Lower the price of the Stuka to foot or buff it

Wow, You rock. A great explanation, thanks. I didn't know any of that. Maybe those squares could help a bit. I didn't know about the scatter inside the boxes.

No worries!

Juggling with in-game distances feels always a bit wonky, since usually there's no giant ruler laying around to put these dimensions into perspective. But this may give a slightly better impression about the actual size of these boxes compared to the ability's indicator:



As it turns out, the width of the indicator is already correct (8 m) and the 21 little chevrons inside can be used to quite conveniently gauge the length of the scatter box(es). The first rocket will impact somewhere between the 4th and 6th chevron, the second between the 7th and 9th, and so on and so forth. Just keep in mind that the area between the 1st and 3rd will be outside the abilities range while aiming...

Damn, I always had the feeling that placing the barrage right on top of your main target (for example clicking directly on an enemy MG leads to less damage and wipes. Now I know why, thank you!


Apart from that, I remember that some pro players had the rule of thumb that the first rocket will approximately impact on the first arrow of the overlay. Not sure if that is true, but maybe that helps some people as well as it is rather easy to follow if you want to hit two distant targets at once (which the Stuka is perfect for)

Heh, it was after reading your comment about these little arrows that I had to go back and check how they align... The overlay above isn't perfect but it seems each group of three - expect the first set - line up pretty nicely with the scatter boxes for each rocket. So as a rule of thumb, I'd recommend using #5, 8, 11, etc. as visual guide where the rockets will most likely impact.

Regarding the optimal spot to place the barrage... I've run some calculations the other day and, well, things are a bit complicated. For now it seems against infantry, it's indeed best to place them right in the middle of one of those scatter boxes to maximize the wiping potential. I'll probably post a more comprehensive analysis some other time if anyone is interested.

I have played a fair number of matches across various game modes with all factions.

That pretty much explains Ur in game knowledge. I guess "roughly the same" was probably the wrong fragment. Also, I'm not really annoyed. I really just feel that sometimes a different point of view should be presented.

Top of the top quality post

Thanks a million for all the info and time You devoted to all this. Wish the actual stuka line was divided into those boxes with maybe two or three arrows only to show the direction.

And btw - is the very beginning of the drawn line basically a guaranteed miss?

And btw - is the very beginning of the drawn line basically a guaranteed miss?

kind of yes and no. yes in the sense that no rocket can ever directly hit this area (between the 1st and 3rd chevron). but also no since you can still damage (and even wipe) stuff outside the scatter box thanks to the large aoe of the stuka rockets. you're just less likely to do so.

in order to illustrate, consider the following:

the lethal aoe radius of the stuka is about 4 m (a bit less, but let's assume 4 for simplicity's sake), and each of the scatter squares is 8 x 8 m.

if you park an infantry model right in the center of the 1st box any hit within a circle of 4 m radius around that unit will kill. that's almost the entire area of the scatter box and only impacts in the very outer corners will not outright instagib the target. hence, chances for lethal damage are about 90%, give or take.

if that same model is sitting right in the middle of the outer boundary of the scatter box that 'circle of lethality' is essentially cut in half (or, more precisely, the area where that circle and the box overlap) - and so are the chances that the rocket impact will result in a kill (~45%).
move into one of the corners, and now that half circle is again halved, resulting in only a ~22.5% chance to wipe.

this of course gets worse when you move the unit outside the scatter box, as now the area where the 4 m circle around the model and the box overlap gets smaller and smaller - until it reaches zero if you're farther than 4 m away.

TLDR; better try to aim the barrage so that the target is not near the first three chevrons if possible.

Not sure if people were even criticizing the idea to change the target reticule to "circles", but I'll address this one quickly because it indeed doesn't make sense and would actually make things worse (the current in-game targeting indicator may not be perfect, but it is pretty accurate nonetheless).

I guess a lot of frustration comes from the fact that people don't know how scatter works for the Walking Stuka, or in other words, where to expect the rockets to land.

To make it short: each rocket has a 8 x 8 m square where it can land in, regardless of distance or orientation (due to the absence of range-dependent scatter), with all 6 squares forming a 48 x 8 m rectangle (see graph below for clarity).



