Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #24! This week we’re delving into how we’ve designed maps and match mechanics that give players different combat and strategic experiences each time they play them.

How do we achieve this? By having the game change which sectors are active for contention each time a new round starts. More on that below…



To help explain how one level gives our players multiple battlefield experiences we’ve created a gif of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont’s map that highlights various combinations that you might encounter.



As you can see the map is split into 15 sectors, or three lanes of five.

Depending on which sectors are set active by the server you might have the majority of both teams fighting over one/two lanes or find them being spread across the map if the sectors are in a zig-zag formation.

Each different sector scenario requires different approaches and tactics when it comes to troop deployment, armour usage and unit strategy. Do you focus on a blitzkrieg of the enemy from the front? Envelop the enemy with a wide flank? Send units to ambush the enemy and counter any wide pushes? The choice is yours.



The nature of our sector mechanic also lends itself to creating entirely different combat experiences for our players each time they play the same map.

Using Sainte-Marie-du-Mont as the example once again, you could end up fighting through open fields, hedgerows and farm buildings one match...



Then the next time round you could be fighting in a more rural urban setting as you fight to capture the imposing Brecourt Manor compound...



Or even get into the middle of brutal building to building fighting in the town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont itself!



This means that when you replay a map, you get an entirely different experience to the last few times you battled over it, after all, each map has 99 possible variants!

This sector variety is applied to all current Hell Let Loose maps and will be included in all future ones too, giving our maps a fresh and exciting feel each time your boots hit the ground.



The last closed beta before Hell Let Loose’s Early Access launch on June 6th is taking place between May 24th and May 27th.

This will be the first time our snow covered Foy map will be playable and it’s unlike anything you’ve played so far!

Whatever sectors you end up fighting over, you’d better hope that when you charge through the mist you don’t run into one of these…




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Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #23! This week we’re taking a look back at the previous beta as we share some of the stats and analytics we gathered from your gameplay time!

Before we get stuck into the statistics we’d just like to remind you that the last closed beta for Hell Let loose is taking place from May 24th to May 27th and will include new features and content. You can read up on what that entails in last week’s Developer Briefing here.

The information below is but a small snapshot of what was gathered in the last beta. Behind the scenes we’re working through the full set of data and will use it to help us tweak the game and update the various roles if necessary.

Right, let's get stuck in shall we…



Below we have a handy infographic from Black Matter’s very own Danny that casts a spotlight on some statistics that we think you might find interesting!





Below are the top 3 and bottom 3 weapons from the last beta, ranked by the percentage of kills from the beta that they earned.

• Karabiner 98k: 17.23%
  
• M1 Garand: 16.95%
  
• Thompson: 9.19%
  
  
• Panzershreck: 0.24%
  
• Luger: 0.23%
  
• Tellermine 43: 0.02%

Unsurprisingly rifles secured most kills on the frontline. Rifles are usable by multiple roles on each side so are commonplace in a battle, allowing them to rack up large numbers of kills.

What is good news for us though is that both the German and US rifles had almost identical kill counts (Kar98’s 12,500 to Garand’s 12,298), heavily suggesting that despite being mechanically different in behaviour, they are equally balanced against each other.

We were surprised to discover that Machine Guns aka the ‘man killers’ weren’t in the top three for weapon kills. This signals to us that they aren’t performing as effectively as they should be and as such we’re going to prioritise looking into their functionality to improve their killing power and battlefield presence.

Looking at the bottom three we get a different picture which could mean multiple different things. Are Tellermine’s doing their role successfully by disabling tanks rather than outright destroying them or are they underutilised? Are Panthers successfully keeping Shermans at bay, mitigating successful Panzershreck kills?

To help answer these questions we’ll combine the written feedback from our community with further analytical data we gathered to build a clearer image of the current standing of these weapons.



The list below contains the top three and bottom three most played roles by minutes used.

• Rifleman: 42%
  
• Automatic Rifleman: 7%
  
• Assault: 7%
  
  
• Tank Commander: 3%
  
• Sniper: 2%
  
• Army Commander: 2%

Bonus stat: Medic was middle of the pack with 5%

The Rifleman took the top spot by far here. This could be for a couple of reasons:

1. There’s no limit to the amount of Rifleman in any unit, meaning it’s the only role that units can have more than one of at any given time.

