Our servers are now down for maintenance and the down-time is estimated at 4 hours. In the meantime, here are the patch notes for the December Update!

Features

Performance Improvements
Several optimizations were made that improve the game’s frame rate.

• Entity extensions that have expensive updates now run in parallel on multiple processor cores.
• Optimized weapon targeting update.
• Optimized PropertyBagGroup lookups by pre-caching them to allow for constant time lookup.
• Replaced temporary data structures using heap allocators with stack allocators.
• Optimized path finding algorithms.
• Optimized AI combat evaluations and AI Info updates for AI Opponent and made them run in parallel

Balance Items – Complete with Knife Juggling!

MP Units and Abilities
These changes seek to refine the recent modifications to both the ISU-152 and Jagdtiger. We decided to switch the Jagdtiger's Piercing Shot ability from a manual target to an automated timed ability to improve the overall usability of the action. We also modified the functionality of the 12.8cm Supporting Fire ability such that it functions more akin to a barrage. We felt its previous functionality was not very practical and overlapped heavily with its new Piercing Shot ability. This will diversify the Jagdtiger’s capabilities by allowing it to counter softer targets. Aside from a cost adjustment on the G-530 Concrete Piercing rounds and a few minor bug fixes, the ISU-152 has not seen many changes since the implementation of the ammo toggle. Below is a complete list of balance changes which have gone in since the Ardennes Assault update.

Jagdtiger

• Main gun will no longer pierce through world objects.
• Added a timed action ability which enables piercing on the main guns projectile for a 30 second duration.
  • Increased the projectile speed of the 28.3 kg APCBC-HE shell from 100 to 400.
• 12.8cm Supporting Fire changed to function as a barrage ability. The limited vertical traverse of the main gun does limit the weapons capacity to shoot over larger world objects such as buildings.
  • Range from 85 to 125
  • Minimum range set to 25
  • Cost from 30 to 40 munitions

ISU-152

• Added a toggle ability which enables the ISU-152 to switch between high explosive and armor piercing rounds.
  • Decreased the mid AOE damage of the high explosive shell from 0.3 to 0.25
  • Decreased the near AOE distance of the high explosive shell from 1.5 to 1.25
  • Decreased the mid AOE distance of the high explosive shell from 3 to 2.75
  • Decreased the penetration of the high explosive shell from 260-200 to 90-30
  • Removed ability that allows ISU to transform into
  • Decreased the deflection damage of the high explosive shell from 80 to 40 damage
  • Increased accuracy on the armor piercing shell from 0.025/0.0375/0.05 to 0.03/0.0425/0.055
  • Decreased the AOE radius of the armor piercing shell from 6 to 1.5
  • Decreased the near, mid, and far AOE distance of the armor piercing shell from 4.5, 3, 1.5 to 1.125, 0.75, 0.375
  • Penetration remains unchanged at 260-200
  • Removed deflection damage on the armor piercing shell
  • Added chance to stun Jagdtiger with armor piercing shell when a deflection occurs.
• G-530 Concrete Piercing rounds cost from 90 to 70 munitions

Ardennes Assault

· Tuned the company veterancy system to grant veterancy more consistently, and to grant more veterancy throughout a playthrough.
· Increased the reward for the Rescue Squads and Capture the Intel bonus objectives from 5 to 10 Company Strength.

Bug Fixes

Targeted fixes in Observer Mode, Multiplayer, and Ardennes Assault.

