This is not a "MAKE THIS OR I LEAVE" thread. It's suggestions with thought, that's all. From my favourite of all time strategy game (yes, it was this much Eugen, the work was absolutely outstanding) I just occasionally pop in, try to prepare a game, but leave before the room is full.

Everybody has his/her own idea of balance. Until we see mod tools, with oner or two prominent mods, the balance/pleasure in the game will depend on Eugen. I trust you guys, even though I've been unhappy at how drastic the changes have been, Nerf hammer and buff uppercuts being rather violent.

Anyway, what I'm asking here will be a half step back of some of the changes. I think the changes were needed, they were good ideas, but overdone. It's not a criticism, it was all dependant on the amount of whine, and balance is a tough thing.

I won't give numbers most of the time, simply because I'm no king of balance with numbers. I'm just giving feedback on how I feel it should be, not how it must be because as an humble player I don't know everything. I'll explain thoroughly the why of each of the proposed gameplay changes.



Idea 1: Increase the time it takes to aim on all artillery + reboost artillery.
Reason: The main reason artillery felt overpowered to most players was that as soon as they popped out of cover, they were shot at by shells coming from the sky. Depending on travel time, it often could feel instantaneous. The artillery did "logical" (take with a pinch of salt, I just can't find a proper word) morale and HE damage to all targets, but it was way too fast to react to any situation. Moving was too punishing for most players, causing the static gameplay some people encountered (I never suffered from it though, just a question of drawing the attention elsewhere). I personally find it more frustrating to see a direct hit leave a tank "worried" as they currently are than to be punished for advancing in the open.

Idea 2: No corrected shot for MLRS units.
Reason: There have been several good explanations why over the time. MLRS were used a sniping units simply because it was rather easy to blanket an area you had eyes on, with concentrated, heavy effects. No other units could do that, except in great numbers. If the radius of uncorrected shot was slightly reduced, but there was no correction at all, these weapon systems would do what they are supposed to do: Suppress a big area so an attack can move forward, instead of wiping out areas so your units can occupy a land of craters.

Idea 3: Slightly reducing the range of the tanks that had their range increased. -IF YOU WANT TO DISCUSS THIS, GO TO DEDICATED THREADS-
Reason: The change gave life to units that were rarely ever used, and that's a great thing. "Heavy tanks" were always part of my deck, with either challengers or Abra(ha)ms and when I saw that the AMX-32 + Kpz 70 also had their range increased, I was incredibly happy because these units deserved a bit of love. They were loved, until everyone realised that two units in the whole game became totally outstanding compared to the others: Leo 2 and T-80s. These combine everything, from speed, armour, damage, accuracy, range, all of those top notch. In itself, it's realistic somehow. In terms of gameplay, it's bad. Units in a game should have some weaknesses. When you take an AMX-32, you have a very accurate while still, powerful and fast vehicle, with poor armour. When you take a challenger, you have a behemoth that moves painfully slowly while raining down some death. With a Kpz 70, you have a fast, accurate and powerful on the move medium armoured tank. All those units have weaknesses unique to them. T-80s and Leo 2s have weaknesses that are common with any other tank: Rather weak sides, and rather high price, but not outstandingly high compared to the other options. With such a range increase, the other heavy tanks can't compare, as they fear the same units, with many more weaknesses. With a slightly lowered range, but still better than "medium" tanks, they would become closer to equals, mainly because their price would be more in tune with their individual battle efficiency.

Idea 4: NO ATGM buff.
Reason: Yes, it's strange to have a proposition that is a no proposition... Buffing ATGMs, that are good against every armoured target, would penalise any land options, especially "medium" tanks that are generally One-shot already. Buffing the range or damage to counter heavies would make any other land unit pretty useless.

Idea 5: Increase the price of "extreme" range AA.
Reason: Currently, the Chapparal and to a bigger extent the BUK create total "No fly zones" as they one-shot their high value targets. Long range AA have nothing to block their sights: If one target is entering their no fly zone, it dies except rather lucky ones. Making those units more scarce by increasing the price or reducing the availability would bring helicopters back as a viable/not depending on luck option. I would have asked for different flight patterns for helicopters, but that would be a lot of work, with no certain result.

