If it can be neutralized in 15 seconds the price is going to have to go WAY down. Comparable cost would be getting next to a okw med truck and it dissolving. Now that the aura isn't a passive and it requires being in supply to convert I don't see it as nearly the same cheese it used to be.
Firstly, the 15-sec decap should be similar to repairing - i.e. the squad can't fight AND takes extra damage while doing it. Alternatively, taking damage could cancel the progress. This would pretty much prevent any kind of abuse in front-line situations, and in back-line situations, it would really be the Sov's players fault for not paying attention (similar to territory cut-offs, losing arty to stealth units, etc.).
Secondly, it's not really comparable to any of OKW's trucks. OKW trucks have to arrive to the setup location (and are super vulnerable), while the FHQ is a 1-click ability. OKW trucks have a long setup time, while the FHQ doesn't. OKW trucks can't permanently block key game-play areas such as buildings, while FHQs can. Lastly, losing an OKW truck means losing tech, access to units, and even core abilities (i.e. healing), whereas losing an FHQ doesn't really set back the Sov player at all, tech-wise.
The problem has always been stone strong buildings, not the ability per se.
Setting building on flames have never been properly addressed.
Not giving all factions flame weapons of some kind by default has just PARTIALLY been addressed.
This.
In general, the ability isn't all that "strong" (gameplay wise), and since most buildings come pre-damaged, or just don't have that much HP to begin with, they often aren't all that resilient, either. However, on some maps, crucial buildings are instead massive stone bunkers with absurd amounts of HP. This is fine when trying to counter the units inside, since flamers and the like still do tons of damage to the units and force the building to be neutral again; the problem is when one team can make the building itself join their team. This pretty much invalidates that part the map design, since the other players can no longer interact with that important building other than by destroying it.
Take, for example, the "train station" buildings on a bunch of medium/large maps, like Ettelbruck or Lienne. They're important aspects of the center of the map, but are essentially impossible to demolish early on.
I would suggest any of the following changes:
Add a "neutralize" ability which takes 10-15 seconds. This resets the building.
Disallow FHQ'ing buildings over a certain garrison size, and/or material type.
Make FHQ's harder to build: Must be in territory, AND have a long "setup" time that can be cancelled/interrupted.
Codguy post a replay of you using Rangers and tell us why they’re underpowered with examples from said replay.
This.
OP starts a lot of "X is OP" and "Y is UP" threads, but has yet to upload a single replay, despite being asked almost every single time. The community is generally very helpful, and would likely give pointers/advice on why certain units seem strong/weak in OP's use case, but multiple offers to do so have been ignored.
I think the "DPS Curve" over game-time needs to be adjusted down, specifically mid-game.
In the early game, I'll agree that IS' are a bit on the weak side, and rely too much on cover bonuses. However, once they hit mid game, their early vet bonuses COMBINED with double-brens AND bolster results in a far too resilient and mobile DPS-blob. If the IS' had to stay still for a while to setup, and took ages to rotate (i.e. LMG-grens), that would be one thing; but their setup AND turn rates are incredibly fast, meaning that you can 'stutter-step' them extremely efficiently. In addition, once you have 3 or 4 of them in a blob (seemingly very common, especially as games get bigger), they can easily take MGs head-on due to this.
Once players reach late-game, this DPS-blob is somewhat manageable for axis players, thanks to "anti-blob" weapons and their own vetted and upgraded infantry, so I don't think that needs to be adjusted.
This could be achieved by delaying either bolster or brens (but not both); however, I'm not sure on how the exact implementation of this would work. Non-bolstered IS+Brens are fine, and Bolstered IS are also fine; it's the combination of all three.
Maybe by faster ticking VPs or fewer VPs to start with.
Also it would be nice if relic found a way to reduce the minimum time of Gameplay by a lot.
Something like: you dont issue any ingame-command for 3-5 minutes of time - you lose.
Now it takes about 12 minutes to end a game where 1 player is afk.
I would like to see the average time to play a game to go down from 20-60 Minutes to about 15- 45 minutes.
I definitely agree on fixing the situation we currently have regarding AFK players, I even had some suggestions for fixing that:
I'm not sure on how to shorten games, though. The current tick-rate seems pretty good to me, where it's fast enough that games don't drag on for ages when triple-capped, but still slow enough to allow a comeback. I'd also like to avoid bringing the 4v4 "super resource speed" issues into 1 and 2s, so simply increasing resource gain probably isn't the answer, either.
I like the core idea (slightly shorter games), but I'm just unsure as to how to do it.
Back to topic. It is very clear that OST and UKF need some love. Buff them OR leave them untouched and nerf Sovs and USF. Either way, the patch team need to make it urgently because OST keep losing 1v1 games and UKF are almost never picked in 1v1.
USF -> fine
OST -> fine or nerf Pzgrenadier
OKW -> fine
UKF -> need whole wise support
SOV -> nerf 7man cons
This is the question we're left at, right now; and it's a fairly important for the 'feel' of the game. I'll admit, the current OKW vs. Sov/USF match-up seems fairly solid, so 'buffing' OST/UKF is probably the easier thing to do. However, this just means further increasing power-creep in the game, which results in a faster game over-all.
So, do we buff OST/UKF and increase the overall 'combat' speed of the game, or do we nerf OKW/Sov/USF, and keep OST's current power-level as the benchmark?
My choice would be to nerf OKW/USF/Sov, since I'm getting a bit tired of the slow-but-steady power-creep since WFA; but I really think this is going to require input from the community as a whole to decide on (the direction, not the actual adjustments).
It also pretty much follows "mainline infantry" (including doc-infantry as mainline) strength.
Sov -> 7man cons / Penals scaling insanely well with little-to-no lategame MP bleed
USF -> Rifles insane scaling and high utility (Bars, M1919, Zooks)
OKW -> Falls/PF becoming very strong late-game, Volks very good early/mid
OST -> Grens scaling poorly in mid/late, but still somewhat viable
UKF -> Make-or-break bolster, no AT snare, very vulnerable to snipers
Fantastic work. It'll probably take me some time to read through it all, though. From what I've seen so far, I think it's pretty clear that OKW and USF need some commander reworks - they were both dominated by 1-2 picks.
Smoke does not kill MGs so I wouldn't call that a "hard counter". The only faction that would have an sniper available to it in a timely manner are Soviets.
You don't need to kill a unit to hard-counter it; you just need to make it entirely useless. Smoke does exactly that - the MG can't fire at anything, so its DPS and suppression goes to zero. It also allows for other units to destroy it, by simply walking right up to it.