Hi, friends. With warmth and ease in our hearts, we inform that we have dealt with almost all the things that we had to deal with before the test. Today we finished sorting letters, and selected people to participate in the test. Thank you very much to everyone who responded and sent applications. Thanks for the words of support and warm feedback on previous games. It was not necessary. And by the way, it did not affect the decision. However, it was a pleasure to read. From time to time, someone could notice how a single tear of emotion rolls down the wrinkled cheek of fellow-developer. He brushes it off or wipes it with his sleeve shortly after, says that his eyes are simply tired of the monitor. And he will start to work again, but somehow happier this time. And his back will become straighter and the look lighter. Thank you for that, fellows. There were many more applications than needed. Unfortunately, at this stage we can invite only a couple of hundred to the test. Those of you who have passed will receive a letter in the next few days with instructions on what to do next. Nothing complicated, dont worry. No marching in full uniforms, tasks to get involved in a fight in opera-house, or waiting at night in a dark alley for a figure in a cloak that will pass a package with a key. The most difficult stage has already been completed. You sent an application and got to the test. Those who wont receive the letter - do not worry! After this test, a CBT will begin, much larger, and many more people will be able to participate in it. The game will be even better, and there will be many more players to play with. Just stay in touch in the Discord - https://discord.gg/DhvK4T Cause it won't be many news here in the near future. The main channel for communication will be there. Are you ready to rush into battle?

Hi, friends! As you remember we have teamed up with 1C Entertainment and now we are getting ready for closed testing. Many thanks to all those of you who volunteered to participate in the first test! There are even more applicants than we expected. We have collected your letters and well keep in mind everyone. Now our goal is to ensure that everything will work smoothly. Hopefully, the dates of the first test will be set soon. Well inform you about it as soon as possible. Closed testing will be held through the 1C Entertainment tools. To participate in CBT you have to be registered on the site: http://1cgames.net. A bit later the 1C Entertainment launcher will be available on the site. Men of War II: Arena could be installed through it. It turns out that for now the game will grow outside of Steam. This does not mean that Men of War II: Arena will never return here. A separate page of the finished game may appear over time. But the stages of closed and open tests are intended for the 1C Entertainment platform. In this regard, it was decided to close the project page. We understand that Steam is a convenient platform for many of you. You are used to monitoring the project, making friends for future games and reading the news here. But for a large-scale online project having its own space and separate site is very important. And it will be much more convenient to conduct tests and collect feedback. Also our posting is going to be more regular. A forum and a separate page of Men of War II: Arena on the portal are being prepared right now. So far, we will answer all questions in our social networks: FB But for the current holly wars and fun you are welcome to Discord, where a separate channel for the test will be created. Thank you for your support and we wish you all the best!

Hi, friends. Didnt we promise important news this Fall? So the change of name is one of them. Hopefully, we didnt hold any weird make tattoo with our brand name contests, otherwise, it would be kinda awkward now.

Publisher.

Name.

Public tests.

• Register on the publishers website.
• Send an e-mail with your data to pr@bestway.com.ua: the email address for which you registered your account on the 1C website, a link to your account in Steam, full name.
• Periodically check mail and news. We will write about the end of recruitment and the beginning of the test.

Link Hi, friends. Summer is over and with it our short parting. Let this art with sunflowers, tankmen with a dog and T-34 brighten up the beginning of autumn for all of you. We went to work straight outta stealth mode and prepared a short diary about arts, getting rid of placeholders, game responsiveness, and interface. To make the metagame more attractive, we began work on the art for battalions. Started quite a while ago, but did not add them to the game until each one was ready. We finished this work by the end of August, so now the metagame interface has significantly fewer placeholders and notably more beauty. In the last post, before we went into the fog of [strike]war[/strike] vacation, we already showed the art of the German subversive and reconnaissance battalion, and today's one is, obviously, the Soviet medium tank battalion. In the future, we will show the rest in good resolution.
Link There are much fewer placeholders and question marks in the development tree too. The work has not yet been completed, so the icons from different periods look a bit heterogeneous. And may change one or more times before release.
Link We also added a lot of hints on the metagame interface. It probably doesn't sound like an epic and very interesting task to read about. And its unlikely to give rise to fantasies about how you and your friends are going to open hints until the early hours of the morning, and interrupting each other excitedly talk about unit levels, or re-reading over and over again, for which you need a Play button. Being a rather boring part of the learning process (which is not Disneyland itself), the tips do not cease to be extremely important and necessary. Soldiers: Arena is a hardcore, as we all love, so there are a lot of mechanics, features, groups of units, types of slots and all kinds of characteristics in it, which you doubtfully understand without a peep. Now you will have a reliable assistant in the metagame. Not Clippy though.
Link Most importantly, tips for units and battalions have started to do their job and can explain to beginners how the T-34-85 differs from the T-34-85M, or rookie rifleman from a veteran. And that means the decision to take it to the deck or not will be more conscious. Of course, you can always just put the most expensive units ... But if you, like us, like to dig into the settings and assemble the most efficient, interesting and surprising battalion, these tips will come in handy. They, as you see, contain a lot of information: basic characteristics, a list of strengths and weaknesses, a description of the unit. Ok, they WILL contain when we finish filling in all the data.
Link We are doing our best to make the game as attractive as possible before the release, to remove the maximum number of placeholders and temporary solutions. We would like to make the OBT stage as short and quick as possible to give everyone a chance to play. While we have the opportunity to devote all our efforts to development, rather than support, we intend to use it. Wish you all the best, and feel free to suggest a topic for the next diary.

Link Hi, friends. The next diary will be in the first ten days of September. As for us, we will activate the stealth mode for the next two weeks, as a sabotage and reconnaissance brigade usually do. Don't miss us much and know that there will be many interesting news this autumn. Hope the rest of the summer will be great for you all.

Link Hi, friends. Today we continue to talk about how to manage your battalion. Well show with examples how much freedom of choice the battalion constructor provides. We will conduct an inspection of the howitzer battalion of Germany and will choose a favorite type of sabotage activity along with some other ones. And we will announce the winners of the contest from the last diary who will get access to the alpha test. In the last diary about on this topic, we talked about the process itself, the principles that formed the basis for the concept of battalions, echelons, and BR. We will not repeat ourselves, so if you managed to forget (or missed the material at all), then here is the link. Today we will develop further on the topic, and show how the same battalion can vary depending on the strategy chosen by the player. In order not to confuse you, we will use the word battalion, although both regiment and brigade can be found in the screenshots. And dont forget that the interface is still work in progress. Do not be too harsh on that.
Link Each battalion has a specialization and discounts on BR for the units. And the deck from the screenshot above uses its specialization to the fullest extent. Only the howitzer battalion can take the leFH 18M on the first echelon, and it is the only one who can put howitzers into two slots on the second and third ones. Using all the slots and a ten percent discount to the maximum (3.6 BR instead of 4 for each sFH 18) we get ten (!) howitzers for the whole battle. Well put the recoilless 105-mm LG-40 gun (which we will use as a howitzer anyway), an anti-aircraft gun and some infantry into the remaining slots. At the third echelon well take one Pak 43 in order to at least slightly cover our rear from heavy tanks. Such a deck will allow you to field anywhere from 2 to 5 howitzers on the battlefield at any time, allowing you to worry less about their loss and enable you to maintain a generous howitzer symphonic orchestra running. The main disadvantage of it is that there is practically nothing left to defend your chaps with and thus it is necessary to rely heavily on fellow mates.
Link If you are not yet ready to entrust your life to an ally and think that the flexibility is the best way out, look at the screenshot above. There are much fewer howitzers, so losing them will be very unpleasant, but you will be ready to turn the tables around on unprecedented situations. Youll be able to strengthen your position with engineers and battle engineers; defend against air strikes and paratroopers with the Wirbelwind. Take some infantry too for cover from saboteurs and the occasional capture of territory, previously freed from the enemy by means of dropping ample amounts of high explosive shells beforehand. Pak of various modifications will not only protect against tanks, but also significantly expand the list of priority targets for you. In general, the battle with this deck is more comfortable, but artillery fire from one or two howitzers isnt the same as from four.
Link What you see above is a deck made by a non-conformist howitzer commander that fights the system in all of its manifestations. This is not to say that a howitzer battalion without howitzers is the right decision, but it is also possible. Just imagine the bewilderment of the enemy team! Your teams surprise equally notwithstanding, you may be able to pull it off... If you want, you can even play as an attacking howitzer battalion, no matter how strange it sounds. Collect more infantry, clear the territory with artillery preparation, move forward, repeat. Or you can support allies with "fire and wheels" moving after the advancing troops. You can take risks and bring howitzers almost to the front line to level out the minuses of the plunging fire. We are sure you understood the main idea - there is no one true option. Now let's expand the material looking into the subversive and reconnaissance battalion. Because everyone knows - there is no MoW without a good fight in the enemys rear. Let's consider three types of decks: with focus on snipers, on front support and on sabotage units.
Link For successful sabotage behind enemy lines, you still need to go there and find the enemy there, which is actually not so easy. But you dont have to, when you focus on supporting the frontline instead. Such a deck is balanced and for it, the team will say Thank you!, Especially if you are a beginner saboteur. Its goal is to strengthen allies on the front line with your units, whilst then capturing and holding territory. Separate infantry squads will help to hold or capture important areas while you are micro-managing the rest of the units. The Jgers do not capture the territory, but they can protect you from the advancing infantry, and have an improved view range to detect enemy saboteurs. Profile units (scouts and saboteurs) in such a deck should be near the front line. Intentionally not going behind enemy lines, but highlighting firing points, machine gunners and snipers for allied artillery. Just to prevent an attack and repel the desire to carry it out. Mortars, both stationary and mounted on the Sd.Kfz 251/2, will help in cleaning buildings, destroying artillery and defending infantry. This one is good for reconnaissance, defense, sabotage on the front line.
Link Focusing on snipers speaks for itself. There are a lot of them. If you forgot, here you can read about the types and ammunition of snipers in Soldiers: Arena. Still, all of them have something in common. Any sniper is good for the systematic killing of defending infantry, but does not cope well with large clusters of attacking ones, especially with tank support. They can trample your snipers and roll them over with their tracks. And in order to provide ourselves with some protection against such attacks, we put machine-gun detachments in the remaining slots to protect against infantry and include ourselves an airstrike against tanks and artillery. And we hope that we wont have to defend ourselves alone. Jgers located close to the front line due to their enhanced view settings provide excellent visibility and highlight targets for snipers. This means that you will always see the enemy first. Such a deck is good for bleeding the enemy and slowing his advance. If the player not only scatters snipers on the map, but also has good situational awareness, then the effectiveness of the battalion will increase significantly. Change positions, monitor the visibility, choose priority targets, advance along with an ally ... In good hands, snipers clean out enemy infantry even better than howitzers.
Link From defensive capturing decks, we move on to something completely different. A base-harassing, offensive, aggressive profile. Its basis is made up of scouts, saboteurs and Brandenburgers. All these units have stealth skills, can mask their positions, and do not affect the front line, but their weapons and equipment are very different.

• Scouts. Each of them have MP-40, 2 M39 grenades, a signal grenade (artillery strike).
• Saboteurs:
  • Two saboteurs (silent pistol, 2 M39 grenades, 2 smoke, 2 signal grenades, 2 dynamites).
  • Saboteur with SMG (MP-40, 2 M39 grenades, 2 smoke, 2 signal grenades, 2 dynamites).
  • Saboteur-sniper (Mauzer 98k (sniper), 2 smoke grenades).
• Brandenburgers:
  • Armored personnel carrier Sdkfz 251 (2 Mg-34)
  • Driver (MP-40)
  • Two riflemen (G43, 3 M24 grenades, 2 smoke grenades, 2 dynamite)
  • Commander (G43, 3 M24 grenades, high-explosive M24x5, 2 smoke, 2 signal grenades)
  • Radio operator (silent gun, 3 M24 grenades, 2 smoke, 5 signal grenades)
  • SMG infantryman (MP-35, 3 M24 grenades, HE M24x5, 2 smoke grenades, 2 dynamites)
  • Sniper (Mauser 98k (sniper), smoke grenade)

Link Hi, friends. This is the right time for another diary with feedback. As usual, we look back to tell what we created from scratch, what we repaired, and what we upgraded. Settings, new features, increasing the size of maps and two returns by your requests: ammunition and BC and rubric with bugs.

Airstrike

Map size

Settings

• Ammunition ceased to be infinite. We test this mechanic and look for a good solution at this point. Maybe a choice of ammunition and setting up the supply will become a part of managing the battalion process.
• We continue to configure the tps and fps cameras. This time, machine guns got their legitimate opportunity to conveniently cut down the foes with direct control.
• Customized the characteristics, weapons and behavior of units. Ordinary snipers lost the bonus to the detection of saboteurs. Jaegers have become more mobile, making it easier to pursue scouts. Reduced health for brandenburgers, and increased for elite snipers. Taught separate infantry squads how to go in the right order - now the commander and heavily armed fighters are walking in the center.
• Added additional characteristic for tractor units, which determines how fast it moves with attached artillery. For example, the GAZ-67B will receive a small penalty when towing a 53- and much larger when towing something heavier.
• Refinement of the trenches. Made a new markup visualization, both intuitive and informative. Many bugs were fixed in the behavior of units in the trench and during its assault.

Hi, friends. Intimidating. Bomb throwing. Aviation. These words can be used to describe the first tests after the introduction of airstrike in Soldiers: Arena. It is always a joy to add new features to the game, but an airstrike ... is a story that deserves to be in epos. The planes dropped bombs, anti-aircraft guns fought back and avenged, all others sought shelter. Sought in vain. One cant hide from the fiery gaze of aces. Cant get away from their punishment, which pours from the sky like rain, turning brave men into the dead. Damn, it's hard not to switch to a high syllable, remembering how epic it looked in the game.

"Now mount we our horses, Now bare we our brands, Now haste we hard, maidens, Hence far, far, away." Poetic Edda

"Cattle die, and kinsmen die, And so one dies one's self; But a noble name | will never die, If good renown one gets." Poetic Edda

Link Hi, friends. Now, while we continue to fix the bugs, to refine the metagame (and not to talk about it), its a good time to discuss some of the questions floating in the air. The damage model in Soldiers: Arena, for example. Fans of accurate settings, disputes about realism and sprawling comments - make yourself comfortable. Today we are talking about who is hurting whom and how much, and what affects the amount of hurt. Let's start with the Healthbar question. New people constantly come into the community, and when they learn about the existence of a life bar on vehicles, they become enraged. Being sure that the presence of healthbars is an indicator of the demise of the genre and the obligatory fall into arcade Gehenna, they lose all hope. So well have this diary for all the newcomers. There will also be a lot of interesting things for seasoned community members too. Dont really want to be a messenger that brings bad news, but Santa Claus does not read your letters, and healthbars have always been in MoW. Usually, shell removed the durability of the component or broke it after penetrating. When the hull was broken, the unit was considered destroyed (sad trombone).
Healthbars cannot be taken in isolation from other mechanics and further in the text, we will pour evidences that in Soldiers: Arena weve added even more realism. Visualization (which, by the way, can be turned off) and the improvements of healthbars is a necessity designed to reduce the value of the random stuff and make the gameplay more orderly and understandable. An additional quest is to force tankers to leave natural shyness, get out of the bushes, and at the same time become a powerful force in the offensive operations and a reliable support in defensive lines. With healthbars, you yourself are the master of your life, and you can safely erase from your emblem the old motto Hit hard, die young. HP is derived from the unit survivability characteristics and takes into account the armor, composition, type of vehicle, size and number of seats for the crew. So with a healthbar you easily understand the level of how durable your unit is, how close to its fate you are coming, and you can therefore control the process. There is no simplification or casualization. Just a standardization. Damage mechanics needed to be improved too, because permanent oneshots arent very healthy. And, by the way, not very realistic too. Does every penetration brake down the tank? Nope. And there are a lot of stories about the shells that have been melted into armor, or machines that have been pieced through a couple of times and still have continued to fight. Reducing everything to a random variable is also not the best option. The luck isnt the only thing that decides destiny in real life. And certainly not the only thing that should call the shots in a competitive multiplayer game. For example we have ZIS-2 and ZIS-3, shooting at some PZ III. Both guns can potentially destroy it. The ZIS-2 has a better penetration value, but the 76-mm ZIS-3 projectile has more explosive ingredient, which means more fragments affecting the vehicle and the crew inside. Which of them should oneshot the tank faster and with what chance? The conditional game situation, when ZIS-2 oneshot PZ III with a fifty percent chance, and ZIS-3 with a forty percent one doesnt seem very realistic. No more than double jump or ring with +5 to the critical hit chance. So, to reduce the influence of chance on victory is a noble cause.
Consider the types of damage and mechanics that affect its amount.

• The penetrating damage to manpower is inflicted on infantry when a bullet or projectile penetrates. In Soldiers: Arena, we increased the damage of small arms at close range, so on a range of grenade throw, soldiers die from a single bullet, regardless of their coolness. The amount of such damage essentially depends on the ballistics of small arms, the position of the fighter, being in a trench or cover. Additional protective equipment such as a helmet, body armor or a thick book in a breast pocket seriously increases the chances of survival.
• Melee combat damage. Only infantry gets it of course. Directly depends on the skills of the fighter and weapons in his hands. We had to refine the AI a lot, but it was worth it. In the trenches, you can now see the battle with the use of bayonets, shovels, knives and buttstocks. Strictly 16+.
• Fatal events damage. As Pratchett said, And that which does kill us leaves us dead! Throwing a throwing knife, being hit with vehicle, collapsed building or trench walls, killing by the worlds physical fragments.
• Armor-piercing damage. Applied as a result of penetration of armor by AP projectile. The characteristics of the projectile (including caliber) seriously affect the amount of such damage and the chance of killing with one penetration. The remoteness of the target is another important modifier, since the penetration and damage from the AP-shells fall with the distance. Such damage very often leads to crew death and disabling modules. Armor of the target isnt the last thing, because to inflict AP damage, you firstly need pierce the damn thing. Using tank angles correctly to increase your chances is still in fashion. High angles of the meeting with the shell can cause a ricochet.
• Cumulative damage comes with cumulative grenades and projectiles. It differs from the AP damage in that it does much less damage to the health-bar (general functionality) of the machine, but doesnt spare the crew and modules.
• High-explosive damage from explosives and HE shells. Destroys covers and is lethal to infantry, which is guaranteed to die in its area of effect. The principle of action on the armor is similar to a hammer - if it breaks through, it crumbles everything inside. The thinner the armor and the closer the epicenter of the explosion, the more damage the machine will take. Light armored vehicles can survive a direct hit only from some small shells. In the case of indirect hit, damage will be inflicted only if the high-explosive wave has enough energy, which rapidly dies out with distance, in order to break through or crush the armor. So indirect hit are almost not dangerous for heavy vehicles, but they are very easy to feel for light ones and fatal for unarmored ones. Artillery does not like high-explosive damage much because of the high chance of detonation of the ammunition.
• Fragmental damage from explosives and HE shells. As you can see in the Soldiers: Arena, high-explosive projectiles and explosives have both fragmentation and high explosive effects. Often in different proportions. For example, anti-personnel mines and grenades cause a lot of fragmentation damage, and minimally high-explosive ones. Fragments piercing rate isnt enough to cause damage even to an APS. Infantry from such damage is well protected by shelters, removal from the epicenter of the explosion and the recumbent posture.
• Seismic damage. Deals damage to trenches and buries them. Large-caliber HE shells have the greatest seismic damage, so that artillery preparation before the storming of the trenches is the right decision. A pleasant realistic bonus is that tanks also cause seismic damage with their tracks. You can bring down the walls of the trench just by riding over it.
• Fire damage. When in contact with a flame, there is a chance of triggering an ignition event. In the future, we also want to move this mechanics from scripted rails, reduce the influence of the random and add fire extinguishers to the armored vehicles.

