OKW free AA

This is getting out of control.
The "free" AA has been there from Stoneage and now some people are thinking is wrong. T4 does not run anywhere, is there exposed to indirect fire, and it is not as efficient as a mobile AA. It has its downsides and it pays for its advantages.
Like stated above, OKW is not the single faction with "free" features, everybody knows it.

It was wrong since day 1 and never stopped to be.

Changes to the doctrines(industry) and short term increase of popularity of said doctrines pushed the issue to the surface again.

Exactly the same issue applies to schwerer.
Player is prohibited from using certain abilities only and exclusively because OKW player teched up.

+1 OP

Its kind of silly that OKW counters several doctrine's hallmark abilities like Airborne's P47 strafe just as a result of teching normally. Arguing that OKW should keep it because they have always had it is a non-arguement: how much other stuff has Relic changed or removed? It's like arguing that Rifle flamers were okay because Rifle Company always had them. The game changes (flamethrower tweaks) and other things need altered as a result (moving them to REs).

If anything just remove the AA ability as a default and then add it in as a side-upgrade. That way its a conscious decision on the OKW player's part to counter skill planes and isn't "free".

The Luchs is not the first unit you can produce as OKW. You can plant mines infront of your base, get AT guns into position etc or even tech for a AEC which comes at the same moment.

Neither the M3. At most, it's your 4th (T1 - 2 Conscripts - M3) or 5th unit (2 Cons - CE - T1 - M3). Flamer arrives at 60muni and guess what, OKW now has equal muni income. This means you can put 1 or 2 mine at least till your first HQ is deployed. Depends on whether you want to rely or not on early schrecks or rak.

Small arm fires can deal fine against an M3 if you don't spread out too much your army. Volks do more damage, SP and Kubel are cheaper and you have more initial mp as well.

Tip: you can still see the xp kickers on FoW. I'm not sure if there's a difference between T2 and T1 but early on when there's not much to do, i sometimes roam around an SU base to know what i might be facing.


Ontopic: Flak HQ should had lower AA capabilities. Just give them normal bunkers.

Funny how Allies need to build M5 or USF HT to deny areal recon while OKW has the AA for free by teching up.

Fine, then let's allow OKW build caches also. Because they still don't have the ability to boost their resources like any other faction has. So if you want to bring them in line with the others, then they should have access to caches too, right?

Sure. That's not the problem.

Fine, then let's allow OKW build caches also. Because they still don't have the ability to boost their resources like any other faction has. So if you want to bring them in line with the others, then they should have access to caches too, right?

Except for Salvage which is free...

panzer command is the only one that can actually kill anything reasonably well.

If it's in the field, you can go kill it. Not only will you take out the AA, but you'll neuter his tech. If it's not in the field, it's not holding any territory and is thus purely an AA weapon.

I'd love to see someone compile the data on doing 50 fuel drops and counting how many times they are shot down by the panzer command.

panzer command is the only one that can actually kill anything reasonably well.

If it's in the field, you can go kill it. Not only will you take out the AA, but you'll neuter his tech. If it's not in the field, it's not holding any territory and is thus purely an AA weapon.

I'd love to see someone compile the data on doing 50 fuel drops and counting how many times they are shot down by the panzer command.

If you went through thread you would knew cause I did a tests.

5/11 for Schwerer.
1-2/10 for flak bases.

If you went through thread you would knew cause I did a tests.

5/11 for Schwerer.
1-2/for flak bases.

Not a statistically relevant sample size. Especially when you have two of them!

Do 1v1, have one schwerer and do it 30-50 times and report back to have meaningful data.

Not a statistically relevant sample size. Especially when you have two of them!

Do 1v1, have one schwerer and do it 30-50 times and report back to have meaningful data.

becasue 10 is not objective...

becasue 10 is not objective...

10 is not really enough, no. Especially when you're using two of them.

Not a statistically relevant sample size. Especially when you have two of them!

Do 1v1, have one schwerer and do it 30-50 times and report back to have meaningful data.

