MK_Regular

So, after checking the contest Discord channel, I found that my 27,978 damage PvE game was the highest damage score for the Type 74 damage contest. Naturally, I was expecting to either be contacted by one of the mods or have the reward show up in my garage one day. After waiting a few days without either of the expected outcomes happening, I decided to go look at the contest channel to see what was up. I found this: I am really fucking salty right now. Can someone please explain why this happened and how I can go about claiming my prize?

The reduced effectiveness at long range weakspot sniping is definitely a plus, but I'm not sure that it will have a massive overall effect (how long range is "long range"?) The bit about not shooting unmanned turrets might make a few vehicles (notably the Termis and T-15) even more hilariously OP in PvE, but that will probably depend on how much penetration the guns the bots are using have Bots not driving backwards will make them seem smarter but will make them harder to kill in some instances, I probably shouldn't have gotten used to abusing this bug BMP-3/3M and BMD-4 not spamming 100mm HE is something to look forward to Ready rack usage will make Stingrays and Merks go from being a free lunch to being quite nasty, I expect more than a few pubbies will get bursted by one of these and go complain on the discord The increase in ATGM noise will hopefully make low-tier missile boats less annoying, but I'm not going to hold my breath *Looks at all of the tanks that have turret ring weakspots* oh dear. 9M14 "Malyutka" (and SS.11, which is not in the game iirc) are MCLOS, so they are modeled correctly. But yes, every other missile that isn't fire-and-forget has incorrect guidance modeling including: MILAN (wire-guided SACLOS) Swingfire (wire-guided SACLOS) Late versions of Malyutka and derivatives (wire-guided SACLOS) 9K111 "Fagot" (wire-guided SACLOS) 9M113 "Konkurs" (wire-guided SACLOS) 9M119 "Refleks" (beam-riding SACLOS) 9M120 "Ataka" (radio-guided SACLOS) BGM-71 TOW (wire-guided SACLOS) 9M113 "Kornet" (beam-riding SACLOS) ZT3 Ingwe (beam-riding SACLOS) HOT (SACLOS of some kind) It's a bit trickier to model a guidance system that automatically leads a target rather than a system that just chases an aim point. Currently, all of the SACLOS and fire-and forget missiles in the game chase the aim point rather than leading the aim point to try and intercept it. I'm not sure what the balance implications of correctly modeled SACLOS and fire-and-forget guidance would be, but it would probably make missiles a lot easier to use in PvP and would make missile bots quite a bit deadlier.

Ah yes, the spread sheet. Good to know that my talents are appreciated TL;DR: the ready rack is pretty trash, and there are 3 good options if you're prioritizing DPM: (5793 DPM) Magazine with capacity + clip RoF (5711 DPM) Single shot with 2x RoF (5664 DPM) Magazine with 2x capacity Edit: I thought this was a different thread, my bad. Removed the link to this thread.

I'll probably do the damage contest in PvE because I'm playing the Type-74 there anyways. If I manage to get a few extra BC (and maybe some gold from the duplicate T-55) out of it I'm not going to complain. I don't see any entries for PvE yet, but that's not surprising considering that we're only allowed 1 entry. Everybody is going to wait until the last day before posting their best result (my best result is currently 17k on Umbrella of all things).

I got the Type 89 the other day, and my thoughts on it in the stock configuration so far are as follows: The missiles are powerful with high damage and penetration, but don't have a tandem warhead and need to be aimed carefully 9k DPM on an autocannon with 200mm of penetration is respectable, if a bit lackluster compared to the 9k DPM with 320mm pen on the BWP-2000 or the >11K DPM with 185mm of penetration of the BMD-2M and BMP-3M Gun handling on the autocannon is excellent, and the missiles are very responsive Mobility is adequate, but a bit on the low side It is looks like it might be surprisingly well-protected against autocannons, but I have not been shot at enough to test this properly View range is above average (but not by that much) Camo when stationary or moving slowly is slightly above average, but suffers when you move quickly and especially when you fire the autocannon in long bursts (I can get it to drop from 45% camo to ~16% when stationary using Lt.Col Rashid) Lack of APS or ERA makes it venerable to ATGMs Overall it's not a terrible vehicle, but it's not particularly good without any upgrades. It definitely has the potential to be very good, but requires some amount of skill and game knowledge to use effectively when stock. Looking at the upgrades it has access to, I'd probably only make a few minor changes: Increase the damage per shot of the autocannon from 45 to 50 Add an option for a continuous-fire autocannon that can be swaped out with the magazine-fed one (~200 rounds/min should give comparable DPM when using the same ammo) Add an option to either take the ATGM control unit OR a flash suppressor (reduces the camo penalty for firing by some amount) that unlocks at the same time as the control unit