Idea 6: Infantry Tweaks.
Reason: The reason why some units were hit with the availability hammer was that units are able to disembark and shoot immediately. It's not their stats/numbers, it's just that you can go and unload in the middle of the enemy. What I'd like to see is infantry units taking more time to unload from APCs OR unable to shoot for a few seconds after unloading OR turning Worried if unloaded close to enemy units, so they aren't that efficient at shooting immediately, depending on the one that's easiest to code. If that was done, Motostrelcis, Piechota Smech, Spadochroniarze and Vyst-whateverthenameis- could be back in better numbers. Currently, Vysts and spades are in too few numbers compared to USSR options, while Piechota Zmech, as one of the most useless infantry units around, isn't ever used, even for the price. On nato's side, i don't care, reducing the overall availability should even be a possibility as they are all professionals but the Riflemen.



So, once again, I don't want this to be applied exactly as I asked. This is just "overall gameplay" changes leads. I'm no developer, just some guy that was active to the community, and average joe, not too good, not too bad, that likes the community, not against changes and just wants to give a bit of feedback.

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"Rocks are OP. Paper is fine" signed: Scissors

Infantry is fine, leave it alone. Only some lesser used units might need some boosts, thats all.

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They are fine, but there should be more of them simply.

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I think it would be interesting to play a few rounds where all parties agreed not to use an AA missile with a range longer than, say, 3.5km. Helicopters would most certainly be a lot more common in such a match, but, that's basically the point.

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I don't see a point in nerfing AA. You can already lose half your tank force to apaches/havocs very fast. It doesn't seem as bad with cobras or Mi-24 series, but I blame that on any ATGM bugs that there might be; they just feel a whole lot less accurate.

I agree with 1, 2, 4, 6.

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Overall, a very thought out and well written post

#1: I've been generally fine with the power of artillery since the release patch (with the exception of the leading fire bug). I don't have any feelings one way or another with rebalancing it along some equal utility curve but I think that there are some changes that has higher priority and I think it is better to do changes in small increments. That said, it might make sense to make artillery less of an attrition inflicter and more of an inmobility punisher which would be the result of what you're proposing. The problem is that this would favour things that are mobile over things that are less so. Because the main current trouble, as I see it, in this game is heavy tanks and because those are mobile, this change would not help solve that problem. Because of that, I think it is better to wait with a change like until other aspects feel more right.

#2: I think it makes some sense that targeting something you can see is more effective than something you can't. The way that is implemented with different sized target patterns is not ideal but really the only feasable way. What I sincerely dislike about rocket artillery though is how it corrects while shooting (this is possibly what you're talking about?). I feel that the game would be strictly better if rocket artillery didn't correct while fireing, it looks a bit silly with the first rockets landing in a ring around the target and the latter directly on target. If all rockets, regardless when they were fired, landed in a gaussian random pattern around the target, that would make it more powerful against players who pays attention and moves units out of the centre when fireing commences but will instead still saturate the area. It would also become less powerful as an individual unit sniper against players who dont pay attention. Last but not least, it would make sense from a realistic standpoint.

#3: The core of the problem isn't necessarily that some tanks has greater range than others. Like you say, it is an important part of making those tanks feel "proper". The core of the problem is that there is no reliable way to destroy those tanks without such tanks of your own or enemy incompetence. Ideally, I would like to test many different ways of giving heavy tanks some more prominent weakness but I can agree that scaling back their advantage might possibly be the only feasable way to go, even though it takes away from their uniqueness.

#4: If ATGMs is part of the sollution for the heavy tank situation, then we need different ATGMs, not more powerful ones. They must be made so that at least some of them are really only useful against heavy tanks and not so much the other. Lets say, for example we give high end ATGM, like shturm and I-TOW a massive +5ap boost coupled with a 30-40 point increase. It would be completly disconnected from reality but there would exist some units that are very good at defeating high end tanks, they would be very powerful against everything aswell but much less cost effective. Then there would be something heavy tanks are afraid of, calling for lesser tanks to deal with it.

#5: It might be as much personal bias on my part as anything else, but I actually like that helicopters are basically crippled under normal circumstances. Helicopters can only work in this game if the enemy overextends himself or you somehow managed to get to his AA. For this significant weakness they gain the ability to be decisive for outcome the entire game if the circumstances are correct. I like that high risk/high reward dimension of the game.

(I assume that you want to make this change in relation to the heavy tanks. If not, please disregard the following paragraph)
If you remove the prominence of long range AA, you'll naturally increase the minimal usefulness of helicopters. This will increase the basic vulnerability of all ground units. While the problematic heavy tanks are indeed a part of the ground units, this change wont really adress that problem. There would indeed be a reliable counter to heavy tanks but there would exist no reason to get anything else than heavy tanks, helicopters, AA and the occational infantry unit. That would almost exactly match the scope of units used in WiC. It's a great game but I don't think anyone needs another game like it. I think it is better to leave the helicopters with their peculiar impact to the game and look for solutions for the heavy tank problem elsewhere.

