Profile of Kasarov

Kasarov #2920
o7

Balancing this could be tricky since 30 Second Brace is unpopular with the opposition. I'd personally like to see brace going up to 15 Seconds (Considered "Too Short" back in the first days of the game) and maybe the duration of Zeroing Artillery shortened yet accelerate the rate at which it starts bombing at full steam. But I feel we would need to hear more input from more unbiased OKW players regarding this.

Zeroing artillery is one of the only reasons to ever pick fortification doctrine in the first place, and that was largely due to emplacement cheese (at least in my personal experience with OKW). Fortifications doctrine, ironically, was OKW's best anti-turtle doctrine because it had the LeFH howitzer as well as zeroing artillery for busting those sim cities. With emplacements not being so hard to destroy in the first place I see little reason to lock in Fortifications.

That being said, live version Zeroing Artillery is definitely overkill for the revamp if it gets all of its shots off -- that is, if it ever gets all of its shots off. It's actually not too easy maintaining visuals on sim city if the Brit player has any kind of presence around it in a 1v1. It's team games that's the problem. I'd argue in favor for reducing the total number of shells fired in exchange for a faster rate of fire, although I'd say we should try putting brace to 10s instead of 15 first, and only then make the jump to 15 if it really needs it. This way Brits get a more intuitive but not busted brace, and the OKW zeroing artillery is more effective for a wider variety of targets while also not being as reliant on teammate flares or recon abuse in teamgames.

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So in conclusion, I do not believe these transports begin to even remotely make up for forward retreat points. It is however one of faction advantages, certainly, in the same way Conscript merge and Ostheer bunkers are. Lack of on-the-field reinforcement for WFA factions is definitely something that should be considered in the course of balancing the game.

While I agree completely that FRPs require much less micro and is less risky in terms of pure reinforcement capability, transport play can be very frustrating to play against too. Everyone knows of the infamous clown car technique in the early game, which occasionally still stirs riots, add that stems as a result from not necessarily the reinforcement advantage, but the rather the advantage of just letting carried troops fire out in the first place. Also, the transports are a relatively small loss as opposed to the costs of a developed FRP if destroyed. Additionally, the halftrack has the obvious advantage of being mobile, which makes it much more survivable in the hands of a careful player. I can agree that it's an underused tactic as opposed to the almost mandatory FRP upgrades; it's unfortunate that despite all the love halftracks got since WBP, halftrack play is still rare. Though it's still certainly not an equal trade, I believe that it is a lot closer than you would think at first glance.

On the previous page I advocated for the introduction of an OKW APC by retooling the 251 Stuka to replace the mobility loss of MedTruck's FRP. Maybe you'd be interested in that approach? totally not shameless self-promotion or anything like that

So I've been thinking about the removal of FRPs, and here's my humble two cents:

It occurred to me that WFA as a general rule of thumb has no non-doctrinal reinforcement-providing troop transports like EFA does. I'm curious if this will be addressed as well?

Looking at OKW specifically, the 251 Walking Stuka is the easiest to retool. A marker_ext and some hold_ext edits would allow it to function similarly to the other open-topped halftracks. The Stuka's cost can be lowered and the rocket artillery functionality locked behind an upgrade that, depending on how testing plays out, may or may not take away its transportation and reinforcement abilities like CoH1. This would allow MechHQ to have forward reinforcement, too, opening up new venues of play. There are even voicelines for an OKW troop carrier in the files that can be heard on those rare occasions you capture an abandoned APC.

I haven't quite pieced together ideas for UKF and USF besides making their doctrinal halftracks non-doctrinal. I know for certain that the 251 Stuka as a troop transport functionally works.

Missing notes:

-Kubel is now OKW's starting unit.
-Incendiary grenades now have a 0.375 fuse

Kubel as a starting unit is an interesting change! Will have to test this later Also, I believe these assets (in spoiler) would be useful for the OKW rework for QoL and visual consistency. If you're into that.

Show Spoiler