Statistically this is relevant. Your small sample size complaint makes sense when samples fall below 5. We call 30 tests a large sample size, but most tests I work with will happily take sample sizes at around 10 and report meaningful output. We don't know the true chance (it depends on the map, game type, plane origin), but 10-20% is also reasonable based on simple calculations.

Each shot from the base structure has a 0.5% chance to knock down the plane. If you have 10 base structures and they all fire 10 rounds at the plane you have 10x10x0.005=50% chance. On the other hand if you have 5 base structures that fire 10 rounds than you get a 25% chance. You can easily calculate for say 4 base structures and 5 round each. The range on the base structures for hitting planes is quite long and 10 rounds is fairly easy to do. All of this is assuming no Schwer HQ, if there is the chance of hitting the plane rises substantially.

Also why is 1v1 the only place to run the test?

If you feel so inclined not to trust the data Australian generated feel free to run the test yourself, you should not demand he do the work for you.

Statistically this is relevant. Your small sample size complaint makes sense when samples fall below 5. We call 30 tests a large sample size, but most tests I work with will happily take sample sizes at around 10 and report meaningful output. We don't know the true chance (it depends on the map, game type, plane origin), but 10-20% is also reasonable based on simple calculations.

It depends what you're doing. In this case, I think 10 isn't enough simply because there are so many other variables. (Rotation on the guns when the plane comes in affecting time to fire, potential accuracy modifiers, plane origin, gun placement etc.) And that's before we talk about the map.

Each shot from the base structure has a 0.5% chance to knock down the plane. If you have 10 base structures and they all fire 10 rounds at the plane you have 10x10x0.005=50% chance.

That's not really how the math works. Would be around 40% chance for 100 total shots fired.

Also why is 1v1 the only place to run the test?

Because it determines how good the panzer command and base structures actually are against planes. If in a team game scenario there's more flak emplacements in the HQ (or there could be none and they could be bunkers!), or multiple panzer commands, that complicates things. On the flip side though, maps are bigger (plane spends more time out of range of stuff) and calling in more planes at once surely is going to effect targeting priority. Simple calling in a recon plane before calling in a fuel drop could let the fuel drop make it through, which is only possible in a team game iirc. 1v1 is clean and simple to test.

Show Spoiler

If you feel so inclined not to trust the data Australian generated feel free to run the test yourself, you should not demand he do the work for you.

If you want to make the claim, it's on you to support it.

When we're done with the homogenization of OKW, can they have non-doctrinal HMG then? Seriously, the gameplay would benefit so much from it. Without an HMG, there is so much less positional play and it will always just be an infantry blob that can either be overpowered or underwhelming, depending on patch.

Excuse me if it has already been said; I haven't read every page of this, because the way the "daily posters" speak to each other gives me cancer.

Got a great idea how to prevent your planes from shooting down. Find OKW flack HQ-> then go there with 1-2 squads-> let the flack shoot at youre infanty-> call in a supply drop, while flack is distracted-> ??? PROFIT!! (kidding ofc, +1 to thread)

Well, OKW doesn't have viable air attack abilities, the existing ones are not even close from allied abilities in this area, especially USF and UKF. So I think their AA capabilities must be better than ostheer's. And they are.
Isn't this how it's supposed to be? Especialy when you have on the field exposed trucks.
Allied off maps abilities can be overhelming, so proper counters should exist. You want skillplanes running wild just because they cost 200 amo?
And if in 4v4 (good thing that we don't have 5v5, 6v6, 10v10, etc) these "free" AAs are so effective, if they are nerfed, how they will perform in 2v2s? Or 1v1s? The number of planes is the same, you know.

Furthermore, there is a question of proportions. If there are 3 Shwerers on the field, and one of the players use a skillplane attack ability, it's quite obvious that alote of planes will fall and this will diminish your air attack power. But if 3 players are using the skillplane ability in the same time, what would be the impact? You won't even notice that there are 3 Schwerer on the field.

I don't think the problem is real.

