Profile of DjDrowsyBear

Hoo Hoooooooooooo buddy. I do not have many things in this game that I really care about changing but this commander is one of them. It is frustrating because I love the idea of the commander (Valentine/Sexton have real potential to be awesome call ins) but, as it stands, it is really just sub-par... And for no good reason too. If Relic made some very minor adjustments to the commander then it could become totally viable. I will copy and paste my arguments from a post I made a while ago:

Solutions:
Lower the Valentine's CP requirement, vet requirements, and population cost:
The Valentine is an interesting and unique unit but it suffers greatly from coming out too late to be useful as a combat unit, being extremely difficult to vet up, and having a relatively high population cost due to its Concentrated Sexton Barrage ability. By bringing down the CP requirement to 4 a UKF player would be able to utilize the Valentine as an alternative to the Armored Car for the late-early game. In theory, this should also help the Valentine vet up more reliably, but it has such poor anti-infantry capabilities and is so fragile (rightfully so on both fronts) that the likelihood of bringing it up past vet 2 would still be impractical. Lowering the Valentines vet requirements, therefore, would reward players who micro it well and go a long way in helping its survivability later on. Reducing its population cost is a small change but would help greatly in its synergy with the Sexton.

Lower the population cost of the Sexton and change its vet 1 ability:
At this point, the Sexton is a viable area-denial unit but its current population (14) is just too high. By lowering its (and the Valentines) population cost down to 10 you will make both the units and the "Concentrated Sexton Barrage" ability much more viable. I suggest to also change the "walking barrage" ability on the Sexton because it has no practical use (especially since it is locked behind vet 1 and costs 50 munitions). It is far too slow to counter blobs or act as area denial and the shots don't do enough damage to cause problems for a line of structures. I believe the best alternative to this ability is a 3-shot "white phosphorous" barrage (no change to cost or vet requirement). This would further cement the Sexton as an area denial unit, allow it to be more versatile, and make it's role more unique when compared to the American Priest.

Replace the "Perimeter Overwatch" ability with "Precision Barrage:"
The 25-pound howitzers are good for area denial but they turn far too slowly and are far too inaccurate to reliably help defend the entire friendly territory (especially for 250 munitions). An easy, common sense, adjustment to this would be just to replace it with Precision Barrage. Precision Barrage would make perfect sense with the Royal Artillery Commander (even better sense than with the Advanced Emplacement Commander, in fact) and would give the UKF player a fast-acting artillery ability whereas Perimeter Overwatch would only feasibly be activated if the UKF player was floating extremely high munitions.

The Sexton is by far the most pressing issue, but I fully believe that if all of these suggestions were implemented then the Royal Artillery Commander would be a perfectly useful and engaging doctrine choice.

I feel if this fix is to be followed, they would need to re-evaluate the British early game. There is a lot of reliance on the Bofors to carry the Brits to Mid-Late game ever since the neutering of the AEC.

With the further British Nerfs and lack of real buffs in the balance patch mod, this looks even more worrysome.

I actually just read the new preview updates. I didn't mind the Land mattress changes, but the base howitzer flares change bugged the crap out of me. I know the range has still been buffed considerably, but those things could use more love, not less.

Anyhow, I agree that the early game for the Brits could use a reevaluation. I have an entire list of changes I would like to see for the Brits which would likely help. Maybe I'll post that some time soon. My main idea being to reduce the cost of tommies from 280 to 260, add a Bren gun upgrade to them, and get rid of the weapon racks upgrade altogether. By contrast, engineers would get a cost increase (from 210 to 250) but would also get a (modified) PIAT upgrade. Overall, I think it would really help the British early game by making the tommies more useful while also making the Engineers less spam-efficient.

I think that entire artillery system and RA doctrine with it should be fully reworked.

Here is da plan:

1. Throw out Sexton. It's just shitty copy of Priest, pretty lame.

2. Throw out Base 25 QF howtizers. They are good as decorations for your base, but useless as real artillery. And my base is beauteful already.

3. Change them both to solid and good QF 25 Emplacements. Put them in "Anvil tactics" upgrade, instead of airburst shells.