• The mortality of the crew has become more logical and realistic. You shoot where the driver is sitting - most likely he will die.
• There is no limit to the firing range anymore. We remind you. Wipe clean a checkmark in the Realism column or put a new one if this is news to you.
• Rewrote damage system of the components. As before, you can shoot down the tracks, damage the tower or gun of the tank, destroy or ignite the engine, knock down additional screens, etc. But now it all became more predictable and less dependent on the chance. Added the possibility of damaging to the component without breaking it. For example, the tower of a heavy tank may jam from frequent hits.
• Weve brought realism to the work of high-explosive and cumulative AT-grenades. Now they do not have infinite pierce power and are not the ultimate weapon in the fight against a tank threat. The RPG-43 could penetrate up to 75 mm of armor, and this is a bit like an ultimatum to the Royal Tiger ... rather, a polite warning. The RPG-40 generally has only 40 mm of penetration, but a lot more high-explosive damage. So, unlike RPG-43, it can be successfully used against fortifications and buildings.
• For each type of projectile we registered our own model of damage, trajectory, accuracy parameters and ballistics. Planning to add more types of shells. So the player will be able to even better configure the unit for the tasks that it intends to perform.
• Added visualization of calculations for penetration of present armor, taking into account the normalization of the projectile.

Hi, friends. Traditionally on this day we wish everyone a peaceful cloudless sky overhead, emotional balance and good memory. May wars and conflicts will be only in games and on forums. Yours sincerely, Best Way.

Link Hi, friends. Our Easter and May Day greetings to you all! Hope your holidays were the same as ours - passed in work and joy. And you are cheerful, in a good mood and ready for a new diary about the results of recent months of work. The main priority of these months was the metagame, and we talked about it a lot lately. So much that we even fed up. Therefore, today we will pause and talk about the rest of the stuff: new features, units, models, speech lines, AI improvements, usability, and a variety of snipers. Every strategy fan knows that harvesters have their own work, and devastators have their own. And they are not interchangeable. The same for the game development. While some are engaged in the metagame, others - in other things.

• Return and improvement of the inventory. Dont say later that developers cant hear the grumbling in the community - we can. Inventory definitely will be reworked but we have a head start. And after that, maybe, well find some way to bring back the ammunition.
• Convenience of use. Made a simple launch of singleplayer, PVE and PVP sessions, tips on the metagame interface (this is the last time about the meta, we swear).
• Repair of repair mechanics. Now tankmen are able to repair several broken components at once if there are enough working hands. Progress is displayed on the repair icon.
• AI. Vehicles can shoot from all guns now. So while you are using direct control and trying to aim the thinnest armor plate, machine guns wont be treacherously silent towards enemy infantry. Rejoice all!
• Rebalance of battalions. Also we added a new one. Panzergrenadier tank regiment is now available only for Germany. It comes with its Inability to take the regular infantry, air defense units, and 6th lvl tanks, but it compensates with slots for top motorized infantry which is otherwise inaccessible to other commanders. The sight to behold: Armored personnel carriers with infantry, Panzergrenadiers and Brandenburgers in combination with tanks If you want to implement a blitzkrieg within the game session - Panzergrenadier tank regiment is just for you!
• Training days for units. All special infantry has learned how to disguise. Saboteurs and other stealth infantry also can see areas of view of other units. So it has become a bit more profitable to cross the front line, to spoil the blood in the enemy's rear, to be brave and bold.
• Improved fortifications. The ability to strengthen the position no longer works instantly, and some tanks have received this feature. Why only some? Because we are testing how useful it will be. Do you think tanks need additional protection like that?
• Voice lines. The first three hundred are already voiced and added to the game. Units become angry, desperate, and pleased with the player. They live, in a word. Unfortunately only in Russian for now.

• The sniper (regular) has basic shooting skills, the usual viewport and Mauser 98k (Germany) or the Mosin Rifle (USSR) and they need a lot of time to reload after each shot.
• The sniper from the saboteurs squad - has the same weapon as the regular one, but proficient shooting and stealth skills, and therefore is not visible throughout the entire line of sight of the enemy viewport.
• The sniper from the Brandenburg squad is very similar to a saboteur, but arrives on an armored car along with other Brandenburgers.
• The sniper from the NKVD squad is the Soviet analog of the Brandenburger, but walks on foot. The main advantage is that he can detect stealth infantry.
• Jaeger Sniper (Germany's collectors unit) - can detect hidden infantry and have an additional weapon - a machine gun.
• Elite snipers - have stealth skill, grenades, several AP-mines and, most importantly, semi-automatic sniper rifle Gewehr 43 (Germany) or SVT-40 (USSR), thanks to which they shoot more often. They are available only in the sabotage and reconnaissance battalion.

Link Hi, friends. Today we will talk about the metagame and changes in its interface, new units in the USSR tree and post-match statistics. Because most of the updates of recent months are associated with the metagame, and because diaries are here to inform you about the development process. And if the word statistics, for example, doesnt touch your soul or excite you, but rather evokes a rattling boring nothing ... That does not mean that we shouldnt talk about it. And maybe you just dont know how important and interesting statistics are!

What is meta?

Why does the player need statistics?

• Ground control - silver earned for territory control. If you play as an infantryman, and in this column, you have a lower value than the allied tankman - this is a serious reason to think about your deck and actions in the session.
• Fine and Compensation are the statistics of spent and received silver for a friendly fire. In Soldiers: Arena you need to try hard to harm the allies. But those who are trying this hard must pay for allies repairs from their own pockets.
• Capture - silver for the capture of enemy vehicles.
• Repair is an item of expenditure for the repair and replacement of your units. Consequently, the more cautious you play and the less you wear your units in the face of the enemy, the more profitable the session results will turn out.

Why does the developer need statistics?

Link Hi, friends. There are a number of questions that you ask more often than others, but not as often as That One. Today we would like to answer them in a diary. To answer with details, to share some far-reaching plans and, most importantly, explain why things goes as they do. Cause we respect the dialogue. And also because sometimes you are perplexed with things that are obvious to us, and we in turn are perplexed at your perplexity. So in order to make Perplexed city uninhabited and leave only young Travolta to walk along its boring empty streets, we wrote this diary.

Will there be an editor?

Priorities and the choice between necessary and very necessary.

When the priority tree bears fruit.

• Without the extra headache and damage to the balance, even the most controversial unit can be added.
• We reward the user with a rare unit that can show off in front of the allies and do it completely free of charge.
• Immediately we get +5 points to realism! Historically rare species - rare indeed in the game.

To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.(c) Paul Klee

They have something to say!

Link Hi, friends. Well show some infantry gameplay in this diary. Just to make your wait for the release more pleasant, and discussion in the comments will now be more specific. This was shot during the real session with testers - so it is really hard to come up with something more live than that. Try not to pay attention to the bug in the display of the cursor. They extremely rarely grow to such sizes. We shall fix it soon. https://youtu.be/3lVCwtZSfXM These moments are only a small part of what can and should be shown about infantry gameplay. No matter how badly we want to recreate the whole picture of what is happening ... even having recorded the session from beginning to end, we are unlikely to achieve the goal. Just compare this video with the previous one and notice how much the meditative howitzer gameplay differs from the one of infantry. The picture changes every time the battalion changes: the Bruegel infantry burrows their teeth into the front line, Malevichs tanks crush resistance along the way, and Bryullovs artillery depicts the Last Day of Pompeii. So we just continue to show interesting and characteristic moments of gameplay, and you would be able to see the whole picture during your first game session. You most likely noticed that the color scheme, interface and icons have changed a bit since the first video. Work continues and this is not the last change. Do not worry, we realize that the interface should not be overloaded. We also want more realism wherever it does not interfere with the gameplay. And here we have a great solution. In a multiplayer game, the main thing is informativeness and nothing can be done about it. The more you know about the enemy, the faster you get this information - the greater the chances of winning. But in a single-player game, where there is more time to make a decision, we can seriously think about atmosphere and minimalism. Pay attention to the screenshot from the single-player mission, where the interface and icons live by completely different rules. And finally take rest to your nervous system.
Link Do you like such a format of diaries? Would you like to see more videos and less text or vice versa? What units / battalions / kind of troops would you like to see next time? Wish you all the best.

Link Hi, friends. Thanks for the words of support and feedback on the latest video. Thanks for the constructive (and any other) criticism too. As always, we have read everything and in today's diary we will give feedback on your feedback. Also youll read some about the results of the last months, settings, and bugs that were in the video, but already fixed and other. How naive we were, deciding that the Early Beta footage inscription would save us from kicks into the fps dropdowns, jabs into the work-in-progress interface, and van-dame-like split kicks straight into the T-34-85 dancing on the trench. Okay. Thanks to that we we have stuff to discuss today and can show with examples: wherever we can, we keep our promises. We promised that in Soldiers: Arena it will be possible to play on an average PC and even recorded the video on this kind of PC. Promised to show real gameplay without editing, and showed without editing how slowly Pastorazzi really plays with howitzers. We promised to quickly fix bugs and hear your wishes - so we fix and we hear. Animation bugs. A known problem but we just did not have time to fix it before shooting the video. Notice how smoothly and gently the T-34-85 now rides over the trenches.
Sound. We have already become used to the sounds in the game and, apparently, did not pay attention to how the sounds of small arms brought pain to the ears. German submachine guns and machine guns sounded louder than similar weapons of other nations. Corrected. We customized the models of sound spreading. The main focus is now on big explosions and and big guns. Added the whistling of mortar mines and the sound of the semi-automatic AT-rifle EW.141. In general, it has become much more pleasant, but the work must go on. Interface. Still in work and in some places it will change beyond recognition, Including the icons that we added to the game a couple of days before shooting the video. But you wished to customize the display of interface elements: And we have this already. If information about units and the battlefield is less important to you than realism and cinematic images - you can always turn off almost everything. By the way, opponents of healthbars cant hate us anymore. Cause, technically, these are the health-rhombuses, so ... checkmate! The size of the map seemed too small some of you, guys. The attentive reader knows that the size of the map adjusts to the number of players. This is one of the ways to achieve the perfect balance of epic and realism to deliver maximum impact and read what is happening in the session. Soldiers: Arena is a strategy game about a full-scale ground encounter and fierce battles along the entire front line, and a hidden enemy quest. The width of the optimal map for a 5 vs 5 fight looks like this.
In addition to the usual work on the balance of battalions, fixing bugs, creating new models and special effects, we also did these:

• Realistic projectile flight paths. When changing the type of shell, the gun changes the angle so that the armor-piercing flew along a flat trajectory, and the HE shells flew along the plunging one. HE were less likely to fly past the target and better get into the trenches and buildings, and AP shells from, for example the ML-20, will not be casting steel hail and throwing your tank into rock bottom.
• Fine tuning of shells and caliber dependencies. For example, the larger the HE caliber, the greater the effective range of the fragments and the damage they inflict on the vehicles. The seismic effect was increased for large calibers also, so that 155 mm now obliterates a trench with a single hit. And 100+ mm shells now break vehicles modules from one damaging hit.
• Arty preparation mode has been added. This is a variant of firing a position, but without an aiming buff after each shot and accelerated by 33% reload. Good for playing with an artillery battery, when accuracy is less important than an overwhelming and demoralizing effect. Perfect for clearing the territory before allied infantry advance and stopping the offense. It works only for units intended for this. Scare infantry with armor-piercing volleys from ZIS-2 battery isnt a great idea anyway.
• We test mechanics related to experience, unlocking new units and balance of the techtrees. We corrected the distortions and adjusted the cost in order to have a more or less working model of the development of the player and the technology tree by the start of the EA. Most of us have already managed to form our favorite decks, and those who want to continue to use them have to farm like an ordinary player. Strange feeling.
• Usability and general understanding. Were changing interfaces, icons, tips, hotbars, etc., to simultaneously give the player full information about what is happening on the battlefield and not clutter building up on the screen. This task is not an easy one, given the Arena's hardcore nature and the huge volume of what is happening on the screen, but we have good progress made already.

Link Hi, friends. Today well talk ... a little. And, perhaps, discuss in the comments ... a lot. The concept of approximate numbers, the melting point and preview gameplay video of Soldiers: Arena.

The world was full of burning of all types and sizes. Now the guild of the asbestos-weaver must open shop very soon.

At least you were a fool about the right things

And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And Id never even thought that thought before.

Link Hi, friends. In today's diary we will talk about two new multiplayer maps: the Kursk fields and Bazerville. Here you can read about the features of each of them, the importance of gameplay diversity, the differences of maps in Soldiers: Arena and in other RTS games, and add to your collection a new render with Yemelya (ML-20) on it. Unlike its fairy-tale namesake, the Soviet howitzer doesnt ride on a Russian stove, but still manages to create some magic in the game even without the help of a magical pike, but with the help of its own 152-mm shells.

Disclaimer: On some maps there are buildings of the era of MoW-antiquity, due to the fact that not all permits for demolition and modernization have been obtained yet.

• Interactivity of environment. We always wanted the world to be as lively as possible and give the player a lot of opportunities to interact with it. In most strategic games, you can at best use the terrain as a platform to gather resources or shelter from the fire. In the games of the series it was always different, and in Soldiers: Arena the number of such interaction mechanics became even bigger than in any other GEM-game. You can dig up the whole map with trenches, barricade buildings, hide your artillery behind a camouflage net and hide infantry in already growing bushes, use hills and cavities to your advantage, use burnt wrecks of enemy tanks to hide your own tanks, demine minefield and have fun in general.
• Front line. To win, it is not necessary to destroy all enemy bases or units, and the struggle for territory is not limited to points of interest. Although the priorities or places of increased interest remain, in each session you can see some non-standard solutions. Someone manages to dig in the middle of the field and hold a position throughout the battle, and someone loses well-fortified buildings, discouraged by armored cars rush or artillery advance. The non-standard approach in Soldiers: Arena work well and you dont need to repeat the same actions each game. Build the fort capture the mine build the barracks upgrade the fort. Naaaah.
• Role component is reflected not only in the selection and use of units, but also in map design. Each kind of troops has a landscape more comfy to play on. Depending on which map you are playing on and which units, the priority points of attack or defense can and will differ greatly.
• New experience on each map. The above mechanics make it possible to significantly change the gameplay, top units and battalions, even with a simple rearrangement of buildings. But we are not limited to this, and we want each multiplayer map to have its own individual gameplay features. Maps that differ only in weather conditions, a season of the year, or a visual style of buildings, is not our option.

Link Hi, friends. As promised in the last diary, well speak today about battalions and how to manage them. We shall reveal some of the secrets, which have been guarded so far. Well talk as precisely as possible about what echelons and battle ranks are, and how many troops can be taken into battle. Also, using the example of two tasks and their solutions, we will explain why Soldiers: Arena will be comfortable for players with different microcontrol skills and expectations from the gameplay.

Once again, we remind you that the interface shown on the screenshots is still being finalized and can be changed. Do not rush to get used to it or spin the flywheel of criticism in the comments section.

• Units should not depreciate. If you love the BT-7 for its speed and cheapness, it makes no sense to give it up. The first echelon will be present in each session and in each session, the BT-7 will be useful.
• The need to minimize excess waiting and moments of inactivity. First echelon units are available immediately and you do not need to save CPs for them, just to choose the order of spawn (more on this in one of the following diaries). In most cases, by the time the first echelon units are finished, the second one is ready. Thus, a player with phantom threads of nerves and low resistance to defeats will not be able to lose all his favorite units at once, lose the game and lose himself on a downwards spiral of existential apathy. Well, ok, he can always lose himself, but we have diminished the reasons for this.
• Make the pace of the game smooth and constantly growing. The first echelon makes it possible to study the enemys battalions relatively calmly, test its defenses, strengthen your own and warm up. The second is for the full-scale battles along the entire front line and the culmination of the game, which often makes it clear how it will end. The third echelon is a battle of top units and a fight to the last.
• Emphasize the features of the battalions. For example, a battalion of medium tanks is especially good at the first and second echelons, and by the third, when top heavy tanks and cannons arrived, it slows down a little. It is necessary to be cautious and go to a fight if only having a numerical advantage.
• Create a lot of interesting game situations and non-linear balance. Some will say that when on the first echelon, only the howitzer commander has the leFH 18 and this is NOT interesting situation at all, and the T-35 of the heavy tanks commander is something too nonlinear. But such is life - there is never equal conditions in it. In addition, such mastodons are very expensive. For example, leFH 18 at the first echelon is available only in one copy and occupies slightly more than half of the available CPs. But losing such a unit, it makes the situation very uninteresting for you, and nonlinearity may also enter a downhill experience.
• Add realism! There is nothing realistic in the fact that only Tigers and Katyusha participated in the battle. We want to show the alignment of forces on the battlefield and the interaction of army types as plausible as possible.

Task number one: minimum clicks+maximum firepower*on armor(+safe distance)=USSR artillery tanks battalion.

Task number two: maximum micro+stealth+map control*quantity(-survivability) = sabotage and reconnaissance battalion.

Link Hi, friends. The time has come for the next Feedback diary. The one who reads could know some about settings, balance, AI, interfaces and matchmaking. There will be a regular rubric about funny bugs too. And we'll show the technology tree of the USSR, because you asked, and we dont mind. In the previous diary we already wrote that now there is the possibility of reconnection to the session, but this is only one of the obvious advantages of the infrastructure changes that Soldiers: Arena has undergone in the past six months. The opportunity to enter the game as a spectator, player rating, matchmaking and optimization are also included. These are those works for which we had to delay the Early Access release. Obviously, nowadays, no one will be surprised by matchmaking systems or reconnect to the games, but in order to implement them on GEM2, we had to work hard. And the time for the execution of these works was very difficult to calculate. Therefore, we had to keep this information secret and hide it behind the words optimization and network code, although we incredibly wanted to share it.
Link Such large-scale changes always bring new bugs and a lot of work on reconfiguring the game, but it was definitely worth it. Time is relative, and the fact that you had to wait for Early access a little longer paid off when creating the session. In 2019 it would be strange if one couldnt plunge himself into battle with the infrastructure not working. Soldiers: Arena should be not just a good game, but also the most responsive and convenient game on the GEM and some of these changes are ready. Now we are already using the matchmaker, but the number of players in the test is not enough for it to work at full strength, so it will definitely be refined after the release. At least now we can answer your questions about how the commanders will be balanced and the opponents can be chosen. Three basic parameters are taken into account:

• The maximum level of units in players army. It is bad to play with 53-K against Tigers!
• Battalion specialization. It is bad to play with other four tankmen against five infantrymen! By the way, it is hard to say bad for who.
• Personal player ratings. It is bad to play bad! The magic of numbers and raw statistics. The better you play, the stronger the opponents.

• Interface. Did you notice the new icons and the technology tree? Also we added a second row of hotbar for those who need more than one.
• Responsiveness of the game. Added in-game hints not only on the gameplay, but also on the interface elements. Making the rules of the game more understandable. Now, if, for example, you shoot with 88-mm at a light tank engine, it will be broken in 100% cases. Breaking the gun barrel is no longer a random event upon hit. You shoot into the barrel - you break the barrel.
• AI. Units become smarter and annoying moments appears less often. For example, before there were unpleasant interruptions, when units began to run into each other because of the intersection of paths, even when they were far away from each other. Now the traffic rules has been mastered. At your requests (numerous, it is worth saying) tankmen stopped taking their place on the machine gun even before the previous gunner let out his last breath. Now they wait a few seconds, before leaning out of the hatch. This is in addition to being able to order them not to lean out at all.
• Rules of the game. Significantly accelerated the set of points in the case of capture of 75% of the map. Now, if you have been forced to stay near the respawn, you will not endure shame for too long. The coefficients of the influence of players on the size of the map were changed so that the battle would become a bit more spacious. We configured the storming of buildings. Skill and weapons of a fighter have even more weight. One stormtrooper, for example, may win in a confrontation against an entire detachment of riflemen recruits.
• Playtests. We tested the game at low levels, since it is from them that new players will start, and it is their balance that must now be given special attention During the last few months the most powerful tanks were Pz.Kpfw.III and T-28. We are glad that at low levels the game does not lose intensity and does not seem boring, but on the contrary has its own charm. Cheaper units make it possible to think less about saving and play more carelessly. On the screenshots of the USSR technology tree, all units of levels 1-3 are open, so that you can understand what we are talking about.

