Cruzz's Fantasy Patch Thread 2: WTFWFA Edition

Great patch note. Would love to play this game. +1

The proposed change to Soviet Industry is necessary because right now if your game somehow extends past the 20m mark, you literally won't be able to build anything and will be floating so much fuel than you know what to do with. Plus Soviet tanks were generally cheaper when the commander first came out but it was never adjusted.

IRT SU-76, would be nice if the regular gun can actually hit infantry much like the Stugs can.

I can only agree with a small portion of those changes and in general think it's a bad idea. It's a too big list to with a certain confidence state the outcome of it. To not just make 'bland' statements let me try to elaborate a bit.

Call-In system - See my suggestion on the other thread. Yours would kill Call-In strategies completely and Relic stated they want to keep those. You gotta learn to work inside the limitations

USF:
First 3-4 suggestions could be possible, though the M7 is still buggy/problematic so I'd rather refrain from that. M8 direct fire is far too strong in my opinion and I'd put it in only arcing fire mode to make it hit moving squads less. Right now it's a far too powerful vehicle and giving it a toggle would only cause it to overperform even more. Sherman smoke is probably harder to fix than you suggest. I'd keep Major probably at 3 seconds, 2 is really damn fast as the flares only drop after 1 second, so anyone not in NA has close to no time to react. 57mm is good enough in my opinion as well as the priest, so I wouldn't touch those. Rest is meh, i don't mind changing it. I feel it doesn't tackle a few really important issues which is the overperforming BARs on range, the dual M1919A6 upgrade for Paratroopers and the long build times. I personally do not see the last one as a giant problem, but still testing it differently is fine.

Soviet:
Dunno about the Maxim. I think that would just make it more extreme and take one of the biggest factors for the MG42, the area suppression. SU-76 sounds problematic, but in the end it's just a general design idea - might be a bit too potent, but could be interesting and give it a role as it's a non barrage artillery. Conscripts - Well you know my stance on upgrades. They are ugly to balance and introducing more to balance out others is a bad way. Rest sounds okayish (though some of them not needed IMO).

Ostheer:
In general most sound acceptable, but I'd rather introduce such changes slowly as a lot of them have far fetching effects. Don't really like sniper and Osttruppen changes though.

OKW:
Once again, I'm not sure if those changes are necessary. Especially the MG34 one seems to be weird. It's worse than the MG42, doctrinal and should be more expensive? Why? Combined with a buffed Kübelwagen I feel that makes it extremely unattractive.

General ones:
I'd rather have Demos unable to trigger if a sweeper squad is within ~15 range or such. Sometimes you don't want to blow it up. Plane one I'd keep. Such a thing would once again make AA useless. Rest is okayish.

In total I think a lot there is too much "wishful thinking", but since it's a fantasy patch well, fine. The projectile, FlaK and such things are not as easy to change as your list suggests

Great suggestions. I might add that the heavy tank call-ins, beyond tech requirements, should be limited to 1 per game.

Just something I really hate seeing, you do know you can fire the Sherman's smoke barrage on the move already? Just order the barrage and move your Sherman as it's doing it - hell, the devs even showcased that in the USF stream some months ago. It might not work with shift-clicking and stacking orders, but it works.

The unit will always stop when it is triggered. I know you can start moving again immediately after it triggers but it is a completely unnecessary bit of extra effort from the player.

If there is to be set-up time for ISU 152, fine, but give the same set-up time to Elefant and Jagdtiger.

The difference is that the ISU is multirole and the elefant and jagdtiger are not. Jagdtiger already has an interesting feature in that every proper AT attack has a huge chance of crew shocking it, which no other vehicle shares, and the elefant is relatively bad now all things considered.

Lastly I think slight dmg nerf for both BARs and M1919s is in order.

They are not any stronger than other infantry weapons, I do not see why. M1919 is getting nerfed in terms of not being able to grab two on a single squad, I think that's plenty enough.

What makes the MG34 a "super MG42"? Unless the stats pages I checked are wrong, the MG42 indeed does more damage and more supression than the MG34. Putting it on a similar price as a supression buffed Maxim also feels wrong to me. The whole concept of basically declaring a WW1 machine gun the best and most expensive machine gun of WW2 feels ridiculous as well, completely apart from gameplay point of view.

1. Vet4 and Vet5
2. 2 second setup instead of 3 seconds
3. higher suppression value with a higher suppression area

The maxim change will only help against multiple squads coming straight at it in the cone or atleast bordering on a unit in the cone. Currently the two soviet machineguns are the only two that can not aoe suppress properly, so just swarming them straight down their firing cones which are already the smallest of all MGs is a perfectly effective tactic.

Call-In system - See my suggestion on the other thread. Yours would kill Call-In strategies completely and Relic stated they want to keep those. You gotta learn to work inside the limitations

There's two units that I'd consider "killed" in my system with their current costs, and those are bulldozer and kv-1 because they resemble vehicles in the tech tree too much without having markedly better performance. But all that needs is a cost adjustment which I didn't include. The others either fill roles completely absent from the base unit selection or are so cheap requiring tech for them would still make them a better choice than the base vehicles. As long as Relic has this weird notion that players have to be able to not build a single tech structure, everyone will continue to skip teching because tech vehicles are not cost efficient at dealing with call-ins and will not provide enough of a map advantage before call-ins either. If you adjust call-in costs directly you just remove the choice of ever using a call-in after you've teched. Making all tech vehicles notably cheaper will work but fuck up balance ten times worse than what I'm suggesting.

I see your suggestion was a price premium if you don't have tech. I don't mind that, it would still be an improvement over the current situation, but it just makes the teching decision into a very simple optimization problem. Is premium*expected number of callins used (2 for most 1vs1 games) more than the cost of tech? The answer is no unless you set the premium quite high (like 25%), which in turn just makes it into a non-choice of always teching just like in mine.

