December Balance Preview

v1.5 is out

Features Commander Revamps for Soviets and Wehrmacht

Could Mr.Smith or Miragefla create new tread about new commanders revamps for discussion ?

Thank goodness, they finally got rid of the damn trip wire abilities.

In general the Guards and Shocks buffs seem great, but I won't know for sure t'ill I test it.

I've noticed several abilities that were previously keyed to H are now on Q. Why? It's a little obnoxious and unnecessary.

LeFH/B4/ML20

So why is LeFH getting 200 damage at vet 3 require nerfs but the default ML20's 200 damage (with more range and thus better accuracy iirc) isn't?

Bundle Grenade (affects both OST and OKW):

With the changes to Gammon Bombs, we are also adjusting the Bundle grenade to match its counterpart’s performance:

Since when are the BG's counterpart the Heavy Gammon Bombs which is not the commando's nuke nade, but the Satchel esque one the Tommies get? Did the balance team have a collective brain fart on this one?

Also does this make Bundle Grenades worse than other elite grenades like Guards?

I've noticed several abilities that were previously keyed to H are now on Q. Why? It's a little obnoxious and unnecessary.

Yeah, I noticed that with Conscipts tried to Oorah and suddenly I'm holding fire lol. Really annoying because you are going to Oorah way more often then Hold Fire with Dank Hunters. Also, the AT grenade assault feels like a bit much... definitely worth looking into

Since when are the BG's counterpart the Heavy Gammon Bombs which is not the commando's nuke nade, but the Satchel esque one the Tommies get? Did the balance team have a collective brain fart on this one?

Also does this make Bundle Grenades worse than other elite grenades like Guards?

BG are nowhere near a satchel and the grenade is still more potent than the majority of grenades if just by its higher damage of 100 vs 80. Tommy Heavy Gammon bombs are just a slightly different flavours of satchels, you can't use those as grenades in most cases.

I guess the Bundled Granade stunt was the last straw in this ‘balance patch’. It took years that the horribly overpriced bundled granades to become useful, and now you want to nerf it back, pardon, made ‘more accessible’ BECAUSE GAMMON BOMB.

There were also community concerns about the SOV howitzers being weak, right ? Oh and OST/OKW one just too strong, right? Not even an exlanation.

And the most golden one - PaK 43 is simply too good, even though it does not even one 1/10th the survivability of the non doc 17 pdr, it is removed by one click offmaps?

Nerf TWP on PaK 40, too?

There are far, far too much changes and most of them do not even have a point. They just chance (and likely break) something nobody complained about. There are a number of much needed changes, but they do not worth breaking the whole game Just because mod makers have endless ambitions. Sometimes less is more.


And these stereotypical BS explanations especially in v1.5 - make (insert Axis stuff) more accessible, i.e. nerfed to the ground, ‘improve scaling of (insert Allied stuff)’ fat buffs nobody asked for.

Fuck DBP, I do not want it. Even the all purpose penal hordes that its creators granted us previously are more interesting than this nerf everything on the Axis side, buff everything on the Allied side. The patch failed to address the balance issues for the fifth attempt and is just breaking stuff left and right now.

yeah..lets nerf the pak43...it was to strong ...wtf.

i can´t read this anymore...a doc unit is much weaker than the nondoc brit unit...and its get more nerfs again...

Great to see this patch moving forward, but would it be possible to get some more in-depth reasoning to some of the changes?

The LeFH was basically required in large team games (3v3/4v4) to counter brit emplacements. The emplacements are small, so the accuracy in the FoW was required to do sustained damage (and even then, you're fighting brace, stand fast, repair stations, etc.). The same can be said of the vet 3 damage bonus. Previously, the LeFH seemed fine in large games, and was unused in smaller games; not due to it being bad, but there being better things to get even for 600mp (or 400/50).

The Pak 43 changes seem fine, but I'm not sure why it's still possible to decrew it so easily compared to the 17lbAT emplacement. While the 17lb is 400mp/75fuel/14pop compared to the Pak43's 350/45/10 (and has a better RoF), it's doc-locked, has no brace, no stand-fast, and can't be auto-repaired or healed. Does it need to be decrewable on top of that?

Wait so you'd take combat nerfs over moving the passive healing? It's also worth pointing out that sturms do have the crates (albeit too expensive for constant use) and setting up a medhq too isn't that expensive and won't delay your game that much. I always backtech it for the healing and sometimes the frp when I go luchs. And in the long run, backteching puts you that much closer to a kt too.

