Commanders!
Welcome to the newest Q&A Session where developers are answering questions posed by players.
In some Special Operations, there are objects that one needs to destroy, such as bunkers or helicopters. The damage dealt to these objects is vital to the team but is not rewarded as “damage dealt” with Credits and such after the battle is over. Is this a bug?
It is true that the Team Results window does not display this kind of damage. Completing such objectives in the game is useful when it comes to teamplay (for example, shooting down the helicopters in the third Black Sea Incursion mission) but it is not appropriately rewarded. We are not happy with this situation and are working on remedying it. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the system, we won’t be able to fix this in the upcoming update.
There are currently vehicles in the game that are unusable in Special Operations, such as Wiesel 1 or Kornet-EM. They have too little ammo for the task and some contract missions even forbid the use of ammo-replenishing PvE consumables. Additionally, I feel that their damage is reduced in PvE. Is this intended?
Their damage is not reduced in PvE. As for the amount of ammunition carried, it’s smaller than on other vehicles to maintain at least some basic semblance of realism – it would be strange if such a tiny vehicle carried more ammunition than a full-sized tank. Another aspect to consider is balance – these vehicles are very successful in PvP thanks to the combination of stealth and powerful ATGMs. To offset these characteristics, players must make sure that every hit counts since their ammo is limited. We are currently looking into adding some repair and rearm areas – we’ll be looking at player feedback and if it turns out that this issue still exists even after the recent difficulty adjustments, we will add them, like we did on the fourth map of the Caribbean Crisis.
How does the Special Operations matchmaker work? For example, four Tier 10 AFVs or LTs can’t really complete the third Black Sea Incursion mission – can you prevent the matchmaker from assembling teams that have zero chance of victory?
The Special Operations matchmaker works the same way as the PvE one. Generally speaking, it’s not supposed to assemble teams without a single well-armored vehicle. In some cases, the matchmaker does, however, exactly that – it’s a known issue that we haven’t been able to root out completely. We are currently working on fixing it.
Why is the Caucasus Loot Crate given out for contract missions and not for, you know, the actual Caucasus-themed Black Sea Incursion Special Operation?
Special Operations have their own rewards that we consider sufficient.
Will you change the system of PvE rewards for battle performance?
Perhaps in the future. The team is currently occupied with other things.
Will you do something about the AI opponents in PvE destroying our vehicle modules too often?
We agree that it’s an issue, especially when it comes to internal turret modules. We will be addressing this issue in Update 0.26, where we:
- Reduce the damage caused by AI opponents to your modules
- Add an ability to the Field Maintenance PvE consumable to also repair your modules
Additionally, we will be making the APS systems more effective. Together, these changes should help PvE players a lot.
Are you planning to increase the amount of Credits and Experience income from PvE? It feels that you can make much more of both in the Global Operations mode.
Global Operation battles do bring you more income per battle, but they also usually last longer. Statistically, you can complete two to three PvE missions per one Global Operations battle. With this in mind, the PvE rewards are fair.
What’s up with the AC-130 wildcard that can take out half of my team in one run? I thought this was a tank game.
We know about the issue. It is tied to wildcard scaling with tiers that is not working correctly. Unfortunately, there is no fast solution – it will take a bit of time to fix.
In some Global Operations battles, when the result ends up being 50:50, the team with more objectives captured wins. Don’t you want to disable respawning during such occurrences so that the stronger team can win?
No. The team that has more captured objectives IS stronger.
In Global Operations, what often happens is that a whole bunch of T-15s, Kornets and Sphinxes ambushes an MBT from cover. The MBT can fire once, but that doesn’t do much – after that, there’s nothing it can do against a flood of ATGMs. What are you planning to do to help players in such situations?
In Update 0.26, we are planning to give all modern MBTs effective means to defend themselves in such situations in the form of the already mentioned APS overhaul. When used correctly, the active protection systems will allow the MBTs to survive such situations. And another thing – the newly introduced Israeli branch will feature armor that will be very effective against ATGMs and will be able to “out-shoot” ATGM spammers thanks to its commonly present Ready Rack mechanism. As a result, the impact of the abovementioned situations should be greatly reduced.
Can you do something about tree opacity? When passing a forested area, it’s difficult to navigate due to the map foliage and firing over the trees is difficult too when you don’t see your target.
