Profile of Blovski

I recrewed my own P-IV command tank that had gotten abandoned earlier, and found it had turned into a regular P-IV. Entertaining bug at least. Don't know if it still had the command tank gun because I lost it very quickly but it had definitely lost the aura.

Thanks for the posts, guys

@Appleseed, yeah, but the chance to not damage a tank is based on armour, so you have some level of control/ability to make predictions over it. The chance for a heavy engine critical seems to be purely random.

@Strumming, I had a dim moment and meant I think RHS is favoured with Kharkov. I think it's about the cut-off. One's surrounded by shotblockers, one by green cover. And it also feels much easier to get to, no clue why. It is a really fun map to play, and I think I haven't really played enough to know if it's actually imbalanced or just needs me to approach the map differently.

My objection with the snipers for the Ostheer is that while I've managed to get good use out of it, there's a pattern of about 10 minutes of extreme micromanagement of a sniper to get 20-30ish kills followed by him dying instantly to something unpredictable the Soviet sniper team would survive every time. I think making him 80hp would allow the Ostheer sniper to be just a tiny bit more forgiving and more of a problem. The difference in sniper micro required by the two sides is hugely in favour of the Soviets right now, and I think it still would be even if the Ostheer and Soviet snipers were given identical health pools.

All good points, except for this shoehorned addition, which is a false premise:

A bit overcompressed on my part and not universally true, certainly. In terms of the things you actually see in almost all 1v1 games, German infantry will have LMGs, pgrens and MG-42s, all of which do a lot of damage and pose a big threat to retreating units. Hence they tend to get more squad kills on retreat with infantry than the Soviets. By contrast, Soviet T-70s/34s, flame cars and snipers are the things that can get the Soviets a lot of squad kills because of small unit sizes and ignoring armour. I wasn't making a big point about overall balance there. Strumming has more or less explained what I meant by the remark which was, I agree, if taken literally, untrue.

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Adding a couple more points

10 - T-34/85s are really underperforming for the cost on account of the very high reload time. Especially since the T-34/76 buff they don't really seem to match up.
11 - Flamer explosion criticals are very cool but they're also really problematic just because there's something like a 2.5% chance (I think it's 10% when the flamer model dies, right?) of an expensive muni investment vanishing on the first model that dies. The same problem doesn't apply to other muni investments like the LMG, which only drops on a squad wipe I think, or the DP machine gun, which can be picked up and recovered if dropped. I think it'd be a really good idea to make the flamer crit only happen if the squad is at half its models or less, to make this an element of the RNG you could work around.

Large building collapses from one nade or mortar hit would be an area where the gameplay could be improved a bit but but I appreciate that is probably a lot of work to fix (because it's about the sides of the building) and the balance team are definitely aware of it so I don't really want to put it on the list.

All that needs to happen really is a KV-8 nerf to armour or damage, and a change to the German vehicle vet so that vet 2 doesn't de facto more than double health. The FHT is fine until it gets vet 2 at which point silliness ensues, the Scout Car flamer is OK and the KV-8 is just obviously blatantly ridiculous in terms of stats at the moment.

Having a quick look.

Tbh, I don't think it's the doctrine's fault.

Soviet Langres North (especially winter) is a really hard start in general imo. Your early game wasn't all that (he was able to get a panther just a little later than the T-70 and M5... and then proceeded to not use really it for ages for some reason) and losing the first sniper to p-grens is a really big loss. You also blobbed up a lot frontally against the LMG grens and P-grens, which kind of limited your map control and meant you lost a lot of manpower to grenades (both your own and chewie's).

The real problem for you was just losing all the vehicles. The T-70 had an ok run but still died very quickly. Your opponent could probably have done better if he'd used the panther earlier (maybe afraid of a ram, otherwise no clue what he was doing) I also don't remember seeing any mines until after the engagement when you lost your SU-85 when you could've known a tiger and a panther were on the field thanks to radio intercept. If you'd had the SU in the second engagement, you'd have probably won that one. Dunno if you'd have won the game because he was floating a *lot* but...

At around twenty minutes, your conscripts have an OK number of kills (and some friendly fire ones from molotovs). They got some squad kills from molotovs. Penals didn't do *that* badly. The sniper use was a little unlucky but also really careless and the side-teching to both T2 and T4 didn't really help because you threw away the T4 vehicles. It was really the vehicle use and teching to things you didn't manage to employ that well and not the infantry discrepancy that did you in.