Commanders!
As we mentioned in the recent article about new engine sounds, we’re working on a major update to the game that will become available this autumn. And today’s the right time to talk about the first of the “bigger” things that will appear in it, which is the long-awaited Drone mechanic.
We first unveiled that we were working on this mechanic back in January and we wholeheartedly recommend you read the initial article to find out more about this feature (including early drone demonstrations). However, initial testing has shown that the drones need a lot of work so we hunkered down and started fixing things. In the end, the mechanic is similar to what was shown previously but the positioning is a bit different.
Let’s start with the basic mechanic. Much like Mechanized Infantry, the Drones will be deployed as an Active Ability. Once in battle, you can hold the Control button and left-click on the minimap where you want to send the drone. A yellow flag will appear on the map. A countdown will start, after which your drone will appear in flight at the edge of the map (it’ll be initially flying generally from the direction of your base to your position). The drone will then fly towards the designated area and, upon reaching it, will perform its task.
The task depends on the drone type. There will be two types of drones:
- Attack (in the previous iterations we also had three different attack drones but, based on a lot of testing, have for now decided to reduce the number to just one)
- Recon
The recon drones do exactly what you might expect. They fly towards the designated area and, once there, start spotting the enemies beneath it in a certain radius. The damage to targets spotted by drones is treated the same way as the damage to targets spotted by Mechanized Infantry for the purpose of rewards.
The attack drones fly towards the designated area and attack anything they come across there (within their engagement radius). If the drones encounter an enemy target on their way before reaching the area, they will attack it instead. First they will start circling around it, looking to attack the weak area that’s vulnerable to their HEAT warhead (typically the rear or the engine deck). They will, however, initially only attack when they deem it appropriate so you can evade them by hiding your weaker areas or just moving around. At some point they will attempt to attack anyway – this attack can be evaded by simply moving (in which case the drone will crash into the ground).
Once the drone is destroyed, another one will spawn after a certain period of time and so on. Drone paths can be controlled in mid-flight by simply moving the flag on the minimap. You can therefore guide your drone or move it around as you see fit.
But which vehicles will get this ability?
There are vehicles in Armored Warfare that have grown somewhat obsolete. These are the lightest machines in the game that typically serve as scouts. In real life, however, these are typically not found on any major battlefield during intensive battles – scouting by vehicles is more or less obsolete. Instead, such vehicles are operated by Special Forces who are also in charge of drone operations. It is therefore only logical that we’d give drones to exactly such vehicles.
Drones will initially be available on Tier 8 to Tier 10 on the following vehicles:
- Sphinx
- K-153C
- CRAB
- VBR
- VBL Ingwe
- Potentially KF51 Panther
The last vehicle is a bit different because it will have a special type of drones (larger but slower) that will be launched from it directly instead of arriving from the edge of the map. We aren’t sure we’ll get these ready for the major release but we’ll try.
Please note: this list of vehicles as well as other drone specifics may very well change before the release.
But adding UAVs is just one part of the equation – the other part is defense against drones.
On the most basic level, you can (and should) evade drones just by hiding or driving away. Drones can be deadly when catching you in the open but aggressive maneuvering will make them miss, just like in real life. You can also take cover behind some obstacle and there’s a chance the drone will not be able to get you (the effectiveness of drones in urban areas will be severely limited unless carefully manually guided.
Let’s talk active defense. The vast majority of vehicles in the game have machineguns and you can absolutely shoot drones down with it. In the previous updates we fixed the elevation on many of them so even MBTs can use them to destroy a drone. Autocannon vehicles will have it even easier as they typically offer improved gun elevation.
But there will be specialized anti-drone tools as well. The first will be the new, overhauled Airburst rounds.
These will (unlike their previous iteration) work the way they do in real life – they will explode near drones, downing them instantly. Against other targets, however, they will deal very little damage and offering very little penetration (and, due to a total mechanical overhaul, will no longer cause performance issues).
Not all vehicles will, of course, get them. These will be limited to real life anti-aircraft vehicles (yes, including Draco and Otomatic) and several others such as Puma or KF41 Lynx Prototype.
The second tool will be even more powerful – the Jammer active ability. We have announced this feature for several vehicles already but, so far, it has been useless. No more.
The Jammer ability will, when activated, instantly down all drones in your vicinity. It’ll stay active for several seconds before going on an extended cooldown (we are still tweaking the exact cooldown values). In other words, you’ll have the opportunity to easily defend yourself and others around you.
But this ability will only be available to a very limited amount of vehicles (which will include the Stalker and Shadow RSV-T.
And that’s it for now. Let us know what you think on Discord and stay tuned for more news regarding the update as we will have much more to share.
See you on the battlefield!