Link Hi, friends. Despite the fact that we now are at an evening, its a new days dawn in the development of Soldiers: Arena. The day, in which Releasedate? will henceforth be turned into the request to Patchdate?. The day, in which there will be more certainty and fewer secrets. The day in which the cocoons of the diaries will turn into butterflies of the patches. And today, at the dawn of this day, let's talk about the nearest plans and some very important developments, about what to expect and what not to expect from the Early Access version.

It's a new dawn it's a new day it's a new life for me. Nina Simone Feeling good

• Control. Make interactive hints on gameplay, session and metagame interfaces. Add a classic RTS mouse mode (LMB for movement, RMB for attack), the ability to drag icons onto the hotbar from the general menu and make controls more intuitive.
• Metagame. Create battalion autofill templates for those who want to fight as quick as possible. Adjust the price and balance of the ingame currencies: silver and gold. By the way, we are just starting work on the balance of the economic component. And if we assume that the final version is Sunday, then the EA ones will be Wednesday at best. Considering that at first the game will be paid, now the priority is to fill it with content.
• Statistics. Refine windows with statistics on utility units, session results, game history. There is a small chance that we will have time to finish the replay structure. All this will help analyze the errors and understand where your team lost and which of your units turned out to be the most effective.
• Commands. Add the ability to create and enter the game teams of real bros, proven over the years, victories and defeats. And of course, adjust the balance of autofit opponents.
• Campaign! From morning till night we worked so that the campaign for the USSR devoted to the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War was ready for the Early Access. It shall depict the bloody summer of 1941 with all the consequences: the blitzkrieg and audacity of the German attacks, durability, and counterattacks of the Soviet army, pain and hardcore, typical for MoW.

Say you just can't live that negative way, If you know what I mean; Make way for the positive day, 'Cause it's news (new day) news and days. Bob Marley Positive Vibration

• Ability to play earlier than others and support the development with word and deed.
• New gaming experience. Soldiers: Arena is really very different from other games in the series. To the already familiar and favorite mechanics we added a large list of new ones.
• Two game nations, more than two hundred units and three dozen commanders with a unique gameplay.
• Singleplayer/co-op campaign. One at the start of Early Access and another at readiness. We create each mission in such a way that it can be played in cooperative mode with friends, and so that each player can choose which units to call and what to do, cause leftovers from the hosts table isnt enough for true coop experience.
• Skirmishes and battles against advanced AI, which in most cases will be better than your teammates.

• Multiplayer game. Weve made the game for this part after all! Meaty 5 VS 5 fights at a pace at which sitting in the bushes will not work. A huge selection of tools and tactics in order to arrange a holiday for you, and a gray hopeless weekday for your opponent. Detailed statistics for each unit to understand which part of your battalion screwed it up. Matchmaking to find rivals and teammates of your level. A balancer who won't throw you in a team against four filthy artillerymen.
• Support and quick patches. We kept in touch with the community for all three years from the creation of the page and are only going to gain momentum. Your tears, battle roar and the joy of victory will be heard and taken into account. Bugs will die, and features will be added. Early access is just the beginning.
• First echelon kit. Those who first come to the front must receive well-earned reinforcements. This shall include a premium account for three months, gold for the purchase of several premium units (2-5). The balance of gold is still not definite, so exact figures are hard to say at this point. And most importantly, two exclusive units that cannot be obtained in other ways: Pz.III Ausf.N and T-28E with a L-11 gun.

• Possible changes and reworking of interfaces.
• FPS drawdowns and bugs. New patches for the new day. And they will surely come with the occasional and unpleasant bug-surprises.
• Crashes. Speaking of surprises. We have a lot of enjoyable ones. Crashes in Soldiers: Arena even in the test version are not a common sight and regardless not a critical one. Now, if you are thrown out of the game at the end of the session or at the end of the fourth hour of the mission, you dont need to tear your hair out and sprinkle ashes on the keyboard. Just click reconnect and continue the day of anger.
• Old models that we will change after the start of the EA. Many new animations and sounds are also in the plans for this period. You should be prepared for such situations.

And a new day will dawn for those who stand long. Led Zeppelin Stairway to Heaven

Hi, guys. Below is the full version of the development tree, as you requested in the comments. So that we have a subject for discussion before the diary (will be next week). Something can and will change, and something is "not implemented", so try not to overthink. Wish you all the best.


Link Link Link

Link Hi, friends. Today is one of those diaries in which we won't publish the gameplay video and wont release the game again. Again we wont cure all runny noses in the world, wont finish A song of Ice and Fire and, obviously, wont return the kindness to the Internet. But theres still something to talk about. A good half of the questions in the community about when to release, why so long and how can we dare to delay ourselves in the first place?! Let's try today to understand the conditions of work on Soldiers: Arena, and to hold a small retrospective of past years and delays. Let's talk about development and developers, about why two years are not many, and why two, not three, and even if three, it is still not too long. We will have a diary that can be referenced by seeing the next Release date?!, and you will have screenshots and answers.

Arena development is a miniature eternity Ralph Waldo Emerson

Development will last long after Khayyam's fame Has passed away, yea, and his very name; Aforetime we were not, and none did heed. When we are dead and gone, devblogll be published same. Omar Khayyam

• Variability of gameplay. Make an army managing a mini-game in which there are no one hundred percent correct or incorrect decisions. So even the craziest set of units had a chance.
• The primacy of tactics. Proper use of units should be more important than the fastest hand in the whole wild west.
• Role component. Give the player the opportunity to play his favorite units and encourage him to play the role.
• Epicness. The battle should consist of a series of epic moments, and not of a sequence of identical actions like: accumulated points on your favorite tank, went on the attack, get wasted, accumulate again or ragequit. Session must be in suspense from the first to the last seconds.
• Readability battle. If you are killed, you should at least approximately understand by who, why, and how to get revenge.
• Team play. Cooperation with other players should be maximally encouraged and be the pillar of gameplay.
• Lots of content. Scope and possibilities! A huge selection of units, perks, and customizations for them, many commanders of various specialties, tons of cooperative. Later, a single-player component was added too, which was not originally in the plans, and which was influenced by you, guys!
• A continuous fight against useless units. With the development and receipt of new units, the old ones should not become useless. The gameplay of each should be considered a set of mechanic and sometimes mini-games.

Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but Arena development is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity. Oscar Wilde

Link Hi, friends. Under the last post, g0Dwarrior23 drew attention to the strange fact that you have not yet seen extensive documentation on multiplayer maps. And it was one of those Oh, re-e-e-e-ally moments when you realize that you did not see (didnt show in our case) the forest behind the trees. In the diary about Polesie we talked about the reference search process, map zoning and showed some landscapes, which is interesting by itself, but does not provide an overall picture. To fix the situation (or lack thereof), today we will look at one of the maps from a bird's-eye view and take a walk through the main sights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2emqBAp_TE&feature=youtu.be The Village map can be divided into three lanes: dense buildings on the left, open area in the center and the forest on the right. The line of first team fights is usually close to the central group of buildings.
Link The preferable flank is usually determined by the chosen commander and the troops he specializes in. In most games you will have to be in several places at the same time, alternately defending and attacking, retreating and supporting the offensive, and success can greatly depend on the choice of these locations. The better you know the terrain, your units, and the likely enemy tactics, the better you will be able to seize the initiative and unleash the potential of your chosen commander.
Link Infantry dominates on the left flank. An Assault battalion is the most successful in urban fights, since storm troops have an advantage in capturing and defending buildings. Moving between buildings on the left flank, you can capture the territory almost down to the enemys spawn point. Here you can also strengthen the safest positions for howitzers and mortars, completely protected from direct fire.
Link Tanks along the building need to move very carefully, gallantly inviting the infantry forward, avoiding succulent main courses of AT grenades served in bundles. Cannons with direct fire have nothing to do here, since you can only fire at close range and probably only once.
Link The central and the biggest part of the map is the open area, which is the natural habitat for the Tigers, Panthers, and Lynxes. And that means there are many artillerymen who attend the safari there. Open spaces allow you to shoot over large areas, and a battery of anti-tank guns concealed in a good location can stop a tank rush even before it starts. However, the response to the brazen gunners who are shooting at an auto attack comes so fast that you usually dont even have time to suffer. Here, with the support of tanks, infantry can break through faster and farther than anywhere else, since it is much more difficult to tie it up with a fight in an open field.
Link The woodland on the right flank gives a lot of opportunities for tank breakthroughs. Because of the dense vegetation, stones and height differences, anti-tank artillery is almost useless here. So if you dont want to see the enemys vehicles in the rear, its best to mine the narrow passages. In most cases, you hardly meet anyone in the forest, except for mortars hidden behind a stone ridge, so this zone is more often used by saboteurs to cross the front line. So cliche, but still effective.
Playing on all three flanks at once or putting pressure on one alone is up to you, but knowing the terrain and commanders will help make this decision right. For example, it is better to use anti-tank guns as a battery in a place where it will definitely shoot someone, since changing the flank quickly will not happen. Howitzers, on the contrary, are almost not tied to any terrain and can shoot from one side of the map to another, regardless of barriers and distances, although the accuracy with distance decreases significantly. Playing with heavy tanks, you often simply wont have so many units to deploy them across the whole front line, but the infantryman just needs to be present at least in several places at the same time. Before we proceed to inspect the village sights, we remind you that any point on the map can become paramount if the situation requires it. A particular building interferes with your plans? Raze it with your HE-shells. Are you afraid of open spaces? Build your cozy fort from bags, barbed wire, and anti-tank hedgehogs, make a moat of trenches and scatter the mines around. And feel yourself at home.
Link The group of buildings in the center is the local navel of the earth. It can give a huge advantage and serve as a foothold for entering deep into enemy territory or help expand the front by half the map. That is why the clashes never stop here. A similar situation with buildings near the forest. Their capture will allow to see the nearest territory and keep the enemy in stress.
Link In the central part of the map, closer to the rear, both teams have buildings that are simply created to be captured by the paratroopers. In addition, it is one of the best positions for a battery of howitzers, albeit the most obvious one. In addition, any stone and any barrier can be used as a shield or additional armor for your units. The battle in the Frontline goes for the territory, and the better you know it, the easier it is to capture and defend. The easier it is to choose the right place for minefields, trenches or a breakthrough into enemy territory.
And briefly about the most interesting development. Now multiplayer maps will change their size depending on the number of players in the session. When playing 3 vs 3, the map will be cropped narrower than when playing 5 vs 5 and will retain the same combat intensity and an average number of units per map area. We will not go into details further, it will be better for you to try it out by yourselves. So we use every existing one and create new opportunities to make the gameplay in Soldiers: Arena intense and damn diverse. And we are trying very hard so that soon you will try it by yourself. Wish you all the best, guys!

Link Hi, friends. We did not have enough time to prepare a diary this week. Sorry about that. Feel free to use your right and suggest the topic. Wish you all the best.

Link Hi, friends. In feedback diaries we usually talk about some results and changes of recent months. About settings, features, models, funny bugs, interface pieces, units, and the rules by which Soldiers: Arena lives. But today we need to talk about the balance also. Talk seriously and sincerely. Under the last diary there was much controversy about whether the stormtroopers are balanced or not, and how the absence of an armored car or flamethrower can destroy everything. Before we proceed to a soothing-explanatory text, pay attention that the Tiger. Pz. VI was already on the cover of the diary about heavy tanks. How do you like this change?

Talking about balance in Soldiers: Arena you don’t need to...

• ... compare units with similar ones from other games / books / wikipedia. Limiting the range of fire or its absence, the range of the HE action, the disguise, the possibility of retreat, of capturing the vehicle or any other of the hundreds of game features can significantly affect the result. If in another game you can shoot a tank with the machine-gun, this does not mean that you can do it in Soldiers: Arena.
• ... think that duplicating units is good. It’s a mortal sin to produce the same units, differing only in skins! And it's not just about stormtroopers. StuG III Ausf. G and SU-85 are conditional analogs of each other, but are they the same? The SU-85 shell deals more damage, but StuG III Ausf. G is better at piercing armor at long ranges, has a machine gun and faster reload rate. Which of these characteristics are the most important, will depend on the chosen tactics.
• ... perceive the unit in isolation from the game. Combat in Soldiers: Arena is not limited to a set of duels. You can even destroy your anti-class if you use the conditions correctly. Do you think that the flamethrower is stronger than a fighter with a submachine gun? But what if the submachine-gun-guy lies in the grass so damn invisible? What if he successfully throws a grenade? What if he has an older tankman brother? This game is about choosing, creating and correctly using favorable situations. Among other things

• ... forget that every unit has its own tasks! The PM-41 mortar has a bigger caliber than the BS-3, but that does not makes tanks easy targets for mortars. There is no point in comparing the stormtroopers in battle against stormtroopers, because you do not compare how well one air defense weapon destroys another air defense weapon, right? Units are balanced not in comparison with their counterparts, but in relation to whether it is good enough (and whether it isn’t too good) in performing their tasks. And there are always more than one way to accomplish this task. If you like to storm the building on an armored car more than to suppress it with a machine gun and annihilate the defenders with your shotguns, it's your choice. But this does not create an imbalance.
• ... simplify to the point of absurd. The presence of a flamethrower or an armored car is not the only important characteristic. There are dozens of them and we take into account everything! To give a PTRS-41 or a grenade launcher to every infantryman is not the only way to strengthen it in battle against tanks. We reduced the speed of tank turret rotation and it worked no worse. Added one AT and two AP mines to miners, so it makes artillery and infantry stronger in defense. Is ZIS-2 too strong for its class? You can change its level from the third to the fourth and its natural opponents will change from Pz III and Marder, to Pz IV and StuG. And this did not change its in-game characteristics. So "Let's give everyone a hammer" is not the only option, there are also more elegant ones. The only question is whether you want to look for them. We want.

Some settings

You are not prepared!

link Hi, friends. The last few months we are preparing Soldiers: Arena to show to the people. There is still much to be done, but as far as it is goes, we’re more or less done with the gameplay and optimization, and now we can work some more on cosmetic improvements. We get rid of temporary solutions, modify interfaces, configure controls, hotkeys, repair uncritical bugs, which usually did not get our attention beforehand. So we polish, decorate, simplify. And in today's diary, we'll talk about some changes in the management and gameplay of infantry, about specialized squads and their differences. We added the possibility to spread the units on the move. Moving the mouse up and down while pressing the RMB, you can specify the distance that the units will keep when moving.
Dispersal in the area not only allows you to quickly capture the territory but not to lose the entire detachment from a single shell or machine-gun fire. And you can also control how close to each other the units will take place in the cover.
We changed the mechanics of an artillery strike. Scouts, saboteurs and elite snipers now have signal grenades that, when exploding, spawn a pillar of smoke. Ten seconds later, in the smoke-marked area, the artillery gives a volley of three 105-mm shells. Since the shot making the artillery "outside the map," no additional cooperation with the allies is required. Only time for observation tower to see your signal and for artillery to aim. Ten seconds is quite a lot in game time, so an attentive player has a chance to react and retreat. Saboteurs, scouts, and snipers do not affect the front line and are visible by other units whey are half-way down the view range. Due to this they can not only get close enough to throw grenades but to also reach the weak points in the enemy’s rear and destroy howitzers, mortars, machine guns, fortifications, and some inattentive tanks.
In Soldiers: Arena, having opened a new unit in the development tree, you do not obtain discounts on the previous one. And we spare no effort to make them realistic, unique and relevant throughout the game. One of the tools to achieve this goal is the fine-tuning of each unit and weapon. Let’s take a close look, for example, to the heavy assault infantry of different nations and how their weapons and tasks differ. Storm Troopers of the USSR, the Rangers of the United States and the German Panzergrenadiers are inhomogeneous squads, with fighters with different equipment. This is an infantry elite that has been in lots of battles, with better survival characteristics, and a bonus to capturing and strengthening buildings.
link Stormtroopers:

• 3 stormtroopers with a submachine gun (PPS-43, grenades (AP, AT, smoke), dynamite, bulletproof vest)
• 1 stormtrooper with a flamethrower (Flamethrower, grenades (AP, AT, smoke), bulletproof vest)
• 1 stormtrooper with a machine gun (BAR, grenades (AP, AT, smoke), bulletproof vest)

• 2 rangers with submachine gun (Thompson, Bazooka, grenades (AP, HE, smoke), bulletproof vest)
• 2 rangers with a shotgun (Winchester 1912, grenades (AP, HE, smoke), sandbags, bulletproof vest)
• 1 ranger with a machine gun (BAR, grenades (AP, HE, smoke), sandbags, body armor)

• APC Sdkfz 251 Ausf C
• 1 grenadier driver (MP-40, grenades (AP, AT, smoke))
• 2 grenadiers with a rifle (G43, grenades (AP, AT, smoke))
• 2 grenadiers with Assault rifle StG 44 (Panzerfaust, grenades (AP, AT, smoke))
• 2 grenadiers with submachine gun MP-40 (Panzerfaust (x2), grenades (AP, AT, smoke))
• 1 grenadier with a machine gun (MG-42, grenades (AP, AT, smoke))

link Hi, friends. Today we will continue our acquaintance with the USSR development tree. As promised in the past diary , we will talk about tanks, specifically, the legendary T-34 and its modifications. In addition, we will try to silence the superstitious fear of the F2P model that lives in the community. Once again, we’ll talk about health bars, and why they won't kill the hardcore. We will show you the USSR tank branch in its current state. And, as always, screenshots, friendliness, walls of text.

The T-34 tank excels not so much for its fighting qualities but for the extreme simplicity in production, operation and repair, reliability, low cost and the possibility of mass production at any machine-building plant. Morozov А. А., one of the T-34 creators

I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a money; and a premium was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

Healthbars was undoubtedly one of the most terrible sins. No, philosopher, I disagree--it is the most terrible sin of all! (с) M.A. Bulgakov

Hi, friends. Immediately after the vacation, we rushed into the work, so there was not enough time to finish the diary. We'll post it in a few days. In the meantime, pay attention to the screenshot from the last issue. Again. And try to find the "Easter egg" standing near the trees. Wish you all the best as usual.
link

link Hi, friends. The theme of today's diary was born from your comments under the last post. We read them all, don’t you know? As Doomykins reasonably noted, the USSR development tree did not appear in the diaries beforehand. Today, we will correct this situation and talk about Soviet artillery in Soldiers: Arena. And so, we’ll tell Egor Tolstoff and the whole community why the difference in one or even several levels is not a huge margin separating the winners from the losers. This is not the final version of the development tree btw. We constantly add new units, change levels or type of existing ones, their places and links with other units, so as not to let imbalanced forces invade your PCs. Vigilantly and relentlessly we stand on the guard of balance.
link We did not include most of the SPGs here, because they are closer to the tanks in the devtree, and we will write about them in the next diary. But even without self-propelled guns, the artilleryman has a wide range of tools to destroy any enemy. Collecting the deck, you can adjust it to your style and add some infantry aggressiveness, self-propelled mobility or howitzer large-caliberness. How to play and how to assemble a commander is up to you. In Soldiers: Arena, the artilleryman does not have to sit in the bushes all the time. Despite the fact that most guns in this group are good at long distances, they can be played aggressively. After all, the closer the distance to the target, the more likely the ‘one-shot’ is, so sometimes it's more profitable to get to a good position for a shot rather than to aim for long - Especially if you support allied forces or they support you. It makes sense to recall the experience of assault troops during the battles for Stalingrad or Koenigsberg, which included sappers, scouts, riflemen, several machine guns, anti-tank guns and cannons. This tactic also works in Soldiers: Arena, and Zis-3 or 53-K, for example, are lightweight and mobile enough to be moved by the forces of their crew and, moving along with the infantry, to support the offensive. Most often, seeing the advancing infantry, the enemy calls something inexpensive and capable of stopping it. Whether it's a machine gun, an armored car or a medium tank, such an assault team will overcome this barrier without hindering the advance. If you were always embarrassed by the contemplation of the artillery gameplay, it's time to reconsider your views. Any deck can be good in Soldiers: Arena, if you know what you are doing.
link

If whale and elephant will fight, who will win?

