CM Covert Disclosures: What We’re Up To & News
Hey there everyone, welcome to a new article series that we, the Community Managers will be posting here on the forum whenever we’ve got some valuable information to share with you.
With this new series, we aim to keep you in the loop on what’s going on in the background to ensure you’re kept in the flow and not left in the dark. We’ll be keeping this series more ‘personal’ than what we regularly publish, where they will be written from the CM’s eyes and perspective.
Regular Roadmap, dev blogs and other important articles will still be published on the website as normal, this series is sort of a new addition to the list of many things that we do.
For today, I’ve got an important update to share with you, some glimpses into other information so let’s make a start.
An update on the Roadmap for the Second Major Update
Most of the Second Major Update Roadmap features are currently in development and are likely to be finished on time, apart from some that will be delayed, here’s an important one I want to talk about.
Sadly, we’ll have to delay the Research Bonuses for new nations again as it won’t make it in time for the release of the upcoming major update due to reasons that have arose, which I can clarify below.
What I can say is that this feature will still make its way into the game, the internal framework and interface are designed, which I’ve had a look at and seen.
Though it became clear through development that it wasn’t the best idea to implement it along with a major update. This is due to the business of our programmers in charge of it and the underestimated complexity of the feature itself which affects the implementation and support of other things.
During these periods there’s a lot of new features and additions that require significant attention, and that attention would be stretched somewhat too thin if we were to add a complex feature like this along with everything else. Based on this, the developers would like to keep this feature and any future progression changes separate from any major update. It’ll be coming in a smaller update, or in one of our biweekly “It’s Fixed” updates some time after the major. I don’t have an exact timeline for when it will be implemented, but it’s still at the highest priority for our lead game designers.
We know this feature is highly anticipated and we apologize for having to push it back again. This pushback however shouldn’t be too far into the future.
Moving onto a more positive note to set our eyes on, and that’s the separation of Battle Ratings for different gamemodes which is pretty much finished, the devs are testing it out as we speak. If all goes well, this feature will be released before the next major update, coming with a handful of aircraft. This is subject to change so please keep this in mind.
The drag n’ drop vehicles to crew slots and rearranging them is also being worked on, and the devs have an interesting QoL design that goes beyond what was originally planned, so I asked if I could include a hint of what’s to come. Here’s a work-in-progress design glimpse of how you’ll be able to drag vehicles around and even remove them from your slot by simply dragging into a delete area, rather than needing to click to send on holiday. I think this is cool!
Also don’t fret, the Kfir Canard hasn’t undergone some strange remodel and these vehicles won’t be going to USA — the designers use placeholder names and icons when designing things!
You may have also noticed that the crew slot bar design is slightly different as well, and I’ve also seen some WiP pictures of a cosmetic redesign for crew slots when clicked and hovered over. I don’t want to spoil much but you should be able to see this on the dev server or with the release of the major update, as long as nothing is delayed and things go according to plan.
I asked the devs about one important aspect of the Roadmap, and that was about internal modules for vehicles. One major discussion has been the 2S38, and here I’ve grabbed a screenshot showing how it’ll be in the next major update. More internal modules have been added, plus larger drives, meaning penetrating shells will cause more internal damage than before.
The automatic healing of ground crew members that received a huge ‘Yes’ vote has also been developed. I asked how this would be displayed, and there’s going to be a healing icon in the x-ray DM panel in-game next to the crew icon, so you’ll know when the crew in your vehicle are automatically healing.
Another interesting one that I’ve kept an eye on is the visual weapons selector. This one has been designed too. You’ll be able to select weapons from a hotbar, the way they will be displayed in battle is somewhat similar to how they are in the secondary weapons menu in the hangar. Looking forward to this one.
Other Roadmap features that I haven’t mentioned here but were previously mentioned to be coming to the second major update are being developed as we speak. As I said, Research Bonuses for new nations is not coming with the major update’s release, and maybe a few others may not make it in time. We’ll keep you updated on that by publishing a Roadmap article on the website about additions and postponements.
Bug fixes & Improvements
As always, our teams are hard at work fixing bugs and improving the game based on your reports and feedback.
We’ve currently got several bug fixes in the pipeline that will be released in the future, but here’s a couple amongst many that I’ve picked out.
The devs have seen your report in regards to the MiG-23/27 series. They’ve have taken a look at this one and will correct its turn rate to how it should be, as initially the missiles had more drag and were tuned with missiles installed. Another one is correcting the PLZ83-130 and PLZ-83’s incorrect visual tracks (they’ve got the wrong ones currently), plus new BEE7 shells for the PLZ-83. These will come out in the next major update. The LITENING II resolution issues on the F-16C, AV-8B Plus and Barak II has been worked on too and a fix will be implemented in the future.
The CM team saw your feedback surrounding air battles and the number of players in them and spoke to the devs about this to see if something could be done. The devs are planning something for this, I can’t write the specifics or give a timeline, but it’s being looked into as of now.
I’d like to reiterate the team’s thanks to you all for submitting bug reports on our platform — reports are being looked at daily and are always being worked on. We’re always looking to improve the ways we handle reports as well.
The upcoming Major update itself
I’ve seen plenty of your comments about the next dev blog season and when we’ll be publishing the first dev blog. Our teams are currently working on this major update, which includes vehicles and features. As usual there’ll be tanks, aircraft, and ships, plus FOX-3 missiles, two new maps and dozens of bug fixes and features, such as the ability to collapse ranks in the research tree. This to me is a small but nice QoL addition and should be released if nothing critical comes up.
The team and I have already written and translated several blogs, and we’re currently preparing the texts as well as renders for some of the vehicles in this update. I don’t want to give an exact date as to when the dev blog season will start, but it’s soon.
Next vehicle event
The next vehicle event is coming soon, and I know many are expecting a naval vehicle for this one. However, it will be a ground vehicle and it’s one I’m personally looking forward to.
Setting eyes on the future, after the ground vehicle event finishes, there’ll be about a month break until the next one begins, as mentioned would happen in the FAQ here. Then a naval vehicle will be joining us.
Be sure to get involved!
The Community Managers are always reading the forum and other places too and we regularly collect feedback for the developers. Post your feedback in the relevant topics to ensure that we see it and can note it down, and be sure to be constructive, as this greatly helps us produce quality feedback documents for the developers to ensure we pass important stuff.
Your bug reports and feedback help us a huge amount. Be sure to submit and view reports here — if you see a report that relates to you, make sure to click the “I have same issue!” button so we’ll be able to see. And remember to discuss the game on threads on our forum too, the CM team are often replying to many of you there.
I’m out of here for now, please feel free to leave questions and comments and we’ll do our best to answer them. Let us know what you think of this type of series and what you’d like to see — we’re looking to make it regular.
Hope to see you around in battle!
magazine2 & the CM Team
