Dshka/120mm Manpower Costs

Short and to the point.

The March Deployment saw a general reduction in manpower cost for elite infantry. Shock troops, panzergrenadiers, assault grens, penals, etc all received some reduction in manpower cost.

With the reduced price and substantially increased killing power of general infantry is it still necessary for the pre-nerfed DshKa to cost 360 manpower?

How about the 120mm mortar; is the 400 manpower price tag justified by its performance? While the 120mm mortar is effective, it costs nearly as much as two 82mm mortars that have nearly identical Precision Strike abilities. How does the balance stand between the 120mm mortar and ubiquitous elite troops vet 3 8cm mortar?

So yes. I would like to see the Dshka's killing power un-nerfed and priced at 300mp with the 120mm mortar at 360mp.

Weapon teams were virtually unchanged in the last patch. Perhaps the whole system could use a similar overhaul?

300 or 320 would be good because DShK total rips apart enemies. But yes, 360 is too much, for 120mm as well.

I think the price justifies performance. Whenever I encounter 120mm, its my primary target..otherwise it obliterates my MG42/German mortars unless I have werfer or some king of stuka bombing... Also use it to protect cap points, because 1 well aimed shot from that 120mm and german squad is wiped out.

In my opinion, 120mm is already good with his big range(and lets not forget that ***** ability called Precision strike)

120mm is a howie skinned as a mortar, 400 is fine.

In some map, they are king and almost unkillable.

If you want 120 reduced in price it must have squad wipe capability reduced. Right now it pays for itself by getting random squad wipes, which is very gimmicky.

Try 120 against bunker spam, you will not be disappointed.

120mm is a howie skinned as a mortar, 400 is fine.

In some map, they are king and almost unkillable.

This.
The Dshka though could maybe be a bit cheaper and should come at 1 CP.

I've been rolling with the Soviet Defensive doctrine for quite a bit recently.

Here are my thoughts.

The 120mm howitzer mortar. This thing is good. Even more so now that infantry combat is more static. It's precision strike is more powerful than that of the 82mm mortar like it should be (82mm mortar used to fire a 120mm shell with precision strike). It's a powerful asset to the soviet army, and its price reflects its performance well.

The DHSK is overpriced and comes too late at 2CP. At 1.5 times the cost of a maxim, both in MP cost and supply/upkeep cost, you would expect this baby to deliver quite a punch.. but it does not. Its effectiveness does not exceed that of the much cheaper maxim. The AP rounds now no longer do bonus damage to grenadiers since they lost their armor, and the same doctrine already has the tiny AT gun to shoo away scout cars. I would prefer this unit to get a substantial DPS buff to really punish units walking into its arch, but with a slower setup/pack-up speed so it's easier to flank as the Germans. It could stay at 2cp if these changes would be made. Just lowering its cost and CP to match its current performance would just make it a re-skinned maxim instead of a unique unit.

Love for the Dshka: yes
Love for the 120mm: nope.

Hmm, a mortar that has really long range can wipe out units, has huge splash damage and can any hit any target accurately with a precision strike.

Looks like we need to get rid of precision strike and get rid of the the mortars high damage output.

Relic : let's just make it more expensive.

everyone's reaction: ........

Relic tries to nerf it, but they still did not fix the problem. It's an rng monster, it sometimes insta wipes squads or sometimes it just misses completely. Whatever they were doing is still not helping, they could fix it, but they just refuse to remove the most stupidest shit they put into the game.

Flood control, please wait for 15 seconds ....


^ this thing made me repost

Hmm, a mortar that has really long range can wipe out units, has huge splash damage and can any hit any target accurately with a precision strike.

Looks like we need to get rid of precision strike and get rid of the the mortars high damage output.

Relic : let's just make it more expensive.

everyone's reaction: ........

Relic tries to nerf it, but they still did not fix the problem. It's an rng monster, it sometimes insta wipes squads or sometimes it just misses completely. Whatever they were doing is still not helping, they could fix it, but they just refuse to remove the most stupidest shit they put into the game.

Just to iterate some things here...

The 400 manpower 120cm mortar and 240 manpower 82cm have the exact same precision strike in terms of damage. Both do 80 points of damage. The 120mm strike has slightly longer range which is usually not relevant (range 80 vs range 100). The fabled 120mm precision strike is essentially identical to the 82cm precision strike, on a unit half the cost.

