COH: Europe In Ruins

Reading the thread on repairs and having a discussion with Volsk the other day, I got to wondering. With Tank having left the mod and volsk taking over and beginning his own process for where the mod goes in the future, It would be a good time to discuss the lasting core changes to EIR that took place under the Tank era (~2015-2018). I know Tank was around far longer than that, but I think 2015 was the first true no more EIRRmod year.

I think it would be cool to look at what the lasting effects of his changes are and what people think of them in general. Listing them off what I remember;


1.) The new Doctrine selection design (No more tree's, freeform picks)

2.) The new Doctrine theme design (Inf - Mob - Armor)

3.) The Global vehicular changes (-10% accel/deccel, -2.5m sight)

4.) The Heavy tank toggle (Persh/tiger AP/HE)

5.) The new Repair system

6.) The new offmap system

7.) Specialization of Light Vehicles

8.) The PE redesign (4 man pgrens, LV pop bonuses, Cheaper IHTs)


I want to actually see discussion on these core changes to EIR, not just stuff like "its kewl" or "I hate, pliz remove m8". I think this analysis is one worth having to really put into perspective how much EIR has changed during this 3 year period and whether people feel its for the better or worse.

I would add to that list core changes to the US faction.

-The debates surrounding its utter dependence on Rifle squads, and whether that's good or bad. Whether Garands should be buffed, and the compromise of "Assault Garands"
-Zooks on Rifles as a response to the Axis LVs steamrolling slow and cumbersome ATGs while kiting Rifle stickies
-Making Marines a core unit in the roster, and why it failed to reproduce the combined arms dynamic of the WM's Volks/Grens.
-Introducing the Chaffee as LV AT, and the GMC as LV indirect AI to the core roster to match similar units available to WM. These changes were warranted IMO.

The introduction of the chaffee fits in with LV specialization. All those other points did indeed happen, but they are not tied to tank130 directly.

I would avoid calling it Tanks legacy, while the changes happened during his tenor as mod lead they're hardly just his changes.

The two changes i have a gripe with are

The new repair system, the old model worked fine.

And

Tiger/Pershing HE/AP toggle, given the effectiveness of these tanks guns they don't need it unless it was made an option for all vehicles which would add more micro to an already micro intensive game.

I personally don't mind a lot of the changes after I got used to them excluding the heavy tank toggle and repair system.
XII why you no open Snapchat no more?

I guess legacy is a strong word. I think its fair to say that most these changes likely would never have come about if not for tank though. As for these changes though, some I like, some I don't as most of you.

Things I think have been great;

1. The new single pick doctrine design: I think this is one of the biggest changes EIR has had since its start and it has worked out great imo. No more dead unlocks at t1/2. No more "everything is about this t4/dual t3". It feels more like a salad bar being able to pick and choose what and how you wanna play. As it stands, most of the doctrine do a good job of supporting every playstyle pretty well(some exceptions of course due to the limitations ill mention later).

2. The global vehicle sight and accel/deccel changes. In the end, all they do is make vehicles a little bit harder to micro, but still keeps them the same in effectiveness. It creates a minor skill gap, which is a good think in my opinion. Makes HHAT a bit more effective and make yolo vehicle rushes a bit less effective unless they are properly timed (skill gap).

3. The new offmap system: Free offmaps are dumb, plain and simple. Now offmaps are no longer free. I would have preferred not having to spend Pop, but in the end, this is a great change.

Changes that I'm neutral about.

1.Tiger/Pershing toggle: I don't mind them really for the same reason I don't mind accel/deccel. You gain a micro tax (toggle) but also gain more effective weaponry (HE is more accurate, AP get 20% extra penetration, 10% extra damage). Another Skill gap, though this one is greater than the global nerf gap. So, it the idea is to keep the game slightly easier for new players to get into it, I can see removing this tax.

2. LV specialization. Meh, they do what they do. The only bad thing I could say is that this eats away at the uniqueness of PE LV's, but that was later addressed with the PE LV pop changes. If they all got reverted tomorrow, I don't think it would end up effecting EIR all that much.


Things I think turned out poorly or could have been done better.

1. Inf - Mob - Armor doctrine themes: EIR has always been a game of aggression, territory control and attritioning manpower. Due to the limitations the design, the 4 Infantry doctrines are miles above the rest in terms of ability to win games since they can achieve those 3 basic goals of EIR the easiest. These pointed themes can work, but they have to be done in a far less strict manner.

