Good ideas but you just can't give a backline unit brace. The enemy has to go deep to even see it and they can't stick around to wait for it to unbrace. I hate brace with a passion, just throwing it out there because the problem is in desperate need of a solution. Maybe a different, less cancerous variant of brace that only protects against indirect damage with 3 minute cooldown and and you can't fire during the cooldown? Also remember that there are some maps where getting LOS on the artillery weapon is nearly impossible. With out stuka bomb strike it would be impossible. I don't like the idea of making artillery more durable. What about the Priest? It packs all the punch of an ML20 but cannot effectively be taken out by offmaps (against competent players anyway). You can only hope to catch it out of position with a tank or Schrecks. On the maps you mentioned, you wouldn't be able to take out a Priest, which makes me wonder if this would really be as overpowered as you say. But I would take any solution to the current problem, because I really think functional tube artillery is the missing piece in the equation of CoH2 gameplay. |
Every time I see a static artillery thread I post the same thing.
There are 1-click, no-brainer, no-micro counters that negate 600 manpower. You either have these counters in your selected commander or not. Either way it is not fun to play the game that way. The deadly Stuka + Recon combo is present in multiple doctrines which are all very present in the meta.
Solution: fudge the target tables so that all offmaps leave a full HP howitzer at 5% hit points (in addiion to decrewing of course). Maybe inflict a crit that it can't fire until fully fixed. Alternatively, give some variation of brace.
Until this is implemented, there is no use discussing balancing tube arty at all. It could be overpowered as hell and we simply would not know because HURR DURR STUKA STRIKE.
I will keep posting this in all artillery threads until it is implemented. |
And the Comet vet allot faster since its commander help its to vet faster... IIRC it was 25% faster, which is not "a lot", and definitely does not compensate for the veterancy discrepancy. Especially since the Panther specifically has insane vet2 bonuses, by far the best in the entire game (this is due to Relic nerfing it by taking away some armour and HP around a year ago, and returning them to the Panther at vet2, while still retaining the previous vet2 bonuses). |
Btw some time ago I made a suggestion how to fix Stuka dive bomb vs ML20 problem (apply symmetrically to IL2/LeFH).
- make the dive bomb decrew the howitzer (of course)
- make it take out precisely 98% of the Howitzer's max HP (target tables allow for that).
- make it inflict a "gun mangled" critical on the gun that disables firing, and only goes away once you repair to 100% HP.
Voila. Howitzers instantly viable in team games.
This way it requires the Stuka strike and something to actually get into damage-dealing range (a Walking Stuka, a PWerfer, a Schreck squad, a grenade, or a tank farting in its general direction), which is counterplayable at least to some degree. It still allows for destroying the howitzer from the safety of your base but the investment becomes difficult to maintain (Recon + stuka + investment of some other damage dealing unit or ability or, in teamgames, offmap) which sounds like a far fairer deal to me.
Priests are proof that this would not be overpowered. You can't offmap Priests against non-noob players, you have to close the distance with tanks or Schrecks. Nobody complains of Priests. |
I agree with you, but I have to take a moment to point out that the Il-2 bombing run does exactly the same thing. At least I'm pretty damn sure that it does. Yep, although stuka vs allied howitzers is a more frequent matchup, it is worth mentioning this. Anything said for stuka vs allied howitzers is also valid for bombing run vs LeFH.
The problem is most prevalent in teamgames, where all it takes is ONE bombing run or stuka commander to completely invalidate up to four other team howitzer commanders. |
Comet has a bit more AI punch to it than Panther does, which might account the price difference. However, the Comet has absolutely abysmal veterancy bonuses when compared to the Panther, which is conveniently not accounted for when discussing said price difference. Shrug. |
There is also the problem that if you are allies, building artillery becomes resource conversion of sorts. It converts 600 of your own manpower into an automatic Stuka bombing strike on that location.
This sort of one-click zero skill, zero micro, no counterplay approach to "balance" just doesn't mesh with the rest of the game. Yes, offmaps cost ammo, and artillery should be vulnerable to them, but not so much that any allied artillery is immediately invalidated with the choice of certain Axisc commanders. Imagine if there was a 500 ammo ability to destroy a Kingtiger anywhere on the map with no possibility of counterplay.
I normally hate homogenization, but some slightly different variant of brace for all static howitzers would be great.
Also any rocket or artillery shell that hits near a tank should definitely cause main gun temporarily disabled crits, vision slit damaged crit, or crew shocked crit. This would do much to make artillery more viable against tanks. You will notice that these crits do jack all if the artillery strike is not followed up by an assault that would exploit these crits, which is as it should be. |
Normally when discussing Brits we should be looking at the fact it has very specific and weak onmap artillery options. But artillery cover? Haha no that thing REALLY needs toning down. Compare what you get for 300 ammo in Fortifications doctrine, in a smaller radius.
Remove engine damage, keep temporary weapon disable. Perhaps the radius / duration should also be looked at. If it is hit with multiple nerfs, a price reduction could be in order (again, using Fortification arty as a baseline).
The rest of the ability is cool (it drops smoke shells on damaged allied vehicles in radius, very nice touch). |
I'm probably going to achieve the impossible and piss off both camps in this discussion but here goes.
Regarding certain extremely-high level of play factors, I cannot vouch for them as I only once caught a whiff of top 100 1v1, at least in CoH2. So I am going to trust Vindi and the high-end players on that one. Vindi's post is actually timeless, some of these problems with allied aggressiveness held true even in CoH1. To that end I support any efforts to make the game more balanced at all levels of play.
However, if the argument is that Relic should balance the game for top 20 (which is the reason this thread is so heated right now), I say, why stop there? Why not top 10? Why not top 5? Why not just make Jove the supreme balance guy and bar everyone else from posting in the balance forums, ever?
Why is 20 the magic number? Could it be because Vindi is playing at that sort of level and therefore only has that sort of perspective?
If anything, Relic needs to balance the game for top 1000 players, not top 20. The game also needs to be balanced for 4v4s, Relic should not lock themselves into 1v1 mentality.
People using Starcraft as the yardstick are barking up the wrong tree, even Blizzard couldn't replicate the success of SC1 even though they built SC2 from grounds up to be cast-friendly. The most popular games in existence are all coop/team games.
It is natural that more skilled people will gravitate towards 1v1s so I don't blame them for that but there is nothing wrong with the top 500 or top 1000 players, or hell, even the 4v4 players. So do not act like they do not exist. |
I'm not sure a setup time would solve the problem. It would just mean close range units could easily bumrush them. ... if caught out of position / on the move which is precisely the kind of weakness this unit needs. If they sit in cover in a defensive position they will still shred the close range units. |