Profile of Mr.Smith

When it comes to dodging the Stuka Dive bomb, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is most applicable there. You can either:
- Localize the exact spot where the dive bomb is about to hit
- Have enough time to move your units outside the AoE, once you know where it will hit
- But never both

(if you get the precise spot wrong, you WILL die. Even if you press retreat immediately, you WILL die if the path goes through the AoE)

Stuka Dive Bomb should either:
- Retain the flavor (no flare warnings)
- Or the devastation effect
- But not both


TL;DR: Just copy what Miragefla did in his mod. pls

In a game that promotes squad preservation, etc, the Stuka Dive Bomb has an unacceptably large AoE effect. This is also considering that:
- It comes extremely cheap at 160 Munitions
- The cooldown is only 50 seconds
- Comes with no visible flare, which should warn the player which direction he should be running to
- (It is still possible to use the ability in the base sector )

Stuka Dive Bomb insta-gibs everything on an radius of 15 meters

(by comparison, the Sturmtiger AoE radius is 8 meters. Thus, the area of the Stuka Dive Bomb is 3.5 times bigger)

To give you a demonstration of how big this AoE looks like:

^ You can see the tiny little aiming reticle in the middle of this Pro-blob


^ Note:
1. The humongous area of devastation
2. The fact that the surviving members took no damage
3. None of the bodies right in the middle of the AoE got gibbed (instead of all the remote ones)

Why?

The answer is that the AoE of the stuka dive bomb applies an insta-death critical to all affected squad members (regardless of how much damage they took).

The Stuka-Dive Ninja-buff has increased the killing area by at least 5 times (for no reason)

If we look at the stats over at http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/stuka_500_lb_bomb_mp we can conclude that:
- The ninja-buff MUST have added the insta-gib death critical (the radius of the pre-buff and the post-buff Stuka are identical, but the performance is nowhere the same)
- The one-hit-kill radius must have been AT MOST 6.5

Thus, the ninja-buff increased the killing radius from 6.5 to 15 (that's an area).

If the Stuka Dive Bomb wasn't UP before, and nobody ever asked for a buff, why did it merit a 5-times increase of the killing area?

How does the AoE look like in Miragefla's mod?

(Miragefla also reduced the AoE radius slightly)

Here:

^ You can see that:
- The dive-bomb still packs a lot of punch, if ignored.
- It is, now, possible to dodge in a combat situation, like other, more expensive artillery
- The dive bomb deals damage evenly, on all affected units, according to their radius from the explosion

The one-hit kill radius in Miragefla's mod is around 9.5. This is already bigger than the pre-ninja Stuka-Dive bomb (which was at most 7.5)

How does Stuka Dive Bomb compare to UKF Air Superiority

Assuming you go afk for the 30 seconds, and most obvious telegraphed ability, here are the before and after pics of Air Superiority.

Before:


After:

^ Yes, zooming-out can be a bit deceiving here. Sorry for that.

Now, compare these pics to the current Stuka Dive performance, and recall:
- Stuka Dive costs 160 munitions
- Stuka Dive only affords 5 seconds of warning time
- No warning cycle is painted on the minimap
- You can still retreat while you are being bombarded with the Bombing Run
- Stuka Bomb: one hit, and you're out

"You want to make weak Ostheer even weaker? That's just lame."

If your main concern is the 1v1 performance of Ostheer:

- The last time I checked Stuka Dive Bomb doctrines were out-of-meta in 1v1. Thus any change to that ability will not affect "competitiveness" in this mode.
- The main arguments around Ostheer weaknesses in 1v1 have to do with the early game. Stuka Dive Bomb is a late-game ability. Again, no effect.
- If you believe that OST REALLY needs to crutch on Stuka Dive Bomb to retain its 1v1 rating, wouldn't it be better to buff OST in ways other than are more consistent than an all-or-nothing gamble?

If you are concerned about anything other than 1v1:

- Then don't worry. Ostheer is consistently one of the best-performing factions in these modes (along with OKW and UKF) -- after 222 buffs and the VetBug fix; this is despite UKF cancerplay.

the thing is that 3v3 and 4v4 maae for 0% of the competetive games and you balance for the competetive modes. you cannot change units because of that.
imo, they should reduce fuel income in 3v3 and 4v4 slightly, would make these modes more balanced

The IRHT costs only 200 manpower. Reducing fuel income will only make manpower cheaper. Thus, reducing fuel income will make spamming (i.e., replacing IRHT) even more trivial than it currently is (and even more difficult/risky to take down)*

If the issue is truly how it will affect competitive modes, from the responses in this thread, we have gathered that:
- IRHT is rarely ever used in 1v1, to begin with
- Thus, any nerf to the IRHT will NOT affect competitive modes

Now, I rephrase my question:
- This unit is obviously broken on some very popular modes
- A fix to the unit already exists (e..g, add a cooldown; require user intervention)
- Fixing the unit will NOT affect competitive modes (as we have already established)
- Is there any single reason to red-light such a change?

* Reducing fuel income will also make Volks-spamming, Mortar-Pit-spamming all that more potent.

With the IRHT, OKW has the best sighting tools available, bar none. Without the IRHT it is difficult to say which faction is the best (UKF, OKW, OST or Soviets). However, I know for sure that USF are the plebs of stock scouting options.

