So I thought I'd put up my idea of what I'd like to see in an upcoming balance patch. Of course things would have to be tested to make sure it wouldn't be completely broken, but if I were working at Eugen I'd be pretty confident to implement 90% of these changes without breaking anything. I haven't included any bug fixes (ie. SAM hitting ground units) though I have included one or two things that might or might not be bugs.

About me: I've got nearly 100 hours duty time logged in-game. I cast a lot and keep an eye on people posting in the cast chat for suggestions/opinions on units. I'm currently ranked fairly highly (http://nanomad.net76.net/index.php?user=Tigga) and do a lot of ranked 1v1 and 2v2 matches. I don't really ever do cheese rushes, though am known to attack very early if the situation requires it. I play both NATO and Pact in roughly even amounts. I prefer playing NATO, though I feel Pact are slightly stronger (barring Marders). My records with the factions are roughly even... well within experimental error. I have also developed and released two small games of my own, so I understand a bit about balancing games.

So, here goes!

Arty:

• Remove or greatly reduce the ability of rocket arty to correct on a point. A little bit is good, but I rather think it's should be for saturating an area in a short space of time, not smashing an individual point. More specifically I'd have it so that the hit radius is reduced linearly to half of the shown hit radius for the final shot.
• Increase the reload times of rocket arty by 50%.
• Increase the accuracy of the Grad and RM-70. I'm not sure how accuracy relates to hit area, so I don't know how much by. I think I'd go for halving of the hit area.
• Depending on how much of the above is done I might increase the HE damage of the Grad and RM-70 to 4.
• Decrease the AuF1 accuracy. It can be more accurate than the Paladin, but I think we're seeing a similar problem to that which we had in the closed beta. The area a barrage strikes is proportional to the square of the radius, so even a 20% increase in radius leads to a 44% increase in area.
• Dana gets the same treatment as the AuF1 with respect the the MSTA-S.
• Stop AML 60s from tracking targets.
• Make the difference in hit areas between uncorrected and corrected barrages smaller. Currently corrected hits a 4x smaller area. I think I'd drop the uncorrected radius by 10% and increase the corrected radius by 10%. This would mean uncorrected would be about 2.5x the area of corrected rather than 4x.
• Look at the distribution of uncorrected shots. As Hob posted in the technical forum they seem to hit bang on target a little more than I feel they should.
• I might do a similar thing to first arty point with corrected tube arty. A little more spread on the corrected shots rather than being quite so exact. Not as severe though - I think I'd make the radius shrink to 25% linearly with shot count.
• I'd make the MSTA-S a little more accurate compared to the 2S3M Akatsiya
• Reduce the Buratino's armour to 3-2-1-0
• Reduce the Buratino's fire rate by 10%

Misc:

• Make morale recovery more dependant on damage taken. At 50% health the current rate is fine. Above 50% the recovery rate should increase to double what it currently is at full health in a linear manner. Below 50% the recovery rate should decrease to half what it currently is in a linear manner.
• Increased Crit chance if AP - AV >= 5 (ie. if 6 or more points of damage are being done). I'd increase the crit chance by 10% absolute for every point above and including the threshold. This means a hit that would leave a unit with one hit point (AP - AV = 8) would have a 50% chance of a critical.
• Add a slight varaibility to AP vs AV damage formula. up to +/- 30%. Uniform distribution would do.
• Helicopter ATGMs lock on 25% faster after stopping.
• Helicopter infantry drops speed increased by 50%.
• All prototype units halved in availablity (AMX-32, M8-AGS, Super M60, MBT-70, KpZ-70, VTS1, BMP 685, Zhalo and any I've forgotten). Maybe not the Super M60 as it's already limited to 4.
• Disable auto-change alt on helis. Or at least give us a global toggle in options.
• Alter veterancy such that the accuracy modifiers are applied before applying the stabalisation modifier.
• Add a five minute countdown restarted whenever one side controls no sectors. At the end of this countdown if that side still doesn't control any sectors they lose. Currently there's a pretty major griefing loophole.
• Reduce repair, rearm and refuel speed based upon the minimum morale of the resupply vehicle and the unit being resuppleid. I think I'd make worried resupply at 75% normal speed, shaken 50%, panicked 25% and routing/stunned 0%, even if still. Pretty sure there aren't any more morale states.

