Hello everyone, I’d like to tell you a little about our plans for Escalation and other modes.
Nuclear Escalation.
First, I’d like to thank everyone for their attention to the mode and constructive feedback; it’s important to us.
My colleagues and I have been playing Escalation for the past few days to better understand how the mode works, and find any potential issues, and areas for improvement.
Balance is a complex matter, even more so when a mode is asymmetrical (in terms of objectives, vehicles, or weapons). We’ve had examples where statistically balanced, asymmetrical missions were perceived by players as unbalanced for various reasons.
In this mode, the challenges lie in the varying capabilities of combat vehicles and weapons, coupled the player distribution across nations. The easiest way, of course, would be to make a complete “hodgepodge” (a completely mirrored set of vehicles and nations on both sides), but we decided to try to keep the asymmetry as an interesting feature of the mode for now, even at the cost of problems with balancing, but we are not ruling out this option (your opinion is also interesting here please let us know your opinion on this).
The main issue with the current BR range balance is the capabilities of the Red and Blue air defence systems and their suppression (considerably the Reds as USSR+, the Blues as USA+). The Reds’ anti-radiation missiles make it easier to penetrate the Blues’ air defences, and in addition, the Reds’ air defences are more effective in Escalation than the Blues’. We are focusing our efforts on addressing this issue; some changes are already in the game, while others will be coming soon. What I mean more specifically is:
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The Buk M3 can no longer fire when the TADS was has been destroyed. Previously, to destroy one position, all three launchers had to be destroyed.
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The BUK launcher reload time has been increased from 20 to 30 seconds.
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Each SAMP/T SAM site now contains two TADS and four launchers.
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Each SAMP/T SAM site is covered by an additional Ito90 SAM.
To test the impact of these changes, we have extended the current event launch by several days.
We’d also like to point out that we don’t want to significantly nerf the air defences overall, as this could devalue teamwork in suppressing air defence groups and make the mode much less distinct from Air Realistic Battles with respawns. Currently, air defences are a prominent force that can change the course of a battle, and their destruction is a core objective that simplifies the game for your team. Our goal is to ensure that both teams are required to make equal efforts to achieve this objective.
Separately, regarding other aspects of Escalation.
Economy – the current economy was adjusted based on the results of the April 1st launch and requires further adjustments. We expect to make these adjustments either at the end of this week to test them before the launch, or if we don’t have time to do so, then during the next Escalation launch. The timing of which I’ll detail below.
We also plan to adjust the mission points (tickets) impact of destroying different types of targets , primarily by increasing the ticket impact for destroying large ships and long-range SAMs.
We also plan to add new nuclear weapons carriers for both the top Escalation variant and the top Ground Realistic Battle ranks, so that the performance characteristics and defence systems of these aircraft better match the threats on the battlefield. This ensure that their RWRs can detect the main SAMs, which is a problem with current nuclear weapons carriers. These will likely be fourth-generation strike fighter variants equipped with free-fall nuclear bombs. We expect to have this ready for the next Escalation launch.
After this event ends, we plan to launch the next one in approximately one and a half to two weeks. We expect that several combat rating ranges for aircraft will be available simultaneously in the next event – the current top-tier, likely divided into two BR sets, and the Escalation mode launched on April 1st, with lower-tier aircraft and corresponding air defence systems (as we know the top-tier version may be more challenging for some players due to the higher threat concentration).
Further plans include, but are not limited to (there is no guarantee that all of this will be implemented):
- Moving Escalation to other existing locations.
- Developing the mode for earlier eras of aviation (the 1960s and 1970s).
- Creating a new location specifically for Escalation.
- Airfield recovery and capture mechanics
- Use of helicopters in this mode
- Player-controlled ships and air defence systems (in the longer term)
We’d be interested to hear which of the above you’d like to see first. This could impact development!
When we began developing Escalation, we wanted to bring a new gameplay experience, implementing aspects of aerial warfare that hadn’t been in the game before and were difficult to implement in existing Random Battles. This mode is in active development and is taking up a significant portion of our resources. However, it’s not the only one.
Besides Escalation, we’re also working on new modes that we plan to launch throughout the summer for both aviation and combined battles. This includes various historical events, as well as new modes and mission types. Details will be released when these events are announced. These events won’t be as large-scale as Escalation, but I hope they will also bring new or well-forgotten experiences.
Regarding fixes, improvements, and balance changes in the main game
TV-guided missiles – their effectiveness, especially in early BRs, turned out to be higher than we expected, so we’re working on increasing their spawn point cost in combined battles. The price will depend on the type of seeker (TV/IR) and whether it’s a bomb or air-to-air missile. In addition, we’ll soon release a fix for a bug that causes ground vehicles to jerk when viewed through the missile camera.
Anti-Radiation Missiles – the price in SP for ARMs will also be adjusted (slightly increased), such that more modern ARMs will be slightly more expensive than older ones.
I also wanted to share a QoL feature in development that will make using the new aiming points more convenient and free up shortcuts used for weapon assignment.
This is far from all of our plans for the summer and this year, stay tuned for updates.
That’s all I have for you, thank you for your attention!
P.S. I’ll be honest right away, I won’t be able to constantly monitor this topic and read all the comments, much less reply to them, but our CM team will be monitoring and collecting valuable information and feedback, which we will then analyse and possibly adjust our plans. Therefore, I ask once again to be constructive and stay on topic.