2. The Rifleman is simple, yet effective, familiar yet versatile, meaning that it’s an attractive choice for both new players learning the game as well as more experienced ones who are keeping their allies stocked up on ammo.

On the wider scale roles that focused on offense, rather than support ranked in the top quartile. However overall the difference between time played wasn’t significant enough to concern us that the support leaning roles were being ignored.

Looking at the Army Commander, there’s only ever one per team so it’s where we expected it to be.



In war, victory comes with sacrifice.

The following roles suffered the most and least deaths among all 14 roles.

• Officer: 14%
  
• Anti-Tank: 13%
  
• Medic: 12%
  
  
• Crewman: 3%
  
• Tank Commander: 2%
  
• Army Commander: 1%

It turns out that leading the charge, fighting tanks on foot and attempting to revive the wounded in the middle of an intense battle can be rather bad for your health.

Those roles put themselves in danger to keep the offensive classes pushing forward. What did surprise us was that Officers had the highest amount of deaths. Could this be to player’s generally leading from the front, or perhaps their loadout forcing them into close combat?

We’ll be looking at the Officer role to help identify the root causes of their high death count and what could be done to remedy this.

On a lighter note, we’re pleased to see you’re (mostly) looking after your Commander, so jolly good show there!



Data such as the above is not only great at seeing what’s going on in-game, it also allows us to further investigate community feedback to help ensure we make the correct balance and game tweaks.

Did any of the above statistics surprise you? We’d love to hear what you think!

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Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #22! This week we’re excited to share with you all the details for our next and final closed beta…

The last closed beta before Early Access launch will take place on the weekend of May 24th to May 27th. We'll be providing further information on the beta, including start times, closer to the date.

We’re still working through the feedback and bug reports from the previous beta, but we wanted to let you know when you can head back to the frontline.

But you didn’t think we’d leave you with just a date, did you? Let’s take a moment to look at some of the new content and updates that you’ll be experiencing in the last beta.



Below are some of the new features and content that you’ll be playing with in the next closed beta. We hope you’ll be pleased to hear that some of these additions are content we’ve already planned, whilst others are directly from player feedback in previous betas – helping us to further craft the game ahead of Early Access launch.


The first map in Hell Let Loose to feature snow, Foy will give players a whole new strategic frontline to battle over. With its unique weather environment and combination of wooded and urban areas, those fighting on this map need to be ready for a wide range of battlefield scenarios that differ greatly from Hurtgen Forest and Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.


Players can expect fierce fighting here


A strong location for a FOB, or ambush...


Lots of cover for varying firing angles


Taking position in a trench, you await the enemy to emerge from the mist...


A vital road for tanks. You'd better hope there isn't an AT Gun hidden in the fog...


Can you hold out against an open ground assault with just one trench?


They could be anywhere...


In this beta you’ll see a host of new character models for existing roles. This will range from entirely new player models, to updates and small tweaks. Keen eyed players will also notice coat physics being applied to specific roles, this is the first test of this feature for us and if it goes well you can expect to see it expanded upon in the future.



This is just the beginning though, we’ll be looking into deeper customisation and uniform options for players during Early Access.



We’ve always intended to include vaulting in Hell Let Loose, but after reading your feedback we made the choice to prioritise its addition to the game.

Starting in the next closed beta, you’ll be able to climb out of trenches, onto boxes and more. As this will be the first-time vaulting is out in the wild we’d greatly appreciate your feedback on how it feels and if it meets community expectations.

We are going to do a lot of polish on both the animation and sound aspects of this mechanic, but we felt it was more important to get the functionality in sooner rather than later.

The vaulting mechanics shown below are a work in progress


WIP - Out of the trench


WIP - Over the wall



You know it, we know it. In a game like Hell Let Loose, sound is an integral part of the gameplay experience.

Throughout our different alpha and beta stages we’ve been listening to player feedback and working on further enhancing and building upon both sound effects and audio behaviour in the game.

In this upcoming beta you should notice new sounds for some weapons, improved directional audio and other improvements.

Please note: This is part of a wider ongoing SFX project, whilst you’ll notice a lot of differences there’s still some areas we’re still working on.



As well as the above, you can expect the following updates next time you play. We’ll go into more detail about what they are closer to the time. Here are just a few of the new things you’ll encounter in the next Beta, including many more that aren’t listed below:

• Map Rotation Implementation
  
• Continued animation polish in both TPP and FPP
  
• Small functionality changes to increase smoothness of different actions
  
• Adjustments to Supply counts
  
• Added emissive to heavy weapon projectiles to better show their flight path.
  