Hi, friends. We will post the diary next week. Still thinking about the topic, so it's the right time for your suggestions. Wish you all the best.

link Hi, friends. While the Best Way programmers take Soldiers: Arena from the darkness of unoptimization into a stable bright future, the rest of us also have something to do. In today's issue of DevFeedback, we'll talk about some of the minor (and not so minor) fixes, changes and settings that Soldiers: Arena has been subjected to in the last few months. Also we’ll tell some about logic and behavior of AI that did not fit into the previous diary. Over the past few months, AI has grown strongly and moved from the phase of children's entertaining to the phase of teenage rude AI, and we just had to send it to military school to correct its behavior.

There he passed the young fighter’s course and learned how to:

• Choose the right targets. The threat factor of the enemy and the distance to it are both taken into account. For example, an SPG is much more dangerous for a tank than a grenade launcher or another tank. But, what if the SPG is on the other end of the map, and the grenade launcher is ten steps behind and reloading his weapon? Now the units know what to do in this situation. Machine gun crews know that a car moving straight towards you is a bad sign, and anti-aircraft gun crews know that no ordinary bird can cast such a big shadow.
• Use weapons on the right situation. Against infantry in a shelter or on a hill, anti-infantry grenades are preferable to small arms, a moving car is better to hit with a HE-shell, and the smoke grenade used in time has a positive effect on the survival rate of the entire squad. And of course they know a few things about the importance of a precision lobbing of a sapper’s shovel - If the shovel of death is in the hand, and the enemy has come close enough - the AI ​​knows what to do!
• Manage units. And not only how to play with the rushing tank, but also how to play guardedly with howitzers, how to support the allied infantry with fire from light cannons, to withstand the balance between sitting in the rear and breakthroughs of the front line with SPG-s. He learned some tricks about the game with situational and complex units. For example, Willys with bazookas will patrol the territory until enemy tanks go on a breakthrough, and only then will he go into a head-on.

While AI learned the tricks of military art, we:

• Have worked on interfaces. Including updated metagame interface, which we will show in the future. Have made templates for commanders, so that in the tests you can start the game in two clicks.
• Have set up and deepened shooting mechanics. At medium and long distances, precision was increased for rifles and aiming for mortars. We set up a different radius of auto attacks for cannons and vehicles armed with armor-piercing shells to reduce the amount of random and ineffective shooting and avoid the situation when the AI ​​attacked without even a chance to pierce. For example Pak-35/36 will start shooting only from the distance of guaranteed penetration of the armored car, and BS-3 from the distance with which it will be able to precisely penetrate a medium tank. Fine tuning of each gun in the game continues.
• Have conducted tests. Including the intensity and duration of the session. Have increased the session time, the number of points needed to win, reduced the limit of units and so on.
• Have fixed game mechanics. For example, we fixed the ability to dig or not dig trenches on each individual type of terrain to avoid underwater and above-asphalt trenches in the game. With the help of smoke grenades, you can now hide the tank or SPG, but only in the case that it does not create much noise from the shooting and is not spotted on the minimap.
• Have added new units and replaced the some old models. Amongst which we can find the leFH 18 from the render and Pak 43.

We're part of the same place We're part of the same time (c)

HD link Hi, friends. Today we will talk about AI in Soldiers: Arena. In one of the diaries there was some info about work on the behavior of bots. A lot of things have been done since then, and we decided to tell in detail how the bot is struggling to make the PVE fun, the battle competitive, and itself to look like a real person. You probably know that making a decent AI for strategic games is not an easy feat. The point is not in the reaction and the number of clicks unattainable for a person and not in analytical possibilities. The key to success is in creating interesting game situations. After all, this is a game and it should give pleasure: Including and especially so after a defeat. We are not talking about creating a super-brain with the possibility of self-learning and making its own name. At this stage, our plans are not so ambitious, but also not so resource-intensive. We are talking about creating a set of behavioral instructions, following which AI could call plays which are interesting and unpredictable.

A good bot should be able to:

• Create different game situations using the same set of tools. For example, a moving tank can be stopped by anti-tank mines, another tank, self-propelled guns, artillery, grenade launchers (and simpler tanks even with AT-rifles), an assault of paratroopers dropped on the turret, anti-tank hedgehogs and so on. So, the bot should not only be able to do it all, but also be able to choose the best of options.
• Use complex and situational mechanics such as digging trenches, capturing buildings, camouflaging positions, reconnaissance, retreat.
• To be a part of metagame systems and game mode, which means that its decks should be as logical and diverse as the player’s.
• Correctly act within a certain game mode and respond to player actions: eliminate breakouts, capture points of interest, cooperate with other bots (or players), and so on.
• Have flexible customization on the level of complexity and sometimes make mistakes, like a living person.
• Do not try to win by cheating and use only resources and units with the same limitations as the player. When AI sees through the fog of war, has more units and in general it's armor-piercing weapons are rather more armor-piercing than yours, it causes sadness, which eventually gives way to righteous anger. Yes, and fortune should be equally supportive for both the player and the bot. Who among us did not spin the roulette in the naive hope of hitting the target with an insane 95% hit chance?

A good bot allows to:

• Create tutorial and training missions in which the player could hone their skills and master even the most complex of game mechanics.
• Create interesting single and cooperative doctrines and make them as replayable as possible. Since, from the unpredictability of AI’s actions, it will directly depend on whether you want to replay the mission.
• To play against those who are interested in the game, but not PVP.
• Replace the player in a multiplayer session after the disconnection or when you just need a +1, and there is no will to wait more. Now the bot is doing quite well at the level of the average player, and the work is far from complete.
• Configure comfortable difficulty and combat conditions. To justify the bot existence, it does not necessarily have to win. The main thing is for the bot to fight like a lion, driven into a corner, which is crushed by unemployment, a generic curse, a mortgage, the loss of kittens in a plane crash and the affair of his lioness with a tigress.

How we tune up the bot.

4K link Hi, friends. Today, we'll talk about the underprivileged, undervalued, complex-in-use and often "single-use” units - cars and motorcycles. You often compare Soldiers: Arena with other games of the series (sometimes even with those we did not make), talking about useful and not so useful units. This is the wrong way to do it, since Soldiers: Arena is very different from GEM games: the organization of combat, the system of managing and spawning units, the constant fight for territory, and so on. Why, for example, take the Kübelwagen VW82, if clearly, an armored car would be a sharper tool in the shed, and more so any light tank of some description? A car has no armor, a weak gun, and will get pummeled from rifle caliber rounds... Sounds like a rather useless piece of equipment.
4K link

He is not skinny, but slim.

Slim with an anti-aircraft gun!

Hi, friends. With a heavy heart and torrential rain in our souls, we must say, that did not have time to prepare a diary this week. Have to postpone it. You can use the opportunity and suggest the topic in the comments. We will try to answer. Wish you all the best.

4K link Hi, friends. Stug III Ausf. G and StuH 42 Ausf. G received new models in one of the latest patches. So far, in the base gray colour, but the historically right one is on the way. In the DevDiary about SPG-s, we spoke in general terms about the role of self-propelled cannons in Soldiers: Arena. Today we will take a closer look at the example of two units from one game category which both use the same chassis, and how their tasks, priorities and gameplay may differ. Plus some words about why the battle is not determined by the caliber and thickness of the armor, but by the tactics and knowledge of the enemy.
4K link

Stug III Ausf. G

StuH 42 Ausf. G

Results.

• Stug III Ausf. G is used to fighting light and medium tanks near the front line. It's worth playing unnoticeably and carefully. Preferred commanders would be anti-tank and SPG.
• StuH 42 Ausf. G is designed to fight fortifications, infantry, and artillery. It can play more cocky, standing deep in the rear, and distracting the enemy's fire, while simultaneously clearing the way for the allied infantry. Preferred commanders would be howitzer and SPG.

link Hi, friends. In the last few months, we have been mainly working on the optimization, interface and responsiveness of Soldiers: Arena. Of course, new models are being created in parallel, maps are being finalized, units are being set up, commanders built, and balance is being corrected, but the priority now is to make the game stable and understandable. Work on the new mechanics is much more interesting than fighting for every +2 fps, intuitive interfacing and no bugs. And, most likely, it would be more interesting for you to read, but hey ... is it not this the essence of feedback, to show things as-is? Now our endeavors involve a complex, damn time-consuming, and rather boring stage, of which without it’s successful completion, you will be much harder to love Soldiers: Arena. Good performance of the game is the norm and hardly anyone decides to say thank you for it. But when the game constantly hangs or is full of bugs... Beware, , developer, cause you can’t escape the wrath of the masses, and even your dearest folks will not hesitate to stone you. The word 'optimization' weakly reflects more than 9000 problems that need to be solved so that everything works, but also does it constantly, without crashes, bugs and accompanying pain.
link

A few words about balance.

Settings.

link Hi, friends. Best Way wishes peace and tranquility to our community on these days. No matter is it Victory Day in your country or Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, the main thing is to remember about the sacrifices that our forefathers brought and be grateful for them. Wish you all the best.

link Hi, friends. We wish all the best to those who have a holiday today and even more to those who have not. Sincerely we hope that you have received your portion of sun, good weather and pleasant moments these days . Google says that May the 1st is holiday in more than 140 countries. Still you can easily find those who are working now. Reveal yourselves, brave men and women, who work in Workers's Day. P.S. Guys, we will publish the DevDiary next week. Btw if you feel the power to use google translate here is the pretty big interview with our lead game designer Dmitry Morozov for DTF.

link Hi, friends. There will be no walls of text today. So you can just start with admiring the beauty of Polesie. Last week's playtests run there already. Although the map is not yet ready 100%, the Ukrainian huts and swampy terrain added a variety to the testing process. All these rivulets, islets of greenery, this particular boat, you know ... pleases the eye. By the way, be careful with this screenshot. It causes a strange desire to get a fishing rod, to grab bloodworms and go fishing, even for those who despise the sunshine and are sure that the best place in the world is in the comfort of his own home with air conditioning. If you did not succumb to the temptation to go into the night in a raincoat, then in this diary you can find some info about the metagame interface. Earlier we wrote about the interface in Soldiers: Arena, but mostly about the part of it that the player sees inside the session. The interface of the metagame remained off-screen, partly because it just began to fill up with artwork. In our case, the meta is what happens outside the game session - commanders’ creation, the recruitment of your army, the opening of new units, etc. In the screenshot below you can see the main interface page in its working form. Of course, this is not the final state and it will change again and again, but we promised to keep you informed of the development. We must apologize to our english-speaking community cause there is no english localization in it now.
Any good interface should be adaptive to various screen resolutions, pleasant to look at, as convenient and intuitive as possible, and only after that contain the permissible number of kittens. The player should feel himself comfortable in the meta-game, because he will spend a lot of time there. Depending on how much your deck matches your style and the role you choose will determine on which team will win. In Soldiers: Arena there are no useless units, but not all of them are equally useful for any commander. It takes time to experiment and find your top units. And all this time the player should not be puzzled with where he can find the developers rich inner world for the "OK" button. So we did not overdo it in this aspect, and the interface will be familiar for most players. In some places, of course, you have to break your head in search of a balance between informativeness, functionality and beauty. For example, with the location of the unit on the icon. Which, in your opinion, is optimal?
We continue to draw icons, arts (one of which decorated the interface page a little earlier) and portraits. This is how the portrait of the German commander changed from the first iteration to the last.
link We would not like to end the diary with his stern gaze, so below is another screenshot from Polesie. Wish you all the best and let’s go back to the old ways and rampage to ask about the release date in the comments below :)
link

link Hi, friends. Each commander in Soldiers: Arena will have a wide selection of tools. The Infantry courier service will receive new motorized and aerial means of transportation to show you the meaning of haste and be able to quickly deliver grenades, mines and a couple of tears to the foe. Tank brigades will be satisfied with the wide choice of Leicht (and not as much) tractors for dismantling the enemy and demolishing his fortifications. And the chaps organising artillery barrage events, we believe, will be satisfied with the high-precision devices and crackers of varying loudness levels. And today we will talk about new units, artillery and why the fight does not come down to piercing/not piercing. You often ask us about the presence of additional factions in the game. Most often, by the way, about Japan and Great Britain. Are they the most anticipated? In any case, we must first fill in the gaps and bring the basic three to an ideal state. We are already speaking about more than two hundred units in the game, in fact closer to three hundred. Some of them just need to have the models updated, while others need to be created from scratch. As you probably know, the BS-3 and 52-K shown in this diary, are new ones in our games. By adding new units we’re not just performing the acts of filling up gaps in the unit trees and allowing heavy tanks to be turned into gruyere cheese, but we’re also asking to ourselves questions like: will it create interesting game situations? will it add something new to the gameplay? will it make the game differ for different kind of troops, different commanders, etc? It's not just about adding a new model, increasing the caliber, thickening armor. And not always about balance. The unit should give new opportunities and have the potential to create memorable moments that one would like to share, about which you would like to tell, to shoot a video, to hang a screen and frame it on the wall. When your inconspicuous and seemingly harmless mortar destroys more enemy troops than the entire tank battalion of your ally - it's remembered. When it’s possible to exchange a cheap armored car for a couple of artillery crews, an infantry detachment and a medium tank, who did not manage to turn the turret in time, - that’s the one to share. When you capture the important isthmus on the map with paratroopers, and surrounded the foe, cutting his reinforcements and causing the eventual capture of the whole territory - maybe this is the moment for the framing?
link

To hammer nails with a microscope? Sounds fun!

link Hi, friends. Sorry, but we haven't enough time this week to finish the diary. So we had to shift the date of publication. Wait for it next Thursday. Tnhx for you patience ;)

4k link Hi, friends. Did you pay attention to the cover? Did you find the link for original 4K resolution? Take it pls, have no doubts. Let Soldiers: Arena be not only in your hearts and wishlists, but also on your desktop :) And in this diary we'll talk about the role, tasks and pain that the special infantry can inflict.
link

A wise man prefers a parachute to climbing boots.

• The motorized battalion will focus on speed, maneuverability and numerical superiority. He will rush with several armored vehicles in hope that in the midst of battle, the enemy will not spot the grenade wielding soldiers rushing amongst the rest of the turmoil.
• The sapper battalion will reinforce the defenses and simply wait until the enemy comes forth and blow him up with mines.
• The assault battalion will cover enemy infantry with shelling from regimental guns and mortars so that grenade launcher infantry can come up close and personal to take the shot.
• The sabotage-reconnaissance one will prefer to remove the infantry silently using snipers. After that he will crawl silently to the tank with saboteurs and deliver a dynamite parcel.

Oh, how do these snipers suits your deck!

Hi, friends. Best Way wishes all the best to our girls from the community on this International Women's Day. Dream, achieve and never stop. And, guys, we remind you make some pleasant things for the ladies (and not just today). At least buy the flowers today, or you'll have no one to patch your wounds tomorrow.

link Hi, friends. Here is the continuation of our constant rubric DevFeedback. How is the development going and how new features are tested, how many iterations of the seven circles of hell you need to go through in search of balance and what are we doing when we are not busy with making healthbars for household utensils and water lilies on a swamp - let's read today's diary

Conceal yourself.

Balance. Settings. Stuff.

• Made a tracking firing mode for the guns with plunged fire trajectory. After the aiming crew of the mortars, regimental guns and howitzers keep their eyes on the enemy and correct the fire, if it starts moving. If the target disappears in the fog - shooting will be conducted at the place where the enemy unit was last seen.
• The rebalance of the submachine guns characteristics according to their real features was carried out. For example, the PPSh is less accurate at long distances than the MP40, and the M3 has faster recharge speed than Thompson and so on.
• Added fragmentary shells for armored vehicles with 20 mm autocannons. The life of infantry and artillery became a bit sadder, and light tanks became more popular.
• Adjusted the chassis and the armor of some more vehicles and worked on the path search for them. Now each tank is manned by a special crew member who is able to pave the way using the cosmic constellation so getting stuck on complex routes and stopping in front of the ravine have ceased to be a problem.
• Modified the AI. Now he's clever enough to keep artillery away from the front line, entrench himself, conceal his positions and arrange tank retreat, but not smart enough to send Iron Arnie back to the past.
• Experimented with the optimal average session time, maps with hilly terrains and dense buildings from previous games. Adjusted the camera, so that at the maximum approach the picture was cinematic.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. ©

Hi, friends. The community asked for more videos, and here they are. We are breaking our usual habits today just to please the brommunity. Today you can rest from thinking about how and with what gun you can pierce the foe’s tank armor, how the bushes on the tank should look like and why hellbars are needed. Sit comfortably in the armchair, wrap yourself around a mantle, pour some cucumber-celery juice into a cold glass, decorate it with an avocado slice, stare comfortably under a sweet umbrella and just watch some videos - we can afford it today.

When you love, you give everything away.

Hi, friends. Today we will talk about concealment in Soldiers: Arena. About the importance of staying in the shadows, whether you're far in the enemy's rear, or deep in your own. No armor will save someone who carries a bullseye target on his back. MoW fans know lots about this mechanic and how important it is for survival and successful sabotage. But in Soldiers: Arena, it changed and got some upgrades. We made it more understandable for beginners, expanded the scope of its use and gave the ability to mask positions to some other types of units. After all, not only saboteurs far beyond the front line need to remain unnoticed, but also artillery in the rear.
link Concealment is an important stage in the organization of the firing position, so we simply have to pay attention to this topic. Previously, we already wrote a diary about viewports , stealth artillery gameplay , and wrote a little about reconnaissance aviation. And we didn’t do it for no reason, but because it's a damn important part of the gameplay. The longer you stay out of enemy’s line of sight, and the longer he stays into yours, the greater your chances of winning. The first shot can easily become decisive, so we do our best to make fans of secret and careful game style happy.

You're not how much frags you have (с)

Is that you, Mr. Hyde?

link January streets in Kiev now look very much like a swamp from a new map Polesie. And what about the weather of yours? Is it also light January wind blowing scalp out of your head?

Picture link Hi, friends. Sorry, but we haven't enough time to finish the diary, so should ask you for one more week. Don't get mad. Look here. This is LeLg18 firing only for you - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=954HbNducbM&list=PLPcbAzP08i685J2-McUcctwJrCvLyCu3T&index=4 And Coub Version in case you want to watch it more than once - http://coub.com/view/12hk0b

Hi, friends. That quarter in which we are going to start the sales of Early Access, has already began and we are looking with hope and anticipation into this near future, but still feeling some anxiety. From the discussions in the Steam forum it is clear that there is a misunderstanding in the community about how the game in Early Access will look like, what will be in it besides multiplayer mode, and why Soldiers: Arena is not similar to our previous games. So let’s clarify some of these.

What to expect in the Early Access.

PVP vs PVE

Hi, guys. Happy New Year to all of you. Best Way team wishes you in this upcoming year more reasons for joy (we will try to provide a couple), a lot of kindness (here you need to work too) and a couple of good old wonders (we leave this for Santa Claus). See you in 2018.