The 2 largest differences between the M1A2C and the TTB are the armour profile and the gun. The armour profile on the TTB has a smaller but weaker lower front plate (it can still resist 440mm of AP pen on the lower half, and 730mm on the upper half) compared to the M1A2C (~650mm of protection across the entire plate). This can be combined with the TTB's hydraulic suspension to hide your smaller weakspot and give you better overall survivability on the hull front. Additionally, the TTB's turret is both unmanned (meaning it takes less damage when hit) and has better frontal armour than the M1A2C turret (no need to worry about the turret ring weakspot). The one area that the M1A2C does better than the TTB is in side protection, as it gets multi-layered ERA on the hull sides and ERA on the turret. As a result, the M1A2C is better protected against HEAT (especially tandem HEAT) from the sides, and has some protection from low-penetration AP and high-penetration AP that hits the side armour at a >30 degree angle. The other major difference between the TTB and the M1A2C is the gun. Where the M1A2C gets a conventional single-shot gun with an 8.75 second reload (which can be improved with a researchable breech upgrade and loader skills), the TTB gets an automatically loaded gun firing the same ammunition (same damage and penetration on the stock gun, all shells get an extra 35mm of penetration on the upgraded gun) with a 6-shot ready rack that reloads every 10 seconds, with 4 seconds between shots. Overall, this means that the TTB has respectable stock burst DPM of 8850 with the upgraded AP (8700 with the stock AP) and a sustained DPM of 3540 (3480) compared to the surprisingly good overall DPM of the M1A2C (3977 stock, ~4800 fully upgraded and with loader skills), and that the TTB has a slightly better chance to do damage with the extra 35mm of penetration. Overall, I'd probably pick the TTB. The burst damage it offers is extremely useful in PvE and allows you to do all of your damage up front and retreat to protect your somewhat questionable armour if need be. Event then, the somewhat questionable armour of the TTB is significantly better than the M1A2C's since most of the vehicles you will be facing will likely be firing AP with enough penetration to punch through the M1A2C's hull front (but not always enough to punch through the middle plate of the TTB) or tandem HEAT ATGMs that will go clean through the hull front of both vehicles or get steered around the ERA on the vehicles' sides and go clean through the side armour. The doesn;t even consider the fact that the TTB gets hydraulic suspension or an unmanned turret, which both significantly improve the TTB's ability to find and make use of hull-down positions. In just about every situation, the armour on the TTB stands up just as well or better than the M1A2C, and the advantage in burst fire means that the TTB doesn't need to spend nearly as long exposing itself to incoming fire to deal damage. Sure, the M1A2C gets decent DPM, but it lacks the much of the protection needed to keep itself alive long enough to make use of that DPM.

If you enjoy playing a vehicle and want a specific overprogression upgrade, isn't system isn't too bad (considering that it's still a time sink). However, if you don't like playing that vehicle or you don't want that particular upgrade the overprogression system is just a waste of time. For example, I have the the XM1A3 and Type 99A2, both of which have overprogression. I like playing the XM1A3, so I'll probably pick up the trophy system eventually, but not any time soon because of all of the other vehicles I am grinding out. On the other hand, I've already picked up the speed boost overprogression for the Type 99A2 which (in my opinion) is far more useful than rapid fire, so I don't really have an incentive to grind out 2M XP for an ability that I'm never going to use (especially considering that the 99A2 keeps getting nerfed every time I think about taking it out for a drive).

The standard designation ability allows you to designate targets that are spotted by other players if the target is both: Inside your view range In your direct line of sight (you can mouse over the target and have the red outline appear) You can test this by having a player spot a stealthy target right at the edge of your view range, and then designating the target. Assuming that the Proto's designate behaves like the standard designate, you should be able to designate targets that are spotted by other players. The view range limitation of the standard designate would be replaced by the 150m maximum range limitation, but I'm not sure if the line of sight limitation still applies due to the fact that you do not need to mouse over a specific target to designate it.

Personally, I'd pick the Russian/Chinese branch (Gvosdika, Akatsiya, PLZ-89) even though it requires more XP to grind through. Gvosdika is fairly accurate and has good RoF, making it relatively easy to use Akatsiya gets a 3-round autoloader, allowing it to dish out lots of damage in a short period of time (and be somewhat effective when doing direct-fire) PLZ-89 gets a 3-round autoloader with better accuracy, RoF, and aim time. Probably one of the strongest SPGs in the game tier-for-tier If you can go down both lines at the same time, you could also go down the M109/Palmraia line. The M109 isn't particularly good, but the Palmaria is pretty decent. Once you get to tier 8, your only choice for a SPG is the flaming dumpster fire that is the Paladin, so it might be worth considering going down some of the other non-SPG lines to unlock your first tier 9 SPG. For tier 9, you effectively have 3 SPGs that are all very good: PLZ-05 with a 4 shot autoloader, has amazing burst damage but terrible accuracy and aim time PLZ-05 with a single-shot gun, has good RoF and great accuracy and aim time PzH 2000 with a 3-round autoloader, has decent burst damage with good accuracy and aim time Tier 10 has the Cent 155 with good RoF and little else. It's not terrible but you're probably better off using a tier 9 SPG if you want to get anything done.