• Adjustments to rules about placing down Garrisons and Ops to increase their usage
  
• Tank Scale adjustment to reflect their real-world size
  
• Applied correct German supply canister and parachute to supply drops
  
• Ongoing UI/HUD Changes
  
• A fast Officer ‘ping’-style mark system to allow unit leaders to quickly identify points of interest for their unit in battle.
  
• ‘Shot from indicator’ to give infantry a vague indication of what direction they took damage from.
  
• Multiple bug fixes – We’ll list these in the May beta patch notes

That wraps up this week’s Developer Briefing! You now have the information you need to prepare for battle at the end of the month!

In the meantime, we’re going to be working hard behind the scenes to prepare for the next closed beta and our rapidly approaching Early Access launch.

Hell Let Loose is available to Wishlist now:

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Hey everyone,

This weekend we'll be hosting two streams on the Hell Let Loose Steam Store page!

We'll be answering viewer questions live whilst fighting on the frontline alongside our beta players.

If you've ever wanted to ask us a question directly, chat about some of our announced plans or simply see us get bombarded by artillery - this is the perfect time to do so!


Location - Hell Let Loose Steam Store page

Saturday 27th April - 6pm BST / 7pm CEST / 1pm ET / 10am PT​

Sunday 28th April - 12pm BST / 1pm CEST / 7am ET / 4am PT​

We hope to see you there!

Hey everyone,

This weekend’s closed beta is now live!

To get up to speed with what the goals of this beta is, as well as what new content you can expect to see in the next one, check out this week’s Developer Briefing.

Below is the list of changes and known issues for this beta. In short, we’re focusing on improvements and fixes to optimisation, lag and desyncs as well as collecting player telemetry data.

Your feedback is very important to us, so please share it in our feedback megathread here.

• Lag and desync improvements
  
• Tank physics improvements
  
• Telemetry and Analytics enabled (users can opt out through the options menu should they wish)
  
• Anti-Cheat enabled
  
• Fix to audio and animation desync for commander ability planes
  
• Added reminder ‘tip’ to Officers for Outpost and Garrison placement
  
• Client performance optimisations for St Marie map
  
• Fix to possible softlock on deployment screen on map change

• UPDATE: Reports of VOIP dropping. Restarting Hell Let Loose should fix this.
  
• Low reproduction client crash seen when changing map to St Marie via mapvote
  
• Tug of war HUD element is currently a placeholder
  
• All HUD, UI, menu and 2D elements within the game will be having an art pass
  
• Audio for directional and distance weapon sounds needs further work
  
• Players may encounter issues with jumping under poor network conditions (high ping)
  
• Delay can occur on map updating users positions
  
• Maps will not rotate between games (although users can change map by vote)
  
• Some minor problems with some resolution scaling (UI element may not represent scale correctly when changed)
  
• Sector locked icon sometimes may not appear when a sector is locked
  
• Outpost map icons may not pulse when newly placed under some conditions even if the player can spawn on it
  
• Server favourites not retained between re-booting the game
  
• If a player is killed whilst in an AT gun with an explosive weapon their corpse will be in t-pose
  
• Players cannot rebind keybinds for map marker placement
  
• Sound Effects for Outpost and Garrison construction does not play
  
• Some clipping issues for prone players in certain map areas
  
• Animation issues for M43 grenade when thrown underarm
  
• VoIP icons do not display on map screen, deployment screen, or you have died screen
  
• Player shadows sometimes are not visible when under interior light sources
  
• Some explosions need their culling reduced as they are not visible at correct distances
  
• If the user hits refresh on the server browser before any servers have been displayed they may become stuck in that screen with a perpetual loading
  
• Sometimes a player may become stuck in the AT gun barrel if the barrel is rotated into their player model whilst standing next to the gun
  
• If the player joins a game during a map change or reset there is a chance their client may hang
  
• Tank nameplates are not affected by nameplate distance options
  
• If the map changes by vote whilst the commander is deploying the commander will be unable to deploy on the next game start

The development team will be fighting alongside you on the frontline this weekend, so if you see any of us, do say hi!

Remember, there will be some fresh troops on the field this weekend, show them the path to victory!

See you on the frontline!


