This update mainly does 4 things:

1. Power infrastructure is slightly more expensive, but tougher
2. Building killer units are nerfed hard
3. Several generalist units lose some attack and survivability
4. Some units become more specialized, especially infantry and sea units

No units or buildings were added or removed.
No networth values changed.
No housing values changed.
No power usage or power production values changed.
No attack buffs were detected. All attack changes are reductions.

Buildings changes

Only 2 buildings changed.

Building balance story

Powerplants are now slightly more expensive, but also slightly harder to destroy. This makes power infrastructure feel a bit more important and less fragile, while still adding a small extra cost to economic scaling.

The Advanced Powerplant gets the biggest relative life buff, going from 60 to 65 life. That is a small but meaningful durability increase for a high-value energy structure.

Unit stat changes

Air units

Air summary

The Specter Warden receives a moderate nerf. It is still a stealth multirole strike aircraft, but it is no longer as efficient against vehicles and buildings.

The Nightfall Bomber receives a major nerf. Its attack drops by 20%, from 220 to 176, and its life drops from 125 to 113. This clearly reduces the power of heavy building bombing and makes bomber-heavy strategies less dominant.

Vehicle units

Vehicle summary

Vehicles were toned down across several roles.

The Ironback MBT loses attack and life, making it slightly less dominant as a durable all-round vehicle.

The Hailstorm MLRS loses attack and life, reducing its pressure against buildings and infantry.

The Ranger JLTV is now more expensive and slightly less durable. This makes cheap early vehicle spam less efficient.

The Siegebreaker Howitzer is hit hard. Its attack drops by 20%, from 190 to 152, and its life drops from 105 to 95. Like the bomber and battleship, this is part of a clear nerf to heavy building killer units.

Infantry units

Infantry summary

Infantry has become more specialized.

The Line Infantry no longer attacks or defends against buildings. It is now purely focused on infantry combat. Its description was also updated to match that new role.

The Urban Fire Team no longer attacks or defends against infantry. It is now focused only on buildings. Its attack and life were also reduced, making it less of a general-purpose assault unit.

The Breach Team and Drop Vanguard both receive moderate attack and life nerfs.

The Bulwark Guard is now more expensive and has slightly less attack, but keeps the same life. It remains durable, but its value is slightly reduced.

Sea units

Sea summary

Sea units received some of the most important targeting changes.

The Tempest Destroyer no longer targets sea units. It now targets vehicles and buildings. This changes it from a ship-to-ship brawler into more of a coastal bombardment and anti-vehicle naval unit.

The Swift Corvette no longer targets sea units either. It now targets air and infantry, making it more of a fast escort and coastal support ship.

The Guardian Frigate becomes more expensive and slightly weaker in attack.

The Leviathan Battleship receives a major nerf. Its attack drops by 20%, from 250 to 200, and its life drops from 145 to 131. It remains a strong building killer, but it should no longer completely dominate defensive structures on its own.

Biggest individual nerfs

The clear pattern is that building killers were too strong. The bomber, howitzer and battleship all received a 20% attack reduction.

Price increases

No prices were reduced.

Targeting changes

This is probably the most important gameplay change besides the heavy building killer nerfs.

Just a few small changes 🙂

• Clans can now have 5 incoming wars. Increased from 3.
• Machine Gunners price increased to 460
• Aggressive bonus increases attack power of units by 20%. Decreased from 25%.

We have three changes!

• Raised bank capacity for the Finance Bonus is downgraded from 50% to 30%
• New starting bonus: aggressive
  Every unit does an additional 25% extra attack damage when attacking. All buildings and units have 33% less life when attacked.
• New starting bonus: aggressive
  Every four days you will receive 5 000m² land. Upon choosing this bonus you will receive 5 000m² land.

We have a few changes for round 54.

True split
– Attack power is split based on the total networth value within a unit type. Let’s say you own 99 NW value of infantry and 1 NW value of air units, 99% of the damage is dealt to infantry rather than splitting the power 50/50.

Defense per unit type widget
– On the dashboard, you can now find a nice little widget that displays how well your defenses cover each unit type.

War menu item
– There’s now an extra menu item that displays the number of wars you currently have

Unit changes
– There have been a few statistic changes amongst various units (mainly decrease of price amongst vehicles)

Aircraft Carrier added
– This is the very first unit that can attack and defend three different unit types.\

New color scheme
– In the footer you can now switch color schemes. More to be added soon. If you have any CSS skills, you can supply your own!

At last! Some changes.

• Eight new units added, two for each unit type.
• Rocketeer bug resolved.
• Players can no longer go below 0 Experience Points.
• Apocalypse tank is renamed to SAM Tank.

Thanks to all the people who helped creating and testing the new units :)!

Changes

– Every 24 hours experience points are awarded for having attained a certain networth. This is to even out the experience points gained between points and networth players.

