Hello, here’s another round of Esamir Rework reviews. I’ll also cover the Indar base changes, the storm, vehicle balance changes and new infantry gear. I’m not going to touch on outfit resource changes here, since this post is long enough already. I’d like to give shoutouts to
aln-isolator , [NWYT]Praefectus, the pilots of [SACA] and everyone else who helped give feedback.
Here’s the image gallery. This time around the bases listed in the document match the order in which they appear in the gallery.
https://imgur.com/a/5pd5VFj Esamir has a new skybox which is much less bright. I can now see vehicle weapon tracers when shooting. This is a long asked for change.
Andvari: 3 points now, 12 min cap with 2 points, 4 mins with 3 points. Consider adjusting the timers.
Ymir: No changes to terrain that I can see. It’s a 12 minute cap with two points owned, and 4 minutes with 3 points. Might consider reducing those slightly.
Apex Genetics has had its wall adjusted somewhat, as well as the rocks surrounding the triple stack. There are now more routes for infantry to enter the base.
Aurora Materials: Sunderer garage and surrounding terrain seem to have been lowered slightly. Also, there’s now a rock at the end of the garage, which reduces the possible angles the bus inside can be shelled from. The slope between the crescent building and the road has had some paths added for infantry. Overall, good changes. However, there’s still one issue here, and that’s the possibility of shelling the triple stack balcony from the ridge NW of the base. Additional purple spikes from the cluster behind the spawn room could be positioned to block this firing angle.
Eastwake Harborage: Point has received a new structure above it. It’s now on the bottom floor of a triple stack that has an expanded balcony around its second floor. This gives point holders a lot of additional cover, but the problems with this base still exist. There’s still a ridiculous distance between spawn room and the point with minimal cover from vehicles/bolters/LAs- a literal Death Valley. The area immediately around point is still extremely harasser friendly and could use some props to obstruct harasser movement. In its current position, the teleporter room is useless since infantry leaving it must still advance through Death Valley. Sundy positions are a bit sketchy, too. Fortunately, I’ve had a long discussion and now believe this base could be fixed with a couple tweaks. Consider replacing the AI turret outside the spawn room with an AV gun. This would discourage excessively aggressive vehicles from camping Death Valley. Likewise, replacing the light vehicle pull with an MBT pull gives defenders a bit more potential firepower, and increases the area attacking vehicles must cover to protect their own vulnerable spawns. This base would also benefit from the moving of primary teleporter room to a point higher up the hill and closer to the point, as shown by squad waypoint in this image:
https://i.imgur.com/TuEee9F.png. A second teleporter here at hearts waypoint
https://i.imgur.com/JUbXklc.png gives defenders another route into the point without going through Death Valley. At these two locations sunderer garages could be built to create safer spawn points for attackers.
https://i.imgur.com/QWblfz4.png https://i.imgur.com/w4HR05n.png Echo valley: Rocks have been added on the exterior side of the vehicle terminal to give it some cover. However, they aren’t close enough to each other to prevent me from driving through with a Kobalt bus, nor is there anything stopping me from hacking the terminal or using a GSD to get through the shield and then start driving around the base. Placement of a couple rocks in very specific spots would stop this. Secondly, a crate has been placed between bridges to give infantry another path into the point building. It’s a cool concept, but it needs some form of obstruction to prevent me from driving harassers or possibly larger vehicles onto the two bridges and blasting point directly. Thirdly, consider some form of sight blockers on the west wall to reduce the potential for LAs to spawn camp.
Excavion DS-01E: Cover has been placed over both tunnels, which is an excellent change. MBT pulls have been added to this base, though they could stand to be moved slightly closer to the spawn room to deter attackers from hacking them and flooding the base with AI vehicles. A point is located in a long narrow building near the eastern tunnel exit. B is in a triple stack on the south side. C is located immediately west of the drill site. Capture timer is 4 minutes with two points and 1 minute with all 3.
This base is mostly fine, but could do with some small tweaks for increased cover. At A point the point holders have few options for cover inside. There are two small smokestack structures (pictures in gallery) that could be replaced with actual buildings to provide more cover from aircraft for players moving around inside the base. Timers could probably be increased slightly. Overall though it’s in a decent state.
Genudine Gardens: Some props have been added throughout the base that’ll prevent harassers from turboing around like maniacs, but the gigantic hole in the wall in one corner needs to be closed off somewhat to prevent vehicle entry or at least make it more difficult. This base would be fine if that hole were sealed or obstructed better.
Grey Heron: Additional cover has been placed on the side of the staircase leading from spawn to B/C point. The secondary route for defenders has been fleshed out- the door now is high enough to get under, and there is a hole in the floor that allows defenders to drop down to the lower level. Cover has been added on the B side of this base.
For improvements, I still think a roof is needed over the stairs from defender spawn to the lower level. A wall alone won’t stop tanks from shelling it. C could use a bit of cover, but I’m concerned that adding too much will turn it into a fortress. You can enter this base with harassers, so some bollards should be added to each entrance to prevent that.
Jaegers’ fist: Sunderer garage has been added, and the trench has been improved. This base has some odd issues from an infantry perspective, namely that attackers and defenders have the exact same routes to the point, as shown in the gallery. I have no ideas for how this could be improved. I still believe the point needs some kind of roof to block HESH spam and A2G, preferably a solid one to deter LAs from doing C4 bombing.
