Profile of Descolata

The Land Mattress is really bad in it's current state. Both it and the Sexton need buffs so I'd rather not see them anywhere else until they are improved.

The Land Mattress isn't proper shock rocket artillery and has the stats to prove it. When we speak of "rocket artillery" we mean a platform that dumps a large amount of wiping damage in a small-ish area in short order. And their effectiveness is directly related to their ability to do just that without dying. Pwerfer is god if it can get close enough, double Pwerfer barrages are insanely lethal. Calliope is behind them, and is being nerfed SPECIFICALLY to reduce shock potential. SzF is much nastier vs bad players and/or massive team weapon lines who don't react/can't move fast enough. Again, shock = bleed (KILLS)/time/area. The Land Mattress just doesnt do that. Does not meet the criteria of shock artillery. The damage is not bleedy, nor quick, nor focused and is easily counter attacked. What it does is generate cover and deny an area. It takes 12 seconds to fire 30 rockets in a gargantuan area. Thats 2.5/second. The Pwerfer takes 2.625 seconds to dump 10 rockets, 4 per second. Calliope does 18 in 4.5 seconds, also 4/second. The only one slower is the Katy at 1.3 per second, but the first 4 rockets come in a super short period, about 1 second. Notice that magic 4 Rockets per second. Also, the Land Mattress's rockets are all weaker than any other rocket arti with significantly more AoE drop off. It does all of this with the single longest barrage cooldown in the game, 140 seconds. It can be fixed, just needs some tweaks.

Funnily enough, the new B-4 IS shock artillery. Each shell is just.... HUGE with no real warning.

Math on the Sexton shows its... alright. The biggest change it deserves have is what all of UKF needs: lower pop cap vehicles. Its pretty affordable, does reasonable bombardment into FoW. It just has the super small 80 dmg radius of all 25 lber shells, and British explosive projectors. All UKF equipment has slowly been reworked to do less bleed, they just need appropriate balance.

Its also the only arty that can effectively double barrage, which is extremely nasty with 2-3 Sextons. Though I would prefer the Valentine able to dump the call in and run, instead of sitting for 3 seconds.

I would cut the pop cost to 11 or 12. Maybe add a shell to emphasis its smaller, easier to shoot shell.

UKF needs some across the board pop cost cuts to its armor due to the loss in power over time. If the Churchill would be problematic, just cap it to 1.


Suggested Changes:
Land Mattress Near AoE->.35, Land Mattress WP Barrage made INCREDIBLY deadly and reasonably accurate. I know there is properly lethal WP in game, double the tick time. Munis for an actual shock artillery strike. CD for both to 120 or 110 (I suggest 120), in line with other rocket artillery. Scatter of WP -> Angle:10 Max:15 Offset:0.1 Ratio:0.156. I may have copied that directly from the Pwerfer. Also, instead of giving the Calliope a higher min range, just decrease its Mid AoE value to .35 from 5. That means 2 Mid shots are survivable.

1 pop off Cromwell (its between a Sherman and P4), 1-3 pop off Churchill (balance Croc independently), 1 pop off Comet (maybe), 2 off Sexton (it isn't anywhere near a priest or a real Howitzer in barrage value), 1 pop off Firefly. The massive pop reduction to the Bofors was INCREDIBLE for giving UKF a some-what affordable AA option.

The UKF population numbers are from release when all the armor was over-tuned. Now its just mildly suffocating due to all the required specialized units, especially with the need for infantry AND extra engineers for snares. Otherwise, move snares to IS OR make Royal Engineers good enough to replace an IS in build order.

I can't speak for the Centaur, I don't use it enough.

Airborne Guards with PPSH need Hold Fire and moving camouflage. Stormtroopers, Commandos, Partisans all have hold fire and moving camouflage and Airborne Guards look like they are trying to be similar.

Fire Superiority makes more sense on LMG instead of PPSH Airborne Guards and has an AOE but is single target.

Spotlight is incredibly obnoxious too. dirt cheap for crazy line of sight in many maps.

I personally think that alone wouldn't be so much of a gain since it has smoke launchers already, which need some foresight of course (but smoke pots / Panzer Tactican should have that delay too).

