Quantum_Ranger

Glad to see so many [LABS] rats out there, even a sighting of Haswell playing where I had not encountered him previously. Wow. Is there an effort to coordinate strategy among the major battalions? [XARMY] is gone, but if [LABS] [MAHOU] [ELOD] [R3PERS] and the other big ones formed a virtual council (?? Division/Corps HQ) we might be able to improve the signal/noise ratio. It will be interesting to see how this interacts with the upcoming battle path. There are (a lot of) gaps in my progression chain, so I might acquire a prem vehicle from the shop if we choose something out-of-inventory (eg Chally 1 Falcon or Leclerc T40 for Euro MBT). I feel bad I can't really help vote here, but will try to position as best I can for the next stage, whatever the outcome. On the other hand, if we wind up using MBT for the storyline (most likely), all the BP missions that require something squishy will be on top of storyline requirements. Yikes! The burnout potential is very real... I hit the wall for a couple weeks last BP even without another campaign on top. I tried asking my wife this question and had to jump to protect my kneecaps. QR

Also, it would be good to understand what "standard PVE" is .... presumably that includes both standard and hardcore difficulty, because only Hardcore is available for the higher tiers. I haven't played enough tanks in each category to have an informed opinion about what we should all pick, but this discussion is very useful. I agree with @MK_Regular that the Abrams series is very playable by average players. For this first stage, I'm grinding T72 because a) I still need to unlock Taco b) at T5 I get a broader choice of maps. For once, Ricochet as a short map is actually OK. c) if we eventually decide on modern Russian MBTs I'm going to need one in my garage... so this grind heads towards a T90 if that becomes necessary. Funny how this launches just when the schools let out... so I suspect that the top 20% will be full of folks on summer holiday crushing it over those of us who have jobs to tend to. Sigh. QR

So am I missing something?? I registered, but haven't heard a peep after that. Prologue was supposed to start 1 June, then later was edited to 2 June, and it's 2 June here in the US.... maybe it launches with the 3 June server maintenance?? QR

OK, after 6 months, finally finished the NM142, starting from stock and not using any free XP. Wow, it was painful, but hopefully this will help others who are facing the same grind: I don't have Erin or Taco yet so I had to use Rashid... experimenting with Sabrina and Ioannis didn't seem to make much difference. Retrofits added early on included improved breech V2 and tele lenses. Leading targets and maximizing damage are key. Pick a target after you reload - your teammates will probably have destroyed several targets while you recycle. At 10% through the grind, I kept hoping adding the upgrades would make it better. Playing it pretty casually, focusing on the X2 first-win bonus, but really creeping along slowly. At 20% through the grind, I managed to add the top-down ATGMs. Really disappointing performance (only ~400 damage and takes forever to switch ammo types) so it's better to stick with the usual ATGMs at ~900 damage each. On the other hand, what else are you going to spend the XP on, really?? At 30% through the grind, I unlocked the uprated engine as the last useful upgrade. There really aren't very many upgrades at all. Despair set in as I realized the performance wasn't going to get much better. At 50% through the grind, I took the bull by the horns. Finished the Burlak, so decided to take a break from contract missions and just grind the NM142 full time. Not the best or most efficient strategy compared to a daily rotation, but I just wanted to finish it and move on. Added some XP insignia and crew insignia to accelerate the grind (when else would I use the silver ones, anyway??) I decide that the rebuild kit is now standard equipment, credit yield is not important if I can just end the torture. At 70% through the grind, I finally get the crew to level 5. Actually, it's not a bad tank now... I can pretty much count on 10k-15k damage per match. I think the mind-numbing thing about it is that you spend so much time waiting for the reload, then shoot the pair of slow ATGMs, then run and hide to load again. Occasionally scream as the target shifts a few degrees while the ATGM is in flight, causing only 79 splash damage instead of 900. As a T7 I think it would be actually OK if it performed like this out of the box, instead of at the end. I finally open the 3 plat crates and one of them is 50k free XP. So tempting, but I am determined to save it for when Faraday really gets expensive. I start to think, well, I could burn my free XP and end this now, or keep going... Each match, I think to myself, well, I saved me another 2.5k free XP... that's half the weekly XP bonus, right?? Grrr. Can't quit now. I spend precious minutes just looking at the tech tree, convincing myself that I'm really saving myself a T9 grind after the Sprut.... At 80% through the grind, we have the X5 first-win bonus. OK, now finishing it looks much easier if can just I stick with it. I notice that the Sprut will be my 5th T8, so there's 10M credits from the Dealer Access achievement to sweeten the prize for finishing. So it would be like getting the Sprut for free plus getting ~2M credits. I feel less bad about using rebuild kits. At 90% through the grind, I have a few matches where MM has another NM142 on the team. I really sympathize with the other driver, knowing he's probably not as far into the grind and has more of this ahead of him. I think I will always have a soft spot for other players driving NM142s, enduring the agony. Memorial day 2021 - X5 first win bonus, plus insignia, 15k XP, done at last!! The Sprut is so refreshing, even though it's a glass cannon. Such a pleasure to destroy a secondary with MG, instead of having to ram it. I feel human again!! Maybe I can meet Hana Buric for a cup of coffee now.... Victory! DVC, QR