BL-4 Recovery and Vidar Observation Post both have spawn rooms and light vehicle terminals. This is a pretty good change, allowing closer vehicle pulls and a shorter sundy reinforcement distance for attacks on the surrounding facilities.
Jord Amp Station: More cover has been added around C point. This is a good change, but doesn’t change the fact that A is still inside the station.
Mani Lake: This one has undergone the most terrain edits, and consequently has become a lot less vehicle friendly. The two trenches leading into the base have had barricades installed, allowing infantry to move through but not vehicles. The hills surrounding the base have had their exterior faces steepened significantly, preventing treaded vehicles from driving up them. This change is excellent, but needs a bit of tuning. The Western Ridge’s southern tip has a shallow enough slope that tanks can still drive up it. On the large mountain to the West on the far side of the road, there’s a small protrusion that should also be levelled. Once these two spots are taken care of, this base will be fine. Overall, the changes are very good here.
Mattherson’s Triumph: The Sunderer NDZ has been reduced in radius, which allows the defenders to deploy inside the south tower for a safer position. This is a good change. The ridgeline to the NE has had its northern face steepened significantly, preventing tanks from driving up that side. However, the SW face has become easier to traverse, so the ridge is still usable for bombardment of the catwalks and A point. If this goes live in this state, it’s not a total disaster since tanks driving up that will be very exposed to AV fire from the tower, but it still could stand to be addressed. Likewise, there’s still a nice spur sticking out of the north end from the NW ridge that allows tanks to easily shell defender spawn and A point. The fix here is simple- flatten the spur completely.
A point needs additional work. At minimum, the windows on each tower in the room where A point/SCU would normally go should be sealed off to reduce the angles point holders must watch. There’s very little cover on the ground, especially when you consider all the angles A can be shot at from. I believe the point could be enclosed in the same type of building used at Chimney Rock’s point on Amerish. The bridges are a mixed bag. They’re identical copies with one rotated 180 degrees, which means that crate placement favors the attackers on B side and the defenders on the C side. Picking one crate pattern for all 4 bridge ends is one possible fix. I’m still not sold on the idea of both points being on bridges. They’re very exposed to A2G spam and bolters. Overall, at the very least the terrain edits are a nice start, and the sunderer NDZ change is very welcome.
Nott Communications: This base is now entirely underground. Attackers enter by overloading a shielded gate, and then drop down into an amp station interior. These gravity lifts are one way, but please consider adding an up lift to replace one of the drop pads. A point is in the position where A points usually are in amp stations. B and C are in the room where SCU would be normally positioned. At the end of this room where the tunnels and back door would normally be is a one-way teleporter, which is the only way for anyone to get out of this base right now. Defenders spawn underground and there’s a one-way shield leading to where the vehicle bay normally is. To improve this base, I’d make the one-way shield a two way shield, and reverse one of the grav lifts. I could not test the cap timer since I did not feel like ghost capping half a continent.
Pale Canyon: Some cover has been adjusted by the big yellow tanks on the SE side. A new route has been placed through the rocks at the NW corner of the base. This is an interesting change, but I don’t know how that’ll play out on live since currently I can park a bus inside the base at the same location.
The Rink: The ground texture at A point is now ice, so it’s actually an ice rink. Too bad you don’t slide around here.
Saerro Listening Post: Trees added to A point to break LOS between attacking vehicles and the tower. The wall between A and B has had some new gaps placed in it to allow infantry to get in. Interesting changes for sure, but I don’t know how they’ll play out.
The Traverse: The bridge has been resurrected, although it’s in a heavily damaged state. It’s now an infantry only playground, unless you’re a bold harasser or magrider driver. Because the storm was here, I really couldn’t stick around and take a long look at this. Lastly, the bottom of the pit has been raised a bit and paths to the bottom have been defined more clearly.
There also have been some changes to roads around the continent, but nothing major.
Indar: TI Alloys: The removal of the bridge is a failure to understand why TI Alloys is such a difficult base to attack. On live servers, TI currently suffers from horrific sunderer placement options which combine with its central location to create a base that’s easy to defend. From the North, attackers must park their bus and attack up a hill through narrow ravines into entrenched defenders backed up by AI harassers, sunderers, ANTs, lightnings and even occasional MBTs. From the South, attackers have two bus spots: One is placed to the south-east, below the point. The other is placed directly south of the spawn room on the far side of the road. Both of these options are suboptimal- on the south east spawn the bus can easily be sniped by vehicles shelling from the Crown, driving down from the Crown, or by vehicles streaming out of the vehicle pull. The south bus on the far side of the road is also not ideal, since infantry have to cross the road and deal with a flood of vehicles as well as an angry AI turret. The only decent spawn location is at the end of the rock bridge, since that one’s reasonably safe from enemy vehicles and doesn’t involve attacking from the low ground. However, this position’s impeded by the fact that attackers from the north inevitably gravitate to the eastern side of the base since that’s safer from the defenders, forcing a three way that never ends. The result is a base that can’t be broken except by routers.
The removal of the rock bridge changes none of this, but instead creates more problems. The safe sundy position on the bridge is gone entirely. Further, the bridge’s removal allows tanks to bombard Ti from the Crown once more, since it served as a line-of-sight blocker. The new attacker foot path to the north east is extremely vulnerable to bombardment from the Crown.
As far as the base interior goes, a new wall has been added to the interior of the point room structure. This might give attackers a better chance to get to the point, but at the same time it might make things easier for the defenders should they conduct an organized push since there are fewer angles to set up a crossfire from.