Unit changes:
NATO:
Log:

• UH-1A price dropped by 35 to 265.

Recon:

• SpPz Luchs price increased by 5 to 45/55 respectively.

Tanks:

• AMX-30B Valorise price increased by 5 to 50.
• AMX-32 price dropped by 15 to 85.
• M8 AGS price dropped by 5 to 65.
• M60A1 AOS Patton price increased by 5 to 40.
• M60A1 Rise Patton price increased by 5 to 45.
• KPz-70 price dropped by 10 pts to 100.

Infantry:

• All Famas units get a RoF/Accuracy drop. Either drop 1 pt in accuracy or roughly 100 rounds/min.
• Panzergrenadiers price dropped by 5 to 30.

Support (ignored most arty as covered a bit by arty fixes so don't really have a feel for it):

• AMX-30 Roland 2 price dropped by 5 to 55.
• M106A1 and M106A2 price dropped by 5 to 30/40 respectively.
• M48 Chaparral price dropped by 5 to 25.

Vehicle:

• M132 Zippo price increased by 5 to 30.
• Marder 1 series price except 1A3 incrased by 5 to 30/45/50 respectively.
• Marder VTS1 price increased by 5 to 25. Without the changes above to damage calculations I would increase it by 10 to 30

Helo (If ATGMs are made to fire quicker after stopping forget this except Apache as don't have a feel for it):

• Apache price dropped by 10 to 165.
• AH-1E Cobra price dropped by 5 to 65.
• AH-1F Cobra price dropped by 15 to 85.
• Bo 105P/PAH series price dropped by 5 to 50/60 respectively.
• Lynx AH.x TOW series price dropped by 5 to 55/70 respecitvely.

Pact:
Log:

• M1-2D price dropped by 35 to 265

Recon:
No changes

Tanks:

• T-72B price dropped by 5 to 115
• T-80 price increased by 5 to 95.
• T0-55 (and FlammPz)/T0-62 price increase by 5 to 35/40 respectively.

Inf:

• Motostrelci price increased by 5 to 10 Not very sure about this

Support (ignored all arty as covered a bit by arty fixes so don't really have a feel for it):

• MT-LB Strela-10 price dropped by 10 to 35.
• RM-70 (and MFRW RM-70) price dropped by 45 to 105.

Vehicle:

• ZSU-32-4 Afghanskii price increased by 5 to 25.
• BMP-2 price dropped by 5 to 35.
• BMP-3 price dropped by 5 to 55.

Helo:

• Mi-28 Havoc price dropped by 10 to 155.
• Mi-17 price increased by 5 to 45.
• Mi-2 URP price dropped by 5 to 45/55 respectively.

Long shots (ie. things I'd experiment with but aren't so confident about being balanced. Also, a pun.):

• Main tank guns to 2275m range: T80, Abrams, Leo 2, Chally, T72B, T64BM, T64BV and AMX 32.
• Maybe also: MBT-70/KPZ-70, Super M60, Cheiftan Mk 10 and other big tanks I've forgotten. People who know about the era might be able to help here.
• A 5 point increase to all tanks with increased range applied on top of the changes above.
• Change the destruction mode so that every four points earned over half the default setting increases the target points score by one point. For a 1v1 game this would kick in when the average points earned was 750, and would scale such that when the average points earned was 1500 the target is increased to 1875. This would prevent games going stale where the points leader cannot attack as they'll lose too many points in the first wave, even though the attack would gain these points back easily shortly after.

