Commander Update Beta 2021 - General Feedback

Doctrinal weapon upgrades/infatry

With the changes to mainline infatry certain upgrades and doctrinal infatry lose value. In addition some of the upgrades alternate from dominating the meta to becoming obsolete. In sort the are difficult to balance.

My suggestions is to turn some of this weapons upgrade to squad so that they can separately balance and not over lap. The change includes:
Flamer for EFA.

USF
have assault engineer no need fo such an upgrade (replace with better weapons or abilities for riflemen like M1C, M9A1, defensive stances increasing far dps no suppression)

UKF
Separate engineer (or IS) with rifles

OKW
A separate engineer type unit lower Pop, K98, sandbag, wire, mine sweepers, to share the burden with SP

Ostheer
Jaeger Light Infantry upgrade/Jaeger Command Squad

Scrap the upgrade replaced with toned version of JCS.
Either scrap Jaeger Command Squad or redesign to have some "command" abilities like min version of "Smoke Raid Operation" (without the cap)


Soviet

Conscript PTRS Package
Conscript Assault Package Upgrade

Scrap the upgrades replace with "new" squads with abilities/bonuses designed for the role.

UKF
Tank Hunter Infantry Section

The only unit to go the other way round. Scarp unit move Boys to Halftruck allowing engineer to equip the weapon.

Why is it a soviet anti infantry air strafe loiter can wipe two of my 5 man vsl grens while I have a 222 protecting them for anti air? I do not understand

I have a 222 protecting them for anti air? I do not understand

This has to be a joke.

This has to be a joke.

No that's what happened. And my 222 was set to attack vehicles only. I did not have the pop cap for an ostwind

You do realize a 222 is not a dedicated AA unit?

I will COMBINE all my wanted changes and also adressing the upcoming patch.

SOVIETS:

Commander changes:

They are overall great.
My only wish is that since ur not buffing KV2, KV8, give him something against artillery instead of KV2 (IL2 precision bombing strike)
And instead of recon spy network, that would be cool. Spy network is better but only in one commander which is sad.
The commander is totally helpless if axis spams Howitzers.


About the last update:
-revert all soviet nerfs. SU85 Vision nerf is unneeded and makes the ability now more a disadvantage.
-ZIS barrage nerf (added delay) also makes the ability useless now, because u cant use it against blobs anymore. It's just too slow, by the time it shoots the blob has already moved.
-Also do not increase population for any units. Shocks and guards and kv1 population needs to stay the way it is. The population for units is getting ridiculous. Do u even understand whjat ur doing wiht ur game if u keep increasing pop of units? One day we see 1 tank and 1 infantry on the battlefield. It also completely ruins the idea of having elite units, because they arent elite if they cost so much pop.
Why do u punish players for making good units? It makes no sense.
-ML20 smoke ability, that should be 1 shell that gives big smoke, not 5 dumb shells with little smoke.
-mortars added Arc. God no! The aiming circle was just fine. Now it looks like u r selecting an MG. And its new barrage ability is trash

Fearpropaganda nerf, really? Revert it! Adding red alarm smoke makes this ability useless. 80 ammo for nothing. The ability was arealy hard to use, it needed perfect timing, and it does no damage, it just retreats units. So why add this idiotic red smoke? The ability was totally underused because its not considered great and u make it absolutely useless now. Also u nerfed the ability itself, revert all changes!


wishes:
-ppsh upgrade to conscripts (non-doctrinal)
-increase sniper vision range
-currently infantry drains MP too much, thats why i refuse to make any infantry. so fix that
-move t34/76 to T3, make t34/85 non doctrinal
-make repair stations non-doctrinal
-current mp system is nonesense. U try to artificially balance the game, which is wrong. MP gain should stay 300 first and slowly lower each time u lose units, also vice versa if u barely lose units it the gain grows again.
-overall population of units is way too high. Im not satisfied just bringing 3 tanks on the battlefield.
Also the pop system needs to be simplified. 1 engenier squad = 1 pop. army squad = 1 pop, tank = 2-3 pop. etc. And then set pop limit to maybe 40 pop.
I know u wanna make subtle pop differences, but it's idiotic to do that. If u make a good tank cost a lot more pop u turn it into trash! The game could be so much fun and strategic, instead u turned it into a mini war, that has 0 strategy and is just a click fest. Where I have to baby sit eveyr unit becvause u refuse to add auto attack to certain units!
-more zoom options, zoom out more for controlling bigger armies.
-more options for visions, currrently its all foggy and therefor a total mess.
-forward HQ for soviets
-custom commander, u can still continue ur scammy selling dlc, but pls do not sell commanders, sell abilities and let people choose from these abilities to put together their own commander.
-2 players vote quit match makes whole team surrender???? Fix!
-remove all received damage reductions on tanks, give them normal stats to make it transparent
-remove fuel cost from halftrack T2




Brits
-emplacements are too weak. Make them tougher to take out
-AVRE needs auto-attack. There is no point in making it unnecessarily micro heavy
-remove fuel cost from carrier



Germans
-Sturmtiger needs auto-attack, same as AVRE
Commander:
-Defensive Doctrine needs Howitzer to defend his defense


I am keeping this list updated

SMG troops

SMG troops are rather to get right, they either walk up to other infantry and force retreat or die like fly on the road.

