Profile of Mr.Smith

Here you have OKW versus new penals game. Enjoy

The matchup that worries me the most is the following.

Suppose that OKW does everything in their power to rush a 251 FlakHT at the Soviet's cutoff (no medic-tech; nothing):
- Do non-doctrinal T1 Soviets have any chance of countering that?
- Is Penal PTRS enough to delay this?
- Is it possible to counter this without building T2?

Vanilla satchel has 340 damage
Vanilla satchel has 25% friendly fire modifier
Max friendly fire damage: 85

AT satchel has 240 damage
AT satchel has 50% friendly fire modifier
Max friendly fire damage: 120

I really cannot think of any ability in the game that has higher-than 50% friendly-fire modifier (except for a few, very stupid death-critical abilities). Thus, we capped AT satchel there. Thus everything is consistent.

With respect to "Why gammon bomb can't have that". Well, it will, at some point. However that will probably happen in the same patch when Comet and Tommies are both in scope; not before.

Hammer is already a stupidly no-brainer pick. Even though Heavy Gammon bombs are way beyond useless, and for many reasons, we don't want to make Hammer feel any more attractive than it already is.

Can the sticky satchels be stuck onto friendly vehicles and used as a missile?

I really wanted to add this. Howevever adding this requires the implementation to be a lot more complicated (rather than changing 1 value). Thus, if we ever decide to go down that route, It will have to wait until we discover whether the community likes the AT satchel idea or not.

I haven't tested the new AT satchel yet, but isn't it possible to make it replace ('upgrade') the vanilla satchel ability once PTRSs are equipped, and differentiate between anti-building and anti-vehicle damage with target tables? It shares cooldown and the cost is the same (IRC), so it might be less cluttered that way.

It is possible. However, that would look unintuitive:
- Only the PTRS penals would get access to the new ability, even though two different squads would appear to have the same ability icon/text

Also note that Vanilla satchel deals more damage, but causes not crits.

The reason Penals don't get this ability is so that PTRS Penals can at least do something in the late-game.

Every satchel tells a story...

(actually the implementation was an idea of Firesparks, that we were all too keen to try!)

Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCBrq0rVxWg&feature=youtu.be

check that and tell if it's working the way it should.

Sweet! I'll give it a go.

well, if you see a puma evaporized in front of a m20, sure you won´t start searching in the entries of the target table related to churchills....but ok, no go....


and...why the hell are you going to have 2500 combinations???? you know you won´t end with that amount of combinations as you only need to have target tables for a very low number of those combinations...

Today it might be the Centaur vaporising the Centaur (which could be solved by offsetting other parameters; e.g., penetration). Tomorrow it might be the P4 vs the Cromwell (which could easily be solved by lowering Cromwell's armour).

If we start arbitrarily adding ad-hoc rules to "regulate" some weird matchup, I will need to read considerably more information to get a grip of what's going on.

For instance, I regularly consult stat.coh2.hu to get a grip of what's going on with a particular weapon. Look at the page for the T-34/76 gun for instance, and how few lines I need to read:
http://stat.coh2.hu/weapon.php?filename=t34_76mm_mp

Just look how small the page is, and how much time it takes for your eyes to take in every single bit of information.

1) Adding arbitrary parameters means that an entire web of support tools will become unusable:
- stat.coh2.hu will need to be updated
- I'll have to update my DPS calculator
- Cruzz will also have to update his tools.

At some point the effort of keeping up will be too much, and those guys might decide to "you know what? I think I'll give up".

Then I will have nobody else to cross-reference any data I gather.

2) Adding per-target rules

As I hinted before, if I am given an 1-dimensional array of parameters, I can rank them from better to worse. And by ranking them I can reuse anything I learned about a unit to apply to its counters and its counters' counters and so on.

If you are given a 2-dimensional array, how do you even begin ranking things? For every single matchup I need to consider, I will have to start from scratch.

By being able to rank things, I can also categorise them, and be able to focus on the bigger picture, than having to worry about updating every single rule. For instance, if we added target tables to everything and we wanted to make a simple change to the Greyhound (e.g,. to nerf it), I would have to go through every single weapon file in the game to see that no weird interactions occur.

3) Finally 1000 times this:

Target tables are best utilized in case by case scenarios to tweak a matchup that is imbalanced when there is otherwise a significant level of balance. It's a last resort option when you have a unit that is completely entrenched in a balanced fashion, but there's a specific unit that breaks that balance.

It is at THAT time that something like, a received accuracy bonus or penalty versus snipers is warranted. Or more specifically, a an accuracy penalty on AT guns when targeting infantry to not snipe entities all the time. It's a way of preserving what might otherwise be a functional unit without having to fundamentally change the unit. But that's about as broad a classification as I would get.

Making broad changes with target tables is probably one of the worst applications since it homogenizes units into cookie cutter roles, or completely upends any possible sense of balance or function the unit might currently occupy.

Target tables are a last resort when you run out of options because everything else is working well. I would strongly caution against using target tables outside of that context.