Fall Balance Preview: Scope Additions

While the current FBP V1.0 includes many great changes from the Mod Team's Revamp I myself was disappointed that a few changes were out of Relic's main scope for the future patch. (Team Games and On Map Artillery). I realize that Relic can be pretty set on what they will allow to be changed but I still wanted to create a thread to discuss what everyone believes is the most important one or two issues that you would like to see added to the scope if Relic should be so inclined to widen it. Ideally this issue would be applicable to team games so that Relic could seriously entertain the idea of adding it. Please offer your reason why and try to stick to things missing from the patch

Personally I'd like to see

1) Standardization of Repair Rates. Reason - I think most people agree that SOV and OST are pretty disadvantaged here where once you lose your vetted Pios or Combat Engineers it takes ages to repair anything with no easy way to Re-vet your new Engineers or improve repair speed. I imagine this is magnified in team games where armor engagements are more frequent and heavy TDs are plentiful.

2) Conscipts - Pretty self explanatory - Soviet Meta is super stale where Penals are the obvious choice in most situations and I don't think a slight nerf to Penals and DSHK and slight buff to Maxims will really change that. This is compounded by the fact that many Soviet Commanders revolve around Conscripts and in turn are rendered less useful. Conscripts affect every game mode and improving their late-game scaling is particularly important in team games where the late-game is reached much more quickly. Simply put, fixing Conscripts is the one single thing that will probably open up options for new Soviet strategies.

+1

+1

This patch obviously is about late game and teamgames --> that's why they are not in scope. Changing cons will have to consider the whole soviet early game mechanic, which is for another patch.

Why don't you play some mod games and try cons with the new maxims. you have to understand cons are a support unit, not main battle unit


What's much WORSE IS THAT THEY COMPLETELY LEFT AOUT THE $%/&%$%%BRACE (!!!!!!!)

This patch obviously is about late game and teamgames --> that's why they are not in scope. Changing cons will have to consider the whole soviet early game mechanic, which is for another patch.

Why don't you play some mod games and try cons with the new maxims. you have to understand cons are a support unit, not main battle unit


What's much WORSE IS THAT THEY COMPLETELY LEFT AOUT THE $%/&%$%%BRACE (!!!!!!!)

Yeah, they are a support, now... which is a big balance mistake that should be fixed ASAP

It's not just that, it's also the fact that the 250 is still useless.

The fact that you're about to pay almost the same amount of manpower for something that's not going to be mobile (mortar pit with single mortar).

The fact that Grenadiers still suck (as well as Cons as you said) compared to other infantry units.

The fact that Eastern Front Armies still suck in bigger team games on bigger maps because they lack in repairs rates (Ost specifically, you already mentioned that) and a Forward Retreat Point compared to the Western Front Armies and Brits.

And the fact that there is no fucking reason for the OKW MG34 not to be Tier 0 when it's already so fucking useless and just makes you rely on stupid noob Wehrmacht noobs that can't use their MG42s correctly, apart from already having to rely on them for fuel caches when you don't have a snowflake resource system anymore.

+1

+1

+2 on both points.

OKW MG34 not to be Tier 0
noobs that can't use their MG42s correctly,

I love your dedication to having an MG for OKW.

MG is love. MG is life.

This patch obviously is about late game and teamgames --> that's why they are not in scope. Changing cons will have to consider the whole soviet early game mechanic, which is for another patch.

Why don't you play some mod games and try cons with the new maxims. you have to understand cons are a support unit, not main battle unit


What's much WORSE IS THAT THEY COMPLETELY LEFT AOUT THE $%/&%$%%BRACE (!!!!!!!)

So conscripts support the support weapons? Interesting....

What's much WORSE IS THAT THEY COMPLETELY LEFT AOUT THE $%/&%$%%BRACE (!!!!!!!)

Please, Mortar pits are fine and you know it. (Hope you know i just want to trigger you )

The Brace is a questionable thing from the start, but an alternative is really not out there, you can give it more Armor, Health? Autorepair?

About Conscipts I like idea Lower damage form Con mosin but improved Acc
From Revamp

Please, Mortar pits are fine and you know it. (Hope you know i just want to trigger you )

The Brace is a questionable thing from the start, but an alternative is really not out there, you can give it more Armor, Health? Autorepair?

Well, brace wouldn't be a problem for the most numerous emplacement there, that being the mortar pit, IF THE MORTAR PIT WASN'T A THING.

Why do you people think I'm pushing for a mobile mortar and the pit to become a bigger mortar trench?

I wish they would have left it the changes to forgotten commanders like Recon Support, but patch looks fine as it is, since it's made to adress the more played Teamgames.

Just a quick note. Vet 3 conscripts with ppsh are OP, they beat vet3 lmg grens in every engangement, no matter what conditions you have (talkinha about cover,not support of a tiger )

Just to get them to vet 3 is pain in the ass

Please, Mortar pits are fine and you know it. (Hope you know i just want to trigger you )

The Brace is a questionable thing from the start, but an alternative is really not out there, you can give it more Armor, Health? Autorepair?

