Royal Engineers are op

I just think that the history of UKF thus far has been underpowered core infantry cancelled out by extreme faction cheese. One of the best buffs you could give to infantry sections is to switch base damage to their damage out of cover and strengthen them to their original normal damage once they leave cover. Right now you just have shitty vickers damage when you are out of cover.

IS can't flank for shit, needs cover to be effective so these guys are less mainline inf and more like mobile def emplacements that needs tons of babysitting. If UKF got base healing, nobody would use IS ever.

The most common problem with balancing ins overbuffing and nerfing. The changes would basically buff IS brens and PIATS with a 40% reload and a 20% weapon cooldown in cover with no penalty out of cover. Another change that needs to be made is their moving accuracy. I agree on that.

The most common problem with balancing ins overbuffing and nerfing. The changes would basically buff IS brens and PIATS with a 40% reload and a 20% weapon cooldown in cover with no penalty out of cover. Another change that needs to be made is their moving accuracy. I agree on that.

Just get rid of the whole cover nonsense with UK, the whole thing is gimmick and unreliable as hell.

Just get rid of the whole cover nonsense with UK, the whole thing is gimmick and unreliable as hell.

But think of all of the work they did to make the little sword thingy in the corner!

Given the prevailing "Sappers OP, Tommies UP" sentiment, what does everyone think of the following changes?

• Tommy vet 3 changed, now equips all squad members with SLE (using this method), and the accuracy bonus has been increased from 20% to 30%
  
  
• Tommy vet requirements increased to 600/1200/2400 from 560/1120/2240 (this is increased from the balance preview value, current patch vet requirements: 480/960/1920)
  
  
• Tommy cover bonus now a bonus (of the same magnitude), weapons adjusted accordingly, changes only apply to UKF weapons and weapon upgrades that Tommies can receive (i.e., not MG34s or Commando Brens)
  
  
• Tommy artillery flare range increased from 30 to 45 (current patch: 20)
  
  
• Piat scatter removed and projectile speed increased by 25%
  
  
• Piat cost increased from 40 to 50
  
  
• HEAT Grenade ability added to Tommies, requires Mills Bomb research
  
  
• HEAT Grenade now does full snare damage and snares on damage, not penetration
  
  
• Gammon Bomb cost reduced from 75 to 45
  
  
• Sapper vet 3 reinforcement cost reduction removed
  
  
• Recovery Sappers now have Sapper build options
  
  
• Sappers now receive the Tommy Bren from weapon racks
  
  
• All units now pick up the right weapons from dropped Brens (No more Tommy Brens for Obersoldaten)
  
  
• The Vickers K now has a moving-fire version for elite (obersoldaten, commandos etc.) infantry, mirror of the Commando Bren (standard Vickers K mirror of Tommy Bren)
  
  
• Vickers K now gives Commando Vickers K to elite infantry when picked up
  

The general idea of these changes is to increase both Tommy utility and scaling as well as reduce the extent to which Sappers with weapon upgrades can be spammed and be effective. As you can probably guess from some of the proposed changes (and their tense) I have a mod here if you want to test the changes.

Show Spoiler

I love it. GJ not overbuffing.

The thing with Tommies is that they have the following handicaps:
- Terrible moving accuracy
- Inefficient close-range DPS
- The out-of-cover penalty

If you read through those lines carefully, any micro you are willing to invest on Tommies past placing them on the nearest safe cover (or A-moving, if there is no green cover nearby) is probably going to backfire on you. Flanking with Tommies is not something that is rewarded, currently.

Since Tommies are an expensive, exclusively-AI unit with no other utility, balance implies that they would have to be buffed to kick everyone else's arses. However, if we do this on a unit that is so allergic to microing, Tommies will become extremely frustrating to play against.

Thus, at some point, we are going to have to consider giving Tommies some utility:
- Give them a recon-section upgrade (e.g., SLE's) that allows them to be accurate on the move (but disables picking up other weapons)
- Fix the base howitzers:

• Give the projectiles some actual AoE (currently they are still on-par with Katyusha rockets).
  
• Consider removing the cost of calling down artillery from Tommies. Nobody can afford 45 Munitions (+45 munitions for the upgrade) in the early game to call down 3 shells.
  
