Profile of general_gawain

Engineers upgrading with Minesweepers will have their shield icon changed rather than having it added as a weapon slot symbol. Now actual weapons like Bazookas will no longer get hidden from the UI.


AP Ammo now has more obvious impact effects (I realise the picture might not show it as well) with more smoke, so it should be a lot easier for the enemy to realise AP ammo is being used.

All pictures show good changes to get some faster ingame informations. Thx

Cancer Commander is probably on the short list of commanders that will be targeted for the supposed next Commander Revamp patch. (Along with Special Weapons). My guess is they'll probably do something like give it the Concentrated Barrage from Arty Regiment and call it a day. It would be cool if they could implement the buildable 25 Pounder but I don't know how you'd balance that with the base 25 pounders (I don't know if being able to double barrage stuff would be OP or not)

The commander has Precision barrage already whixch is really strong. It makes no sense to give him a second ability of the same kind which is just a little bit weaker and cheaper. UKF needs onmap artillery the most, so remove emplacement buff ability and CB. Give him an onmap artillery piece and something like Designate Command Vehicle and it is okay.

i do think heavy tanks take too much pop cap, but in the end they are high impact units and pop cap allows them to be counterable and prevents snowballing.

I don't think they take too much pop. You can get barely two med tanks for one heavy one. It is as you said they have a high impact. A single Jagdtiger/Elephant ISU-152 in a 3v3 and 4vs4 can force the opponent team to search for alternate ways to take a position. Thats a huge impact.

You are missing my meaning entirely.
Commanders are optional. As such they have no direct weight on the faction balance. They can easily not be brought or not be owned whilst the faction core is ever present. The core faction needs to work regardless of what commander.
Brits need work and while that work is done commanders shouldn't even be considered in the process as they can be tuned separately and individually as needed without impacting anything but themselves

I completely understand you. But if you really want to reduce it on the nondoc stock units, then something is horribly designed. Take a USF/UKF team in 3v3 and 4vs4 for example. Not a single piece of somehow long ranged artillery. They are pretty screwed in its core in big game modes and it gets hard already at 2vs2. So the core factions don't work here.

Another example: Soviet has Shock Troops / Guards as elite units on so many commanders that they are practically getting their missing stock elite unit there. Most of the soviet commanders who have neither of these have Conscript Assault Package Upgrade to make Conscripts in early to midgame more competitive. It is pretty much a “stock” mechanic of soviets to boost their infantry options with their commander. It is similar for soviet tank options but not to that extent.
Soviets in the whole are more depended on their call-in units than other factions as part of their core design.

One last question: On paper it totally sounds good to balance core first but is it really possible in reality? How do you want to balance around core faction if there are no games played with both sides choosing no commander? Playtesting a hundred to thousand games without commander? All the casual/ranked games out there get influenced by choosing a commander at some point somehow. You won't get reliable data.

You shouldn't be judging the faction on its commanders. You should judge it on its core as it is present every game in every mode. Commanders are a separate issue that should be addressed individually. Faction balance has nothing to do with them.

Commander have a lot to do with faction design since they influence the performance of core units directly or fill blank spots in core roster. So they have to be looked at when you are balancing the core game.

Take the UKF Emplacement commander for instance. It directly influences the performance of emplacements and makes core emplacements hard to balance as a result. There are multiple examples of commanders that give abilities or additional weapons to core units.

If we have a look at the two mentioned commanders:

Mechanized Support Tactics
Guards
AT-Gun Ambush
Mark Vehicle
IL2-Precision Strike
ISU-152

-> Fills spot of elite infantry and super heavy AI unit. In addition you get a passive ability and two very good munition depended abilities, which give soviet a way to spend their munition in another way than spamming mines. Great designed commander which influences the core of how soviet is played.


Royal Artillery Regiment
Early Warning
Concentration Barrage
Valentine
Sexton
Perimeter Overwatch

-> Good abilities on first glance but a horrible designed commander in the whole. Why? Valentine comes far too late in 3vs3 and 4vs4 to have a real combat value other than calling down the Concentration Barrage for munition. But even more disturbing is the fact that pretty all commander abilities are munition depended (including Valentine somehow) while UKF is pretty low on munition generally (IS upgrades + Brens + grenades/mines + heavy sappers and so on...). There you have a further context between balance of core design and commander design.


So while Mechanized Support Tactics adds a lot of interesting doctrinal stuff that can be used and removes some blank spots, Royal Artillery Regiment is solely about indirect fire in such a bad overburdened design that you can never use all the commander abilities to full effect.