So how can Ti be improved? I’d start by bringing the bridge back, or at least a small section of it to allow for a safe sunderer position at the east side. For the south, consider a tunnel leading under the road. This allows infantry to get to the base safely. I’d also consider adding in more props to restrict the passage of vehicles through the spawn room area to the northern side of the base. Removing the Kobalt bus fiesta there will make it easier for attackers to push in from the north. Lastly, if the bridge is not restored, consider creating a rock wall at the north east section of crown to prevent tanks from raining hell on anyone fighting at Ti.
Crown: The removal of D point is honestly a good thing. It wasn’t fun for anyone to attack since it’s open ground and below a cliff which enables C4 spam against vehicles and requires attackers push against entrenched infantry. Since Crown becomes a three point again, now the base cannot be stuck in a perpetual stalemate. I’m not a fan of where A point was moved to, either. I think if the rock bridge were kept then Crown would be mostly fine. With the three non-vehicle points it has on live. The issue with A being on that southern bridge is that if the attackers set up sunderers to control B, then they get A almost for free and can contest C as well. B point has been moved farther towards the center of the mountain and the tunnel system lengthened a bit, and a lot of cover has been removed at the initial entrance room that exists on live.The extra tunnel into B is an interesting idea and gives a better chance of an attack from the North succeeding, but at the same time it’s just another tunnel choke point to for aoe spam to create nasty farms. C is also problematic if it’s supposed to be the easy point for defenders to contest. It’s a fair distance from the tower, and it’s also open ground which is prime for A2G farming. I’d suggest moving this one into one of the nearby buildings if A must stay in the position it’s at on PTS. I’m not convinced the base needed any point position changes apart from the removal of D point. The current point layout on PTS favors an attack from the SE very heavily, and attacks from the East or North are far more difficult. While old A was very close to the tower, at least it provided a convenient point for attacks from the East. None of the changes really address the problem of poor bus location options, and with the current terrain there really aren’t many good potential spawn options. At most some garages could be added.
Ceres Hydroponics: Defenders now have a slightly shorter path to the point when pushing from the NE side of the base. The point itself has much less cover. I’m not going to make judgements on this without seeing how it plays out.
The Esamir storm: I’m not sure what this thing is supposed to do. The entire point of the game is large scale battles, yet this thing rolls around the map destroying the biggest fights. There’s nowhere safe from it. Sunderers will get destroyed even if put in garages. When outdoors infantry can be instagibbed by lightning for staying outside too long, and even when indoors their shielding takes frequent chip damage from environmental effects. The shield damage consistently drops players down about 150 shield points that constantly recharge, but this is enough to start messing with TTKs. For example, a commissioner can consistently OHK players. Since the shield damage is not synchronized across all players, it’s possible to be forced into gunfights where you have no hope of winning not because you were in a bad spot or outplayed, but simply because the game decided it’s your time to die. This applies doubly for lightning bolts which will randomly strike you down. There’s a text warning, of course, but random OHK mechanics really shouldn’t be a thing. You cannot use steel rain in the storm.
For vehicles this is obnoxious too. Ground vehicles lose most of their mobility, which will punish new players with poorly certed vehicles even more. Aircraft are even worse off, losing most of their vertical thrust. At times I felt like even afterburning upward was barely enough to keep the aircraft airborne. Vehicles kept in the storm for too long will simply be instagibbed, which cripples sunderers as spawns. The storm also destroys base turrets and terminals.
There are counters to the storm, though. Infantry can deploy lightning rods bought with merit that allow them to fight outside, but it doesn’t stop shield chip damage, and can equip an insulated armor suit at the cost of flak armor, nanoweave, or shield capacitor. This suit slot appears to be bugged and doesn’t actually reduce the chip damage taken by your shields. Carapace seems to be immune to this chip damage. Vehicles can equip insulated armor in the defense slot. This mitigates the performance hit to vehicles, reduces the damage taken by lightning, and prevents the storm from instagibbing your vehicle. Now, this is less of a problem in the first place for aircraft and tanks, but it screws over sunderers. Sunderers are already fragile enough even with deployment shield equipped, but forcing spawn buses to use this module and rely on their low hull HP is a very bad idea when paired with random lightning strikes and the severe lack of garages Esamir has.
With all that out of the way, the question I have to ask is why is the storm designed like this? It seems like a band-aid fix for zerging and actively punishes trying to create large fights. It cripples the vehicle game, negatively affects the infantry game, creates inconsistent TTKs, and only adds frustrating game mechanics. If the center of the map ends up with stalemates, it’ll circle around there endlessly preventing any kind of progress through the pile of three point bases. Why this, when there’s a lot more interesting concepts that could be used? For example, maybe the storm could reduce the rate at which players can spawn at a base/sunderers/routers. Maybe it could jam radaprevent Q spotting. Consider reducing shield chip damage to 50 shields instead of 150 to reduce TTK variance. There’s a lot more interesting ways it could change the game without being the anti-fun mechanic that it’s currently set up as.
Infantry gear: Lightning grenade: Cool, you can launch a targeted lightning strike when in the storm. More instagibs is what the game needed.
Lightning rod: This temporarily redirects lightning strikes near you. This is a solution to an obnoxious problem that doesn’t need to exist.