Certainly not all the changes I'd want to be making in the long run, but given the current state of the game (20th March 2012) these are what I'd start with. You have to be careful not to change any unit or mechanic too much with balance patches as they can always be tweaked later if needed and things are fairly fine as it is. It might be that this lot is a little too heavy to put into one patch given how much some bits might change the game. I guess it's more as "suggestions for the Eugen team to look at" rather than "this is what I know should be changed", even if, as I said, I'd do 90% of them without much hesitation.

If a mod wants to move this into the suggestions thread I'd be sad but would understand!

You realize that they cannot make all this changes in a single pathc because would make too hard to track wich changes had what effects on people interest in the game?



Besides taht.. Buratino must keep t72 armor because it IS a t72. The whoel idea of it is being a heavily armored supression tool. Change its reload time if you want to nerf it.

A problem that pops up with this thread is wether or not they'll want to balance the game for the top players or the casual middle of the bunch kind of player.

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This should be bolded. I'll do it for you:
Alter veterancy such that the accuracy modifiers are applied before applying the stabalisation modifier.


You mean Motostrelki, right?

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See last main paragraph. I've seen change logs that are bigger in plenty of other games though. To be honest there are too many other variables if you're trying to track interest in a game from patch to patch. The weather, for example. The reason to do smaller incremental patches is so that you can easily catch a mistake and rectify it without a load of other things clouding it.


Sure, but it's a T72 with a whole bunch of ammo in a not very armoured really rather large external area. I suppose an alternative would be to increase the chance of the "internal ammo explosion" critical by 5x. A single hit on that launcher and it's effecively out of action, no matter what chassis the launcher is mounted on.


In a few weeks/months people will have improved so that the middle of the bunch players are playing at a level which the top players are currently playing at. I'm not really sure there's too much in here that'd break mid-level play anyway. I think I'd probably hit arty with a bit of a nerf if aimed towards the mid-level play, but that's it.


Nope - Czech Motostrelci. Currently you can spam them at 10 points per unit (5 points on the inf, 5 on the APC) and they are very effective AT at close range. I'm not sure about it because I feel 10 points is a little too expensive, while 5 is too cheap. It's a problem at the lower end as five points makes a huge difference and things only seem to be done in fives.

The only thing i disagree with here is reducing availability of units, i know the "pro" players like to play either 1v1 or 2v2 but i feel reducing availability of units would have a negative effect on 3v3 and 4v4 games... if you are lucky to end up in a 3v3 or 4v4 where both teams are relatively equal these battles can last quite some time and with the addition of new game modes and victory conditions on the way i'd be worried if i saw more units having the availability reduced by half.

I feel price changes and unit fire power/armour/reload time/accuracy etc tweaking is the right way to deal with any imbalances.

Cheaper units need balancing in command point cost in finer increments than 5.



Terrific post OP.

Holy patch notes, Batman!

Things I don't like:
- Buratino's armor nerf. I prefer your second suggestion, increasing the chanche of criticals

Things you should add:
- Fix SAM AA hit detection
- Fix Mi-24V firing on the move



Unless I'm mistaken, the only availabilty reduction concerns prototype tanks. And as the name suggets, those tanks were prototypes (some even a failure but w/e) thus not widely available.

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My unofficial ELO rankings site: http://nanomad.net76.net
My DAT unpacker: https://bitbucket.org/nanomad/wargame-ee-dat-unpacker/downloads

Given the abstractions in the game, we can argue about this until cows come home. It's got the chassis of T-72 but not turret, and turret is the most heavily armored part of the vehicle. Something between T-72 and BM-27 is probably the correct answer.

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Wargame: Disco Edition

http://i.imgur.com/KwSCdxW.png

Ahh I get it, earlier you've been mentioning Panzergrenadiere and price was without a carrier. Motostrelci comes in 5s instead of 10s (equals less HP).They could cost 10 for 10 Moreover for 10 you can get Chasseurs FAMAS which are much superior.

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