Commander Update Beta 2021 - British Feedback

Having snare or not on mainline infatry is faction design issue.

This patch that focuses on doctrinal issues so the issue of snare or not on mainline infatry for UKF is rather irrelevant.

Imo the Vicker-K /Raid section will probably cause issue.

Although turning Vicker-K into BAR might seem to be ok there are fundamental difference between USF and UKF unit that one should consider.

IS start with lower target and better far DPS tha riflemen and BAR-K fixes their main weakness: Close DPS and on the move DPS.

IS with 1 bren/BAR-K will simply perform excellent in all range.

You've said raid section will cause problem. And I'm saying they are just like RM in AI unlike what you've commented.

Having snare or not on mainline infatry is faction design issue.

Having no snare(unlike any other faction) in return of having HIGHER AI was design issue.

Now it's JUST having no snare without return. One of the reason UKF is fallen behind.

Having no snare(unlike any other faction) in return of having HIGHER AI was design issue.

Now it's JUST having no snare without return. One of the reason UKF is fallen behind.

I don't think there would be anything wrong with putting a USF snare in the UKF grenade package. I don't get why Relic is so afraid of doing that.
Unlike what some people claim, UKF do not need a huge rework in the first place.

Can someone tell me the stats of the new Vickers K to calc the DPS (CD, fire aim time, burst length and modifiers, ROF, reload etc). Or was the BAR taken as the base weapon and then modified?

Unlike what some people claim, UKF do not need a huge rework in the first place.

Besides further homogenisation of factions that a lot of people already complain about;

Everything major that gets changed will have ripple effects. When RE got snares and it was finally no longer possible to park light vehicles on top of UKF infantry without consequence, the faction turned OP almost overnight and needed some significant nerfs in other areas to compensate. For example, if you'd add a snare to Infantry Sections, the AEC would become significantly less mandatory, and that would very likely in turn significantly speed up their tank timing. They have the cheapest tank tech of any faction, this is balanced only by requiring to get some side techs along the way. So yes, big changes like adding snares to a mainline or adding stock rocket arty would definitely require more reworks and rebalancing down the line. It's never simple.

Most infatry can not over run double Bren Raid Section (or M1919 + BAR Riflemen) or even if they can they will sustain casualties while the RS will simply retreat. RS even have incendiary grenades to stall approaching infatry.




1 Bren and 1 Vickers combos might work, copying M1919 + BAR on Riflemen, but it'd be slightly worse. So it won't be an issue.
And my point stand. UKF are not getting simply riflemen, they are getting all the available combo that m1919/BAR gives to USF.

I hope ,with everything you claim UK is OP in the next patch, i can see the increase of UK pickrate and winrate in the next tournament

For example, if you'd add a snare to Infantry Sections, the AEC would become significantly less mandatory, and that would very likely in turn significantly speed up their tank timing. They have the cheapest tank tech of any faction, this is balanced only by requiring to get some side techs along the way.

AFAIK, (with less AI than stuart, but still costing 75 extra fuel) skipping AEC for early cromwell or even comet if you can afford it is a dominant meta.
Go for the bolster upgrade along the way with saved fuel. It still gonna minimize 1-2 min. for tank timing.

I noticed the Universal Carrier no longer costs 5 fuel on the test patch. Not sure if the change was intended or a bug. Would make the 221's life much harder imo if it didn't cost fuel.

Besides further homogenisation of factions that a lot of people already complain about;

Everything major that gets changed will have ripple effects. When RE got snares and it was finally no longer possible to park light vehicles on top of UKF infantry without consequence, the faction turned OP almost overnight and needed some significant nerfs in other areas to compensate. For example, if you'd add a snare to Infantry Sections, the AEC would become significantly less mandatory, and that would very likely in turn significantly speed up their tank timing. They have the cheapest tank tech of any faction, this is balanced only by requiring to get some side techs along the way. So yes, big changes like adding snares to a mainline or adding stock rocket arty would definitely require more reworks and rebalancing down the line. It's never simple.

Id suggest just bake in a bunch of the side techs. Bolster has always been a problem child, the AEC and Bofors side techs are weird. Maybe unify them instead of 1 side tech for 1 unit. That would remove competely skipping in team games. Unless that quick tank skip is intentional.

I noticed the Universal Carrier no longer costs 5 fuel on the test patch. Not sure if the change was intended or a bug. Would make the 221's life much harder imo if it didn't cost fuel.

Ive just started really playing 2v2 aggressively, what's the UKF solution to early 221s?

