Supertest: Premium Ammo Changes

One of the most awaited changes to the game is now entering the Supertest stage: the overall 25–30% drop in damage for special rounds. The objective is to make shell choice more thoughtful in battle and lowering the damage of high penetration shells.

This is the very first testing iteration aimed at general evaluation, for now, it’s merely a rebalance of special shells’ damage, without any adjustments to their cost. The Supertest will be conducted with a limited  selection of vehicles to check:

• the viability of the idea and the impact of its implementation on the game;
• the effect of lowering the special shells’ damage has on the total damage dealt;
• the overall combat efficiency of the vehicles involved in testing.

Set in stone or subject to change?

The decision to decrease special rounds’ damage isn’t set in stone as it’s still in development so it may change significantly. After the first testing run, Wargaming will decide what to do next:

• Change the amount of damage slashed off the special rounds and fine-tune the stats of individual vehicles
• Enlarge the pool of tanks in the Supertest to gather even more data.
• Or course we’ll take into consideration your feedback on the changes proposed.

A varied list of very different vehicles was selected for the initial test. For some vehicles having APDSs as their basic rounds, they have been substituted with AP shots of the same speed. Likewise, for the vehicles with AP rounds as their specials, they have been replaced with APDSs.

Wargaming will track the distribution of damage done per shell type, the changes in vehicles’ battle stats with regard to their class and role, and lots of other parameters. These are the questions Wargaming is aiming to get an answer to with the test:

1. How much shall the special rounds’ damage, especially against well-armoured targets, drop? This is one of the key areas the players on heavily armoured vehicles asked.
2. How shall the damage be re-distributed between the two other shell types? Wargaming aim is to reduce the special rounds damage against well-armoured targets in particular. Thus the overall damage of other shell types could grow; they want to check whether it’s true during the test.
3. How shall the share of HE shell damage change? Currently, the total share of HE damage is small and it’s not intended to be changed. Overall, the combined special HE shell damage is mostly dealt by the Type 4 Heavy and the Type 5 Heavy tanks. The special round for the Type 5 Heavy will be substituted with a HESH with an alpha of 750 points and a penetration of 193 mm.
4. How shall the rebalance affect the battle performance of individual vehicles? Wargaming knows that currently certain tanks are played with a greater-than-average special to non-special rounds ratio, to increase their efficiency. So we want to assess how these vehicles’ performance changes.

List of Changes

The testing is just starting, and your feedback will help take the correct decisions. Let us know what you think down in the comment section.

About Author

Harkonnen

Tank Nut and Gamer Wannabe! Huge fan of tanks and World War II history. Playing video games since I was six years old, from Streets of Rage on my Sega Mega Drive to World of Tanks, I’ve never stopped since and will always love games.

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