While I like Shanka's suggestion, I have a feeling it might not be easy to implement. Thus, Australian Magic's suggestion comes as a strong second.

Now, regarding the stock IRHT, also consider that OKW is also getting stock MGs. Now, can somebody inform me how they plan on flanking those MG34s in the next patch?

For reference, here I am listing all non-doc options for all factions.

USF
M20 (50 - 60 range depending on Vet).
- Dies to 1-2 shots
- Costs 340 MP to replace
- Unsuitable for late-game

Stuart (requires Vet2)
- Good luck replacing that Vet when the Stuart dies

AT gun
- Vet1
- It's very clunky to use as a spotter

Major recon
- Difficult to aim (have to move major)
- A single pass is definitely not enough to give vision for the USF paper forces

UKF
Pyrotechnic supplies Tommies
- Stacks with Vet1 bonus
- Highly recommended
- Easily replaceable
- (just never use the 25pdr ability; it sucks)

Sniper
- Also gets Vet that allows it to spot even further

AEC
- The best unit to escort a Firefly fleet
- Churchill is for plebs D:

Tank Commanders
- Sight range 35 -> 45 (Cromwell, Comet)

Universal Carrier (next patch)
- Vet1 replaced by +10 sight range

OKW
Kubel
- Useful for the first pushes
- 360° always-on maphax at Vet1
- Not easy to replace once dead

Puma
- Best AT light vehicle in the game, bar none
- Easy to replace

Volks grenadiers
- Vet4.
- Pioneer-like sight-range on the most spammable unit in the game.
- What could go wrong?
- Ever wondered why Volksblobs are always able to home in on your tanks? That's why.

JP4
- 45 sight range at Vet0
- Self-spotting at Vet2
- The true wonderchild of CoH2

IRHT
- The topic of this thread.
- Duh.

OST
Scout Car
- Great sight range (insane with doctrinal scopes)
- Durable, easy to replace

Pioneers
- Helps avoid an MG ambush but little beyond that

Sniper
- It's the most frequently encountered unit in OST arsenal

Soviets
Flares
- Sniper
- Mortar
- Tripwire door-flares

T70
- Recon mode
- There aren't many other worthwhile vehicles in the soviet fleet; easy to replace.

SU-85
- Cone-of-sight

Elite squads are supposed to be better than normal squads already at Vet0 (i.e., they are frontloaded). Stormtroopers have a -25% received accuracy modifier at Vet0; that's huge.

The reason that it doesn't show is that Axis squad spacing is terrible, and they tend to get oneshotted by grenades/mines/mortars/pak-howies/stray-tank-shells/

Now, regarding bonuses:
- The difference in price between squads should already be reflected in the Vet0 bonuses
- Every squad in the game should get exactly the same amount of raw-stat bonuses as they vet from Vet1 to Vet3 (or Vet5).
- It would be interesting to see Vet1 EFA bonuses that are not a variant of Trip-flare-mines/Medkit

The reason is that:
- Bonuses are multiplicative (thus, if you start better, and you get the same bonuses, you will already scale better)
- If we ignore that rule, we are going to have squads that scale better, for no reason at all (see post-patch Penals, every single OKW infantry except for Volks, Riflemen), or scale worse than the rest (e.g., Commandos, Tommies)
- These modifiers also apply to captured weapons as well (something you cannot control). Post-patch, if a Penal squad captures an lmg34, you are going to have a baaaad time.

Now, regarding the performance gap between squads should be reflected at Vet0 with the following modifiers:
- Target size
- Squad size
- A passive accuracy modifier

Currently the passive accuracy modifier doesn't exist. Squads that are supposed to be better with their weapons only get the bonus for their base-weapons, not weapons that they pick up. This, completely, sucks for these squads, as they make captured weapons scale worse.

The main reason that Sexton/25pdr barrage suck so much is that they have no AoE. Compared to an ML-20:
- The damage of Sexton/25pdr is 25% smaller (this affects 1-hit probability and ability to kill structures)
- More crucially: the radius of Sexton/25pdr is 33% smaller

Since the radius affects an area, we could say that the damage output of a sexton/25pdr shot is about only 33% that of the ML-20 (against small structures) and 44% against infantry (which the ML-20 is not that good to begin with). It's -that- bad.

The other reason that 25pdr suck is the obvious artillery flare, with a 20-meter throw range.

If Sexton/25pdr AoE was a copy-paste of the ML-20, they would be pretty damn good for their role. Even despite the seemingly-short range (Sexton) or the visible flare (25 pdr)

Now. The main reason I am scared of camping is because I have been through the arty-parties of overpotent howitzers in the past, when:
- OKW had no counter to howitzer play (since they have no offmaps to speak of, and no long-range artillery to begin with).
- The game was all about camping behind an HMG wall and wondering whether the OST guy picked a doctrine with stuka bombs or not.
- CAS was meta

I can tell you that LeFH is very-much in-meta currently in team games. This is mostly due to:
- Brit-city
- The unholy synergy with OKW trucks
- The absence of Recon-and-stuka-bomb equivalent doctrines on the opposition.

Yes. It would be cool to start seeing howitzers used in 1v1, howver. However, would it be worth throwing 3v3+ under the bus again, just for that, though?