2. The new repair system: The new repair system devalues good micro and creates an inverse skill gap.
     a. You can make more mistakes with your vehicles since you can get more repairs on them
     b. Even if you lose a vehicle, no problem, you didn't lose the repair
     c. As time has gone on, players have become more savvy about timing their repairs and keeping them alive, so hunting them down rarely works
     d. Soft AT has gotten worse. Stickies/mines/rear treadbreaks have all lost extreme value since expending 1 repair is no longer a big deal.
     e. ATG's are less useful since facetanking an atg, destroying it and then repairing the damage from face tanking probably can be done repeatedly vs just once or twice max.
     f. Due to the lower efficacy of AT assets in the new repair system, actual AT load in a company has rocketed up, meaning that Armor players who DONT stack up on repairs will suffer.

The concept and reasoning behind the repair system was pretty sound, but in action, it has done more overall harm than overall good to To EIR gameplay. Of course, thats on the caveat that we agree on what core EIR gameplay should be.


Overall, I think the Tank era has been pretty good outside a couple failed experiments.

Well he banned me 3 times, 4th ban was permanent But hicks356 helped me come back. Overall i thing Tank was a guy who saved a mod from bankruptcy and got Volski onboard which is the best thing of all. Volski is a great dev who will give me Tiger Ace

Really can't stand what he did to doctrines.  Rather than the pick your own, which is fine, he more than anyone led the charge to water down and make all the doctrines as boring and not fun as possible.  This is a trend I really wish would be reversed.

lol

I'm responsible for helping you come back?

Fuck me, I'm glad I stopped drinking.

I'm working on it. Fun will return, but old meme-strength 42.5 m range RRs and 2-shotting-StuG-capable-non-AP-ATG TR won't be making a return.

boring 2.5% reload buffs don't really do it.  If every doctrine is OP, then its still balanced.

2 shooting isn't that much of an issue - vanilla 80-guns can do it with vet 3 and AP rounds.

Old TR allowed you to 1-shot StuGs. Good times. I'll talk about tank's legacy point by point later, so everyone can just tune off now.

While I agree with the first half of that statement, I find it hard to agree with the second half.

EIR already has(and will probably always have) a slight issue in the fact that games can often be decided In the company tab if one company simply counters another. In a good game state, even companies with really bad match ups can still compete in a game with good micro and solid game understanding.

The stronger you make units, the greater that gap becomes, the less enjoyable the overall experience becomes on the end of the person who simply doesn't have enough counters. Its true, in a "Everything is OP" mindset, all the factions would probably achieve a ~50% win rate, but the manner in which they do it would probably be harmful to the longevity of EIR.

Lets take another example from the most recent designer to buy into the "Everything is OP, then nothing is OP" philosophy: MisterSchmidt.
I wont even talk about the 42.5 (functionally a near 50 range RR). Lets instead talk about the mortar.

You could stack two doctrine 15% damage reductions(one general, one light cover) that combine for approx -28% Damage. Throw it in with a 20% HP booster and the 20% range boost.

At just vet one, you end up with a mortar that has -38.5% received damage, 84HP AB armored crew with fire up, 96m of range (Compared to WM mortar 85m)

So, your counter argument is "Buff the shit outa dat WM mortar". Sure, that can be done, but you then run into 2 issues.

1. Do all 3 WM doctrines get equivalent mortar buffs? If so, how do you give 3 different Mortar buffs of the same quality without having mirror doctrines?

      1a. If you don't, what are other 2 doctrines gonna do with their mortars when they run into AB mortars?

      1b. If you do, what are the buffs you then have to give the other 5 allied doctrines so their mortars are not so obviously outclassed in this mortar war when they run into the anti AB super mortar for Axis? How do you get 6 allied mortars with equivalent buffs without Mirror balance?

      1c. You buff some other way to counter the Mortars, but then that means buffing an extra tool in this interaction so the counters to that tool then will need to be buffed to keep up (in particular soft counters). This, however, still leaves the issue of the WM mortar being in a state of "WTF am I even here for" until that AB mortar is off the field.


2. What about the general target of that AB mortar? A flak 88 has 100 range and it already susceptible to mortar fire, now a mortar has 96m of range. What about mgs/atgs? How do we buff them to deal with the meta with Super mortars? If we buffs those things to a level to compete with those super mortars, what about the stuff those things counter?