Hell Let Loose is available to Wishlist now:

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Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #21! This week we’re sharing with you what’s going on in this weekend’s beta, as well as some exciting developments for the next one!

For those out of the loop, starting tomorrow (26th April) at 11am BST we’re running a closed beta until Monday (29th April). This is the penultimate beta for Hell Let Loose ahead of Early Access launch on June 6th.



We’re pleased to share that for this weekend’s closed beta we will have servers operating in the following locations:

• EU
  
• US East
  
• US West
  
• South America
  
• Asia
  
• Australia

To go through what’s happening both in this beta and the next, as well as sharing some behind the scenes information on what we’re doing with your beta feedback we’re joined once again by Lead Developer on Hell Let Loose, Max!




Each Beta we have a series of large goals we hope to achieve (alongside collating all bugs and smaller issues that we expect to encounter). Last Beta was very much focused on profiling the netload and servers used to host Hell Let Loose. We wanted to know the exact specification of the servers and how many 100/100 player games could be hosted on a server of that spec. As a result of that testing, we noticed some interesting desync and other latency related issues on the lower end machines. We applied some hot-fixes during the last Beta that fixed the issue, but also noticed areas where we needed to push the netload optimisation even further.

The purpose of the Beta this weekend is to collect a clean set of data around the nature of each role, weapon, vehicle and general player behaviour. We’ve applied fixes to the two most critical issues we saw last Beta (desync and flying tanks) as these were really important for quality of life and will continue to watch them during the course of this weekend. We’re aware particularly of what was causing tanks to bounce/fly and are keen to make sure that the issue is solved.

We wanted to make sure that this weekend was stable and lower-risk, and that it would best resemble the test environment from our last Beta weekend. If you had a particular issue or bug in the last Beta and experience it again in this one - don’t worry, we’ve most likely fixed it if it’s a bug or have continued to improve it and you’ll experience that in the next Beta.

People may wonder why it’s necessary for us to collect this data. Fundamentally, Hell Let Loose is an enormous game with lots of tiny pieces all working together at all times. There isn’t a moment where a single feature isn’t expected to perform bug-free. By using these telemetry hooks, we can assemble a great set of data that will help us make gameplay design decisions with an extra dimension. While relying on self-reporting feedback from the community is fundamental, it’s tempting to fall into the trap of only acting on that feedback - which can often be a loud but potentially niche complaint (or entirely preferential).

By having a good knowledge of the game at a data level, we’ll be able to determine if things are performing as we’d expect, and also be able to begin conversations about particular topics. If Hurtgen has a very low play time, we’d immediately seek to chat to the community to understand why it’s less popular. The goal - as you can imagine - is not to balance absolutely everything. Some objects or weapons will always be less popular, however we’ll be able to see absolutely drastic differences in performance across the two teams. If the German artillery is achieving double the kills that the US artillery is performing, that will obviously raise immediate questions. In all, we’re establishing what we feel are key pillars to assist us on the long journey of making Hell Let Loose as good as we possibly can!

Below are just a few examples of the questions we’re asking and data we’re collecting:

• Player kills per weapon – eg. MP40, M1 Garand etc.
  
• Deaths by role – how many times a player dies in a specific role.
  
• Binocular usage – how often and for how long are Officers using this tool.
  
• Times played per role per player – How many times a player picks a specific role, such as Rifleman, Medic etc.
  
• Officer role picks – how often a player chooses to be an Officer.
  
• Role switching – does a player stick with a specific role or switch often.
  
• Deployment screen time – how long does a player spend in the deployment screen before respawning.
  
• Number of times an Officer uses voice chat – which channels, proximity, unit or leadership.
  
• Number of times an Officer uses text chat – unit, team.
  
• Equipment usage by role – how often medics use Morphine or Anti-Tank builds an AT gun.
  
• Suppression frequency – how often players are utilising the suppression effect in a firefight.
  
• Kills by bombing run – Commander role skill.
  
• Player time in map – from joining to leaving a match.

While we’ve applied fixes for two of the major issues for this Beta, our final Beta will contain a much larger bulk of continued work we’ve been doing, including:

• Foy (Snow map)
  
• Large continuation of SFX overhaul
  
• Map Rotation implementation
  
• Continued animation polish in both TPP and FPP
  
• Small functionality changes to increase smoothness of different actions
  
• Adjustments to Supply counts
  
• Adjustments to rules about placing down Garrisons and OPs
  
• Many more character models - including testing some cool coat physics
  
• Enlarged tank models
  
• Applied correct German supply canister and parachute to supply drops
  
• Beginning of total UI/HUD/2D overhaul

And much, much more!


