Project Reality Forums

Hey guys,

I just wanna express my feelings about the new ATGM/front armor change.
While I love the change in terms of Tank balance (atgm tanks vs. no atgm tanks etc.), I have concerns about the TOW.

A TOW does 24% damage if it hits the front armor of a tank.
This is extremely underwhelming. It means that if a TOW location is known a tank can just move straight towards it and kill it without any danger. It could before, when the tank was good at peaking, but at least the tow had a chance of punishing the tank if he failed.

So imo this means 2 things.
A) The TOW loses its status as a super hard defensive force to be reckoned with except on maps without tanks/only against APCs. And that is a shame, since you can only can have 2 and they were the only real threat beside the HAT and helped infantry a ton on those asset heavy maps to zone out tanks.

B)It will become some kind of ambush weapon that has to be build at sneaky locations rather then on obvious strategical positions to help zoning out tanks. And additionally to that you have to hope it passes you and stands still so you can shoot it in his back.
Basically the way an ATGM APC has to play vs. a tank except for the difference that the APC is mobile and has an easier way to do that.
And the builder has to pray it doesnt get spotted and the intel goes to the enemy tanks.

Of course you can say now that there are still a lot of ways to kill a tank with it. For example when you are on an elevated position where you have the chance to hit the top of a tank, or if a skillled player can guide the tow on top of the tank even when the tow is positioned on the same height as the approaching tank or even lower.
You could say "well you just have to place them more carefully". But I think in reality it is very circumstantial and often does not work out like that.
A Tank is almost always able to find an attack angle where he can abuse the new front armor.

Well I'm just scared that TOWs end up in a way they are not supposed to. Which is a very circumstantial and weak defensive weapon instead of a solid defensive weapon. Being useless in most cases. Even some APCs survive a TOW now.

Please discuss and share your experience.
But also please remember before posting that if you wreck very bad tank drivers it is not valid proof that everything is fine.

Remove tow from deployables.
Give back 3 hats. Problem solved

It will become some kind of ambush weapon that has to be build at sneaky locations

Well, this is what we did in the army. TOW isn't some super weapon that guarantees the kill. We went for side- or back- kills. We kinda never fired the simulated TOW-2 in the front of the armor we tried to destroy. Though, we had like 3-6 tow positions guarding the area so it was never up to one TOW position.

Maybe increase the amount of TOW-placements in the same FOB? idk. 4 crates => 2 tows.

Jacksonez__ wrote:Well, this is what we did in the army. TOW isn't some super weapon that guarantees the kill. We went for side- or back- kills. We kinda never fired the simulated TOW-2 in the front of the armor we tried to destroy. Though, we had like 3-6 tow positions guarding the area so it was never up to one TOW position.

Maybe increase the amount of TOW-placements in the same FOB? idk. 4 crates => 2 tows.

well when it comes to how armies using them like your army does i dont think realism is a good approach here.
and specifically the suggestion with 2 tows wouldnt help that much either since then the tank gets 48% damage from 2 shots which only shows how ridiculously low the damage is right now. or you would have to place those 2 tows as far away from each other as possible and hope the second gets an angle on the side armor. this makes it a lot harder to find good places setting up a fob with tow and it also makes coordination harder.

lets just assume you have a tow on the far right and one on the far left to give them the best chance of finding angles on a tank. the tank then would just have to come from the far left or right and he would have to deal with only 1 tow then, picking them off 1by1.

my suggestion would still be raising the damage for stationary tows to at least a level where you know the tank is in imminent danger of being destroyed or gets a tracked turret on hit or whatever.

You underestimate how often the side or top of the tank is exposed to the TOW, sometimes even if the tank tries to avoid it. Also even in the old model every tank would survive a frontal hit, although heavily damaged.

You said good tank crews could abuse the new system but the fact is that good tank crews had no problem before these armor changes to reliably take out TOWs they knew of.
Just wait until it gets distracted, looks the other way or the operator jumps off and then just roll up and shoot it. Or just roll up slowly out of cover and just shoot it even before the TOW operator gets a chance to launch the TOW at you.

I also think even now good tank crews will not be willing to often take the risk of an unexpected side or top armor hit (or 25% damage, which is still significant) by just trying to face the frontal armor at the TOW and try to brute force it, why risk it if you can just wait a little bit and destroy the TOW with the methods i laid out before very reliably?

