Commander Update Beta 2021 - Soviet Feedback

Tested it in cheatmode multiple times:

Real close hit next to the back of a Tiger not even scratched its paint. The AOE must have been nerfed heavily. The visuals of the explosion are telling a whole different story however.

Vet 1 direct shot for 70 Mu failed in destroying a non moving HT for three times. HT survived with some health left always. Combine that with the slow turning/targeting of the ability and just scrap it. Not even close to PAK-43 or 17pdr.

Unfortunately you just confirmed what I thought was going to happen. The tiny AOE would've made it more RNG dependent, even if they had not nuked the damage. Now it's just a 50% version of the old meme. I haven't checked, but I'd bet that the B4 now has an AOE that is less than the LEFH shell that was only about one-fourth of its size IRL.

That's the point. This cheap ability shouldn't be able to almost oneshot (super)heavies. With the reduced pen, its effectiveness against heavy vehicles will be halved and more in line with its cost. It'll still pen the rear armor of mediums at roughly 90-100% chance. It still has significant deflection damage anyway.

The ability is anything but cheap considering that you have to sacrifice a T34 to pull it off, and the success rate is highly variable. I play mostly Ost when not playing with friends and it's been a couple weeks since someone used this successfully against me. Backing up at any angle other than straight back usually means the Panther will survive. Is that really that difficult? The commander as a whole doesn't have any good late game abilities other than the strafe. Nerfing that will make this join the bazillion other useless Soviet commanders.

The update is very dubious with what it tries to achieve, the update basically nerfs alternative playstyles for factions like SOV, but buffs meta playstyles
Some points that i have an issue with:

The IL-2 strafing run- this ability is completely worthless. There is no upside to this ability. The ability practically does zero damage to both tanks and infantry, and it costs an enormous amount of munition. The patch states that it will boost damage, but even then, 115 munitions is too expensive for a SINGLE strafing run. This is basically more than half of the cost of the IL-2 loiter. To add insult to injury, the two counterpart abilities, which cost less or equal, outclass it: German AT strafe threatens tanks, this does not, and the stuka anti-infantry strafe pins infantry immediately, this doesn't suppress even on a direct hit. Buffs aren't only recommended, but badly needed, as several doctrines lost good abilities to have a F tier ability.

IL-2 rocket run: this nerf seems like it came out of nowhere. the ability was fine, my theory is that a developer has lost their heavy tank to a T-34 ram and rocket strafe rush. Unfortunate nerf.

Partisan "changes" This doctrine has needed reworks for quite some time, and this is not it. This doctrine has been used mostly in team modes, so this perspective will be taken. The PPSh partisans were a niche unit, fit only to completely fuck over the wehrmacht in the early game. you immediately lose against pgrens and anything similar, so your window of opportunity isn't that large. AT partisans were okay, funny way to get rid of dying tanks. I can understand these changes, even if they suck completely for such a weak doctrine already. Since you cant cheese the axis anymore, they probably wont ever be used. IF they are used, they will be spammed on mass. partisans drop models incredibly fast, so please re-add the partisan survival package to help them bleed less manpower.

I am not going to analyze the whole list, that would take too long, so i will cut corners: the B-4 is essentially ruined, and LIKELY useless, since all it was useful for was the one-hit potential it could bring, why was this changed? who knows

UKF special weapons regiment no longer being able to give weapons to Soviets: Very sad to see this go, this wasn't game breaking and it ruins the utility of the commander, which is hurting your own AI in exchange of buffing the soviet AI. No, the PIAT is not a good anti tank weapon.
Soviet assault guards being added is nice, but it seems like they're inferior shock troops, the zookas are nice but unreliable

The soviet infantry repair package, the PPSH conscript package, (doctrinal) bunker, are all nice QOL changes, but i don't feel like they justify the nerfs of seemingly random things (those that i mentioned)

Opinions and suggestions: The off map artillery and the ZIS-6 trucks are also nice additions, although i would like to see a special ZIS-6 supply version that fulfills the now-gone purpose of the UKF M3, essentially letting penals and conscripts utilize DP-28s and PTRS-41 rifles. There is no reason why the soviets shouldn't have a commander to do this, since the DP-28 isn't a ground breaking OP LMG, i don't see a reason why not. Even osttruppen have a LMG upgrade, many commanders exist that cover a faction's weakness.