The 120mm mortar does have solid range, but one must keep in mind that because scatter scales due to distance it simply cannot be used effectively at long range. If players want to score consistent hits with mortars they must be within roughly one screen length of distance whether the mortar is 8cm, 8.2cm, or 120cm. Any time you see a replay of 120mm mortars owning face it is almost a certainty that they are doing so at very close ranges.

Now Jinseual. You have noted the 120mm mortar's high damage output. Are you aware that a 120mm mortar does 6.14 dps while a barraging vet0 German 8cm mortar does 18.82 dps? Are you even aware that the German mortar has three times the DPS? Don't even ask what dps an elite troops insta-vet 3 german mortar puts out... The reality, and the numbers, show that while a lucky 120mm hit is potent this is mostly due to perception and smaller german squad sizes. The 120mm mortar fires extremely slowly and its ability to influence a game is inconsistent for its cost.

Others have noted that the 120mm is uncounterable. Is this really accurate? It has a weapon crew like any other. A single pgren squad or even pioneers will simply run it over. The german mortar halftrack is a 100% hard counter with incendiary barrage nearly a guaranteed squad wipe. Rifle grenades can insta gib the crew as easily as a maxim. A scout car will force it off as easily as an 82cm mortar. The german mortar will handily beat it until the 120mm mortar gets vet 1 and manually uses precision strike, the exact same ability as the 82cm mortar. So what is making it uncounterable?

Well, I wouldn't say it's uncounterable, but it can retreat with one man left while 5 crew members have been dropped.

yarp.

Ok let me reiterate when I mean high damage output. It wipes out squads entirely, the impact it has on the battlefield can be tremendous when the Germans only have a few infantry squads left and a lack of manpower. It has been like this since beta.

Incendiary barrage is a guaranteed squad wipe? You can press retreat and the mortar will always escape unless something else is hitting it. The incendiary round does so little damage because flames relys on crits to kill now. However, I never seen an incendiary round instantly wipe out a squad. It's always just 1 or 2 squad member dies before they walk out of there or just none at all.

I'm not one of the people that say the thing is completely uncounterable but the thing is pretty difficult to kill. After all it's an mobile artillery which would be firing safely behind the front lines. You're talking about rifle nades and other infantry assualt on the mortars, but I could just say the same for the German mortar. The problem still stands, the 120mm mortar is just too good at squad wiping compared to everything else the Germans had, and the Soviets already have enough squad wiping tools anyways.

You have noted the 120mm mortar's high damage output. Are you aware that a 120mm mortar does 6.14 dps while a barraging vet0 German 8cm mortar does 18.82 dps? Are you even aware that the German mortar has three times the DPS? Don't even ask what dps an elite troops insta-vet 3 german mortar puts out... The reality, and the numbers, show that while a lucky 120mm hit is potent this is mostly due to perception and smaller german squad sizes. The 120mm mortar fires extremely slowly and its ability to influence a game is inconsistent for its cost.

The issue with the 120mm has never been DPS but burst damage. A german mortar will never cause a squad wipe on a full health squad unless the soviet player is AFK. It might cause a retreat or re-position or tip an engagement, but that's it. The 120mm on the other hand can with no warning instantly kill an entire squad. It can also miss entirely the whole round.

There's no direct analogue but consider if the Elefant did 640 damage but fired slower. Its DPS would be lower than the Pak40's but it would be 1shotting most soviet tanks when it hit. That wouldn't be good.

I think most people would like it to be more consistent and less lethal. Simply making it a regular mortar with X% more range and maybe suppression on impact is probably enough imo.

EDIT: Whoops forgot to respond to topic. Yes, I think Dshka could be made cheaper and/or have a bigger fire arc and setup time, somewhere in between maxim and mg42.

The 120mm mortar does have solid range, but one must keep in mind that because scatter scales due to distance it simply cannot be used effectively at long range. If players want to score consistent hits with mortars they must be within roughly one screen length of distance whether the mortar is 8cm, 8.2cm, or 120cm. Any time you see a replay of 120mm mortars owning face it is almost a certainty that they are doing so at very close ranges.

this is the problem with only looking at a few stats. youre completely ignoring AOE. youre also ignoring the differences between the auto fire and barrage. distance scatter max/ratio make the 120mm mortar excel at auto firing, while the 82mm is better when barraging.