This all exacerbates the basic issue I had at the beginning of simply taking people or parts of peoples companies out of the game without even getting a chance to play with them. "Everything is op, nothing is" philosophy simply doesn't work because it exacerbates inherent flaws in the EIR system with a giant magnifying glass. Much like Trump, its a simple sounding solution with very little thought put into the consequences of the solution.

I felt a good philosophy was always to avoid range buffs because they completely change encounters (suddenly you now have a sniper that cant be countersniped or a mortar that cant be countermortared etc) and ideally avoid stat buffs in general because they're just bland and don't add anything on the surface though they can stack up with other bonuses for disastrous and (often-times) invisible effect.

I can't say I agree with the approach of adding a cost to these kind of bonuses in the upper doctrine unlock table as the go-to fix like is the case currently. They do in principal help balance things out by ascribing a cost to each benefit, but it only makes the fact that they are bland and unimaginative buffs even more apparant (I now have to pay for them on every single unit and even a 20 MP cost quickly adds up to a few infantry squads less for often a very neglible benefit on the field) This in contrast with unlocks from the bottom table that actually add new playstyles, abilities, etc. for the price.


My biggest beef with the doctrines currently is just how messy it's all become. The bottom unlocks have like a gazillian units, often with one unlock giving access to a long list of units while the top ones just 3/4 filler abilities that only serve to confuse players with walls of unintelligible text and subsequent truckload of new unlocks filling up people's company builders. I'd argue a return to simplicty, not just for the sake of new players but also for the sake of the game - I'm not against the "salad" bar approach per se, though I do miss some of the distinct pathways each doctrine used to offer. If we insist on a salad bar approach; get rid of the filler abilities, spread out the meaningful unlocks across the two tables (or even better make it just one table, though it'd still be good to have some sort of logic to the way every unlock is listed) and make sure that every unlock is actually wortwhile, adds something to the game AND perhaps even more importantly discernible (nothing worse than powerful invisible buffs)

In addition, if we keep the approach of having a cost associated with every unlock, I think we may want to consider increasing the total MP pool. Right now the 8k MP pool feels very restrictive to field a balanced company and make use of all the unlocks.

I'm not sure I understand your concerns.

1 - Buffs are bland and unimaginative and associating costs to them is only a bandaid fix.

2 - Lower unlocks unlock too many units.

3 - Upper unlocks are too descriptive--we should make descriptions easier to understand by simplifying them (i.e. Tank Reapers - ATGs gain better penetration and range).

4 - Being able to mix and match doctrines is bad; we should revert to rigid trees.

5 - If we continue to make players pay resources for unlocks, we should increase the MP pool (which in effect does the same thing as making everything free, relative to the old system).

Do I have that right? I would like to point out that it took almost two years of work with a team of 2-3 of us to get us to where we are now. To demand basically reverting the entire system and overhauling it with "no stat buffs", "no prices", and "simpler descriptions and effects" would drown me--not a team, but me--in another year or more of work. What you ask is functionally impossible.

Ya..... so about the Tank legacy thing.

Tank recognized the mod was dead and nothing short of a complete overhaul was going to change it. The problem was, the mod was coded in such a way that only a small percentage of the mod can actually be changed. Everything you find as cluttered and non-intuitive is a direct result of the limitations of the coding within the mod/launcher.

The game design presented would have been very successful if it was implemented as originally designed. The original doctrine design was to have very impactful, meaningful doctrine choices - at a cost. The down fall started when people started qq about additional costs before anything was even created. The design failed at the speculation of issues, not actual issues.

The repair system would have ( and still can be ) very successful if a relative cost was associated to repair units. The value of repairing vehicles is grossly understated and has resulted in under valuing the repair unit. The cost of repair should be valued closely to the value of having a repaired vehicle.

Anyway - glad to see the mod limping along still and I am encouraged by the work Volks continues to do. There have been very few people in this mod who earned enough trust to have the keys to the office - good job Volks!

can i have a set of keys daddy.

Also

while not everyone agrees with the changes implemented during tanks time at the helm, they did bring life back to an otherwise stagnate decade old mod.

Who has power to drop a banhammer now?

I do.

As do I.

Wagglepuss is always watching.

Can you ban Unknown an EIRRmod with message “your ban expires SoonTM?”