For partisans, please lower the ambush strike accuracy bonus to veterancy 1, or even zero, solidifying their role as ambush infantry, rather than cheap shock troop cannon fodder.
and for assault guards to have cheaper thompsons, why would you pay 70 munitions for half of a traditional shock squad?

Can the developers please consider buffing the scatter of the IS-2? the tank costs identical to a tiger, but it visibly performs worse than a tiger 1, only because of this stat. Hell, even a rework (increasing the fuel cost and performance) to become the SOV's king tiger would be a viable solution. Funnily enough, axis tanks like the panzer 4, tiger 1 and especially tiger 2, have excellent anti infantry capacity,

Final note: I have lurked on the forums for a long while, and I always saw the community citing how asymmetrical balance was a thing, but this update clearly shatters the illusion of that, since some factions got what other factions already had, but what i am sad to see is how alternative, cheesy and non meta playstyles got completely and utterly fucked over, at least a lot of SOV faction's cheese is gone, but hey, shock army isn't a noob trap anymore

I think preventing Vickers K drop is too much baby sitting. It is a change directed specifically towards very rare scenarios where teammates share weapons. You are nerfing THE PLAYER by limiting control, not THE GUN.

I think chasing little unintended features and strategies takes way too much time and is futile because there are way too many unintended features in this game.

Going after usf vehicle sharing, M4 Sherman dozer upgrade exploit, and other similar unintended features will take forever and feels silly from the balance team to go after.

A lot of this is very rare and benefits teamwork and coordination. I see these exploits as a good thing not a bad thing. Dropping a Vickers K for your soviet teammate should be rewarded because the UKF player is looking out for his teammates.

A OST player dropping a med bunker on a Mechanized OKW player is a similar scenario. You don't want to somehow prevent this exploit because it is unintended.

No, it should be rewarded.

Don't kill creativity in the game. That is where balance team should draw the line. Very few people are happy to see halftrack Vickers drop being nerfed. This is an incredible blow to the incentive to buy this halftrack.

Balance team should focus on balancing units themselves, not considering rare scenarios of things happening. It is very silly.

"We have changed X because in these rare circumstances it can be used in an unintended way." I think this is extremely silly because there are a million unintended things you can do and thus futile.

Tldr don't nerf strategies, coordination, creativity, or power/control of players. Nerf the tools instead. You can nerf the Vickers, but don't remove ability for players to share them, that is specifically removing player control and coordination which is almost always bad design.

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Ability suggestion for Partisan Doctrine:

Disruption: Lockdown a unit of Partisans in an enemy sector to sap resource income like CoH1's Vampire 250, or a hostile mirror of the Opel Blitz. The income doesn't necessarily need to go to the Soviet player, the destruction of enemy resources may be enough to be worthwhile.

6 man squad with a couple of Elite zook sound too durable. It can be that squad come as 5 man and only the thompson upgrade increase squad size to 6.

This

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I've tried out the new B-4 in the commander revamp beta and also got somewhat mixed results, so i dug a bit deeper. if you visualize the old vs new aoe profile, the reason for these underwhelming results - especially against vehicles - becomes pretty obvious.

Vs infantry the new b-4 actually performs pretty good, if not better than the live version. As you can see from the graph below, the AoE damage vs an 80 HP target (solid line) is roughly comparable to the old profile; the lethal radius shrunk quite a bit (from ~5.6 to ~4.2 m) but the minimum damage dealt per shot went up from 32 to 45.



So essentially the new B-4 kills slightly less on a per-shot basis, but deals more overall damage to anything caught in its blast radius. plus, it is now guaranteed to drain more than half the total HP of any infantry model, allowing it to 2-shot squads that stick in the danger zone for too long.