Hi, friends. Last time this year we gave feedback about the job done until that time. And this is the last diary, the same for this year. And some last screenshots. The year is coming to an end, you know. But the next one is coming, in which there will be new diaries, videos, occasions to flame and the release of Early Access. 2018 promises to be important and interesting in the life of our modest game company and its friendly community. (firecrackers)
Within the battle, besides the explosion of landmines, the cries of the wounded and machine-gun bursts, the roar of aircraft engines are a new arrival to the not-so-philharmonic battle orchestra. Still relying on old models and in several basic support functions, but the struggle for air superiority has already begun! How did it all start? We decided that once again we should listen to the requests of the community and make sure that the paratroopers did not fall out of of nowhere in the sky. Now after your spawn them, there will be a plane aspiring from your edge of the map to the place where brave paratroopers will hit the silk, armed to the teeth to grant delightful gifts to the enemy. But, the reconnaissance is not slumbering and at the same time the flying plane is displayed on the map, and the chat starts grumbling: ‘Beware. The enemy aircraft is approaching’. As soon as the first birds appeared in the sky, we had to give the appropriate slingshots to the units. So we gave anti-aircraft guns the air-defense mode, when enabled, the gun get a bonus to the range of aircraft detection and perceives them as priority targets. We still had to adjust the healthbars of aircraft and set some damage dependencies. So some of the paratroopers can die if the plane is fired upon and the number of the paratroopers will depend directly on the hp of the aircraft at the time of the airdrop. The battlefield with broken planes gives one hundred points on the epic scale to the usual battlefield. In general, it worth to add them, at least for the sake of entertainment. Entertainment and airdrops, yes .... and reconnaissance! No doubt, reconnaissance aircraft would be useful to you, my friend. So we added them. So they fly, they recon. They show enemy artillery, destroy the clever attack plans, and point the caches of the Third Reich with treasures. Useful, you know.
The work on the commanders continues and we added a few new ones: the commander of a heavy assault tank regiment (available only for the USSR), specializing in artillery tanks such as BT-7a and KV-2, and one commander of each class without any obvious specialization. This latter ones will be useful to those players that do not like to limit themselves in the choice of means and believe that it is better to have a modest SPG, a quiet AT-gun and a small howitzer instead of all sorts of big and loud howitzers. Almost all units within the class are available to these commanders, except top specialization units. We also added a separate slot for supportive units to artillery commanders, where only miners, engineers, doctors, etc. can be placed. Now they do not need to compete with anyone for the right to be in the pack to save and strengthen. In addition, commanders have acquired modifiers that affect the cost of units of their specialization and when creating a roster, the profile units look even more attractive now.
And here's another things we worked on:

• Players' ratings with winrate and detailed statistics on the outcome of the battle.
• The interface for metagame (all that you will see outside of the game session), which, we hope, will soon be able to show.
• A new screen for perks of the unit was prepared so we can start our work in that field and soon you can customize your soldiers.
• Changed and adjusted the accrual of points on the map to increase the chance of comeback in the second half of the game and victory by kills. Now it is more profitable to organize a deep breakthrough to the rear, and not to butt over a small but long piece along the front line, and the game of defense now makes more sense.
• Added the ability to install heavy machine guns in rifle cells of trenches, so you can proudly demonstrate ‘no pasarán’.
• Made the button "Do not stick out of the hatch without a command" at the request of the community, which prohibits curious tankmen to get hold of an anti-aircraft machine gun and die one by one from malicious snipers and even angry explosions.
• We taught bots and AI some useful tricks, among which is the correct choice of targets. When firing at a trench or house, the unit will aim at the nearest part of it to the enemy unit, and when firing with small arms they aim at cannon crew, but not the cannon itself. Now they are aware that it is much more effective.
• As always, new vehicle models were added (T-40 with large-caliber machine gun DShK, Marder 3, BT-7, etc.), animations, special effects and textures.

Hi, friends. We did not have time to prepare a diary by Thursday, so we had to shift the date of publication. Wait for it on Monday the 25th.

render link Hi, friends. It's strange that haven’t talked about mobile artillery for so long. After all, it’s the only thing that unites the realms of tankmen and artillerymen. They both recognize SPG as their own, and even the infantry has to admit that there is something in mobile artillery.

Pimp my cannon

An artilleryman who doesn't want to be a self-propelled artilleryman is a bad artilleryman.

Hi, friends. You asked us to tell about the development tree, about the difference between common and premium units, and how many grinds and level-ups you need to make every day to make your fighters strong, smart and with ruddy cheeks. All of these questions already have answers, because most of the mechanics are implemented. At the same time, the system is still being improved, so your wishes and comments will be welcome. The whole concept of the player's development is difficult to explain in one diary, so today we will talk mainly about the development tree, types and groups of units, commanders - the metagame in general.

Commanders and experience

Development tree and unit types

Early access and threatening letters

Here is the link in case you can't see the image. Hi, friends. It's also such cloudy and rainy in our hearts, cause we did not have time to prepare a diary and need to postpone its publication to next Thursday. What would you like to know from it? Which of the veils of secrecy have to be opened? Dilute your resentment with wishes. Wish you all the best of luck!

Hi, friends. Today is a jubilee, fiftieth diary. This much all over again - and we can start the Early Access :) When speaking seriously, we look with pleasant surprise at the work done for this time, we think with joy about the perspectives and with thrill about the opportunity to show the game to you. And, of course, we hope that, like us, players will rejoice at victories, feel harshly because of defeats and work hardly on creating the ideal setup for your very best commander. And today, as you already guessed from the title and BA-20 render, we'll talk about the place of armored vehicles in Soldiers: Arena and the commander of a motorized infantry battalion, which may be the best choice for those who feel an apparent lack of mobility when playing infantry.

Armored car isn’t subtank.

There is a task - there is an instrument.

Hi, friends. The last time we posted [url = http: //steamcommunity.com/games/421010/announcements/detail/1455080932981238358]feedback diary[/ url] almost two months ago. During these two months, we have changed a lot in game balance, defeated lots of bugs and introduced several worth saying features that aren’t big enough to write a full diary about. Now Soldiers: Arena is already in the phase when the main functionality is almost ready and some time has been freed up for non-critical, but still important, changes which we want to implement before the start of of Early Access. We did the context menu of actions for the selected unit and began to configure it. By holding the LMB on a target or surface, you will bring up a menu that shows possible actions for this target / surface. We continue to supplement statistics and information with the outcome of the battle. Now you can see how much damage in the session caused each type of your units, how many opponents he killed, how much experience he got etc. In near future we want to add the win rate for each unit. Added a menu of quick chat phrases, without reference to the point on the map and markers. Pressing Y, you can wish 'Good luck' before the fight, scream 'Help' into the emptiness of you teammate’s hearts, give the ‘Attack’ order which your allies most likely will ignore :) We also changed the loading screen and started creating hints for it. It will show you a screenshot and information about the specifics of use and technical characteristics of units, tactical decisions, features of the game mode, etc. This is how the working version of the new loading screen looks like.
Changed the logic of behavior and movement of the new infantry squads. Now they are moving in the given direction until someone starts to shoot them. Having encountered resistance, they will lie down or crawl into the hideout if there any in close proximity. A few seconds after the cessation of the shelling, the squad will stand up and continue moving. Independent infantry squads began to take into account the forces of the ally and the enemy on the territory closest to them. Having received the order to attack the fortified positions without adequate support, this squad will lay down and will hold the position. In order for them to begin the offensive, you can either eliminate the threat, or bring more forces to the attack zone, or send them to kill themselves in an irretreivably stupid (or brave) attack by using the ‘Charge’ order. Also we have added ‘Entrench’ order, after receiving which, the detachment will begin to dig trenches and dig into the ground. We also:

• Created a new commander with an emphasis on anti-aircraft guns, which is especially good now in countering light tanks and armored vehicles.
• Gave the ability to land at any point of the map some paratroopers, including in enemy territory.
• Had been working the damage of shells, the chances of one shot kill using the armor-piercing projectiles, the principles of high-explosive and fragmentation action. Now the damage from the high-explosive action on the infantry is considered separately. Damage from high caliber shell also ignores the protection from shelters, trenches, buildings in the epicenter and close range of the explosion.
• Added dependence on the position of the fighter when calculating the shell damage. The clever and attentive infantryman had time to lie down and survived the shelling. And his inattentive standing comrade - no.
• Removed annoying braking for vehicles overriding the small stumps and fences when using direct control.
• Set up the rotation angles and path search for some units so they did not have to deploy the field headquarters and gather a military council to solve the problem of 'bypassing the stone'.
• Added new models, including Panzerjäger I from the cover and a five-tower infantry annihilator T35.

Hi, friends. Today, we'll talk about working process on a new map that has already been mentioned here. Its working name is Polesie, so you can easily guess which region is taken as a basis for it. We wanted to create another village map, which could be used in the future for cooperative missions about the first months of combat operations in Ukraine during WW2. But stopping at a particular village would mean - putting yourself in a tight frame. First of all, this is a map for a team multiplayer game, which means that it should give the same opportunities for both sides. In life, this happens rarely.
An additional argument in favour of the village map was that some of the resources and models were already completed, so we would not have to make it from scratch. At this stage, this argument can not be ignored, because there are still a decent number of models that are waiting for a replacement in the game. Now we sometimes use old maps like Depo or Bazerville during the tests to slightly change the process and simplify the bugs search, but we can’t fully use them in Soldiers: Arena. Lots of work need to be done before that. Perhaps even more than with creating new ones. The map should not only be atmospheric and beautiful, but still meet the standards that dictate the new gameplay. We have different commanders in the game, so there must be zones on the map for the use of each unit: open areas for tank battles, areas with dense buildings for infantry fighting, bottlenecks for mining and using engineers, etc. Fighting for territory requires the presence of places of increased interest, where you can get a serious advantage if you gain a foothold. In addition, the height map should be easily readable so as not to cause irritation when player’s shell hits an inconspicuous elevation. And everything should be equally balanced for both sides of the conflict. Once we decided the region, we began to discuss its plan. This is how the rough draft version of the map looks. It will be corrected and refined in the process of work, that’s for sure.
A large village in the center of the map, as the subject of the main dispute. Surrounded by fields and wide forest belts, where tanks and artillery can move freely. On the right side you can see the mill and miller's house (with the possibility of strengthening it), which are located on a raised platform. This is the main point of interest on this flank. Infantry can climb to the hill without problems, but the vehicles can only do so through narrow entrances, so that the player who is fortified on this island gets a good advantage in the defense. At the top and bottom of the map you can see abandoned farmsteads (forts on the map), which, like the mill, are on a small hill and have a clearly marked entrance. These locations are particularly interesting for artillery, since the entrances to them can easily be blocked by anti-tank hedgehogs or mined. However, this is not a secret for your enemy so he can shoot you with howitzers, send saboteurs, or simply surround. And there is not much place for maneuver, so artillery will start to unmask faster and faster because of the noise mechanics. The left part of the map is a swamped forest, in which tanks and infantry move slower, and the battle will go over the parts of solid ground. Only on them the player can dig trenches, install mines and barrages, so you always have to choose: advance slowly with the risk of getting into an ambush, or with the usual speed and explode on the minefield. On the left flank of the map we want to realize interesting opportunities for infantry gameplay. Once we have decided the region and the initial layout of the map, it is time to look for references to convey the atmosphere of the area and show it believable. After all, buildings and entourage are seriously different from region to region. Someone even had to sacrifice a piece of vacation to visit the outdoor Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine, look at the huts with his own eyes and collect more information. Here are a couple of examples of implementing these references in the game.



So that’s all for now. Maybe you have favorite maps from past games that you would like to see in Soldiers: Arena? Also, feel free to write your wishes about zoning of Polesie, while work on it is still under way. And as usual we wish you the best!

Have a great weekend, guys!

Hi, friends. We noticed that much more often we write about changes in artillery and tank gameplay, but much less often about infantry. Which is quite strange, because in battle it’s the infantry who suffers most but still does most acts of bravery. So in our games, it has always kept an honorable place, and Soldiers: Arena is no exception.

Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at.

A ‘sucking chest wound’ is nature's way of telling you to slow down.

The enemy diversion you have been ignoring will be the main attack.

Hello, friends. When you compare the state of the game mechanics in their first mention in the Diaries with how they currently are, you realize how much time and effort has been invested in the game and how far Soldiers: Arena has advanced. Just remember the trenches. We could write a medium-sized epos about how they were created and how many times they have changed. But we are not tired and we are not going to stop. And today we will tell you about a new type of infantry squad, on which we recently started to work. It’s Difficult and promising. Just as we love it.

What are these squads?

What do I need them for?

How will they help me dominate?

Hi, friends. This is one of those diaries in which we report on the work done over the last couple of months. What kind of balance changes were made, what was added newly and how we are working on the game, which is worth waiting for. Read below about all these and some more.

We think of you. On these serene summer nights ...

’Some of this and that and everything else’.

• Set up machine guns, increasing their rate of fire to real indicators, but slightly reducing the damage and suppressing effect to keep their effectiveness at the same level and the infantry did not feel helpless.
• Changed the rules of armor piercing, so that shells with a caliber much larger than the thickness of the armor have more chances to pierce and less to ricochet.
• Set up the shell normalization, so now armor piercing projectile change it’s trajectory for 4.5 degrees.
• Did nonlinear aiming. At close ranges, cannon aiming is at the maximum value after the first shot. At longer ranges, the number of shots to aim and the minimum radius reduction both grow.
• We set up the noise mechanics, which we talked about earlier for snipers, and the aiming with time for riflemen, so that at long distances they have a clear advantage against the submachine gunners.
• We created a test polygon in which you can shoot from everything, and a marker that allows you to see the armor rate under the cursor. That helped a lot with finding bugs in models.
• Added new commanders with their unique style gameplay: light mechanized brigade and reconnaissance-sabotage battalion.
• Entered into the game new units, such as T-28 from the cover image, lend-lease Valentine to the USSR tree, elite snipers for each of the factions with self-loading rifles and camouflage, and others.

So good that I'm not afraid of death.

Hello friends. Today's diary continues the topic of the past one, so we shall tell you about some of the changes in the artillery gameplay. If you ever had to throw apples over a fence in the hope of hitting the neighbor's dog - you already know something about plunging fire. This diary deepens your knowledge.

Type of shells in Soldiers: Arena

Firing positions

Plunging fire

Hi, friends. Today’s diary is about how we see the artillery gameplay and why we are sure that each type of forces should have its own unique gameplay. And do not forget, our dear reader, that this gameplay should be not just another different one, but also interesting in it’s own. If you leave the art in its previous form and bring it to a separate class, then you should admit that it will be a rather boring class. In addition, the big problem of artillery was its "one-off" style of usage. Spawn-shoot-backoff. And when you have more units to play besides artillery, this state of affairs is tolerable. But what to do when it's a whole class and most of the troops in your battalion are just like that? Leave everything as is and put up with the fact that the game for the third part of the units in Soldiers: Arena boils down to a wait-and-see sitting in the bushes? Damn it, no!

… ad astra doloribus itur © Prudentius

Artillerymen would run away from each other if they knew the true essence of each other © Immanuel Kant

What does this give me as a player?

• Artillery guns are a bit more accurate and significantly quicker in comparison with similar tank ones.
• Artillery has become mobile and now each cannon can be called attached to a car if the appropriate perk was earned.
• If you have taken a position, then make it impregnable! AT-hedgehogs, barbed wire, mines and trenches. A good artilleryman always has something to do.
• The right choice of targets. Howitzers and mortars are good for destroying the enemy's manpower and its fortifications, but a wide spread of plunging fire makes the destruction of mobile units a tough task. Using such weapons, you need to knock the ground out from under the enemy's feet, and not try to knock the helmet off his head.
• Battery fire. If you are playing with artillery, then play it right! Selecting, for example, AT-artillery you must do what it is really supposed to do - destroy tanks. So why don’t combine the three guns into a battery? And instead of making three shots from one gun, do one from three and go into silence to enjoy the shredded ruins and look for a new victim.

Hi, friends. In connection with the lots of works planned, did not have time to prepare a diary for this week :( So we apologize for that. Feel free to use the opportunity and put pressure on us to made us write the next diary about what you want :) But no gameplay videos. All the best for you!

Time is an illusion. Release time doubly so.

Played, understood nothing, but I will play again

...it has the words Don’t Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover

• We are a small team working without a publisher.
• It takes a lot of time and effort to create a game in which the user will spend a lot of time with pleasure and enthusiasm, instead of simply plunging into his pillow and pray to Apollo to have his eyes mercifully shed with divine arrows after the first game to never see such a sickness ever again.
• We burn ourselves on games with early access and believe that at this stage the game should give joy from something more than finding a bug.

Hello, Friend. What have we done for you lately? Hey-hey, everything is written right here, in the diary. Read, please. We worked on the performance of Soldiers: Arena. We switched to 64-bit client, for example. Steam says that as of May 2017, about 7% of users are playing with 32-bit OS, but their number is constantly falling. Friends, are there any of us who need the 32-bit version of the client? We optimized the transfer of information between units in combat, which saves resources and is especially felt in mass battles. Changed the server rules when one of the players lags. Previously, the server, guided by the musketeer’s principle, forced all to wait for one, or slowed the game, allowing the laggers to catch up the rest. In the first case, we "enjoyed" the pause in the culmination moment, in the second we watched another Wachowski film (same spectacular and slow mo). Now the server does not stop the game because of one lagger, because "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. The game for the others goes on as usual, like a caravan of tanks, aspiring to a cloudless and happy future.
The game for the lagging guy is recovering as much as possible, trying to catch up what’s lost and find what’s gone. Rushing at a gallop and moving to the trot only when catch up the server. Lagger at this time alone in his lagging sad world, like a caravan of desperate tanks, lost among the dull country roads.

Playing God, do not overdo all settings

Want to see beauty, Burning my life in the game, Beauty I need. Now!

GEM2 is dead, long live GEM2.

GEM2 is alive!

• Carefully support partial and complete localization. At the moment almost everything except right-to-left languages.
• To inform the player about his success in the session, ratings, available commanders and their experience.
• To work with memory according to C ++ 11 standards. The selection, release, counting of the number of references to objects now passes better using the new stuff.
• Improved the system of quantizing units. And what has we say earlier? Terms in da house. This makes it possible to set a more realistic rate of fire for machine guns, cannons etc. And AI began to think faster.
• To recognize a highly detailed map of heights in the right places. Specially made this one to make possible to shoot an apple from the infantryman's head sitting in the trench using your Pak40.
• To understand Rim shading, Ambient bounced, HDR, LUT, gamma-correction and stuff.
• Gathered the tools to create games against bots, both single and multiplayer.
• Learned to be tolerant to different platforms. At the last test, our coders finally managed to play in the general session using the Linux and no longer feel hurt.

Hello friends. In today's diary, we will talk about the tasks and advantages of regimental cannons in Soldiers: Arena. There will be some text (yeah, sometimes we can write short diary) and three renders: the legendary M-30 howitzer and two regimental guns. So do not rush to wear your "reading glasses". Let your eyes rest. Admire the curves and angles of the cannons our modellers have been working on.

Regimental cannons in reality and in the game.

• the destruction of the enemy's manpower - in open field and in trenches;
• suppression of enemy firearms;
• fighting with mechanized enemy corps;
• destruction of wire barriers

• Is the enemy trying to drag you into an infantry shootout? Don’t play his game spamming more infantry, it's better to call the gun instead.
• Was your attack stopped because of the enemy's stronghold and your comrades are in no hurry to help you? Take your soldiers to the rear and summon a "battery" of regimental cannons that will clear your way. And after that, occupy the territory with infantry.
• Are the enemy's mortars covering your positions? Make the artillerymen suffer!

A few facts about the cannons shown.

Hi, friends. Our today's DevDiary is about (you'll be surprised) how development of Soldiers: Arena is going. We want to give you some feedback, like in the pre-New Year's diary. Tell you a little about the work days of the Best Way, what problems we face constantly, what part of the development process is the most difficult, and how unexpectedly funny bugs could be.

What did we do all this time? Do you mean, except rest in Monte Carlo?

Balance is the king!

Hi, friends. We have already talked earlier about commanders in Soldiers: Arena. About what they are and what their advantages on the battlefield are. Today we will tell you more specifics about the very concept of the commanders, but do not forget, that concept means possible changes.

Commanders? I am the only commander here!

Is it necessary? It was ok for me before!

Hello friends. In today's diary, we will tell you a little about the section of user interface that helps you to control your units: hotbar and quick access bar. But remember, my friend, that everything shown on the screenshots is a working concept. To bring the interface to it’s fullest potential, we need all features to be implemented and this is possible only closer to the release. So, looking at the screenshots, remember what Confucius said at this point "If you hate an alpha-build, then you’re defeated by alpha-build”.

Why change? The old one was native and cozy!

Easy to learn, comfy to dominate.

Hello friends. Today we will talk about medium tanks. Their role in Soldiers: Arena, their strengths, and review some usual ways of getting your ideas to the enemy with the example of the PzKpfw III’s family.

It’s good to be strong, but double as good to be fast.

Your first medium tank

Did you know that …

Hi, friends. We continue to share with you the latest development results. Now we are working on a system of visibility zones (further viewports) in Soldiers:Arena. We have repeatedly said that between balance and realism, we will rather choose the former. But this is only in a situation where the choice is inevitable. In most cases, you can get both. And our today's diary about a similar case. Any unit in Soldiers:Arena has its own set of viewports and we now writing and changing for them some general and particular rules. We add viewports to the commander's machine guns and usual ones, to all observation slots. We added dependence on the unit type. For example, the SPG with closed superstructure sees much less compared to an open-top one.

A couple of text examples.

And a couple of visual examples.