I mean, it's probably going to be lots of fun to play (like the PLZ-05 or MTLB) but absolute cancer to play against (like the PLZ-05 or MTLB).

Preliminary results after 2 and a half weeks: 47 data points, most maps don't have a statistically significant (at least 3) number of games played. I'm assuming that there is a 3 minute turn around time between matches (game ends, results screen pops up, select new vehicle, join queue, get match, load match, finish countdown), and am adjusting the average times accordingly. Of the maps that I can draw conclusions on so far, Leviathan has the best base credit multiplier per minute (CM/M) ratio of 1.55, and is tied with Cavalry for the best base XP multiplier per minute (XM/M) ratio at 0.33. I'm not really in a position to play more matches at the moment, so I'll leave the current copy of the spreadsheet here for anyone who might be interested. AW Grinding Map Meta.xlsx

No, it should be 600 listed average damage, with the maximum possible damage roll of 891 (600 * 1.10 * 1.35). It will never be able to break 1k damage per shot against anything, but it doesn't matter because it is the best 120mm HEAT-MP round in the game (it has the best penetration at 830mm and is tied for the most damage with the Leclerc's HEAT-MP at 600).

I..... WUT? (good thing I finished my chally 2 grind a few weeks ago)

This argument is somewhat negated by the fact that the best DPM setup gives you a 3-shot burst (2.67 seconds between each shot) with a 13 second reload. This option gives you the most DPM you can get out of the K2 while still giving you the opportunity to hide between clips. You don't need to sacrifice burst damage for DPM when you can have both.

It might take 4 shots to kill a superior Bradley with 120mm HEAT-MP some of the time, but it will always take 4 shots with 120mm AP (not counting the challys) to do so. Even if you still need 4 shots to kill the Bradleys half of the time, it's still better than needing always needing 4 shots (besides, it's HEAT, you can aim for weakspots or explody bits to improve your odds of getting a 3-shot kill with high damage rolls or fire).

And just like that, all of my DPMs for different setups are wrong. I was under the impression the gun only did 590 damage per shot, so the listed DPMs are slightly (about 1.67%) lower than the actual in-game values. Also, the probability of securing a kill with the shots you have in the clip is probably one of the biggest considerations if you are thinking about using a ready rack for the burst potential. Because of the ready rack's lackluster DPM, you're going to want to minimize the number of capacity upgrades in favour of upgrades that increase RoF. I don't actually know what the probability distribution is for determining the amount of damage dealt by a damaging hit (I know the range is +/- 10% if you don't have any bonuses or modifiers), but my best guess is that it is based on a either a uniform distribution (equal chance to get any given damage number inside the +/- 10% range) or a normal distribution (probability is weighted so that extremely high/low damage rolls are rarer. In the case of a normal distribution, my best guess would be that the range of probabilities is limited to 3 standard deviations, with anything outside of the 3 standard deviations being automatically assigned to the highest/lowest damage value as if it was only 3 standard deviations above/below the mean (this should not be too noticeable, since only 0.3% of shots fired would be at least 3 standard deviations away from the mean). In the event of a uniform distribution, the equation for the amount of health H that results in a kill with X shots and Y certainty is as follows: H = X * average damage * (0.2 * (1 - Y) + 0.9) For example, in order to have 95% certainty of a kill with 5 shots doing 600 damage each, the maximum amount of health the enemy can have is: H = 5 * 600 * (0.2 * (1 - 0.95) + 0.9) = 3000 * (0.2 * 0.05 + 0.9) = 3000 * (0.01 + 0.9) = 3000 * 0.91 = 2730 health With this in mind, a few things to note: Superior Bradley will take 4 shots with 95% certainty Tbolt, PL-01, K21 will all take 5 shots with 95% certainty All but the weakest MBTs (and T15s) will take at least 6 shots, probably 7 (or more) The only times were the ready rack is better than the magazine loader is when you need to deal with isolated squishy vehicles quickly. Given that the magazine loader will be able to kill heavy vehicles faster than the ready rack, and that squishy vehicles very rarely (possibly never) spawn alone, the ready rack doesn't seem like a good fit for PvE where having mediocre sustained DPM is more valuable that mediocre burst DPM. It might do well in PvP modes where there is a better chance of running into lone squishies, but not in PvE. I don't have the math for the normal distribution, and it's far too late for me to go and work it all out, so I'm going to make a promise to come back to it tomorrow soon. That said, I don't expect that more consistent damage rolls will make that much of a difference in the number of shots needed to kill common enemies, but that remains to be seen.