Condensate grenade: Reduces movement speed and ROF by 20% for six seconds. This is a terrible idea in an FPS game. This doesn’t create interesting gameplay situations. Instead of being outplayed, players hit by this just lose since the game’s punishing them for playing. Keep this in RPGs and RTS games. Now, we do have status grenades already, but do we need one that’s as powerful as this one is?
BEC grenade: Similar to Condensate Grenades, this is a horrible addition to the game. Anything that hurts player mobility/damage output is a bad idea.
Neutralizer Device: Campaign reward that allows players to acquire abandoned vehicles, and apparently strip ability energy from players too. I like the idea of vehicle acquisition, but I don’t know if we’ll ever see the second use of this tool.
Abandoned vehicles: Around the continent are the hulks of abandoned tanks, sunderers and aircraft. They come with a special ability that I haven’t really tested, HEAT cannons and the first generation ES top gun. For the sake of loadout parity for all 3 abandoned MBTs I’d like to suggest the Prowler get a Gatekeeper instead of the Vulcan.
Vehicle changes: Havoc missiles: Are these things still necessary, with the liberator nerfs? These things seem redundant now, and they’ll punish rep gal balls unnecessarily hard while valkyries with rep monkeys can probably still dodge these things easily.
Phalanx AA turret range increase: This doesn’t fix any of the problems with the current AA setup. Instead, it’s going to just annoy A2A players who are flying along at high altitude and getting plinked by base AA guns, which is the reason the things got their range capped to begin with! Honestly I think these things should be replaced by weapons like Bastion CIWS guns. Those things are nasty at close range but their damage output falls off heavily at range.
Liberator: -500 HP and ESF nosegun resist from 85 to 80. While the liberator needed some changes regarding its durability and repair tanking in particular, this change spectacularly misses the mark on many levels. This change skews ESF vs Liberator combat too far in favor of ESFs. When paired with air locks this brings down the TTK to incredibly fast levels (around 9 seconds, which isn’t even enough for three dalton shots) In this post,
mystoganofedolas https://www.reddit.com/Planetside/comments/ivjg8t/rock_paper_scissor_balance/ explains in great detail the liberator issues- it’s a blatant hard counter to ground vehicles, and gets brutally hard countered by ESFs on PTS. Hard counter mechanics are terrible in an FPS game. In this sort of rock-paper-scissors gameplay, things boil down less to individual ability and more towards who has an exact counter to something, which is extremely boring. There’s no skill in using A2A missiles, just as there’s minimal skill in hovering over tanks and daltoning them. In this post here
https://www.reddit.com/Planetside/comments/ivsssx/did_some_basic_math_regarding_the_upcoming/,
taltharius demonstrates that -500 HP barely changes anything in the case of liberators eating multiple AP shells before hitting fire suppression and flying off. Skilled gunnery should be rewarded, and sloppy flying should be punished.
So how can this be improved? Consider reducing vulnerability to ESF noseguns slightly. Adjusting Liberator resistance against tank shells, light anti-vehicle, gatling guns, and infantry rockets will increase the damage libs take from ground fire and punish poor flying/reward skilled aim. Possibly consider increasing MBT main gun elevation angles slightly, to reduce the ability of liberators to hover over tanks with minimal counterplay.
Harasser: Nanite cost to 300. Oh boy this one misses the mark completely. The problem with harassers has never really been cost related, but rather one that got introduced with CAI. The harasser itself is not overpowered and its efficiency in combat drops off hard at higher levels of gameplay. Only when harasser numbers become overwhelming (3 or more harassers vs 1 MBT) do the harassers stand a chance of defeating the best tank crews, and even then the tank usually can take 2-3 harassers with it. Harasser vs tank gameplay is extremely boring and very binary. If the harasser has a CQ AV gun it’s forced to fight at point blank which means I delete it easily. If it uses halberd or ES long range AV we both enter a boring poke fight where neither one does significant damage to the other. Even if the harasser opens up with rear hits the MBT still has an overwhelming advantage in firepower and hit points. With tanks, the problem since CAI has been poor muzzle velocity of HEAT shells which makes hitting difficult and what most players will have equipped, pathetic Basilisk DPS against everything (Kobalt kills stock harassers 4 seconds faster), Skyguards being helpless against every ground vehicle, and the Viper not having the accuracy to deal with small moving fast targets. Small changes to these three weapons will reduce harasser vs tank complaints.
Harasser vs Harasser is broken, for a different reason. Harassers have a weakness to gatling guns, which means that the Vulcan and Aphelion rip through harassers while the Mjolnir specializes in fighting heavy vehicles. In practice, this means that for low/average skilled car crews, vulcans are disproportionately powerful since less skilled players won’t know to keep outside minimum damage range. At higher levels an Aphelion car is very hard to fight. Toning back harasser weaknesses to gatling guns might improve this situation, but at the same time it might nerf the Aphelion too much. At the very least this’d probably reduce vulcan whine somewhat.
Overall, I have mixed impressions. The base changes are mostly for the better, but the storm, infantry gear, and vehicle changes are mostly bad or miss the mark completely.
I'm working as an Undergraduate Learning Assistant and wrote this guide to help out students who were in the same boat I was in when I first took my university's intro to computer science course. It provides an overview of how to get started using Linux, guides you through setting up Windows Subsystem for Linux to run smoothly on Windows 10, and provides a very basic introduction to Linux. Students seemed to dig it, so I figured it'd help some people in here as well. I've never posted here before, so apologies if I'm unknowingly violating subreddit rules.
