Since last year we have been making large changes to the balance of our game. So far the focus has been on infantry weapons, but with the latest build we have finally made our first changes to the vehicles. In this blogpost we want to take a deep dive into why we wanted to make changes, what we changed and how this should effect the gameplay.
This patch holds some of the biggest changes we have made to tank combat in a very long time. It is therefore possible some elements are a little rough and some changes may have some foreseen consequences. In the future more patches will be made for the tank balance to make sure issues are resolved and we make the game as balanced as possible.
Based on the communities feedback we have already released a hotfix to solve the most pressing matters. We are currently not planning to hotfix any other aspects of the tank changes, yet! We need to see how the current settings affect gameplay. Future changes will be based on both community feedback and our statistics.
AP shells versus APCR shells!
Why would you ever use AP shells once you have unlocked APCR shells for your tanks? Well in the previous build, there was no reason to. Well, they were a bit cheaper in use but if you wanted quality, you had to use APCR shells.
In this build we have changed that. Both AP shells and APCR shells now have their own strengths and weaknesses. We will not go into every single detail of what we changed, but we will take a look at the most important differences.
A change that we have made to both shells, is to increase minimum values and decrease maximum values. If a shell used to do a minimum of 1000 and a maximum of 1600 damage, now they do a minimum of 1200 damage and a maximum of 1400 damage. This decreased the randomness and makes combat more predictable and with that more controllable.
When we look specifically at the AP shells, we have decreased the tanks penetration values. This means that it will be more difficult to take on a tank with thick armor. In exchange however, we have massively increased the damage this weapon does. On every tank in the game, AP shells now do 20% more damage than APCR shells. Which in some cases means, AP shells now do 50% more damage than they did in the previous build! AP shells are at their best, when taking on an enemy tank that is lightly armor. When you are driving a medium tank and your enemy is in a light tank, using AP shells can kill the enemy quite a bit faster than using APCR rounds.
When it comes to the APCR shells, the penetration values are on average about the same as they were before. As they were always higher than that of AP shells, that is of course still the case. Damage has been increased by a small percentage compared to the previous build. When an AP shells is unable to get through the armor of an enemy tank, the APCR shells in many cases will be able to! It may do less damage on paper, if the AP shell does not penetrate but the APCR shell does, APCR is certainly the way to go!
Penetrating the enemy tank!
As mentioned before, APCR has better chances to penetrate the enemy thank AP shells. But how does penetrating an enemy work exactly? Let's take a look.
The basis is very simple, every shell has a minimum and maximum penetration. If the armor is lower than the minimum penetration value, it penetrates. If the armor is higher than the maximum penetration, it does not penetrate. If it is between the two sometimes it penetrates and sometimes it does not.
There are however more elements to this system. The first one being the angle at which you hit an enemy tank. We have decreased the 'angle correction value', meaning that the angle is now more important that it used to be. When the angle at which a shell hits the tank is too large, the shell may completely bounce off. If it does hit the tank properly, a high angle can still effect the difficulty a shell has to penetrate. The higher the angle, the further you increase your 'effective armor', so the higher the angle, the smaller the chance your shell goes through the enemy armor.
The last important factor is the 'Armorhull degradation' system. After every shot, both when penetrating and without penetrating a certain percentage of the damage goes to the armor of the tank. The more damage the armor takes, the thinner the armor becomes. If you take on an enemy tank which you cannot penetrate on your first shot, hit him several times and you will wear his armor down, until you can penetrate him!
This system was introduced quite a few years ago, however a complaint often was that armor went down too quickly and a thick armor just didn't really help you that much in combat anymore. We have tripled the health of the armor, meaning it will now take a lot more shells to penetrate a well armored opponent.
So be careful when engaging a tank with strong armor, he may be able to penetrate you even if you cannot penetrate him! Flanking is always a good option, as the armor on the side or at the back is always thinner than the armor in the front.
The side armor may be weaker than the front, 37MM AP rounds still won't penetrate
A purpose for every tank!