Of course, passive healing was meant so despute getting a weaker start, mechanized builds were viable because of passive healing out of combat.
It doesn't matter if you want to backtech or not, no faction is forced through a specific teching part (full of useless and trashy units) to unlock mere healing, which, like kurfurst said, happens to be the most expensive and also the less mobile.

That's really a wrong approach, rather than saying "here you have less cooldown/reload/x bonus, you gotta rely more on combined arms as volks are merely a filler now" it's saying "ok we can't nerf the crap out of luchs because is balanced as ai only vehicle, we can't nerf volks because btg hq is a meme, so we put a constant bleed over mechanized builds you can't do anything about it"

With proper crap halftrack buffs, an mg that isn't a meme (somwhat more expensive for sure, yet able to deal with green covered squads as it doesn't shoot rubber, BECAUSE DPS MATTERS) and decent sturm (which implies a little more buffs than simply being able to benefit from his veterancy, like Changing that poor nonsense 0.87 RA to something more fit for combat for an higher base cost) I would definetly get nerfed volks, even by removing stg upgrade and simply reducing the reinforce cost and initial price to something more fit.

BG are nowhere near a satchel and the grenade is still more potent than the majority of grenades if just by its higher damage of 100 vs 80. Tommy Heavy Gammon bombs are just a slightly different flavours of satchels, you can't use those as grenades in most cases.

So why are BG being compared to the Heavy Gammon Bomb: "changes to Gammon Bombs, we are also adjusting the Bundle grenade to match its counterpart’s performance" ?

Im just trying to understand why a nerf to the HGB (satchel) means there should be a nerf to BG.

PaK 43 needs at the very least a range increase to make it less vlnerable to arty and generally allow it to sit back more; that, and/or made decrewable like British emplacements (btw why are those non decrewable in the first place? Maybe switch that to being non decrewable only when brace is on)

Price is not an issue with it, but the fact that 500 or 350 mp is wiped with one clicks without any counterplay expect not to build it.

>pak43 is easily destroyable...while a doc unit
>17punder is not easily destroyable and is nondoch unit

>AA eplacment from OKW is doc unit and REALLY REALLY easy destroyable/ decrewable
>bofors is a nondoc unit and heavily armed and heavy to destroy in early / midgame..


see what i want to say...?

So why are BG being compared to the Heavy Gammon Bomb: "changes to Gammon Bombs, we are also adjusting the Bundle grenade to match its counterpart’s performance" ?

Im just trying to understand why a nerf to the HGB (satchel) means there should be a nerf to BG.

I don't really get why the hell they nerfed bundled, it's several grenades thrown by expensive as hell elite units, nerfed because a nuke thrown by a simple mainline was nerfed....oh wait ACTUALLY buffed as it will nuke any building in map while being 25 muni cheaper vs bundled 10 muni cheaper...in a scenario in which buildings looks like death traps as troops have a leaving time...

EDIT: nvm they meant light gammon bombs available for commandos, which seems to be a copypaste now.

Still think they nerfed both way too much, they stopped blobs and yoloed cqb squads like nothing before...

"It took years that the horribly overpriced bundled granades to become useful, and now you want to nerf it back"

HERE it is what I instantly said to myself as I looked changelog.

However, the lack of scalability of the Osttruppen into the late game hurts the viability of the commander.

So their scalability is improved by... making them reinforce slower, making them worse with captured weapons, and giving them LMGs when in the very late game? That just makes them feel like really, really cut-rate grens past the very early game at that point, when their main selling point of their ability to tarpit your opponent is getting nerfed by a 75% reinforcement time increase.

Some scalability buffs would be nice, especially if they can't use captured weapons effectively, but having it specifically be LMGs just invites unfavourable comparisons to infantry you'd really rather have instead by the time you're at battle phase 3.

Supply Drop (Formerly Supply Drop Zone)
Given the doctrine’s reliance on support weapons to deal damage in the later stages, we are giving a supply drop that allows players to make use of the Osttruppen’s ability to cheaply recrew team weapons.

Now drops 1 unmanned MG 34, 1 unmanned AT gun, 1 munitions crate (50 munitions) and 1 fuel crate (25 fuel)
Cost changes to 450 manpower

This feels like the same "overpriced package where you'll never want all the contents at once" problem that the USF AT gun + paratroopers drop has. Turning manpower into a direct resource is good and, more to the point, clean and simple. Turning it into a goodie bag of things you might not even need all of at once just makes the ability feel lacklustre, even if you're getting a good rate for all of them.