I made a spreadsheet 4 weeks ago based on the leaked K2 stats. iirc the guns' stats have not changed in those 4 weeks, so the spreadsheet should still be valid: To explain the spreadsheet: Boxes with green text and green fill have the best time for a given number of shots, with yellow text and yellow fill showing the best time on the 2nd best gun and red text and red fill showing the best time on the worst gun. All of the boxes with green text but no fill have better times than the box with yellow text and yellow fill, but not as good as the green text and green fill. All of the boxes with black text and no fill are have better times than the box with red text and red fill, but worse than the bow with yellow text and yellow fill. All of the boxes with red text and no fill are worse than the option in the same column with red text and red fill. Green text and green fill -> green text but no fill -> yellow text and yellow fill -> black text and no fill -> red text and red fill -> red text and no fill Note that these values do not take any retrofits or commander/crew skills into account. It seems like the magazine loader with a single capacity upgrade and a single clip RoF upgrade gives the best sustained DPM, with the single shot gun being ~80 DPM behind it and he magazine loader with 2 capacity upgrades another ~50 DPM behind that. Any of these options are pretty good, and the option a player chooses can likely be compensated by personal preferences and playstyles. The onle thing I will say is that the ready rack is pretty trash. Even with upgrades, the ready rack's DPM is worse than the stock gun without any upgrades (yes, really). However, depending the ready rack does have a few potential use cases depending on how many shots are needed to kill specific targets (and how much DPM you are willing to sacrifice). If a target needs anywhere between 3-5 shots to kill, the ready rack with various upgrades has the best ttk of any of the gun options (note that the magazine + cyclic + capacity only takes an extra 1.8 seconds to fire its 3rd shot that ready rack + 2x cyclic). Once you get to the 6th shot though, the magazine loader gets ahead of the ready rack and stays ahead, while the single-shot gun takes until the 8th shot to pass the ready rack. TL;DR: Use one of the following setups: (5793 DPM) Magazine with capacity + clip RoF (5711 DPM) Single shot with 2x RoF (5664 DPM) Magazine with 2x capacity Do not use the ready rack unless you are willing to sacrifice >20% of your DPM to kill isolated targets with no more than 3k HP and can guarantee that every shot does full damage.

I think we might be able to metagame this data to find the most efficient maps for grinding. I'll start tallying my completion times for different maps to see if we can get an average XP multiplier per minute value. Might be able to do the same thing with a credit multiplier per minute value, but that would need to take secondaries into account.

So, now wouldn't be a good time to tell you that someone created the Well of Has and filled it with Kool-Aid?

I'm honestly not sure what to think about the AP nerf. The devs said that they want the CATTB to be good against MBTs but venerable to everything else, but also said that MBTs are strong against HEAT and weaker against AP (which is why the CATTB has good AP protection but bad HEAT protection). Naturally, this means that they're going to nerf the anti-MBT shell on the anti-MBT vehicle.... I just, wut?

Yup, just make the playerbase wait a few weeks after forcing a new UI on them to give them the customization options that the old UI had. Why do I get the feeling that this will make the shell trajectories as flat as a board in PvE? They're already a little bit too flat to work in some PvE maps, this wouldn't help at all.

IIRC if you remove the rentals from your garage, any retrofits you have will be sold at their normal selling price (75% of the purchase cost). However, if you keep the rental vehicle in your garage (maybe put it in your reserve fleet) any retrofits you have will be kept with the vehicle.

IIRC those aren't missing ERA tiles, they're actually part of the APS system. For reference, here's the Cent 120 (ignore the bit that says it's a VBR, that bit doesn't update when you preview a vehicle) with the APS installed without the ERA: . Also, the Draco doesn't get (and doesn't really need) any ERA.

Of all the games I play, there are exactly 3 vehicles that have been blessed with name of Cobra: There is the Cobra Mk III, a classic design that first appeared in 1984's Elite on the BBC Micro. It can turn on a dime, take a hit, hit back harder, and it's FAST. The Cobra Mk IV is a revised version of the Cobra Mk III. It's not as fast or agile as the Mk III, but it has more space for armour, guns, and other stuff. It's a bit of a lemon, but can still be quite useful in a specialized role. The OT-64. Can we start weekly series where we make a tier list for each class and tier of vehicle? I can already say for certain that the Cobra Chonker would get placed in 'D' tier on a ranking of S-A-B-C-D for the tier 5 AFV category.

Considering that most of the enemies in tier 10 PvE either sling ATGMs at anything that moves or are made of paper, being venerable to HEAT and not having an alternative HEAT/HE/HESH/etc... round isn't exactly great. The K2 seems like it might end up being another PvP-focused vehicle that will have some issues in PvE.