities for players to find locations to work to the strengths of whatever vehicle they are driving, allowing any vehicle to perform well. Two of the three possible variations of the secondary objectives (namely the "destroy the trucks" and the "destroy the ammo" variations) do not require players to go out of their way to complete them, while the third (the "satcom trace" variation) is worse than the others because it does. My only recommendation for this map would be to get rid of the "satcom trace" secondary objective. Dire Wolf - 4 ... Erebos - 8 ... Frostbite - 8 ... Ghost Hunter - 9 ... Harbinger - 10 An excellent map that provides good opportunities for all playstyles. No mater which vehicle a player is driving, they can always pick a suitable position that will allow them to play to the strengths of their vehicle. While the objectives are not overly complex, the players can choose between one of several routes to complete the first objective. While the secondary objectives don't provide anything outside of the reward bonus and can be a bit out of the way, the fact that the player only needs to shoot them means that they are easy to collect. Hydra - 5 ... Kodiak - 6 ... Leviathan - 9 While I like the complexity of this map, the objectives tend to vary wildly between being too hard and too easy. The randomized locations of the "defend the radio tower" objectives can lead to situations where nobody on the team has enough mobility to reach the new objective on time, causing the objective to fail. Conversely, the final objective is far too easy as the sole requirement for completing it is that at least one player survives until the end of the match. The random locations of the secondary objectives are often too far out of the way for players to reach them before they expire, and do not provide anything outside of the typical bonus rewards. That said, there are plenty of opportunities for vehicles of all types to find suitable positions for their intended playstyles, meaning that any vehicle can be comfortably used for this mission. Life Jacket - 5 ... Meltdown - 8 ... Onyx - 6 ... Perseus - 10 Provides excellent opportunities for squishy vehicles to spot and provide long range supporting fire. The series of objectives give the map the dynamic feel that is usually associated with complexity, and the second and third objectives can both be approached from several different directions if the player so chooses. While the secondary objectives can be a bit out of the way, the one that is the most out of the way spawns several additional enemies that players can choose to engage for additional rewards at the end of the match (helpful if your team is hyper-competent and everyone is trying to maximize their earnings) or ignore completely (although they will occasionally send a few shots at any players that get spotted). Phalanx - 6 ... Prometheus - 6 ... Quarterback - 6 ... Raiding Party - 9 Has the potential to be my hands-down favourite map, but the current mission timer is about 60 seconds too short. Objectives are complex without being confusing, and give players the opportunity to complete them in a variety of ways. Engagements can consistently take place at any range, allowing all vehicles to play to their strengths. The secondary objectives are a little bit out of the way, but generally not that hard to pick up when traveling between objectives. The only thing that prevents me from giving this map a 10 is the mission timer, which is just a little bit too short for an average team of random players to consistently complete the mission (outside of tier 9-10, which seem to do fine). Red Opossum - 6 This map suffers from many of the same problems as Anvil. Most of the engagements take place at very close range, so the effectiveness of various vehicles is heavily weighted in favour of heavily armoured vehicles. While the multiple primary objectives make it more complex than Anvil, the randomized secondary objectives are now harder to obtain while still not providing anything outside of a small boost to the post-battle rewards. Ricochet - 1 This map is a good example of everything that should not be done when making a PvE mission. The engagements all take place at relatively close range (due to a combination of AI spawn locations and urban/hilly terrain) and massively favour vehicles with armour. The map layout is extremely linear for the first half the match, but then branches out to give the players a grand total of 2 routes that they can take in order to continue the engagement - one that will allow players to attempt to get the secondary objective, and one that doesn't expose the players' flanks to a swarm of enemies. The secondary objectives are spaced far apart, and take so long to get to that the match is often over before the team can finish it. Additionally, while the average map time for Ricochet is significantly shorter than the other maps, the rewards from the map are so disproportionately low that a player looking to generate as much income as then can in a given period of time is probably better off skipping Ricochet entirely. The end result is a map that is neither fun nor rewarding to play. Rolling Thunder - 7 A decent map that provides a reasonable level of complexity and good options for different vehicles. Engagements can occur at comfortable ranges for any vehicle on the first and last objective, but only at medium or close range for the second objective. Secondary objective locations are randomized, and are often in locations that are out of the way of the normal paths players would otherwise follow, but are being meaningless outside of increased rewards. Sapphire - 4 Another example of a map that could be done better. The primary objective is very straightforward, which means that matches are usually pretty short. While nowhere near as constrained as ricochet, there are no particularly good spots that players can use to take advantage of the open fields of fire to provide flanking fire without getting spotted. The secondary objectives are well out of the way and require the player be right next to them in order to pick them up without providing any advantage in the match. Scorpio - 6 ... Snakebite - 8 ... Spearhead - 3 ... Starry Night - 6 .. Stormy Winter - 6 ... Tsunami - 7 What would otherwise be a excellent map is hampered by the fact that any players that remain near the spawn for a few minutes