Best wishes from Best Way! We love you! Honestly, honestly :)

Hello friends. Thank you for your activity and a lot of variants of names for hunters. We decided not to use certain division names and so on, to avoid embarrassment in case when these guys would fight where they could not fight. We have summed the results and the winners are: Germany - Jaegers. Skyrimjoe suggested via Steam 16 FEB 10:02pm. Allies - Pathfinders Da ork boy suggested via Steam 16 FEB 10:06pm USSR - Дозорные ( not sure now about the proper translation ) Suggested Павел Курганов via VK 16 FEB в 10:26pm Winners knock to friends ( http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198026692491 ) and write me your name and surname for credits. Many thanks to others and cheer up - this isn't the last contest!

Hi, friends! We were very pleased about your brisk reaction to the competition. There are more active players in our community than we had hoped. The only thing we want to remind - do not forget in creative fury, that the essence of the competition is to find a suitable name for hunters which correlates with real formations of World War 2. Maybe we want to add dragoons on raptors or heavy infantry with gatling lasers, but sometimes you need to say “stop”. We must remain in the setting. To win you need to choose the name, not imagine it :) So Advancing forces witnesses, Sharp-eyed boys with binoculars or Sherwood natives don’t fit. There is still time until the end of February and the we are not limiting you in number or variants for the competition. Although it makes no sense to repeat other’s, since the win will go to the first who suggest a suitable name.
And now about changes in Soldiers: Arena. Last week, we have increased the number of artillerymen in the crews. Now cannon crew consists of four people, six for the howitzers (in the future this number can vary). There are several reasons for this change. Firstly it is more realistic, and it becomes more pleasant to play with artillery. Often the crew were killed by a single shell and the cannon stand just like an orphan in the middle of the military landscape. It is very annoying when you playing artillery, so, to make it more survivable, and as a result more useful in combat, we added more artillerymen to the crews.
Especially successful shell can kill even six men, but there are a few chances for such thing, and in most cases there is someone to replace fallen comrades. And while leveling you can make your artillerymen even more dangerous for the advancing infantry.
At the start gunners armed only with pistols, but after upgrades you will be able to equip them with rifles or machine guns.
We also added the ability to suppress the infantry in cover to make possible to counter the fans of strengthening each square meter. So when you see the enemy which overgrown with hedgehogs, trenches and blocked all the entrances to the buildings - pin him to the ground with your heavy fire from all guns.
Suppressed enemy will fall to the ground and won’t be able to shoot back with full power. So he will quietly sniffle with anger in his trench, until you (with a reduced, but still risk) will be able to get close, to send a grenade-telegram or begin storming the building. Currently suppression works only for the units in fortifications. We doubt whether it makes sense to implement the ability to suppress advancing infantry. It seems that it is quite logical evolution for this mechanics, and btw it’s more pleasant to be suppressed in the mud in the open air. But it can cause an unacceptable level of rage for the player, because of his unit is immobilized and can not run on a tank in full growth. What do you think about this? Do you want to have an opportunity to suppress all anywhere and everywhere or only in fortifications, to counter the enemy which strengthen his positions?

Hello, friends. Today we start a little contest. Where are you, creative ones? History experts, answer our call! We introduced a new unit into the game with a "hunters" working title. But the trouble is that "hunters" do not sound good enough. To win the contest you need to pick up an authentic name for hunters. We need one for each faction (Allies, USSR, Germany). In fact hunters are riflemen, armed with self-loading rifles, but they have better field of vision, can cross the front line secretly. In defense, used to see the and kill enemy infantry, in case of a breakthrough can quickly eliminate the enemy. In offense they similar to the saboteurs (but weaker). With proper skill they can neutralize the sniper or cannon crew. We expect three winners (in the case if we could find appropriate names). Each winner will earn the honoured place in the credits ("Thanks to" part) for his contribution to the common cause, and one premium unit at his choise after the release of the game. The results will be summarized at the end of February. And to encourage your intellectual work - here are some screenshots from the alpha test.

I'm convinced that the infantry is the group in the army which gives more and gets less than anybody else.

When in doubt empty the magazine

The easy way is always mined

Hello, friends. You know, the main advantage of working in game development is an opportunity to work while playing. Now when you are on the edge, trying to punish those guy from the game design department or testers which constantly reel up your artillery on your poor tank tracks ( yes, you know, what I mean), screaming with anger and helplessness or beating yourself on the chest in a moment of triumph… And when someone asks you, what the hell is going on and why so much noise is generated from your room, you’d usually continue playing quietly... But Oh, no, this time you proudly and emphatically say - I’m testing!

Those who are about to test salute you! (с) Оbiriron

• Lifetime barricade .
• There will be no problems with Capulets if we’d have one!
• Germans take too much time making perfect lines of things.

I’ll take the category “Tanks over 30t”

Try to joke about Freud NOW!

We have the Red Flower for this tiger too!

Action? Give me two!

• The 56-calibre long 8.8 cm KwK 36 was one of the most successful models of tank guns of its time. In British wartime firing trials, five successive hits were scored on a 410 by 460 mm (16 by 18 in) target at a range of 1,100 metres (3,600 ft).
• In terms of money "Tiger-I” tank cost was more than 800,000 Reichsmarks ( a monthly salary of about 7,000 workers ). Labor intensity of the production of one tank was near 300 000 working hours, which is equivalent to a week's work of 6000 workers. These figures were known by the tank crew because they were carefully placed in the manual.
• The manual for Pz.VI was a bit unusual. To interest the tank team to read the it ( in fact no one likes to read boring tutorials, huh? ), Guderian gave the green light to the creation of Tigerfibel. This manual contains in addition to the boring diagrams funny diagrams too, interleaved by erotic illustrations and jokes. It is good soulful guide, as we think! You can see the full Tigerfibel here . Have a nice day and happy reading!

Hi, friends. We are people too, so the desire to draw a line under the ending year is close to us. Therefore today's blog is a trip into the past year plus a couple of words about our plans for the future. Anyone who has followed the development from the beginning, knows that our steam game page was created in December, 2015. So a year of work on Soldiers: Arena coincides with the calendar year up to a couple of weeks. A lot has happened this year. In December, 2015 Soldiers: Arena was a remake of the Men of War multiplayer with some "extensions". We created new animations, tinted the sky, fixed cameras and worked on special effects. In other words, smartened the game. Plus we did some changes in the engine in order to set up the game for the needs of the Steam platform. We didn’t want the repeat of a history with GameSpy, but there was not the slightest sense in making of our own “BWPlay” or “Arena. net”. Time passed and the number of "extensions" was growing. It became clear that we can give players a new gaming experience. Make multiplayer richer, and strengthen the role-playing component and teamplay. Add more hurricane action and we’ll have ... well, not the remake of the Men of War, that’s for sure. So we decided to do a full multiplayer game, which we wanted and we all deserved. It was in June, 2016. Oh, how many beautiful sleepless nights happened ever since! Let us recall how it has gone:

• We have created a system of character development and, in fact, the characters to develop. Now we are testing and fixing them. And as soon as we will be confident, that the only the cosmetic changes had left - we’ll tell you in detail how to level up your commander.
• Okay, we have commanders now. Next we created the "hangar", which is mentioned in the diary about the tanksman. There you can choose the perks and additional equipment for your troops, form a "deck" of the units for the next fight and so on.
• Further, it was necessary to choose the monetization model. We selected free-to-play. This is a risky step and unusual concept for our games, but we are sure that the most appropriate. There were a lot of issues with implementation, but most of them have already closed and we started the tests. All you have already noticed the test "Gold" on the shop page :)
• We have created a new gamemode and multiplayer maps that underline the gameplay to which we are going. And the new co-op mode ( we’ll tell about it later ) with the transcendent level of epicness and a number of maps for it are ready! Now we write and design training missions, both informative and interesting. So young beardless rookies that come to our community will stay with us forever.
• Move from global to local. We added lots of new features. Now you can entrench and strengthen positions ( it works only with infantry now, but we plan to introduce the possibility to place and build other fortifications, such as the breastworks, artillery foxholes, hedgehogs, barbed wire, etc.). Now we are testing the new engineer troops. And you know what? They are awesome! Medics rushed into the gameplay and have forever changed the infantry tactics. And much more.
• We made a number of additional edits. Connected backend ( statistics server ) for the game, for keeping statistics of games, commanders and so on. Connected the ability to record and view replays, without leaving the game. Backlight for units, visualization of commands, icons, revision of the visibility and detection units in the fog of war and much more.
• Changing some of the sounds. The sounds of small arms are now even more "juicy and metal." We continue to change and create animations: movement, shooting, reloading weapons, melee fight, death, mine laying and digging trenches, transit animations and many many others.
• Work is humming on new models. We have almost two hundred of units for three game factions, which need to be remodelled. And don’t forget about small and heavy weapons, projectiles, entourage, flora, buildings and other. Plus we are introducing to the game about thirty fully new units. Part of them are modifications of the existing, but most of them a new in the series: cannons, tanks, self-propelled guns and some infantry.
• And another huge piece of work on the balance. This is the invisible but terribly time-consuming part of the workflow. Edits-tests-edits and so on.
• At the end of the year we started the public (although closed for now) alpha test, and we needed to prepare for it urgently adding some new functionalities and fixing it for testing through the Steam.

Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images

Hello, friends! The next DevDiary will be released on 29, December. Good luck!

A wise physician, skill’d our wounds to heal, is more than armies to the public weal. - Homer

• Over time, the injured unit will die and could be resurrected only by the most skilled clerics ... uh ... wait ... Actually. The dead don’t need medics.
• Medics can only be called on your territory. If your soldiers died in the enemy field you firstly need to capture it.
• You can save only your own units. Not the allied or enemy soldiers. We haven’t got enough medications even for our own guys!
• Everyone is mortal! Even the most valuable units are not worth saving, if that means throwing medics into the meat grinder. You’ll lose both.
• Before the unit can return to the front to avenge his wounds, some time has to pass. Our medics are great, but not miracle workers.

• You can redeploy units from one flank to the other, bypassing the hearths of especially fierce fightings, without worrying that your squad will rest in a minefield or meet the enemy squad (unless you have the enemy squad in the rear ... but you know, that’s a different story).
• Do you have the holes the size of a fist in your tank armour? Full-back and you could return after repairing, jolly good.
• Did you shoot all the missiles, threw all grenades or installed all the mines? Retreat and replenish ammo.
• And the most cheerful part: you can retreat not only with your units, but also with captured ones ;) Trophy tanks? Gimme some more!

Hi, friends! New DevDiary straight from our DevHearts is already here! As we promised, closed alpha testing has begun before the end of the quarter. And it is both joyful and anxious since we’ll get the first feedback. We recruited about ten alpha-testers (at this stage we need very few) and in due course we’ll add a couple more. Now it is more important to get a general impression of the basic gameplay, rather than finding all bugs. Our games are quite complex, and we are proud of it :) But the tough side of hardcore games is that if you didn’t listen the lecture course by your friend about how to dominate in the game session - well , it is likely that you will enter the game and just die. Then again ... and again and again. As it should be, you are not in Disneyland, son. But the defeat should be understandable. In a case with MoW games ... you continue to suffer until someone says to you: Buddy, direct control was invented for a reason. And sometimes even longer. Previously, it was singleplayer part of the game, where you could pass through the gentle tutorial, then you could struggle in the campaign and only after go to the multiplayer session and feel your helplessness. There will be no singleplayer in Soldiers: Arena. Tutorial is therefore present and it is fun and interesting, but how to lure the player into it? And then , does anyone beleive that the classic run-of-the-mill player who comes into the multiplayer game, expecting fierce PVP, sees the "Tutorial" button and speaks to himself: "Oh hell! There is a training part here! I’d rather play into it"?. We don’t know such people. Tutorial is needed the most for the guy who already realized that this game is what he wants to play, and wants to understand it! So now we're focusing on how to make the game understandable to the beginner, without affecting its hardcore-part. That is why in a closed alpha there are only a few people from the community. Now we need to understand if the core gameplay of the game is clear for the newcomer. After all, it’s better to change something in the gameplay now if needed. And in order to make this chilly evening (for us, at least, it is so) more cozier… Here is the brand new render of the 5 cm leGrW 36 straight from the loving hands of our modellers and some facts about it. 1. The Rheinmetall-Borsig AG was the company that manufactured this technically advanced, but too tricky piece of equipment. It manufactured tractors among other things. Uh ... wait ... no, it was tanks ... But since under the terms of the Versailles Treaty there were some limitations as to producing tanks in Germany, they called them ( for the purpose of conspiracy ) «Kleintraktor» ( ger. "Small tractor"), Grosstraktor (ger. "Big tractor") etc. Although Kleintraktor sounds like a new book about the adventures of Karlsson-on-the-Roof, it was still the light tank VK31. 2. The mine had such a gentle and vulnerable fuze that it was prohibited to fire the mortar in heavy rain - the mine could explode upon loading. 3. 5 cm leGrW 36 was a compact, lightweight mortar (only 14 kg and 46.5 cm in height) with a good firing rate (experienced team could fire from 15 to 25 shots per minute). But it was considered too complex and intricate by the infantry, mainly because of its sigh system which was hard to master. Partly due to the fact that under the conditions of trench warfare, it did not fulfill its goals satisfactory. Likewise, its production was rather expensive, and it was halted in 1943.

I do not have to tell you who won the war. You know, the artillery did. – Gen George S. Patton

Hello friends! Our 25th diary continues to talk about the fortification theme, that we started here . It’s about buildings in Soldiers: Arena, something changed and now new mechanics have appeared for their usage. Buildings in the early games of the series wasn’t often perceived as a completely tactical object and had very limited functionality. In the Front Line gamemode, where the place of decisive battles can take place over any part of the map - captured building become the center of gameplay. Previously, you could only order your units to go into the building and link them manually to the windows. Considerable skill with questionable utility was required for such actions, because those clicks often could be spent on something more important. In the Soldiers: Arena we want to see the building as a completely defensive object, easily controlled and functional. First of all, we have added a visualization of fire zones, so player can always see the firing zones and the blind ones. Now you will see the fire sector by clicking on the building .
Now you can understand, without too much of a fuss, what flanks should be urgently strengthened, so that the enemy can’t take the building without paying a hard price.
In the future, we want to make the management of the buildings and fighters inside them more automatic. The defending infantry will choose the position for shooting by themselves, depending on the type of threat. For example, if tanks appear in the field of view, soldiers with bazookas or AT-guns will move to this side of the building. While shooters will stand at the convenient positions against the advancing infantry. The building will be "manageable" and you would be able to order it (or rather units inside) to attack the enemy of your choice, and soldiers who can most effectively confront this enemy will change their positions accordingly. We added the opportunity to strengthen the buildings. So the enemy can not break into the building by means of a cluttered entrance and boarded-up windows. Such structure becomes a real fort, and its defenders obtain much more (compared with unfortified ones) defensive bonus. The strengthening will take some time, but the more units that are inside, the faster this process will take. Some auxiliary units (e.g. engineers) will make it faster, but it would be better to replace them for the further defense of the building, as their fighting characteristics aren’t high enough to kill normal infantry.
But this does not mean that the gaming session will be limited to digging trenches and strengthening buildings. In Soldiers: Arena you will always have something to counter that annoying lover of fortifying everything. In the early games it was easier to destroy the building than fight for it. And it was fun, no doubt! But now you will be able to send your soldiers to storm the building by double-clicking on it (or by pressing the appropriate menu button). To succeed you will need the numerical superiority, because the defenders will have a good bonus to defense. Not all soldiers are equally good for the storming of buildings (the same situation with the defense). For example the units armed with automatic weapons (and anti-personnel grenades greatly assists) in the storming of the building will be much better than soldiers with rifles. AT-guns and bazookas in this battle will be almost useless, especially against the special assault troops.
If the defense or storming of the building didn’t go according to the plan, you can always give a command to retreat. But remember that soldiers can’t retreat instantly. In the case of fortified and barricaded building assault, this function will not be available. You’ll need to demolish the wall and organize the place for a breakthrough. When you’ve done with the wall, you can shoot the defenders from the outside, cause, you know, non-existent wall gives no bonuses.
You can throw a few grenades in the window, (it’s especially important to find blind spots in the enemy defenses in such tactics), burn down the enemy with flamethrowers or demolish the house with dynamite. You can also spoil the enemy’s Tea Party by rushing into the building on board your tank. Or, maybe, order an airstrike :)

“God fights on the side with the best artillery” (c) Napoleon Bonaparte

Ah, you can easily retrench me!.. I’m happy to retrench myself! (с) :)

Hello everyone! Today we will talk about the "Front Line" gamemode and how it differs fundamentally from the old ones. We wrote about the new map for it here . "We want our game to be hardcore and action-based at the same time. Ok, then our basic gamemode should reflect all of these"- it is the first thing we thought, before picking up the tools (keyboard and mouse, basically, but calling it “The tools” sound more like a term to be reckoned with).
First we abandoned the very idea of predetermined control points (as it was previously in "Battle Zones") since they significantly restrict the tactics you can select. We decided that all the map must be a battlefield, not just individual areas of interest. In the new iteration we decided to create a real front line dividing the warring parties. So now every successful attack drives the enemy back, and the front line will reflect your progress by how much it has moved.
For those, who like to carry out sabotage operations behind enemy lines, or simply don’t like to going anywhere without the scouting - we have special. types of infantry, which do not affect the front line. Such units cross it without notice. Each object on the map, which you think you can use to your advantage SHOULD be used to harm the enemy. If you are sure that that a ruined barn deep behind enemy lines will be the great place to capture and strengthen your position, creating a constant crossfire for the enemy - just do it (but remember, being surrounded and split away from your forces means will not be able to replenish ammunition and medical supplies, or evacuate injured troops).
If you think that a quick rush on a less fortified flank will give more advantages than disadvantages from the potential loss of units, - go for it!
Did you focus on support infantry like miners, engineers and spotters while creating the preset for your infantry commander (assigned set of units to use in the battle)? Oh, we got it! You have an artilleryman-friend and wanna be he who stops a horde of enemies, as the Greeks at Thermopylae - ok, sounds like a great plan! Especially if your team successfully attacked the other flank, and the naive enemy continues to spit the manpower in it’s divergent fronts, trying in to beat you in vain. The most important thing is to create an opportunity to fight multiple times on the same area without getting tired of it. And now, every fight is truly unique, because the team will always be different in composition and set of units. Now you would be able to prove the enemy over and over again that there is no ground for him! By using more and more new ways to achieve the same goal - to show everyone that the entire battlefield is yours, and the front line should be close to the enemy spawn.
Even now "Front Line" is much more diverse and dynamic than the earlier gamemodes of the series, and in fact some of the innovations are just in test phase (and several new gamemodes based on the "Front line". Don’t you think think that the new regime will be the only one, don’t you? ). But do not worry, as soon as they are ready - we’ll remove the curtain :)

Hello everyone. Friends, today we would like to give you some explanations about the course that we selected in the development of Soldiers: Arena, because we believe, that we are doing it for you, not just for ourselves :) As we wrote earlier , the game becomes wider, longer and, in general, different one. We mistakenly thought, that you read our thoughts and understood everything up to the last mind-symbol :) We, Best Way, want to apologize for didn’t dot the i’s. When we started to work on Soldiers: Arena we really wanted this project to be similar to the Faces of War multiplayer, but modified, with the features that we eager to implement long ago, but couldn’t. This course was meant, first and foremost, a great similarity of game settings. But we changed this course, because realized that many of you are waiting for not just a remake, but a serious quality changes in the series. The "dominance" of the remakes of the recent times and your reaction to them assures us that such a course makes sense :) Therefore, we have set ourselves a few more challenging goals for the Soldiers: Arena:

• to make a competitive multiplayer project, with the developmentent tree for players
• to improve the gameplay and team work inside the game session, and deeper interaction of the army types.
• each branch (infantry, artillery, and tanks) must perform on the battlefield its own, different from other types of troops, role and have different playing style. And their role in our game corresponds (as far as possible in the strategic game) to role, that they perform on a real battlefield. By this we mean not the shooting ranges or the presence/absence of a health bar, but HOW they will act in the game.
• to improve the dynamics of the game, its entertainment and perspicuity level, make an ordinary player of average skills to able effectively deal with all the basic gaming opportunities. At the same time, giving the seasoned player a chance to show off his skills using complex or non-obvious tactics.

