Obsidian Entertainment and My.com are proud to introduce the first preview of the newest addition to Armored Warfare - Update 0.12. It is scheduled to appear on the North American and the European server on the 17th of December, 2015.

Update 0.12 does bring several major features that include:

Battle-Hardened vehicle status

Camouflage System overhaul

Tank Destroyer rebalance

PvE overhaul (including randomized spawns and adjusted AI vehicle behavior to eliminate the split second AI snapshots)

Statistics Sharing

Apart from the new features, a large number of game corrections including but not limited to vehicle performance adjustments, map balance and critical issue fixes was implemented as well. These include fixes of certain commander and crew skills, some vehicle models (notably the Abrams tanks), reload timer freezes, the "artillery destroys all modules" issue, several audio issues and much more. The issues were prioritized based on player feedback.

Please note that the Visual Camouflage feature was removed from Update 0.12, making the patch mostly mechanics and issue-oriented.

New Features

Battle Hardened Vehicles

In 0.12 players can now use gold to apply a new "Battle Hardened" status to standard progression vehicles - upgrading them to pseudo-premium status. The intent behind Battle Hardened Vehicles is to give players a way to convert their favorite vehicles into ones which resemble a 'Premium-lite' vehicle. Battle Hardened vehicles cost approximately half of an equal tier Premium Vehicle and come with the following benefits:

+25% to Credit gains while playing this vehicle

+25% to Crew Experience gains while playing this vehicle

+25% to Commander Experience gains while playing this vehicle

+10% to Reputation earned on the vehicle (including locked reputation)

To unlock Battle Hardened on a specific vehicle, the vehicle must have first reached Renowned status. Once reached, a special "Battle Hardened" node can then be unlocked with gold. Battle Hardened status may only be unlocked on vehicles at or above tier 3.

Progressive Camouflage Penalties

Based on player feedback, in 0.12 we've made some significant changes to the camouflage and spotting system to help address the following goals:

Make camouflage penalties more intuitive

Encourage a more dynamic battlefield where players are able to move and re-position more

To accomplish this, we've introduced new "Progressive Camouflage Penalties". This update changes all methods of applying camouflage penalties (movement, shooting, on fire) from a binary on/off state to a more dynamic system where penalties grow and decay.

Previously, when driving your vehicle you would receive a flat movement penalty as soon as you started moving. Once you stopped and were stationary for a period of time the penalty was disabled. With the updates to the system the penalty now grows as you move and decays when you are stationary based off of two factors: time and distance traveled. If a player moves away from the location they fired, the camouflage penalty decays faster as the player moves further away.

Additionally, the camouflage penalties from shooting are now additive instead of being a set value. This means that a stationary vehicle repeatedly firing a cannon will continue to build up camouflage penalties with each shot making it easier for them to be seen by enemies while a vehicle that re-positions between shots will be less likely to be seen. If the player stays stationary and does not fire again the camouflage penalty slowly decays down to zero, but this will take some time. This means that a stationary vehicle repeatedly firing a cannon will continue to build up camouflage penalties with each shot making it easier for them to be seen by enemies, while a vehicle that re-positions between shots will be less likely to be seen.

With auto-cannons, instead of firing a single shot and having a set penalty applied, each shot now has a smaller camouflage penalty and builds up over time. This allows vehicles with auto-cannons to shoot a few rounds with a smaller chance of being spotted, but makes them more likely to be spotted if they are emptying a full clip into an enemy. We feel these changes will improve the camouflage and spotting system by making the system more intuitive while also encouraging a more active and dynamic battlefield. We have more plans to keep updating the vision and spotting mechanics and we look forward to your comments and feedback on the current updates.

New Tank Destroyer Class Ability

In 0.12 we took the opportunity to redesign the Tank Destroyer class ability to be an active ability instead of a passive max accuracy damage bonus. This new ability works with the new progressive camouflage penalties to help reinforce TD's role as a sniper on the battlefield and no longer rewards with more damage for achieving maximum accuracy when that is something they are likely to do with nearly every shot anyway.

TDs now get a "Gun Suppression" ability that greatly reduces the camouflage penalty from all shots while the ability is active. Players must be stationary for 2 seconds before the Gun Suppression ability is available for use. Once active, a timer appears and starts to count down. Players must fire a shot before the timer expires or the ability is disabled. If the player fires a shot then the timer resets and the player must fire again before the timer runs out. In total, a player is able to do this for three shots. The ability is only usable while stationary and will turn off if the player moves while the ability is active. Once the ability turns off, it goes on a cooldown for 60 seconds regardless of how many shots have been fired.

Additionally, we are removing the passive damage bonus ability for tank destroyers when they were at maximum accuracy and are re-purposing the UI yellow reticule indicator to show when Gun Suppression is active. In order to ensure that tank destroyer performance does not drop, we are increasing all TD damage to start with and will be keeping a close eye on telemetry data to ensure TDs are performing as intended. Details on these TD damage changes can be viewed in the full patch notes below.

New Year Decorations

For a limited time, players will notice that the garage has been updated with a holiday overlay in this patch, filling their garage with seasonal decorations and surprises! This change is also reflected in the Base view.

New Statistics Sharing Settings (Dossier Sharing)

Players can now opt to share their gameplay statistics either publicly, or with just those on their friends list. By default, player statistics are set to private. To switch your statistics to public or to friends, pull up the options menu and select the 'Social' tab. Afterwards, select one of the available options under the 'Dossier Privacy' dropdown and hit apply. To view another player's statistics, right click on their name outside of a match and select 'View Dossier'. If the player has opted not to share their Dossier, the Dossier will not display.

More Decals

New decals added for your tanks.

Encounter System (PvE Overhaul)

All PvE maps were reworked to improve the variety and randomness of spawn locations. This also should eliminate many cases where players have AI vehicles suddenly spawning on top of them.

Screen Resolution Changes

In 0.12 we've made improvements to Armored Warfare's available resolution options. Now when running AW in "windowed mode" players can resize and maximize the window as they see fit.

The new window size and position will be saved in-between sessions.

Players can also set two different resolutions for both windowed mode and full screen, meaning when they switch between them by hitting Alt+Enter their resolution will adapt based on their preferences.

Players can now enter fullscreen mode on any monitor, not just their primary one.

AW now properly works with Windows scaling (150% and 200%)

Previously, with Windows scaling active players often had trouble clicking on buttons within the UI

New Inventory Screen (Work in Progress)

A new work-in-progress inventory screen has been added to lay the framework leading up to the implementation of the loot system and to provide a way for players to redeem boosts provided to them. Previously, if a player was granted a boost (due to a promotional event or store purchase), it automatically activated once a player logged in. Now any boosts players find in their inventory screen can be activated by double clicking on the appropriate boost icon.

If a player has multiple boosts of the same type, these will stack within the inventory screen - allowing a player to manually activate another one after the first one has run out.

Upon logging in for the first time, players may find they already have boosts in their inventory. These are legacy promotional boosts which were previously not activated during the promotional event by logging in. There will be new features associated with this screen in future patches.

Full list of changes will be available soon. We hope you will enjoy these new features and see you on the battlefield!