Besides further homogenisation of factions that a lot of people already complain about;

Everything major that gets changed will have ripple effects. When RE got snares and it was finally no longer possible to park light vehicles on top of UKF infantry without consequence, the faction turned OP almost overnight and needed some significant nerfs in other areas to compensate. For example, if you'd add a snare to Infantry Sections, the AEC would become significantly less mandatory, and that would very likely in turn significantly speed up their tank timing. They have the cheapest tank tech of any faction, this is balanced only by requiring to get some side techs along the way. So yes, big changes like adding snares to a mainline or adding stock rocket arty would definitely require more reworks and rebalancing down the line. It's never simple.

Absolutely, I get it, there's some changes that would be needed. What I meant by that is that it would not require a complete overhaul and unit switch between tiers like OKW and USF did.

The more obvious issue is medium timing, but that would be imo the easier to solve. Since the faction timings are currently balanced by considering AEC a mandatory requirement, by adding both AEC and Bofor unlock as a single upgrade costing 100 mp and 15 fuel in the Platoon Command Post the faction would keep the same timing for the Cromwell and have the option of a backup at light vehicle.

I'm not downplaying the overall changes in faction strength, sure it would make UKF infantry more potent during the light vehicle phase, so overall a lot of smaller changes would be necessary with 2 matchups to be sure that, for example, OST can still compete against a UKF that can more easily snare their 222. All i'm saying is that, compared to what OKW and USF went through, it would just be a portion of the effort.

Regarding the "homogenisation" issue. I don't think that it makes sense to draw that line right at snares for mainline infantry. We had 2 men sniper squads for a long while but that was cancer. I don't think that UKF would lose their identity just because of snares.

But regardless we could at least have a middle ground with AT boys tank hunter sections made non doctrinal as option to build after Tier 2.

Besides further homogenisation of factions that a lot of people already complain about;

Everything major that gets changed will have ripple effects. When RE got snares and it was finally no longer possible to park light vehicles on top of UKF infantry without consequence, the faction turned OP almost overnight and needed some significant nerfs in other areas to compensate. For example, if you'd add a snare to Infantry Sections, the AEC would become significantly less mandatory, and that would very likely in turn significantly speed up their tank timing. They have the cheapest tank tech of any faction, this is balanced only by requiring to get some side techs along the way. So yes, big changes like adding snares to a mainline or adding stock rocket arty would definitely require more reworks and rebalancing down the line. It's never simple.

Basically everyone would like some homogenisation on UKF though rather than them clutching on weird things for compensation of lacking core features. What I mean by that is, for example the Infantry Sections getting some of their raw DPS getting removed for getting a snare or Vickers getting some more suppression with reduced damage in return for Universal Carrier (aka. Lame Car) not being able to survive 2 panzerfausts and so on.

TLDR: UKF relies on gimmicky and annoying things since they lack core features and are horribly designed and everyone would like to see it get changed.

Imo the Vicker-K /Raid section will probably cause issue.

Although turning Vicker-K into BAR might seem to be ok there are fundamental difference between USF and UKF unit that one should consider.

IS start with lower target and better far DPS tha riflemen and BAR-K fixes their main weakness: Close DPS and on the move DPS.

As far as Raid Sections are concerned I believe this no longer applies since they increased their Vet 0 target size and gave them Enfields that are basically psdeuo-Garands. I did test Raid sections against an AI just to get a feel for how their moving and far DPS felt and wasn't blown away - for instance going by feel their chase-down potential didn't feel as good as G43 Fusies. I don't think there is an issue there as the whole point of Raid section was to give UKF this new playstyle option. If there is a balance issue it's more likely to stem from the M3 HT Vickers IMO. Lot of players like to just A-move Bren sections so I'm not sure how much incentive they have to dump their munitions into Vickers when you have that long range damage drop-off versus Obers and such.

Ive just started really playing 2v2 aggressively, what's the UKF solution to early 221s?

UC, snares, mines, small arms isn't bad if you have multiple squads shooting at it. Just not sure why the UC shouldn't cost fuel honestly. Think UC is fine as it is right now, doesn't need any buffs or nerfs. It's not really the reason Brits struggle.

Inb4 someone actually is naive enough to believe that royal engineers are actually good if you put weapons on them other then PIATs, lets remember that REs are the ONLY infantry in the whole game who do NOT get ANY accuracy vet.

Their firepower does not scale, its ALL about the weapon itself and it falls short badly against vetted inf.

I side with katitof on this one. for fun I have attempted to use Royals as a mainline infantry and honestly it's both bad and good.

In no realm of possibility will a firefight ever consistently be long distance and in heavy cover. Additionally since they have stens, they are missing out on long range DPS if your opponent decides to group his forces together to shoot at you. The reason they can beat LMG grens is because they don't have crazy RA bonuses later on. The idea is that heavy engineers will outLAST you not out dps you. If you force them to move even slightly or just get rid of their cover they're dead in the water.