An introduction to Linux through Windows Subsystem for Linux
GitHub Pages link Introduction and motivation
tl;dr skip to next section So you're thinking of installing a Linux distribution, and are unsure where to start. Or you're an unfortunate soul using Windows 10 in CPSC 201. Either way, this guide is for you. In this section I'll give a very basic intro to some of options you've got at your disposal, and explain why I chose Windows Subsystem for Linux among them. All of these have plenty of documentation online so Google if in doubt.
- Dual-booting with Windows and a Linux distro
- Will basically involve partitioning your drive and installing Linux from an external bootable USB through your computer's boot menu. You'll get the full Linux experience.
- Lots of Linux flavors to choose from. For beginners, Ubuntu and Linux Mint are generally recommended. I have Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, I'd recommend Ubuntu 20.04 LTS since it's newer, but it's all up to you.
- However, it can be a pain to constantly be switching between operating systems. Maybe you wanna make the full jump to Linux, maybe you don't.
- Life pro tip: if you go down this route, disable Window 10's Fast Startup feature as it will get very screwy with a dual-boot. I've also included a helpful guide in Appendix B.
- Using a virtual machine (VM) to run Linux
- Involves downloading a VM, downloading a .iso image file of whatever operating system you'd like, and running on your local machine.
- Devours RAM and is generally pretty slow, would not recommend.
- Using terminal emulators
- These provide commands and functionality similar to a Linux terminal, but are still running on Windows architecture.
- These days, the most commonly-used Linux terminal is called bash. bash stands for Bourne Again Shell (no, Bourne is not a typo), and is likely what you'll be using as well.
- Terminal emulators generally don't include a package manager, i.e. you can't download new bash programs, so pretty limited for general usage. BUT you can install a package manager externally, kind of hacky but can work.
- Examples of terminal emulators include PuTTY, Git Bash, msys2 and mingw.
- Using Windows Subsystem for Linux (either WSL 1 or WSL 2)
- WSL provides a compatibility layer for running GNU/Linux programs natively on Windows 10. It has integration features certain Windows 10 development apps (notably Visual Studio Code) as well.
- You've got two options, WSL 1 and WSL 2. WSL 2 was recently released and features a real Linux kernel, as opposed to an simulated kernel in WSL. This means WSL 2 offers significant performance advantages, but still lacks some of WSL 1's features.
- WSL 1 is what I currently use, and thus what I'll be talking about in this guide. I'm not necessarily recommending it, frankly I regret not doing a dual-boot sooner and ditching Windows, but a dual-boot isn't for everyone and takes a lot of time you might not have right now.
- Getting WSL initially setup is easy, but making it run smoothly requires some effort, and some features (like audio playback or displaying GUIs) require workarounds you can research if interested. WSL will also not work properly with low-level system tools.
With that out of the way, let's get started with setting up WSL 1 on your Windows 10 machine.
Setting up WSL
So if you've read this far I've convinced you to use WSL. Let's get started with setting it up. The very basics are outlined in Microsoft's guide
here, I'll be covering what they talk about and diving into some other stuff.
1. Installing WSL
Press the Windows key (henceforth Winkey) and type in PowerShell. Right-click the icon and select run as administrator. Next, paste in this command:
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
Now you'll want to perform a hard shutdown on your computer. This can become unecessarily complicated because of Window's fast startup feature, but here we go. First try pressing the Winkey, clicking on the power icon, and selecting Shut Down while holding down the shift key. Let go of the shift key and the mouse, and let it shutdown. Great! Now open up Command Prompt and type in
wsl --help
If you get a large text output, WSL has been successfully enabled on your machine. If nothing happens, your computer failed at performing a hard shutdown, in which case you can try the age-old technique of just holding down your computer's power button until the computer turns itself off. Make sure you don't have any unsaved documents open when you do this.
2. Installing Ubuntu
Great! Now that you've got WSL installed, let's download a Linux distro. Press the Winkey and type in Microsoft Store. Now use the store's search icon and type in Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux distribution, and seems to have the best integration with WSL, so that's what we'll be going for. If you want to be quirky,
here are some other options. Once you type in Ubuntu three options should pop up: Ubuntu, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
 Installing plain-old "Ubuntu" will mean the app updates whenever a new major Ubuntu distribution is released. The current version (as of 09/02/2020) is Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS. The other two are older distributions of Ubuntu. For most use-cases, i.e. unless you're running some software that will break when upgrading, you'll want to pick the regular Ubuntu option. That's what I did.
Once that's done installing, again hit Winkey and open up Ubuntu. A console window should open up, asking you to wait a minute or two for files to de-compress and be stored on your PC. All future launches should take less than a second. It'll then prompt you to create a username and password. I'd recommend sticking to whatever your Windows username and password is so that you don't have to juggle around two different usepassword combinations, but up to you.
Finally, to upgrade all your packages, type in
sudo apt-get update
And then
sudo apt-get upgrade
apt-get is the Ubuntu package manager, this is what you'll be using to install additional programs on WSL.
3. Making things nice and crispy: an introduction to UNIX-based filesystems
tl;dr skip to the next section The two above steps are technically all you need for running WSL on your system. However, you may notice that whenever you open up the Ubuntu app your current folder seems to be completely random. If you type in pwd (for Print Working Directory, 'directory' is synonymous with 'folder') inside Ubuntu and hit enter, you'll likely get some output akin to /home/
. Where is this folder? Is it my home folder? Type in ls (for LiSt) to see what files are in this folder. Probably you won't get any output, because surprise surprise this folder is not your Windows home folder and is in fact empty (okay it's actually not empty, which we'll see in a bit. If you type in ls -a, a for All, you'll see other files but notice they have a period in front of them. This is a convention for specifying files that should be hidden by default, and ls, as well as most other commands, will honor this convention. Anyways).
