M72_LAW

Hitboxes wouldn't necessarily need to be altered if the whole car was made "transparent" for bullets. The only section of a car that has a chance of stopping a bullet, is the engine. Bullets travel through doors and such with ease, check out Demolition Ranch if you don't believe it. APB could be like this:

The Alig is not a heavy machine gun though. It is based on M240 B general purpose / medium machine gun that fires 7.62x51 Nato.

Another ridiculous detail about cars in APB is the top speed. According to APB Database, the absolute maximum speed of a Bishada Rapier is 23 m/s. That translates to a whopping 82.8 km/h. I know there are game engine and server related restrictions which cause this, but it's still amusing to me. I remember reaching 400 km/h in Need For Speed Underground 2, a game released in 2004. Cars in earlier NFS titles weren't much slower either, to my understanding.

How about a light anti-tank weapon (such as an M72 LAW) as a secondary? -Single shot per ammo refill. -Enough damage to take out a car in one hit. -Equip time of some 2 to 3 seconds. On a real one you first pull out the pin holding the cap, unfold the pipe, adjust the sight and turn safety off before firing. A very common weapon around the world, and could provide an new, interesting anti-vehicle alternative to the game.

I think he did mention that. If I remember correctly, he said they want to give inactive players enough time to save their characters.

That would actually be an interesting addition. A mean looking, sporty light pick-up truck. El Camino was a neat vehicle in Driver San Francisco, and it could sure fit San Paro also.

I'll thow in some suggestions of varying quality. - Allowing players to hide their threat level. This could encourage some casual (bad) players (like me) to play missions without the fear of going silver. - Light anti-tank weapon consumable / secondary. One shot per ammo refill but capability to destroy a car with one hit. A flexible and realistic alternative to a launcher that occupies a primary weapon slot. - A 6x6 armored personnel carrier. A city like San Paro would require using one if regular cars weren't as bullet proof. - A fire truck with a water hose, so you could stun players by shooting water at them. Maybe place a water cannon on top of some truck or apc also. - I would like to see weapons do more damage, as player characters are insane bullet sponges at the moment. This would make macros less useful, and also allow a sneaky player to take out multiple enemies. Enough bad ideas for one day.

Did someone mention an APC?

It's not impossible, as even I have 2500 hours of regret.

The following rant can be negated by stating that APB is not a solo game. That would be a most valid argument if that was the case, but I'm not focusing on it now. I know how you feel. I kept jumping back and forth between gold and silver for some 30 consecutive missions before I finally decided to stop playing the game. I was gold since 2016, as I used to join nothing but open conflict, fight club or social. Success for me was totally random in this game. Every now and then I would go on a five kill streak in abington with a regular oca, and sometimes not be able to kill a single hostile in close quarters, no matter how I tried. The bullets would just pass everywhere around him. This was especially annoying when I managed to sneak up to them on a mission, with my decent knowledge of the map, but die anyways due to not scoring enough hits. You could say this is due to panic or something, but keeping the sights right on the center of mass, well within the effective range of the weapon, should do the trick. My ping was good and fps almost smooth 60. A funny thing was how I was almost always granted gold threat after just tagging along a really good team. Even though doing more kills and objectives alone in a lost match turned me silver. This is of course due to the winning team receiving a well earned score multiplier, but still. It felt unfair to have your constantly visible social status switch without having much to say about it. The general inconsistency lead to feeling devastated at times. Not knowing if you're a decent player or complete garbage. What I could blame for randomness faced by solo players are (in addition to my own drawbacks) slow times to kill (preventing a single player from taking out more than one enemies face to face) and fast health regeneration (making taking out a camper (*cough* an entrenched defender) often impossible without a teammate). How could this be fixed? A) Hide threat, or allow a player to hide his. This way one wouldn't need to be embarrassed for failing a mission or two. Queing for a mission wouldn't feel as awful if you know you won't get ridiculed if you lost. B) Make guns more deadly, and therefore allow a sneaky lone wolf to be more effective. This would sure make macros less useful too, as the focus would move from damage farming to getting the first shot off. Sure this would be too radical to most.