I do think E8 needs either an AOE buff around Cromwell level (that is still below AI of PZIV/T34) or a skill shot like WP. The main problem of E8 is that it is far behind HE Shot of M4A3 at AI performance and far behind AT performance of M36. So having two E8s instead of one M4A3 and one M36 (wich are cheaper in addition) isn't worth the doctrinal choice. It gets even more obvious at late game. One M4A3 and two M36s are just plain better than three E8s. While HE shells will force the infantry away, two M36s are a match for pretty much any armored unit axis can field in lategame.

Not even counting Dozer Blade, which makes the M4A3 rugged enough to take a few hits.

Giving E8 the Cromwell's no-bleed, high damage AoE might be a good way to give AI without the brutality of wipes.

very interesting analysis. i agree the new B-4 is now an even more capable anti-infantry tool with somewhat limited AT capabilities. overall i'd say this is a good change, since the 3-shell barrage brings a bit more consistency while the frustrating OHKs of anything up to a medium tank caught in the blast are finally a thing of the past. maybe the AI power of the revamped B-4 is even a bit too high, especially in situations where you can't simply retreat back to safety after the first impact (such as in your base sector). guess we'll have see how this thing turns out once more testing has been done.

that being said, i've tried to replicate some of the numbers in your comparison and found mine to be way off. are you sure yours are correct?



in my calculation the new B-4 has a slightly greater nominal 160 damage radius (2.397) than the ML-20 (2.323), giving a ~5% difference, and the nominal OHK area (for 80 HP) is only 33% greater instead of 3 times.

also, how did you define the damage per area over time? this is certainly an interesting metric, but clearly depends on the parameters used to calculate it. e.g., do you use the full AoE damage dealt or is it capped at 80 (160) HP? and do you count the whole duration of the barrage cycle including ability recharge or do you use a specified timeframe (e.g. the time it takes the B-4 to fire all 3 shells)? this would be worthwhile to know in order to put things into proper perspective.

Ah, I see what I did wrong. Those are areas not radiuses, as radius is not a useful comparison tool. 80 damage radius for new B-4 is 6.07 and 3.33 for ML/20. Turns out I copied the leFH results down to the ML/20, so its more like 3.4x the 80 dmg area. I updated my spreadsheet without updating the post I was building. Also, I think there's some rounding weirdness. I'm using the interpolation formula:

(range_long-range_short)*(dmg@radius-dmg_short)/(dmg_long-dmg_short) + range_short = radius@dmg

DPS includes all 3 shots using an integration of total damage over the AOE. Area is defined using the scatter parameters, I used 160 range for the area which Max Scatter is generally maxed out by that point. I checked 250 range, it didn't change any relative results.

An interesting note, the new B-4 is the BEST fixed howitzer at saturating a target area with 80 damage zones in the FoW over time, only beaten by the Priest (by 24%), which has some incredible FoW statistics. It beats out the leFH by 8.8%, and I call the leFH the random wipe cannon. If you want a mustering point totally wiped of infantry, B-4 is here to help.

It looks actually good at its job, but the hate will be unreal. It doesnt wipe stuff at random, it will consistently murder blobs that don't move. Calliope -> B-4 will generate a LOT of rage.

If the balance team wants it to be a good siege gun, its great at that. Not great at AT and especially not great vs the big cats, which was old B-4's real dream. I won a few games on the back of a few lucky B-4 shots putting a Jadgtiger back into repairs and turning a Panther into a luchs health-wise.

If the balance team wants it to be a good Heavy Tank AT gun, it needs to be utterly different. Something like 560 damage 1 shot salvo with very tight scatter and minimal AoE characteristics (old B-4 was almost that). Turns out no one likes Precision Strike. Otherwise, still go back to 1 shot salvo and cut cooldown to like 30 seconds or so to let the gun make more shots on targets with its reduced shock potential. 3 shots is pointless vs a highly mobile target. Someone mentioned a vehicle crit, which might be a way to go.

If the balance team wants a blob punisher that isn't a wipe device, give the B-4 suppression. But we know about artillery having rolling suppression. 24 seconds of long range suppression might be madness and wouldn't effect AT guns or tanks anyways.

Toning down the current B-4 would continue to make it more of a ML/20 knock off. It needs its own identity. She's the most expensive howitzer next to the Priest.