So where is my Windows home folder? Is WSL completely separate from Windows? Nope! This is Windows Subsystem for Linux after all. Notice how, when you typed pwd earlier, the address you got was /home/. Notice that forward-slash right before home. That forward-slash indicates the root directory (not to be confused with the /root directory), which is the directory at the top of the directory hierarchy and contains all other directories in your system. So if we type ls /, you'll see what are the top-most directories in your system. Okay, great. They have a bunch of seemingly random names. Except, shocker, they aren't random. I've provided a quick run-down in Appendix A.
For now, though, we'll focus on /mnt, which stands for mount. This is where your C drive, which contains all your Windows stuff, is mounted. So if you type ls /mnt/c, you'll begin to notice some familiar folders. Type in ls /mnt/c/Users, and voilà, there's your Windows home folder. Remember this filepath, /mnt/c/Users/. When we open up Ubuntu, we don't want it tossing us in this random /home/ directory, we want our Windows home folder. Let's change that!
4. Changing your default home folder
Type in sudo vim /etc/passwd. You'll likely be prompted for your Ubuntu's password. sudo is a command that gives you root privileges in bash (akin to Windows's right-click then selecting 'Run as administrator'). vim is a command-line text-editing tool, which out-of-the-box functions kind of like a crummy Notepad (you can customize it infinitely though, and some people have insane vim setups. Appendix B has more info). /etc/passwd is a plaintext file that historically was used to store passwords back when encryption wasn't a big deal, but now instead stores essential user info used every time you open up WSL.
Anyway, once you've typed that in, your shell should look something like this: 
Using arrow-keys, find the entry that begins with your Ubuntu username. It should be towards the bottom of the file. In my case, the line looks like
theshep:x:1000:1000:,,,:/home/pizzatron3000:/bin/bash
See that cringy, crummy /home/pizzatron3000? Not only do I regret that username to this day, it's also not where we want our home directory. Let's change that! Press i to initiate vim's -- INSERT -- mode. Use arrow-keys to navigate to that section, and delete /home/ by holding down backspace. Remember that filepath I asked you to remember? /mnt/c/Users/. Type that in. For me, the line now looks like
theshep:x:1000:1000:,,,:/mnt/c/Users/lucas:/bin/bash
Next, press esc to exit insert mode, then type in the following:
:wq
The : tells vim you're inputting a command, w means write, and q means quit. If you've screwed up any of the above sections, you can also type in :q! to exit vim without saving the file. Just remember to exit insert mode by pressing esc before inputting commands, else you'll instead be writing to the file.
Great! If you now open up a new terminal and type in pwd, you should be in your Window's home folder! However, things seem to be lacking their usual color...
5. Importing your configuration files into the new home directory
Your home folder contains all your Ubuntu and bash configuration files. However, since we just changed the home folder to your Window's home folder, we've lost these configuration files. Let's bring them back! These configuration files are hidden inside /home/, and they all start with a . in front of the filename. So let's copy them over into your new home directory! Type in the following:
cp -r /home//. ~
cp stands for CoPy, -r stands for recursive (i.e. descend into directories), the . at the end is cp-specific syntax that lets it copy anything, including hidden files, and the ~ is a quick way of writing your home directory's filepath (which would be /mnt/c/Users/) without having to type all that in again. Once you've run this, all your configuration files should now be present in your new home directory. Configuration files like .bashrc, .profile, and .bash_profile essentially provide commands that are run whenever you open a new shell. So now, if you open a new shell, everything should be working normally. Amazing. We're done!
6. Tips & tricks
Here are two handy commands you can add to your .profile file. Run vim ~/.profile, then, type these in at the top of the .profile file, one per line, using the commands we discussed previously (i to enter insert mode, esc to exit insert mode, :wq to save and quit).
alias rm='rm -i' makes it so that the rm command will always ask for confirmation when you're deleting a file. rm, for ReMove, is like a Windows delete except literally permanent and you will lose that data for good, so it's nice to have this extra safeguard. You can type rm -f to bypass. Linux can be super powerful, but with great power comes great responsibility. NEVER NEVER NEVER type in rm -rf /, this is saying 'delete literally everything and don't ask for confirmation', your computer will die. Newer versions of rm fail when you type this in, but don't push your luck. You've been warned. Be careful.
export DISPLAY=:0 if you install XLaunch VcXsrv, this line allows you to open graphical interfaces through Ubuntu. The export sets the environment variable DISPLAY, and the :0 tells Ubuntu that it should use the localhost display.
Appendix A: brief intro to top-level UNIX directories
tl;dr only mess with /mnt, /home, and maybe maybe /usr. Don't touch anything else.
- bin: binaries, contains Ubuntu binary (aka executable) files that are used in bash. Here you'll find the binaries that execute commands like ls and pwd. Similar to /usbin, but bin gets loaded earlier in the booting process so it contains the most important commands.
- boot: contains information for operating system booting. Empty in WSL, because WSL isn't an operating system.