That would be hilarious.

Ok, so, with my internet being degraded to this new-fangled technology of WiFi after builders fucked everything up, I've got some spare time, as I ain't bringing the glorious volks horde to victory till my mainframe and cat 6 cable are back online.

I thought I'd whip out the old abacus and quill and get to do some writing.

 First off - thanks to Tank for keeping the mod going. Many of us noveaux-riche fellows who made a name for ourselves in the past 5 years may be tempted to now scoff and point at the poor, old, construction inclined geezer and haughtily declare that we could easily keep the mod running off our paychecks without even noticing it. Just a quick reminder - 5 years ago we weren't in a position to do that, and Tank kindly offered his own money to keep things ticking along. For years and years. He's now handed off the reins, so if you still feel like you can support EiR without even noticing the expense - do it now. The donation button isn't going to click itself.

As for "Tank's Legacy", here are my thoughts:

1) The New Doctrine Design (No more trees, freeform picks).

This to me is a bit of a double-edged thing. On the one hand, additional choice is rarely a bad thing for the player, and the movement to free-form picks would be something I'd shout from the rooftops about. However, this comes into two main issues that have overall marred the experience we, as a playerbase, could have received:
a) The doctrines were never re-designed to make all choices equivalent. You still have trash/marginal picks, as well as no-brainers.
b) The way the launcher is hard-coded means that T4s DO have more "cost" compared to a T1, regardless of it being free-form. If you pick 3 T4s, you only get 1 T1. Compare that to 3 T3s, 2 T2s and 3 T1s.

The two issues above mean that, despite the good intentions and clear reasoning as to how it could make the game better, the overall effect has been lacking. Despite overall enjoying the idea of moving towards free-form choices, I would actually recommend to go back to limited choice under these circumstances. The old "double T3s or a T4" methodology worked - for better or worse, and the community had a lot of experience with it. There is a lot of untapped design knowledge that could be tapped by employing the community to return to this methodology, and allow for a plethora of different playstyles in each doctrine.. if the doctrines are designed well.

2) Inf - Armour - Mobility

Although I understand the general reasoning behind this change, I am not a fan. It is too restrictive design wise, and it is no surprise the doctrines have drifted rather rapidly from these stated goals - probably as soon as the first draft. By definition they restrict choice, and stifle creativity, as the boxes that the "doctrines" were put in to were not only highly restrictive, but uniform across factions. I do believe it has granted one positive for us as a community, however - it's got us to think a bit more about what doctrines could be. Rather than, say, SE being the infantry rapist, and TH doing nothing but destroying tanks, it did force us to rethink how these doctrines work. This push, I believe, is something that should not be thrown out with the bathwater if EiR reverts this design decision.

3) Global Vehicular Changes

Overall.. I think the sight range has been good, as it encourages higher levels of combined arms play, but the slow-down in accel/deccel has been a shame. It is not just 10% as Dire implies in the OP - it's a rather more significant 0.75 modifier across the board - and it has hurt overall tank micro play. Perhaps unintentionally, it has actually buffed tanks like the tiger, relative to the P4 - as the difference in maneouvrability is less pronounced. I do believe the sight nerf should remain, but the Acc/Decc nerf should be reverted to bring about more exciting tank play.

4) Heavy Tank Toggle

I see why it was done, but I disagree with the approach. Although I love EiR for it's micro-heavy bits of fun, having to toggle the ammo-type on a heavy simply is not. It adds nothing for the user, and it adds nothing for the enemy. It's simply an annoyance to get past. I would much rather revert to the original guns and priced in the heavy tanks more in line with their performance - particularly from a manpower and munitions perspective. The issue was never that a tiger/sherping was too powerful. It was always the support that you could still field alongside.

5.) The new Repair system

I kind of like it from a balance point of view.. but I don't like it gameplay wise. The old system allowed for more aggressive armoured builds, while also creating a risk/reward mechanic for the armour player. Do you repair your 50% pershing to full, or will you risk one more pak shot before you piss off? Do you repair at the front and risk getting your nice tank ganked with no way to stop the slaughter? Or do you go back to the spawn? The old system created more questions and more decisions - all of which were meaningful. So I would like to go back to the old system overall - though with the caveat that moving repairs should probably just never happen again.

