Scouting Through Scout UAVs

[Rinhord]

For balance of players with brain yes

But with the average players… nothing will really happen. People dont use the map, chat or even their brains.

Lets be honest… most will ignore it, some will be useless sitting in a UAV the whole round. As they would with their tank anyways…

[Der_Zerkquetscher]

i mean sure. But being able to instantly or with a 2 second delay to scout everyone means that in this game from many positions you can instantly scout half the enemy team (whether with the stupid mark following them or not doesnt matter at this point) and would also be something a scout irl would struggle with seeing 5 enemy vehicles move through its fov very quickly. apart from reporting 5 enemy vehicles probably.

But yeah i agree 18 seconds for scouting from the ground seems excessive, especially since you can then only use the drone to give you a hint where the enemy team is moving but youd still need to move around to get a somewhat clear line of sight to scout. (or scout from the drone every 18 seconds) but the drone up wont make your ground scouting that much more efficient. I guess we’ll have to see how it plays out, I’m just not a big fan thinking about the possibility that now at any time of the match half the teams are constantly scouted arcade style without more efficient ways to counter the tiny drones that fly so erratically that a lot of times its even hard hitting them with radar aa let alone ir seeking missiles.

[SilentTracker]

@Stona_WT

When a Scout UAV is up in the air and operational, the delay before reusing Active Scouting after a successful scout has been increased:

• In Arcade Battles, the cooldown after a successful scout is now 12 seconds, and in Realistic Battles it is now 18 seconds. In both modes, this extended cooldown occurs regardless of whether you scouted with a UAV or a tank.

• [However,] when no Scout UAV is up in the air and operational, the cooldown time in both modes remains at 6 seconds, [the same] as [it was] before.

@Stona_WT

• When the Scout UAV is up in the air and operational, the reduction in the aircraft’s spawn cost (in spawn points) for each target destroyed by an ally you scouted is halved, regardless of whether you were using a Scout UAV or a tank during scouting.

I see this as a very good change. Especially in Arcade, it was possible to scout 3x-4x enemies at the very start of the match. I play light tanks 90%+ of the time, and even I did not like how unbalanced it was. The greatly increased cooldown for scouting while the drone is up is much better.

EDIT:
TL;DR:

@Necronomica

this is in practice a nerf that will 3x the time per scout and 1/2 the air spawn point reward. So effectively a 6 times nerf to the mechanic but it’s made more available to all players instead of those few in the know.

[Chxnxlmx-live]

Yeah I see what you’re saying and i get how that could be considered OP, however I don’t think it should go unpunished rolling through open terrain without a care who can see you. Like if the whole enemy team rolls into the open straight out of spawn then they should probably expect to be scouted. No body said you have to take the most direct route to the centre of the map, there’s (usually) plenty of terrain for masking

It’s a weird one to balance and there’s lots of angles and arguments we could both make, same with many things in this game. Nice job 👍🏼

[Der_Zerkquetscher]

Totally agree. Well if the bigger open maps (which i prefer) werent actually as open as they are with basically 0 vegetation and even less hard cover (hello big poland that once had lots of really thick vegetation you carefully had to advance through, sinai, well thats the desert and at least has some terrain to go where waters flow, ardennes where 90% of the locations trees nowadays are just cosmetical and once youre scouted anyone from across half the map can see and shoot you sitting next to a treetrunk). Rolling through open terrain is basically unavoidable on a lot of maps for your second spawn (unless youre willing to take insane detours on which you will be scouted by drones now while watching the tickets tick down like crazy, cuz match must end in 5 minutes)

Masking yourself, camouflaging in front/between similar coloured vegetation, waiting for the right moment and going sneaky unfortunately is not a playstyle anymore since the felt removal of bushes like 2??? years ago with the map remakes. Almost like irl (/s), playing a tank in wt means rushing to one of 3 power positions as fast as possible and try to hold half the enemy team as long as possible since anywhere else theres no cover or the positions arent viable. And i just dont think that revealing half the enemy team to every enemy ground or air vehicle will do anything to improve this gameplay.

[Rinhord]

Hell ofc it wont improve anythink, i dont think anyone ever thought that. Its just a marketing thing, like drones in the first place.

And big maps have a shit ton of issues of theyre own. Not only the map design that gaijin sucks in, also the balancing on bigger maps is absurdly bad. Slow tank suck even more, stock grind is absolute trash, CAS gets additional distance to AA, as AAs are usually not at the front. Big maps are an absolutr shitfest, same with small maps. And medium maps barely excist with good map design.

[simsimkek]

I just played a few games after the change and im probably going to quit playing tank rb all together, they are clearly catering to kids with 5 second attentions spans with how they have not listened to any feedback about horrible map design for the past decade and keep adding features like this to remove any sort of slow tactical gameplay.

So what’s next? R37 and PL15 missiles while keeping air rb maps the same size? ill probably just stop playing all together then…

[Sweedish_Gunner]

Drones are invulnerable to the average tank and most SPAA either can’t effectively lock and/or kill the little scout drones. They can just fly around with impunity most games.

[SilentTracker]

You made no comment about how the new scouting mechanics affected or changed anything. You are just complaining about things in general. Do you have any specific comments about the scouting changes?

[simsimkek]

I did make a comment earlier, based on my intuition, then got a few games in and my intuition was proven correct. Also its very clear how terrible this addition is to gameplay…

[SilentTracker]

@simsimkek

Also its very clear how terrible this addition is to gameplay…

Nah, it was bad before, this makes scouting less overpowered when coupled with the UAV’s. And I say that as a nearly exclusive light tank player; I play light tanks 90%+ of the time.

