Reducing Soviet building cost and time

Dude, did you actually look at the timings and costs I posted?
I mean really, did you?

And did you look at the post where I (among others) said that it still negatively impacts Soviets because they need an engie in base far longer than the germans need a pioneer in theirs?

I mean really, did you?

And did you look at the post where I (among others) said that it still negatively impacts Soviets because they need an engie in base far longer than the germans need a pioneer in theirs?

I mean really, did you?

Yes, I did. And I responded. Which apparently you didnt read either, nor the stats.

Here it is for you again:
http://www.coh2.org/topic/9545/reducing-soviet-building-cost-and-time/post/88484

I would argue that the most important units when it comes to time are the ones that you rush out. Say T70, T34 that really have big impact. As balance is right now, tech and buildtime to shockunit seems ok.

With a cost reduce of fuel and increase of mp for backtech and backtech only(soviet tech seems to cost more fuel and less mp, this could even it out somewhat). The units coming out of these back teched structures would still not be considered shock units, wether they are Su85s or T34s. Since the fuelcost would be lower, they could hit the field earlier, yes, but to a higher manpowercost, thus maintaining current buildspeed.

It will most likely affect the current meta. No matter how you do it, if soviets are allowed to produce a bigger variety of units during one game game will change one way or the other.


And about the upgrades for conscripts I simply have to disagree about the notion that it evens out since cons have oorah and merge for free. That said, I am fine with the costs as they are, since they add the requirement och choosing what way to proceed as soviet. Still, in almost any game, you need theese upgrades (molotov could sometimes be occationaly be skipped though). This will slow soviet tech down and backtech a building of 90 fuel quite the steep one-time investment, because if you are not already winning, those 90 fuel needs to get to work asap. CoH1 solved this by having the supply-yard as a stopgap to higher tiers. The initial T3 or 4 would cost you ALOT in total, but back-tech or tech-on was not that expensive. Something similar could be introduced in CoH2, however with alot of carefull counting on evening out costs to be similar to what they are toda to prevent shockunits coming out to early/late or cheap/expensive.

Yes, I did. And I responded. Which apparently you didnt read either, nor the stats.

Here it is for you again:
http://www.coh2.org/topic/9545/reducing-soviet-building-cost-and-time/post/88484

You didn't respond. You said ''calculate them yourself''. I'm quite capable of doing so if I wish. The point is not this; the point is that, very early game, building anything for the Soviets is nothing short of a gamble. If they build too soon, it means less map control. If they build the wrong building, they're basically screwed since back-teching in the early game is complete madness that leaves you wide open for an Ostwind-flavored ass-kicking. This leads to fairly stale build orders, where Soviets always have to get 2-3 conscripts and grab map control in order to then get out the T1-T2 units. By which time some of them (M3 in particular) are almost obsolete already. I'm not he only one saying this, link0 agrees and he's a better player than most on these here forums.

I can agree with the idea of back-teching costing more MP but less fuel (albeit exactly evening out the costs following Relic's 1 fuel = 5 MP formula seems redundant). But I also think that all Soviet buildings need less build time, especially T1 and T2. 25-ish seconds for T1 and 30 seconds for T2 seems fair.

Maxim spam might become too strong if you reduced T2 build time, but it does seem that Soviets are unfairly burdened by the need to get their buildings started 100% on time or else be forced to wait minutes for a proper counter to certain units.

Maxim spam might become too strong if you reduced T2 build time, but it does seem that Soviets are unfairly burdened by the need to get their buildings started 100% on time or else be forced to wait minutes for a proper counter to certain units.

Maxims were nerfed, and Ostheer has everything they need in T1 to counter it (sniper and mortar). I don't think them arriving 20 seconds earlier will impact the game much, going T2 at start also means giving up a lot of map control for the Soviet player (which is working as intended). Maximspam is much more risky now than it was near launch.

I would like to point out that when talking about "total" teching and its cost what you build out of these buildings also should be considered.
If you're playing as Soviet and you have went for T3, usually you want to build more than one T-34.

I would like to point out that when talking about "total" teching and its cost what you build out of these buildings also should be considered.
If you're playing as Soviet and you have went for T3, usually you want to build more than one T-34.

Well, thats equally true of Ost.

You dont build a tier building, and then build nothing out of it.
Preferably more than one unit too.

Overall, the only notable disparity, is T1.

Another alternative is to move Grens to Ost T0, and raise Ost T1 to Sov levels of T1 cost/buildtime. Possibly also in conjunction with an earlier Battlephase to get to T1.

