The first half of Turning Tides, Battlefield 1’s latest premium DLC release, has already delivered two awesome new maps, a thrilling new mode in Conquest Assault and some of the best new weapons in the game to date. As we told you last year though, there was a lot more still to come as DICE prepped two additional maps as part of Turning Tides. One of those maps, Heligoland Bight, was being positioned as something special, as DICE wanted to design an environment that incorporated all facets of the iconic battle – the first naval battle of WWI – that was waged in the eponymous German bay in 1914 . This meant all out war on land, sea and air. And it appears that they’ve delivered.
In a new post on the Battlefield 1 CTE Sub-Reddit, DICE have revealed that they’ll be making some huge changes to Conquest Assault mode on Heligoland Bight as it was in the Customer Test Environment which would see both sides actually spawning with one of the L-Class naval destroyer dreadnoughts. These destroyers can shell the islands that make up the map, cap points, act as mobile spawn bases and most importantly, FIGHT EACH OTHER! Yes, we’re finally getting proper large scale naval combat in Battlefield 1. What’s more though, is that just like in normal conquest games, if a side is falling far behind on points, they will automatically spawn in a dreadnought in the form of either an airship or a destroyer, and the same goes for the leading team if they start trailing. This means that theoretically, you can have up to four dreadnoughts on the map at the same time engaging on land, sea and air!
Here’s the full post as it shows how DICE has broken down this major addition, including giving infantry players more protection from all these titanic vehicles as well as more options to take them down.
Happy New Year to the Battlefield 1 CTE!
First off, we’d like to thank all CTE players for their participation and feedback. We’ve collected a lot of responses from the test on Heligoland Bight, and we’d like to address some of the feedback and concerns.
The vision for Heligoland Bight is focused on highlighting the combat between sea, air, and land. For the Battlefield 1 Turning Tides map pack, we wanted to create a map that will allow players to really take advantage of the L-Class Destroyer and the Airship. Along the way (and because of community asks), we’ve been able to add Dreadnought vs. Dreadnought combat to escalate the naval warfare.
Yes, Dreadnought vs. Dreadnought is happening! Dreadnoughts spawn for each side and can shell cap points over the two islands of Heligoland Bight. The boat combat is intensified, as the side that loses its Dreadnought first is at a big disadvantage. (Though, because it’s Conquest Assault, the Attackers will get a second Dreadnought if they lose their first and are falling too far behind in score.)
Feedback from the CTE has been really useful to see that the vehicle combat was unbalanced. Rather than nerf the air combat, we made several adjustments to balance and counter the planes:
- We’ve added one more Destroyer per side (4 active at the same time!)
- All flags can be captured by a Destroyer
- Each side now has the Airship
- All flags can be captured by the Airship
- Both sides have active Dreadnoughts early in the match
- One less active plane (from 6 to 5). Each team has two HQ plane spawns, but capturing the U-118 flag will provide a third plane for either side
With these changes, the planes are critical for taking out the big vehicles, rather than strafing infantry in the trenches.
It’s also been clear from the CTE that the infantry doesn’t have enough options to really feel effective. Even when not in a vehicle, players should be able to make the right moves and be the team hero. To bring the infantry more in line with the ships and planes we’ve done the following:
- Added more AA positions with better cover
- Increased the infantry combat space with a new cap point on the infantry-friendly side of the main island (between the lighthouse and the U-118 flags, near the tunnel)
- Added 6 new sturdy pillboxes along the edges of the main island, to provide more cover from the planes (some even have emplaced MGs)
- Added 4 more boat spawns at capture points, to allow infantry to move around the map better after capping a flag
With the added flag on the main island, sturdy cover, and AA positions, controlling the north end of Heligoland with infantry is viable, and can lead your side to victory.
Along with your feedback, there have been a few callouts for ideas like adding tunnels and houses to give infantry players more places to fight where vehicles can’t go. We’ve had many discussions and tests in Heligoland Bight’s development looking at infantry-only spaces. (At one point we had the cliffs on top of the island in the play-space, but it only led to numerous un-fun sniper positions.) The result was that the no-vehicle combat spaces lessened the naval aspects of the map, or were already served better in maps like Zeebrugge Raid.
Going back to the vision for Heligoland Bight, we’ve seen in its current iteration some truly epic combat moments in the sea, air, and land battles.
Thanks for all the feedback and discussions. We hope you’ll take another look at Heligoland Bight and enjoy its unique aspects of Battlefield 1 gameplay!
All the best,
/The teams at EA and DICE
Currently , ICE has not officially revealed when the second half of Turning Tides – which includes Heligoland Bight – will be released. They’ve just revealed a new “Fire and Ice” Operations campaign yesterday (which incorporates two maps each from the They Shall Not Pass and In the Name of the Tsar DLCs), and it’s scheduled to run until 22 January. That makes it likely that part two of Turning Tides releases no earlier than that, and probably closer to the end of the month. Personally, I can’t wait to give it all a try!
Last Updated: January 10, 2018