A vehicle like this could be an interesting addition to the game. Sisu XA-180 "Pasi" is a 6x6 armored personnel carrier, designed in the 1980's. It is used not only by UN peace keeping units and a few militaries, but also the Finnish police as an extreme SWAT vehicle. It is protected against small arms fire but remains vulnerable to most explosives. Therefore it would be the strongest player-owned vehicle, but by no means indestructible. The mass of this vehicle is 13500 kg, meaning it is considered as a truck, and would be way heavier than any current car. It would still be a lot lighter than the Kolva truck, which is definitely heavier than a two-axle truck could really be. It's powered by a 240 horsepower turbocharged diesel engine and can reach the speed of 105 km/h. Check this video, it has been set to start at an appropriate time. Although an email from the in-game contact Ernst "Mule" Templeton mentions how there would not be enough space for an APC in the city, it would not be much less manouverable than say, a Pioneer. It would only make sense to have some armor in such a hostile environment as San Paro. It could easily seat a driver and three passengers. The passenger sitting in the front could shoot through the commander's roof hatch, and there could be two more roof hatches closer to the back of the vehicle. There are doors in the front for the driver and the "commander", but the two other players would climb through the rear doors. Unless a unique APC model was made.

The biggest problem with Charge Cisco is the center of mass. It is way too far behind at the moment. One would expect the large engine to move mass towards the front and make it grip well in turns, but instead all of the weight sit in the trunk for some reason. This makes the car very floaty to drive at the moment.

The idea could be taken to a next level by adding vehicles with a fixed machine gun on top. Maybe even a light armored personal carrier, like Sisu XA-180.

The cars behave in insane ways indeed. It mostly has to do with how friction is calculated and whatever external forces are at work. Not to mention that a car like Bishada Rapier can go only 82,8 km/h at max (23 m/s * 3,6). A car could go above 400 km/h in NFS: Underground 2, an arcade racing game from 2004. But a funny idea I got is that if an EMP grenade is added, there could also be a slower old car that is resistant to it. For example, a diesel powered UAZ-469 with a mechanical fuel pump, and a manual crank for ignition. It needs no electricity you see. Of course mods like radar tower would still go out.

I support the idea of ditching visible threat levels. What frustrates me is the inconsistency of evaluating threat. I am a very low gold player, meaning that whenever I lose a mission I go silver, and if I win I return to gold. I often go gold even if I was just carried by a good team, and did nothing special myself. Meanwhile, facing a coordinated enemy team, with no trusted allies by my side, will most likely make me a silver. Despite putting more effort into the match. Therefore I don't have the will or courage to play in mission districts if I don't feel 100% competitive. This has made me take long breaks from the game after open conflict districts were shut down. Playing or even socializing with golden friends is stressful, as suddenly going silver makes me look rather bad. And at the same time, I don't tend to find much in common with actual silver players. I started playing in late 2015. All of this makes the current threat system feel detrimental, and somewhat hollow to me. Segregating players into these skill levels gives a noticeable boost to toxicity. Either directly in chat, or simply in the form of abandoning missions when there are silvers in one's team. With such a low playerbase, we can't afford to split the community with such a system. Not to mention the way it is being abused constantly, by dethreating and finding all bronze players in one place. I know not that many agree with me, but that is completely fine. I'm just telling how I've felt about the game for a few years now.

Smoke grenades. Grenades that create a large cloud of smoke for a certain period of time. With different colour variants perhaps. Not a legendary but a weapon idea nevertheless.

