Commanders!
Not so long ago, we’ve unveiled our plan for the first stage of Battalion Activities, consisting of:
- Battalion Contract Missions
- Special Operations – Heroic difficulty
Since the launch of this feature is coming in the near future, we’d like to tell you more about both features.
As their name suggests, the Battalion Contract Missions are available to battalions (regardless of their size) and work on the same principle as standard Contract Missions – they are available for a limited time only and form a part of a campaign. A single campaign consists of several Contracts and each Contract consists of a number of Missions. The difference between various Contracts is in rewards.
The Battalion Contract Missions will be available on the right side of the Headquarters screen where the following elements are shown:
- Contract name
- Contract conditions
- Your personal progress
- Battalion progress towards the contract completion
For a Battalion to participate in the Battalion Contract Missions:
- The Battalion leader must first select and accept an available Battalion Contract based on the reward him and his Battalion desire
- Each Battalion Contract has a set of Mission the Battalion members can complete
- Each Battalion Mission awards (apart from rewards for the player who completed it) a number of medals that are added towards the Contract progress of the entire Battalion
- As soon as the required number of medals is gathered by the Battalion, the Battalion leader can claim a Battalion-wide Contract reward
In other words, the main difference from the standard Contract Missions is that once you complete a Battalion Contract Mission, the amount of medals the contract is worth will be added to the Battalion Contract progress, also indicated on your screen. The more Battalion members work on a contract, the faster it gets completed. As soon as the required number of medals is gathered by your Battalion, the Battalion leader can claim the Battalion-wide prize and you will all receive a reward. It’s worth noting that if a player joins a Battalion after the Battalion has accepted a Contract, that player will only be able to participate in its completion after 14 days from his joining.
Two types of Battalion Contract Missions are available for each Contract – Basic and Heroic. Much like the standard Contract Missions, they are selected randomly and reset once per day (once per 7 days for the Heroic Missions).
The Basic Contract Missions are mostly about gathering a specific resource, making them a more casual option to the more hardcore Heroic missions. Last but not least, unlike the standard Contract Missions, Basic Battalion Contract Missions can be completed by spending Credits instead of completing their actual objective. However, please note that this option will be quite costly. The following Basic Contract Missions will be available:
- Gather 400.000 Experience points in any mode (the bonuses from boosters and other income enhancers do count)
- Gather 300.000 Experience points in any mode while only the Experience earned from dealing damage counts (the bonuses from boosters and other income enhancers do count)
- Gather 200.000 Experience points in any mode while only the Experience earned from killing your enemies counts (the bonuses from boosters and other income enhancers do count)
- Gather 250.000 Experience points in any mode while only the Experience earned from spotting and dealing spotting damage counts (the bonuses from boosters and other income enhancers do count)
The Heroic Contract Missions are about feats of skill and will require some very specific gameplay, sometimes as a part of a platoon. They are considerably more difficult than the Basic Contract Missions but are also much better rewarded. Heroic Contract Missions cannot be completed by spending Credits. The following Heroic Contract Missions will be available:
- Complete an entire Special Operation on Heroic difficulty
- While playing in a platoon, kill at least 10 enemy vehicles in a PvP Standard Battle or at least 40 enemy player vehicles in a Global Operation, while winning the match
- While playing in a platoon, deal at least 20.000 damage in a PvP Standard Battle or at least 90.000 damage in a Global Operation, while winning the match
- While playing in a platoon, kill at least 8 enemy vehicles in a PvP Standard Battle while surviving the match, or at least 20 enemy player vehicles in a Global Operation while not dying once
- While playing in a platoon, spot at least 9 enemy vehicles in a PvP Standard Battle while surviving the match, or, in a Global Operation, deal spotting damage equal to at least the sum of the entire enemy team’s hitpoint pool while winning
- While playing in a platoon, damage at least 14 enemy vehicles in a PvP Standard Battle while winning the match, or win a Global Operations match while being responsible for at least 50 percent of the victory points in that match
The “while playing in a platoon” mission progress counts for all the members of a Battalion platoon together – if the requirement is to kill 10 enemy vehicles in PvP and, while in a 3-player platoon, one player kills 3, the second player kills 3 and the last player kills 4, the mission will be completed. These platoon missions can technically be also completed while playing solo, but their requirements make such a feat all but impossible – they are designed for organized team play.
As you can also see, one of the Heroic Contract Missions involves a new Special Operations difficulty called Heroic Special Operations.
This mode will be available for Tier 9 and Tier 10 vehicles only and will be considerably more difficult than even the existing hardcore difficulty. No additional story elements will be added to it (you do not need to finish this difficulty level to follow the Special Operations storyline) but the challenge will be ramped up, for example, by:
- Turning previously optional objectives into main ones
- Giving players less time to complete each task or the mission itself
- Making the enemies tougher, more numerous and placing them so that the players will have it more difficult to engage them
- Introducing new types of enemies that require special tactics to beat them
The players who complete these difficult feats must also receive proper Rewards.
In the Battalion Contract Missions, there are two types of rewards:
- Individual rewards
- Contract rewards
The Individual rewards are awarded to the players (or entire platoons) who complete a Battalion Contract Mission. The basic rewards for all Battalion Contract missions are experimental consumables.