How will you handle a snow-covered frontline?


The benefits of working with our friends at Team17 is that we’ve been able to put together a large roadmap for both our Early Access period and then beyond. We have a good idea of what we feel would make Hell Let Loose ready for version 1.0, and then all the content we want to add to expand the battlefield far beyond anything you’ve seen so far.

We’ll be releasing our roadmap as we launch Early Access. We’re very, very excited for the patches to come - which will contain a mixture of features, maps and polish across every aspect of the title. Just as we have with every Beta wave, we’re always making notes, playing the game with you and constantly pushing for a higher level of quality in every aspect of development.


Hell Let Loose is available to Wishlist now:

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Welcome to Role Guide #13!

This week we’re looking at a role that requires a cool head under pressure but isn’t afraid to make daring plays with their tank that change the course of a battle – the Tank Commander.

If you missed the previous guide where we looked at the Crewman, as well as how to drive or use the tank’s gun, you can catch up here.





As a Tank Commander you’ll be leading a tank crew consisting of yourself and two crewmen. Your unit will have the following setup:

• Commander: You
  
• Driver: Crewman
  
• Gunner: Crewman

In times of need, or crewmen being MIA, you may need to take up the mantle of driving or gunning your tank – so keep that in mind!

Playing the Tank Commander, you’ll unsurprisingly find most of your time within the tank in the Commander seat. This position within the tank grants the widest visibility range, giving you a 360-degree view around your tank via the periscope. If you’re swapping between seats in your tank, the periscope will lock itself in the position you last left it.

From the Commander position, you’ll be able to keep valuable information to both your driver and gunner, who have far less visibility than you. Use this advantage to call in obstacles, threats and allied/enemy movements that your crew would otherwise be unaware of.



Commander

Calm under pressure, tactical and mindful of their surroundings. A successful Tank Commander embodies these three traits.

You will decide where your tank goes, what targets to prioritise and when to engage the enemy. This rings true for not only managing your own crew, but also the requests of the infantry Officers on your team.

The Tank Commander has access to the Officer voice channel, which means you’ll often receive requests for armour support in key battles. Sometimes you’ll have to make tough decisions, such as where to provide help and who to leave without armoured support.

Keep in close contact with other armoured units on your team to maximise your presence on the battlefield, whether that’s by working closely together, or ensuring you’re spread out to cover enough ground.

Tank Defender

The Tank Commander’s loadout is far superior to that of a crewman, armed with an SMG compared to their pistol. Because of this you should be prepared to jump out of your tank if the opportunity arises to attack enemy Engineers and other infantry that may be harassing you up close. Taking this approach also means both the driver and gunner can remain active, keeping the tank both mobile and dangerous.

This is a risky move, but it can make all the difference in keeping your tank and its crew alive, or rolling over a rapidly placed AT mine.

• M1A1 Thompson
  
• Colt M1911 Pistol
  
• Bandages
  
• Westinghouse M3 6x30 Binoculars

• MP40
  
• Walther P38 Pistol
  
• Bandages
  
• Dientsglas 6x30 Binoculars

Look before you leap – Using your binoculars will allow you to scout the path ahead for enemy mines or ambushes. When safe, take the opportunity to do this – especially on paths and roads.

Better together – Tanks are strong on their own, but stronger when working alongside infantry or other tanks. This will reduce the chance of your tank being isolated by the enemy, flanked and destroyed.

Eyes in the back of your head – If you find yourself driving or gunning as a Tank Commander, leave your Commander periscope facing behind the tank. This will allow you to quickly check if the enemy are sneaking up behind you. (Thanks to community feedback, the periscope now acts independently from the turret.)

Stay vocal – Talk to your crew, inform your driver on where you’d like to go, tell your gunner ahead of time what you’d like them to prioritise and inform your crew of threats, obstacles and troop movements as soon as possible.

A friend in need – Listen out for allies requesting assistance via comms. Tanks can quickly change the tide of a battle.

Ask and you shall receive – If your tank is damaged and far from HQ, use either Officer or proximity comms to request a repair station be built. You can also ask a friendly Engineer to come and repair your tank.


