U20 Armour and Other Suggestions

Made this post on the HLL discord as well, but thought I may as well stick it here too.

As the developers continue to iterate on the tanks and associated mechanics I thought that I would share my thoughts and ideas on how I would go about improving the system in this post U20 world. As a brief introduction for those who don’t know me, I am a competitive Hell Let Loose tanker that plays with one of the top teams in the world (ESPT) and as of now have 4700+ hours logged on HLL, the majority of which will be in tanks. I say this simply to lend me credence as someone that understands the armour systems in this game quite thoroughly, even if I still have things to learn! Thus, the suggestions I make do come through a competitive lens, but I believe would improve the game generally for all players.

Firstly, I think the node system should be removed from the game – in its current form it doesn't add any meaningful value to gameplay. For example, most competitive rulesets prohibit teams from destroying one another’s nodes. This removes node raiding from the gameplay loop, because the community consensus is that there is little meaningful or enjoyable gameplay in repeatedly infiltrating the enemy backline to destroy nodes. Instead of nodes the resource incomes should be set to a flat +60/minute and the encourage commander ability be removed or reworked. This is the simple and easy to implement solution, but if we must insist on keeping nodes then the hard route is to rework them into a more interesting system.

AT-Guns need some attention, and my basic suggestion is simply to make AT-Guns turn much faster. Note that I am not talking about how quickly you move the barrel of the gun when in the gunner’s seat, I am talking specifically about the speed of turning the whole gun. I think that something like a 30% increase here would be very welcome. I wouldn’t increase damage for now, because I think that this change might make AT-Guns surprisingly more effective.

The recently implemented “armour resistance” system should be reverted. I understand that it’s supposed to make positioning the front armour of your tank more meaningful, but 3 shots for a heavy to kill another heavy? Really? My proposal here is simple: go back to the previous armour system and make armour positioning more about ricochet chance. Infantry AT rockets should be very sensitive to penetration angle and make tank rounds more sensitive as well. Give historically excellent AT-guns such as the Firefly’s 17-pounder and the Panther’s 7.5 cm KwK a penetration advantage that means they penetrate armour at more oblique angles.

Following on from the above point, the game currently has an issue where the side armour of heavy tanks (and possible others) is pennable by mediums and other heavies at almost any angle. Even if you only see a tiny sliver of Tiger I side armour, if the shot hits, it penetrates. This makes a joke of the new armour resistance system anyway because a Tiger can be almost entirely front-facing an enemy but still get side penned by another heavy or even a medium for a 2-shot kill.

The heavy tank limit should be removed. I was never a fan of it being introduced in the first place but now with the Panther being reworked into a “heavy medium tank” I’m not certain if it fulfils the role it was intended for. It’s my opinion that spam of heavier tanks can, and should be, limited by COST and COOLDOWN.

The vehicle cap should be increased. With the inclusion of jeeps in the vehicle rosters and the price of other vehicles being slashed (notably the half-track), teams are no longer squeezed by fuel costs but by the maximum cap of spawnable vehicles. I don’t think the increase needs to be drastic, even +2 to the cap would make a big difference here.

Vehicles should only be repaired by ONE repair-station at a time. To be honest, I rarely run into any problems with repair-station spam, they are easily dealt with using artillery or HE splashes, but it is silly mechanic to exist so removing it seems fair enough.

Destroying the tracks of a tank should be more impactful than it currently is. At the very least it should be necessary to repair the tracks up to a threshold before regaining any mobility (e.g. 50% or even 100%), and I would personally also be a proponent of making it that a tracked tank can do nothing more than turn on the spot.

The upper limit of fuel costs for tanks should increase, thus making heavier tanks a larger investment and providing greater room to differentiate vehicles within each class. My ideas of approximate fuel costs per weight-class of tank are as follows, bearing in mind that if nodes are removed it would be easy to simply increase resource gain per minute to compensate if costs are too high:

• Heavy Tank (e.g. Tiger I, Jumbo 76): 700-800
• Heavy-Medium Tank (e.g. Panther, Firefly): 500-600
• Medium Tank (e.g. Panzer IV, Cromwell): 300-400
• Light-Medium Tank (e.g. Panzer III, Crusader): 200-300
• Light Tanks/Recon Tanks: <200