How about making all weapons more deadly? This would be extremely game changing, and I would love to test it out. At the moment players are unnatural bullet sponges that don't mind getting five assault rifle bullets stuck in their vital organs. At point blank range that is. This makes surprising the enemy and getting the first shot off less effective, while also spoiling many other tactical aspects. Increasing weapon damage would make overall weapon balancing easier. This kind of combat would focus more on player awareness and reflexes, rather than comparing precise TTK values of each gun. Shorter times to kill would also make using macros less beneficial. I know that APB:R is an arcade shooter and not supposed to be realistic, but the current balance does not make any sense. Especially for new players that have played any other games with firearms. Hitting a hostile multiple times only to reveal your position and have him (or her) fully regenerate, is always frustrating. The current system feels almost like the famous dice roll combat system present in Morrowind. In the sense that opponents stop to farm damage on one another, halting the flow of overall gameplay. Does this make defending overpowered? Yes and no. Obviously attacking positions would become more demanding if an entrenched opponent could stop the assaulting players with fewer bullets. But that is how it is in the real world. How do they manage it? With tactics and combined arms warfare. Taking advantage of your map knowledge and advancing in a smart manner will keep you undetected, allowing you to surprise the defenders. Fire and movement tactics would also get a prominent role, by having a teammate secure your advance with his fire and vice versa. A faster TTK would also reward a sneaky lone wolf, as taking out multiple exposed enemies would become more plausible. Grenades could also receive a buff, either in the shape of incresed damage or a higher blast radius. A damage buff would reward precision while increased range would make softening hostile positions more reliable. Both could be achieved by buffing the damage of conqussion grenades and the blast radius of frag grenades. The need for an additional tool would arise, smoke grenades that is. Trading explosive firepower to the chance to blind a powerful enemy position would be an interesting choice, and really add something to the game. Sure the crosshair could still turn red but spotting targets would become a lot harder no matter what. +60% damage, +60% fun? That would mean four shots to kill with assault rifles such as STAR 556. Stats are from APB:DB. Some examples of guns with only the bullet damage being multiplied by 1,6: STAR 5,56; 4 STK - 280 Damage - 0,45 s TTK N-TEC 5: 4 STK - 296 Damage - 0,42 s TTK OCA-EW 626: 5 STK - 200 Damage - 0,4 s TTK Colby PMG: 4 STK - 320 Damage - 0,525 s TTK (The rate of fire could be buffed.) Joker Carbine: 4 STK - 288 Damage - 0,45 s TTK Obeya CR 7,62: 3 STK - 392 Damage - 0,42 s TTK (Faster than the carbine but less mobile.) OBIR: 2 STK - 792 Damage - 0,6 s TTK SHAW 5,56: 5 STK - 200 Damage - 0,32 s TTK ALIG 7,62: 3 STK - 360 Damage - 0,36 s TTK Obeya FBW: 4 STK - 288 Damage - 0,6 s TTK Colby .45 AP: 3 STK - 360 Damage - 0,4 s TTK Stabba CCG: 5 STS - 227,2 S.Damage - 0,6 s TTS Stabba NL9: 2 STS - 640 S.Damage - 0,78 s TTS Agrotech DMR: 2 STK - 640 Damage - 0,8 s TTK N-HVR 7,62: 1 STK? - 1360 Damage - 0 s TTK* N-HVR .243 2 STK - 880 Damage - 1,75 s TTK Colby JG: 2 STK - 0,7 s TTK** *(One shot to kill could be outrageous in a game without hitboxes for body parts. Although the low rate of fire (1,75 s) would still make an N-HVR 762 slower at stopping multiple targets compared to something like a buffed CR762. Strangely enough, both of these guns are supposed to fire the same 7,62x51 mm round.) **(In a third person game, shotgunners can guard corners without exposing themselves. Therefore a one shot kill would be a bit too much. The ability to pump the shotgun in cover is also why I think that submachine guns should beat shotguns out in the open. The pellet spread should be less extravagant in my opinion, and a single full shotgun hit should do close to 85% damage if other guns were buffed.) Sure balancing changes to rate of fire from gun to gun could still be made. Although these would all kill so fast that reflexes and positioning would play a much more important role than just the TTK of the weapon. I won't suggest changes to effective weapon ranges or these low vehicle max speeds, as those are limited by game performance unlike weapon damage. Hitboxes for specific body parts would of course make damage buffs a lot more reasonable, such as having head and torso as vital targets while arms and legs not so much. I just don't know if that is something the developers could invest time in for now. Is this worth a try? In my opinion, definitely. I would love to have a weapon prototype district run with deadlier weapons for a week or so. I'm sure it would attract more players than usual, since changes would be a lot more noticeable than usually. If nothing else, a healthy discussion is always welcome. -With love, your favourite light anti-tank weapon, M72LAW.