And still mortarpits get raped in teamgames. Even with avre doc

When you don't have this brace. OKw just overruns you and throw the flamenade and ggwp 400 manpower^^

https://www.coh2.org/replay/62377/balance-patch-preview

What's much WORSE IS THAT THEY COMPLETELY LEFT AOUT THE $%/&%$%%BRACE (!!!!!!!)

Yeh this and OKW vet 4+5 that often give broken passive combat bonuses on units, instead of timed abilites you must activate yourself such as sprint or special shots / grenades etc. which would be much better design!

And King Tiger still not locked behind Command Points!

Show Spoiler

Show Spoiler

And still mortarpits get raped in teamgames. Even with avre doc

When you don't have this brace. OKw just overruns you and throw the flamenade and ggwp 400 manpower^^

https://www.coh2.org/replay/62377/balance-patch-preview

it is what i meant, where is the alternative^^

3. Brits Tech
4. Brace
5 Allied HAT

it is what i meant, where is the alternative^^

Yeah its kind diffcult.

Yeh this and OKW vet 4+5 that often give broken passive combat bonuses on units, instead of timed abilites you must activate yourself such as sprint or special shots / grenades etc. which would be much better design!

And King Tiger still not locked behind Command Points!

Show Spoiler

Show Spoiler

I suggest you should try OKW in 1v1 a bit and you will see that they aren't as P as you think

In my opinion, and after extensive testing in the revamp mod, there is zero reason to keep brace on Mortar Pits (or emplacements in general), if pits are rebalanced properly.

1. Brace adds nothing to the game

The only rationale for keeping brace is to make it so that offmaps cannot trivially remove emplacements. However, even then, there are better approaches:
- Make emplacements lower risk-reward; e.g., nobody is ever going to waste a 200MU offmap to kill a 200MP mortar pit (with one mortar). Remove brace from 17 pounder and make it actually affordable; that will make it useful for once.
- Adjust the damage of said offmaps vs emplacements; Relic has already given enormous bonuses for offmaps to bypass brace, which is meant to protect against offmaps. This is madness. Just remove brace and remove those damage bonuses.
- inb4 somebody says that Brace is there to add micro to emplacements; it's not. It's an one click ability that requires no investment from the defender to use. If you want micro for emplacements just remove the FHQ aura and have people hop their squads in-out.

A successful defensive structure is not necessarily an immortal defensive structure. It's a defensive structure that's cheap enough to hold the adversary back for a long time to be worth it.

Trenches die in seconds to AT guns. However, they are still extremely useful just because they are affordable.

2. Mortar Pit design is just plain wrong

That's because from a design perspective:
- It is futile to try to flank Mortar Pits with infantry because they will brace at any point in time
- You can't force people to wait for tanks until they can take mortar pits down, because that's gratuitous cruelty
- Therefore, Mortar Pits have been designed in a way to be extremely vulnerable to indirect fire
- However, the entire British faction is ridiculously vulnerable to indirect fire spam; and if Mortar Pits can't protect the faction against it, why build them?

The mortar pit has 700HP, which means 9 mortar shells will take it down. The Pit also has a gignormous hitbox, which means that any shells fired will hit the pit. The Pit also has a massive target size, which means that AT guns can also join in the fun and s tart sniping the pit.

So, now we have ended up with a mortar that is:
- Practically invulnerable to infantry
- Can be sniped by anti-tank guns and tank destroyers
- Can be rendered useless by mobile indirect fire

3. Mortar Pit doesn't have to be so horribly implemented

The goal of the Mortar Pit is to provide indirect fire cover for a faction that is already vulnerable to indirect fire. Therefore, the Pit:
- Should be very cost-efficient vs indirect fire units
- Should be wrecked easily by successful infantry flanks
- Should be cheap enough so that you are not knocked out of the game for losing one mortar pit
- Should not be snipe-able by AT guns and tank destroyers, ffs

That way we avoid the trap of all-or-nothing foolishness of emplacements, and you have a system of counters that make sense.

4. How to fix Mortar Pits

- Reduce their hitbox size, so that indirect fire has to move closer to hit your mortar pits with their turbobarrages
- Fix the responsiveness of mortar pits, so that they can respond to indirect fire faster
- Add +75%-ish more HP to fully-upgraded mortars, so that they can tank indirect fire damage
- Completely remove armour from mortar pits so that they vanish to small arms fire in seconds
- Reduce target size to 1 so that it's no longer possible to sniper mortar pits with AT guns, and forces infantry units to fight at their optimal range (e.g., you shouldn't be able to snipe pits with MP40's from 35 range)
- Add an option of building a single-mortar pit for 200MP
- Remove brace, or reduce its duration to 5 seconds.
- Remove the garrison aura from FHQ; it only promotes sim city and nothing else

To recap:
- Brace serves no useful purpose in emplacement design; any purpose that Brace can fullfill, picking the right stats would fill it better (e.g., does Pak43 need brace? Does FlakHQ need brace?)
- Brace is only there to make emplacements useless at performing their primary goal (e.g., 17-pounder is useless at anti-tank and mortar pits are useless at anti-indirect fire); unless you spam them of course
- Brace is harmful to the game, because it's only ever useful if you go sim-city; if you don't go sim city, brace is useless

So, I see no reason to keep the brace in a format that makes it last for longer than 5 seconds.