That is, unless heavy cover is involved. Indicated by the dotted lines, the damage drop-off against targets with higher effective HP (160 for models in green cover) is much more pronounced than in the live version and, in fact, even inferior to that of the ML-20. The 160-HP one-shot radius in the beta is only ~2.2 m versus the 9.4 m of the live B-4, which isn't even in the same league anymore.

But it gets worse. If you look at the whole AoE curve (graph below) it is immediately evident that against high-HP targets, such as vehicles and emplacements, the new B-4 offers little more than an average howitzer shell.



Outside of direct hits the chance to deal any meaningful damage vs these targets is vanishingly slim even compared to a ML-20 shell. The fact that the shell count is increased by 3 doesn't really do anything to remedy that, so it's safe to say that the AT and anti-emplacement capabilities of the B-4 took a massive blow in the beta.

I'm not sure if the new AoE/damage profile also applies to the direct fire ability, but if so this would make the ability virtually useless as well.

I've tried out the new B-4 in the commander revamp beta and also got somewhat mixed results, so i dug a bit deeper. if you visualize the old vs new aoe profile, the reason for these underwhelming results - especially against vehicles - becomes pretty obvious.
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Great work as usual, well done.

Imo the big explosion unit are difficult to balance just with AOE and other means should be used to balance them.

1) Hard cap entity kills so they do not act as wipes machines

2) Add utility by adding critical to vehicles and infatry. For instance injured driver/gunner and "shell shock" for infatry

3) Lower damage but add target tables vs vehicles/structures allowing for smoother damage profile vs infatry

In the case of the b4 the direct fire ability could become a skill shot using an AP round with while increasing the rotation speed of the gun (possibly speed of crew also) making the ability more player friendly.

I get that they don’t want you to just be able to ram + rocket strafe a heavy.

Maybe the rocket run could stun vehicles to allow for a follow up?

I don't agree with the penetration nerf on the rockets nerfs at all.
The new penetration value of the rockets looks like it can't even kill Panzer 4s even with support. 80 Penetration seems like an over-nerf. and Even thematically, an AT ability that costs so much being unable to kill a heavy tank seems like just a bad change.

I don't think the AT rocket strafe has to be changed at all. in most cases, undamaged tanks will be able to dodge the rockets at ease, and Ram+Rocket is much less effective already as in the last patch they (rightfully so) changed the ramming ability.

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While I wasn't able to test the IL-2 Cannon Strafes enough in the beta. I still have gotten the impression that they are horribly underperforming.

The IL-2 simply costs way too many munitions for a strafe ability that (still despite the updates) deals way too low and inconsistent damage. and the munitions cost is very high in comparison to abilities that deal a similar amount of damage.

The IL-2 SERIOUSLY needs a buff in the next update as more and more commanders are getting their abilities replaced with what is basically a slot filler.

The Issue with the IL-2 strafe at the moment is not that it's underperforming compared to other abilities, but that it's underperforming for it's muntions cost heavily. this makes no one use the ability and act as a slot filler which is just bad.

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The Issue with the IL-2 strafe at the moment is not that it's underperforming compared to other abilities, but that it's underperforming for it's muntions cost heavily. this makes no one use the ability and act as a slot filler which is just bad.

Abilities that are not powerful are required to fill slot of commanders that are other wise power power full.

It help bring commanders at similar power levels.

Who cares about Ił Rocket strate
soviets now can finally build bunkers
Seriously this so huge change i really like it.
Thank you Sander

Soviet reserve army

PPsH - you want to go T2 and do conscripts to use this

Team weapon supply drop - You want to go T1 and use this to get team weapons.


These abilities have horrible synergy.



I love the Shock army change though, finally Shocks + T34/85s is a thing!

Maybe could give PPSH more buff like reduce RA？And maybe could work on Penal too like OST G43

The b4 direct fire, I see its does 300 dmg I guess that would change.

On that note I assume it will track the vehicle than target the ground, also its vet 3 range dosnt apply.

I feel the is2 needs something more than a well overdue vet decrease. Even if its looking at its vet one ability.

This is one of the thoughts of feedback on the Soviet army. Rather than purely my opinion, I synthesized the opinions of friends playing games around me.