Hello everyone. Today we have a video for you - https://youtu.be/1HPb2RriPf4 ... And some explanation with it. In this clip we wanted to show an armor weakening principle ( "fatigue" ) (or - ), which is well familiar to fans of the series. When hitting the armor, projectile penetrates it or makes it (not the whole sheet, but the specific affected area) more vulnerable to the following hits, including for smaller caliber shells. This works, of course, only for projectiles that can damage or weaken this armor. We have also increased the survival rate of tanks. Now they are not destroyed with the first penetration. Damage mechanics remained the same: injuries, deaths of the crew, components breakdown, engine ignition, and explosion of ammunition are still possible. The last one, still leads to the destruction of the unit, but, in general, it became more difficult to one-shot the tank. We are confident that you could notice the bars above the tanks that appeared in this video. We hope you also noticed that these bars are not the health bars in their conventional sense, rather the visualization of damage inflicted to the vehicle, feedback to the player. Not any damage and not every hit can affect the "health" bar of the tank and the game is still skill-based. We hope that you noticed all this earlier than your palm caused significant damage to your forehead, spoiling your mood :) We know how important and thorny this question is, but … Soldiers: Arena is a multiplayer, dynamic game and this fact implies some changes in the gameplay. This slight shift away from the realism toward greater playability is deliberate. Now you’ll have an opportunity to react, after catching the first projectile, and fall back to the rear, or change your tactics. This is especially useful, when playing with the heavy tanks, when the loss of each unit is a tragedy. One-shot is a definitive thing and can’t be frequent, because Soldiers: Arena is not only about ambushes and patience. It's also about rush, infantry and tank raids, tactics, reaction, strengthening your positions, mutual assistance and much much more.

Hi everyone. Today we decided to give you a break from the tanks, theories and give you some workflow screenshots to please the eye.
As we have mentioned here - http://steamcommunity.com/games/421010/announcements/detail/990036078191948660 and have shown here - http://steamcommunity.com/games/421010/announcements/detail/990035444561522793 , we are planning to add a new mode. And now we are creating a new map, which would underline the new gameplay. Our designers use accepted international practices when developing new levels. Initially, we build the location plan and some areas in draft form. Then we make the skeleton with the common features, based on the main game metrics, Create blank models, maintaining the proportions and using carefully selected references. Next, we move a sketch to the game and test to be sure that everything worked as it should.
Creating the map for this mode, we have to take into account the characteristics of the planned gameplay. The map design must underline and deepen gameplay. Each hill is important, every square meter can be the One, each building can decide the outcome of the fight, so we have to carefully analyze the location of the buildings, hills and other objects on the map. We strive for balance, which will give you the same chance to win regardless of the side on which you start the fight. At the same time area should look natural.
In addition to attacks on the enemy positions, players will need to be strengthened the captured ones, complicating the enemy counterattack by all means. The map must provide the player with so much different tactics for holding the important points as possible, without obscuring the view, and without cluttering up the game field at the same time.
And, among other things, it should be nice and memorable)

What do I know about Panzerkampfwagens 38 (t)? Don't they come from Czechoslovakia? Historical reference. Pz.Kpfw.38 (t) (also known as LT (Light Tank) vz. (Model) 38), was the most famous and widely used Czechoslovakian tank manufactured by ČKD (Ceskoslovensko-Kolben-Danek) and Škoda Works. The very same Škoda, that notoriously produces cars, made the tank’s main weapon - the 37 mm Skoda A7 gun. This light tank was involved in many conflicts and was exported in various modifications to countries such as Sweden, Iran, Peru, Switzerland, Lithuania and Germany. Unfortunately, for Czechoslovakia, this tank didn’t serve it’s own country. At the time of June 1, 1941, there were 779 Pz.Kpfw.38 (t) in the Wehrmacht’s tank roster. Along with the 198 captured LT-35 (produced by the same Škoda) they formed a 17% of the total roster. This number is particularly impressive because the German tanks of that time conceded to Pz.Kpfw.38 (t). About 1300 Pz.Kpfw.38 (t) were manufactured for Germany and its allies in total. By the way Pz.Kpfw.38 (t) was Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s favourite tank as he clearly noted in his memories, especially nimble in the desert. Additional tank fame was acquired thanks to its simple and solid chassis, which later was widely used to create self-propelled guns, armored vehicles, recovery vehicles, etc. The gun was replaced with a flamethrower and even was a candidate project for the production of an amphibious tank based on Pz.Kpfw.38 (t), but was canceled. The "tank destroyers" like "Hetzer" were produced in about 2500-2800 units from 1944 and until the end of the war. For comparison, the most common German AT-SPG StuG III Ausf. G had 8,400 units manufactured. Pz.Kpfw.38 (t) in Soldiers: Arena Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t) is a light tank in the branch of German development tree. Thanks to balanced characteristics, it can be a real workhorse for the tank commanders of the Wehrmacht. It’s 37mm gun ensures a high rate of fire along with good efficiency. 50mm of frontal armor is a safe bet to become an unpleasant surprise for the naive enemy who expects to turn the Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t) into burning ashes from afar. Of course, this tank is only effective when faced with opponents of his weight category and moderately brisk armored vehicles. But this tank has a negligible chance to deal with the harder tracked monsters. Because of its low price and mobility, Pz.Kpfw 38 (t) reaches it’s utility peak in the mid-game. Thanks to a good dynamic characteristics and with a certain commander’s skill, this machine can be put out of the fight and throw to a more favorable positions. Amaze enemy infantry assault squads trying to intrude the front line! Two machine guns will come in handy;) Due to the refined combat system, and possibility to enhance units (which will be introduced later) once common or rarely-used military units will sparkle with new colors and will appear more often in a fight. So you could try new tactics, gain new experience and the game will become even more dynamic. In their moment of glory, these units will show the best sides. Who knows, maybe Pz.Kpfw.38 (t) will be your favorite.

Greetings, tank ace. I know you've been waiting for a long time. You’ve been waiting for news, new challenges, new opportunities to rest back your shoulders and rush into battle. You didn’t sit with your arms crossed waiting for “Only tanks” mode, oh no! You were training in other games, learning new tactics sharpening your reflexes. You couldn’t afford low spirits, because you know your time to shine in the dance of fire, metal and pain will inevitably come. When the fight starts you will be where you are most needed, claiming your "god of war" title, injecting chaos and panic into the ranks of the enemy infantry, putting things in order and imposing respect just by your mear presence within the troops. You have no doubt on whose side victory is. I am your tank commander, your right fist on the battlefield. I am the one who challenges the foe that dares get in the way. We have many ways to make them suffer. You can focus on the light tank branch and break through the enemy flanks, destroying enemy infantry detachments, howitzers and cannons, and retreating enemies at the rear. Yes, with such tactics not everyone has a two way ticket... Yes, there is little we can do against the heavy and medium enemy tanks. We are vulnerable to anti-tank weapons, but we’ll field many more vehicles. We can make the emphasis on the heavy tanks and force the enemy to panic from the line of sight with our dreadnoughts. We’ll need to take care of them - it's a fact, but neither building nor fortifications will stand in our way. We will hit them hard, accurately, from afar. Heavy tanks are often armed with two or three machine guns hence are strong against infantry, but vulnerable without adequate cover because of their weak view ranges. We need the help of the infantry - one more fact, but we’ll not be alone on the battlefield! If your mind is cold and the conviction that victory is achieved with patience is your cup of tea, - it makes sense to choose the anti-tank SPG as your main instrument. We will not be so mobile and aggressive in battle, but after all someone has to show this high-handed enemy that our rears are strong. No pasarán! AT-SPG specialization makes us a renowned expert in the destruction of medium and heavy enemy tanks at long range. We will be good at the aft lines shaping the landscape and managing crater services where recently enemy forces were spotted. The Achilles heel of such tactic are the flank attacks. Often without the turret, and sometimes even without a roof over the fighting compartment your SPGs will be vulnerable against fast and maneuverable enemies. All of this is just the basic patterns, my friend. You will have the opportunity to create your own style and write a picture of destruction as you please. By combining and managing the infantry, artillery or both. But remember - there is no entirely winning tactic, such as no the hopelessly stupid enemy. Before leaving, it is strongly recommended that you read the note from the technician. "The component-wise damage system and the armor-weakening system, as well as before, work on the battlefield. As usual, the armor and gun components can be repaired under combat conditions. A serious threat for our vehicles are the enemy anti-tank weapons capable of destroying the crew partially or fully, depending on the power of the projectile.While at-gun shots can injure or kill someone from the crew, a large projectile will precisely kill one crew member and with a high probability wound a few of them as well. Each crew member has its own function, thus your tank will loose view range if the commander is killed, loss of the radio operator or gunner causes inability to fire with a frontal machine gun and so on. Each member of the crew is qualified to manage the basic parts of your vehicle, so when mission-critical for movement and firing soldiers are killed their place are taken by other members of the crew, thus preventing a total loss of the fighting capacity of the tank, but your vehicle is most effective with the full crew." Make your choice. I'm waiting in the hangar.

Hi everyone. Today we have the third and final part of the small arms renders straight from Soldiers: Arena. And again a little quiz for cinema experts, but something more complicated than the last one. You need (if you want) to guess a celebrity on the screenshot. We, of course, give you hints, but not a fact that they will help.

Gewehr 43 rifle and ...

• Martin Scorsese.
• Ray Charles ... or some other singer, who looks like him.
• Julio Iglesias, because of 36% match.

Karabiner 98k rifle and the guy holding it is …

• Hugh Grant! That’s for sure!
• Sergei Bodrov Jr.
• I know him! This is the dancer from the Fatboy Slim video, never knew his name.

МР-40 submachine gun

• It’s not a question at all! It’s Grigory Leps, no doubts!
• Jean Reno… or maybe no… but the Frenchman definitely.
• Penelope Cruz ... just hunched somehow ...

Thanks to all, who participated in the survey. Here are the results. All comments were read, numbered, weighed and found substantial enough) Please don’t be nervous ahead of time, cause easier doesn’t mean worse. Simpler in managing does not mean that the game will be easier. Unless you can dominate only a neophyte who does not know how to throw a grenade?) Operations with the inventory and special items (jerry can, repair kits, etc.); - 18% Direct control feature and it’s pluses and minuses; - 10% Complexity of the interface with lots of buttons and indicators; - 10,7% Controlling the troops in general and execution of orders by them (AI, running with the shooting, and without it, throwing grenades, etc.) - 29,65% Complex rules of units military cooperation (shelters, ricochets, "fatigue" of the armor) - 13.6% My own answer in the comments. - 17%

Hi. As you know, one of the problems of the series (SoldiersMoWFoW etc) is it's "unfriendly" behavior to the the beginner and great complexity in understanding laws and rules of the game. In Soldiers: Arena we want to change this situation, but to do this we need help of our community. Today we ask you to answer only one question. The main thing is to try to ignore what you didn't like or hate and remember what was the most difficult to understand. Best Way beforehand thanks you warmly and wishes all the best. Here's the link - https://surveymonkey.com/r/B5SF3VT

Hello everyone. Today, we will continue to show you renders of small arms, but we don’ want to overload you with information at the end of a hot summer week, so - more photos, few letters. The unofficial theme of today's issue is “Guns and cinema”. Try to guess the film looking on screenshots and choosing from the offered variants.

Shotgun Winchester Model 1912

• "From dawn to dusk"
• “The Passion of the Christ”
• In snobbish style “It's actually painted aquafortis from the Renaissance time, not a screenshot. Shame on you! "

Garand M1 Rifle

• "Where is my lawn, dude?"
• "Fifty Shades of Gray"
• "Gran Torino"

PPSh-41

• "Two Soldiers"
• "Ram Aur Shyam"
• "You made a mess again. This is a frame from the Kanye West’s video "Diamonds from Sierra Leone"

Hello everybody. Today, after a rather long break, we have a new edition of the diary, in which we show the first renders of small arms from Soldiers: Arena, backing them with a couple of interesting historical facts.
SVT-40 (or "Svetka," as it was called by soldiers) was adopted in 1940 (April, 13). On the famous painting "Defence of Sevastopol" by Deineka both sides are armed with SVT. The artist could not have deal with the guns, but in this case he was right, because feeling the lack of small arms, particularly automatic, the German army is often used captured SVT, as a "limited standard". In German Army SVT-40 received designation Selbstladegewehr 259 (r), and sniper SVT - SI Gcw ZO60(r)
MR-35. Theodore Begrmann was born in 1850 in Bavaria. He started his business with the production of bicycles and later the early cars, but in 1893, Bergmann Industriewerke, as an side project, began to produce semi-automatic weapons. Weapons had very limited success, but still sold much better than cars, so Bergmann eventually sold part of its factory to one little-known young man named Karl Benz.
Some facts about the Thompson submachine gun.

• Before becoming a Thompson submachine gun, he was "The Annihilator"
• Thompson's other nicknames were: “Tommy Gun”, “Trench Broom”, “Trench Sweeper”, “Chicago Piano”, “Chicago Style”,” Chicago Organ Grinder” or simply “The Chopper”.
• The first batch of Thompson for the First World War was made only to the Armistice Day.
• Tommy Gun was available for purchase to all ... all who have enough money, cause it cost about $ 200 (while the price of a brand new Ford was near $ 400). We shall try not to disappear for a long time, so that in the next couple of weeks, you can expect the “sequel” of this Diary. Victories and restraint for everyone!
  
  

Hello. It’s Thursday again, but without the DevDiaries today. We have strongly decided to change the format and move away from the practice of weekly diaries. We don’t leave you with no information, of course, but we will publish them less often. In the early stages of development we had a critical need of feedback from the players, so we decided to give information about the game and collect your requests at least once per week. We got a great feedback from your, and charted a course. Now we are working with the sleeves rolled up, because this game pretend to be more ambitious than we had planned at the beginning, and it logically implies the following:

• Now we need to focus on the playtests of the new features. This involves much work and a lack of confidence in each stage. This is the main reason for the change of the diaries shedule - we can not afford to give you conflicting information from stage to stage.
• It takes time to implement and test all of the planned features and capabilities, so Early Access release postponed to autumn 2016. Do not be afraid, it does not mean that the summer holidays for developers began so early. During the playtests we have groped a new and very promising theme, so we can safely say that a new and very exciting gaming experience waiting for you. But we need tests, tests and tests again!

Hello everyone. The renders of USSR infantry models arrived today, which you have been waiting for, and some even began to doubt the existence of the Soviet Union, as a game faction. Fortunately, fan of theories didn’t reach the point that the Third Reich will fight the invaders from other planets, but we still want to dispel doubts - do not be afraid, we have no desire to retreat far away from the historicity, and yet staying close to the format of three basic fractions, about which we wrote earlier. Question to experts: Which of the the following types of troops was not presented in the Men of War game? Tankman
Shooter
Stormtrooper
Paratrooper
Marine

Hello everyone! It is gratifying to know that our subscribers have caught our pre-April Fool's joke. But we feel that some clarifications needed anyway. Yes, we really thinking about f2p model, but in yesterday's blog, we wanted to show the worst of all possible variants of its use. There are a lot of pessimists among our subscribers, who believe that everything that is done is always done in even worse way than they imagine. We wanted to test are we meet their expectations? :) To make people believe in the joke it should carry a charge of truth, is not it? Something from what was written yesterday we will actually put in the game, if we dwell on f2p-model, but of course not in such a terribly exaggerated and close to stupidity form. Of course, we will not create a marked imbalance in the game giving the opportunity to buy for real money the maximum level or units directly in combat. This would have undermined our efforts and killed the gameplay. And we don’t want to do this, so as you, judging by yesterday's comments. It’s April, 1 today, so we offer you a few more "features", which will be in the game. Or maybe not :)

• Support for Steam controller and adaptationof the game interface for it. No more complicated and cumbersome panels. You will be able to manage your units quickly and easily, using only a half of your fingers!
• Direct control is now even more direct! We have long thought over the main feature of the series - direct control, and have decided not to stop on achieved. Now the player can take control of one soldier and switch to first-person view, bind its equipment on the hotkeys and purchase weapons specifically for this fighter at any moment! In first-person mode reinforcements points can now be spent not only for buying new units, but for the revival of old ones. Animators are already working hard on animations for hands holding, aiming and reloading different types of weapons, and modelers making more detailed types of weapons especially for this purpose. We were inspired by Battlefield, Heroes and Generals etc. When we tested the new camera ( we have wrote about it earlier), we tested the game in the first person mode, and we all were delighted. Thereis an idea to throw out all the tactical component fro, the game and give our players a whole new experience. We are confident that by doing so we can increase the online and go beyond the audience of strategies.
• Soldiers: Arena has always been planned as a skills-oriented action strategy, but we want to deepen further the action-component, so now during the battle you can periodically see key combinations on the screen pressing properly and sufficiently quick on which you can add reinforcements points, run Slow Mo mode, or even get the charge of "KillEmAll" skill!
• Open World and non-linear plot. Yes, we add a global map into the game on which you will be able to travel completing quests from your command or neutral fractions. The outcome of the war now depends on each of your decision!
• We often read that the gameplay of a series has not changed since 2004, so we want to add some innovations. Now, during the battle you will be able to take the quests from your command.You can now enhance the experience rate or open the desired units by completing them. We spent some money and hired as a screenwriter one famous writer, whose first name we are not yet ready to name, but his last name is Martin and he will be ready to start in the near future, immediately after the close end of his own project. So we promise you a lot of interesting and bloody quests in the shortest possible time. Destroy, come and talk, collect, break down…

Hello! Thursday again and the 13th issue of the Diary is ready. Today we have important and interesting news, because it will be about the principles of monetization in Soldiers: Arena. As mentioned earlier, we've been looking in the direction of f2p-model and now finally understand that the future belongs to it. In the current reality, the player is not ready and, let's be honest, simply one lsoses the habit of paying for online game. There is a mass of examples proving this point, but examples confirming the success of pay to play model have been constantly been reduced in recent years. Best Way is often blamed for the fact that we often go our special way, and this time we decided to comply with the requests of the players and to keep up with the nowadays times. Free to Play - so the game will be completely free. For everyone. You can always invite a friend into the game and not have to worry that he had already spent pocket money for another indie project. More players - more fun! Boosters - here we have already mentioned, that we plan to implement the global system of progress for player and we are going to make boosters that will give you the opportunity to gain experience faster for a certain time. x2, x5, x10 or maybe the maximum level at once, if you can afford such a package? Do you remember the joke, "while you sleeping, your enemy is leveling"? Not a problem for you any more. Premium pack - the opportunity to buy a premium package of Soldiers: Arena with the activation of of all possible and currently available DLCs for the duration of the package. Besides the premium pack (granting the ”admiral epaulettes") will give you the opportunity to gain experience twice as fast for the entire duration of your subscription, and this is month, quarter or whole year. Plus some special features that we will describe later. Online Shop - certainly for ease of playing and committing transactions, we will create in-game store, access to which you will have at any moment of the game. Many of us lived through the moment when the superior enemy forces clamped your troops near the spawn and you have absolutely no hope for a tide turn. We will put an end to this! Now you can always go to the store and buy any tank or unit, even from the ones outside the reach of your lvl lock. Right now, in this specific battle, get the opportunity to have your revenge, and drive the enemy back! Customization - we made it possible to customize vehicles and infantry. You will be able to buy a new camouflage for your troops or replace some tanks or infantry schemes, or create new paint for your army from scratch. We very much hope that this particular option will be to the liking of fans of historicity in the games, because now they can repaint by themselves any units in the necessary and historically correct colors! Fans of bizarre color combinations also will be satisfied. At the moment we have not yet decided on the cost of boosters, subscriptions and other things, but will do this as soon as possible. Stay tuned because there are still a lot of innovations!