M8 direct fire is far too strong in my opinion and I'd put it in only arcing fire mode to make it hit moving squads less. Right now it's a far too powerful vehicle and giving it a toggle would only cause it to overperform even more.

Well here our opinions differ again. I view the Scott as a huge glass cannon right now, it is very good at clearing out infantry in direct fire but the indirect fire role leaves things to be desired to say the least despite being the only one the USF gets. It's extremely easily killed with dual paks/raketens because it doesn't actually have the range to bombard from far away, and yet the kill rate on indirect fire on it tends to be fairly low because of how slow the projectiles move. In direct fire it has huge targeting issues against vehicles because it keeps reverting back to indirect fire at the weirdest timings. In the end just spamming shermans tends to get far more results than trying to put up with the eccentricities of the Scott.

I'd keep Major probably at 3 seconds, 2 is really damn fast as the flares only drop after 1 second, so anyone not in NA has close to no time to react. 57mm is good enough in my opinion as well as the priest, so I wouldn't touch those. Rest is meh, i don't mind changing it. I feel it doesn't tackle a few really important issues which is the overperforming BARs on range, the dual M1919A6 upgrade for Paratroopers and the long build times. I personally do not see the last one as a giant problem, but still testing it differently is fine.

I honestly don't know how I should add up the delay numbers for the Major artillery ability in the files, there are so many of them, but I do know the thing takes freaking AGES to come down ingame. If anyone ever gets hit by that they fully deserve...the pathetic couple of rounds that drop down. I mean the major has to be in firing distance to fire off the damn thing, I think seeing the little guy in a coat running around on the frontlines already counts as a warning smoke.

What kind of tank does the 57mm deal with? I sure know that I don't feel the least bit threatened with a PIV against a single 57mm, and even two is not enough to stop me from rushing straight at them unless I see them running tungstens before my approach. The first shot on AT guns is the most important, and 57mms fail hard against anything with armor without Tungstens running, and even with Tungsten running tend to have a hard time due to the 4 man crew. With a Tiger, 3 is the minimum number of 57mms needed to pose a threat.

Priest is way overpriced compared to Katyusha and Pwerfer for performance right now. Forgot to add it to the list of tech units though, which largely cancels out the cost change...

Didn't actually have any changes to para LMGs because they're the only thing to use the doctrine for really. I do not consider BARs as overperforming, they require a teching cost to unlock and honestly with the way riflemen get gibbed right now, they don't even really let you compete in the endgame.

The projectile, FlaK and such things are not as easy to change as your list suggests

I'm not judging difficulty of implementation though I do try to pick solutions which as far as I understand the game engine workings should be easy to implement. For instance I do not see why they can't just use the projectile stats of a weapon fairly similar to the flak like the Luchs 20mm if the issue with the actual flak projectiles is so hard to solve. Barely anyone would mind the graphical change if it meant a more functional unit.

+1. all of them sounds like quality changes.

+1 To everything (except maybe OST sniper changes).

-I'd also add in the su-76 <-> t70 swap.
-Manpower to fuel conversion in soviet industry needs to be looked at as well. It feels more like a penalty than anything else.
-Luftwaffe commander used to be UP in 1v1. Now that drops can't be stolen, it actually feels balanced. I can see it being problematic in team games though.

Good suggestions. I miss some SU85 love though.

I believe this is the most well thought out balance post to date. Almost everything suggested would overhaul a lot of the perceived problems and make the game far more enjoyable to play as both sides.

Yea this is pretty great.

+1 Make this a sticky

This is just great, you put here changes the game needs, nothing more and nothing less.

Definitely +1

Just fire that Mr. shocks in M3 and hiring Cruzz.

Period.

Quite a few good changes,others not so much.
280 mp maxim would still be spammed,and be super effective with area suppression for example.Much better to increase their build time.
Also u don't suggest much anything that changes ostheer gameplay at all,pz grens remain unattended..and thus they remain 1 infantry faction.
Panther gets only a accuracy fix for 175 fuel,while bazookas are getting a buff.Everyone knows pzshrecks are rarely used by ost but with bazooka buff and at gun buff well even ost armor will be swarmed.Bazooka buff specially will be abused with blobbing.I support the 57 mm buff though.
U suggested no changes to dead elfant either..so same tiger endgame.
Even with major which all easy eight players get anyway,u still have pz 4 at 125 fuel and e8 at 135.While panther at 175.
Also nerfs to panzerfusiliers and mg 34s while soviet sniper is still without counter,and maxim spam very difficult for OKW?

+1 to everyone for not derailing thread and constructive feedback, I'm surprised we got to page 2 with no major incidents


+1 for these changes.

This has my blessing

's need to be toned down. dont agree with the zook changes either. maxim should be 320 mp. ostwind needs fuel reduction. panther(both) needs fuel reduction as well. pgrens need durability buff. o yea, as for the scavenger arty. if you have the minimum requirement (180) it needs to be more powerful, and if you have 600+ muni stored it needs to be shorter barrage.

If any thread of balance suggestions is looked at by Relic, surely this one, with its many well thought out ideas and its endorsement by so many partisans of the various factions, should be carefully investigated.

god bless you Cruzz. Very nice list. Relic please read

+1 cruzz

Can someone plz tell me why osther or obk cannot hold vet 1 or 2
reflemans early game?? when osther have a commander who vet3 the mgs,mortars,volks or whatever, early game fucking hell ¬¬

Hear, hear! This fantasy patch sounds amazing, can I preorder it? It's nice for a change not seeing balance suggestions posts that are completely biased towards their most favorite army.