In Development: New Commander System

In Armored Warfare, Commanders are the most important members of each vehicle’s crew and correctly choosing one for each vehicle and play style can have an impact on your success. This impact is, however, limited in scope, which is something we’ve never been truly satisfied with – what we wanted to do is give players a meaningful system with a lot of impact, in which they can choose from truly distinctive commanders, each with a unique story, personality and preferred tactics.

Another issue of the existing Commander Progression system is that it’s quite short and restrictive. It’s very easy to maximize each commander’s progression limit and very few choices that objectively make a difference are currently available in it. We’ve decided to change all that and are pleased to announce that Update 0.22 is bringing the long-awaited overhaul of the Armored Warfare Commander system.

In Update 0.22, each commander will have a distinctive role and personality, something that was not quite accentuated before.

Commander progression will still be based on Commander Experience received (the same amount as vehicle Reputation), but instead of previous 5 levels, the commanders will have 15 levels instead. To train a commander to level 15 will require quite a lot of effort that will be rewarded with perk upgrades described below. To give you an example:

• To train a commander from Level 1 to Level 5 today requires approximately 222,000 Commander XP points
• To unlock a Tier 5 vehicle requires approximately 96,000 Reputation points
• To unlock a Tier 10 vehicle requires approximately 6 million Reputation points (which will roughly correspond to a Level 10 commander)
• To unlock a Level 15 commander from Level 1 will require approximately 19 million Commander XP points

It will also be possible to convert Global Reputation into Commander Experience. Please note that the act of unlocking the next rank is no longer automatic – players must manually assign the next rank to the Commander if he or she meets the requirements for next level. Speaking of which...

To promote gameplay diversity and to encourage players to try and acquire new and different Commanders, we are introducing a special rule for the existing commanders. Up until Level 10, the progression will work as described above. However, to unlock Level 11, players will have to own at least two Level 10 Commanders. To unlock Level 12, players will have to own at least two Level 11 Commanders and so on.

It is, however, possible to continue playing just one Commander – if that commander reaches the limit (for example, reaches Level 11 while the player has no second Level 10 Commander), the Commander Experience will continue to accumulate and will be stored until it can be used when the requirements for the next level are met.

Of course, such effort must be appropriately rewarded and that’s where the new Background and Perk system comes in.

Each commander has a set of perks at his or her disposal that can be unlocked by achieving the next level. That’s where the similarity to the existing system ends, however, as the progression is fairly different. Perks can be divided into:

• Commander Main Perk
• Commander Progression Perks

Commander Main Perks are the core of each commander’s character. They tend to be more general in nature, but do reflect the skills and bonuses required for the commander to perform in his or her role as well as his or her background, story and morals. What makes them truly special is the fact that they represent the starting place for the progression and grow in power.

These perks are automatically unlocked when you receive the commander in question and improve with each level. To give you an example:

Philipp Holzklau is one of the entry level commanders. He’s not very specialized – he can perform well in any vehicle, but not as well as specialist commanders. He’s also defensively oriented, focusing on safety and protection rather than offense. His Main Perk reflects this – when he commands a vehicle, the modules repair 25% faster, but this bonus can reach up to 39%.

Progression Perks are, as their name suggests, the improvements that can be unlocked by Level progression, one perk per level. Perks come in three qualities that determine their usefulness – the higher the quality, the better the bonus:

• Tier 1
• Tier 2
• Tier 3

An example of a Tier 1 Perk could be Rashid Al-Atassi’s module repair speed improvement by 5%, while his Tier 3 Perks for example reduce missile noise by 19%, increase missile module or crew damage by 19% or increase environmental camouflage by 19%. These bonuses of course stack with other systems such as the Retrofits.

Each commander has a Perk Field of a certain shape, consisting of square perk fields. Each square represents one perk and players can only unlock perks adjacent to those they already have unlocked, starting from the Main Perk.

Only Tier 1 and sometimes Tier 2 Perks are initially available and players must choose their path through the perk field for each individual commander. While simple in theory, this system allows for a wide variety of configurations as there will never be enough level points to unlock all Perks (or even most of them). Reaching the most desired Tier 3 Perks will require at least several Levels worth of progression.

Additionally:

• While the Perk Fields for entry-level Commanders resembles a full square, other, more advanced commanders have empty spaces present in their Perk Fields to allow more interesting choices and configurations
• Entry-level commanders only have Tier 1 and Tier 2 Perks along with smaller Perk Fields, only advanced specialist commanders have Tier 3 Perks

As you can see, the potential of customization is great with each commander having multiple ways of unlocking the right perks for you for him or her to become the ultimate fighting machine in your service. It will, of course, be possible to reset each Commander’s progress, but Commander’s level will reset along with his Perks.

As was stated above, the roles of the commanders in the game will become more clearly defined. The existing Commanders will be overhauled to fit their intended roles, which include:

• Philipp Holzklau – Entry Level, universal commander, defensive focus
• Sabrina Washington – Entry Level, universal commander, sniping and scout focus
• Viktor Kirsanov – Entry Level, focus on close range combat
• Ioannis Sanna – Advanced, focus on mobility, active scouting, sniping and fire (burning damage and flame protection)
• Fyodor Sokolov – Advanced, universal commander, crew performance focus
• Maximilian König – Advanced, universal commander, crew performance focus
• Rashid Al-Atassi – Advanced, focus on ATGM launchers
• Juan Carlos Miramón – Advanced, focus on active scouting and mobility
• Freja Højbjerg – Advanced, focus on sniping
• Erin O'Connell – Advanced, focus on passive scouting
• Anthony Diaz – Advanced, focus on close range combat

More commanders like Kathryn Grey or Joshua Seagrove might be added in the future!

All Commanders will be converted to the new model and their owners will receive the appropriate compensation to bring them to the equivalent level of what they had before.

We hope that you will enjoy the new commander system and will see you on the battlefield!