Profile of Grumpy

serealia's site i...snip

oh and i use coh2.com to host images used here, just go to your profile, 'my files' and upload the images directly there.

thx

just as a heads-up, some of the numbers you used for your comparison are quite a bit off. both the ml-20 and lefh are actually almost carbon copies of each other, though the ml-20 has a bit higher near AoE damage (180 vs 160) and slightly more far AoE damage (not sure exactly, but i think sth like 10 vs 8). unfortunately, Stein's sheet seems to have some of these wrong. this may not represent the real life proportions of their respective shells, but from a gameplay perspective i'd think this is a fair compromise.

another thing is that the AoE usually extends well beyond the value set for AoE far. for example, the b-4's radius is actually 10 instead of 7.5 (and 8 for both the ml-20 and lefh).

as for the new b-4, i think it will be much more potent against infantry, but not so much against tanks. it gets even more max AoE range and higher far AoE damage, but much lower near AoE damage. so the one-shot potential goes down, but since it now fires 3 shells the overall damage output per area will be greater.

I realize that Stein's sheet is out of date at this point, but don't know of anything that is up to date. How did you get the B-4 radius?

What website do you use to host the images you post?

There's been several threads about balance recently, mostly centered around larger team games and the imbalance in win rates. The oddest thing about the imbalance is how Soviet win rates drop off in 3's and 4's. A lot of the theories have been about caches or the incomplete design of the WFA armies. I don't think that's the case given that OKW is a WFA, can't build caches, and still comes out on top of the 4v4 win rates. I really think it has more to do with the LEFH and Walking Stuka.

Here's a recent 3v3. I got around 90 kills with a LEFH. On the maps where the approach routes are restricted, it's easy to rack up a stupid amount of kills with the LEFH by just firing randomly into the approach path.

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  BMon Drink_to_Win Grumpy

  陣 thealert Partisanen 召虎

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  LEFH

  by: Grumpy map: Rzhev Winter

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Here's a cheat mod test of the LEFH versus the ML20. If just firing at buildings, they're about the same effectiveness. The LEFH starts to get great when firing at approach lanes like the one on Rzhev or the middle of Port of Hamburger.

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  Grumpy

  Snot Rockets

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  arty test 1

  by: Grumpy map: Unknown

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Interestingly, the Land Mattress was about equal to the Walking Stuka, but only if the units don't react to the barrage. However, the Land Mattress takes forever to fire all of the rockets and is affected by scatter like all other rocket arty. This replay also showed the other part of the problem with the Walking Stuka, as you'll see full Con squads get wiped by a single barrage. The all-or-nothing design of the Walking Stuka is problematic for Soviets in 3's or 4's. The games often go about an hour, so Soviets don't have to dodge just a couple barrages, they have to out-guess their OKW counterpart up to a couple dozen times. Nobody is that good so losing those vetted squads in the late game often results in a loss.

Here are the in-game numbers taken from Stein's sheet for ballistic arty, along with the few real world numbers that I could find for comparison:

Crewed Range Range Shell ROF DMG Near Mid Far Near Mid Far
(IRL) kg IRL (IRL)
ML-20 152mm 250 17230 51.5 3 200 200 30 10 2 4 6
B-4 203mm 250 25400 110 yes 640 640 96 32 2.5 5 7.5
leFH 18 Ost 250 10675 14.8 6 160 160 56 8 2 4 6
leFH 18 OKW 250 10675 14.8 6 160 160 56 8 2 4 6
M7B1 Priest 180 11270 14.8? 6? 200 200 56 10 2 4 6
Sexton 135 12253 11.5 6 160 160 80 32 1.25 2.5 6
(sorry if this isn't very readable, it doesn't want to keep the formatting)

A couple things stick out. The ML20 had a shell that was about 3x larger, but in-game has a smaller AOE and lower rate of fire. The B4 should have a massive AOE, not just a 7.5 radius versus 6. In another test that I ran, the B4 was consistently about 1/3 as effective as the ML20. I think people just like to use is because they think it's great on the random time that it hits a medium tank and brews it up.

I think the following changes would really help to balance:

Nerf the LEFH (both) from 10 shells to 8.
Nerf the ML20 from 8 shells to 6. Increase AOE ranges to 3, 6, and 8 and make damage at range equal to LEFH
Sexton - increase range to 180 (mobile arty should have shorter range than fixed or else gameplay will suffer)
Make all arty not decrewable. Put a limit of 2 total (so 2 LEFH or 1 LEFH and one WS, same for ML20 and Katy). Count rocket arty in the limits also.
Make Priest and Sexton so that they can't be abandoned.
Change the Walking Stuka so that it doesn't one-shot everything Soviet (or completely miss like it often does).

I'm not sure how the new B4 will be, but think the far AOE range should be increased. The mid shouldn't be increased unless the damage was lowered under 80.

Mostly boring 3v3 with 4 LEFH's.

Could give it a Tank commander or .50 cal upgrade, I think the turret model supports but I'm not entirely sure.

A tank commander upgrade that allows it to call in the TOT arty would instantly make this commander more viable in larger game modes. It would also give the doctrine another ammo sink.