Aim at the silhouette. Alright – seriously speaking, it’s something we might look into in the future.
Will you improve the visual effects of water waves and the way the water in the game behaves when a vehicle enters it
Yes, we are planning an improvement of a wide variety of special effects.
Why not return the number of players to the queue interface? The current waiting time system shows inaccurate times anyway.
Displaying the number of players in the queue window led to a number of cases where players “gamed” the system so that it would give them a matchmaking advantage (for example, by ensuring they were on top of the team). The old system had other issues as well – it was incomprehensible for new players (or, more specifically, it made it harder for new players to draw waiting time conclusions from the numbers provided) and it didn’t really work for platoons at all. The new system actually works with a larger number of conditions and is more accurate and easier to comprehend. That doesn’t mean it’s always absolutely accurate and we are working on improving it even further.
Are you planning to allow players to choose between the new UI and the old Obsidian UI?
No. Otherwise, we’d have to support all new mechanics in two different systems.
Are you planning to allow transferring the accumulated Experience of Premium vehicles directly to other, progression vehicles?
No.
Have you thought about adding a post-battle chat to the game? One or two minutes, you know, to talk about what happened in that game.
We currently have no such plans for random battles as such chat would quickly become very toxic. We are, however, working on providing players with more communication options (platoon voice chat, General Chat in the HQ, Battalion Chat in the HQ that is coming soon).
There are a large number of potential Tier 8-10 prototypes waiting to be added to the game. How do you choose what to put in a progression branch and what to make a premium vehicle?
Generally speaking, for the Premium status, we choose those vehicles that had no versions of follow-ups (dead end offshoots for vehicle development) or those vehicles that foreshadow the upcoming progression branches such as the Merkava Mk.2D. Progression branches are generally assembled from vehicles of the same class and nationality (Israeli MBTs, French MBTs etc.), although some branches are based on a “topic” rather than nationality – for example the “light anti-tank vehicles” of Oscar Faraday.
Are you planning to introduce more retrofits?
Not for now. However, when it comes to customization, there will be a number of interesting options for the special Battalion contract vehicles.
Can you add a retrofit that would increase the amount of ammunition carried?
That would be a very situational retrofit, usable only for specific vehicles, in specific modes and on specific maps. Constantly installing it and removing it depending on what mode you want to play would be quite awkward. It could potentially also be quite balance-breaking. However, we are considering an ammo refill consumable.
Can you add a notification of teammate help requests to the minimap?
Not in Update 0.26, but we do hope to add it this year.
Can you make a feature where, after any battle, we’d see an image of a vehicle with all hits that penetrated or didn’t penetrate indicated on it so that we can sit down and analyze the outcome in order to help us play better?
As the first step, we already improved (and continue to improve) the impact decals on your vehicle. They now differ based on what kind of shell hit you. Based on their appearance, you can check the way your vehicle looks at the end of the battle and draw your own conclusion. In the future, we will add the possibility for you to view your vehicle at the end of any match without having to resort to replays.
Why can’t you reload your smoke launchers quicker and why don’t the repair points fix them?
Smoke launchers in real life take longer to reload than they do in the game, but the real answer is – balance. For the same reason, repair points aren’t generally meant to return your tank to mint condition, especially when it comes to defensive measures. That is why your ammunition is replenished in full but only a portion of health is returned. We are, however, looking into allowing the repair points to also replenish your smoke grenades.
Are you planning to give amphibious vehicles more abilities than just the bonus to drowning time?
Not at the moment. For the future, we are, however, considering adding fully developed amphibious vehicles with the ability to swim.
Can you make the PvP contracts go away? I play only PvE.
We will review the contract missions in general, including adding a solution for those players who prefer to play only one mode. However, we do consider the system where playing all modes yields the best rewards the right way to go.
Some contracts are made in such a way that they support anti-team gameplay (kill stealing etc.) – are you going to do something about it?
Yes. We are planning to review these contracts in order to make them promote team play better.
Remember the Base mechanism? We miss a “strategic” element like that. Will you return it?
Yeah, we miss it too. The old Base was removed for an overhaul as it didn’t quite do what it was supposed to, but we haven’t forgotten it. After we finish with the main Battalion activities we have planned for the upcoming updates, we plan to return the overhauled Base in the form of a Battalion Base with its own resources, crafting and asset deployment on the world map.
That’s it for today! We’ll see you on the battlefield!