6.) The new offmap system

Great general idea, but terrible execution. And not due to the fault of the idea, or the coders. There simply seems to be no way to both make people pay for off-maps, and not tie them to a shitty unit that is extremely annoying to use. Overall, I do think I would prefer for this to be reverted. Off-map guy scouting is infuriating as hell from a gameplay perspective and off-maps are sorely missed in the recent shift to OMG style doom-fort gameplay that appears to be taking hold. I would absolutely recommend going back to the old system. I miss recon runs, and I miss rocket Arties. I miss strafing runs and bombing runs. I see the reasoning to move to a cost-based system.. but the tech isn't there to make it workable. Until that can be resolved, I'd rather stick with what we had that made the game more fun and dynamic.

7.) Specialization of Light Vehicles

Overall - I think this has been great. Clear roles for vehicles is great. My main issue though, is perhaps the slight OVER-specialisation that we've had. I would like M8s to still mess up light vehicles, and do damage to tanks from the rear. Equally, I do not see why pumas should bounce every shot from an M8. Tweaking the system so that light vehicles can fight each other relatively equally would be a good change - and I do not see an issue with toning down the AI firepower of these vehicles to compensate. Overall I think it would add one more, better-balanced tool in the tool-kit of every EiR player.

8.) The PE redesign (4 man pgrens, LV pop bonuses, Cheaper IHTs)

Honestly, great change. PE is a great faction nowadays. The Cheaper IHTs with no MG has worked very well - the only thing that saddens me is the apparent disappearance of the original IHT.

Not sure where you're getting the 25% nerf from.

(https://s8.postimg.cc/hcj4pfbgl/accdecc.png)

Not sure why we can't have more fun buffs without any range buffs at all?  I completely agree range buffs need to go.  96 range mortars are obviously dumb.  That being said, 2.5% buffs don't excite anyone. 

With regards to your concern that you win games before they start in the company building screen...honestly my answer is so what? Building companies is the most fun part, and finding a build that works for you and is fun is great!  No build no matter what can face any type of company and have a shot.  That is absurd.  If you build an anti-support weapon company you obviously aren't going to be dominating against heavy tanks.  If the enemy in a 3v3 shows up with a KT and 4 tigers, sure, you're screwed.  This is never going to change.  But with careful coordination with your teammates, you can eliminate the paks supporting the tanks and other weapons and let your teammates try to knock em out.  Making your company REALLY good at one thing is both fun and encourages teamwork.  Not sure why this is a bad thing at all...

@Dire

My bad, thought it had been 0.75. Is what one gets when they rely on their old, cobweb dusted memories too much. The 0.9 reduction still has a larger effect than one might think, as it in effect adds 11% to the time to reach top speeds or slow to a halt, and you will need to cover more ground to achieve either full speed or a full stop. This is especially noticeable if trying to kite enemy infantry.

I also agree with Crazy on winning and losing games before they even start. The freedom to build companies in the way that you want to build them will always come at the cost of sometimes getting it wrong, and building a company that just isn't very effective. Or a company that is not prepared for what your opponent is going to bring to the field. If you want to remove the possibility of people losing games before they even start due to company builds the only way to do this is by removing choice from players in the first place, and setting everyone on pre-built, "balanced" companies. I think we can all agree that such an approach would go against the very fabric of what EiR is supposed to be about.

What we should be looking out for instead are the units that when chose en-masse out-perform most other company builds, and still give a beat-down to companies that, in theory, should be hard counters. Then we can play around and tinker with these specific units until they perform in line with their price and popcap (looking at you, Mr. Wirblewind).

EIR definitely has its best chance to be succesful in years thanks to Volks being in charge now.

It's like the end of the frozen winter in the Chronicles of Narnia... hope is returning to the land.

From a gameplay standpoint, there's lots to look forward to. Thoughts on some of the changes that were ill-concieved and which dumbed down, slowed down, or overall OMG-ified EiR in recent years (that I know Volks is working to correct now that he is el capitain).

High level, EiR used to be a fast paced, aggressive game where battles between well matched teams would swing like a pendulum and typically mobility and abillity to react to sudden changes and new threats meant victory.

By contrast, the game now feels much slower, more plodding, campy and tends not to be as punishing for players who like to set up nice lines of support weapons and who maybe struggle with actions per minute. That's not to say that style of gameplay is inherently bad, it's just more lethargic. And it is arguably very different than what made EiR so compelling in some of its better years back when EiRMod was around.