I dont underestimate how often these armor parts are exposed. we are not talking about driver going into mid range being careless. if you fight a tank max view range and the tank adjusting its front armor towards you i wanna see you hit anything other than the front on a reliable (!!!) basis.
and the methods you laid out, i laid out as well if you take a closer look to what i wrote. but if the tank fucked up doing that it could be punished. now it doesnt get punished anymore. because taking 24% damage is not a heavy punishment in my eyes.

and i have no problem that a front hit doesnt kill the tank. i have a problem with it that it doesnt do heavy damage at all. 24% i mean come on.....
and if it was so easy to take out TOWs as you said then why nerf their damage in the first place? that wouldnt make sense.i know that it was easy for good tank crews, but you where always under pressure to not fuck it up because otherwise you were in trouble.
now you just have to peak and have all the time in the world since it would take 4 hits to get you. that is not fair at all imo.

like i said i understand the decision for atgm tanks because it helps the balance on a lot of match-ups .

gwa1hir wrote:Hey guys,

I just wanna express my feelings about the new ATGM/front armor change.
While I love the change in terms of Tank balance (atgm tanks vs. no atgm tanks etc.), I have concerns about the TOW.

A TOW does 24% damage if it hits the front armor of a tank.
This is extremely underwhelming. It means that if a TOW location is known a tank can just move straight towards it and kill it without any danger. It could before, when the tank was good at peaking, but at least the tow had a chance of punishing the tank if he failed.

So imo this means 2 things.
A) The TOW loses its status as a super hard defensive force to be reckoned with except on maps without tanks/only against APCs. And that is a shame, since you can only can have 2 and they were the only real threat beside the HAT and helped infantry a ton on those asset heavy maps to zone out tanks.

B)It will become some kind of ambush weapon that has to be build at sneaky locations rather then on obvious strategical positions to help zoning out tanks. And additionally to that you have to hope it passes you and stands still so you can shoot it in his back.
Basically the way an ATGM APC has to play vs. a tank except for the difference that the APC is mobile and has an easier way to do that.
And the builder has to pray it doesnt get spotted and the intel goes to the enemy tanks.

Of course you can say now that there are still a lot of ways to kill a tank with it. For example when you are on an elevated position where you have the chance to hit the top of a tank, or if a skillled player can guide the tow on top of the tank even when the tow is positioned on the same height as the approaching tank or even lower.
You could say "well you just have to place them more carefully". But I think in reality it is very circumstantial and often does not work out like that.
A Tank is almost always able to find an attack angle where he can abuse the new front armor.

Well I'm just scared that TOWs end up in a way they are not supposed to. Which is a very circumstantial and weak defensive weapon instead of a solid defensive weapon. Being useless in most cases. Even some APCs survive a TOW now.

Please discuss and share your experience.
But also please remember before posting that if you wreck very bad tank drivers it is not valid proof that everything is fine.

I think thet damage shoud stay 24% because in reality ATGM cant one shot kill tank. But what should be buft is 5 of critical damage(lising track,looking turrent). Thet would bringe more balance, because tank/APC would still need to think how they attack ATGM.

Damage isn't the problem, the obviousness and inconvenience to deploy it is.

Since TOWs have to be kinda sneaky now I think they shouldn't be restricted to 200m from a FOB. Make it instead so that they can be placed anywhere on the map, similar to the insurgent SPG. But also make it so that they require 1 big crate to build, this way they could "realistically" be transported around (they look like they would fit in 1 big crate) and be deployed where they're needed.

This is pretty much what the FSA is doing in Syria atm.

Then again, maybe it's easier to just up the amount of HATs available.

I can get behind the idea of the tank being more easily tracked and having more TOWs per FOB, all of this makes actually a lot of sense exactly like the armor changes do.
I also like the idea of having the ability to set up a TOW independently of a FOB with 1 crate, which is a real tactic that is being employed and gives more of an opportunity to slip under the radar and surprise the tanks.

Back to he argument:

Fair enough about the tank being on the edge of the VD. But like i stated, a good tank crew will most likely not even take a hit and what is important here is what will happen generally, and if you look at that, not much will change effectively.