Johnny what happened to you man? You've gotten a lot more hard line in the last few months.

OKW originally had flak in base instead of mg due to reduced fuel income to stop allies base rushing with a quick light/medium vehicle while OKW waits for their first tank (which back then was most likely going to be a luchs or a heavy.. remember old flak halftruck with pack up and down time P4 was only a call in and not great at that (pre-okw p4 buff when you had to drop muni to get a decent medium vehicle (worse than OST P4).

With the changes that have been made it could be argued do they even need it now? Perhaps mgs in base would make a better approach?
Also in the same vein the flak gun of the Panzer HQ may need adjustments given the resource buff (although it does cost 120 now). I would first switch the base flaks and see if that is enough instead of changing both (you know not make a drastic change, do it in increments to avoid severe frustration for a player base).

It really does make it hard to get the lend lease air drop in with very little active thought being put in by the OKW player while allies have to actively invest fuel and sometimes muni to stop OST drops. I don't feel too strongly either way but I do feel Relic didn't foresee how the changes to OKW resources would impact the faction in a lot of ways.

Funny how Allies need to build M5 or USF HT to deny areal recon while OKW has the AA for free by teching up.

well, i guess they are run by National Socialism government, so i guess all the free shit technically make sense. except that there resources don't get taxed to pay for those.

damn it boys, nazis have figured out a way to get free shit without paying shit.

That's not really how the math works. Would be around 40% chance for 100 total shots fired.

Maybe I don't know how to multiply, but 10x10x0.005 leads to 50%.

If the guns have a 0.5% chance per shot, each fire 10 shots, and there are 10 of them.

How do you calculate 40%, since you showed no numbers but claim I can't do the math? Feel free to prove me wrong. I would be interested in calculating it correctly for myself anyway if I am wrong.


"Clean" testing in 1v1 is important, but so is 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4. Assuming the commanders are for all game modes.

Also Australian did support his claim, you just didn't like it so it falls on you to now show that he is wrong since he presented data. This is how these kind of data driven discussion go. A person presents some data, another disagrees collects more shows that, the other disagree and collects more...and so on. We are at the part where you collect data.

Edit: Whoops I completely brain farted. The way to calculate this is the chance to survive (0.995 or 99.5% per shot) raised to the power of the number of occurrences. Here it would be number of shots fired, so 0.995^100 = ~60% as you recognized.

If you feel so inclined not to trust the data Australian generated feel free to run the test yourself, you should not demand he do the work for you.

Just tested the following:
1v1, Angoville, SU vs OKW. SU using Lend Lease's fuel supply drop.
CheatCommands mod.
OKW starts with 3 flaks as "bunkers", they all fire 18 rounds to the plane before it goes out of its range. Schwerer fires 6 times when put in the middle of the map.
12/31 times were taken down by 3 flaks + schwerer panzer.
5/30 were taken down by 3 flaks (base).
10/30 were taken down by 1 Schwerer HQ.
7/10 were taken down by 1 Schwerer HQ + 1 FHT (2 of those 3 times that didn't, somehow the FHT didn't fire).

Hope this helps.
I still find it stupid that OKW gets AA by sideteching (and thus deny some allies' abilities), specially when they also have AA bunkers.

Just tested the following:
1v1, Angoville, SU vs OKW. SU using Lend Lease's fuel supply drop.
CheatCommands mod.
OKW starts with 3 flaks as "bunkers", they all fire 18 rounds to the plane before it goes out of its range. Schwerer fires 6 times when put in the middle of the map.
12/31 times were taken down by 3 flaks + schwerer panzer.
5/30 were taken down by 3 flaks (base).
10/30 were taken down by 1 Schwerer HQ.
7/10 were taken down by 1 Schwerer HQ + 1 FHT (2 of those 3 times that didn't, somehow the FHT didn't fire).

Hope this helps.
I still find it stupid that OKW gets AA by sideteching (and thus deny some allies' abilities), specially when they also have AA bunkers.

Thanks for your work
It just proves that x10 is as objective as x30