If you think about the role of the B4 Howitzer, I think the biggest role is to check or destroy the opponent's heavy tank destroyers. Therefore, I buff the damage in the patch from 300 to 500, but I want to reduce the number of shells from 3 to 2.

About the Soviet Industry commander:

Replace kv2 with Il2-precision Bombing Strike


It has nothing good vs infantry or artillery
1. Yes it has a KV8 but it is pretty useless late game when the enemy has massive Anti tank infantry panthers and paks. For 145 fuel and being an ONLY anti-infantry tank u expect the tank to perform better.

Kv2? same issue. And it underperforms anyways.

2. It has nothing that can fight Howitzers. When the Germans spam Howitzers its GG. U cant get close, u have no artillery strikes and no own artillery.

Since this commander has quite a lot of weaknesses due to underperforming tanks and nothing to counter artillery for I wanna ask to give soviet industry artillery strike to take out the opponents artillery.
The commander has already nothing good vs infantry so give it at least the artillery strike to counter Howitzers.

About the Soviet Industry commander:

Replace kv2 with Il2-precision Bombing Strike
replace kv8 with T34/85

It has nothing good vs infantry or artillery
1. Yes it has a KV8 but it is pretty useless late game when the enemy has massive Anti tank infantry panthers and paks.
Kv2? same issue. And it underperforms anyways.

2. It has nothing that can fight Howitzers. When the Germans spam Howitzers its GG. U cant get close, u have no artillery strikes and no own artillery.

Since this commander has quite a lot of weaknesses due to underperforming tanks and nothing to counter artillery for I wanna ask to give soviet industry artillery strike to take out the opponents artillery.
The commander has already nothing good vs infantry so give it at least the artillery strike to counter Howitzers.
I also sugguest replacing the underwhelming kv8 wiht the T34/85 since u appearantly refuse to buff him.
i discussed the kv8 wiht some of my friends and we all share the same opinion that it is not a great tank. And none of us ever bothers uses it because of it. THe T34/85 is better at killing infantry. Yes it is. It kills instantly, instead of slowly reducing the squads health. For 145 fuel and being an ONLY anti-infantry tank u expect the tank to perform better.

KV-2 does not underperform in any way... You may be using it wrong, but it is very good unit that murders infantry and fends off tanks below panther.

I am not going to analyze the whole list, that would take too long, so i will cut corners: the B-4 is essentially ruined, and LIKELY useless, since all it was useful for was the one-hit potential it could bring, why was this changed? who knows

The B4 was changed because it was AIDS. It was an inconsistent RNG cannon that either did nothing at all, or instantly killed a medium tank with lucky scatter.

I'm not saying that the "new" B4 is a good unit, it seems as though it needs further changes, but I am glad that the Balance Team seem to want to rework it into less of a memegun and into something that's actually usable/not AIDS to play against.

I'd personally suggest the AOE be increased on shells significantly, the damage somewhat lowered (So it doesn't obliterate squads), the number of shells increased, and perhaps having landed shells cause suppression/force buttoning/stun vehicles temporarily. I expect numbers would want to be tweaked a lot, but I think this would give it an identity apart from other howitzers. "Massive single nuke" certainly fit the B4 thematically, but I don't think it was something that could really stay as it was.

All howitzers are pretty AIDS to begin with, though.

Post about the Vickers Drop mechanic

While I agree that interesting teamplay shouldn't necessarily be discouraged, I think things like Med Bunker/Ambulance sharing isnt quite the same as being able to drop slot weapons for teammates. Units are generally carefully balanced around what weapons they can equip, there's a reason that you can't buy weapons from an allied player's weapon racks, after all.

I'd go further and say that I think the "Weapon drop" mechanic upon model death is a bad mechanic in itself. It punishes allied players more frequently than Axis players (Due to Allied squads generally having multiple droppable weapons, meaning that depleted (but not fully destroyed) squads often lose their firearms, whereas Axis squads often only have a single slot weapon (Or none at all, in cases like VG)). It isnt deterministic like decrewing a Team Weapon is, which is itself a MUCH better implementation of a mechanic similar to weapon drops.