after the match starts face certain death. Several enemies rush the spawn within the first few minutes of the match and spot anyone in the spawn for the lieutenant sitting at the end of the road with a clear line of sight into the players' spawn point. The single primary objective is straightforward, but the amount of time it takes to get there mitigates most of this as it gives players the opportunity to explore the map and choose from a wide variety of possible routes. The open area at the start of the mission gives plenty of opportunities for squishies to spot and give support fire, as does the relatively clear trainyard and dockside near the end of the mission. The secondary objectives are spaced far apart, but are not that much of an issue to get since players will need to go there anyways to deal with enemies that would otherwise hit the players with flanking fire from across the map. Umbrella - 4 While this map provides reasonable opportunities for players to use their vehicles to their strengths, it is hampered by being the quickest PvE mission in the game (this is the only mission I have ever completed in under 3 minutes, and I have done so multiple times). The secondary objectives are randomly placed, and could either be well out of the way or in very convenient locations, and are meaningless outside of the post-match rewards. This mission is better suited to being a single objective of a longer mission rather than a whole mission in itself. Watchdog - 8 A good map with varied objectives and decent variation in gameplay opportunities. While it is possible for squishy vehicles to support the objectives from longer ranges, the positions that they need to be in to do this are either not obvious and/or a bit awkward. Secondary objectives are easy to complete and provide decent rewards, but are otherwise useless. Wildfire - 7 While this map has some opportunities for squishies to give spotting and long-range support fire, these locations tend to be a bit awkward. The multiple objectives are relatively open, and offer players multiple ways to approach each objective. Some of the secondary objectives are a bit far out of the way, and collecting them does not provide any in-match advantage. Zero Hour - 10 One of my favourite maps, it is complex while still offering varied gameplay opportunities. Objectives are generally good and, with the exception of the latter half of the first objective, provide opportunities for squishies to spot and give long range support. While the secondary objectives give decent rewards they are quite far out of the way, although going after them does not take a player entirely out of the fight due to the fact that the enemies that spawn with them would otherwise flank the team. While not entirely necessary, increasing the timer for the second objective by 30-60 seconds or reducing the amount of time needed to capture it would make this map slightly easier to complete. What's the most important thing to you in a PvE mission? - gameplay While it is undeniable that all of the choices that were given for this question are important factors, I'm going to go with Gameplay. I have reached a point close to the "endgame" where I have most of the progression tanks and can afford to buy and upgrade the ones I don't have once I research them, so I'm not particularly worried about being sufficiently rewarded unless the earnings from PvE missions were to receive a massive nerf. Similarly, while certain enemy vehicles can be really annoying to play against (the old Swingfire in particular), I have enough experience in dealing with them that I generally just consider them to be "slightly more dangerous" or "mildly annoying". Instead, I'll focus on gameplay since this has the widest scope of things that can potentially be changed: map layouts and objective types (less corridor maps, less linear maps, no escort objectives) AI behaviors game mechanics (vision and spotting, shell damage and penetration mechanics, mobility mechanics, etc...) vehicle balance etc... What's your favorite mission objective preference in PvE? - capturing a location this is really just a placeholder answer, because I don't have the option to select the mission objective types that I actively despise: The escort objectives where you need to escort a vehicle with a limited HP pool and possibly preset pathing are terrible because they remove all of the potential creative solutions in favour of boatloads of DPM. There is no thinking involved with this type of objective, just driving around and holding down LMB and hoping that you can kill everything fast enough. This type of objective should be avoided for all future PvE missions. The fetch objectives where you need to pick up and carry an object have potential, but their expectation in the Moscow Calling season were less than ideal and prone to abuse. This was particularly noticeable in cases where the death of the player carrying the object would result in mission failure, as this turned the objective into a variation of the escort objective where the vehicle that needed to be escorted was marginally more competent than the AI at best or actively and deliberately suicidal at worst. While the other variation of the fetch objective did not have this particular problem, it was still prone to abuse by players grabbing one of the limited number of objects available for pickup and then deliberately not delivering it to force a mission failure. This type of objective could be used in future PvE missions with 2 major restrictions to prevent griefing: the death of the player carrying the objective should not result in mission failure there should be multiple redundant copies of the objective available The "kill the enemy boss" objectives range from being OK to exceptionally boring/annoying depending on what the boss is. An example of this type of objective done well is Cerberus, where the bosses are strong but not overwhelmingly powerful or hard to kill. An example of this type of objective done poorly is the gunship in BSI 3 (particularly in Heroics) where remaining stationary for too long means certain death and the boss takes several minutes of sustained fire (RMB, hold LMB) from the entire team to kill. All of the other objective types are generally fine, and I have no real complaints about them How difficult do you like your PvE? - challenging but doable with random players ...