Glad you are enjoying the game. For the LABS clan, contact itzjustrick. You can also look for other clans in the Battalion Recruitment section of this forum. :-) Community is good here and very helpful for those starting out. Usually I stick to the short missions if I'm on call in case the gong goes off, and save longer SpecOps / platoon runs for days off. Even in platoon people are usually really good if someone needs to catch some rack or get work done. Many players are in EU so things are busier when they are awake. If your better half doesn't mind you grinding, I predict you will both be happy. DVC, QR

Thanks for the links, looking at the 2017 storyline - yep, the initial missions were pretty straightforward, but towards the end it looks very grindy. A problem with episode 1 is that if you didn't have the tank for the objective, you would get shut out of a chance to get the end reward straight away... hopefully this time there are more choices and (at least early on) fewer requirements to complete objectives with tanks that I don't have (a la Raid). I suppose if one is going to grind the BP anyway, might as well get a few more rewards for doing it. QR

Probably a response to global chat complaints about trolls who boast incredible stats but have closed dossiers precluding verification of claims. Whatever. Shadow gets a MG, but NM 142 doesn't. Sigh. QR

Yep, we are on day 14-15 now, and the Taran takes 11 days from the beginning, so if you start soon then the Taran should still be possible because you would finish on something like day 26/30. DVC and good luck, QR I think the Taran boom sounds a lot like the Object 190 boom. Makes me wonder how many boom sound clips actually exist in the game, or whether they have someone on staff intentionally tuning the booms to be distinctive (not that we are dealing with reality anymore, but they are pretty obsessive about the skins, so why not the audio?). I agree the York is the mainstay for T5, considering I started T5 with the Starshi*. ... Hopefully it won't get nerfed with the fall update, now that I finally scored one in the last BP. QR

Finally received the Taran - it definitely looks cool. Looking forward to the skin. Not sure whether I will grind it right now to level up the crew and add the retrofits to buff it up a bit... still have a lot of progression vehicles competing for attention. Might be a good project for a rainy day later on. QR

I was thinking the airships were using some kind of gravity propulsion device for lift - these have been researched IRL since the 1950's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_gravity_control_propulsion_research]. Perhaps a century later someone finally found a breakthrough. The fans could just be for trim / attitude / forward propulsion, which is why they don't kick up much dust. Hopefully a clone of Austin Harper has been created from his DNA and been cryogenically preserved, so Hana gets to rescue him again someday... On a different note, it is useful to have the RL vehicle characteristics to justify their parameters.... like why I still believe the NM142 should have a 7.62 MG to fend off infantry. The real vehicle does, so why shouldn't the AW vehicle?? DVC, QR

Not really sure when the clock started on this event... if we had to get the 3 wins in by 1700 EST on the 6th, a lot of the NA playerbase would not be eligible for any of the prizes. Hopefully the devs would give folks ~24 hours to qualify. QR

Actually, recently I have seen more new players in the garage chat seeking help. I try to direct the more inquisitive ones to this forum. DVC, QR

Playing SH this weekend after a long intermission... and back to failing Extreme SH4 miserably. Everyone seems to die before we get to the final ramp, even though folks (from multiple regions) are racking up good quantities of damage. Did SH4 get harder after all the updates (AI vehicle changes, downgraded HE mechanics) or am I just out of practice [not that I was ever that good]? Reading this thread has helped remind me of some details that I had forgotten, which probably contributes to the problem.

