Since I do not make many forum posts and tend to just lurk, let me go ahead and say this so that my feelings and/or intentions towards RO2 and Tripwire are not misunderstood.
You guys have done absolutely stellar work! It is a bit crazy when I think about it. To think of how it all started out from a mod -- and now here we are, all playing a game that we all love and to many like myself, feel that it dwarfs the major franchises in terms of gameplay quality and enjoyment factor. It really is amazing and I've been nothing but impressed by all the hard work you guys pour into your games.
Whenever I first started playing RO1 I felt the learning cliff that many of us have felt. It was the most frustrating and at the same time, the most enjoyable gaming experience I had ever had. After getting my face pwned off the first few weeks, I took a small break from it and when I came back I had a mission: Find 1 weapon and practice practice and practice until I could hold my own. My thinking was to find a weapon that was not considered a priority target by the enemy and effective at a distance. After finding arad servers to be a bit slower paced, I found my answer, the PTRD. I still get a bit of nostalgia thinking about how I bumbled about not knowing what the hell I was doing but loving every minute of it. Over time, I explored pretty much every facet of the gun and saw it change from a class that tankers would ignore to a class that tankers would spend 10 minutes hunting until they killed him. I guess the best analogy I can come up with is that the PTRD was my gateway drug to my current addiction to Red Orchestra. I want the same thing for myself and other PTRD/S fans out there for RO2.
When I look back on Ro2 years from now, I hope that there is some equivilent to things I've discovered in Ro1 - like finding out that the Is2 can be destroyed by the PTRD with 2 shots if you have a 45 degree vertical angle straight shot into the viewport -> ammo. I also hope (like everyone) that there is a minimum of glitchy things like PTRD rounds being unable to kill tank commanders (not drivers) sticking their head out of the tanks, unless you have very specific and awkward angles to the tank and/or turret orientation. If not, it bounces off their forehead like they are ironman lol.
I noticed something in the beta that is a really minor thing to me, but it is something that made me wonder how much testing the PTRS had received. There is no achievement in the RO2 beta for anything anti-tank related. I know that will sound strange to some but think of it like this -- achievements are used as a way to measure one's progress in a game and generally when someone has 100% of the achievements for a game it is considered being a completist. That means someone could be considered an RO2 Completist but never have played the Anti-Tanker class. That just seemed a bit off to me, but I'm guessing/hoping that it is only a partial list. (btw - props on the binoc bash achievement, that one gave me laugh)
Here is a list of a few things I've noticed:
- Anti-Tank Rifle hitting front end of Panzer IV tracks results in a non-deflecting hit but it appears no damage is dealt, even after using 15+ rounds. My guess is that the game is registering an armor penetration hit on the metal overhang on the top side of the tracks (I'm sure it has some unique name but it is unknown to me).
- sometimes when you reload the PTRS it does not center correctly when bringing up the ironsights. The rifle is slanted off to the left side and you can see through the part of the rifle closest to viewpoint. undeploying then redeploying fixes it.
- Tripod Machineguns can penetrate the thick walls on Fallen Fighters, but the PTRD can't. There also seems to be another penetration bug concerning the PTRS and the buses on the same map.
- AT grenades explode upon impact, even when they only hit the ground. I don't consider myself an expert on these, in fact, I know little to nothing about them. I just felt it worth repeating as I've read others say that they were magnetic and had a fuse.
- Lack of binoculars on Anti-Tank Loadout. RO1 had them and were probably the Anti-tanker's most valuable tool to locate enemy snipers and identify which tanks he had an angle on. I'm assuming that it will be unlockable equipment for the AT class? I very much hope so.
- There appears to be no way to deal any amount of damage to a Panzer IV when faced with its frontal armor. I don't expect to be able to kill it outright but being able to take out a driver through the viewport or something would be nice. I also don't expect to be able to nail every weakness of the tanks before the game even comes out, but finding these nuances in the game is what makes it so addictive.
- While the Panzer IV seems to be impossible to get a frontal kill on, the T34 is relatively easy to kill, 3 shots to the left hand side of the turret seems to do the trick. The difficulty gap between killing a PanzerIV and killing a T34 seems to be rather large if this is an intentionally placed vulnerability. As far as the balance goes I would think that the PTRS would provide a generally equal effectiveness against both tanks and if anything making the T34 harder to kill to please the realism people.
- It is very difficult to tell who's tank you killed or how many were in the tank that you killed. The point modifiers like "+2 vehicle destroyed" "+3 the player was inside the capzone" (or whatever the points are) scroll the names before they even appear it seems. Opening the console is no luck as the kill messages do not appear there. Perhaps there is some config setting I haven't discovered yet that will change the number of messages allowed on screen.
