Profile of Mr.Smith

The Aimtime when switching targets is what kills this ability.

Aimtime is already fixed.

It lacks any AI (like ISU152) to make it decent in fights where infantry isnt present.

That's where you're wrong. It has a 95 range HE barrage now available at Vet0.

Mortar pit

is still cancer much much. Might be because of map campyness nature.

It's probably still cancer because one of the mortars still has 120 range autoattack. The copious amount of back-and-forth for v1.3 meant that some bugs crept in.

Ostheer

With Otheer tanks and tehing changes the faction finally feels like a vcoh1 Wehrmach - versatile faction that grows strong as gmae progress with big variety of strong (but not OP) tanks with good veterancy supported by Strong but not OP vetted infantry. Like the faction.

If you can afford to try it. Let us know how the Ostwind feels. In particular how it performs vs light vehicles (with penetration and range buff), vs infantry and vs AT guns.

Overall

The game turned into cancerfest and heavy artillery was needed to break British defensive positions. Might be beause of map nature.

See above for Mortar Pits. The change to mortar pit range are probably not there yet. The primary reason for toning down the range at this point is to see how it behaves with reduced LeIG range.

Once again, thanks for testing this out for us!

I'll provide feedback for the brit commando doctrine, since no one has already.

Commandos Doctrine is a very solid commander when it works, except for the fact that the glider is so expensive
and comes with a 4-minute cooldown (probably the longest cooldown in the game, currently?)

The doctrine is, situational however, since most of its abilities either only operate on a sector-level, or they only benefit specific squads (e.g., smoke raid only really helps commandos, and assault only really helps tommies).

Out of all commanders in the game, assuming that the abilities become individually useful and balanced with respect to one another, it's probably the commander that would be the most interesting to play with global cooldown on all abilities (like UKF faction conception)

Smoke raid operation:
I actually love this ability but it is a little tough to actually coordinate the push. For those unaware, what this ability does it for each infantry unit (+ support weapons too? Don't remember.) in friendly territory it drops a smoke pot on the unit. Units inside will cloak (including support weapons) and have commando like camo briefly. Points will be neutralized faster.

Note that camo stick with the squad, even if you leave friendly territory. With hold fire on, you can even go have a tea at the enemy's base. You can only really use this ability with commandos and the sniper though, since those are the only guys with hold fire.

It might be helpful to for this ability to either dictate where the smoke is being dropped so that I can plan around it; it's simply too much to keep track of when you have lots of units moving around. I suggest something similar to the tactical support scavenge royal engineer call in, where it highlights on the minimap where the wrecks are, or something similar to that effect.

There's two kinds of smoke. Normal smoke drops at capture points in the frontline sectors, and nowhere else.

Then, there's "fake" smoke (which does absolutely nothing); it just spawns on your squads as they go invisible.

Another suggestion is to have smoke drop on the borders of a neutral territory (enemy if you find this too powerful) and a friendly connected territory, which will help the ability be more consistent.

I'm not sure if it's possible to implement a feature that makes smoke drop on the border. For the sake of the doctrine though, I think it would become more solid if territory layout was ignored completely.

It would be interesting to try giving hold fire to all units, but limit stealth (i.e., make it so that you require cover).

The version of smoke raid I would be more inclined to try is targeting a particular location which causes smoke to start dropping in a big radius around that point. The ability could definitely drop yellow-cover smoke to allow units to stealth to the objective; then we could experiment with vision obscuring and shot-blocking smoke.

The benefit of having this version of the ability is that you can have a doctrine focussed around sneaky assaults. However, don't think it's interesting to keep the stealth-anywhere behaviour of current smoke raid.

Assault:
This ability is iffy for me. What this does is a slew of recon planes will sweep the area and infantry sections only will be on sprint and have an accuracy buff. Having sprinting infantry sections sound nice, but being unable to fire on the move can make the whole assault theme of this ability more like "find cover for the infantry sections" theme.

Sprinting Tommies are amazing. Tommies never hit anything when they move in the first place. You can use sprint to relocate to cover, dodge grenades, or even kite enemies (with 60 secs duration, there's no rush). Assault is also probably the only reason you would ever want to tech Brit grenades. Try it; it's seriously scary and fun!

I'd suggest giving the ability to have infantry sections fire on the move, with the caveat of reducing the sprint just a little bit, disallowing weapons to be able to be fired on the move, and reducing the assault munitions just a tad bit.

One of the downers of the ability is that it only affects infantry sections, and that kind of forces unit composition to go a particular way. This makes the doctrine restrict your playstyle than enhance it.

Perhaps if we follow through with your advice and limit the speed-increasing effect that won't make sappers/commandos completely OP when using the ability; so we will definitely try it!