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Hey everyone,

We’re happy to share the news that the next Hell Let Loose closed beta is arriving at the end of April. Dates below:

Start date: April 26th
End date: April 29th

Participants

Existing players: Crowdfund backers who had access to the previous betas and Recruit tier backers will also have another chance to join the fray!

Pre-Order Players: Any player who has pre-ordered the game (or will do so between now and the 29th April!)

What Can players expect?

Players will be able to play on both Hurtgen Forest and Sainte-Marie-du-Mont as per the last playtest. Since then we have been working hard on improving the overall experience, taking note of all of the great feedback we received and polishing up where we can.



An example of what’s new and improved are detailed here:

• Lag/Desync improvements
• Tank physics improvements
• SMDM Optimisations
• Plane audio desync fix
• OP & Garrison HUD Hint


In addition to the above improvements we will be largely focusing on the telementry and analytics identified in Developer Briefing #20. The information we collate will go a long way in identifying potential changes and supporting community feedback following the next beta, both on the granular and wider scale.

As a reminder, if you pre-order, you’ll be able to take part in our upcoming beta on Friday April 26th at 11am BST / 6am ET / 3am PT, as well as the final beta that follows.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #20! This week we’re sharing with you some of the telemetry and analytics that we’re planning to implement in the next closed beta (date announcement pending).

The information we collate will go a long way in identifying potential changes and supporting community feedback following the next beta, both on the granular and wider scale.



From roles to weapons and the metagame, we’ll be watching and applying what we learn. Below are some of the things we’ll be gathering information on:


This data comes directly from the players themselves and focuses on their individual behaviour and actions in-game. This can range from relatively simple data, such as kills with a particular weapon to time spent using a particular role or the numbers of times voice chat is used.
Client-side data we aim to collect in the next beta:

• Player kills per weapon – For example MP40, M1 Garand etc.
  
• Deaths by role – How many times a player dies in a specific role.
  
• Binocular usage – How often and for how long are Officers using this tool.
  
• Times played as a role – How many times a player picks a specific role, such as Rifleman, Medic etc.
  
• Officer role picks – How often a player chooses to be an Officer.
  
• Role switching – Does a player stick with a specific role or switch often.
  
• Deployment screen time – How long does a player spend in the deployment screen before respawning.
  
• Number of times an Officer uses voice chat – Which channels, proximity, unit or leadership.
  
• Number of times an Officer uses text chat – unit, team.
  
• Equipment usage by role – How often medics use Morphine or Anti-Tank builds an AT gun.
  
• Suppression frequency – How often players are utilising the suppression effect in a firefight.
  
• Kills by bombing run – Commander role skill.
  
• Kills by strafing run – Commander role skill (not live yet).
  
• Player time in map – From joining to leaving a match.

The information we can gather from the above is very useful at identifying if certain roles are fulfilling, our game mechanics are working as intended and whether players are making the most of the tools available to them. This helps us read between the lines and make usability and quality of life tweaks to the game and see if what we’re hearing from the community in written feedback is matching up with the data we’re seeing in-game.



This data is taken from the servers themselves, focusing on broader analytics such as the metagame, kills per team and which sectors were the most contested.

Server-side data we aim to collect in the next beta:

• Amount of kills a team get per map – For example, Germans get x kills and Americans x kills on Hurtgen Forest.
  
• Kills per role – How many kills did Riflemen get compared to Snipers, Officers, Machine Gunners etc.
  
• Sector contention – How long are certain sectors battles over for, what’s their capture and hold times.
  
• Strongpoint usage – Amount of players inside/outside of one when a sector is captured.
  
• Sector usage – Amount of players inside/outside of one when a sector gets captured.

The above information allows us to look at the workings of the wider metagame, as well as the performance of roles in the wider battle. This information is also useful in helping to identify whether strongpoints are serving their intended design within a sector.



Now you know some of the things that we’ll be looking into for the next beta! We’re excited to run this telemetry alongside the existing methods of community feedback as we get ready for Early Access launch on June 6th.

We’ve still got two more betas to hold before then, so you won’t be waiting long for news on when you’ll next be joining us on the frontline to battle it out!


Hell Let Loose is available to Wishlist now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/

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Welcome to Role Guide #12!

This week we’re looking at a role that travels in armoured style and brings the big guns rolling to the frontline – the Crewman!