I don't think it makes all that much sense to compare the cost of each tier for the two sides.

Simply because the soviet tier 1 does not do anything near what the german tier 1 does.

What one should look at, is the cost of a proper set of counters by a certain time of the game.

Point being that by the time both sides have build tier 2, germans have the advantage of vehicles _AND_ AT.

The same is true about the german tier 3 which cannot really be countered by the soviet tier 3. It's like the soviets need a tier more at any given time.
I don't have the solution, but I think it does not express any kind of balance to compare the cost tier by tier.

to be honest, if construction times was to be reduced for soviet, it probably wouldnt destroy balance at all.

the acquisition of troops and counters are still limited by manpower. but soviets now have the additional burden of unnecessarily long build times only serve to screw up timing of counters arriving into the field, while the german army have the map advantage because the appropriate counter from soviets takes longer to arrive.

i'm sure there are many soviet players, floating 400mp while waiting for the building to finish because they need a mortar more than another conscript.

as for mid-late game flexibility, soviet tiering is a mess. t3 and t4 gives access to units that are designed to support each other, yet now they are pretty much mutually exclusive, since the buildings are so prohibitively expensive.

also, despite the insane cost of these 2 buildings, there's no counterpart that the german army dont have. in fact, the well structure of german army means they can probably get access to them all cheaper and with the advantage of being above to build heavy tanks like the panther and sturmpanzer which there is no soviet equal.

I'd be interested to see what happened if they dumped all Soviet buildings to be in line with German building costs and battle phases. Considering what many Soviet units are like (i.e. inferior to German counter parts) the results would be interesting...

Maxim spam might become too strong if you reduced T2 build time, but it does seem that Soviets are unfairly burdened by the need to get their buildings started 100% on time or else be forced to wait minutes for a proper counter to certain units.

Why? You won't be able to get the first maxim out sooner.
With the "cheap backtech" the initial buildingcost for the first building you build remains the same.

I'd be interested to see what happened if they dumped all Soviet buildings to be in line with German building costs and battle phases. Considering what many Soviet units are like (i.e. inferior to German counter parts) the results would be interesting...

the game will be more unbalanced I guess. There is a reason, why the dev choose different building costs/times etc.

I rather like this idea. I can't tell you how many times I wished that I hadn't made the "mistake" of going to t1 when german tanks hit the field, or going t3 when a heavy tank shows it's face. Early game, the whole choosing 2 buildings works well I believe, but late game sometimes you need a bit more versatility, and as people have said, the soviet is punished pretty hard for going for say t3 and t4.

I think that over the course of the game, it should be viable to have both t34's/halftracks and su85's, and so far the OP's suggestion is the best one i've seen yet.

I'd be interested to see what happened if they dumped all Soviet buildings to be in line with German building costs and battle phases. Considering what many Soviet units are like (i.e. inferior to German counter parts) the results would be interesting...

That's not the point of my suggestion.
As MoerserKarl said, there would be a guaranteed imbalance in favor of soviets.

Regarding pricing, there are a lot of ways this could be done.

half price for a second building in the 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 tier categories, as you suggest gustav, which sounds pretty good to me,

but might have unforseen consequences to early t1 t2 combinations(I can't imagine them, but then that's why they'd be unforseen).

A more gradual pricing option could be to make progressive fuel(only) reductions for every building of a different tier you build. This would basically reduce cost and build-time for subsequent buildings in relation to how many buildings you build.

Initial pricing would change slightly:
t1 would still cost 40 fuel, t2 still 50, t3 to 100, t4 to 100

after building t1, your t2 building would now only cost 40 fuel, your t3 or t4 buildings would cost 90 fuel. After building t2, you would get an additional discount of 20 fuel for your next building for a total savings of 30 fuel, so your t3 or t4 building would cost 70 fuel. If you subsequently built t4 on top of 3 OTHER TIERS you would get an additional 30 fuel discount for the basement price of a 40 fuel building, but you still probably wouldnt' be able to buy anything.

In back-tech order it would be something like 40 fuel for t1, 90 fuel for t3, and then 20 fuel for t2.

From t1 to t3 to t4 it would be 40, 90, 70 respectively(much more gradual of a reduction)

total fuel cost for all tiers would be 190-210 fuel, versus the 270 that everything costs now, versus the 200 total fuel that I think the Gustav model would cost. My discounts would just come more gradually. I just realized though that this becomes problematic when being forced to rebuild a building, unless the price is just locked in once its been built. So long-term this option would be the most cost effective, but wouldn't really fully materialize until late game.