OK, looks very similar to the 5th anniversary event mechanic, except there are no lootboxes, so it's all predictable. Banner takes 1 day (but useless to those of us who never unlocked banners), second stage is 2 days, third stage is 3 days, the later stages are 5 days each... so 26 days total to finish all the stages if I've counted correctly. Plus the Taran is in the middle of all the stages... so ample time to get the steel stuff with lasting value. Looks like you could miss a couple days and still get the lilacs if you want.

You were brave to post an inaugural replay on this forum despite having PTSD from WoT... and it helped a lot of people, me included.

Just a quick post after playing AW for exactly a year now, with over 3500 missions and 70 vehicles later... Many thanks to Haswell, TeyKey, Defnce, Knutliott, and the legions of others who have provided thoughtful advice on the forum. Nods of thanks to Baron_Georg, Blapowski, and other contemporary teammates for support through the continual grinding. Gratitude to all who play, because it is the player base that keeps AW alive and the server open... and to the devs (despite our grievances) who never cease to amaze us with ingenious updates. :-) To new players just starting out (always heartening to see tagless folks driving T1 and T2s out there)... Stick to it. There are definitely peaks and valleys. Map knowledge will come eventually no matter how foggy it seems at first. There are plenty of great players out in the community willing to help, and this forum is a terrific way to learn new aspects of the game from folks who have been there, done that, and then compiled statistics on it. It's the support from the community that will keep you from burning out. There's a reason why my warmest and most memorable moments in this game are not from epic kills or caps, but from freeing stuck and trapped fellow players. See you on the battlefield (haha!) DVC, QR

Has anyone been able to compare base payouts from pre-0.35 to post 14Apr2021? I have noticed that now the first-win-of-the-day multiplier is now X5 instead of X2... so the gap between good maps and bad maps for credits and XP just got bigger. Wish we had better rotation tracking so I could decide which tanks to play for which match. I am thinking they are trying to incentivize having a larger fleet of tanks, and to push players who have a favorite tank to rotate through others. QR

I wish we had this feature to click on while we waited in queue - think of how many ads you could view in 5 minutes!

Yes, it's weird that the devs spend so much time and effort laboriously crafting these skins, yet make them unobtainable by the masses. I suppose we will see them reappear in contract crates or in the store someday in the future. At least there is the free Tier5, which could be really useful for newer players who don't have a T4 or T5 yet, especially with the current Hardcore and Specops tier requirements. They would have to use gold to bypass the Homicide missions, because there is no way to kill enemy infantry without a T4. QR

PVP=PVE only when you are playing against me (a player with skill level comparable to an AI bot.) :-) But one could achieve something close to your idea by re-scaling the tier multiplier... I definitely agree with you; am currently grinding T9 Abrams and it is really slow going, even on hardcore with the 2x daily bonus. I suppose the devs would rather have us grind it out in SpecOps. DVC, QR

Yep, may shorten queue times especially when total numbers of players are sparse. Kind of sharpens the transition between T3 and T4. On the other hand, lack of a hardcore option for T3 will make grinding any T3 longer since there won't be a hardcore credit/XP bonus available ... so it will be harder to start a new line from scratch unless you can cross over from a different dealer at a higher tier, or burn boosts/insignia to make up for the loss of bonus. Maybe you could "unlock" the hardcore option for T3's if you have at least one T5 or something like that?? I agree there's not much utility to doing Standard at T7-10.

Thanks! This is really helpful, especially because a lot of the builds posted outside this forum are obsolete.

Thanks, this makes sense - I never really thought about growth over levels.... just got Sanna up to WO. Do you have a recommended Sanna build? I still have the free reset available in case I've screwed it up already. DVC, QR

Whatever this is, it should be more interesting than the Desert Storm Raid event.... perhaps this is the event that is supposed to run alongside / after it for those of us who don't need more skins. QR

OK, Sabrina and I have spent a *lot* of time together. Rachel and Freja might be a little jealous. So now Sabrina is maxed out at LT, and can't be promoted because I don't have another commander at LT... and everybody else is at MSGT or below. The question is if I continue to play Sabrina without promoting her, does she still accrue commander XP? I can't tell from the GUI because it just says she has 200k/200k... I figure if she is still accruing XP, I'll just keep using her to start fires and for SpecOps, and work on promoting a couple others through regular missions. If the commander XP is forfeit unless I promote her, I might just spend the 2k gold to get a prem commander (Jorge vs Olivia) to hold the LT rank to let Sabrina keep going. Or just give her a break until I level the others up... Advice welcome. DVC, QR