Brace in Balance Preview Mod

At the risk of another heated Brace thread.... for those have you who have tested out the Balance Preview Mod what are your thoughts on Brace in it?

General Points:

1. Relic wants to avoid Sim City 2.0 by high cost/ Pop Cap of Emplacements

2. Brace is needed due to the static nature of emplacements + to protect your investment in them

3. Infinite Brace with no cooldown is arguably OP (at the very least super frustrating for the Axis player) and almost certainly needs changed.


As of now Brace has a 1 Minute cooldown after the Brace effect ends, which I feel presents a significant threat to emplacements due to the multiple threats to them.

1. Buffed LEiG - Now with better range and accuracy, short barrage timer means you can widdle down emplacements fairly easily (especially with multiple guns)

2. Mortar Half Track - Incendiary Barrage currently wrecks emplacements

3. Buffed Walking Stucka or Stuka Bomb Drop/Other Artillery Call ins ('nuff said)

4. New Volks Incendiary Grenades - Emplacements are weak to fire and now mainline infantry have fire; their grenades also currently wreck bunkers in 1 grenade due to DoT. I haven't tested them vs. emplacements yet but I fear a similar effect. This could end up being a wide-spread hard counter.

5. Tanks, AT Guns, Etc.

With the new cooldown any combination of these counters slightly staggered after brace is popped leaves a high chance of emplacement death. Counters are fine and needed but when you consider the current cost of emplacements the Brit player is faced with losing 320~400 MP + 0~70 Fuel depending on the emplacement in question. This is pretty devastating given the Brits current manpower bleed situation.

Due to this I feel like a shorter cooldown (30 sec?) is probably more appropriate and/or changing the way brace works (diminishing returns as amount of damage is received increases?). Either that or emplacements need a cost/pop cap reduction to offset the increased likelihood of losing them or slightly buffed damage resistance when not in brace.

tl:dr I feel like the 60 sec cooldown on Brace in Preview Mod is too long considering current counters to and costs of emplacements. Additional tweaks may be needed or else emplacements may not be viable.

Brace is fine as it is, it gets hard countered by indirect fire.
You don't need to destroy Brit buildings, canceling there ability to work is fine enough.

If you remove Brace, all Brit buildings need at least the health of OKW HQ's.

Remove brace, is removing this faction from the game.

Brace was overnerfed. Relic tends to do things drastically.

Brace is fine as it is, it gets hard countered by indirect fire.
You don't need to destroy Brit buildings, canceling there ability to work is fine enough.

If you remove Brace, all Brit buildings need at least the health of OKW HQ's.

Remove brace, is removing this faction from the game.

Looney I like this game just as much as you do, but please be reasonable. I don't think anyone here wants to completely removed this feature.

Brace is not so much of a problem on more open maps due to being easier to get at with At guns/TD's and better line of sight for weapons like the ISG. But for more urban maps like Dusseldorf and Ettelbruck (Is that how you spell those? ) it becomes very hard to dislodge, especially combined with "stand fast". Which overall makes for very sterile gameplay.

I also feel like the 60 second cool down for brace may be too long, but leaving brace as it is now is not the best solution.

At the risk of it being buried under dozens more posts about this I'd like to suggest a different mechanic entirely: Nerf brace duration (obviously) while actually allowing the emplacement structure to be decrewed at 0% health instead of destroyed entirely. Once it is decrewed it could take a bunch more shots before it is destroyed entirely, much like all other indirect fire weapons. This would allow for counter play for both UKF (defending veterancy, not wasting resources to recrew) and Axis (sniping the emplacement to stop it temporarily and removing veterancy) without the major all-or-nothing approach of dying too easily or being almost impossible to take down.

At the risk of it being buried under dozens more posts about this I'd like to suggest a different mechanic entirely: Nerf brace duration (obviously) while actually allowing the emplacement structure to be decrewed at 0% health instead of destroyed entirely. Once it is decrewed it could take a bunch more shots before it is destroyed entirely, much like all other indirect fire weapons. This would allow for counter play for both UKF (defending veterancy, not wasting resources to recrew) and Axis (sniping the emplacement to stop it temporarily and removing veterancy) without the major all-or-nothing approach of dying too easily or being almost impossible to take down.

Totall agree with this.

@OP

Incendiary mortar rounds kill the crew, not the structure, so Brace can't protect them any way.

I don't think brace is totally fine though, I mean not even sustaining 40% damage from a 12 cp 160 munitions bombing strike is a bit to much for me.

At the very least emplacements need to be more resistant to indirect fire or have greater health.

What if instead of stopping the emplacement from firing entirely brace instead reduced damage taken by half while reducing the RoF or the emplacement by half?

fun fact, brace + commander with self repairs means you literally cannot kill them faster than they can repair in brace mode. I played a game where one player spammed railyway on my AT gun whilst 2 MHT fired at it and all I do is pop brace and hit self repair its a joke.

Brace is fine as it is, it gets hard countered by indirect fire.
You don't need to destroy Brit buildings, canceling there ability to work is fine enough.

If you remove Brace, all Brit buildings need at least the health of OKW HQ's.

Remove brace, is removing this faction from the game.

Braced Bofors still fires...saw it today hitting the tank and other units attacking it........

At the risk of it being buried under dozens more posts about this I'd like to suggest a different mechanic entirely: Nerf brace duration (obviously) while actually allowing the emplacement structure to be decrewed at 0% health instead of destroyed entirely. Once it is decrewed it could take a bunch more shots before it is destroyed entirely, much like all other indirect fire weapons. This would allow for counter play for both UKF (defending veterancy, not wasting resources to recrew) and Axis (sniping the emplacement to stop it temporarily and removing veterancy) without the major all-or-nothing approach of dying too easily or being almost impossible to take down.

Sounds cool.