Greetings, Commanders!
Today we will tell you about the next part of the French Arc.
The new Update will bring a new collection, a new historical Commander,
changes to AA priority sectors, and some further matchmaker improvements.
How can you get a new collection,
and which ship is the best for Philippe Auboyneau?
Konstantin Pavlov knows the answers.
Update 0.8.7— what does it bring?
A collection, containers, Commanders, and the continuation of the French Arc—
Tier II–VIII researchable destroyers will become available,
while Tier IX and X will remain locked for now.
Kind of an exclusive…
Yes, only for those who obtained Mogador in early access in Update 0.8.6.
That's cool! Let's go step by step.
Where should we start? The collection…
As usual, the collection elements
will drop from containers dedicated to the French Arc.
You obtain the first element from them,
and then you either gather the rest from the same French containers,
or you activate the subscription and receive them from daily containers.
For assembling the collection, you'll get standard rewards
and the ability to mount a second flag on French ships,
or select an alternative camouflage scheme for them.
Directives?
Directives are basically standard,
they're like a pleasant addition to the Arc.
Completing Directives will grant you Tokens,
which you can spend in the Armory
to obtain a new Commander and other different goodies.
Let's talk about the Commander.
He's unusual—not only is he historical, but he also has some special talents.
Yes, we've prepared a unique Commander.
He'll join Kuznetsov, Halsey, and Yamamoto,
but he's more similar to Kuznetsov in terms of his concept.
The new Commander will emphasize two features of the French ships—
their speed and… (High rate of fire?) Firepower of the main battery guns.
But it will increase the chance of causing fire.
And the speed, of course.
Speed is everything for the French in our game.
French destroyers can already accelerate to over 53 knots,
and here it will be even faster.
The new French Commander only reinforces this feature—
he'll increase your efficiency for scoring ribbons,
as well as receiving and dealing damage.
Super, understood.
I'd like to return to AA defenses, what's happening with them?
In Update 0.8.7, we'll upgrade the mechanics for the priority AA sectors.
In fact, this change is being implemented according to feedback from our players.
Since their introduction and beta testing,
they didn't like these mechanics very much,
because they required pressing and holding a key, the entire screen dimmed,
and then you needed to select either the left or right sectors.
All this distracted from the battle and was difficult to live with.
Now the mechanics are much easier:
you turn the camera to either the port or starboard sides,
click a button, and that side becomes active.
How does it work? You instantly deal some minor damage,
between 3% and 6% of a squadron's entire HP,
and this damage is distributed in a such a way that you try to shoot down
as many aircraft as possible from the squadron that’s attacking you.
Of course, if this squadron is at full health, you'll deal some damage to it,
but it's unlikely that you’ll destroy any planes with this initial burst.
But it will hurt, at least.
Then, the continuous damage in the sector that you've selected
will gradually increase, according to a graph,
until it reaches a straight line, like a plateau.
It gradually grows from, let's say, 100% to, roughly speaking, 175%,
then it stays for a specified period of time at 175%.
After that, the priority sector switches off and starts to reload.
So, it reinforces you…
But it returns to 100%, right? As it was before the increase.
Yes, as it was before the increase.
At the same time, the efficiency of the other sector reduces,
just as it was in the previous implementation of these mechanics.
Once the reload is completed, you can repeat these actions,
and so on, in cycles.
Great, so it’s now easier. Yes, it is.
What about perks, will we rework them?
Together with the priority sectors,
we're reworking the Manual Fire Control for AA Armament skill.
Let me break it down for you.
There are three entities in the new sector:
the instantaneous damage that you deal, the reinforcement of your base sector,
and, lastly, reloading.
So, the skill will simply ignore the second part,
but will reinforce the instantaneous damage several times
and increase the reload time as well.
It's necessary for ships that inflict weak damage within their AA auras.
For example, Shimakaze—
she deals a very insignificant amount of continuous damage
and it makes no sense to reinforce it for just a few percent.
However, it makes perfect sense to increase the instantaneous damage.
Instead of 3–5% for example,
you instantly cause between 9% and 15% damage to a squadron.
That's significant, and if you play on an aircraft carrier, you might think,
“Should I attack this destroyer or not?
Maybe it's better to look for another target?”
Cool.
So, what is the new collection about,
and what exactly did the French Navy do in Alexandria?
Let's ask Sergey Zhebrovskiy about it.
The French Arc continues,
and we’re adding a new French Commander to the game—Philippe Auboyneau.