Just like replacing AP-shells with APCR shells, in former builds it was always better to eventually change to the highest tier tank of a certain class. The Panther tank would always be better than the PZIII tank. We wanted to create a system, where every tank is useful in it's own way. Every tank, has it's own role, strengths and weaknesses.
The system we have introduced mostly targets light tanks and medium tanks, but does also influence tank destroyers. The heavy tanks have seen some other reforms, which will be talked about later.
The way it works, is that the higher tier tank you pick, the better the tank is in tank versus tank combat. They tend to have thicker armor, their shells can penetrate more enemy armor and they even do more damage! If you see a hostile PZIII and you yourself are driving an E8 tank, you can have a good laugh before firing your first shell. That enemy tank doesn't stand a chance! But when the enemy only has light tanks, or no tanks at all I would rather drive a PZIII than an E8 tank into combat. When shooting HE-shells at enemy infantry, the shells of you PZIII have an explosive range of 12 meters! While the E8 only has an explosive range of 8 meters. The actual kill range? If an enemy is within 6,5 meters from the explosion of a PZIII shell, he's dead! The E8 tank only kills you 3 meters away from where the shell lands.
So to put it very short, if the enemy has tanks of the same or even higher class as your team does, you probably want to spawn the highest tier tank you can. But if you are facing infantry, the lowest tier tank is much more effective. Of course in most trees there are three tanks, so what does that one do? Well that one is simply in the middle. The Soviet T34/76 has some decent anti-tank capabilities and can also kill infantry in a 5 meter radius when firing his HE shells.
One specific tank to mention is the SU-76! A Soviet tank-destroyer. The SU-76 is the only tank destroyer that is counted as tier 1 medium tank. Just like the T-28 Soviet tank, they both have a kill-range of 7.0 meters! These two tanks have the strongest HE shells in the game. So while the SU-85 may be your best pick when taking on enemy tanks, the SU-76 may now also be interesting to use in certain situations.
Rock paper heavy tank!
The heavy tanks are the group that will need the most fine-tuning in the future. In the last hotfix we have already increased the penetration values of the Tiger II, the IS-2 and the Pershing. This way they can in most situations penetrate each other. The Tiger II should because of that lose some of it's dominance.
So how does the balance work on the highest level? Well they are balanced by a rock paper scissor system:
Tiger I > IS 2 > Tiger II > KV-85 > Tiger I
Tiger I > Pershing > Tiger II > Jumbo > Tiger I
Pershing > IS2 > Jumbo > KV-85 > Pershing
The Tiger I does less damage than the IS-2, but due to a much faster loading time it has a small advantage over the IS-2. The IS-2 with APCR can penetrate the Tiger II and because of it's much higher damage, should win that fight. The Tiger II doesn't have the highest damage, but does have very thick armor, the KV-85 will not be able to penetrate that. But the KV-85 has the fastest rate of fire of any heavy tank and should be able to do damage quicker than the Tiger I can.
The Tiger I also does more damage than the Pershing, the pershing does more damage than the Tiger II, the jumbo cannot penetrate the Tiger II and the Tiger I cannot penetrate the Jumbo. And last but not least, the Pershing does more damage than the IS-2, the IS-2 does more damage than the Jumbo, the KV-85 cannot penetrate the Jumbo but does more damage than the Pershing.
This is at least the theory and in the coming months we will see if the changes to the heavy tanks will actually have the effect we hope for. In most cases it also does not mean a tank is completely unable to fight another tank. We do at least hope that the current changes make sure that all the heavy tanks can perform well and we do not have a tank that can almost not be defeated.
More changes have yet to be be made to the tanks, but these were the biggest and most important changes. We hope to have informed you enough on how the system works and how to use it to your advantage.
Now it is time to use this information in combat!
Equip your tanks with the correct munition, spawn them into combat and wreck havoc!
*Images used are made by community members: Apcio, Nukio_Sorioka & Whisherz