Edit: I just realized that if t1 or t2 were the last building built, that some of the discount would essentially be lost, and either of those buildings would be in negative numbers for fuel cost, so not as elegant a solution as I thought, showing my poor math skills!! Not sure that would be such a big deal though. Another goofy thing is in my model it would be cheaper to build a 3rd building before building t4 than just going straight to t4 after the second building, so uh...I guess that's a bigger flaw! Haha!!!

the most expensive tech choice would be to go t2 t3 and then t4. t1 would be free but you would lose 20 fuel of discounts. I should have spent more time on this before posting I think. Probably should have considered a percentage approach to discounts rather than a progressive number.

Regarding pricing, there are a lot of ways this could be done.

half price for a second building in the 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 tier categories, as you suggest gustav, which sounds pretty good to me,

but might have unforseen consequences to early t1 t2 combinations(I can't imagine them, but then that's why they'd be unforseen).

I do not think that there would be any Problem in t1 /t2 combinations since this is already possible in 2v2+.

A more gradual pricing option could be to make progressive fuel(only) reductions for every building of a different tier you build. This would basically reduce cost and build-time for subsequent buildings in relation to how many buildings you build.

Initial pricing would change slightly:
t1 would still cost 40 fuel, t2 still 50, t3 to 100, t4 to 100

after building t1, your t2 building would now only cost 40 fuel, your t3 or t4 buildings would cost 90 fuel. After building t2, you would get an additional discount of 20 fuel for your next building for a total savings of 30 fuel, so your t3 or t4 building would cost 70 fuel. If you subsequently built t4 on top of 3 OTHER TIERS you would get an additional 30 fuel discount for the basement price of a 40 fuel building, but you still probably wouldnt' be able to buy anything.

In back-tech order it would be something like 40 fuel for t1, 90 fuel for t3, and then 20 fuel for t2.

From t1 to t3 to t4 it would be 40, 90, 70 respectively(much more gradual of a reduction)

total fuel cost for all tiers would be 190-210 fuel, versus the 270 that everything costs now, versus the 200 total fuel that I think the Gustav model would cost. My discounts would just come more gradually. I just realized though that this becomes problematic when being forced to rebuild a building, unless the price is just locked in once its been built. So long-term this option would be the most cost effective, but wouldn't really fully materialize until late game.

Edit: I just realized that if t1 or t2 were the last building built, that some of the discount would essentially be lost, and either of those buildings would be in negative numbers for fuel cost, so not as elegant a solution as I thought, showing my poor math skills!! Not sure that would be such a big deal though. Another goofy thing is in my model it would be cheaper to build a 3rd building before building t4 than just going straight to t4 after the second building, so uh...I guess that's a bigger flaw! Haha!!!

the most expensive tech choice would be to go t2 t3 and then t4. t1 would be free but you would lose 20 fuel of discounts. I should have spent more time on this before posting I think. Probably should have considered a percentage approach to discounts rather than a progressive number.

Interesting Idea.

I do not think that there would be any Problem in t1 /t2 combinations since this is already possible in 2v2+.

One thing that we shouldn't overlook is that in 2v2 t1 and t2 are controlled by different players. The unit combination cannot be used to maximum effectiveness unless the two players have really good team cohesion (VoIP). There is a difference between two players' combining their forces and one player having all tools at his/her disposal.

Sniper + Maxims + ZiS combination comes to mind.

One thing that we shouldn't overlook is that in 2v2 t1 and t2 are controlled by different players. The unit combination cannot be used to maximum effectiveness unless the two players have really good team cohesion (VoIP). There is a difference between two players' combining their forces and one player having all tools at his/her disposal.

Sniper + Maxims + ZiS combination comes to mind.

Well I don't know if it's easier to micro everything yourself or sharing the work with your teammate....

Only notable discrepancy in tier cost, is T1. Which balances out when all tiers are built, in total. Largely an indirect result of Ost T0 being basically entirely useless as opposed to Cons building from Sov T0.

Aside from that, there are three fundamental non-cost/buildtime discrepancies.
-Onfield time for Pios while Battlephasing (which ranges from roughly 30s to 50s)
-ATnade/Molotov upgrade (arguablyna result of free Oorah and Merge)
-The spread of units in respective tier buildings.

Otherwise the cost/buildtimes of tiers are quite equal.