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Overall I like the balance changes. There are 2 main issues for OKW in team games at the moment:
1. No real way to deal with Mobile Arty in team games (Katyusha/Calliope/but even Priests), especially in narrow lane maps with little/no flank avenues
For the mobile arty issue, OKW has very limited options to do anything about these in a crowded map. First I'll start with the less likely options because often it is the last option that you have to use.
- Stuka barrages will miss or not do enough damage on 1 rocket hit to lucky kill the arty, neither would 2 VERY lucky hits from 2 Stukas at the same time.
- Counter barrage from an LeFH can work sometimes once it is vetted up with faster reloads, but is still limited and only doctrinal.
- Recon flares from Panzerfusiliers/Special ops with a lucky offmap barrage for a player who is completely asleep at the wheel??? Basically this would never happen, and you need 2 OKW players with the different doctrines to pull this off
- Lastly but most commonly, the good old tank dive. The only one with anywhere near the speed and firepower needed to pull this off would be Panther. It would need to sneakily flank and try to 2 shot a Calliope (almost never 2 shots) and try to run away avoiding all other tanks, infantry with snares, and AT guns that just woke up. If you get caught with a snare, bye bye, OKW loses 185 fuel for 1 Calliope (135 fuel? I forget) and with low fuel rate, you are severely behind. You can try this with a PZ4 or 2, with some success but likely going to lose 1 if not both, again losing more fuel than you took from your opponent. Lastly and what I like to do against Katyushas is use a Puma (2 shots if on target but this doesn't work well against Calliopes as damage when you get there is too low usually and requires a lot of shots). But again, if there is a tank around chasing you out of your smoke back to your line, Puma is likely dead, god forbid there might be infantry with snares all over the place. But at least then you trade 70 fuel for a 100 fuel Katyusha. For Calliope, you'd have to use 2, likely lose 1. All this to say that OKW really struggles in a team game with Arty spam, which obliterates all your high MP vetted infantry, and that expensive tanks can't really chase down.
Recommendation: Keep the Stuka penetration buff against vehicles during play testing please remember that OKW really has nothing else to counter mobile arty, and even with penetration, the random location of Stuka rockets isn't really a great solution. The other option might be a targeted 1 or 2 rocket shot for munitions pinpointed where a vehicle might be.
2. Underperformance of key tanks in late game, namely Jagdpanzer, Tiger, and KT, but also PZ4 lategame.
I know OKW TANKS WEAK?!, every Allied player will scoff but hear me out. Keep in mind playing as OKW you don't swim in fuel, and most of the time you might have up to 3 medium tanks, or 1 heavy tank + a medium, after infantry and raketens are accounted for with max pop cap. For those 3 medium tanks, Panther is strong but expensive and in generally good balance so I won't talk about it. But to deal with Allied heavy tanks (KV-1, IS-2, IS-152, Pershing, don't get me started with unkillable, infinite-emergency-repairing Churchills which bounce Tiger shots), OKW are actually suffering against a heavy tank with multiple medium tanks or worse, SU-85s with insane sniping vision. Raketens can plink, but late game you're already dreaming if you think static raketens will survive the arty spam nightmare that will be raining down on you. You might be able to maintain 1 on the field between salvos, not gonna do anything to a heavy tank. which leads me to the KT and Tiger, which just don't have the stopping power with a medium tank to kill an Allied heavy. A Tiger with a medium tank will fall pretty quick to an Allied heavy with AT gun/TD backups. It will get swarmed (Hoorah!) and snared easily. KT's only hope is to stay super far away until it gets vet, then it becomes a problem. All I can say is thank god for the Ram nerf, that plus Rocket Run is a joke. Lastly, the Jagdpanzer, which for 135 is way too expensive for it's performance. Horrible mobility, penetration, vision, and armor compared to an SU-85, let alone if a heavy rushes it. It is easily penetrated despite sloped armor everywhere. It can't reliably penetrate heavy armor, which basically means in the end game, with enough Churchills/AVRE, 1-2 other heavies, and swarms of TDs on the field, there's basically nothing OKW can do to combat this. Infantry and raketens are cancelled by the mobile arty (above), what else is left? Pz4 Ausf J even vetted can't survive long on the field either, and doesn't have the penetration
Recommendation: the Churchill rear armor change is good! But OKW needs help against other heavies. So I think better penetration on Jadgpanzer specifically can help given that is supposed to be it's role. I would also recommend a bit more survivability to the Tiger, and I would increase the chance a snare misses or decrease range of the snares, given a lot of the time 2 or 3 squads are rushing forward towards a slow tank. Blitz doesn't help a lot on a KT.
Some more QoL issue requests:
- Fix the slow re-manning of the raketen, if 1 man goes down, it is just death loop with the new man crawling as slow as humanly possible to the gun, especially during a retreat.
- When you lose an upgraded BGHQ and rebuild a new one, you at least get to keep the medics. When you lose an upgraded Schwerer, the game is over with 120 FU lost, and don't get to keep your upgrade. It basically means you should never forward place it in a team game and it is just an AA gun. Defeats the "lockdown" intention of the upgrade, especially in team games where it will just be arty'd to dust.
Recommendation: Keep the upgraded gun for the rebuilt 2nd Schwerer
-Visually, barrel on the Jagdpanzer and Flammhetzer don't move, and shots come out at silly angles if the tanks don't need to rotate and target is still in narrow arc of fire.
Recommendation: Fix barrel movement visuals
BUG: Sometimes when you retreat squads back to base, and at the same time a new unit spawns from it, and you drag-select all of them -> then sometimes you will lose all buttons in the command panel in the lower right for one of the units (might not even be the newly spawned one). Even when you deselect the unit by selecting another, selecting it again it still has no command buttons (attack move, special abilities, etc). I think you can recover it if you retreat it again and group select multiple units, but if you don't, your hotkey memory better be good! |
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
