Buff Volley Fire

Volley fire on Rear echelons is comically underpowered. Not only do you eat received accuracy debuffs on the your REs when you activate it, you have to target a particular unit, can't issue any other orders, and the only redeeming quality (suppression) doesn't even kick in after firing for 5-6 seconds at units in no cover.

In fact, in green or yellow cover, volley fire sometimes doesn't even do anything!

I'd suggest that as a start, the ability shouldn't be a targeted ability - instead, its a temporary buff to rear echelon that gives them suppression on their shots. That way they can actually retarget and move around as volley fire is active.

Thoughts anyone? Is volley fire as bad as I think it is?

I agree, the ability is fairly useless.

With the easier accessibility of MGs since the tech rework, it could probably be removed and replaced with something more interesting. Don't know what that could be though.

Or just make it somewhat reliable.

With the right timing and positioning this ability can be pretty excellent. One of the better feelings playing the faction is when your rear echelon manages to 1v1 an onrushing sturmpioneer because you started behind a tank trap and he crossed red cover.

With the right timing and positioning this ability can be pretty excellent. One of the better feelings playing the faction is when your rear echelon manages to 1v1 an onrushing sturmpioneer because you started behind a tank trap and he crossed red cover.

Sounds like a great use of munitions.

With the right timing and positioning this ability can be pretty excellent. One of the better feelings playing the faction is when your rear echelon manages to 1v1 an onrushing sturmpioneer because you started behind a tank trap and he crossed red cover.

I agree, but the ability certainly could, at the minimum, use some improvement to its ease of use ala the suggestions I made in the op. It’s not useless for sure but it’s such a slog to ever use the ability and get your minis worth out of it. The only moments you might ever practically use it is in the scenario you described right at the start of the game. I don’t ever see it used ever again.

Volley Fire just needs to scale with Veterancy as it only really makes an impact early on.
(Yes its possible to make progressive scaling with abilities based on Veterancy in the Mod Tools)

Volley Fire
+40% received accuracy, -50% accuracy, +1% suppression, squad moves extra slowly
After 5 seconds of being active: +1% additional suppression, +3% additional accuracy
After 10 seconds of being active: (if the squad is still alive) +3% additional suppression, +4% additional accuracy, -87.5% cool-down



So the ability makes it so that you essentially take 40% more damage while doing 50% less damage yourself.
So a progressive Volley Fire Could look like this as an example.



Vet 0 = +40% received accuracy, -50% accuracy
Vet 1 = +30% received accuracy, -40% accuracy
Vet 2 = +20% received accuracy, -30% accuracy
Vet 3 = +10% received accuracy, -20% accuracy

This would make the ability Scale (they should add ability scaling to most abilities honestly) with Veterancy allowing it to not auto win early engagements while still being useful later on.

I also agree it needs some improvement - too lackluster to matter apart from scenarios so rare that it might as well not exist.

With the right timing and positioning this ability can be pretty excellent. One of the better feelings playing the faction is when your rear echelon manages to 1v1 an onrushing sturmpioneer because you started behind a tank trap and he crossed red cover.

agree here. this ability used to be pretty weak before it was fixed but seems to work much better now, especially early on. essentially it allows your echelons to engage and bind a much stronger unit (e.g. sturms) in a 1v1 situation they would normally lose by a fair margin. arguably this utility falls off rather quickly the longer the game progresses, as these one-on-one encounters get pretty rare. not to mention that, against multiple squads, the RA debuff means your echelons will melt in an instant if focus fired.
still a rather useful ability, even though situational.

I think the problem people had which resulted in it being nerfed to useless was that it was possible to use it at the start of the game and you would instantly win any initial engagement with it. I think it would have been better if they just delayed it, instead of making RE squishier. It is useful late game if you wanted to suppress a kamikaze PG out of a blob or something.

I'd say remove the damaged received, slight suppression increase, and you should be good to go. The cost of both the ability and for the RE squad is enough to warrant such a thing, Re's are an expensive useless unit with low DPS and low accuracy with high MP cost.

As of now, its basically "I want to lose my squad button" as soon as you pop the ability the pop up UI lets everyone know its happening and its a waste of muni due to how bad it truly is.

Just remove Damaged recived on RE and that is enough. Volley fire only worked if RE stayd in Green Cover.

i agree this ability has only been useful at one point in time. waste time and munis to get killed

Some of these suggestions sound like they would end up with USF getting 2-3 REs and forcing off everything they look at until it's game over.

Some of these suggestions sound like they would end up with USF getting 2-3 REs and forcing off everything they look at until it's game over.

Yeah if Rear Echelon took no extra damage then people would just spam 4-5 Rear Echelon and spam nothing but Volley Fire, especially if the Rear Echelon had Bars it would be rather OP.

Yeah it's bizarre how this ability has been so worthless for so long. The massive received damage bonus is the weirded thing about it. It makes it a big noob trap.

Yeah it's bizarre how this ability has been so worthless for so long. The massive received damage bonus is the weirded thing about it. It makes it a big noob trap.

How is it weird? It's exactly what makes it only usable from an advantageous position (starting from far range, behind cover), where it can work quite well, instead of spamming it whenever. Otherwise it could let USF win every engagement in the early game. It's not a fantastic ability, but it does work in the right circumstances and there is a good reason as to why it has been restricted. Though I wouldn't mind looking into making it scale with veterancy.

How is it weird? It's exactly what makes it only usable from an advantageous position (starting from far range, behind cover), where it can work quite well, instead of spamming it whenever. Otherwise it could let USF win every engagement in the early game. It's not a fantastic ability, but it does work in the right circumstances and there is a good reason as to why it has been restricted. Though I wouldn't mind looking into making it scale with veterancy.

Would have to agree with Sander93 on this. I remember how oppressive Volley Fire was when USF first launched. It was impossible to win any engagement because it would pin everything easily. It was max level of cheese and one of the most broken things to have ever existed in this game, especially when fielding multiple Rear Echelon Troops.

I agree that the ability is lackluster however as much I would like to see the increased damage taken mechanic removed, there is no way to make the ability balanced or better unless it scaled with vet so that its power can be gated through time and can retain its usefulness into the late game especially when counters are more readily available at that stage of the game.

Rear Echelon have received quite a few nerfs since USF launched due to being more efficient than Rifleman and players foregoing Rifleman and straight up spamming Rear Echelon which is why it got nerfed rightly so. However rather than make Rear Echelon rely on Volley Fire, I would rather see the cost of Rear Echelon go up to 300 (Would be consistent with OKW Sturmpioneer the other Western Front Army) and have its Vet 3 Extra Squad member made baseline.

Having 5 man Rear Echelon at the start with a cost of 300 would prevent spam (especially if build time is also significantly increased which should also happen to further prevent spam). This would fix a few issues with USF such as

- Rifle Company -
Commander Sucks, would be more attractive with Rear Echelon Flamers being 5 man and be comparable with the UKF Royal Engineer call in which also have a 5 man squad and available at 0 CP

- Heavy Cavalry Company -
5 Man Rear Echelon would help the Pershing out since they can repair faster

The added squad member would also allow/increase the units chance to survive using the current implementation of Volley Fire as well without having to change it.

Design wise it would be better if the majority of abilities scaled with vet. That would allow smooth out the power spike while keeping abilities relevant through out the game.