If a tank is surprised he will most likely have the side, top or back exposed, therefore can be taken out easily.

If a tank knows about the TOW and the crew is good, the TOW will in most cases never hit the tank.

So in my opinion the armor change is not that impactful as it is made out to be for the TOW operators.

Why make the TOW less effective against frontal armor if it doesn't make that much of a difference for a good tank anyway you ask?
Because the change is more about the armor ATGMs than the TOWs, the tanks with ATGMs had an unfair advantage over the normal ones that wasn't even justified because of modern reactive and compound armor being a thing. But you can't just change the tank ATGMs without doing the same for the ATGM emplacements, that would not be logical and authentic which PR aims to be and would be totally inconsistent.

Now the armor combat and infantry vs tank combat is way more interesting and fair in my opinion.

The infantry can now also take out tanks much more easily utilizing the LAT and HAT kit by ambushing it, or in urban enviroments where they can hide and easily hit it the more vunerable armor.
The tank used to be almost invincible in the city if it checked the corners for TOWs and watched its back, easily shrugging off multiple LATs. now infantry has a good chance against it.

So don't pretend as if this is just a pure buff for the tanks.

DogACTUAL wrote:I can get behind the idea of the tank being more easily tracked and having more TOWs per FOB, all of this makes actually a lot of sense exactly like the armor changes do.
I also like the idea of having the ability to set up a TOW independently of a FOB with 1 crate, which is a real tactic that is being employed and gives more of an opportunity to slip under the radar and surprise the tanks.

Back to he argument:

Fair enough about the tank being on the edge of the VD. But like i stated, a good tank crew will most likely not even take a hit and what is important here is what will happen generally, and if you look at that, not much will change effectively.

If a tank is surprised he will most likely have the side, top or back exposed, therefore can be taken out easily.

If a tank knows about the TOW and the crew is good, the TOW will in most cases never hit the tank.

So in my opinion the armor change is not that impactful as it is made out to be for the TOW operators.

Why make the TOW less effective against frontal armor if it doesn't make that much of a difference for a good tank anyway you ask?
Because the change is more about the armor ATGMs than the TOWs, the tanks with ATGMs had an unfair advantage over the normal ones that wasn't even justified because of modern reactive and compound armor being a thing. But you can't just change the tank ATGMs without doing the same for the ATGM emplacements, that would not be logical and authentic which PR aims to be and would be totally inconsistent.

Now the armor combat and infantry vs tank combat is way more interesting and fair in my opinion.

The infantry can now also take out tanks much more easily utilizing the LAT and HAT kit by ambushing it, or in urban enviroments where they can hide and easily hit it the more vunerable armor.
The tank used to be almost invincible in the city if it checked the corners for TOWs and watched its back, easily shrugging off multiple LATs. now infantry has a good chance against it.

So don't pretend as if this is just a pure buff for the tanks.

where did i pretend tanks got purely buffed? im talking about the tow being nerfed ...and you dont have to explain to me that the change is about atgm tanks mainly i mentioned that 3 times already and im fine with that. but sometimes gameplay is more important than realism or being authentic when you say tank atgm and stationary atgm damage has to be the same.
and i still dont get the point of
"the chances of the tow hitting are so low so why care about its damage in certain situations? lets make sure that when it really manages to hit the tank despite all the odds it does no damage lulz."

You asked why it was important to buff the frontal armor of the tank if the situation will not change that much and i answered. Doesn't matter if you already mentioned what was in my answer, you asked and i answered, simple as that.

The armor changes are balanced imo because it made the tank more superior to infantry in some situations, and more susceptible to infantry in others. Combined with potentially more TOWs per FOB or TOWs seperately constructed of FOBs to ambush tanks, which would be a nice change imo, it would be totally fair for everyone.

I just get tired of all the fear mongering the moment a big change is announced, people immediately proclaiming that those changes will be disastrous for gameplay. I heard it about every change that was implemented and i have only been playing for 3 years.

I trust the devs and i am thankful to them that there is such a good game like PR that they are still working on that i can play for free. Sure sometimes i don't like certain changes too and will complain about them but overall they are doing a very good job.

