Edit:
I was never making this post about balance or winning, per se. It was just that I personally found the bracing mechanic of British emplacements to be the least fun in the game and desperately wanted a reliable and satisfying counter-mechanic.However, there is apparently no current way to differentiate between a regular emplacement and a braced one in target tables (according to Mr Smith's post below), so my preferred recommendations are completely moot unless somebody finds a way to redesign the ability from the ground up.
Intro/TL;DR
Edit: Me no like British emplacement brace. No fun because no counterplay.So here's my list of ways to potentially improve brace counter-play:
(I'm not suggesting them all together, just brainstorming potential ideas in order of preference)- Make brace a defense against only artillery via target table.
Not 100% realistic, but would be still be highly intuitive from a gameplay perspective. Requires British player to actually defend against ground units.
- Introduce one or more 'costs' to the ability:
- While making the braced emplacement stronger against artillery, make them more vulnerable to close-range weapons like flamethrowers and grenades.
My preferred choice. Rewarding and intuitive gameplay
- Have a small cooldown period afterwards where brace no longer applies but the weapons are not yet recrewed.
More likely to have balance implications
- Maybe a small munitions cost.
The weakest cost and my least favourite. Would mostly make British players angry at their lack of options, I suspect.
- Make brace automatically spread to all nearby emplacements within a certain radius. Less micro to defend against artillery strikes, but also shuts down sim city to ground attacks.
Something of a micro buff to British players, but might reduce sim city clustering? That said, they usually brace everything anyway (against artillery), so this one is more of a random thought bubble.
What do you think? Did I miss any good points in old threads?