— Above 500 000 networth gives 25 XP per day
— Above 759 000 networth gives 75 XP per day
— Above 1 000 000 networth gives 100 XP per day
— Above 1 500 000 networth gives 150 XP per day
— Above 2 000 000 networth gives 200 XP per day
— Above 2 500 000 networth gives 250 XP per day
— Above 3 000 000 networth gives 250 XP per day

– Rocketeer attack power boosted from 35 to 45
– Experience points on province pages are no longer live and only updated between rounds.

Due to several circumstances development has been slow. But it seems that the playerbase is increasing again, which can only be a good thing. The next round will probably be a weird Corona-crisis round; so stay safe, stay at home, play AO 😉

Here are the upcoming changes for Round 34:

Gameplay changes:

• “Resume war” removed for now, it’s buggy and I have no time to fix it
• Because of that: Cooldown has changed to 36 hours
• Also because of that: No incoming modifier of 50%
• New clanpoints modifier formula by Panic
• Clanpoints mofidier: Max diff up is 25%, max dif down is 10%
• Clanpoints modifier changed from 2000pts minimum to 500pts minimum
• No resets during Assault protection
• No sending aid during Assault Protection

My thanks go to:

• Geronimo and Panic

Welcome to a new Round of Assault.Online!

Test server

Over the last few rounds it has become clear that the player base has been feeling increasingly disenfranchised and frustrated at the seeming lack of discussion around new changes. It’s clear people feel their thoughts and views have been unfairly ignored. Obviously this isn’t what the admin team want, and as a result we can now announce an excited new change in how changes in AO are developed.

Moving forward, balance changes will be conceived and implemented in the usual way, through discussions on discord and (rarely) on the forums. Once changes have been decided and implemented, they will be announced and pushed onto the new Test Server for a period of time to be tested by ANY PLAYER WHO WANTS TO.

There will now be full transparency, not only will changes be announced formally but you will physically be able to go and play them before the round starts. If you hate them and they suck, they can be reverted.

To that end, a new discord channel has been set up #change-feedback. If you would like access to the new server please go and register your interest there NOW. It is open to EVERYONE. Feedback regarding the changes will now be confined to that channel as much as possible.

The test server can be found on https://test.assault.online

We have been testing the new changes for some time now and have put the following online:

Balance changes (by Panic)

– Removed NW damage dealt/lost comparison when deciding Victory/Defeat

Complaints were made as to the predictability of the current engine. Attacking should be predictable, and it should be possible to work out whether an attack will result in a victory or a defeat from available information. As a result the engine is going back to comparing AP to decide who wins and loses. Other features have been implemented to better deter suicide attacks.

– Points reduction changed from 35% to 50% based on clansize

The 35% reduction was hampering, but was made worse by stacking with the Building Damage reduction which has been almost completed reverted. This leaves room for a slight tweak to the deterrent for Large clans attacking small clans. Overall, the points reduction has still been scaled back by 15% for BK.

– Building damage from 30% to 2% based on clansize

The predictability of victories and defeats under the attack engine shouldn’t be compromised to protect solo or newer players. This has been all but reverted (a small number has been left for practical reasons).

– Defensive startbonus adds 25% life to buildings

– Removed extra 5 buildings per turn for Defensive startbonus

These two changes go hand in hand. The defensive bonus will now allow new, solo, and casual players to have a way to attempt to defend themselves from the experienced player base. This bonus has been redesigned to be a hindrance to competitive play, but soemthing you can take to play a more chilled style. It should remain unattractive to points and networth players, hence the removal of the more buildings per turn. The numbers are tweaked such that the weaker DBs will now mimic the stronger ones, and the stronger ones will now have the defense of AMS. An AMS will have the life of less than 4 powerplants. Defensive bonus and PPE may not be potent, and the combination of the Land rule with AMS stacking may be strong at lower networth. We will have to be vigilant for any potential impact on points play and tweak numbers accordingly. (I am confident this will not be necessary)

– Money and land gain purely based on nw loss

(attacker lost twice as much nw = 50% money & land gain)

Again, this feature allows counterplay to deter larger clans land raiding targets who are weak by virtue of being solo. Currently, larger clans gain too much benefit to just having more players. Clans who wish to land raid will now need to more strategically choose their targets, and solo or casual players can attempt to avoid being on that list by defending themselves appropriately. The numbers are fairly minor, and generally this shouldn’t be a huge deal when offensive bonus and regular attacks are used.

