PLANNED BALANCE CHANGES July 2023

Discussion
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Hello, survivors!

Closer to the middle of July, we plan to release the next update, in which we plan to implement the necessary balance changes. Today we will tell you what changes you can expect in the near future.

Please note that all the balance changes specified in this news are relevant at the time of publication and may not be final or not get into the game at all. Certain additional changes, if necessary, can be made after the announcement.

Bumpers

  • Reduced the resistance to melee damage from 90% to 65% for all bumpers, except for the “Impact” bumper.
  • Reduced the resistance to melee damage for the “Impact bumper” from 80% to 60%.

Comment: bumpers are very effective in countering melee damage, which is especially noticeable after the frequency of their use as armour has greatly increased.

All turret cannons from “Little Boy 6LB” to “ZS-52 Mastodon”

Ammunition increased to 14 shells.

All cannons from “Judge 76mm” to “CC-18 Typhoon”

Ammunition increased to 12 shells.

Comment: cannons are weapons that are highly dependent on ammunition and, in the current realities, there may not be enough ammunition for them.

Prosecutor 76mm

Penetration ability increased from 10% to 25%.

Comment: the cannon’s effectiveness decreased a lot after all the changes, but bringing back the 2-pin penetration of the structure would be an overly powerful enhancement. Therefore, we are improving its penetration ability.

Executioner 88 mm

  • Penetration ability increased from 10% to 30%.
  • Durability increased from 600 to 655 pts.

Comment: just like with the “Prosecutor”, the parameters of the “Executioner” were also greatly reduced. These changes will help restore the cannon to its effectiveness and relevance.

Elephant

  • Damage increased by 15%.
  • Penetration increased from 80% to 100%.
  • Improved accuracy.

Comment: the cannon’s effectiveness is noticeably lower than that of its epic equivalents.

“BC-17 Tsunami” and “CC-18 Typhoon”

  • Blast damage increased by 9%.
  • Penetration ability increased from 65% to 75%.

Comment: even after the change in damage dealing mechanics, the effectiveness of these cannons remained at an insufficient level.

ZS-46 Mammoth

  • Damage increased by 23%.
  • A direct hit now increases the cannon’s damage by 10% for 10 sec. (instead of 20% before).

Comment: with this change we make the cannon less dependent on its perk and preserve its maximum damage.

Cricket

  • Rate of fire increased by 28%.
  • Improved accuracy.

Comment: the “Cricket” was insufficiently effective when compared to other epic weapons. Increased accuracy and rate of fire will help in the implementation of its perk and inflicting the maximum possible damage.

Barrier IX

  • Shield activation time increased from 1 sec. to 2 sec.
  • Cooldown increased from 20 sec. to 25 sec.

Comment: these turrets have become an overly effective way of blocking damage. Reducing the possible frequency of shield deployment should bring the parameters in line with those expected. The implementation of the turret’s capabilities will become more dependent on thoughtful actions on the battlefield.

Synthesis

  • Penetration ability increased from 10% to 30%.
  • Damage increased by 10%.

Prometheus V

Penetration ability increased from 10% to 30%.

Helios

  • Penetration ability increased from 10% to 30%.
  • Damage increased by 12%.

Comment: the effectiveness of plasma emitters was greatly reduced after the change in the mechanics of dealing damage. Their penetration ability turned out to be too weak, and the projectile stopped its flight after colliding with the first part in its path. Also, the damage of “Synthesis” and “Helios” didn’t correspond to their rarity.

AC80 Stillwind

Damage reduced by 10%.

Comment: the autocannon’s ratio of damage to energy drain was too advantageous compared to other “legendary” weapons.

Cyclone

  • Damage increased by 5%.
  • Durability increased from 661 to 714 pts.

Comment: our statistics showed that the “Cyclone” needs small improvements aimed at improving damage and survivability in battles.

Draco

Damage reduced by 6%.

Firebug

Damage reduced by 8%.

Comment: by gaining the ability to deal damage through the parts that let damage through, the flamethrowers became very effective. We don’t want to deprive them of this feature, and therefore we reduce the damage they deal.

Kapkan

The delay before activating the mine has been increased from 1 sec. to 2 sec.

Comment: “delay” refers to the time from setting the mine until it is able to capture the enemy. This change should reduce the effectiveness of planting mines directly in front of the enemy and give him a little more time to react.

Aspect

  • Damage increased by 23%.
  • Now, when the machine gun is fully heated, its damage increases by 30% (instead of 60% before).

