Can you list the USF commanders with abilities to help fighting Axis superheavies?
Airborne with the P47 loiter, Mechanized and Heavy Cavalry with Combined Arms (self spotting, +5 main gun range and +30% reload speed for Jacksons), and to some extend Infantry with the Priests (which are quite good at dislodging an Elefant or Jagdtiger).
If you had carte blanche to shuffle up the USF commander abilities, what would you do?
To be honest, I think most of them are fine as is. Rifle Company and Tactical Support could use a little extra perhaps, but I wouldn't really know what right now. USF actually has quite a large amount of viable/good commanders (across all gamemodes) and I personally don't think that every single commander has to be competitive, because ultimately the vast majority of the playerbase plays for fun. The faction is doing fine on all levels, so there isn't really a huge incentive to shuffle around / buff a bunch of commanders (don't fix what isn't broken).
Ideally, but impossible ofcourse, I would switch the M10 with the M36 to get rid of the overlap issues with all the doctrinal Shermans (being overshadowed by the M36), and give the USF the Sherman Jumbo (75mm/76mm) as a stock heavy medium, so that they'd have a damage sponge tank to work together with the M10s (like the Churchill/Firefly combo). Then the M36 could be toned down.
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Nevertheless, a straightforward commander like Airborne is bound to struggle against more recent, very versatile commanders.
That's the main thrust of this suggestion: move some of the toys out of saturated commanders like Mechanized that can't realistically use them all to buff up the less favoured commanders.
I don't think Airborne Company struggles at all, it's a very good and popular commander for team games, particularly because of access to the rocket planes to help fight Axis superheavies. Taking that away would actually be a significant nerf. |
Did you ever wonder why mg34 was removed from luftwaffe commander after okw rework?
Perhaps because it was moved to the HQ? Instead of being in one of two exclusive tech trees? |
Airborn will remain lame commander as long as it has 2 infantry squads and 2 STOCK weapon drops.
How is it lame that the commander offers the flexibility to skip one of the officer techs to get access to both support weapon, resulting in faster tank tech (and avoiding another line infantry squad, so that calling in Paratroopers is easier). The commander has good synergy, besides being a bit munitions heavy. |
I think the idea is more "your guys are going to die anyways, let's try and get something out of it"
I agree with this honestly, I think the ability does fit Lightning War's theme somewhat. The doctrine is about setting up powerful attacks, and when attacking you're guaranteed to lose models. So the ability will allow you to attack more cost effectively by compensating the losses that you take while doing so. Even if Osttruppen are trash mid/late game, that's 1-2 "free" squads you can use to crew weapons or delay the enemy with.
My biggest concern with an ability like this is that it has some communication/readability issues (I don't think it tells you what it does exactly, and it doesn't show a model count when active), but there's nothing that can be done about that.
Also, given how Lighting War is a very strong doctrine (even if not dominating the meta), I don't think it needs any changes. Best to focus efforts on reworking other doctrines. |
Is there a guide to the changes anywhere? I'd love to look over comparisons or thought processes for adjustments, since design is very interesting to me.
There are tons of changes, too many to document really. If there are any specific maps you're curious about, I could give a summary for those. |
Versus P4 head on (tank v tank)
Highlights:
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It's saving grace would be that it is at least better than the regular M4A3 at fighting Panzer IVs, but it is still only barely capable of doing that.
Single tests are meaningless in a game where RNG is so dominant.
Multiple engagements test results (still not conclusive due to small sample size, but with dozens of engagements they are significantly more reliable than your result) show that the Easy 8 will, on average, beat the OKW Panzer IVJ quite comfortably. While costing the same.
At 20 range, the EZ8 won 22 out of 24 times, of which 9 times with 50-100% health left.
At 30 range, the EZ8 won 23 out of 27 times (1 result forfeit), of which 10 times with 50-100% health left.
It's definitely better at fighting both Panzer IVs than the M4A3 (no tests but you can imagine that with less health, less armor and less penetration, the M4A3 would do way worse).
EZ8 vs P4J at 20 range
EZ8 vs P4J at 30 range
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I saw a thread where it shown that the E8 is far worst than the Panzer 4 was he wrong or.....?
One test does not prove anything, given how influential RNG is in those types of engagements. I wish people would stop taking a single test result as fact. |
Further, with all due respect for your dilligence in providing a stat sheet, the P4 in tests has remarkably better AI performance
Two tests prove absolutely nothing, because of how high the influence of RNG is. |
Not since new pfussies with T0 AT nade.
Also, one thing missing from the OP's analysis is that the 221 doesn't need to kill the M3 to render it ineffective; dealing enough damage to force it back for repairs or preventing it from diving after your retreating units is enough to put a stop to its power in the early game, and help stall for the tech going up to get Fausts and the 223 to finally kill it.
Furthermore, one more thing to keep in mind here is that the reason the tech restrictions and 223 upgrade are in place is because especially USF has absolutely no form of AT until the late early game, and Brits also need quite a lot of time to get snares or an ATG. As opposed to Ostheer and OKW who respectively have access to Fausts and T0 Raketen to deal with rampaging light vehicles in the early game (both do have drawbacks, but at least they're there).
A 30 fuel 223 deploying ~2-3 minutes into the game would completely overrun USF and UKF because they have nothing to effectively fight back a 320hp and 9 armor vehicle at that point. |