In my opinion, the SU76 needs to become less unique to become more useful (hear me out). If the SU76 was literally a zis-3 AT gun on wheels, it would be much more useful than it is currently. It would allow players to have a more mobile version of the 2x AT gun meta we have all come to love, at the cost of fuel investment. In other words, it needs to gain pen, gain damage, and lose RoF. These changes would also more closely mirror the vehicle to its historical role.
This would make it scale better and solve part of the reason why Soviets struggle so badly in 4v4's. On a lot of maps, there are only limited places that you can place your AT so even if the player isn't scouting, they can often guess where your AT guns are and decrew them. Either that or you put them so far behind the lines that they don't do anything. I'd get SU76's on maps like Lienne where AT guns are nearly useless.
Oops, I forgot this part. It mostly happens in team games, but there seems to be a bifurcation in the algorithm.
Path A)
Teammate drops - AI decides you are okay - AI continues normal build
Path B)
Teammate drops - AI decides you're a wanker - AI spams Kubels to cap behind the lines
Not me, I moved camouflaged commandos onto a fuel point, okw dumped goliaths in cover. You cant reveal goliath until on top of the thing and it insta wipes a 400mp 90 mun squad. I thought I'd missed it and it must have been visible sooner the first time so tried again and again (it was 4v4 we were losing anyway vs a permade team) but no, the thing is not revealed until your squad is sitting on it.
They nerfed demo charges for this very reason, they were broken and now you can see them on map as soon as you're 10m or so, thats fair, they cost 90 mun to plant, goliath is 100 mun, can't be seen at all umlike demo and is drivable. Its a 2 click squad wipe.
I take it engineers can reveal with mine detectors then? I didn't think of that, why would I, the thing is not a mine after all it never occurred to try and use them. Never mind, guess I know what to do next time then.
I'm not a fan of powerful units like this, at least demos have to be planted.
I wasn't a fan of the demo nerf. I often used them in conjunction with a regular Soviet mine. The combo of the two would brew up a Panther, which often caused a lot of rage. Explaining that it was a "noob bomb" probably didn't lower the rage. I still think the visibility should only be for infantry.
If someone is patient with Goliaths then they are annoying. If they're moving then any MG or AA vehicle counters them well. I haven't tried sweepers but I rarely see Goliaths.
Piloting a Goliath takes the same amount of skill as moving 4 Penals squads together, and infinitely more funny.
There are some units that easily destroy goliaths, maybe some things that aren't even units. Maybe try figuring that out because I don't think you'll get it nerfed.
I couldn’t find an answer on this but, if this has already been discussed, please let me know.
I’m curious what drives the decision making for the AI. I’m aware they “cheat” with resources and understand their general build orders, but I have no clue what the priorities are for AI and so on. I’ve noticed the computers have not adapted to the latest patches well, so I’m thinking there was some stuff hard coded in there which didn’t translate well to the current game state.
Did anyone ever crack the code?
I can help with this. I love cracking codes.
It depends on what type of game you're playing. If it is just you and a bunch of computers then this is what happens:
Soviet, OKW, OST, and USF computers play somewhat normally. It normally seems like Soviet>OKW>OST>USF, but there aren't huge differences.
UKF is somewhat different. It will normally start by building emplacements in locations that it can't defend. Then after it loses everything, it will try to turtle by stacking everything it has left on top of your stuff. This makes it easier for the enemy AI by not requiring it to decide which targets to arty. This may seem disappointing at first, but it was carefully modeled by Relic after watching the behavior of actual UKF players in game. It's kinda your fault for including them even in a comp stomp.
There are 483 games since the patch with all players in the top 200. The win rate is pretty stable around 65% Axis. The standard deviation of win rate is 0.048 so the average is a little over 3 sigma above 50%. That means there is about a 0.3% chance that this game mode is balanced and these are just abnormal results.
I'd need to be a lot better at multivariate analysis to say if the Ost versus OKW percentage actually has an effect on the outcome or is simply a measure of popularity.
(edit - here are the 2v2 numbers, which are also relatively stabile)
Week Start 15-Jun 22-Jun 29-Jun 6-Jul 13-Jul Stdev
Games Played 619 498 407 363 325
Axis Win 300 228 196 165 153
Axis Win % 48.5% 45.8% 48.2% 45.5% 47.1% 0.013565168
These numbers say the opposite, not quite to the same degree, but in this case enough to say it's a little unbalanced towards Allies. I do think that it has a lot to do with how the units and maps interact. The 4v4 maps aren't nearly wide enough, so most engagements are going straight out from your base with little room for flanking or strategic positioning. Units are a lot more clumped together so a unit like a walking stuka, that isn't good in a small game mode, becomes great in a 4v4. There's nothing worse than having a random teammate get beat in their lane in a 4v4 and have them decide to stack their units on top of mine.
I don't think it's very surprising that smaller games tilt towards axis. A lot of times it feels like I get pushed around by Penal blobs until I get the Sturmtiger out.
Offtopic question, but can you explain why lend lease is popular?
The other two don't surprise me, haven't given lend lease a try in a while
Lend Lease - The M4C gets radio net and is relatively efficient in terms of pop cap. It has a lot better chance to damage something like a Panther than a T34/76. Level 3 radio net with 3-4 M4C's is a lot to deal with.
The guards can be upgraded with either Thompsons or bazooka's. They are "bazooka experts" so their bazooka's have some bite to them, as opposed to regular bazookas which are mostly good for the cool sound they make when bouncing off a Panther.
I don't agree with the sentiment that the T34/76 is trash. Fuel-wise, you can get around 3 of them for the price of two M4C's. The advantage of the M4C is just better penetration and If you treat them like throw-aways then they are, but if you vet them up then they're incredibly cost efficient. A vet 3 T34 can circle strafe a vet 0 Panther, which is oddly hilarious when somebody rushes their Panther out to the edge of a map thinking that they will easily wipe the T34.
Every time I think to myself: well, I need an MG, how bad can the Maxim be. And it turns out that this MG can be really really fucking bad. Basically every time I build that pos, it turns out to be a grave mistake. Even floating MP would help you more than this crap. It just shows that the balance team has no idea what they are doing, taking away every bit of uniqueness (Maxim with fast setup times but small arc) and making these units just unbearably worse (or buffing other units to levels previously unknown to mankind...)
The maxim doesn't do any better in 3v3's. I started getting a lot better results by doing either 4 con starts or 3cons and second engie. The setup time was nerfed to match the MG42. The arc is about 90 versus 120? for either of the Axis MG's. It might not sound like a huge difference, but it often takes 2 maxims to cover what 1 MG42 covers. A MG42 will suppress more or less instantly but the maxim can have units walk through the arc and often not suppress.
Overall, the balance doesn't seem that bad unless you're playing in the Sturmtiger league (4v4), just don't get maxims and outblob with Cons or Penals.
if you factor in any 160 damage from any source, indeed it does not make any difference to 640 hp unit. Although it is fairly realistic situation when su-76 is the only source of damage to a specific unit.
Imo, if anything the unit need more penetration to be relevant after arrival of p4, at least make it so 'suchka' pens pre vet2 PIV consistently like it used to couple years ago.
IIRC, the balance team nerfed the penetration so it wouldn't be effective against heavies. I'd be surprised if they undid that. Part of the problem was massed SU76 plus Mark Target was good against heavies