Fixes (by Dikdap)

– Fixed tomahawk remaining after reset

– Do not say “out of range” on the attack page in a mutual war

– Enable demolishing silo’s even if you have tomahawks

– You cannot sell more submarines then needed for tomahawks

– Fix nw calculation when buying units multiple times

– Reset sat morale too if player dies

– Fix max in market sell

– Fix: Make the saboteur a special unit everywhere

– No truncate when buying units

Visual changes (by Dikdap)

– Go automatically to the unittype tab with most units

– Menu order has changed

– Removed the ‘save user’ functionality

– Added date/time to conversations

– Fix: When you are in war & not in range & you can not peace yet, it does not show the message “not in range” anymore

– Users can be CL & CT at the same time, fixed the layout problem

– Fixed notifications on mobile (a bit lower than the fixed menu)

– Put the help for beginners on the bottom of the page

– Make tap area bigger on mobile for sell all and max fields

– Restored exploring and selling back to ajax, so no page reload is needed and messages can be read.

– Make a lot of things more compact on mobile

– Fix padding on clanpage

– Show market timer right away

We know change can be scary, so without further ado.. the changes for BETA round 25.

• If the attacker loses A LOT more nw than the defender, the attack is a failure
  This make more sense in a war game. When you lose too much of your own army, and the defender doesn’t, it’s a win for the defender.
  Right now it is tuned towards 2.1 times the loss. Might be tweaked later rounds.

• Stolen land and money reduction based on clanmembersize difference and networth loss
  For instance; when you attack with a 6 player clan towards a 2 player clan, AND you lose much more nw than your defender, you won’t gain as much money and land as you used to. This is tweaked to at least a 1.5 times the loss. In that case, the maximum difference for money is 75%, for land is 55% with a clansize difference of 5 players.
  It works only from big to small.
  This is done to make it a bit more fair for smaller clans / solo players. If you notice a lot of this, try to make more effective attacks with less losses, or choose bigger clans to attack. This reduction won’t happen in a mutual war!

• Disabled support units for this round
  This makes the game and interface for new players a bit simpler, and they weren’t really helpful anyway

• Raid protection removed
  It did not fix what was broken, so we will try to fix it another way

• Disabled clan opting in and out
  Same as above

• Clan-points are scaled based on clan member size difference
  For instance; when you attack with a 6 player clan towards a 1 player clan, there will be a small reduction in points. If the difference is 5 players there is a maximum of 35% reduction. If you notice this a lot you might want to take on bigger clans.
  It works only from big to small.
  This reduction won’t happen in a mutual war!

• Building damage is scaled based on clan member size difference
  Same as above, but the max is 30%
  This reduction won’t happen in a mutual war!

• There is no total maximum in bank
  Just 10 deposits and a minimum and maximum per deposit

• Medal of Recruitment
  When a visitor registers, he/she will be able to fill in your userid.
  At the end of round, the one with the most active new users to his id will win this medal. There are a couple of checks to ensure these are actual new individuals playing the game.

• Public clan messages are now in plain text!

• The menu stays opened on large screens until you close it again
  This makes you switch faster between areas of the game

• If there is only one input field in the attack (step 2), prefill it.
  Handy for single unit attacks or spying for instance

• Mobile interfaces for buildings, units, missiles and market
  It’s a lot smaller, but gives a better overview (thanks to Elon for the help)

• Easy-spy™ buttons
  If you have spy-units, there will be one-click-spy buttons at several places in the game.
  It will go to attack and spy immediately the target province

• Added the top 3 clans to the dashboard
  This is updated as often as the toplists

• Daily summaries for people who were online the past 3 days who have enabled the Telegram bot
  Including top 3 pts last 24h, top 3 nw, top 3 pts.
  These summaries cannot be disabled yet, sorry.

Small changes:

• Added Telegram bot instructions on the dashboard.

• Clan tags and names are now unique

• Cooldown from autopeace changed to 3 days, just like manual peace

• You can now delete your clan between rounds

• You can now change clan name and tag between rounds

• Added cooldown time to clan wars page statistics

• Added research in progress on dashboard

• Added research time left in menu and clan member information

• Added links to the discord-chat on forum and clan-list

• Added extra bank-help for new players

Fixes:

• Button fix on clan pages for spy reports

• Fix double serialization on multiple occurences

• Fixed cooldown-list problem

• Fixed title on clan view, clan title instead of faulty “clan not in range” text

• Max number clickable in explore and sell land

• Fix links to forum topics on dashboard

• Fixed a NaN-number in the events where silo’s were disabled

• Fixed layout of /claninfo command in Telegram bot

• Fixed days left on satellites

• Fixed power usage error on bot

BETA round 24 has a few gameplay related tweaks:

• Attack and life for all sea units increased by ~10%
• Price for all sea units increased by ~10%
• Resource gains for aggressive attacks increased
• Carrier now carries 40 air units, increased from 25
• U-2 Dragon Lady now supports 40 vehicles, increased from 25
• Battle Fortress now supports 75 infantry units, increased from 50
• All support units now provide a 20% attack boost, increased from 15%
• Satellite networth decreased from 6% to 4% for all satellites
• Medal of Destruction is based on the missiles sent during war

As you might have noticed, there have been various display tweaks and fixes done by a relentless Dikdap. Thanks a LOT!