• Adding column to observer games list to show the time until the match is observable
• Fixing observer mode settings not displaying correctly for non-hosts
• Post chat message to a match when someone observer with the bypass delay password
• Control + ~ can open and close the graphs
• Graphs will now dynamically adjust (grow dynamically instead of clamping)
• XP Kicker's will now scale proportionally to the HUD to make them more readable at higher resolutions
• User can no longer disrupt other players' experience by indefinitely rapid-spamming "Attack Here!" pings.
• Fixed exploit to retry missions with a dead company
• Main Gun on the Tiger Tank will now recoil when the weapon is fired
• Fixed an animation issue with the IR halftrack's top hatch
• Fixed a bug where the barrel and breach of the IG18 would get out of alignment with the rest of the gun
• Fixed a bug where the hull mounted machine guns on the KV1 and IS2 would not be aligned with their targets and fire FX
• Fixed a bug where the crew of the 75mm Pack Howitzer would play redundant forward walk animation after reversing a few meters (potentially delaying setup)
• Fixed a bug where any unit wielding a BAR, other than riflemen would have corrupted fire animations on stand
• Fixed a bug where bazooka projectiles would be visible outside of the reload animation
• Fixed a bug where the weapon of a ranger would stay active while he is placing a demo charge
• Fixed an issue on Stoumont where the boundary line was showing near fence at the beginning of the mission on the right side of the map.
• Fixed an issue on Ouren where the boundary line was showing at the beginning of the mission near the frozen water.
• Fixed an issue where the ISU toggle ability and Dhska HMG upgrade shared the same hotkey
• Fixed AI not buying Soviet Conscript AT grenade / Molotov upgrades
• Fixed a bug where some players saw Vastano abandon his post in order to pursue a career in theatre, that lazy jerk
• Fixed bug where the "Thicker Skin" Intel bulletin would increase the effective health of the KV1 by 20%
• Fixed AI not using the new Abilities of Jagdtigers
• Fixed AI not using the new Abilities of ISU-152
• Fixed a bug where the Ranger's "cheap grenades" specialization could be applied multiple times making them cheaper than intended
• Made the Medics from the Medic Specialization NOT heal a squad while they are in combat, and reduced the heal rate
• Fixed a bug in Twin Villages where you could build a Lieutenant and it would count as equipping a squad with a BAR from the weapon rack
• Fixed a bug in Twin Villages whereby if you didn't call in Artillery in the Support section, the voice of Derby would respond when you used an ability later on in certain situations.
• Fixed a bug in Elsenborn Ridge that caused "Request Artillery Barrage" not to work straight away, if the ability was used before the counter reached zero.
• Fixed a bug in Elsenborn Ridge where "Request Artillery Barrage" would cause the audio and Sub-titles to fall out of sync
• Fixed a bug where Frontline Combat specialization's buff did not affected Officers and Weapon Teams
• Fixed sadness mode by adding in extra hugs
• Fixed a bug in Siegfried Lines where "Assault Engineers" couldn't be reinforced when the Squad Size was increased to 5
• Fixed a bug in Siegfried Lines where Player starts with extra "M20 Utility Car" and "M3 Half-track" units if Able Company is replaced with Fox Company
• Fixed some strange requirement text on the Ranger's Demolitions ability when the Rangers were pinned
• Fixed that one dude with that stuff that was not doing what he was supposed to do with his stuff
• Fixed a bug where the turret sound never turned off if a turret was rotating when a tank got destroyed with a brew up death (All Shermans, Stuarts, HMC, M20 utility car, M8 Greyhound)
• Fixed an issue in Stoumont - Rarely a unit stops outside of the players view in the FoW and prevents the next wave from starting
• Fixed an issue that would cause save games to not display properly in the Ardennes Assault Save game window.
• Fixed a bug in Espeler where Commander Strafing attacks on IR Half-Tracks did not trigger any alerts
• Fixed a bug where the loading screen does not show the briefing screen for Siegfried Line saved games
• Fixed an issue with corrupted quotation marks in French locale
• Fixed a general crash bug affecting players mid game
• Fixed a bug where a line of one of Derby's company reports would not trigger in various languages.
• Fixed issue where the ranger unit would have the the engineers voice.
• Fixed a bug where one line of Edward's company reports was triggering the wrong audio in Polish.
• Updated one of Vastano's lines in Polish.
• Updated one of Durante's lines in Polish.
• Fixed a bug where part of an Edwards' line is repeated in polish.
• Fixed missing background audio in cinematic before Siegfried Line in other languages.
• Fixed a bug that caused chat moderation to be less secure
• Removed portions of Decal UI that were prematurely pushed in previous build.

Minor Updates
· Put in a divider in the inventory screen when the ‘all’ filter is selected.
· Added a sub-filter for skins and bulletins in the inventory screen. This is located in the bottom right of the inventory screen.