- dev: devices, provides files that allow Ubuntu to communicate with I/O devices. One useful file here is /dev/null, which is basically an information black hole that automatically deletes any data you pass it.
- etc: no idea why it's called etc, but it contains system-wide configuration files
- home: equivalent to Window's C:/Users folder, contains home folders for the different users. In an Ubuntu system, under /home/ you'd find the Documents folder, Downloads folder, etc.
- lib: libraries used by the system
- lib64 64-bit libraries used by the system
- mnt: mount, where your drives are located
- opt: third-party applications that (usually) don't have any dependencies outside the scope of their own package
- proc: process information, contains runtime information about your system (e.g. memory, mounted devices, hardware configurations, etc)
- run: directory for programs to store runtime information.
- srv: server folder, holds data to be served in protocols like ftp, www, cvs, and others
- sys: system, provides information about different I/O devices to the Linux Kernel. If dev files allows you to access I/O devices, sys files tells you information about these devices.
- tmp: temporary, these are system runtime files that are (in most Linux distros) cleared out after every reboot. It's also sort of deprecated for security reasons, and programs will generally prefer to use run.
- usr: contains additional UNIX commands, header files for compiling C programs, among other things. Kind of like bin but for less important programs. Most of everything you install using apt-get ends up here.
- var: variable, contains variable data such as logs, databases, e-mail etc, but that persist across different boots.
Also keep in mind that all of this is just convention. No Linux distribution needs to follow this file structure, and in fact almost all will deviate from what I just described. Hell, you could make your own Linux fork where /mnt/c information is stored in tmp.
Appendix B: random resources
EDIT: implemented various changes suggested in the comments. Thanks all!
Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near as good as some of the theorycrafters in this sub, and better numbers may be available elsewhere but I think this is worth a read, if at all as a case study I just clocked in full 7 days of playing this game with a build made specifically for the Merciless Exotic Rifle, and while it's widely agreed on that it needs a buff, I would like to explore the shortcomings of this gun and my love-hate relationship with it.
Let's start with the basics. What does the Merciless actually do?
Binary Trigger
This weapon fires on trigger pull and release.
If both bullets hit the same enemy, gain a stack.
At 7 stacks, shooting an enemy deals 500% amplified damage and creates a 7m explosion dealing 500% weapon damage, consuming the stacks.
Reading the talent, it sounds easy, right? A rifle with a 30 bullets mag, I need to hit one dude 14 consecutive times and he will get a nasty explosion and tons of damage.
But, the Merciless' drawback or the thing that you need to build to overcome and take advantage of, is that it's perhaps the worst weapon in the game to handle. As soon as you take a shot and see the recoil, you'd be sending it to the stash, never to see the light again.
That is unless you build with the attribute "Weapon Handling". There are two ways you can approach this:
1- Get your chest talent "Braced". Braced will give you a whooping 45% Weapon Handling while you're in cover.
2- Invest in Weapon Handling attributes.
In my experience, the sweet spot to properly control the Merciless' recoil is somewhere between 30 and 40% Handling.
That means if you're going for option 1 you are well above that ideal stat and you are deleting the chance for a damage talent in your chest piece, which neuters your build by blocking you from using popular talents like Glass Cannon, Spotter or the soon to be buffed Obliterate.
Option 2 will cost you 36% CHD, as you will need at least 3 Weapon Handling rolls to reach 30% Handling (Merciless has 10), assuming max rolls.
Whatever you decide to do, you will end up with a setup that will, more often than not, land consecutive shots and rack up those stacks. You will be seeing lots of Explosions go off...
...and it's underwhelming.
In Heroic 4-man, an Explosion is unable to finish off an unarmored purple. This is, for me, inexcusable.
I'm assuming the devs want you to make a tactical use of your maxed shot. But hitting a fully armored enemy with it barely tickles them, and you cannot one shot a red, let alone finish off an unarmored purple or yellow I'm not using Glass Cannon, so I could be losing on damage, but if I need Glass Cannon for the damage to be up to other guns in the game, why would I go with the Merciless to begin with?. So what do I get from the stacks I had to build up on the build I had to make around one attribute to make this gun actually work?
Proposed Solutions and changes Now, not everything is complaining. I do have ideas that aren't mutually exclusive:
1- A named item with superior Weapon Handling. Like Fox or Contractor's, a named say Ceska or Grupo Sombra that rolls with 14% Handling.
2- An obviously needed buff. These 500% values are just not enough. PTS had 1200% or 900% if I'm not mistaken and it was deemed far too strong, so maybe settle in a middle ground at 700/800?
3- A base damage increase. This is probably the laziest to do and the safest.
If you made it all the way through here, congrats. You must be interested in the subject, and if you just got here looking for a Tl;dr, I'm sorry I have none. This shit is just too much to put in a sentence.
Thoughts?
submitted by Greetings Warriors!
Now that the (green) smoke has settled from the Y4S2 and the CCU landing, we thought now would be a good time to do a quick subreddit news post, as there are a few things to catch you up on - before Y4S3 arrives and there is more news to take the sticky post slot!
Upcoming Tournaments
First up, there are a number of tournaments happening in the next few weeks.
Slayscion Gaming are returning with 4v4 and 2v2 tournaments on PC, in EU and NA regions in the next few weeks! And if you didn’t get chance to watch the last 4s tournament, you can watch
the VOD of The Arena’s cross region dominion tournament last weekend here. Remember to keep an eye on
Battlefy.com for upcoming For Honor events!