I will update the thread if/when I find any more things of interest regarding the PTRS. I do wish I could do more in-depth look at the PTRS to find any other bugs/glitches to help out but unlike RO1 I can't exactly boot up a game in practice mode with zero bots . All I need is to get 30 people to join a server and let me and the tank play in a corner of the map Lol
You guys have done absolutely stellar work! It is a bit crazy when I think about it. To think of how it all started out from a mod -- and now here we are, all playing a game that we all love and to many like myself, feel that it dwarfs the major franchises in terms of gameplay quality and enjoyment factor. It really is amazing and I've been nothing but impressed by all the hard work you guys pour into your games.
Whenever I first started playing RO1 I felt the learning cliff that many of us have felt. It was the most frustrating and at the same time, the most enjoyable gaming experience I had ever had. After getting my face pwned off the first few weeks, I took a small break from it and when I came back I had a mission: Find 1 weapon and practice practice and practice until I could hold my own. My thinking was to find a weapon that was not considered a priority target by the enemy and effective at a distance. After finding arad servers to be a bit slower paced, I found my answer, the PTRD. I still get a bit of nostalgia thinking about how I bumbled about not knowing what the hell I was doing but loving every minute of it. Over time, I explored pretty much every facet of the gun and saw it change from a class that tankers would ignore to a class that tankers would spend 10 minutes hunting until they killed him. I guess the best analogy I can come up with is that the PTRD was my gateway drug to my current addiction to Red Orchestra. I want the same thing for myself and other PTRD/S fans out there for RO2.
When I look back on Ro2 years from now, I hope that there is some equivilent to things I've discovered in Ro1 - like finding out that the Is2 can be destroyed by the PTRD with 2 shots if you have a 45 degree vertical angle straight shot into the viewport -> ammo. I also hope (like everyone) that there is a minimum of glitchy things like PTRD rounds being unable to kill tank commanders (not drivers) sticking their head out of the tanks, unless you have very specific and awkward angles to the tank and/or turret orientation. If not, it bounces off their forehead like they are ironman lol. I noticed something in the beta that is a really minor thing to me, but it is something that made me wonder how much testing the PTRS had received. There is no achievement in the RO2 beta for anything anti-tank related. I know that will sound strange to some but think of it like this -- achievements are used as a way to measure one's progress in a game and generally when someone has 100% of the achievements for a game it is considered being a completist. That means someone could be considered an RO2 Completist but never have played the Anti-Tanker class. That just seemed a bit off to me, but I'm guessing/hoping that it is only a partial list. (btw - props on the binoc bash achievement, that one gave me laugh)
Here is a list of a few things I've noticed:
- Anti-Tank Rifle hitting front end of Panzer IV tracks results in a non-deflecting hit but it appears no damage is dealt, even after using 15+ rounds. My guess is that the game is registering an armor penetration hit on the metal overhang on the top side of the tracks (I'm sure it has some unique name but it is unknown to me).
- sometimes when you reload the PTRS it does not center correctly when bringing up the ironsights. The rifle is slanted off to the left side and you can see through the part of the rifle closest to viewpoint. undeploying then redeploying fixes it.
- Tripod Machineguns can penetrate the thick walls on Fallen Fighters, but the PTRD can't. There also seems to be another penetration bug concerning the PTRS and the buses on the same map.
- AT grenades explode upon impact, even when they only hit the ground. I don't consider myself an expert on these, in fact, I know little to nothing about them. I just felt it worth repeating as I've read others say that they were magnetic and had a fuse.
- Lack of binoculars on Anti-Tank Loadout. RO1 had them and were probably the Anti-tanker's most valuable tool to locate enemy snipers and identify which tanks he had an angle on. I'm assuming that it will be unlockable equipment for the AT class? I very much hope so.
- There appears to be no way to deal any amount of damage to a Panzer IV when faced with its frontal armor. I don't expect to be able to kill it outright but being able to take out a driver through the viewport or something would be nice. I also don't expect to be able to nail every weakness of the tanks before the game even comes out, but finding these nuances in the game is what makes it so addictive.
- While the Panzer IV seems to be impossible to get a frontal kill on, the T34 is relatively easy to kill, 3 shots to the left hand side of the turret seems to do the trick. The difficulty gap between killing a PanzerIV and killing a T34 seems to be rather large if this is an intentionally placed vulnerability. As far as the balance goes I would think that the PTRS would provide a generally equal effectiveness against both tanks and if anything making the T34 harder to kill to please the realism people.
- It is very difficult to tell who's tank you killed or how many were in the tank that you killed. The point modifiers like "+2 vehicle destroyed" "+3 the player was inside the capzone" (or whatever the points are) scroll the names before they even appear it seems. Opening the console is no luck as the kill messages do not appear there. Perhaps there is some config setting I haven't discovered yet that will change the number of messages allowed on screen.
I will update the thread if/when I find any more things of interest regarding the PTRS. I do wish I could do more in-depth look at the PTRS to find any other bugs/glitches to help out but unlike RO1 I can't exactly boot up a game in practice mode with zero bots
. All I need is to get 30 people to join a server and let me and the tank play in a corner of the map Lol 
