Profile of Mr.Smith

Great analysis and summary!

That still leaves one questions unanswered: Do I rebuild Tommies (with LMG) once I lose them or do I build Pios with LMGs?

Especially when I play with US who has an ambulance I don't really need the healing. Having one Tommy for increased vision is good of course...

2 Healing Tommies are indispensible, even if you plan on blobbing your entire army together. That's mainly because you will always have a medkit that is not on cooldown.

However, I prefer replacing Tommies with heavy sappers. If you get a vet0 Sapper squad, research minesweepers and the Vickers_K upgrade, your vet0 squad can down a vet3 LMG gren. Don't ever bother giving extra LMGs to your sappers, it's really not worth it (Sapper squad formation is too tight. Also, your Stens will help if the enemy decides they have had it with your Vickers_k and start closing in too early). Even if you lose your sapper, you will have lost very little (70 munitions). Also, the only way to lose sappers is explosives, which cost munitions (thus you bleed your opponent any more).

Heavy Sappers have the Osttruppen effect: Cheap, durable, and you don't have to bother about winning fights (although you will be winning some of them, anyway). Just let your enemy worry about dislodging your Sappers instead (even if you are fighting a losing fight, it will take a long time for the enemy, anyway). Watch out for artillery and nades, though.

That's exactly my point. They need LOS to be effective now since they don't provide their own.

Having access to recon is one of the most trivial things to accomplish in a teamgame (the topic of the OP).

Moreover, skillplanes don't require line of sight (i.e., fog of war). They only need the target to be visible for a split second. You can make a target visible by e.g., firing a panzerwerfer over the target area (at max range, to reveal as many tanks as possible).

This is also why, if you plan on using an AA vehicle to take down skillplanes, there is high chance that the vehicle itself will be targeted (and die).

Each skillplane summoning grants the user with 2 planes, and 3 strafes per plane.

The very instant that a target becomes visible, the skillplanes have acquired the target. Thus, they will go for a strafe (which can follow the tank even outside the indicated area). To pull off additional strafes, you need to make a target visible in the affected area again.

In 1v1, this is still considered acceptable because:
- Resource income
- Recon is not readily available in containing doctrines (well.. except for Vanguard).
- Skillplanes mostly works as area denial, since nobody will go back after the first run
- Thus, in 1v1 you only benefit from the alpha strike of 2 strafes (1 per plane)

In teamgames, everything is the exact opposite. And to be more precise:
- Summoning 2 CAS loiters at once means that there will be 4 planes hitting an armour blob at the same time.
- Thus, you get the alpha strike of 4 strafes. That's more than enough to turn a game.
- This doesn't even require any real coordination either. Even in randoms, you can type "Summon skillplanes here, now <ping>" (then, you just wait until you see your teammates' red smoke pop, and you do the rest).
- No counterplay possible.

Yeah absolutely, it is an op killer in AT games. I always wondered why it is so cheap, while all other more RNG based Tank loiters (rockets) cost a lot more. JU-87 loiter only cost 110 munition. This plus the ability to get munition for fuel in the same commander results in a cheap, spammable ability with an absolutely insane damage output even to the heaviest tanks.

You get the whole thing (1x Artillery Flares + 2x Ju-87) for 280 munition. That is not much for the garuanteed destruction it will bring upon your enemies. Imo in AT it is stronger than the pre-nerfed Artillery cover, that gave you a chance to escape at least, because of a higher delay between smoke and shells plus slightly worse recon commander abilities on allied side (Artillery Flares is just the best one for reliable LOS at an area).

The loiter skillplanes actually cost 200. There is a similarly-named ability in the CAS commander that only strafes in a single line (and costs 110).

However, the total cost is not necessarily 460 munitions. This is dispersed between 3 people and is (thus) easily achievable (2-3, sometimes 4 times in a game, depending on your resource control). You only have to pull this off once, and you won the game. Just bait the enemy to blob their armour by presenting your Tiger(s).