Ubisoft have announced that the PC Dominion Series will be starting up next season, so now is an excellent time to get into competitive tournament play, and practice for the big tournaments on the horizon!
New Mods
Next, I’d like to welcome two new mods to the team,
u/SenpaiKaplan (SenKa) and
u/DaniUsagi. I’m sure regular readers will recognise these two, as they are both frequent contributors to the sub, with many interesting tech posts between them. We’ve been seeing a big increase in viewers and posts since the CCU, and their help and expertise will be much appreciated! Please give them a warm welcome!
Poll Posts have been disabled
Since Reddit added the new Poll option on posts, we have seen a big influx of these posts, and unfortunately 90% of them have been very low effort, normally just a title and a binary choice, which we have had to remove. Adding a “no low-effort polls” clause to rule 6 hasn’t helped with that situation, so we have decided to disable the option entirely. If you do still want to do poll the readers here as part of a discussion post, or want to gather data to find opinions on a specific question, you are welcome to include links to external survey sites (like surveymonkey or google forms) in text posts - we are only trying to cut down on low-effort posts, not genuine use of poll for interesting content.
Info Hub Update
The Info Hub has been updated with all the changes from the CCU and the follow-up patches, including the 3 new executions, new punishes, balance information on each character, and an
All Attack Properties sheet which allows you to compare attacks across the cast, and contains lots of data that doesn’t fit on the individual character sheets (like hit reactions for example). We are still in the process of revamping the General Info sheet, and an update to the Viability Tables is also in the works, now that there has been a decent amount of time since the CCU for the meta to stabilise. Also planned is addition of frame advantage sections on some moves for which it is particularly relevant.
If you spot any errors, outdated info, or have requests for information you’d like to see included in the hub, please let us know by commenting on the hub itself, messaging me or the mod team as a whole, or contacting one of us on discord.
Some CCU Mythbusting
Since the CCU update, I have seen a few persistent bits of misinformation floating about, and I’d like to take this opportunity to bust a few of these myths:
- The CCU did NOT remove delayed attacks. The changes to indicator speeds with the CCU made it so that delaying or buffering attacks do not make a difference to the length of animation + indicator shown to the opponent - but it did not remove the ability to delay attacks. You can still delay an attack within the input window, which can be used to give attacks different parry timings, or to better dodge incoming attacks in the case of dodge attacks. The best way to demonstrate this is to go into the training arena as JJ, and do the light -> light chain, first inputting the attacks as fast as you can, and then leaving as big a gap between the lights as possible.
- X Hero’s damage has NOT been “gutted”. In particular, Peacekeeper... In the CCU, attack damage has been mostly standardised - based on the speed of the attack, and its position in chain, and very little else. For example, almost every 800ms opener heavy does 24 damage, almost every 400ms chain light does 9 damage, and so on. This means for some characters that previously had greatly overtuned damage, their damage has come down to the average, and for others, their damage has stayed the same or even gone up in places. The one category of attacks that have not had any changes to their damage are bleed attacks, and so, Peacekeeper’s heavies have been reduced so that combined with the guaranteed 1 + 10 bleed from Deep Gouge, they do the standard damage. Yes, it uses a bit more stamina than a regular heavy, and yes, bleed damage has its own downsides (and upsides) compared to immediate damage, but to say that Peacekeeper’s damage has been disproportionately lowered is just false. The frame advantage on Deep Gouge is considerable, so it behaves almost like it chains anyway. If anything, her damage is higher than average, thanks to her GB triple stab punish being unchanged at 38 total damage, which is way higher than the standard GB punish of 24, and closer to the level of OOS punishes.
- You get frame advantage after being hit by chain lights and light chain finishers, NOT all light attacks that do not chain. I have seen many people saying that Warmonger “breaks the rules” of frame advantage by having advantage on her bash follow-up, and the same for Warlord. However those attacks are not part of a normal attack chain, and therefore do not fall under the same frame advantage rules. This also makes sense if you step back and think about it - the changes were implemented specifically to weaken “light spam”, and special bash follow-ups cannot be “light spam” because they cannot be used as part of Light->Light chains. There currently is one character who does break the light attack frame advantage rules - and that is Highlander’s chain lights, which do have frame advantage on hit. As of the patch on the 27th, Shugoki’s light attacks no longer have frame advantage on hit - and your light attack will hit before his next one. But the hyperarmour on them does still allow him to trade with your light attack.
- And finally, a mention of “light spam” - no, the CCU did NOT “buff light spam”. The CCU has certainly buffed light attacks, but it has also specifically nerfed light attack spam. To be pedantic - “spam” is when someone repeats the same attack over and over, and this is what the devs have taken from the complaints about “light spam”. The CCU has given more tools to allow you to defend against repeated light attacks: dodging out of Light -> Light chains, and granting frame advantage to the defender after light finishers. Additionally, the damage nerfs, and stamina changes have made it so that you will survive for longer against an opponent who is spamming lights. To be honest, I think it is quite impressive that the devs have managed to improve light attacks in general, whilst still nerfing the specific use-case of “spamming” them. The continuing complaints seem to be because for a significant fraction of the community, “spam” just means “doing anything more than once per fight, especially if I lose to it”. And if that’s what you are actually complaining about, honestly, there are no balance changes the devs could ever make that will make you happy, short of your own personal win button. There is still one thing you can do though: Click here
That’s all Warriors, thanks for reading, and see you on the battlefield!
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