Commanders will keep XP that you accumulate even if they aren't promoted. While not overly useful, you can use this to "pre-level" you commanders when you're doing the initial rank ladder and to keep an XP buffer in case you want to retrain commander skills without using gold.

Yes, the increased render range would work to discourage camping in PvP, but it would have the complete opposite effect in PvE. It doesn't matter if a player "announces their presence" in PvE by shooting a bot because the bot is hard-coded to not fire at players unless they have been spotted by one of the bots. If the render range was increased for PvE without any mitigating or conditional factors I would expect more players to drive to a good vantage point and then sit there killing all of the bots that they can see without any risk of return fire because none of the bots can spot the player. Earlier I suggested a few possible mitigating or conditional factors to the increased render range, but after reading your reply I think I can expand the list: environmental factors (rain, snow, dust, etc...) that impede visual spotting use the current spotting system, but have a draw range based on the player's view range in which all enemies will render use the current spotting system, but firing automatically makes the player render on their enemies' screens for a brief period of time

I just took her out for a test drive and discovered a rather interesting behaviour with the autoloader. Because the reload timer for the second shell does not reset when you fire the gun, it is possible to fire 2 shots in very rapid succession. Normally, if the second shot is already loaded when the gun is fired, there is a 2-second loading cycle before the 2nd shot can be fired. However, I have found that is it possible to bypass this loading cycle by firing the first shot when the second shot is nearly finished loading. The exact timing between shots depends on how precise the player's timing is when they fire the gun; I managed to get the interval between shots down to one tenth of a second in the test ground (with 0 ping), but with a bit of practice and a consistent internet connection this should be replicable in a live match. I'm not entirely sure if this behaviour is intended or not, but it seems a bit broken. Without knowing what the devs intended, I would expect there to be a minimum of a 2 second reload between shots even if the 2nd shot has less than 2 seconds remaining on its load time, but this is obviously not the case.

As much as this seems like a good idea, I would be a bit cautious about implementing it. Being able to see targets from across the map could encourage more static and methodical behaviour (where players refuse to move up to new positions while there are still enemy vehicles visible even if they're not ID'd) and would reduce the importance of proper scouting and spotting. It might be possible to limit the behaviour effects by introducing or increasing environmental effects (heavy rain or snow) to reduce visibility. Another option that could mitigate some of these issues would be to have the render range for enemy vehicles scale based on the player's view range (scouts would benefit from the increased render range the most, while other classes would still be somewhat reliant on the spotting done by their teammates).