You might very well be right and the armor changes might be too unfair for the infantry, we will just have to wait and see though. Only after a fair amount of time we can really tell how it has affected the gameplay, but i think it will be working just fine.

Nice footage.

I also remember an instruction video for the TOW where they actually show how the TOW team hides first and lets the tank go past them so they don't have to aim at the frontal amor and then assembles the TOW to shoot it in the back, explaining that the chance to penetrate the armor is much higher that way.

It was an old video though, of course some new TOW versions can now strike the top armor of a tank from any direction.

DogACTUAL wrote:Nice footage.

I also remember an instruction video for the TOW where they actually show how the TOW team hides first and lets the tank go past them so they don't have to aim at the frontal amor and then assembles the TOW to shoot it in the back, explaining that the chance to penetrate the armor is much higher that way.

It was an old video though, of course some new TOW versions can now strike the top armor of a tank from any direction.

Man I am waiting to get home and try to do that, hell I even tried to place ATGMs in flanking position earlier in 1.3.9

A TOW requires 2 crates and a FOB close to even deploy. Then there's the time it takes to actually build it, warm it up and the firing delay. It's in no way portable at all and even without the smoke trail visibility is still bad when firing.

All of these disadvantages should make it able to 1 shot any armour.

PeppeJ wrote:Since TOWs have to be kinda sneaky now I think they shouldn't be restricted to 200m from a FOB. Make it instead so that they can be placed anywhere on the map, similar to the insurgent SPG. But also make it so that they require 1 big crate to build, this way they could "realistically" be transported around (they look like they would fit in 1 big crate) and be deployed where they're needed.

I like this.

PeppeJ wrote: Since TOWs have to be kinda sneaky now I think they shouldn't be restricted to 200m from a FOB. Make it instead so that they can be placed anywhere on the map, similar to the insurgent SPG. But also make it so that they require 1 big crate to build, this way they could "realistically" be transported around (they look like they would fit in 1 big crate) and be deployed where they're needed.

this would make no sense when it requires a crate. who brings that crate to you?? a chopper so everyone can see it including the nearby tank? or a logi form a main base that would take ages and by the time it arrives a tank can be gone.
a solution like that would only work if you can deploy it really quick in reaction to a tank appearing.
as i explained this would not be possible if a crate would have to be delivered to build it. on the other hand it would be overpowered if it would not require a crate because then you just could delete/build/delete/build in seconds around the entire map.

The main disadvantage of the TOW is that isn't mobile. Yes I think a crate within the vicinity would be fair. Obviously the crate would have to be there before the tank shows up. If you don't have a TOW up and a tank is nearby you are in big trouble anyway (pre 1.4).

Regarding the rebuilding thing, yes that is something that isn't very realistic. It would simulate "moving" the TOW to another area where it is needed. It doesn't take seconds too. Maybe a delay could be something here? Surely that is something that could be done by python..?

I'm honestly most curious to know exactly, specifically which maps and layouts had the armor with atgm's vs. armor w/o atgm's. Then i would like to know what strategies the devs thought the players would use to even those odds. Then i would like to know why that remained unchanged for so long (simple map balance c'mon) if it was truly such an issue, and why the change comes now in the form of a TOW nerf

Like seriously, the TOW wasn't overpowered so it doesn't need a nerf. I understand it's about the atgm's mounted on armor, but the change also simultaneously relegates TOWs to the trash pile of nearly useless tactics seeing as how they are practically suicide stations against any decent tank crew. And don't give me the whole, "they were useless against good tanks before blah blah blah." Take your BS elsewhere, good TOW operators could keep armor at bay, that was their main purpose, sending them to RTB. Not getting kills.

I believe that the balance of which assets are on which maps should have been what was actually looked at instead of, "wow, atgm apc's keep killing my tank which is supposed to be completely invincible, 50 kills 0 deaths amirite"

I guess we can all count on the guy who grabbed the HAT kit right (1 of 2 on the WHOLE team), a rando that barely speaks English who said, "I grab AT, I grab AT!" at the beginning. Oh, but he ran off on a hillside and is doing his own nonsensical thing. Go figure.

[R-CON]rPoXoTauJIo wrote:Remove tow from deployables.
Give back 3 hats. Problem solved

Maybe not so radical?
For example, TOW is available, but 2 HATs for the team.