Speaking of AEC

Game was going fairly well until the AEC came out and I sort of floundered when it came out. Game went sharply downhill from there. Anyone care to review?

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  JJB34

  LeadCuresCancer

  AEC Loss

  by: LeadCuresCancer map: Kholodny Ferma Winter

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There is no even semi reliable counter to AEC, the thing is pretty broken. sorry for being non helpful, but just about all you can do is pray for a lucky teller.

Even tellers don't help when they can spam them with only 50 fuel. And they are still good against tier 3 ostheer tanks.

And mostly the problem is that they push u away and then it's really hard to come back .

I'm mainly a british player. I didn't look at the replay but i can tell you that panzaphasts are the best way to make the thing useless. use them everytime you see it to hold it off until you get a pak or shreks (2 squads with them to kill it, 1 with them will only hold it at bay) or tank. btw i wouldn't say its broken, powerful yes but still able to be countered fine. i would say its on par with the staurt now. a luchs (the OKW light tank thing) will not beat it unless you get a panzaphast on it too.

It wasn't the first AEC that really did me in it was the second one. Just watched the replay on my own and I think I saw a couple of things that I did wrong. One of which was bringing my PaK out so far right away without any gren support. I have found that the AEC comes out at the same time as you get the pak (so long as you haven't been bled and your opponent goes straight for the AEC) so with that in mind I will just have to stay back a bit until I have something to support the pak or block it to prevent circle strafing. Thanks for the replies guys. Anyone else have something to add?

Right now, it may be OP. But that is just a placeholder before a more reasonable buff comes, to give the faction at least a little chance

It's broken
There are 2 big issues:
1. Its survivability. It absorbs 2-3 pak shots and smokes away. I feel that's more or less the same as pz4 vs brit AT.
2. Almost insane efficiency vs infantry. Is needs 2-3 shots to wipe a gren squad with almost every shot killng a model on a squd. That's faster than pz4.
These 2 combined and there's no chance to effectively manouver it into a pak/shreck trap. The result is it will push ost off the field and make it impossible to come back against a competent player. I tried going straight into tier 2 but then if they go sniper it will destroy you.

" Is needs 2-3 shots to wipe a gren squad with almost every shot killng a model on a squd. That's faster than pz4."

Not in my experience.. Frankly it misses rather a lot ( check the accuracy stats) and doesn't do a huge amount of splash damage ( 1/4 of a model's full health if that?). If you leave a low health Gren squad unsupported and let an AEC bombard it then yes it will be in trouble. In comparison to before the patch Grens, Volks etc would just ignore it and carry on capping.

As a previous poster said fausting an AEC which has over extended sees it with a long slow return to be repaired. Mine never seem to not have engine damage against a competent player and shrecked infantry are quite capable of running it down.

AEC is in function and effect very similar to T-70 and Stuart, so treat it the way you'd treat any of those.

AEC is very fragile and any Faust can seal its fate if its followed up by something else. If not, it will have to limp back home and give you time to deploy your counter.

AEC's effect is dependent on your ability to keep your cool.

It might be a bit overdone, but it's definitely not broken.

hi
I know all the things U wrote down. I cannot agree with them, however. You have to face a really bad player who overextends the AEC. Trust me, in the hands of a competent player a supported AEC will drain ost manpower and allow the Brits to control most of the map. Fausting it will usually cost you more manpower due to the lost models of grens than the loss of the AEC. You have to be almost insane to let it die to a pak without previously having drained huge amouts of manpower from your opponent.
AEC may be OK and fair against OKW, though. The problem probably lies in very fragile ost squads that tend to lose models more quickly compared to other squads.

AEC can fire at shreck infantry outside of the shreck range. A good AEC player will stay out of range, drain your manpower and now OST has invested all this AT capability and gets overrun by Brens on IS.

Someone earlier said it's just like a t-70 or a stuart. No it's not, those 2 tanks come later and they do not have the same AI capabilities that this tank has. The T-70 has good AI but can't fight armor. The Stuart has decent AI and decent anti tank, with some nice trick shots.

But the AEC wrecks infantry like a Luch, and kills tanks like a Puma. It may have less range than a Puma but 1on1 it's a hard to judge who's going to win and Puma is a dedicated light AT tank.


I think the AEC should either be AI or AT, it shouldn't be powerful at both. Also I believe it is the cheapst out of the tanks to get, boasting only 50 fuel, and 25 to unlock? Everyone pays tech fees, and this puts the brits at such a low tech cost and pumping out 2 or 3 is very common in games vs british players.

If it was easy enough to counter, then why is every british player under the sun spamming these things?

These instawipes are news to me, watched Latch's stream the other night whilst he chased 2 Volks models who were retreating back to base. His AEC fired at least 8 shots and missed every one. I think he lost the AEC too.

At max range you might tickle a large blob, who are having a chimpanzees tea party and oblivious to it, which oddly enough tends to happen even if it has better and closer targets. For some reason the AEC prefers to hit targets at max range unless you intervene, which is probably a bug but rather puts the lie to it's potency. It does some splash damage out to 2.5 metres but rarely gets within 10!

These instawipes are news to me, watched Latch's stream the other night whilst he chased 2 Volks models who were retreating back to base. His AEC fired at least 8 shots and missed every one. I think he lost the AEC too.

At max range you might tickle a large blob, who are having a chimpanzees tea party and oblivious to it, which oddly enough tends to happen even if it has better and closer targets. For some reason the AEC prefers to hit targets at max range unless you intervene, which is probably a bug but rather puts the lie to it's potency. It does some splash damage out to 2.5 metres but rarely gets within 10!