Comment: as with the “Mammoth”, we are making the weapon less dependent on its perk and preserving the maximum damage.

Pulsar

Changed the weapon’s perk. Pulsar will now deal 30% more damage to modules.

Comment: the previous perk of the “Pulsar” for increasing blast radius had almost no effect on the effectiveness of the weapon. Now successful hits will help you to quickly deprive the enemies of vital equipment on their armoured cars.

Parser

Durability reduced from 320 to 290 pts.

Comment: for a weapon capable of firing at long distances, the “Parser” had a very high durability parameter.

Scorpion

  • Damage reduction as parts are penetrated is now 6% faster.
  • Reloading time increased from 5 sec. to 5.5 sec.
  • Increased dependence of accuracy on movement speed.

Comment: with the old mechanics, the weapon’s damage was excessive, but this was offset by the “screen” armour. Now, it has become easier to implement damage and the average effectiveness of the “Scorpion” has increased. The changes should slightly increase the cost of a miss and make the weapon more dependent on the player’s skills.

Harvester

  • Damage increased by 50%.
  • Changed the perk: now damage is increased by 20% for every second of contact with the enemy. The effect stacks up to 5 times and gradually resets every 0.5 sec. when the weapon doesn’t deal damage.

Comment: the weapon depends too much on Tesla emitters, but even with them it shows insufficient effectiveness. We have decided to return the old perk to the “Harvester” while also rebalancing its parameters.

Follow our news — we will definitely inform you about any major changes in a separate publication.

Good luck in battles!

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Oh look bumpers are getting a nerf and melee getting a buff
Can you say WHO LET THE DOGS OUT WOOF WOOF WOOF

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They buffed so many things I play all the time.

I have had a set of fused Helios waiting for this buff. I never made a build with them.

Harvester change has been needed for a loooong time. It being dependent on another weapon really sucked.

Also time to break out the Mammoth CK and finally make a Mammoth build, I have been sitting on a set of mammoths for months.

Super exciting changes!

Love it.

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Good to see someone being positive I’m just waiting for the tide of these changes will ruin the game
Though I wasn’t expecting the bumper nerf but did foresee melee being buffed as they tend to buff or nerf weapon styles in patterns

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Pretty happy about all these changes, especially the harvester perk change.
Always hated that they needed to be paired with a spark or flash. Now I’m thinking they’ll combine better with the new melee, and make my tormentor a lot more useful.

Edit: if elephant has 100% penetration, does that mean it doesn’t do explosive damage anymore? I’m a bit confused by what those numbers actually mean.

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I strongly disagree with the stillwind nerf. It requires 16 energy to run, has much less durability than cyclones, and loses to everything up close. That said, I sold mine 2 weeks ago, so no loss for me.

I am glad to see the scorp nerf. Surprised mastodons didnt get a nerf. IMO, they should have swapped penetration with typhoons.

Fire nerf seems reasonable.

I think most of the changes seem reasonable. I am would consider this a decent balance move.

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This is the way I understood:

It has bullet and blast. For this discussion, lets say it does 200 bullet damage and X blast. It would continue to go inside the build until it met at least 200 worth of durability…then it would explode and do its blast damage

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a very good update i would say.

Expected little more nerf for firedogs and Scorps. But maybe its enough, i hope.

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Melee meta incoming boys
incoming-pillo
Half of team swept in a seconds times are coming back. So much for “slowing game down”

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Now they need to buff Lances :slight_smile:

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Wait… The only direct melee buff is the Harvester, right? They’re indirectly buffed by the bumper nerf.

I’m sure plenty of folks are glad to see the flamethrowers get the nerf.

Canons get a pretty wide sweeping buff, too…

Not mad… Not mad at all, even though I love my bumpers. :man_shrugging:

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So based off of this, what are we expecting to emerge as the meta? Which 3 builds would be ideal for CW after these changes are inplemented?

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That makes more sense.
I thought penetration was the amount of total damage put towards bullet damage before the rest is released as explosive damage.

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I know a lot of people that are going to love this.

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That seems insane to me. Grinding the rest of your Battle Pass in the middle of a melee festival sounds awful, but who knows. Most of these changes are pretty extreme. Too extreme, IMO. We’ll see how it plays out, I guess. They really like to shake the tree hard with their updates these days. This changes things a lot, once again. Good for the whales who don’t have to chase that around all the time.