Oh yeah, and I'm going to echo the "doctrinal non-British emplacements look absolutely ridiculous compared to non-doctrinal British emplacements" sentiment. I get that emplacements are meant to be a core part of one of the main British strategies, but come on, units like the Pak 43 might as well not exist if you're going to lose a 350 manpower and 45 fuel investment basically the moment the opponent gets vision on it. Also:

Cost of these howitzers and the Pak 43 more accessible in smaller game modes while less potent when shelling into a base without spotters.

Serious question: Can't it just suffer a scatter penalty when firing specifically into a base sector? I know there must be some "targets a base sector" check in the code because of how artillery (both off-map and unit-based) can't be fired into bases, so the same kind of logic could be applied to the howitzers to make them situationally less accurate without stopping them from being effective counter-play to British emplacements.

In addition, I think the concept of cheaply recrewing team weapons that come in a bundle that costs an arm and a leg with cheap models that have 1,25 RA to start with and who would then receive what is an additional 1,25 penalty RA of the team weapons crews is... mostly just free team weapons for the opponent.

Just imagine the worst MG of the game crewed by guys with 1,6 RA meeting the double BAR blob.

played a couple games-

-command pgren squad uses arty officer icon on command bar + named jaeger light inf
-reinforce at 37 is a bit of a hidden knife. not sure if it's too high, it does bleed a lot.
-but they can turn into a 5 man sprinting, stealth double shreck squad, which is also quite nuts. have yet to try this ingame though.

-osttruppen LMGs don't seem as weak as the 50% penalty would imply (ingame they were ripping through vetted USF inf)
-suspect that the 50% acc penalty doesn't translate to 50% lower dps, probably something along the lines of base acc with vet being high enough at some ranges
-tier locking upgrades for them is a nice concept
-concern regarding osttruppen balance not within osttruppen commander but from lightning war- reserve army spamming (though there is quite a lot of opportunity cost unless muni control is substantial - mass upgrading LMGs + nonstop reserve army precludes the use of stuka CAS). need closer games to see if this is an issue.
-opinion -try out different weapon packages rather than lmg42. lmg42 osttruppen are more or less grenadier v0.75 and fill the same niche. (6x?) mp40s would be far more interesting, less problematic balance-wise, and round out the ostheer complement more. If it doesn't clutter gameplay too much, mp40s could be unlocked at BP2 and LMG42 (or something else) at BP3.

-field defenses
-grenadier, osttruppen sandbags are really nice. +1 here

-tank hunter conscripts are pretty fun to use
-loss of molotovs is pretty major, since they basically can't fight anything once upgraded now. i understand the logic (not good to mass upgrade, just grab one or two as specialized squads) but it's a little annoying
-loss of regular AT nades is strange since the AT volley is not a straight upgrade
-AT volley is very strong with cloak though.
-would be nice to give ptrs penals with that doctrine something so they aren't eclipsed entirely- maybe the same cloak, or maybe even moving cloak (!)

-hulldown cloaking tanks
-the bushes are visible by enemy through FOW, which is probably unintentional but something i think should stay
-don't think the +20% damage should stay- it just makes the first shot very RNG (two t34s can burst almost 400 damage, or bounce and do nothing which they still do a lot even with the +20% pen). i suggest either deflection dmg for shot out of cloak (if possible) or more pen instead to make it more consistent
-time to cloak after firing seems a bit janky. sometimes it cloaks really fast, sometimes it seems to take forever. Possibly linked to firing as it enters hulldown.

-manpower + fuel emplacements
-manpower being the more valuable resource, this is a pretty big buff
-ML20 was OP as hell with the new costing in FBP. suspect same here in DBP with the buff-nerf to more shells / better mid AOE

-arty officer changes are nice
-probably doesn't need to be at 2CP though, since it's limited to 1

-ISU
-reliable now, maybe too reliable? needs more testing probably
-consistent 120 dmg deflect on HE shots is a very big buff

-guards
-i'm not sure how useful hit the dirt is- same issue as cons hit the dirt, you just eat rifle nades / flame nades. real utility here seems to grab a few extra shots with the ptrs using the bonus range to secure light vehicle kills

In addition, I think the concept of cheaply recrewing team weapons that come in a bundle that costs an arm and a leg with cheap models that have 1,25 RA to start with and who would then receive what is an additional 1,25 penalty RA of the team weapons crews is... mostly just free team weapons for the opponent.

Just imagine the worst MG of the game crewed by guys with 1,6 RA meeting the double BAR blob.

So basically the same problem the USF AT gun used to have when its models were sized larger than normal. And we all know how bad that felt.

How will the new arty officer squad perfom in combat compared to ass. grens? And will it retain the price of 240?