Check them out when they are fighting squads in cover, the aoe and the bunching when squads are in cover is mostly where it comes from. The AEC moving, squads moving, the accuracy is suppose to be crappy then. But max range, not moving, picking at squads. Then when you run w/ shrecks just keep the AEC at max range and kit him. Generally the Brit player will compliment this with a rather aggressive mortar pit to slam your volks and if you get hit at all you need to retreat because you don't want a weakened volk squad taking an AEC shot.

However when playing as OKW the AEC isn't as much of a problem. It's mostly the OST that have a problem fighting this thing. At least w/ OKW you can do a ninja rakten, OST just lacks good ways to ambush the AEC unlike OKW. Current meta is all about light vehicles and OST don't get one worth a damn. Luch and Puma are great, Stuarts good, and AEC is top dog while T-70 is still good AI and cap also cap.

Another thing I noticed while using CheatMode mod is that the AEC 1 shots cover. So if you were using it to try and fight the AEC it blows up a volks sandbag in 1 shot while also dealing aoe damage to the volk.

I did manage to find a lone squad in green cover, killed it after 24 shots at close to max range. Of course the chap didn't know I was firing on it so probably put it down to an instawipe.

How is the 222 inadequate combined with Pak, faust, shreck, MG42 rounds, rifle grenades etc? It costs the same as a Universal carrier without any extra branch teching cost and deals damage consistently where the AEC seems to miss it about half the time. You can have 2 plus change for an AEC yet I rarely see OST players using them.

I rather suspect that the counters are already there ( and cheap ones at that) but don't scale into the late game and are therefore underused.

I did manage to find a lone squad in green cover, killed it after 24 shots at close to max range. Of course the chap didn't know I was firing on it so probably put it down to an instawipe.

Can you stop trolling in the thread? You really want me to upload a video that shows the AEC killing squads consistantly with 3-6 shots? 24 shots? what were you driving it around in circles with your eyes closed?

You know one of the grand finals for ESL was won by the Brit player spamming 3 AEC's against an OST? Or do you watch ESL or just make up idea's to post on the forum?

Jump in around the 6-7 minute mark and watch the damage the AEC is causing to those volks grenadiers. There's even a shot that while it doesn't kill a single model, drops the entire squads HP to 50%. The mortar pit is assisting, but its the AEC that's picking up virtually every kill for a good 2-3 minutes in here.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKUCu85YM2k

"But max range, not moving, picking at squads. Then when you run w/ shrecks just keep the AEC at max range and kit him."

As I say max range the accuracy is horrible. Show me a vid of what we were specifically talking about ( the above quoted) and RNG dependant I doubt you'll see much difference.

Oh saw the final you are talking about, losing 4 or 5 paks isn't helpful against any build or any faction.

You seem to think the AEC is an invincible long range uncounterable instant squad wiper. I humbly disagree providing you don't let it.

Also

"How is the 222 inadequate combined with Pak, faust, shreck, MG42 rounds, rifle grenades etc? It costs the same as a Universal carrier without any extra branch teching cost and deals damage consistently where the AEC seems to miss it about half the time. You can have 2 plus change for an AEC yet I rarely see OST players using them."


You know if you add the tech costs up it's 75 fuel for the Scout Car and 85 fuel for the AEC and they're worlds apart ?

OST
Research Tech 2 - 40 fuel
Build Tier 2 ( also have an engineer thats at your base) - 20 fuel
Build Scout Car - 210 manpower/15 fuel

Brit
Tech 1 - 30 Fuel, requires no engineer to build (obviously you dont get one but it's still annoying to retreat a squad just to tech)
AEC Unlock - 15 fuel
Build AEC - 340 / 50 fuel


So the AEC is 10 fuel behind the OST Scout car, and keep in mind most OST will build Tier 1 just to stay in the game and get the Panzerfausts you mention. This then puts OST behind the timing of the AEC.

So you race your way to an AEC, the OST races his way to a Pak40 and you just circle straft it. When Grens appear you circle and keep your distance. Don't think I haven't played brits, when I roll AEC it's like playing the damn game with one hand.

The AEC should not be as powerful as it is, but by no means does that mean it should remain costing 340 manpower/50 fuel. Something like 240/40 would be decent if they could remove how good it is at killing infantry. Nobody is building the AEC to fight light vehicles, everyone is building the AEC to kill infantry. What light vehicle is the AEC afraid of when fighting Ost? yet its the #1 counter to OST.

Furthermore, cheap counters? 320 manpower for a pak isn't exactly cheap. Although it's useful for the rest of the game at least. Pak, Fausts, Shrecks, and a Car ALL to counter the AEC? Why does OST need to micro 4 things, oh maybe 5 things if we're counting laying tellers, or baiting someone into a teller. So why does the OST player have to work so hard to counter 1 unit? they'll also likely be trying to counter a mortar pit at the same time as a common build is to slap down a pit while the AEC keeps them busy.

Don't listen to anyone that tries to defend the Aec's current status or compares it to another light Allied vehicle (T70, that made me LOL). It's in it's own ballpark and is currently broken.

Simply put, don't play Ostheer until it's patched.

Simply put, don't play Ostheer until it's patched.

This is the advice I often see, being pigeon holed into OKW kinda blows though. The uphill battle is often a fun one but this hills more of a mountain currently.