I know the harvester kinda sucked before, but this coupled with the bumper nerf is just way too much.

That seems like a huge buff to me. I bet that’s not going to be a very popular “improvement.” It’s not a popular weapon so maybe that’ll help. The Bots will love it I bet.

Again, those seem like unusually big buffs to me, especially since the bumper nerf is essentially a sweeping buff to all weaponry. Is armor even worth using at this point?

I see a lot more empty baked hulls laying about in this future wasteland since the only thing left that catches enemy fire, or melee, is the cab.

Cannons got another buff, which I’m not sure they actually needed, but somebody is going to have to save us from the all the melee about to hit the fan. I hope they’re up to the task. They’ll need that extra ammo, which I see as about the only good thing this update has to offer. The Elephant needed love too, and I suppose I could find some other things that are good too, but I don’t think they’ll make a remarkable difference in slowing down the train wreck this update looks like.

If you wanted matches in PVP to be shorter, this looks like it’ll do it to me. I see more meet and defeat game-play around the corner for all power-scores. I don’t care for High power-scores for exactly this reason. Now they will have spread this tendency to all power-scores. Anything you run into anywhere is sure to be devastating if you get hit at all, so probably heavy slow builds are further doomed? I thought it was already a tough situation to be in.

Just don’t get hit by anything, avoid all contact with the enemy and you’ll be fine? Some of us already play that way, but for the rest of you guys, which I think is most of us, this update won’t be very popular. I don’t like it anyway, and I can’t see why this is the direction they decided to go. Were these the issues people were complaining about?

I think this is literally the developers giving the community the middle finger (just press W) and will make melee a major nuisance to anybody trying to grind out their battle passes.

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I personally don’t think I view this patch that way. I feel like most of this is pretty solid “Balances”

But only time will tell :slight_smile:

They seem to be trying really hard at doing balance patches lately and it is nice to see patches come faster.

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My life in this game lol

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This will make bumpers noticeably less effective as passive melee weapons. As if the developers didn’t know that bumpers take a hefty amount of damage too upon hitting an enemy car. With most bumpers with 10 damage bars, one can only do 1 or 2 powerful strikes before losing them. This is important, because putting boosters on a car is a risky investment. With booster fuel being so limited, such vehicles need any additional advantage they can get.
2023.07.01 002
My boosted Clarinet cars had a ‘wall of teeth’ at the front, which could only be built with bumpers that don’t have a lot of HP. In this screenshot, the bottom row is composed of 8 BladeWings, which are mounted on 2 Catches. Due to the penetration bug, at very high speeds, the Catches could be damaged by an enemy part penetrating through my BladeWings. I could replace the 2 Catches with the more durable Sentry Line, but it’s shorter, hence less practical. Going up, there is a row of Incisors, followed by 2 Spikes, and 2 Medium Thorns + 2 Small Thorns. This change will be most noticeable in the case of the smallest bumpers. The top row, consisting of Thorns, is there for striking hovercrafts. Even a single Small Thorn can be very useful, but it already takes considerable damage upon contact, and if it first takes some projectile damage, it really needs that 90% melee resistance to perform. The King of Birds and the Flails are less effective due to their shape, and may be too heavy, considering that ideally a Hermes shouldn’t be pushing more than 1242 kg, or 1366 kg with the +10% accelleration upgrade (for a base Hermes, at 1400 kg, boosted accelleration drops by 1/3).

I can’t drive boosted Clarinet cars anymore (without Hans’ +2 sec. missile flight time, with the Icarus VII flying faster, which requires an extra +4 sec., and the Volcano being unplayable for boosted Clarinet cars with just 8 sec. missile flight time), so it’s not a problem for me. But I hope this change will be noticed by those that still use boosted cars relying on passive melee.

From the Charybdis, which is said to underperform. This change is intended to promote BP sales.

This is a typical Tard’em lie. Unless I missed something, nothing happened to make players start using bumpers more frequently. It’s just a trick to make us buy more of the BP, which would be prediectably less popular than the previous two, due to its less attractive contents (such as a 11-energy decor part, a PVE cabin, an engine for centipedes, and not enough lighters for a second legendary item). What’s next to help sell the BP? Maybe vehicle wrecks that don’t disappear, or a series of Thyrsus buffs? They’ll come up with something, once they get desperate enough. :grin:

Weirdly enough, the Harvester will now be more resistant to melee damage than bumpers, despite having moving parts (the same goes for the Charybdis). But, combined with the Cockpit and the Buggy wheels, it may now be an interesting option. Depending on the vehicle weight, there could be room for a Tormentor or a Trombogna.

