Profile of IntoTheRain

First, thank you for making some real changes to the docs and adding some much needed indirect to the Brits. This is the first patch where I've really liked what I'm seeing for them, and gives me a reason to be excited to play them.

Immediate thoughts:

1) I'm not sure Mobile Assault needs the Land Mattress *and* the Mortar. Why not take advantage of this slot to use a unit that is only available in a single other doc, like the Valentine or Tank Hunter Sections? Or an ability like Smoke Raid Operation?

2) I'd really like to see more access to the Vickers outside of just Tactical Support.

3) Reworking Raid Sections as an alternate mainline is probably a good idea. Surprised there is no mortar support here even with the Smoke Grenades.

4) Moar indirect! Extra mortars are good, but it would be nice to see the Land Mattress and Sexton available in other docs to open up more team game diversity.

I think the idea was that each faction is vastly different so that they didn't feel samey. The argument is "well people will just pick soviets because it's the most viable/less gimmicky then.", well people do that anyways because soviets still have tools and a good tech structure vs USF. If you pick USF now you are basically picking them for the crew repairs and a few outlying strategies which can be similar to soviets.

Ignoring top end play, factions are pretty samey with USF/Brit/Soviet skins thrown onto them.

As far as that playstyle being bad for the game, I look at fighting games and each character is an arch-type that plays differently. So if I'm a zoner and I'm up against a rushdown character, I need to be even more cautious then I normally am about defense. In this context it seems like every faction is a Ryu/Shoto clones with slightly different things. So people just pick Akuma because he has a gross kit compared to Ryu.

I think "healthy for the game" is up to personal opinion because at that point what is? Would come down to the underlying vision of the game that I don't think had ever been openly discussed.

I keep seeing this 'every faction is the same' argument, but I'm not really buying it. Riflemen and Conscripts play nothing alike, USF LV pressure is decidedly different in role and timing from a T-70. Lategame is night and day, with the decisive push of USF infantry and TDs style contrasting with the slow manpower grind of Soviets hidden behind a million mines, sandbags, 6 man setup teams, and rocket arty.

My problem is that people seem to define factions having the tools needed to play the game as turning everything into the same faction. But the game requires that you have that toolset to work within its framework. Every faction needs some form of suppression to control blobs, AT Guns and snares to control vehicle pressure, Artillery to break setup team and emplacement spam, Vehicles, and a variety of specific counters to things like Mines and Snipers.

It makes far more sense to me to define asymmetry around faction specific mechanics (OKW Trucks, vet 5, and Salvage, Soviet 6 man teams and merge, etc) or equally strong, but different weapons (50 cal vs MG42) that fill the same role rather than trying to compensate for missing tools with broken units. (Brits..)

The expansion armies all started out as an attempt to do the latter, and while you can do this to a limited extent, (Ex: USF having lots of Zooks to compensate for AT Gun on only one side of tech tree) it tends to make the factions increasingly one dimensional in how they play. (I don't entirely agree that USF has to win in 15 mins or less, but going LT in 1v1 you *need* to do damage to be in the game late)

The end result though was they were unable to make the game work this way. OKW was more or less completely walked back and turned into a more traditional army, while USF is close to one while missing a few tools, and Brits remain the big outlier.

The TL;DR: version is that I agree the lack of toolkit is the problem here, but I don't think any of the Allied factions play in a similar manner, and any further patches should focus on adding more tools to their stock rosters while further emphasizing their different factional traits.

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So put more tools in the docs? Isn't that what the whole point of this patch was supposed to be?

The Soviet/Ost patch changes have been far more aggressive than any of the expansion army changes.

One thing that caught my attention but isn't talked about much is just how bad the base arty is. Its supposed to be a core component of the faction, and justifies the lack of stock mobile indirect, but its basically been sidelined into a joke.

Having to cast it from relatively short range means you never use it like actual artillery, the smoke telegraphs that its coming, and it costs munitions both to upgrade and use the ability. Even when you do get it off, the slow arrival time means they have ample opportunity to move, making it little more than a repositioning tool.

The Smoke suffers from the same problems. You can't get close enough to an MG to drop it without getting suppressed, and the delay is so long you often get pinned even if you do.

I like the idea of Land Mattress being half a Rocket Arty, letting you double up on them.

But the price really kills it. The fuel is cheap, but 350 manpower apiece is brutal. 700/80 for 2 is way outside the price range of any other Rocket Arty.

The Command Aura design is fairly problematic. Vehicles are too valuable to self nerf, regardless of how powerful the army buffs it gives are, so you end up putting it on the cheapest thing available. Given the raw toughness of many British vehicles, a redesign should be considered to put those slabs of health to good use.