Commando Insertion:
The main complaint of this is that one would think that the commando doctrine is less commando-y than the vanguard doctrine. To get one commando you would need 500 mp from the commando doctrine, while to get one commando from vanguard, you would need 890 mp but you get the airlanding officer + forward retreat point, which is worth the difference imo. The difference in mp shrinks if you want to build more commandos.

However, I like the aggressive aspect of the commando insertion, but it's worth while to facilitate a change to bring the commando aspect into the commando doctrine. Leave the insertion as is, but if the player decides to call in the glider defensively, within friendly territory, give a possible upgrade to the glider to allow it to build more commandos. It can only build commandos only when in friendly territory. To maintain the flavor of vanguard, the upgraded commando insertion glider should not be able to have a forward retreat point.

I would make the insertion super-cheap; like 390MP, and also allow the glider to reinforce even in enemy territory. Thus, you can use the insertion operation to support an infantry operation to the frontline (since you don't have a halftrack if you picked the doctrine).

The cooldown should, of course become reasonable since 4 minutes is insane.

I am personally against the idea of allowing commandos to spawn from the glider to force players to use the glider offensively and to keep it more unique from Vanguard doctrine.

Mortar Cover:
Good ability. Only issue is with this ability is being sector dependent. Wildly op on some sectors, wildly up on others. Maybe area of effect circle should be used? I'm not 100% on how this should be changed.

I think that this should operate on a sector as it ruins the ability for some maps or makes it wreck on others. Frankly, if rifle company WP barrage was used instead, this would be a great support abiilty.

Air Supremacy:
Pretty useless in 1s, very powerful in team games. However I think it should be changed thematically (and this is also conditioned that the schwere truck has the AA toggle mode, otherwise this ability would be useless against multiple okws). Have a recon plane enter first, then a few seconds later a strafing machine gun plane, a few seconds after that a bombing run plane (I'd recommend it to do damage equivalent to 75% HP of an OKW base truck, just to incentivize people to push in conjunction with air supremacy.). Reduce the munitions for this ability, I think anywhere from 200-250 would be a good price point.

That could work.

I have this issue with the new balance mod.

In order to fix USF teching not showing a progress bar, I've turned the upgrades into special squads.

The moment the lieutenant_spawner (costs 200MP 50FU etc) is complete, it yields the player the lieutenant-dispathched upgrade (to unlock the tier), spawns an actual lieutenant squad and dies.

However, I noticed that this cuases issues when the player tries to tech up when they are near full-popcap.

For instance, say that you are at 90/100 popcap. You click the lieutenant upgrade, which allocates 8 popcap while building. Now you are at 98/100 popcap

The lieutenant finishes building and calls in the actual squad to reinforce. However, reinforcement_action refuses to spawn the squad when you are above popcap. This means that the actual lieutenant squad will not spawn.

Is there a way to make the reinforcement_action ignore popcap. Or, how would you guys fix that?

I haven't managed to find a workaround for this workaround, yet, and I might have to pull this feature out of the patch.

To be quite honest I have no clue how USF functions in teams aside from 2s and I don't play those much anymore either. I solely base my opinions on one v ones. Saying that I'm aware the struggle of the Jackson in team games and I understand the need to have some adjustments of the Jackson in team games.

1v1 matches usually end a bit after manpower bleed has started to settle in, USF has started to slump and there's so many paper tanks to micro. For teamgames, just double the effective duration of the match.

There's no point at building Jacksons by that point; everything can kill it in 2-3 shots, and there's so many guns around. Therefore USF goes for the infantry/tactical artillery spam game.

Sadly the team isn't either allowed, unable, or the prospect is too daunting or demanding like damage tables to have patches for ones and for team games.

Damage tables are inconsistent behaviour, and inconsistent behaviour makes the game more difficult to understand, and more difficult to predict.

Let it sink in that the vast majority of the player base don't realise, or don't want to understand that there's a difference between OST Panzer4/Panther/Blitzkrieg and their direct counterparts at OKW, and factor in that you now want to make one unit behave differently, depending on what it is engaging.

I use the Jackson well and effectively but it makes me wonder if only I and a few other top USF players can use it then is it under powered? The reason I'm so opposed to the Jackson changes as if they go through then the Jackson will be overpowered in my hands which I disdain the idea of. Take away that vulnerability of being three shotted then one of it's two weaknesses is patched. Yes, it'll have no armor but to take another AT shot is huge when said tank has

The changes will make it so that the insane micro requirements of the jackson get lifted, but it will do so by losing some firepower.

The jackson feels too crappy at v1.3, if anything. So, some stuff like cost and move accuracy might be reverted. I think it's worth exploring the idea of a 640HP jackson with 160 damage that can shift to HVAP shells every once in a while.