Profile of Antemurale

GG WP

Features the leIG and the Mortar Pit.

---personal thoughts---

leIG is decent, but is far outclassed by the Mortar Pit. While the Mortar Pit does die quickly when focused by infantry, it's really inexpensive,l accurate, massive range, and does not bleed MP.

Hollow Charge isn't really useful. Sure, it gives the leIG a way to harm vehicles (and gives T1 some form of anti-tank power) but 120 damage is negligable.

Honestly don't know what to do with this ability, because if damage was upped to 160 double leIGs would one-shot Halftracks and Scout Cars, while a Snare (stun, damaged engine, blind, loader injured, etc.) might be a little too strong. (Of course, I'm theorycrafting here)

Cheers for taking the time for testing this to us! I hope the adjustments to AA make those platforms feel ok now?

The Ostwind, Flak Emplacement, M15A1 seem much more in line. Schwerer is practically useless as an AA tool. Centuar is better, but still a little underpowered from my perspective. However, the Soviet Quad is ludicrously effective, as are pintle-mounted DshK-38s (e.g. those found on IS-2s).

Perhaps 50% damage vs aircraft for the Quad, and for the DshK-38 25% damage?

USF's pintle M2HBs and WM/OKW's pintle MG42s are still completely useless as an AA tool.

Howitzers apply a fixed amount of bonus damage to emplacements, even if they barely touch them. Since we can't touch sim-city stuff, I think it's ok for howitzers to be a safe pair of hands to wipe sim city off the floor, for now. However, if we were allowed to do a proper rebalance of all emplacements, that bonus damage would be have been snapped off.

Indirect fire is meant to be inefficient and unreliable vs mortar pits. That's because we want to design around the retardedness of artillery-spam which the current design promotes. Nevertheless, if we reduce the HP of the pit sufficiently, indirect fire could remain some sort of a soft-counter.

I'd like to see indirect fire remain a soft counter to emplacements. After all, artillery can reliably damage each other on the battlefield (e.g. mortar duels), so I'd like to have the option of brute-forcing down a mortar pit with mortars and infantry support guns.

In FBP v1.2 the fight is extremely one-sided: the pit is so accurate that it reliably damages even Sdkfz. 250/7 Mortar HTs.

If the pit is too durable to all kinds of threats, then it's good news. We can trivially fix this by reducing the raw amount of HP. The fun begins when we make the pit becomes uneven to different kinds of threats.

I haven't tested the pits enough. However, my original impressions are that even without brace, the pit seems too durable. (the only reason the pit might require brace now is fallschirmjagers and lava nades, tbh).

Don't forget the Sdkfz. 250/7 Incendiary Mortar Shell and the mighty Goliath!

Yes, the Pit seems a little too strong. Based on its current durability, I'd like to see 500HP stock and 750HP advanced, then see how that goes and adjust from there.

Edit: Pit survivability seems okay now. Quite vulnerable to infantry flanks, especially when it has not yet been upgraded.

Now, hitbox size and target size are two completely different parameters.

Target size is what balistic weapons use in their calculations to attack. Ideally, the values should stay within 0.8 and 1.2. Anything higher than target size of 2 and bolt actions become completely obsolete, whereas short-range automatics will start sniping the pit from max range, which is less than ideal.

Hitbox size is what affects the size of the mortar pit and determines vulnerability to AoE. We can't change it at will, and can only reuse hitboxes from other entities (in this case, we had to use the TM-35 mine, as it's the only entity that seemed to be able to get overshot by AT guns).

I see why target size shouldn't be touched. Assault Grenadiers wiping Mortar Pits from 30m range would be very bad. However in my experience LMG42 Grens and even LMG34 Obers aren't too effective because the total DPS of the squad is rather low compared to squads completely armed with automatic weaponry (especially at range).


A few thoughts on other units that might need tweaking:

Kubelwagens are so useless as combat units that on most 1v1s I'd go 4 Volks every time instead. They might see use in team games with larger maps though.

If I could tweak Kubelwagens, I'd revert the unit to its original state (strong early-game combatant) but remove its capping ability, or lock it behind an ability akin to SOV Secure Mode (that also requires 3-5 seconds to toggle). This makes the Kubelwagen an early-game combatant, capable of causing decent MP bleed and help infantry win fights, but the OKW player sacrifices capping power (at least the ability to contest points and fight enemy infantry at the same time).