Experimental consumables are improved versions of the existing consumables:
- Experimental Oil will add 15% bonus to acceleration and turret traverse and 10% bonus to maximum speed
- Experimental Energy Drink will add 7% to crew statistics
- Experimental Field Kit will allow you to respawn 3 times with 100% health
These consumables cannot be bought or sold for Credits and are available only by playing the Battalion Contract Missions. For a Basic Mission, the reward is one piece of each consumable. For a Heroic Mission, the reward is 25 pieces of each consumable.
The second Individual reward is a part of an Upgrade. The Upgrades are special modifications, significantly changing the properties of your vehicle. They can be installed on any Hades vehicle and are unlocked by each player individually by collecting ten parts of their specific Upgrade plans.
These parts can either drop after completing a Basic Contract Mission (only one type per missions) or can be obtained by completing Heroic Contract Missions, which are guaranteed to drop one part of each type per completion.
The following Upgrades will be available:
- Project Buffalo Upgrade
- Project Jaguar Upgrade
- Project Eagle Upgrade
- Project Cobra Upgrade
Project Buffalo Upgrade increases the vehicle’s protection and durability at the cost of mobility, specifically:
- Hitpoints increased by 50 percent
- Armor thickness increased by 10 percent
- Acceleration reduced by 33 percent
- Maximum speed reduced by 10 km/h
Project Jaguar Upgrade increases the vehicle’s mobile combat potential at the cost of protection, specifically:
- Acceleration increased by 33 percent
- Maximum speed increased by 15 km/h
- Hitpoints reduced by 33 percent
- Armor thickness reduced by 10 percent
- Weapon accuracy on the move (also known as stabilization) reduced by 50 percent
Project Cobra Upgrade increases the vehicle’s rate of fire at the cost of accuracy, specifically:
- Reload time reduced by 33 percent
- Maximum accuracy reduced by 50 percent
- Aim rate (the speed with which the aim circle gets smaller) reduced by 33 percent
- Weapon accuracy on the move (also known as stabilization) improved by 100 percent
Project Eagle Upgrade increases the vehicle’s ability to spot better at the cost of acceleration and reload time, specifically:
- Camouflage factor increased by 15 percent
- View range increased by 70 meters
- Acceleration reduced by 20 percent
- Reload time increased by 25 percent
Only one Upgrade can be used at one time for a vehicle. Unneeded parts can be sold for 100 Gold.
The Contract rewards are awarded to the entire Battalion upon the completion of a Contract with the following exceptions in mind:
- They are only awarded to the players who contributed to the completion of the Contract
- They are not awarded to those players, who have joined the Battalion recently (of the “newbie” rank)
- The Battalion leader always receives the reward regardless of his contribution
The first campaign of Battalion Contract Missions will include three Contracts with each Contract awarded by a very special prize – a 30 day rental offer of an improved version of an existing Tier 9 vehicle of the Hades project:
- T-90MS Hades MBT
- Challenger 2 Hades MBT
- M8 Hades LT
Once awarded, they will appear in the Goods section of your Inventory as tokens and you are free to activate the 30 day rental period as you see fit. Alternatively, unwanted vehicles can be sold for 250 Gold.
Once the rental expires, the contract that rewards them can be taken up once again to renew the possession of these tanks, although there is a certain cooldown period between the completion of one Contract and the acceptance of another Contract – this is one of the measures that will be in place to prevent player “Battalion hopping” (switching between Battalions to receive multiple rewards in quick succession).
More Hades vehicles (including the Armata, the Type 99A2, M1A2C Abrams and Leopard 2A6) will come in the future. These tanks will not have Premium or Battle-Hardened status and their repair costs will be increased significantly – in the world of Armored Warfare, the goal of the Hades project is to use cutting edge technologies to achieve battlefield superiority, regardless of costs. These tanks are not economic to deploy constantly unless you are a part of an extremely rich PMC and only advanced commanders can even dream of accessing them (you have to have at least one Tier 8 vehicle in your garage to be eligible to receive a Hades tank).
Compared to the standard version, the Hades tanks will have a unique camouflage set as well as upgraded stats of their stock camouflage, as such:
- More hitpoints
- Improved rate of fire
- Improved engine performance
- Improved aim time and accuracy
- One optional Upgrade available automatically (Buffalo for the Challenger 2, Jaguar for the T-90MS and Cobra for the M8)
As you can see, these tanks are clearly significantly more powerful than their regular counterparts, making them extremely useful in competitive environments such as tournaments and the upcoming Battalion versus Battalion mode. In order to make them balanced, they do have two major drawbacks:
- Extreme maintenance and running costs
- Special matchmaking
The second point is especially important considering the powerhouses these vehicles are. Simply put, in a random battle (PvP and Global Operations), each team has to have an equal amount of Hades tanks. If there are not enough Hades tanks to make a balanced match in queue, the Hades tanks will not be allowed to join the queue.
All this is coming very soon to Armored Warfare – we hope that you will enjoy preparing your forces for the ultimate upcoming Battalion showdown and will see you on the battlefield!
