Profile of Mr.Smith

Version 0.1:

I added some changes which with further improve squad spacing in all squads in the game. The goal of these changes is to:
- Avoid squad members bumping onto each other when issued different orders
- Find squad formations that make squads spread out as fast as possible when moving away from cover

When squads drop to 2 or 3 models they will use the Tommy/Panzerfusilier squad formation, which don't have the forementioned issues.

However, the most immediately obvious changes are for the following:
- 4-model squads will now use the 5-man formation, but with one member missing
- 6-model squads will use the 5-man formation + 1 guy spaced up between the two guys in the rear

Previously, 6-model formations sucked really hard, since they always had 3 members in close proximity with one another.

Let me know how the formations feel like, especially the 6-member one. Do the new formations create issues for:
- Close-range squads (e.g., shocks)?
- LMG-troops?
- Engaging MGs, etc (since the 6 squads members no longer form a line)

Let me know, if those problems are an issue and I can try to do adjustments per-squad.

PS: Many thanks to Planet Smasher, once again, for his feedback.

Grenadier -> reduce to 6 pop (same that conscript) while being still much better at any time of the game. you are going to make soviet main infantry more useless that it is already.

To counter that, a little buff of soviet infantry (accuracy at long range & received accuracy) would be great.

That's a good point actually. The 6 pop thing is kinda necessary to bring grenadiers in line with Riflemen and (reduced-pop) Tommies.

I will try to give Conscripts (and Ostruppen) a 5-popcap cost, but I can't guarantee that this will be possible.

To be fair, for Soviets it would make more sense to simply increase their popcap to, say 110 - 120. The reason is that those 6-man crews really chew up popcap. However, unlike other factions, Soviets completely lack infantry that's proper for recrewing team weapons (OST gets free sight range, Brits get received accuracy, etc).

The reason why you don't see maxim-spam etc fill up Soviet popcap so fast is because Maxims cost literally 0 popcap. For comparison:
- MG34: 1 popcap
- All other MGs: 2 popcap

USF captain and lieutnant : you reduced their reinforce cost, considering they are 'free' squad it makes them too better.

1. Then make the squads cost MP to summon. For another example that follows the same twisted logic, take AT partisans.

In the live version it takes about 270MP to summon a partisan squad with a panzerschreck and an AT nade out of any building. That's super cheap.

However, the cost to reinforce AT partisan models is 2 popcap and 35+ MP per model. That is way too much for what this unit can do. Partisans can't even fight OST Pioneers properly; why should they cost so much more to reinforce?

Thus, the pricing scheme is killing the unit, limiting its use to spawn & snare cheese.

2. This wasn't so much a reduction in the cost, as much as a normalisation. The captain model would take 50MP to reinforce, whereas the cohort would take 25MP per-piece to reinforce.

Occasionally, when you would queue up reinforcement for these squads, the game would screw you over and it would charge you 200MP to reinforce 4 members, instead of 125MP. That difference is big, and that made those "free" squads a huge dead-weight.

Riflemen and Tommies cost 28MP to reinforce. Lieutenant and Captain are no better than riflemen, so why should they cost more to reinforce?

i was much hyped in this mod because it is mainly fixing bug issues and adding some usefull stuffs (no balance except piats, para and commandos) but if you want to change infantry cost, it's not the same thing.
If you are going to make more balance stuff, you might loose all the potential of this mod : there are already a thousands of balance mods (miragefla, GG, and much more...).

That's true.

The thing, though, was that it was always my intention to fix popcap/reinforcement cost of these units when said units are recrewing, say, an AT weapon. This completely screws up certain factions (e.g., Brits), since they only have 1 unit "appropriate" for recrewing AT guns. Everything else is a suicide.

Since, to implement that change, I had to touch a whole lot of files. Thus, also fixing the inconsistent reinforcement cost/popcap at the same time was actually easy to do at that time, than leave it for later.

I mean, some of the values for some units are so glaringly-off, you have to ask why:
- 35MP-ish per AT partisan model
- 35MP-ish for assault engineers
- 10 popcap for commandos
- etc

Most of the reinforcement buffs I gave are in line with other, similar buffs that 4-man elite squads have received. It's just the units that are outside the limelight for too long (e.g, Greyhound, KV1) tend to get completely ignored.

Here you can see the precise cost/reinforcement time per squad in the mod. A (+) or a (-) denote a value that was touched by the mod.

Let me know if I missed something / there is any value you disagree with.

Table:
Show Spoiler

Speaking of which, that's focus-fire off right?

Exactly. If focus fire is off, you have missing bullets hitting targets other than the original intended one. Thats:
- STGs
- Bars

ty smith already saw that guide the real problem comes when choosing the weapon to clone (sp stg ,infrared stg,volks stg) and fiddle with the stats
And make it so is undroppable and come from the start though I could copy Capt Thompson and start from there but then I don't know how change weapon model
Another problem is comparing raw dos of scooped stg volks and vanilla volks to adjust the stats and give stg 70% of the dos of the squad

Note that captain thompson is not a slot weapon. This means that when the captain picks up a weapon (e.g., bazooka), the bazooka will sometimes end up on the captain model, depriving the squad of their thompson. Othertimes, when the captain isn't holding another weapon, he will have the thompson accessible.

Moreover, in the captain happens to get sniped at some point, the thompson will be unavailable until the squad becomes reinforced. If you want the STG to be that powerful, you probably want to make the STG a slot item, like how it is now (that can be transfered around to the squad), rather than an entity weapon (which is permanently tie to the entity that carries it).

If you want to replace the stg with a panzerschreck when the upgrade happens, then make the upgrade:
- add a slot weapon to the squad (panzerschreck)
- remove a slot weapon from the squad (stg)

DPS-wise, you can refer to Cruzz's calculator.

The easiest way to, then, update the DPS is scale damage or accuracy (all ranges) appropriately. If you want to control DPS in a different way (e.g., cooldown), things get tricky.

(note that due to the focus-fire mechanic STGs are a bit more accurate than their value indicates, since they have 2 chances of hitting somebody)