• The sniper can retain the munition cost, as there is no forward investment/lock-out (from medkit) involved there.
  
• Find a way to give Tommies access to smoke. Either mobile mortars, or base howitzers or something.
  

- Add a mobile mortar to UKF, and let faction synergy work its magic there.

Now, regarding the suggestions that Svanh made:

<snip>

If I had to categorize the changes, these would be:
- Increase the AI power of Tommies
- Give Tommies snares
- Make Tommies the PIAT gods of UKF (Because of the cover penalty, they are currently the underdogs)
- Nerf Sappers by giving them inferior weapons from the racks
- Some solid QoL changes (Flare range, Vickers K, etc)

My gut feeling is that Tommies would already be buffed a lot, if we already completely removed SLE's from their Vet3 "bonus". However, that alone:
- would make double-Bren Tommies extremely frustrating to play against, late-game
- does not give us an answer about how UKF is supposed to get by early-game (when munitions are scarce)

(The Vet3 bug NEEDS to go already. If the only reason for keeping this bug in is to balance double-Bren Tommies, then fix the (RNG-prone) bug, and find a more consistent way to balance the unit).

However, if we also go for giving snares on top of the AI buffs, that might be killing it.

The other thing is that, I do agree that if Tommies get buffed, Sappers no longer have to remain super-efficient. However, I am not sure if giving them inferior versions of weapon rack upgrades would be the right way to go; that might make the Heavy Engineers upgrade more awkward than it has to be (apart from hurting your mobility). Why not just, straight-up increase the MP cost of Sappers?

Sure they are champ

Just don't do hard drugs anymore

Rifle still beat ober
More news at 69

Rifle still beat ober
More news at 69

Not sure how its relevant to REs.

Not sure how its relevant to REs.

you said that higher tier unit should beat and be more cost effective than lower tier right ober should cost 300 30 reinforce for your logic and their performance with 8 popcap (you know tier 0 vs tier 3)
Btw shouldn't gren beat is easily tier 0 vs tier 1 Kappa

Thus, at some point, we are going to have to consider giving Tommies some utility:
- Give them a recon-section upgrade (e.g., SLE's) that allows them to be accurate on the move (but disables picking up other weapons)
- Fix the base howitzers:

• Give the projectiles some actual AoE (currently they are still on-par with Katyusha rockets).
  
• Consider removing the cost of calling down artillery from Tommies. Nobody can afford 45 Munitions (+45 munitions for the upgrade) in the early game to call down 3 shells.
  
• The sniper can retain the munition cost, as there is no forward investment/lock-out (from medkit) involved there.
  
• Find a way to give Tommies access to smoke. Either mobile mortars, or base howitzers or something.
  

- Add a mobile mortar to UKF, and let faction synergy work its magic there.

I'm not a fan of the recon-section, free call-in artillery, or Tommy smoke.

- Recon-sections will most likely be introduced doctrinally (which doesn't fix the issues) or will dilute the long-range role of Tommies (reducing the number of easy and intuitive counters).

- The artillery actually calls down six shells per howitzer. The Royal Artillery Regiment call-in only calls down three. Reducing the cost of the Tommy version (and its shell count) would be a good change but outright removal of the cost would be a bit much.

- Tommies are long-range superiority units (want long LOS) that can build green cover (which makes them effectively immune to suppression). Smoke will only be used in situations that would usually require a hard retreat (i.e., careless play).

Now, regarding the suggestions that Svanh made:
If I had to categorize the changes, these would be:
- Increase the AI power of Tommies
- Give Tommies snares
- Make Tommies the PIAT gods of UKF (Because of the cover penalty, they are currently the underdogs)
- Nerf Sappers by giving them inferior weapons from the racks
- Some solid QoL changes (Flare range, Vickers K, etc)

My gut feeling is that Tommies would already be buffed a lot, if we already completely removed SLE's from their Vet3 "bonus". However, that alone:
- would make double-Bren Tommies extremely frustrating to play against, late-game
- does not give us an answer about how UKF is supposed to get by early-game (when munitions are scarce)

(The Vet3 bug NEEDS to go already. If the only reason for keeping this bug in is to balance double-Bren Tommies, then fix the (RNG-prone) bug, and find a more consistent way to balance the unit).