The 'center point' of this rectangle (or the pivot the indicator rotates around) lies in the middle of the 3rd square, so the last rocket will actually impact a bit further from the center point than the first. Apart from this, each rocket will always land in its respective square, not anywhere else, meaning there are no gaps or anything such where rockets could never impact.
The actual point of impact in each square is of course totally random, so two projectiles can, at best, land right next to each other or, at worst, up to ~9 m apart - this is where the perceived gaps in the impact distribution arises from.

Now, as a TLDR, what does this all mean?

• The rectangular indicator is already a pretty good representation of the rocket impact pattern, and the only way to improve it would be to give it the actual dimensions of the in-game scatter box (48 x 8 m).
  
  
• There's no real secret to placing the barrage, apart from knowing the dimension of the scatter box and lining up the ability accordingly (including all the guesswork of where the target will have moved to by the time the rockets arrive, of course).
  
  
• There is, however, the possibility to either maximize the damage output or reduce the chance of dealing no damage at all to a given target, depending how the reticule is placed:
  
  To maximize damage output, the target should be placed right in between two adjacent squares. This way there is the (rather small) chance of two rockets impacting right next to the target, but the odds to miss completely are also highest.
  
  On the other hand, if the target sits right in the center of any square, chances to completely miss are rather small, leading to more consistent damage output on average.
  
  

Thanks for confirming my suspicion that the centre of the barrage was not the best to place it. I've always placed it either slightly above or slightly under where I click to get the best effect. I've noticed more wipes from clicking like this rather than clicking directly on the MG team.

vhqp

Thanks again

On playing all factions an equal amount

You're half-correct. People do need to play all factions to understand the mechanics and issues. Playing just one side leads to horrible bias.

However, playing all factions a roughly equivalent number doesn't make sense at all, since that would mean you play 50% more Allied games than Axis ones. And across a playerbase that is simply not possible since the matchmaker needs to match the playerpool 1 for 1 exactly. If 3 people are queuing Allies as Soviet-USF-Brits and only 2 people queue Axis as OKW-Ost, 1 Allied players will be left without a game.

So if you play equal games with all factions, you will have 50% more games as Allies - assuming that you can even find matches that often. The true equilibrium is playing both Axis and Allies 50-50.

This is why Katitof and gbem style comments should never be taken seriously. FYI Gbem claimed that my 1544 games as Axis and 1501 games as Allies made me "Axis-biased" at 50.3% Axis games (while he himself played 100 times more Allied games than Axis ones).

You're half-correct. People do need to play all factions to understand the mechanics and issues. Playing just one side leads to horrible bias.

However, playing all factions a roughly equivalent number doesn't make sense at all, since that would mean you play 50% more Allied games than Axis ones. And across a playerbase that is simply not possible since the matchmaker needs to match the playerpool 1 for 1 exactly. If 3 people are queuing Allies as Soviet-USF-Brits and only 2 people queue Axis as OKW-Ost, 1 Allied players will be left without a game.

So if you play equal games with all factions, you will have 50% more games as Allies - assuming that you can even find matches that often. The true equilibrium is playing both Axis and Allies 50-50.

This is why Katitof and gbem style comments should never be taken seriously. FYI Gbem claimed that my 1544 games as Axis and 1501 games as Allies made me "Axis-biased" at 50.3% Axis games (while he himself played 100 times more Allied games than Axis ones).

I agree with all the above. IMO it is just hard to pinpoint the exact proportions of games played to make sb less biased or ideally not biased at all. I don't think anybody serious might really think it should be exactly the same number.

Another thing is voicing strong balance opinions without any significant experience of playing all of the factions involved. Maybe it should just be added to players' signatures and then people reading the forum would just know what kind of player voices what kinds of opinions.

But to the stuka ze fuss point. I really do feel that more precise indication of rocket target points (be it squares or dots or anything of that sort) would spare some frustration of using the stuka for both sides. To be precise here I must add that those point would just show aim point not precise landing points of the rockets. I understand that a pro player will know where each rocket is aimed. This means that the player on the receiving end will feel stuka is performing really well (looking at tourney use by pros it might still be a risky statement - stuka missed a lot). On the other hand, a fresh or intermediate player using stuka will feel that those rockets are frustratingly unreliable for such fuel investment.