the downside of smaller scale patches is that you have to plan ahead for how the future changes are gonna affect the small changes youre making now, because the game isnt a vacuum and everything is supposed to work together to balance everything. for example a faction can have weak infantry if they can make up for it another area, and this leads to asymetrical balance and imo more interesting dynamics. but if you just have a small patch that focuses around infantry balance, then the tendency is for infantry to become homogenized so that they are balanced when fighting each other without taking into account other factors because they are 'out of scope' or because they may not be as obvious. and as you say, smaller patches are ok if theres a higher frequency, but the reality seems to be that relic doesnt want to have frequent patches.
It's not possible to have high-frequency patches due to certain technicalities involved. At the same time, it's not necessary to have to wait 6 months before starting the new patch. This delay was uncharacteristically long due to a setback caused by Ardennes Assault breaking.
With respect to how to choose the scope. I think that we can have more interesting results if we are allowed to focus on one faction at a time, fixing the most pressing issues of that faction, and also addressing the immediate knock-on effects in other factions.
At the same time, the game is rife with an enormous backlog of broken stuff that will have to be addressed first before we can assess and reached a reasonable and non-biased conclusion. E.g., tying call-ins to teching is such an obvious change to include in the game. However, without it we don't have a clear indication about faction relative strength in the early-to-mid stages in the game.
Call-ins that allow people to skip tech allow factions to keep their foot on the pedal, apply pressure, and then apply the finishing blow with a call-in. For instance, Armor company enabled USF to stay afloat simply because they could get 2 free squads out of their teching, continue to apply pressure and still get their vehicles. Without Armour company meta, but with a purpose-fit Jackson USF players will have to make radical adjustments to their playstyles and that will help us better identify which parts of the faction to fix.
At the same point, with call-ins fixed, and some of the late-game wunderwaffe reigned in, I don't think that there is any other change that needs to happen across factions at the same time. e.g., we couldn't fix Call-ins just for one faction; that's because all factions were abusing the call-in system, and that would disrupt the equilibrium. Certain obvious fixes, such as repair speed normalization, can easily be fixed on a per-faction basis. The repair speed system is already completely broken; thus, even if we do incremental updates to it we are not in risk of breaking it even further.
So, hopefully, in some of the upcoming patches we will be allowed to focus on one faction at a time, fix the unit synergy for that faction and leave it at a level that it is no-more-broken vs other factions than it was before.
Before I go, i will get that replay for you.
Now we have that out of the way, why do I need to tech mayor? The point of the call-in is to by-pass tech and as such, you balance it around it.
If the bulldozer current buff is jusitfied because of the mayor tech making it cost equal to a brumbar, you need to tie it to that tech.
If the mayor is not accounted for in the justification, than the dozer is far cheaper to field than a brumbar (tech cost inculded, without mentioning the viability of ost t4).
The goal for this patch is to make call-in meta less dominant and/or disappear. The goal of this patch is not to lengthen the already long list of useless units in the game. We want the formerly-call-in units to remain viable; just not be call-ins anymore.
If you've teched Major, and you have the option to build a 110FU Sherman, a 80FU Scott or a 145FU live-version Dozer, would you ever seriously consider buying the live-version dozer?
Not a chance in hell. For 1v1 you would always get a Sherman that can also help you deal with tanks. That's because odds are that you probably skipped Lieutenant or Captain to get the Sherman in time, which means you are missing access to some team weapons. In 2v2+ you would most likely get a Scott; longer range; way more reliable, way faster and way cheaper.
Now on to some smaller questions:
Did the current dozer not perform well in GCS in your opinion?
Why does vet 2 matter? if i can get the cost out before that, it is enterily irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Lastly, do you want a replay of the live dozer (which i argued is fine) or the mod one?
The Bulldozer is an ultimate RNG cannon; it's way squisher and way more inaccurate than the Brummbar that costs the same.
The only reasons the Bulldozer performed the way it did was:
- USF gets 2 free squads while teching
- You don't have to pay Major teching costs
- You get access to both MGs and AT guns while teching both Lieutenant/Captain
- You still get access to the Bulldozer way faster than the enemy can get their tanks out, despite the fact that you got 2 free squads, access to MG and access to AT
Finally:
- Most of the buffs are about making Bulldozer vet actually meaningful (Vet2+)
- None of the GCS Bulldozers ever reached further than Vet1
Outside hardcore 1v1 call-in meta, you would never EVER buy a bulldozer (unless you want a troll unit).