Alternately, because the FBP Kubelwagen is all about capping, increase the rate that it caps points even more (150% capping rate?). This would make it a very strong capping unit, and would also make it much more viable as a point-harrasing unit.

leIG 18s are much, much stronger against infantry. However, the HE barrage is a bit lackluster, and the Hollow Charge ability confounds me (its damage is negligable).

I would say their performance in FBP v1.2 might warrant a cost increase back to its original cost, and throw in a bigger HE barrage (perhaps 6 shells?) and/or a vehicle critical (blind sounds pretty good) for the Hollow Charge (increase cost accordingly too).

#makeleIGgreatagain

M36 Jacksons are strong, very, very strong. Reliably counters all Axis heavy armor, and wrecks mediums reliably as well (even at max range). The only units that reliably outgun it are heavies (Tiger I, Tiger II) and casemate TDs (Elefant, Jagdtiger, StuG III G, Jagdpanzer IV-70) provided they aren't flanked.

I think their performance in FBP v1.2 might warrant a cost increase to around 420MP 155FU (Firefly territory). Either that or reduce it's HP down to 560HP and make it a glass cannon again.

The EFA revamp did wonders for Conscripts. Much more reliable, worth 240MP.

It's a shame that the scope for the Fall Balance Preview did not include mainline infantry.

8?! cmonBruh me and Hooligan are not that crazy

It was 4 LeIgs that game, 2 of each OKW player.

And land matress is definitely not garbage at all. It still has an insane amount of rockets per barrage, and the rockets wipe very decent. And that for 8cp and 350mp/50 fuel! (it hasn't been touched in FBP)

Well, I wiped quite a few with my Panzerwerfers

The quad in live is extremely effective, it shoots down planes in their first pass sometime before they even start shooting. From the little testing I did in mod it seem very capable there also.

Re-tested, it seems pretty strong. Unless directly targeted by the loiter, of course

Anti-air is, at any rate, implemented on a target-table basis. Therefore, we can simply make adjustments to damage as necessary.

We will look into this. However, how much difference in % (very roughly) would you say there is between the Ostwind, the pintle MG and the Quad?

I've done further testing, and I have different results: I've created a blob of enemy vehicles, then put the AA unit outside of the Loiter zone.

Used WM Stuka CAS to test. Keep in mind this loiter actually makes one final pass after the ability duration is over.

AA units listed in order of effectiveness.

Very Effective (downed both aircraft before duration of ability ended)
- Ostwind: approx. 20 sec
- M17 Quad: approx. 25 sec
- Bofors: approx. 30 sec. I tested this against Typhoons (Vanguard Operations Strafing Support), but they should perform the same way.
- Schwerer Panzer HQ: approx. 30 sec
- Sdkfz. 251/17 Flak HT: approx. 35 sec
- Centuar AAMk. II: approx. 40 sec

Effective (downed one aircraft before duration of ability ended)
- M15A1 AAHT: Its MGs do almost nothing, while the 37mm AAA is pretty effective. Also, it happens to rotate when engaging enemy aircraft, so it is advised to use handbrake.
- Sdkfz. 222
- pintle DshK: The pintle-mounted DshK is surprisingly effective.

Mediocre (downed one aircraft after duration of ability ended)
- 2cm Flak Emplacement

Ineffective (downed no aircraft after duration of ability ended)
- pintle M2HB: Reliably damages aircraft, never can bring them down however.
- pintle MG42: Pretty useless against aircraft.

In summary:
I would say that the M15A1 and the Centuar need a slight buff in the AA department. If you could fix the tendency of the M15A1 to "dance" when it engages aircraft (perhaps related to its limited firing arc?) that might do the trick. The Centuar is a dedicated AA platform much like the Ostwind, I would like to see it perform as well in the anti-aircraft department.

Additionally, the poor Flak Emplacement needs some love (although base Flak Emplacements need to not be able attack aircraft, or OKW would be more OP). Perhaps make it especially strong against aircraft to give it a niche role?