If the entire concept is based on the premise of players being able to see how many people are queueing for a particular map, the entire idea is almost certainly doomed from the start. There used to be a counter for the number of players queuing for matches divided by the tier of vehicles that were being queued, but the devs removed it for reasons that to my knowledge have not been disclosed. Given that the devs generally don't reverse changes that have been made (and the in the few cases where they do they are fairly recent changes), the chances of getting the player counter for queuing is effectively nil. While it is possible that a player counter for the queue might be reintroduced, I would not be holding my breath for it and I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath for a more detailed player counter than what used to be in the game. Allowing players to queue for 2 or more maps at the same time would increase the complexity of the queue system, which would in turn increase the number of potential failure points. While it would be exceptionally rare for 2 maps that a player is queueing for to go into the match at the same time, random chance dictates that the conditions necessary for it to occur would happen eventually, which means that the matchmaking system would need to be able to automatically deal with it without any user input (requiring user input would open up the possibility of greifing by locking other players out of being able to play the game) or causing any game-braking effects (e.g. a player having to play 2 maps at the same time or being forced to abandon their team on one of the maps). A lobby system could work, and the easiest way to do this in my opinion would be to expand on or revise the platoon function. A platoon can take the required 5 players for a PvE match, but joining one is currently limited to receiving an invitation from the platoon leader. Giving the platoon leader the option of making the platoon public and adding a section on the matchmaking tab of the UI for joining platoon would provide the basic lobby function. The exact particulars of how the improved platoon system would work depend on the answers to several questions: Can the platoon leader restrict the platoon to a specific game mode or difficulty? Can the platoon leader restrict players to having a particular classes and/or tiers of vehicle? Can the platoon leader allow more than 4 other players to join the platoon to insure that vehicles of the desired classes and/or tiers are present? Can the platoon leader force a match and leave behind any players that are not ready? Can the platoon leader override matchmaker restrictions with respect to vehicle tiers if they have a full platoon (like they already can with vehicle classes)? Can the platoon leader choose the map if they have a full platoon? etc... While all of these options would work to improve the amount of choice afforded to players, they would all increase the waiting time between matches. A more complex system that gives more options will always be slower than a simple system that restricts player choice. While I wouldn't be opposed to being able to join "public platoons" I personally do not think that the majority of the options I listed should be implemented due to the potential of griefing and abuse

As much as this would be the "ideal" solution, the game does not have a large enough playerbase to allow for it. The devs haven't said how long the average waiting time for a +/-1 tier spread PvE match is, but we'll assume for the sake of argument that it takes an average of 30 seconds (in my experience this is about right for tier 7-10 hardcore PvE). This means that it takes about a full minute for 5 players to queue for a match in the +/-1 tier spread, or about 1 player queuing every 15 seconds (the 5th player gets the match instantly). Of course, this is with a +/-1 tier spread, so the amount of time between players queueing for any given tier is effectively doubled, for a queue rate of 2 players per minute per tier (we can probably also add in "per PvE difficulty/mode" here as well, but I'm not going to bother with it). This value of 2 players per minute per tier means that your idea would not work in the current status of the game. There are currently 36 standard PvE maps in AW, and giving players the option to choose which one of them they want to queue for would dilute those 2 players per minute per tier across 36 separate queues, which would increase the average wait time from 30 seconds to over 20 minutes. This is unacceptable. While this time could be reduced by limiting the map choices to 10 maps which change on a daily basis and increasing the tier spread to +/-2, this would still result in an unacceptably long queue time of over 6 minutes while the increased tier spread would reduce the queue times by about a third at the cost of serious adverse effects on gameplay. This means that the best possible scenario (10 maps, +/-2 tier spread) results in average queue times that are 8 times longer than what they are now and breaks what little PvE game balance we have, both of which are currently unacceptable. The ability to queue for 2 maps at the same time would be nice, but would present so many issues (what happens if a player gets into two matches at the same time, how does the game determine which one the player is sent to, etc...) that it's just not worth adding. TL;DR: While the idea seems like it would work on the surface, the game's player count is too low to make it work without breaking game balance and massively increasing queue times.

It actually seems like an arty would be pretty useful on the final part of the mission once players start figuring out where the infantry spawn. Lobbing HE/WP shells in the approximate locations of the infantry spawns should take them out pretty quickly if they are as bunched up as they seemed to be...

Great, it looks like tier 5 PvP is going to be broken again. Time to load up my T-72A and sealclub the shit out of tier 5 PvP. Maybe all of the whining from the people I stomp all over will encourage the devs to prioritize the low-tier rebalance... (it won't but I can dream)

Yay Ok I guess No. Just no. There are some PvE maps that some players absolutely despise (exactly which maps varies from player to player and which tier the map is played at) and will instead wait for the next mission in the rotation. This change is arbitrary and will result in less PvE matches being played because of players not joining the queue when a map they don't like is being offered (or god forbid 2 or 3 such maps in a row). Edit: I can understand the increased rotation time if the reasoning is "we don't want people to play the same map twice in a 2-hour session", but the benefits of keeping the rotation time the same far outweigh any perceived advantage of doubling the amount of time that a map takes before it appears in the rotation again.