Profile of mrgame2

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 02:57 AMSelvy289

More trivia, CB activates and tracks shermans and the valentine if you use the smoke ability.

And I kid you not, CB also activates when the britt base howitzers fire as well , give that base a nice dose of extremely lethal rounds.

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 02:05 AMDoomlord52

Right, that's sort of what I was getting at - maybe just not in enough detail.

The problem is, in CoH2, it's a lot easier to tweak an "aggressive squishy/cheap" faction than it is to tweak a "defensive tanky/expensive" faction. That, combined with the requirement to keep "faction flavor" is what I think we're seeing here.

Making a squishy/cheap/close-range faction better is pretty simple; increase the DPS to keep up with higher HP units, but keep the HP pool low while keeping cost down. If it's too squishy, adjust the HP up a little. There's really not too much of a limit to this, either. Cost can go down to zero, HP can get close to zero, and only DPS has an upper limit (at some point you hit "instant-melting" levels). However, as the price of units is generally low, you don't expect "instant-melting" DPS from them.

Adjusting a tanky/expensive/long-range faction has way more limits. Defensive stats can't go up infinitely as eventually the unit is indestructible and becomes an "I win" button. Price also can't go up infinitely, as it becomes non-viable to float the resources required to build it. Additionally, DPS needs to be reflective of the price; an expensive unit can't do low amounts damage (near-zero), as then it can be safely ignored - so DPS is somewhat tied to price.

This is what I think we're seeing with ost; we're hitting two of the limits. We can't make the mainline units tankier (i.e. stock 5-man 2-slot grens), because they'd stay in the field too long doing high DPS. We can't make the tanks tankier, as it forces the allied factions into more and more niche AT roles. We also can't make the units more expensive, as OST already struggles with MP bleed. Essentially, we've hit the point where OST is a caricature of what it once was, and it's because of the expansion factions.

Basically, if we (well, the balance team) wants/needs to keep the current faction flavors, OST and to a lesser extent, Sov, need to become the limits of "offensive" and "defensive", with every other faction in between. As long as they're not, they can't fill the design roles they're supposed to.