#6: I don't like the fundamental concept of unit call-in limit, I think it is sort of a lazy balancing tool. If units where properly balanced there would be no reason for a player to call in many of one one singular unit and even if he opted to do so, it would not be overly powerful. Granted, we don't live in a ideal balancing world but surely, some of the draconian limits of some of the pact infantry is overdone?

On the infspam/ instradrop issue, all I have to say is this: A flat delay in dropping would only be annoying in most non-spam situations (remember how helicopter dropping used to be?). I think it would be a better option to either:
1. let the morale state influence the drop of time
2. let carried units take the same damage to morale as the transporter. (the infantry is just as inside the vehicle as the vehicles crew, no?)

or possibly both. I you don't manage to suppress infantry transporters coming at you, frankly, you deserve to get killed from it.

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Amazing post. Kudos.
I agree with absolutely everything.

Just one concern while removing corrected shot from MLRS please give Buratino higher accuracy since non corrected shots with buratino at the moment kills nothing.

Special Emphasis on These :-
Idea 3: Slightly reducing the range of the tanks that had their range increased
Idea 4: NO ATGM buff.
Idea 5: Increase the price of "extreme" range AA.
Idea 6: Infantry Tweaks.

I wonder why you put this in the same thread as obviously it's a number of separate issues



To me, W:EE appears as a very complex game to balance. Fairly similar to Eve Online, in respects. Eve was balanced over the years, and quite often, the changes were rather drastic, and the nerfhammer was heavy, leading to FoTM just like we got with the heavy tanks buff. Getting the ideal and most interesting balance can take a good while. Looking at what Eugen have done with balancing so far, I'd expect them to hit top-tier tanks with some kind of nerfbat in the near future.

OK next to the beef: I very much agree with #4. #1, #2 and #6 might have some beef, it's debatable, but in the end issues probably are so minor it doesn't make sense to drop other work for them.

Only #5 seems a bit misguided to me.



I'll make a list of counterarguments:
1) Even long-range AA have their sights blocked by forests, hills etc.
2) Your no-fly zone requires recon cover - you can't shoot what you can't see
3) Long-range AA are already expensive, not very powerful, and limited for availability. If you'd further nerf them, I'd just use more of the other AA and you'd have an even harder time to use your helis against my heavy tanks and other top priority targets.
4) Long-range AA is for killing high value air assets - you can rush in with your heavy hogs, kill the CV and the Buk-m1 won't be able to shoot them all down in time.
5) When the AA dies, the no-fly zone is gone. There's several ways to kill it, not just "rush in with heavy tanks and prioritize" - eg. a bunch of heavy hogs.
6) If you don't run recon helis, your opponent just wasted 100 or more points into a unit that's nearly useless. You could argue that if you can't run recon helis, the AA has already done its job, but then you'd have to detail the case why the game is worse off now with limited aerial reconnaissance available as opposed to recon helis spotting the major enemy formations easily.

Air tends to be a marginal asset, but that is fine as long as it still gets fairly much usage in certain scenarios. There's always going to be a number of units that see occasional usage, and I'd say that's fine balance for W:EE, after all there's hundreds of units to choose from - you can't be running all of them all of the time. Many of these units can decide a game. For example we just played a WCCL game where we decided the game by use of air assets - even though the enemy had at least 1 Buk-M1 and several tunguskas, plus other anti-air.

PS. I sometimes use the piechota zmech too, but just because it comes with a very nice vehicle.

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Fix decks and save minor nations - viewtopic.php?f=91&t=28335

I think the high efficiency of AA comes from the way corrected shot works. (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3640) Shells always miss target at the begining then perfectly hit the pointed spot but too late.
In my opinion choppers feel useless most of the time because arty cannot destroy SAMs properly. If shells landed randomly with corrected shot (as I proposed) you could be able to get a lucky shot on a chaparral/BUK sometimes this would give an upturn to multiple cheap AA compared to a single top end SAM.

Modify corrected shot system and you don't need to change anything concerning AA. (This regroup ideas 1,2 and 5 in one single change)

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Eugen's law of maximal pain in the ass : If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong on Friday evening.