EDIT:
Read my extended comment below: Scouting Through Scout UAVs - #95 by SilentTracker

TL;DR:

@Necronomica

this is in practice a nerf that will 3x the time per scout and 1/2 the air spawn point reward. So effectively a 6 times nerf to the mechanic but it’s made more available to all players instead of those few in the know.

[simsimkek]

Oh yeah because marking every flanker at the beginning of a match and have them immediately killed, then ate game marking people trying to push back from second spawn light tanks that are in spawn getting them killed immediately is totally a huge nerf to spotting…

Sure spotting was bad but at least you needed some sort of line of sight, this drone nonsense is just ridiculous.

[Pipimer]

well you could do that and before

[Necronomica]

Before this addition you could still use the drone to spot by marking the enemy with the drone, jumping back to tank and spotting the marker (no line of sight required), then jump back into the drone and repeat the process. This without any extra cooldown and full spawn point reductions so you could spot the entire enemy team within the first minute of the match and spawn CAS directly after, this change is in practise a nerf to that ability. (i’ve personally seen this old method done perhaps every 2-3 matches at top tier)

[Rinhord]

Havent seen that all all tbh, good players usually kill enemys and dont spot them. And the scouting from tank is super unreliable
And if the snail says u havent seen him u habe a big cd.

I mean, maybe u habe seen that alot, but i would like to see some evidence befire i beöieve that, as i havemt seen that very often and would even struggle to believe that a good player that wants to spawn cas is depending on smt like that.

But like i say, maybe i am wrong, havent played in the last weeks very much, especially not top tier not in the last days.

[Der_Zerkquetscher]

But thing is that method was only reliable on enemies that were not moving, otherwise you would miss the scout due to the time needed to switch back to the tank and scout while the enemy kept moving, setting your scouting ability on a long cooldown. So unless they all just stayed in their spawn, no it was not possible to scout the entire enemy team in the first minute at which everyone is moving. With the new changes now you can scout every enemy anywhere on the map directly through the drone albeit with a longer cooldown and less sp reduction for cas. You can now basically keep one or two enemies constantly scouted on the other side of the map, but because 18 seconds cooldown you can’t scout (at least constantly) more ppl. But with at least 4-6 light tanks each team each match that shouldnt be a problem to keep the most dangerous positions scouted.

Havent tried it in game yet (is it actually live already) but im certainly not excited at all for that change to make it into the game. Perma scouted flanks at 8.0 wow thats gonna be cool for gameplay

[Necronomica]

There are threads and posts about it here on the forum, since i sadly have nothing saved myself and since the change has gone through i cant play a few matches and show you either. But here are some examples of others talking about it and showing what was possible:

Quotes and images

@Fisheyyy

@_Marco

@SolareHQ

But after the major update you can sit with PIP mode on your drones, which allows you to scout the entire enemy team through terrain without missing a single scout once.

@Der_Zerkquetscher

But thing is that method was only reliable on enemies that were not moving, otherwise you would miss the scout due to the time needed to switch back to the tank and scout while the enemy kept moving, setting your scouting ability on a long cooldown.

Semi true, if you have the key binds set up well enough the enemies aren’t moving fast enough to go past a marker you put 1m in front of them before they are scouted. Sure it’s harder and there is a chance to miss, I’ll concede to that point.

@Der_Zerkquetscher

Perma scouted flanks at 8.0 wow thats gonna be cool for gameplay

I also agreed with someone else mentioning mid BR as an issue. This is currently my take:

@Necronomica

This is a valid point, they might want to limit the mechanics availability to the top two ranks perhaps. Or something similar. It makes sense for modern vehicles with datalink and high tech battlefield awareness tech to have access to this mechanic. They could even expand on this spotting mechanic further to have more diverse functions, spotting times, range of information sharing, etc based on the vehicle and BR. So modern vehicles share more data more accurately for longer times compared to older vehicles. (or something like that)

[Der_Zerkquetscher]

@Necronomica

Semi true, if you have the key binds set up well enough the enemies aren’t moving fast enough to go past a marker you put 1m in front of them before they are scouted. Sure it’s harder and there is a chance to miss, I’ll concede to that point.

true actually im watching the nukenus video of the begleit this moment where he does it early game with good efficiency by using this set point in the path of moving of enemy and scout method. Probably helps if youre getting used to the method and the 500th keybind you have to set but then it seems quite reliable. Though maybe not half the team more like 4 ppl, but his side of the map is gone after that. So maybe the change will actually tone this down because of longer cooldown i hope, coupled with the decrease in lowering of sp. Now if only the scout drones would have somewhat more reliable counters and this could actually be not too bad (maybe with fiddling with cooldowns more after testing period in the future as necessary)

[Rinhord]

Just because u see a video of someone dosnt mean that the average player in the average player is doing anything of that

just saying.

Most players dont even know the game core mechanics like what the crew does or that u can expert them

[Der_Zerkquetscher]

Sure, but it being possible with quite high chances of not missing the scout sets people using this even further apart from the average player (or someone grinding a tech tree for example, doesnt have cas or cap yet) and cant do anything if esports approved player xy has enough sp to hop in a completely opressive cas plane 1.5 minutes after match start. Its not whether only good players can use this, that it is possible is bad enough? Theres enough very good players in this game compared to how many average or just bad players there are to just snowball 70% of matches (also) because of broken mechanics like this. Not that they needed it per se, but to hop into a su30 or any cas plane with insane loadouts 2 minutes faster makes or breaks matches.

Actually i just thought it s a quite funny coincidence that just in that moment im watching a vid of someone doing it with great success (which is not seen regularly even with content of other very good players)