Suggestion:
SMG now are redesigned to relay more on abilities and less on base stat.

The are already to good abilities that can be used and can be expanded to other units:

"Diversion" with +25% accuracy on the move,-20% received accuracy

"Light Smoke Grenade" -50% received accuracy in smoke (the old implementation without the sight blocker)

These and similar abilities should become available to SMG and replace normal smoke grenades to better fine tune this troops

I quite like this idea. More abilities means more dynamic play and more facets to bring balance to a brilliant shine.

You do realize a 222 is not a dedicated AA unit?

The anti ifantry strafe did the same thing to my infantry even with the support of an ostwind. And I saw the same thing happen to an okw player wirh support of the schwere panzer hq

The anti ifantry strafe did the same thing to my infantry even with the support of an ostwind. And I saw the same thing happen to an okw player wirh support of the schwere panzer hq

strafes of all kinds usually deliver their playload before getting shot down. you can try this will all of them

strafes of all kinds usually deliver their playload before getting shot down. you can try this will all of them

Yeah it seems that way like you need to retreat as soon as you see the red smoke or it's too late. However if it is a strafe and not bombing they seem pretty good at killing retreating squads as well. I have thousands of hours played but I am of low ranking, so my opinions on balance do not matter so much, I appreciate the feedback.

Is anyone doing pvp in the beta? Does it work in the beta?

Please post all general feedback from the Commander Update beta here. Each faction has its own thread for specific feedback related to their commanders, units, etc.

Full notes here

A patch for the Commander Update Beta has gone live. View the changes here.

A patch for the Commander Update Beta has gone live. View the changes here.

well done

Seems to me as the 1.1 version is a "transition" patch. I really hope the last word about OKW's 2nd tier commanders is not spoken yet.

A patch for the Commander Update Beta has gone live. View the changes here.

Small correction this is Ostheer unit and not an OKW one.

Luftwaffe Officer

Suppression strafe cost from 60 to 50
Suppresion Strafe now requires veterancy 1
Recon Plane no longer requires veterancy 1
Smoke plane cooldown from 50 to 90

Spotting scope removal from Elefant looks good.

None of the other changes are looking to fix team games sadly

Yeah it seems that way like you need to retreat as soon as you see the red smoke or it's too late. However if it is a strafe and not bombing they seem pretty good at killing retreating squads as well. I have thousands of hours played but I am of low ranking, so my opinions on balance do not matter so much, I appreciate the feedback.

Is anyone doing pvp in the beta? Does it work in the beta?

100 hours of aimless practicing is less effective that 1 hour of focused training.

-222 is not a dedicated AA platform. Think about it like having a extra couple of pintle MG upgrades.
-Flak HQ is also not a dedicated AA platform and the OKW player needs to activate the AA mode.
-All planes are effective on their first pass.
-All planes that track units will still be effective against retreating/moving units.
-Ostwind is the less effective dedicated AA unit of all factions due to RoF.
-PvP in beta can be unreliable depending on time zone. It's generally more effective to make custom games.

Spotting scope removal from Elefant looks good.

None of the other changes are looking to fix team games sadly

They don't care about team games. Every change which resembles something going for team games is just a token change so people shut up.

A patch for the Commander Update Beta has gone live. View the changes here.

Not really happy to see the Rear Echelon Rifle Grenade being reverted to its' old functionality, but otherwise quite a nice patch.

Also: Sappers gaining Sandbags, Trenches and Caches... Is this a step towards potentially removing those things from IS, or is this just a straight boon to the faction? Feels a little bit like "baby proofing", given that you do already start with an IS that can build all of those things. Seems a little like the previous change to have medics be produced from the HQ.

As a last thing: If the 120mm mortar's new ability is meant to almost solely be a "bunker busting" tool, why not just give it extremely low scatter, while having a fairly ludicrously long fuse time? You'd be all but guaranteed to hit stationary targets, while the very long fuse time would make moving mobile units away from impacted shells fairly trivial (If one is paying attention)?

-Ostwind is the less effective dedicated AA unit of all factions due to RoF.

I thought it had been improved in this regard in a recent patch? Didnt it get an increase in the percentage chance of each Flak round downing an aircraft or did I imagine this? If the former: Is it still the worst?

I thought it had been improved in this regard in a recent patch? Didnt it get an increase in the percentage chance of each Flak round downing an aircraft or did I imagine this? If the former: Is it still the worst?

I think that was previous to the last patch. I would have to test them back one by one but i'm still under the impression when considering factors like rotation as well, that the Ostwind lags behind all other dedicated AA units.

I think that was previous to the last patch. I would have to test them back one by one but i'm still under the impression when considering factors like rotation as well, that the Ostwind lags behind all other dedicated AA units.

I normally go by Stein's sheets (though admittedly I don't know if they're 100% accurate, and how often they're updated). It seems to imply that the Flakpanzer ought to be pretty competitive with other AA options... though I suppose whether that's the case in practice is another question entirely.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H5z6szCfhmAAnDprmgwLzc-viZg4HPhKZshNLErvnck/edit#gid=193111409

This sheet specifically.