Some touchpoints:

1. The New Offmap system

Slowed down the game and added unnecessary clumsiness to temporary buffs and artillery etc. I'm not a huge fan of damage dealing offmaps in general, but even worse is adding in essentially free (resource cost) scouting units that serve no other purpose than to slow down and complicate gameplay. Everything that adds unneccessary complexity inherently slows the game down and this one is a prime contender.

2. The Repair System

The new system never made much sense (dedicated repair squads who can literally do nothing else other than soak up pop and sit on the field idle inbetween repairs). It doesn't promote fast, momentum based combat and decision making. It's even less logical than the OMG system (which is bad enough) in that at least there you aren't ending up with single-purpose nothing units that just wait around on the map. The repair kit system was not perfect, but it at least brought with it a decent risk vs reward and made the prospect of infinitely repairing the same tank 5-6 times impossible.

This system was not a good idea from the start and reverting or abandoning it may bring a lot of the mojo back to the mod's gameplay.

3. Individual Unit Upgrades

This OMG approach to upgrades has arguably contributed to armies being smaller, games being shorter (for that reason), and for the mod being considerably more byzantine and confusing for new players. Not to say that new players were really much of an issue under the management of the past few years but with Volks in charge and a Steam release on the horizon there's a good chance we'll start to see them returning in the future. No better time to greatly simplify and streamline doctrinal unit buffs.

4. PE Changes

All in all, these aren't too shabby. Probably one of the good changes from the past few years was making IHT's cheap, pgrens a bit more feasible as mainline infantry and overall helping PE live up to their fast and fluid promise. But a few changes (like giving every doc a sniper, or giving some docs MG's/support weapons for some weird reason) were a step in the wrong direction. Also the inherrent campiness/slowness of the mod's gameplay at the moment due to other changes across the board has somewhat mitigated the value of the PE mobility concept.


5. Heavy Tank Toggle

This was a really nonsensical concept from day 1 (it added nothing meaningful or positive to overall gameplay) but everyone kind of knew it then and it seems pretty unanimous that everyone knows it now. Good riddance to it.

6. Freeform Doc Pics

This is great.

7. Global Vehicular Changes

Seemed more based on an individual not enjoying having to micro and be prepared for vehicles (aka how the mod's gameplay overall got dumbed down and slowed down to cater to slower players) than rooted in what actually promoted good gameplay. Should be undone to be honest, and I say that as a guy who typically runs less AT on the field than he should and doesn't use vehicle heavy companies often.



Overall, with Volks I think we're in good hands going forward. In the end what he's doing with Steam, his activity, lack of ego and genuine desire to work hard is probably going to make the next year or more the most interesting and potential rich period EiR has seen in a long, long time.

Heavy tank toggles will be dead in a patch or two.

Repairs and offmaps are on the table for a change/reversion.

Squad upgrades from doctrines, on the other hand, are not. I fully support the idea of paying moneys for upgrades. Lambast that choice if you wish, but this is one point I refuse to budge on. Paying for your buffs makes them a conscious choice rather than a no-brainer.

Know that I'm taking a chainsword to the current iteration of the infantry-mobility-armor doctrinal formula. No, I'm not taking input or drafts from the wider populace. Lothen and Myst have my ear, otherwise it's more than likely I'll ignore your input. Sorry.

Why would you select the doctrine if you don't intend on using it?  Obviously its a conscious choice.  But alright

Not really. On my AB company for example, I dont use pathfinders on all my AB units. Sure, 7.5m of moving sight is great since it lets you self scout anything you'd really want your AB to do, but the 20mp cost is pretty steep so I only put it on my RR squads. Same for the 50% moving acc bonus only being on my carbine squads.

Right but you've already paid a cost to pick that doctrinal selection and not something else, why do you have to pay twice? 

Just to say i didn't mean to criticise the steps EIR has taken and the excellent work Tank and now you are doing to keep this mod alive. I'm really grateful for that, as is everyone here I'm sure and I'm by no means advocating for a drastic overhaul. Just wanted to highlight some of the areas in which I feel there's some room for improvement still.