This will be useful during another helicopter event. We know from leaks the developers are working on a cabin based on the Ka-52 (which has a coaxial rotor), as well as what looks like a module launching 7 flares to counter homing missiles.

This after letting players spend lighters to get a Barrier with faster recharge in the previous season. Now 3 Barriers with that upgrade won’t be enough for continuous shielding. (I didn’t get any Barriers with that upgrade, but those that did, will be disappointed.)

With a force field that receives increased damage from:

  • unguided rockets,
  • grenades,
  • autocannons,
    and doesn’t stop:
  • Yongwang grenades,
  • Fortune tires,
  • Purcupine barrels.

What was expected? Not to have continuous protection? :upside_down_face: Edit: OK, after some testing, now I’m not sure if I’ll still have it with my 4 upgraded for longer duration, for a total of 10 sec. each. Which means I won’t be able to use the Clarinet. Because:

  1. I need those +2 sec. missile flight time from Hans to reach snipers,
  2. with the Icarus VII’s top speed of 90 km/h, I actually need +4 sec. to properly intercept hovercrafts.
  3. At the Volcano, and now the Orbital Station, staying behind terrain cover reduces the weapon’s range too much, making it impractical.

So that may be it for the Clarinet. They never cared about it anyway. And the fact that it was great at countering hovercrafts that a lot of players complained about for years - doesn’t matter.

Originally, the Barrier IX’s base duration was 10 sec. (12 sec. with the duration upgrade), and introducing the 2-sec. delay reduced it to 8 sec. (10 sec. with the upgrade). I’m glad that I could enjoy a Barrier IX lasting 1 more second for a few months. With how broken the Omni is, and with the upcoming Barrier IX nerf, maybe I’ll try this new-old Harvester magic.

To what end? A sniper with ACs will eat through the force field in 2 seconds, rendering the module(s) useless at least for a portion of a battle. It’s even worse when facing rockets, grenades, and the stuff that ignores the force field altogether, because vehicles using those will attack from much closer than AC users. It was obvious to me that reducing the energy requirement to 2 was intended for vehicles to only have only one such module, for extra protection, and not 3 or 4 for continuous shielding, but there are still too many disadvantages that reduced the Barrier IX’s predictability for the user’s team by a lot from its original performance. In terms of shielding vehicles, the way this module works, the moment it stops providing predictable protection, it ceases to work. In this regard, predictability is the most important aspect of this module.

Isn’t this the original activation delay time? Must’ve been 2 more than years since it was 2 sec. Next year, they’ll switch it back to 1 sec., and so on.

This is Alex’s idea. Chief developer had a eureka moment. After seeing him in a few dev streams, I know how his mind works. The new perk is an epitome of “random.” So I looked at the tech tree… Modules, modules… Yeah, stuff that’s mostly hidden. Oh, generators. OK, there’ll be protests, but just a little. Anyway, a weird, and not very useful perk.

Looks like they’re done with giving out the Stillwind in BPs, for now.

Nerfing one AC and buffing another looks like a move to ‘shake things up’ on the market. To make players sell their Stillwinds, lose coins, and buy crosscrowns, to buy coin packs, to buy some Cyclones (wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done something like this). The same could be happening with the Harvester, though the bumper nerf would primarily be intended to make the Charybdis more effective, thus promoting BP purchases.

Perhaps we’ll see more ‘balance changes’ aimed at boosting BP sales. With developers that don’t care to keep the game fun, it’s understandably hard for some to stick around and spend money here.

I’ve mostly switched to building art, to make up for not placing among the 10 ‘winners’ of the frog contest on Discord, despite having built a frog that deserved the 1st place (4 of the winning frogs were too ugly to win, and 1 Dark Aquamarine paint went to a name that wasn’t even among the participants - maybe a friend of that moderator).

Jungle frog

Pink Jungle Frog 005

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Tusk was further buffed,Maybe make the impact damage and melee damage split into two?

The developers didn’t listen to my balance suggestions, they still don’t buff missile turrets and drones, not good
But the pulsar was eventually buffed,The new ability I think may be more reliable, which amounts to a direct increase in damage
stillwind was reduced by 10% damage, the developers really have no mercy on those who buy them, which will let more players know the developer’s tricks

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and still we play… :face_with_peeking_eye: :crazy_face: