In today’s article, we’ll be discussing two mechanics that we’d like your feedback on: improved aircraft target hit alerts and night battles. Our proposed designs are not final, as we’re explaining them to you so that we can get your feedback to make adjustments if necessary. Let’s dive into the details!

Improved Aircraft Target Hit Alerts: Our proposed design

As we mentioned in our previous Roadmap article, we’ve been working on this mechanic and would like your feedback on it.

Welcome to the “Severe damage” mechanic

As of now, the death of an aircraft is counted under one of the following conditions: the pilot was knocked out; the aircraft crashed into an object and was completely destroyed; the aircraft had its tail torn off; the aircraft received damage that causes it to be counted as dead but it can still conduct further combat.

Relating to the last part, currently when an enemy aircraft gets destroyed (“Target destroyed”), they can sometimes still fly, shoot, land to repair and have no automatic bail out. The aim of this was to allow you to score a frag and at the same time prevent another player from finishing off the heavily damaged enemy aircraft and steal the frag.

We’d rather not count the aircraft as destroyed based on "guesses", but instead would like to leave you the opportunity to attempt to control a “severely” damaged aircraft until it's either completely destroyed or returns to the airfield to repair.

However, with different game modes, aircraft control options, player experiences, and the number of aircraft in the game, there hasn’t been a single system that could reliably and accurately determine this state.

Due to this, we’re proposing to remove this condition from the game mechanics and instead replace it with the “Severe damage” mechanic. How will this work? If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously, despite still being able to fly, shoot and land to repair, this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged. No destruction or death will be credited until the severely damaged aircraft is further finished off.

How rewarding will work with this new mechanic

If you severely damage an enemy aircraft and then further damage them enough to the extent that they are now classed as destroyed, you’ll receive rewards that mount up to how destroying an enemy aircraft was previously.

In addition to this, if you severely damage an enemy aircraft but did not destroy them (because they flew away for example), you will not receive a destruction but instead a new reward called “Severe damage”. The amount for this reward is slightly less than the reward for a destruction.

When a friendly player finishes off an enemy aircraft that is severely damaged, they will receive a new message: “Finished Off”. For doing this, they will receive the rest of the reward and the frag in their statistics. For the player who inflicted the original severe damage, they will also receive a fully-fledged frag to their statistics as well — however, no additional reward because they did not play a part in finishing this enemy off.

As a result, both players will receive a frag of the enemy aircraft in their statistics, as well as counting for tasks and camouflage unlocks as usual, for example.

Severely damaged aircraft that crash

If an enemy aircraft that is severely damaged crashes, the frag of this aircraft will be credited to the player who originally inflicted the severe damage. The remainder of the reward for their destruction is accrued.

When the battle finishes

When the battle finishes, aircraft that are still severely damaged will then be counted as destroyed, with the frag given to the player who inflicted the severe damage. The player who was severely damaged will have a death credited to their stats, and the remainder of the reward for their destruction will be accrued to the player who inflicted the severe damage. This is to avoid players who get severely damaged to climb high and fly away to avoid being destroyed.

Let us know your thoughts on this proposed design by leaving feedback. As we mentioned, this proposed design is not final. If the majority of you like it, we’ll keep it as it is explained. However, if you dislike it and have suggestions, let us know so we can make adjustments if necessary.

Night battles: Our proposed design

As we mentioned in our initial Roadmap, we planned to make Night Battles selectable by the player. We’re going to be adding this and in addition, we’d like your feedback on some further improvements.

Selecting night battles

Night battles will be selectable in the gamemodes screen. From here, you’ll be able to enable or disable the “Participate in night battles” option. Night battles will only be available in Ground Realistic Battles and the option to participate in them is enabled by default. However, having this option enabled doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get into a night battle. This is because you’ll be put into two queues: for regular battles without night and for battles with night, where you’ll have the chance to get into both. The chance of getting into a night battle will be approximately the same as before, before night battles were turned off.

The minimum Battle Rating for night battles

Night battles will only be available for 10.0 Battle Rating and above — where the vast majority of vehicles have night vision and thermal vision.

Rewards for playing in night battles

If you have the “Participate in night battles” option enabled and play a night battle, you’ll be able to earn rewards! These rewards are purely cosmetic and are focused on night, for example night vision goggles as a decoration, and a loading screen of tanks firing in the dark. The full list includes: a loading screen, titles, a decal, 3D decorations and player profile icons. The progress for obtaining them is shown in the same area where you can switch night battles on or off.

Our thoughts behind this design

Night battles allow you to diversify your matches while at the same time experience some different and difficult scenarios that are not present during daytime battles. Having said this, we understand that not everyone likes this type of complication, so we’re giving you the option whether or not you want to participate in night battles. As night battles are generally more difficult to play in than daytime battles, we’d like to reward players who play in them with minor night themed cosmetics.

Let us know your thoughts on this proposed design by leaving feedback. As we mentioned, this proposed design is not final. If the majority of you like it, we’ll keep it as it is explained. However, if you dislike it and have suggestions, let us know so we can make adjustments if necessary.

Other Roadmap changes

We knew you’d ask, so we’ll include it here too. We know your anticipation about skill bonuses in RP as well as research bonuses for new nations, and we’re working on these right now too!

That’s all for now! Please continue to leave your feedback and comments: be it either on our official forums, social media, on Steam, Reddit, as well as other platforms that we read. And remember, let us know your feedback about these proposed design changes. See you soon!