However, if we also go for giving snares on top of the AI buffs, that might be killing it.

The other thing is that, I do agree that if Tommies get buffed, Sappers no longer have to remain super-efficient. However, I am not sure if giving them inferior versions of weapon rack upgrades would be the right way to go; that might make the Heavy Engineers upgrade more awkward than it has to be (apart from hurting your mobility). Why not just, straight-up increase the MP cost of Sappers?

Giving Tommies more mobility (as much as it would help) pushes them towards the Riflemen/Obersoldaten school of balance. I'd prefer them to be long-range DPS and support infantry rather than all-rounders.

I wanted to address Tommy scaling and utility (DPS and support) more so than straight performance so as not to completely destroy Ostheer. The snare, artillery flare and PIAT changes were to address utility scaling (the PIAT changes to encourage a more long-ranged role). The snares aren't necessary to the other changes but they do help UKF with their mid-game issues.

You should note that Sappers would receive the exact same weapons the Tommies do but simply don't receive the in-cover bonus (which could always be added to their vet 1) to encourage players to use Tommies in a long-range fire support role with Sappers used to assault and soak up damage.

I'm not a fan of the recon-section, free call-in artillery, or Tommy smoke.

- Recon-sections will most likely be introduced doctrinally (which doesn't fix the issues) or will dilute the long-range role of Tommies (reducing the number of easy and intuitive counters).

Giving Tommies more mobility (as much as it would help) pushes them towards the Riflemen/Obersoldaten school of balance. I'd prefer them to be long-range DPS and support infantry rather than all-rounders.

- The idea behind Recon Sections is that you sacrifice firepower (Brens/Piats etc) for mobility.

Recon sections can still remain pretty terrible at close range, but at least you will be able to relocate them. More importantly, you will be able to chase units down with Recon sections (which is something that Tommies are terrible at)
e.g., chasing an MG/sniper while it relocates at mid range.

I don't want to make Recon Sections the new-new Penals. (they don't deserve to!)

- The artillery actually calls down six shells per howitzer. The Royal Artillery Regiment call-in only calls down three. Reducing the cost of the Tommy version (and its shell count) would be a good change but outright removal of the cost would be a bit much.

- About Artillery. I almost always use the Sniper version of the Artillery, which (I could swear!) calls down 3 shells per howitzer + 4 airburst shells (if you went anvil). There are basically 4 ways to use the 25pounders:
- The Royal Arty barrage
- Sniper flares
- Tommy flares
- Forward Assembly flares

Is it easy to verify whether some of these abilities behave differently than others? (otherwise I have to check this tonight and I'll edit this post with the answer)

- Tommies are long-range superiority units (want long LOS) that can build green cover (which makes them effectively immune to suppression). Smoke will only be used in situations that would usually require a hard retreat (i.e., careless play).

- Regarding smoke; I wasn't thinking of giving Tommies access to smoke directly. More like giving the faction some way to deploy smoke.

Currently, the only options are Vet1 Mortar emplacements (static) and AEC (90 second cooldown). If Tommies could choose between calling down howitzer barrage or a smoke barrage, Artillery flares (and Tommies) would immediately become more useful (without having to buff their AI to infantry-melting levels).

You should note that Sappers would receive the exact same weapons the Tommies do but simply don't receive the in-cover bonus (which could always be added to their vet 1) to encourage players to use Tommies in a long-range fire support role with Sappers used to assault and soak up damage.

I've already mentioned something similar in another thread. Relic would probably want to balance Brens according to how they behave on Tommies, because if Brens=strong and Brens-on-Tommies=Ober-strong, faces will melt. Thus, in order to retain the vision of giving Tommies better Brens than Sappers (cover bonus included), the Sapper version will have to be pushed down, to make room for the (upgraded) Tommy version.

If we really must absolutely give Tommies an actual cover bonus, we could do the following:
- Retain cover penalty (on a similar-ish level)
- Implement a tiny cover bonus, that will also work for picked-up weapons. (I don't know if the bonus would have to be 1%, 5% or 10%; I am not good with DPS numbers). However, it would have to be small to retain a relative level of balance.
- The actual bonus (for captured weapons etc) would be justifiable for Tommies because: they don't get decent accuracy veterancy, they have smaller utility than other mainline infantry (if we keep them as is), and they are static.
- However, I would still be _very_ concerned about the A-moving effect.