That spreadsheet does not take account for the way people ACTUALLY tech. Take USF for example, a majority of players decide either Lt or Captain before going Major for tanks. That is a lot cheaper than the spreadsheet makes out. Not many good players tech serially, unless forced (ukf). Soviets also usually decide either tier 1 or 2 before 3 or 3,4. Ost choose tier 1 or 2 then they choose either tier 3 or tier 4 (with tier 3 research). Basically its not as simple as that chart makes out.

It's true that calculating the teching cost is a rather complicated business. Firesparks chose to do it this way, and you are right to have objections to this.

How would you recommend to calculate the teching costs?

Basically, if you could provide a similar-looking spreadsheet, it would really help to prove your point.

Brit Emplacements need a redesign. The current design (brace, counter-system) is an all-or-nothing system. This will only allow for fluctuation between complete irrelevance (and thus no indirect fire for Brits) or Sim City abuse (and high levels of salt, everywhere).

- OKW

• Bundled AA
  

This one's tricky because it could affect 1v1. One Schwer HQ on the field and you can still use air based munitions abilities (sort of). 2-4 Schwer HQs on the field and you immediately shut down all plane abilities. Many Soviet and the USF Airborne commanders are now firmly out of the meta.

The (first) AA, currently comes completely free to the OKW player, and is strong enough to withstand anything but a fully-committed frontal assault.

If a player is good, they can capitalize on the strong (and completely free) bonuses that this ability gives. However, if you are good enough, you really didn't need the enormous advantage that the T4 flak provides anyway.

If somebody messes up and loses this, they immediately fall on a terrible disadvantage, since replacing the T4 is way more expensive than the utility the free AA provides. This, again, is an example of an all-or-nothing design (see emplacements).

My proposal:

• The T4 comes with no flak weapon attached to it. (you need to upgrade)
  
• If you ever have to replace the T4, you can do it for free (the price of the HQ truck; does USF/UKF pay for anything to repair their base?)
  
• However, every time you want to redeploy the AA canon you need to pay some price.
  
• Paying the same price as an 17-pounder would do the trick, since the gun is great at deterring infantry, and also good enough to deter medium armour rushes (with 10 popcap, though, equal to Bofors)
  
• As a compensation, the gun should become controllable by the player (maybe even with attack ground).
  
• (The Bofors is currently way too underpriced, and everybody knows this).
  

Skill planes.

In 4v4, we can have all these different air abilities flying at once. We used to have a limit to how many p47s strikes could be in the air at once. With the Brits new abilities, you have 3 different type of OP plane abilities all flying around at once. Its unfortunately game changing and cheap play. Players now build ammo caches to stock munitions just for this very purpose. Its madness. Limit the air abilities to one per team at any given time.

Quoted for Truth.

Air Supremacy
Remember when Air Superiority was nerfed so that it wouldn't one-shot OKW trucks? That was a great change. Now it is an awesome denier ability, and if you want to use it offensively to wipe OKW trucks, you also have to follow up with an assault (otherwise, you just wasted 300+ munitions).

... unless of course you use 2 of them at the same time. No counterplay possible (if the map forces you to bunch up trucks).

OST JU-87 AT loiter
The ability alone is borderline broken. However, you can mitigate this by making sure your tanks are always at full health (and hugging the enemy tanks when the ability is used mid-combat). It also helps if you keep an AA unit in the rear to shoot the ability down.

... unless the enemy decides to summon two of these abilities at the same time. This will instantly annihilate ANY vehicle present, in the first pass (including Churchills, or any unfortunate AA unit that you happened to be present). Because, counterplay. JU-87 spam waits for no man, woman, child or small furry animal.

agree with everything except Tech/Building Independent Call-in Vehicles

down with FRP already.

Since Relic seems to be actually reconsidering fundamental aspects of the game (e.g., vehicle crush), wouldn't it be a great idea to also trial removing FRPs? At least in the official balance preview patch?