Tommies stand a chance against PG's or Obers, Royals do not you really feel that lack of accuracy when you are facing squads with good RA.

I actually rather like the Snares on the Engineers. Putting Snares on your PIAT carriers usually works out well for me. On average, I usually run about 2 RE squads anyway, so the difference in snares vs other factions is only 1-2, and they have both Sniper and AEC snares to help make up the difference.

As far as the homogenization goes. Any faction built around having missing tools compensated for by OP units is by definition going to be incredibly linear to play with and against. The games design is also built around each faction having a set of tools to play the game with. Asymmetry should come from how those tools are designed rather than a complete lack of them.

Any faction built around having missing tools compensated for by OP units is by definition going to be incredibly linear to play with and against. The games design is also built around each faction having a set of tools to play the game with. Asymmetry should come from how those tools are designed rather than a complete lack of them.

Absolutely. With complete artistic freedom we could fix most if not all of UKF's major issues while keeping them unique. But since we can not create any new assets, it would be impossible to significantly rework the UKF faction at this point without making them basically Ostheer or stealing even more stuff from doctrines or other factions. So we're left with band aids.

Ideally, they would get stock indirect fire (UC mortar conversion), stock heavy indirect fire (LM or other type of rocket arty to stock roster and create something new for the commander), an AI light vehicle to replace the Bofors tech (pick any armored car or the Valentine and replace that in the commander), completely rework Bolster, etc. Then most holes would be fixed while staying unique enough as a faction, but there obviously is no way to do this without a dev team or even proper mod tools to create new assets.

It's the same for other factions by the way. The homogenisation of assets/factions is not a choice. It's usually the only thing that can be done to fix units or parts of factions with the very limited access to mod tools that's available.


At least we can hope that Relic learned their lesson when designing factions in case they ever decide to create CoH3, that all factions should have all basic tools and that variety needs to come from molding those tools into unique mechanics, rather than creating factions with gaping holes that require cheesy OP stuff to compensate.

I hope ,with everything you claim UK is OP in the next patch, i can see the increase of UK pickrate and winrate in the next tournament

Faction balance and Commander design has little to do one with the other. Faction can be completely UP and still manage to win with specific commanders.

This patch should focus on solving commander issues and not fixing balance issue the faction might have.

As far as Raid Sections are concerned I believe this no longer applies since they increased their Vet 0 target size and gave them Enfields that are basically psdeuo-Garands. I did test Raid sections against an AI just to get a feel for how their moving and far DPS felt and wasn't blown away - for instance going by feel their chase-down potential didn't feel as good as G43 Fusies.

Raid section are basically riflemen and Raids section with Vickers-K are basically BAR riflemen.

I don't think there is an issue there as the whole point of Raid section was to give UKF this new playstyle option. If there is a balance issue it's more likely to stem from the M3 HT Vickers IMO. Lot of players like to just A-move Bren sections so I'm not sure how much incentive they have to dump their munitions into Vickers when you have that long range damage drop-off versus Obers and such.

Just because something works for a faction does not mean it will ok for a completely different faction.

As for IS with double Vicker-K you can probably see how they perform here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swtB3J8Htns in minute 29:30 since they if in cover they should be a bit better than Raid section in Version 1.0 (unless I am missing something)

And they seem to doing quite good in that test.

Ideally, they would get stock indirect fire (UC mortar conversion), stock heavy indirect fire (LM or other type of rocket arty to stock roster and create something new for the commander), an AI light vehicle to replace the Bofors tech (pick any armored car or the Valentine and replace that in the commander), completely rework Bolster, etc. Then most holes would be fixed while staying unique enough as a faction, but there obviously is no way to do this without a dev team or even proper mod tools to create new assets.

Outside of a model for a Uc mortar carrier, what exactly "new assets" do you need ? Following your saying i see almost all the elements needed are already exist. We have an observation officer that can replace the valentine if it become stock, rework bolster dont require any new models, just about 2 new icons and 2 new symbols at best, land mattress only being in 1 doc and can re replace with an off map if become stoc, etc.

In the past i heard sb said that relic dont allow you to change the brit, but then we have usf rework and okw rework, and now you are here, talking about how tools limitations prevent you from doing the right things while you are fully aware that those things should be done. Like "we cant fix brit because we dont have assets" sory, but with all the respect for modding team, i think this is so lame for a reason. Talking right from what you said, event i can turn those changes into a mod within a week, then we can spent 1-2 month for pp to test it and fine tune it, then it is done. What seem to be the most complex task i can think of is to calculate the effects of the changes and balance things out, but With an elite goup of modder like you have, what can be so difficult outside of someone being lazy and dont want to take the risk ? What is the true reason ?