Hello everyone. This week, we have a very few text, because we have something better. We asked our filmmaker to record video, which would show the German infantry and the new reloading animations for firearms in the most spectacular way, so today we have a "video diary". Just watch! https://youtu.be/VzfXA0xYZxE

Hello friends. Today we are launching a series of Soldiers: Arena diaries, devoted to the changes in the interface. For a start, we will talk about its general concept. It's no secret that in the “Men of War” series of games, a lot of players complained about the cumbersome interface, that looked like a fighter jet cockpit. He covered a large part of the game space, and frightened off beginners just at the first sight. The new interface concept makes it possible to solve all these problems by adding more convenience to the players in the management and hiding the elements, which unnecessary at the moment. So, when creating this concept, we proceeded from the following five principles: The interface must be understandable to the user on a subconscious level. Therefore it is necessary to get rid of or change all non obvious elements. It is necessary to minimize the interface, while not limiting the convenience of its use. The user should be able to customize the interface for himself to manage the game as comfortable as possible for him. With all of this interface must be informative. Player must have an opportunity to assess the situation on the battlefield and take the necessary decisions with a cursory glance. To do this, he must understand the conditions, limitations and capabilities of his units (all this had to be kept in mind before). Player needs to respond quickly to changing situations, so he needs a quick access to all currently commands. So interface in Soldiers: Arena are looking like this now
(it is worth noting that the graphics part of the interface is not final). In future issues we will explain in detail about all the innovations of the interface due to the chosen concept. It is obvious that at first everything new and unusual is viewed with suspicion. But we are confident that, ultimately, you will like the result.

Hello everybody. Meet Saucy Network with their preview video of Soldiers: Arena. The attention of bloggers is very pleasant for us, so we share a video with you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-zax5246Is

Question: The game slows even in the presentation video on the developer machine. What is waiting for regular users? Will it be a slideshow? Answer: Firstly, there is no presentation video. From the very beginning of Soldiers: Arena development, we have headed for the most open and honest communication with our fans. We see no sense to follow the general trend and to record super-cool staging videos made in frame by frame mode on the machine designed specifically for rendering to force users to drip saliva on the keyboard with anticipation ... and then demand their money back with disappointment. It was a piece of the real test of combat, recorded with Fraps on such configuration: Intel C200 6 / GeForce GTX 550, and upload on Youtube. With all the repsective consequences. If you’re interested, the average Fps during the battle on this machine at 1920x1200 is 32-36. Yes, this is not the ultimate dream, but you can play quite comfortably. Question: What's with Early Access? Will it be in the first quarter of 2016 or not? Answer: Arena will not be released in the first quarter of 2016. And here is why... Reason One: as we have said, the game’s interface has completely changed, and this applies to all of its aspects - starting with the type of minimap icons and units, ending with conceptually new solutions, such as context-based action menu. Functionally, the interface is ready, and we will release a series of diaries about this soon, now goes its refinement in terms of usability. We want to release the game, where users can easily and comfortably manage all aspects, and it takes some time. Reason Two: the gradual user introduction into the game. We want to implement the global progress system for player. Under this system, a new player will start with a small set of units and capabilities, the list of which will be gradually expanded with the growth of the player's skills. Of course, matches auto-fit will be operated in such a way that the seasoned players with a maximum set of opportunities will fight with the same experienced players. Simplistically, it looks like this: each level of the game corresponds to one or another commander with his own list of units available for order. Moreover, we do not want to limit the players with some certain prepared sets, and considering the possibility of forming armies by the players, but this idea is at the stage of early testing now, and talking about some specific decisions on this issue is premature. If all goes as we invisige it, you will find plenty of different opponents and tactics. Though we believe, that these innovations can solve a whole bunch of problems with matchmaking and the situation, when newcomers do not have any chance in the game with seasoned veterans and results in a wild ‘seal club’, the ideas themselves can be perceived controversially, so we want to test them at the stage of early access. As a result, the list of works necessary for the releasing the Early Access has grown significantly, and there is no physical time to do everything by March or April.

Well, friends, it is Thursday today, and therefore the new issue of DevDiary is here. This time we feel the need to answer your questions, which we got a lot, after publishing the last video . So, here we go! Question: What is this line on the ground? Why does it look so strange? Answer: At the moment, when this video was filmed, our game designers tested one of the new modes, the purpose of which is area control. The team which captures and holds the greatest portion of the map’s territory receives victory points. The line looks strange, because it follows a purely technical purpose. Aesthetically correct visuals with respect to this line is not critical for testing of new modes of gameplay (what we are doing). Therefore, the task of changing the line has a low priority, at this point in time, but, of course, will be complete by the time of game’s release. Question: What if I want to make a diversion in the rear of the enemy? Will the line shift? Answer: Behavior of the front line is configured so that a single unit has almost no effect on it. At the same time, if in the enemy's rear there is a whole infantry squad, and there are no enemy units at the forefront to keep the front line - the line would shift. In addition, the game provides you with a specialized infantry for sabotage operations (such as Scouts), which can in no way affect the line configuration. Question: How can you sell the same game for so many years? I have the impression that nothing new has arised after watching the video - still the same "Men of War". Answer: Perhaps it is, because we have not sought to show something new in this video, and specially cut off all possible interfaces. And yeah, nothing new, except the gaming mode, behavior of cameras, special effects, infantry with its animations, status icons above units, environment models (buildings, flora, entourage), and so on. And if there is nothing new you can see - it means we're going the right way: all the global changes, that we have made with great care, do not break familiar to our players original gameplay and visuals. Although if "nothing new" is the common position of the community, we can go the other way. But then we’ll have a bunch of angry forum posts like "return, as it was!". But we’ll not return. On the basis of this response. Question: So much time has passed, and the gameplay has not changed. What are you doing there all this time? Answer: Yes, the basic gameplay remains almost unchanged. And is it bad? It would be possible to alter the game in the image and likeness of CoH, it was possible to make a bias towards the WoT, it was possible to ... But what is the meaning of these alterations? Saving the base gameplay - this is our deliberate step. Generally, Soldiers: Arena - is a response to numerous requests for releasing the “Men of War” Steam-remake. However, we are implementing a lot of features to the game, that we wanted to make for a long time. They mainly relate to improving the quality of the gameplay, clarity of what is happening and lowering the entry learning curve for newcomers. Continued tomorrow night ...

Hello everyone. Today we have something tasty. It’s not much to talk, so we just simply show you the first short gameplay video of Soldiers: Arena. https://youtu.be/UZzmGPpwpZU In it, as you can see, intentionally not shown a new interface, because it is a separate topic for discussion with the massive text, links, quotes and so on. And it (ie, text) will be fairly soon, but for now we do not want to mix everything together. Plus, we are afraid of Masons, whose one dream is, to steal our new UI). P. S. Administration requests to take into account also the fact that it is pre-alpha and the game is in the stage of developing and improvement. Optimization of the game and increasing of fps are in full swing in all possible ways.

Hello! And once again in touch with you are the developers of Men of War/Soldiers:Heroes of WWII with our the new project - Soldiers: Arena. At this time, we will talk about the of games’s optimization. It is no secret that the low FPS turns intense dynamic battles into turn-based boring slideshows, that gets your eyes tired fast. Taking into account the characteristics of the game’s type of synchronization, where each individual event occurs for all players at the same time (as we wrote in our previous diaries), the question of optimization comes important. But the optimization itself is quite extensive work and consists of many factors. Let's look at some of them separately.

Code optimization

Configuring the the appearance of objects, map levels, lods

Automatic adjustment of maps and modes for the number of players

Game camera improvements

Hello everyone. The topic of today's diary is new special effects in Soldiers: Arena. We touched this theme in the first trailer of the Arena , where we showed in comparison graphics of Men of War and Soldiers: Arena. So, details now. Despite the fact that the toolkit for creating effects inside the engine has not changed and has not been improved, since the previous games of series, we made every effort to create special effects that will be worthy looking, and will enrich the Soldiers Project: Arena picture. Absolutely all effects were remade from large, as explosions, shots and projectiles hits to small, such as cigarette smoke or falling leaves. New, more detailed textures were also drawn for these effects, designed to add more realism and effectiveness to all that explodes, burns, emits smoke and crumbling. Moreover, thanks to new textures we could reduce the number of particles for effects compared to the previous games, so we can assume, that the optimization has been done for this part of the work. Special effects of explosions, shots, flares and exploding projectiles firstly had to be hyperbolized, in an attempt to make the general picture of the game, as much as possible juicy and impressive But not everyone in our team liked such an exaggerated form and size of new effects, and after numerous gaming tests and discussions, it was decided to slightly revise the concept, and as a result to remake and reduce most of the special effects. Nevertheless, even after these changes, picture of the game looks rather impressive, dynamic and bright.

Hello. We're back with the sixth issue of DevDiary. Last week, we wrote quite a lot of text, so today we are going to talk less and show more. So briefly and to the the point. Creating models, we finally switched to the new unit complementation system, based on the constructor principle, which we conceived long time ago. It was necessary to take into account the specificity of the old skeleton, which we used in GEM2. After considering the various embodiments we stopped at the "block" equipment system (it is fully disclosed in Outfront project on a new engine). In this approach, each kit is located at a predetermined position of the character, which allows their use together with other possible objects, such as body armor for ex. And we want to tell you about the making of nonstandard unit in "ghillie suit" camouflage. "Ghillie" is a set of plane meshes, imposed on each other in a certain sequence. We had to figure out how these meshes will behave in motion, and in animations. The task was complicated by the fact that it was necessary to put the meshes so as to keep the volume of the camouflage. Moreover, with a simple flat stacking textures are blurred and meshes are mixed into a single form, which did not allow expressively highlight details. As a result, an option has been selected, in which common parts were flat, but complemented by a separate polygons, which emphasized texture. Then was the segmentation of planes into parts with attaching them to certain parts, followed by skinning with the blend in places of bends. And we invite you to enjoy the results of our efforts, relax in your chair and forget about the cares of the world. Because renders of German infantry already here.

Hello, guys! There is a contest in social networks made by us. We hope it's fun. Hurry up, cause you can win Battle of Empires 1914-1918! Winners are separate in VK and Facebook. https://vk.com/soldiers_arena?w=wall-107170712_1477 https://www.facebook.com/soldiersarena/posts/1691557534457397

Question 4: WIll such nations as Italy or Japan available for players? How about a battle between the forces of the Allies and Japan in Southeast Asia, or the Battle of Kasserine Pass with Italians? Answer: Partial this question affects the single player campaigns one, answer to which has been given above. So it would be logical to reformulate it as: "Will Italian and Japanese units in multiplayer mode be available?". Well, as has been stated previously, we plan to complete the three factions till the game's release: the Allies (US + UK), the USSR and Germany. Make more with the proper level of quality, we just physically can’t to do good, and don’t want to do it in other way. At the same time, if the project will prove to be successful and reach its goals (for example, to achieve simultaneous online above 5,000), this will be the first sign that our efforts are not in vain and we should develop the game further. So it all depends, first of all, on you. Question 5: Will the matchmaking system is implemented in such a way that when you create a session , the host will be created on the player’s local machine or will be dedicated servers for this purpose? Answer: In our opinion, stable dedicated server is required to create multiplayer games in a project such as Soldiers: Arena. Now we are trying to identify the most successful solution for creating games and support of the running game session. Question 6: Are you pay more attention to the realism of what is happening, or focusing on how to make the game easier and more balanced, when creating the game? For example, howitzers and artillery - people are complaining that they are very easy to manage and they are prohibitively effective. May be its necessary to make the process of their use is somewhat more complicated, as it was in reality? Answer: Our games are known for a high degree of realism despite the fact that we have never tried to make a "simulation of the fighting." First of all - this is a game. The game should be fun. For some players enjoy lies in the possibility to put into practice their ideas about the Second World War, for some it’s a "Kabooom!!!" type of fun. It must be said, that there are many times more the second ones. So it's a question of compromises. Soldiers: Arena - is not the game about the angles of inclination and thickness of armor of soldier’s helmet. At the same time, it is not about the uber-soldiers, destroying dozens of tanks with healthbars. We want to keep a middle ground between the realism of what is happening, and ease of management. It is obvious that in this direction is still a lot to be done, and we are ready for it. Question 7: Will the game support the 64-bit systems? Will full 3D-space (navigation mesh) be added to the engine, to give an opportunity to go under bridges, buildings, etc. Answer: Not in the near future. This question affects the depth of the engine’s architecture and currently we do not have neither the time nor the opportunity to revise it. More precisely, we have already done this, and Gem 3 engine was born . But he is now in the process of developing and Soldiers: Arena project has no relation to it, as opposed to Outfront project. Question 8: Do I understand correctly that Soldiers: Arena - is a multiplayer part of the game, and the Gates Of Hell - it’s single component? Answer: Projects "Gates of Hell" and the recent "Battle of Empires" are not the Best Way’s games. They are made by third party developers on our engine (GEM2). Here we act as publishers and consultants in the gameplay and technology, which use these talented teams. So the short answer is "no." These are completely different projects developed by completely different teams.

In the fifth issue of the diary, we, as promised, answer your questions from here . On some of them we have already answered in the most discussion on some we would like answer more fully. Question 1: Do you plan the implementation of possibility to reconnect to the gaming session in the case of departure from it, and Is it technically possible? Answer: The problem of recconection is closely linked with the method of synchronization of the game, which is used in the Gem 2. Currently we used full synchronization of all game events for all participants. This method has some advantages over the others: the game cheats through the use of third-party software on the client machines are excluded (the game will detect a mismatch of resources at the first event of synchronization and exclude the player from the session). Moreover, the game runs identically at each time point on all machines , i.e. each event occurs at the same time for each player. In case of disconnect, will need to provide for the disconnected player the same state of the gaming scene, as other players have, to restore the session. To put it bluntly, the game will need to collect a huge patch about all states of all units, all of the objects in the scene and send it to the disconnected player. This process is very time-consuming and huge by the amount of information transmitted. For the players it will be as follows: when one of the players disconnected - the game will forcibly put to a pause, stopping all new events - all sit and wait until the disconnected player fix the internet, until his client will gather all the data for synchronization and apply them. In the end, even if we spend a significant amount of time refactoring base code, the result will be quite controversial. We think that would be much more useful to focus our efforts on solving a priority and unambiguous problems. Nevertheless, we are aware of this problem and have some thoughts about its solution. Question 2: The troops will continue to appear in the spawn point, or will come from behind the edge of the map? Answer: Yes, the units still appear at a certain point which planned by the game designer. Primarily, this is done for the convenience of the users themselves. We are confident that fans of realism can easily make a couple of mods, where spawn of the units will occur out of the map. Question 3: Should we wait for single campaigns and cooperative scenarios, where the death of a key character leads to the failure of the mission? Answer: Soldiers: Arena - is, first and foremost, the multiplayer project and single campaigns are not currently planned. At the same time, we understand that players like to use their skills to solve all sorts of tactical tasks set by game designers. Therefore, we have developed several cooperative missions, in which the group of players will need to solve such problems for successful completion. And this is not the limit - in the future direction of the PvE game will be developed alongside with the development of PvP modes. Will they be small and tactical or big and massive? Most likely, both. We think, all of our players can find such gameplay, which is closest to them. And it is very important link between the players and the people, who make the game. Why else we are releasing DevDiaries. ;)

Hello friends. It's Thursday, which means the new issue of developer diaries here and now. This time our topics are: new animations and improved infantry movement. So, first about animations. We have replaced the key groups of animations responsible for units movement, hideouts occupation and fighting. In addition, we added a series of idle animations, so infantry behaved naturally now in a state of relative calm. Filming of these animations was made using motion capture technology and implemented with the participation of professional actors. Everybody was satisfied with the result, so it become possible to move on to the implementation phase. But implementation of new animations, created in a completely different principle into the engine, is impossible, as you know. In order to make it work were needed the efforts of various specialists. Firstly, the models of units themselves have been significantly improved (you can read about it in our last diary http://steamcommunity.com/games/421010/announcements/detail/988905733436625930 ), and then animator-rigger worked on them in addition : skins were customized and units poses were redesigned. Secondly, our programmers had to be pretty sweat over finalizing the code of movement and the basic logic of animations playback. All this allows to show with a greater degree of accuracy the realities of infantry battle and considerably enlivened the picture, so that we can say, our efforts in this field were not in vain. It is quite difficult to describe the result with just words, so we advise you to see everything with your own eyes: https://youtu.be/AeM2aF2GTjs We shall answer your questions from this topic (http://steamcommunity.com/app/421010/discussions/0/458606248628387484/ ) in the next issue of the diary.

Hello everybody! Thursday again, and new issue of developer diaries. We hope that you enjoy this incipient tradition. Today we have very juicy topic on the agenda: the new models of infantry. We will talk a little about the process of creation and give you some figures. At first we had the idea to simply replace the existing textures on the models at a highly detailed, but after several attempts, it became clear that the result does not meet the expectations. The process of recycling old models imposes certain restrictions. Therefore it was decided to make all models of infantry from the ground up, which allowed us to not only replace infantry models for new ones, but also to make better and nicerl animations. At the moment, we plan three playable factions in the game: the Soviet Union, Germany and the Allies. We decided not to divide the allied forces on individual nations, but in the future this decision will possibly be reconsidered. Model’s creation process is quite long and troublesome one: for ex. one unique model of infantryman takes about two or three weeks of skilled modeller’s work. We hope that this figure will give to subscribers an understanding of why we do not have plans for the near future to replace all models of vehicles too (for comparison: one cannon takes about 2 weeks, and tank needs at least 4). In other words, changing of all models will require a lot of time and resources, which in turn dramatically pushes back the release date). First of all, we have compiled a list of all necessary units for the game, described their characteristics and equipment. Distinguished such categories of infantry units: common, elite, assault and various kinds of special infantry, such as a miner, an army and elite sniper, saboteur, etc. On the basis of these categories were formed a unit-list of 21-23 infantry-units for each fraction. In addition, we've got something for the future. At the next stage, we have compiled the document for modellers (see. fragments from it in the attached photo), where we described the appearance and equipment for every infantryman. Information was gathered from open sources: photos, historical reenactors forums and various shops selling reconditioned parts of uniforms and equipment. Some of the units were discussed for a long time, and it does not always succeed to reach a compromise without bloodshed. Primarily we focused on the maximum "staginess" of the unit, but without without departing from the historical component. As a result, we have raised the authenticity bar for infantry skins in comparison with our previous projects. But, it is better to see once, than 100 times to read. Who’s there? Aren’t the US infantry?)

Hello! We are here again with the second issue of the Developer Diary. In the first one we mentioned some innovations of Soldiers: Arena. Starting with this issue onwards, we will talk in more detail about what is featured in the game, what we are working at, and what we would wish to fulfill. Judging by the comments in social networks over the last week, the most serious concerns of the players relate to micro-transaction and, in fact, F2P, generally. We have already mentioned earlier, that the mere introduction of this model is questionable. The main reason for the uncertainty is that this is a new experience for us. As you all know, the game series has never been influenced by this model. We are very devoted to the original gameplay and do not want to turn it into something unrecognizable. Free-to-Play model in this case is not an goal by itself, but rather a possible pathway to achieve goals. The priority for us is to craft a big simultaneous online experience, while maintaining the unique gaming qualities of the project. You will never be able to buy for real money the "Schwerer Gustav" and dominate the battlefield. No, the game does not imply such premium packages as "press X to win". We stand firmly and respond "NO" to Pay-to-Win model! We won’t sell anything that could give an advantage to the owner while in the game. When we talk about monetization, we are talking about alternative units (buys) of similar value from the base unit-list, skins, stickers, scenario missions for cooperative game and other small features. They diversify the gameplay, but will not give you an unbalanced opportunity over the other players in order to humiliate everyone and leave nothing standing, leaving behind only decay and ashes. Yes, perhaps you cause your opponent to tear his hair apart and eject smoke from his ears, but it goes down exclusively to your gaming skills. We foresee Soldiers: Arena as a long-playing and perspective project, that we want to develop and improve. We are confident that the perfect solution is not found immediately, it will need polishing and evolution - and you help us, right? :) In conclusion, we want to state, that the selection of candidates for the alpha test (which will begin soon) is going on at the moment, Thanks to all who replied to our call (there are a lot of them, to our great delight). Unfortunately, we can not send keys for testing to all of them, because alpha is a closed event with a limited number of participants. Ask your questions in the post. Ask about the aspects of the game, about what aspects would you like to know more, and we will definitely reply your appeals in future editions of the diary. P.S. And small allusion to the theme of the next issue of the diary.