1, 2, 3, 4. I think the salad bar approach is fine really. If we ever get a chance we should ideally just change the graphics so it's clearer that there's no longer pathways and a distinction between the top and bottom table. I would suggest spreading some of the unit unlocks out, to replace some of the more bland stat buffs. And with all doctrine unlocks having a cost, there's no reason why we cant have more powerful stat buffs at least - either permanently or on cooldown (though again I just want to stress it's really important these buffs are visible in game, i.e. either through a special icon or a clear ability effect indicator)

5. I think increasing the base resources somewhat is easy to do - i seem to remember there was a link to do just that in the SQL. Worth considering at least. Perhaps from say 8k to 9K starting manpower. In the old days we also used to have resource bonuses on top of that, but it's just better to have everyone with equal resources from the get-go anyway

Beyond that, with a possible steam launch ahead of us, it's also really worth thinking through all changes from a "new player accessibility" point of view. That was never EIR's strong point to begin with but if we want to ensure the mod's longevity we definitely want to ensure all game systems and launcher functions are as easy, straightforward and streamlined as can be.

I think that's fair given that it's not really a big issue like the offmaps/repairs things.

With that said the squad upgrades does have an impact on newer players (it's more complicated and requires a lot more pre-game and in-game preparation/memory) so there might be merit to simplifying or streamlining it in some way. More experienced players don't really have much difficulty with it for sure, but they aren't really the problem.

Also i've noticed when you have lots of stacking buffs or upgrades on single units it seems to drastically raise the risk of some abilities' icons blocking out others etc. Which makes sense -- I don't even want to imagine how complicated checking every single combination on every single unit that has upgrades might be for conflicts/overlap in their icons.

Perhaps there's  some way to strike the happy balance between it costing resources to get upgrades on units and not having it be so byzantine and inaccessible for new/medium skill recruits who will surely start arriving when the Steam release happens. Especially when you get into thosse doctrines who can have 3+ special upgrades on even just baseline inf.

RE: Offmaps

What if we just limited it to one offmap guy that you can purchase all your offmaps on. Once he gets called on field, you gain the offmaps for use in the old manner (ability bar, unlimited range). It would keep a resource cost on offmaps but make it less finnicky than the 80 range limitation and the multiple free scouting units.

Of course, you still end up with the extra step of putting the offmaps on the radioman, so that may be in conflict with making the game more streamlined for new players. I guess it really boils down to how on board people are with offmaps having a resource cost to them.

Ideally you'd just buy the off-maps for munitions in a seperate box in the company builder in the launcher. Technically possible at least, but I suppose we have no one who can do launcher code. It needs to have a cost to be in line with other doctrine abilities, otherwise they will be a no-brainer unlock.

A single radioman solution would still be a bit of a pain to deal with but is still an improvement over what we have currently at least.

Or, perhaps a more creative solution - what if selecting an off-map doctrine unlock would just reduce your overall munitions in the launcher by a certain amount? Not sure how difficult that would be to code, but could be a more elegant solution - provided it's clearly communicated to the players.

^

All of those ideas sound a lot better than the current back alley chaotic circus of free, 1 pop, scouting units who can pick up and use weapons and take multiple sniper shots to kill.

They're on the chopping block for the newest patch. 55 HP, Infantry armor, no Heroic crits. They'll gain crits and become armed at Vet4, but lose their ability to pick up slot items. Gives incentive not to throw them away, and makes them easy to kill.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r3hTwsvJV_A

Dat shab  :D :D :D

TA delet

You can’t delete shit you never gave it to me you cheap devlead. Steven give me my TA u promised to me you fuck

https://streamable.com/2b4ir

Clip of possible offmap rework

Key points

1. Offmaps would still be purchased
2. Not available until the officer comes onto the field
3. Once on the field, they are tied directly to the player. If the officer dies/retreats, they remain useable
4. Would allow hardcap of just one offmap officer, so no longer multiple free scouting units
5. Would prevent ability to call in multiple singular offmaps simultaneously

If even 1 free scouting unit is an issue, you could hard tie 4 scouting runs or MI's to the officer and give him a base cost of 40 Munitions or something like that. It would both stop the free scout issue as well as open up a doctrine slot for more interesting unlocks.

Pretty neat! But isn't the unit kind of redundant at that point?

Perfect, exactly how i would want it to work.

Unkn0wn - the unit is slightly redundant, but it's a necessary redundancy to be able to give a cost to offmaps due to launcher limitations.

I think we first need to test the proposed changes being, 50hp soldier armor units.

what about aeros legacy

Good shit legacy imo