When I was searching for a prominent French naval officer of the 20th century
to add into the game, he was one of the best options.
He was a real Frenchman, and an imposing, handsome,
and very talented officer, who rose through the ranks very quickly
and was always in the right place at the right time.
He did everything he could to ensure that the French Navy
conducted itself in the war with dignity and ended it victoriously.
Could you tell us about a turning point in his biography related to his service?
After France capitulated,
a very strange situation arose when the French fleet in Africa
suddenly became opponents for the British—their former allies.
In particular, in Egypt, in Alexandria,
French and British squadrons were stationed in one port, side to side,
and the British sailors didn't know what to do.
That's when this officer entered the scene;
he maintained excellent relationships
with both the British and French admirals,
and was able to find some common ground for these people,
thus preventing any fighting and bloodshed.
“Honestly, France capitulated,
and while this fleet belongs only to this capitulated France,
it will not take any part in this war,
and in return, you won't attack us either.”
By doing so, he managed to preserve quite a powerful squadron
for the future French Navy, when France re-joined the Allies.
Having accomplished this, Auboyneau went to London, to General de Gaulle,
and said, “I'm ready to continue serving France!”
He was given command of the most powerful ship at that moment—
a Le Fantasque-class destroyer leader.
He sailed with it to the Atlantic and then on to the Pacific Ocean
as the Commander-in-Chief of the naval forces of Free France.
Plainly speaking, his country capitulated, but he kept on fighting?
Yes, he did, together with those who hadn't accepted that surrender,
and he was prepared to fight until the end.
Let's switch from Auboyneau to the collection—
what will it include, does it have any connection to the Commander,
and how did you create it, in general?
I've suggested naming the collection “Legion of Honor”
after the highest French order of merit—the Legion of Honor.
It's not just a reward, its creator, Napoleon Bonaparte,
intended it to be a kind of knightly order uniting the best of the best—
the best citizens of the country.
The collection comprises four sheets.
Half of them are dedicated to French military decorations,
while the other half concentrates on ships,
namely the ships from the branch that’s getting released in this Update.
Matchmaking improvements, what are they?
How often will you be at the top with your Tier VIII ship?
Andrey Lysak will keep it simple.
Hi, can we talk about matchmaking? Of course!
It's good when you have it, and it's really bad when you don’t—
we're improving something, right?
Yes, a better matchmaker is better for the game.
What are we improving?
In the upcoming Update 0.8.7, we're going to address the issue
of how often a player gets into the top or bottom of the list.
So, we're beginning to control the number of battles
and the tier which a person is at.
In each range: at the bottom of the list, in the middle, and at the top,
or in single-level battles, which will occur sometimes as well.
Ok. Does it work for a session?
The matchmaker holds 20 battles in its memory.
For the last 20 battles at each tier,
it gathers data about the battles that you've been in,
and as soon as this number surpasses the specified number
it says that you're no longer in the queue for this tier,
because you've played at this level too much.
For example, you're on a Tier VIII ship. The matchmaker says,
“You've played against ‘tens’ too much—eight times already—
that's it, you're out of their queue, you won't play against them.”
So, when you play on a Tier VIII ship, you'll feel more comfortable, right?
Not only at Tier VIII—at any tier
you’ll be in more comfortable and fair conditions in relation to other tiers.
Will it affect the waiting time before a battle?
Of course, the waiting time will be affected a little,
but our matchmaker works very quickly,
and we have certain reserves— some reasonable 10 seconds or so—
to wait, to allow for a battle to be assembled on more balanced terms.
Excellent! You've said that it's only the first step towards a greater goal.
Where are we heading and when will it happen?
It was a preparatory stage before trying to resolve a much more complex issue,
which can be described as,
“Help me, I'm a lonely ‘eight’ in a battle of ‘tens’.”
You can feel quite uncomfortable in a situation like this.
In one of the upcoming updates— we hope it will happen quite soon—
we'll implement the following algorithm:
if a battle doesn't take too long to assemble,
the number of ships at every tier will be also determined by some limits.
For example, in a Tier X battle,
there will be no less than three or four “eights” and no more than five “tens.”
So, this will place some kind of limits on the number of ships by tier?
Yes, and sometimes they will be at the top,
and sometimes at the bottom of the list—
all to make a battle as healthy as possible in terms of ship types.
I mean ship tiers, not types, of course.
So, that’s it! Like our video and subscribe to our channel!