New bullet mechanics
As announced in a previous devblog already, the new bullet mechanic has been added to the game now. To make the explanation short: bullets fly now instead of spawning instantly inside the enemy. If you are fast enough, you might be able to avoid slower bullets. They are not affected by your tanks relative velocity yet, this might be changed in a future update though.
Friends and statistics
You now can search for other players and add them as friend. You can see the online status of a player if he added you as a friend as well. You can also check out other players profiles this way now. It’s planned to use this new feature to form platoons with your friends in a future update.
Garage chat window
The garage chat has been reworked. It displays previously sent messages in a channel now, even if you haven’t been online when they were sent. Every clan now also has its own chat channel, only visible to members of your clan.
Clan season 2
The last clan season ended, and all gained clan experience has been reset. This season you will be able to buy the russian KV-2 tank for 500.000 silver, after earning 2.000.000 experience together with your clan comrades. The season ends on 30th June 2019.
AI pathfinding
The pathfinding system of NPC tanks has been reworked in this update. They will no longer drive through static obstacles like water or other map objects. They also will calculate a smoother path around obstacles now, so they don’t get stuck anymore, and they can drive through destroyed map objects now. Other tanks are still ignored however. This behaviour will be fixed in a future update with a new server-sided movement system.
Balance changes
The IS-2 has been moved to Tier IV and was replaced with the IS-1. The IS-3 is still Tier IV, but has been removed from the tech tree for now. It probably will be placed back into the tree with its own line at some point.
- KV-1 reload time reduced from 7s to 6.5s
- KV-1 health increased from 475 to 600
- M4(105) reload time increased from 8s to 12.5s
- Adjusted values of all M4 variants to better match other medium tanks
- Increased turret speed of all tanks by 25%
- Decreased aiming time of all tanks by 50%
- IS-2 health increased from 775 to 850
- IS-2 frontal armor increased to 190mm
- IS-2 base view range increased from 20.5 to 21
- IS-3 frontal armor increased to 220mm
- IS-3 side armor increased to 150mm
- IS-7 side armor increased to 190mm
Comment about the IS-3 and IS-7 side armor: in reality, both tanks had an interesting side armor shape, which made them really hard to penetrate. This design is hard to realize in the game however, so their general side armor strength has been increased instead. These values may receive further tweaks in future updates.
Other small changes
Besides the balance adjustments, there have been some other small changes. Check out the list below for more information…
- Added tier indicator to tanks in the garage interface
- Added tier indicator to the buyable clan season tank
- Clan members are now always sorted by rank
- Clan description can be edited by commanders now
- Clans can be locked and unlocked by commanders now
- Your clan tag is now shown in the battle chat
- Tanks in garage are now sorted by nation
- Added !stats command to Discord bot
- Silver income has been adjusted for vehicle tiers: T5 -10%, T4 -5%, T3 unchanged, T2 +5%, T1 +10%
Notable bugfixes
Not all fixes are listed here, but at least the most important ones…
- Fixed various wrong map tile visuals
- Enabling/Disabling map particles now works while in battle
- Hangar data should update correctly now even after leaving battle early
- AI tanks should no longer drive through water or other static obstacles
- AI tanks should no longer get stuck in or near static obstacles
That’s pretty much all for this update. Feel free to share your thoughts about it on Discord or in the comments below this article.
Good luck on the battlefield!