You have noted the 120mm mortar's high damage output. Are you aware that a 120mm mortar does 6.14 dps while a barraging vet0 German 8cm mortar does 18.82 dps? Are you even aware that the German mortar has three times the DPS? Don't even ask what dps an elite troops insta-vet 3 german mortar puts out... The reality, and the numbers, show that while a lucky 120mm hit is potent this is mostly due to perception and smaller german squad sizes. The 120mm mortar fires extremely slowly and its ability to influence a game is inconsistent for its cost.

care to explain how you got your numbers? because your 120mm dps is way off.

this is the problem with only looking at a few stats. youre completely ignoring AOE. youre also ignoring the differences between the auto fire and barrage. distance scatter max/ratio make the 120mm mortar excel at auto firing, while the 82mm is better when barraging.



care to explain how you got your numbers? because your 120mm dps is way off.

I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, and I'd be a fool to argue dps with wooof, but Tensai's site has Granatwerfer 34 81mm Mortar barrage listed as 18.8 dps. Upon closer inspection I can see that 6.14 is the 120's auto dps; the correct 120mm barrage dps is 9.7. So only 2x more dps on german 8cm instead of the 3x I had originally listed.

However, as wooof knows the mortar damage is 80 for both and so the dps value is only useful to show just how much faster the 8cm mortar can fire.

The 120mm shell has a radius of 9.0 compared to the 8cm radius of 6.0. That of course is significant. Is significant enough to be cost comparable to two barraging 8cm german mortar's? That I'm not so sure about.

I still contend that the 120mm effectiveness is mostly a perceptive fallacy based on german smaller squad sizes, reliance on weapon teams, and confirmational bias when players witness a lucky hit.

As far scatter is concerned both have a scatter angle of 12, the 8cm has a smaller scatter distance of 14 vs 15. I can't claim to know how to properly graph the effective scatter at a fixed distance between the two. But I can say that in order for the 120mm to be effective it must be brought up as close to the front as possible just like the 8cm.

DHSK is not bad it simply comes in a bad doctrine.

I still contend that the 120mm effectiveness is mostly a perceptive fallacy based on german smaller squad sizes, reliance on weapon teams, and confirmational bias when players witness a lucky hit.

uhm no that is simply untrue and you give the reason why this is. Germans do have smaller squads and a such all AOE is more potent against them.

that doesn't make it perspective fallacy but fact that the 120 mm is far mre dangerous to the german squads then the 81 mmis to the soviet squads.

I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, and I'd be a fool to argue dps with wooof, but Tensai's site has Granatwerfer 34 81mm Mortar barrage listed as 18.8 dps. Upon closer inspection I can see that 6.14 is the 120's auto dps; the correct 120mm barrage dps is 9.7. So only 2x more dps on german 8cm instead of the 3x I had originally listed.

However, as wooof knows the mortar damage is 80 for both and so the dps value is only useful to show just how much faster the 8cm mortar can fire.

The 120mm shell has a radius of 9.0 compared to the 8cm radius of 6.0. That of course is significant. Is significant enough to be cost comparable to two barraging 8cm german mortar's? That I'm not so sure about.

I still contend that the 120mm effectiveness is mostly a perceptive fallacy based on german smaller squad sizes, reliance on weapon teams, and confirmational bias when players witness a lucky hit.

As far scatter is concerned both have a scatter angle of 12, the 8cm has a smaller scatter distance of 14 vs 15. I can't claim to know how to properly graph the effective scatter at a fixed distance between the two. But I can say that in order for the 120mm to be effective it must be brought up as close to the front as possible just like the 8cm.

The dps numbers for mortars should be correct on my site. But you need to remember that it's basically just a number to describe rate of fire - since it assumes 100% damage done by each projectile (so 80 damage for mortars) and it excludes any AoE.

The mortar needs to have less people, or die when there is only one guy left. It's seriously too hard to kill that thing.

I think 120 mortar it's fine as it is, no nerfing no buffing needed. It worths all the monney and I think it's a balanced tool (price/performance).

A small price decrease for DSHK? I guess this is fine, but it still comes into the game to late to actually make a difference. Maybe if it would come at 1 CP less will make it count...