I wanted to address Tommy scaling and utility (DPS and support) more so than straight performance so as not to completely destroy Ostheer. The snare, artillery flare and PIAT changes were to address utility scaling (the PIAT changes to encourage a more long-ranged role). The snares aren't necessary to the other changes but they do help UKF with their mid-game issues.

If there is a graceful way to balance UKF early game without giving their mainline infantry snares (and also retain the mainline infantry relevant), I would go for that.

Finally, regarding PIATs. They are too spammable currently (and way too good for their current price).

I agree with the price increase (50 might be cheap still), and I also agree that giving PIATs a faster projectile will ease the micro tax (thus bringing together the low-end and high-end users, so that the price increase becomes justifiable). However, PIATs is something that can/should be settled in a thread of its own.

(off-topic: Is it moddable to give PIATs a tracking projectile, while also retaining their hedge-hopping aspect?)

The thing with Tommies is that they have the following handicaps:
- Terrible moving accuracy
- Inefficient close-range DPS
- The out-of-cover penalty

If you read through those lines carefully, any micro you are willing to invest on Tommies past placing them on the nearest safe cover (or A-moving, if there is no green cover nearby) is probably going to backfire on you. Flanking with Tommies is not something that is rewarded, currently.

Since Tommies are an expensive, exclusively-AI unit with no other utility, balance implies that they would have to be buffed to kick everyone else's arses. However, if we do this on a unit that is so allergic to microing, Tommies will become extremely frustrating to play against.

Thus, at some point, we are going to have to consider giving Tommies some utility:
- Give them a recon-section upgrade (e.g., SLE's) that allows them to be accurate on the move (but disables picking up other weapons)
- Fix the base howitzers:

• Give the projectiles some actual AoE (currently they are still on-par with Katyusha rockets).
  
• Consider removing the cost of calling down artillery from Tommies. Nobody can afford 45 Munitions (+45 munitions for the upgrade) in the early game to call down 3 shells.
  
• The sniper can retain the munition cost, as there is no forward investment/lock-out (from medkit) involved there.
  
• Find a way to give Tommies access to smoke. Either mobile mortars, or base howitzers or something.
  

- Add a mobile mortar to UKF, and let faction synergy work its magic there.

Now, regarding the suggestions that Svanh made:


If I had to categorize the changes, these would be:
- Increase the AI power of Tommies
- Give Tommies snares
- Make Tommies the PIAT gods of UKF (Because of the cover penalty, they are currently the underdogs)
- Nerf Sappers by giving them inferior weapons from the racks
- Some solid QoL changes (Flare range, Vickers K, etc)

My gut feeling is that Tommies would already be buffed a lot, if we already completely removed SLE's from their Vet3 "bonus". However, that alone:
- would make double-Bren Tommies extremely frustrating to play against, late-game
- does not give us an answer about how UKF is supposed to get by early-game (when munitions are scarce)

(The Vet3 bug NEEDS to go already. If the only reason for keeping this bug in is to balance double-Bren Tommies, then fix the (RNG-prone) bug, and find a more consistent way to balance the unit).

However, if we also go for giving snares on top of the AI buffs, that might be killing it.

The other thing is that, I do agree that if Tommies get buffed, Sappers no longer have to remain super-efficient. However, I am not sure if giving them inferior versions of weapon rack upgrades would be the right way to go; that might make the Heavy Engineers upgrade more awkward than it has to be (apart from hurting your mobility). Why not just, straight-up increase the MP cost of Sappers?

Don't forget that due to high mp cost and their tendency to clump behind cover, Tommies make excellent rifle nade bait and mortar food, Tommie needs mortar cover badly or any forms of indirect, explosives would rip them apart. Also sniper food.
My suggestion is remove the out of cover debuff altogether and to balance out also remove their 0.8 receiving acc.

Don't forget that due to high mp cost and their tendency to clump behind cover, Tommies make excellent rifle nade bait and mortar food, Tommie needs mortar cover badly or any forms of indirect, explosives would rip them apart. Also sniper food.
My suggestion is remove the out of cover debuff altogether and to balance out also remove their 0.8 receiving acc.

