Profile of Krötentöten

Good thing that this (https://www.coh2.org/topic/48788/ostheer-railway-artillery) falls under every category you mentioned.

While I symphatise with your wish to make the railway artillery more attractive as it should be quite iconic it is not conpareable to ANY of the artillery options i am talking about. Those are all UNITs, not doctrinal abilities. They dont have a risk, they dont take mp/fuel damage. Of all the options they should be the least impactful over the course of a game since they are just supplementary.

Closer into the fray to achieve less damage. I strongly suggest a change towords more saturation damage that harms units and kills harmed units. It's not ok that 2 obers are shot in literaly 1 second from a calliope fireing 50 m (whatever range unit the game uses) away from them from the fog of war and they both get vaporized in the first volley even though you hit retreat. Thats the sturmtigers job and frankly i am not too fond of that one either but thats another story. It's equaly not ok that a lone rifle squad capping gets vaporized by 1 Pwerfer salvo. This is not the intended purpose of those units as they can do it for way to cheap a prize and with way too little risk.

The katyusha and to a lesser extend the stuka are spot on. The katyusha beeing the best. It has to come realy close to do a lot of damage and pays for that by beeing one shot in return or even killed by inf that happens to be arround. It saturates an area, it is very rare for a squad to die to the first volley of a katy, it happens but its manageable. The katy is also not expensive so it performs overall well. The stukas rockets are skillbased, leaving it in the hands of both the attacker and the receipient what the outcome will be. Technically you can avoid beeing hit by it all game, and even if it hits the "new" randomness of the weapon doesnt ensure wipes. They happen, but not frequent. Also the stuka gets 2 shot in a faction without snares.

Of the 2 the stuka might be slightly overperforming. The katy is realy the golden middle.

All the real howitzers suffer from 1 weakness that keeps them in check. They get 1 shot by most of map abilities. Most players dont go for them because they know there's a high chance of them beeing countered by a 1 click 160 mun or 200 mun ability giving a favourable 600 mp for mun trade. And frankly... i am ok with that. Ever been in a game without a team having an offmap arty? Those things can be horrible. If they ever were made to survive an offmap they would need to have their efficiency brought down in another way as yes, they do have scatter and some shots just achieve nothing. But they also dont have any warning noise like rocket artillery and as such are much more threatening. I am personaly fine that these shell artilleries are only valuable in some very certain situations as I do not find them promoting fun gameplay. Your opinion might ofcourse differ.

I guess in the end after all these arguments what I am trying to say is, artillery units, due to their nature, need to be a lot less damaging amd to ensure a fun game experience rather border on the lines of UP than OP.

This is for now the end of one huge post. I hope I managed to put some structure in it. Wasnt that easy writing it on a cellphone ☺

I have put a lot of effort into this post and I hope that it manages to reach relic or some other people who also love this game like I do and want it to improve overall.

Rather then a balance topic I would like to create a discussion about the state of artillery with special focus on rocket artillery in general.

My goal is not to focus too much on a single unit but rather which role artillery should play in general in this game to ensure both a reason to build them and most of all a fun gameplay experience. Also, most of my observations are true for 2v2 and up. In a 1 vs 1 the smaller maps and less units overall may change some of them slightly. In general though I'd say they apply there too.

In my eyes artillery is necessary for this game. There are certain rock / paper / sciccor (god i forgot how to write that one) mechanics in which artillery is needed to present a viable counter to certain units in a certain position.

Now the question arises, what use do you want out of artillery in this game? To me the answer is following in importance from highest to lowest:

1. Hardcountering static emplacement and forcing mobile defensive lines to move or pay the price with no immediate threat of retailiation through range.

2. Doing damage to slowly moving Tankdestroyers Elefant/Jagdtiger/ISU

3. SOFTENING up infantry blobs and/or forcing them to move or to avoid a certain area for the time.

(4) punishing people who dont pay attention (mostly low level play and thus more a result of that than a desired effect)

Before we go into the subject of how those tasks or handled ingame I would like to say a word about efficiency of artillery units in general.

To "calculate" efficiency one needs to compare the cost of the unit (might be reoccuring) to the damage (again calculated in cost) it does to the enemy. With the very notable addition that complete wipes on infantry count dpuble because normaly you reinforce at half the price of the unit, so a sturmtiger with 1 wipe on a Rifleman, an thus 5 kills has done the same damage like a sniper with 10 kills on Rifleman. Units prone to wiping therefor have a better chance at higher efficiency than units that do their kills traditionaly.

There are 2 (2.5 if you want to be very specific) type of units in this game. Such that do mp/fuel/mun damage (henceforth just referred to as damage) while normaly gradualy receiving the same, this goes for all infantry but snipers (with again the exception of soviet snipers).

And those who deal damage with either receiving none in return or total loss of the unit, this goes for all vehicles, brit and ost sniper and all artillery.

2.5 categorys because of the second you have to distinguish between those that need repairs and cind of have a cost therefor to sustain and those that dont (sniper and artillery) but its a minor thing, just mentioned for completion.

(There are some units that are somwhere in between that sometimes also take gradual damage but not always like mortars/leig pack howi etc but since this is a sidetrack its not necessary to further distinguish.)

Obviously the second needs to be less effective. There are many more factors to consider though, one is how easily the second option of total loss of investment is achieved. A good example is the ost sniper falling in the second category. At 360 mp the ost sniper needs to kill 18 cons to break even (upkeep would make this far to complicated and is thus ignored) this is a not unsubstantial nr of kills and the sniper beeing only 1 man is very likely to die (mines, arty, tank shot, countersnipe and enemy imf) having to come rather close to do his damage (compared to arty).

In short, there needs to be a balance of damage done to damage received ratio/cost/risk of complete loss.

If you want to simplyfy it the ost sniper would have on a scale from 1 to 10 10 beeing the highest and thus best for you.
Regarding damage done to damage received, all units of the second category do not take damage so you could say they all get a 10 but there are differences in how much damage they inflict, a tiger and a churchill while both only either live or die do not do the same damage.

Damage done to received: 7 (he does not take damage and dishes out a lot, not many wipes though normaly)
Cost: 4 (he is 1.5 times as expensive as an ordinary infantry squad)
Risk of complete loss:1 (it doesnt get any more vulnerable than a sniper in this game)

Spoilers

Well earned though! if you had a better mate who knows what would've happened, I shudder by the thought.

Wow, comming from you that's quite a compliment! Yeah I want to actualy start looking for a set teammate again... know any1 good? ☺

Got artillery cover used twice against me to no severe damage by good players. Otherwise it features a vet 3 comet, vet 4 commando panther, kt, calliope, all the good stuff. Was a very intense game.