4. Move airburst shells to RA doctrine, instead of Sexton.

5. Change "3-shot barrage for 100 ammo" to "supercharge rounds for mortars and 25s". Increasing range of fire, increasing direct hit damage. For mortar pits all those basic stats should be nerfed after that, because it will be too OP - mortars already cover with fire half of map. Let them do it only with Artillery doctrine.

6. Change Valentine and Counter-battery fire places. Guess, it will be more reasonable to have arty ability in arty doctrine. And Advanced Emplacements will get light tank, for to compensate absence of AEC after taking Bofors. CP 4-5 recomended.

7. Change "Perimetr Overwatch" to "Royal Artillery Officier" call-in. He won't have abilities and will be unarmed (only armed with binocularus and radio station), but will buff all (your and your allies) artillery around, making it reload faster and shoot a few % more accurant.

That doctrine and artillery would be really great, I think. 100% arty-support doctrine. Just a way it should be.

I think people are really underestimating the Sexton and base howitzers. It is true that they are inaccurate and have poor aoe but they *are* good if you use them as intended, the recent patches have gone a long way in helping that (the flare throw range increase/Sexton changes in particular were fantastic). You don't use them to insta-wipe units, you use them as area denial at choke points, support in big assaults, and to destroy emplacements (1 sexton and the base howitzers will reliably wipe out an aggressive medic forward base from the OKW).

I didn't suggest any changes to the "Concentrated Barrage" ability because you can place it literally anywhere through the fog of war (including the enemy base) that makes it useful in a number of ways which justify the 100 munitions cost. The only change I would want to make for it is taking away its ability to fire in the enemy base (which can be problematic for a multitude of reasons) and reduce the munitions cost to 80.

Aside from that, your plan just has far too many questionable changes. You are essentially suggesting to take away two non-doctrine abilities (Airburst shells and mortar range/damage) from the UKF, locking away a faction-specific bonus (base howitzers) and completely trashing a doctrine unit (Sexton) in order to buff one doctrine. That would just act as a massive nerf for the UKF all around with no real cause. Not to mention that your "Royal Artillery Officer" call in just sounds horribly over powered.

Suppose you are right, but the only argument I will raise is this.

As of this patch, emplacement as a whole are already extremely difficult to deal with, leaving medium-heavy armor as the only solution against British using advanced emplacement regiment. Having the 17pdr buffed without the other emplacement toned down in terms of effectiveness or durability will make the "fort" too capable against all targets.

Honestly, I think the advanced emplacement regiment just needs to be reworked. Half his abilities are near useless and the other half are far too overpowered.

That being said, tell me what you would think if this idea was implemented (if the cancer doctrine wasn't a worry):

Bofors: Nerf the range of the Bofors "suppressive barrage" ability down from 60 to 50. Doing so would prevent it from countering indirect fire by itself (something it wasn't mean to do). Also, raise its cost from 280/30/10 to 350/60/12. This would help in three ways, it would make the bofors arrive later, match the Bofors more closely with its performance, and punish the UKF player on teching (especially if he built more than one).

Mortar Pit: Raise the population cost from 8 to 12 (to prevent spamming and contribute to population saturation making sim-city less viable by the late game).

17-pounder: lower the cost from 400/75/20 to 360/50/14. I am still iffy on this price because it still seems too high for me. The 17-pounder is a good anti-tank (its currently just far too expensive) but, unlike the (current) Bofors, it absolutely requires support and good placement. That being said, the UKF player would probably just build a Bofors with the 17-pounder which would clearly be a strong combination. The difference there being that they would be spending a lot of gas, manpower, and population to do it with no clear answer to indirect fire.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating this as a complete fix for emplacements, but I do believe it will go a long way helping making emplacements much more balanced.

So just tried the new War Spoils beta and you can't stack bulletins and they remain the same stats (3% etc.) - what the fuck? Basically they've fixed duplicates and added a currency for them but now they are literally useless?

I haven't tried the open beta, but if that is the case then I would advocate for updating the bulletins. I don't want to make them more powerful, necessarily, but I do want them to be usable. Case and point, 5% faster speed on the ambulance has always been an awful bulletin.