Then you'd end up with a unit that is weaker then grens and much more expensive...

Don't forget that due to high mp cost and their tendency to clump behind cover, Tommies make excellent rifle nade bait and mortar food, Tommie needs mortar cover badly or any forms of indirect, explosives would rip them apart. Also sniper food.
My suggestion is remove the out of cover debuff altogether and to balance out also remove their 0.8 receiving acc.

1. I would also agree that giving Tommies a more damage-dealing oriented bonuses (than a damage-soaking oriented one) is better oriented towards their long-range characteristics.

When on defense (and behind cover), you want to bleed the enemy as hard as you can while they close the distance, and then you retreat. Received accuracy bonuses will only help you there if you misplayed/got flanked.

When attacking, and under mortar fire, you want to deal as much damage as possible before you are forced to retreat. Received accuracy will not help you there, as you don't want to close the distance too much.

On the other hand, if you have a short-range unit, received accuracy goes a long way, as it minimizes your MP drain while you (constantly) have to close a long distance, anyway.

This is one of the reasons current Penal battalions scale very badly (their DPS is piss-poor at long range, and all their vet is about Accuracy), while on the new patch, they will scale really-really well.

2. I wouldn't say that the cover penalty affects Tommies as much. In fact, this is one of the better ideas Relic has put forward, so as to balance the effects of weapon upgrades.

Firesparks has compiled a DPS chart here, with a separate section for the UKF cover bonus:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LOYMDi_XR7rILsk6HbAZqGihsk22t-45C_6NbQEP-m0/edit#gid=1496803838

As you can see, the effect of the cover penalty on default Rifles is minimal, while the effect on LMGs is around -12% DPS. That's hardly worth the risk of clumping up to get wiped. As Katitof implied, this definitely not equal to losing their entire Received Accuracy bonus at Vet0.

The biggest culprits in Tommies' ability to perform offensively are:
- the _extreme_ moving accuracy penalties.
- the lack of a long-range riflenade, that is better adapted for their weapon range.
- The lack of snares only adds to their complete lack of autonomy.

3. If we want to trade damage-dealing with damage-soaking let's do it in equal parts (e.g., with veterancy).

For instance, if we want to go towards extremes, we could completely trade the -23% Received accuracy bonus of Tommies at Vet2 (which increases their survivability by 30%) to a 30% accuracy bonus.

Beware of the A-moving effect, though...

Then you'd end up with a unit that is weaker then grens and much more expensive...

The idea is to give IS more utility in exchange of raw combat power, like maybe improve the grenade upgrade and give IS increased grenade range with vet like rifleman, also without the debuff I think IS Bren would be better so they will be weaker initially but than better than gren and maybe can fight Obers with double Bren/Vicker. Also remove the whole cover nonsense with view range, just give them a straight vision increase with vet. The idea is RE would be in the front tanking dmg while IS deal dmg from behind.

ISs rely too much on cover and therefore on maps. In green cover they are OP and out of it tgey are garbage. In yellow cover they are fine.

- The idea behind Recon Sections is that you sacrifice firepower (Brens/Piats etc) for mobility.

Recon sections can still remain pretty terrible at close range, but at least you will be able to relocate them. More importantly, you will be able to chase units down with Recon sections (which is something that Tommies are terrible at)
e.g., chasing an MG/sniper while it relocates at mid range.

I don't want to make Recon Sections the new-new Penals. (they don't deserve to!)

...

- Regarding smoke; I wasn't thinking of giving Tommies access to smoke directly. More like giving the faction some way to deploy smoke.

Currently, the only options are Vet1 Mortar emplacements (static) and AEC (90 second cooldown). If Tommies could choose between calling down howitzer barrage or a smoke barrage, Artillery flares (and Tommies) would immediately become more useful (without having to buff their AI to infantry-melting levels).

How is that mobile mortar you and PlanetSmasher were working on going? An easy way to buff the UKF early game without introducing new upgrades would be to move Sappers to T0 (with emplacements restricted to their current tiers) and fill their spot in T1 with a mobile mortar.