If you missed the previous guide where we looked at the Spotter, you can catch up here.



As a Crewman you’ll be spending the majority of your time on the front in a tank. Under the leadership of a Tank Commander you will find yourself either driving a tank or taking control of its armaments.

This means that the Crewman role can find itself in two very different scenarios, driving or shooting. Being experienced in both is highly advised, if you lose a member of your unit in battle you could end up having to both drive and gun.

A Crewman must be aware of their combat environment, have an astute understanding of what their vehicle’s mobility options are as well as their firepower. Not only that, but a good Crewman will understand the same capabilities of their opponents too.

For example, Panthers have heavier armour when compared to their Sherman counterparts, but are outnumbered by Sherman’s five to two. Knowing how to utilise your strengths and capitalise on enemy weaknesses will keep your tank tracks turning whilst your enemies become a smouldering wreck.





Tank Driver

Fire up your engine, it’s time to get this show on the road!

The Crewman that finds themselves in the driving seat of a tank is responsible for the movement of the tank. Generally, you’ll listen to your Tank Commander’s orders on where to go, as well as obstacles to avoid. In the heat of battle though, you’ll have to rely on both your wits and skill to both survive and thrive in battle.

Know what you can do, know your limits and watch out for tank traps and mines!

How to drive

• Once in the driver’s seat you’ll want to know the following:
  
• Hold ‘E’ to turn on the engine.
  
• Once the engine is on, use left shift to move up gears and left control to move down gears.
  
• Hold ‘W’ to accelerate. To move from idle you’ll need to be in first gear.
  
• As your RPM increases, shift up gears to build speed.
  
• If you hit a something or need to go backwards, shift down into ‘R’, which is the gear below Park.
  
• ‘W’ will also allow you to accelerate in reverse.

When stationary and wishing to keep a low profile, return to Park and tap ‘E’ to turn off your engine. You’ll lose the ability to quickly escape, but the lack of an engine rumble can let you get the drop on enemy infantry at close range.

Oh, one more thing. The driver also gets access to a Hull Machine Gun. You can aim this with your mouse and fire with the LMB. This doesn’t have targeting, so you’ll need to use your tracers to track where your shots are landing.

Top tip: If you find your tank damaged or low on ammo, head back to HQ to find a repair station, or ask an Engineer to build one for you at the frontline.


Gunner

Lock n load, you’ve got the big gun!

The gunner brings the hurt with the tank’s main gun, as well as a coaxial machine gun. Infantry, tanks and other vehicles are your targets.

Where you strike enemy tanks is important, from damaging specific parts to focusing on a kill shot, landing your shots in the right places is of key importance.

Follow these rules to maximise your success and gain the adoration of your Tank Commander:

• Load the right round for the job. AP rounds for vehicles and HE for infantry!
  
• Aim to hit enemy tanks at a flat angle, this will stop shells from ricocheting off the side.
  
• Know when to take your first shot, as it will give away your position.
  
• Know your weak points! Damaged tracks inhibit mobility, damaged turrets severely limit aiming and a penetration to the side or back will destroy the tank.

Top tip: Use the mouse wheel to adjust the magnification of your optic!

• Colt M1911
  
• Bandages
  
• Gets a tank!

• Walther P38
  
• Bandages
  
• Also gets a tank!

Hull down: When opportunity presents itself, try to keep the main body of your tank behind cover/terrain, with the turret and as little of the hull as possible showing. This greatly reduces the risk of taking critical damage.

Front facing: Your armour is strongest at the front of your tank, it also has the highest chance to score a deflection. In combat, face your foes head on!

Greased lightning: Higher gears give you more speed, lower gears give greater turning mobility.

Onwards & upwards: Being in first gear will allow you to climb and navigate obstacles that can’t be passed on higher gears.

Bullet hell: Use the hull mounted machine gun and coaxial machine gun to suppress enemy infantry. This is particularly useful whilst a Gunner reloads.

Shield of steel: Tanks make a great shield for infantry pushing forward under fire. If you see friendly infantry having a hard time, offer to have them sprint behind you as you gloriously shield your team.

Together you’re stronger: Tanks are powerful, but alone they can be picked apart by the Anti-tank role. Proceeding through cover heavy areas without infantry support is just inviting yourself to be ambushed.

Watch your treads: AT mines are normally found in high vehicle traffic areas. Keep this in mind when pushing down roads or choke points at high speed.


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