You can then go for long-range Tommy DPS or the less powerful but better at chasing Sappers. As a bonus, you also don't have to rely on the Mortar Pit.

EDIT: I've implemented this into the mod I posted earlier. Sappers are now in T0 and UKF has a copy of the USF 60mm mortar in T1.

- About Artillery. I almost always use the Sniper version of the Artillery, which (I could swear!) calls down 3 shells per howitzer + 4 airburst shells (if you went anvil). There are basically 4 ways to use the 25pounders:
- The Royal Arty barrage
- Sniper flares
- Tommy flares
- Forward Assembly flares

Is it easy to verify whether some of these abilities behave differently than others? (otherwise I have to check this tonight and I'll edit this post with the answer)

I usually use the Sniper version as well (better range and don't have to give up healing).

The Tommy, Forward HQ and Sniper call-ins all fire six shells per Howitzer. The Royal Arty barrage fires three per howitzer.

I've already mentioned something similar in another thread. Relic would probably want to balance Brens according to how they behave on Tommies, because if Brens=strong and Brens-on-Tommies=Ober-strong, faces will melt. Thus, in order to retain the vision of giving Tommies better Brens than Sappers (cover bonus included), the Sapper version will have to be pushed down, to make room for the (upgraded) Tommy version.

If we really must absolutely give Tommies an actual cover bonus, we could do the following:
- Retain cover penalty (on a similar-ish level)
- Implement a tiny cover bonus, that will also work for picked-up weapons. (I don't know if the bonus would have to be 1%, 5% or 10%; I am not good with DPS numbers). However, it would have to be small to retain a relative level of balance.
- The actual bonus (for captured weapons etc) would be justifiable for Tommies because: they don't get decent accuracy veterancy, they have smaller utility than other mainline infantry (if we keep them as is), and they are static.
- However, I would still be _very_ concerned about the A-moving effect.

I'm probably not being clear enough or misunderstanding you, but the issue I'm trying to solve with that change is that weapon upgrades (the major scaling mechanic for infantry) are better on Sappers than on Tommies.

This is because Sappers currently get a better Bren (fixed by giving them the Tommy Bren) and don't suffer the out-of-cover penalty (fixed by moving the penalty to the weapons and giving Tommies a bonus in cover to return them to their previous in-cover performance).

The practical effect of this is that Tommy performance stays the same but Sapper performance (with Brens, Vickers and PIATs) is reduced to an out-of-cover Tommy level. You could easily adjust how this works with the Sapper cover bonus (i.e., keeping the current cover bonus for their Stens but giving them the Tommy cover bonus with other weapons) to ensure they weren't nerfed into the ground.

From the thread in which I first suggested changing the cover penalty, captured weapons make up a percentage of the reasons against it completely disproportionate to their effect. I'd prefer captured weapons didn't benefit from the cover bonus simply to defuse that issue before it starts.

If there is a graceful way to balance UKF early game without giving their mainline infantry snares (and also retain the mainline infantry relevant), I would go for that.

Finally, regarding PIATs. They are too spammable currently (and way too good for their current price).

I agree with the price increase (50 might be cheap still), and I also agree that giving PIATs a faster projectile will ease the micro tax (thus bringing together the low-end and high-end users, so that the price increase becomes justifiable). However, PIATs is something that can/should be settled in a thread of its own.

(off-topic: Is it moddable to give PIATs a tracking projectile, while also retaining their hedge-hopping aspect?)

Making performance more consistent between pros and newbies is exactly what I'm going for with those changes. I think 50-55 munitions is a good price. PIATs are powerful but not quite as all-round useful as Panzerschrecks.

It's simple if you don't mind losing artillery targeting and might not be possible if you want to keep it. I would prefer that PIATs stayed a slightly more skill-shot/dodgeable weapon than Panzerschrecks or Bazookas, so I won't be making that mod.

Those PIATs are ridiculous. And people were crying about the schrecks... now you got a 50 munition version can be added to ANYONE... what could go wrong with this?

Those PIATs are ridiculous. And people were crying about the schrecks... now you got a 50 munition version can be added to ANYONE... what could go wrong with this?

Have you tried moving your tanks?

There, PIATs hardcountered, regardless of how many there is.