R005 Patch Notes

It's out! Go grab it in the updater now, free of charge! Myst will handle the patchnotes this time around and that's a job I'm happy to get rid off! As always, there might be a slight delay on launcher side impementation (New upgrades/price changes).

Quote from: Mysthalin on May 16, 2014, 11:45:08 am

Hi everyone, the long awaited first patch from your new Balance Lead is finally here.

The first part of the notes below details the changes made. The second part of the post will explain why the changes have been made. When you read the patch-log, if at any point you see something you think "what the hell?" at - go ahead, scroll down and read the appropriate rationale. I don't expect to have made everyone happy with every single change. Some changes you will like, some of them you will hate - but regardless of the change, a short explanation as to why it was made will be available to you.

Changes:

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General and Bug Fix:

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Mando Jeep, US HT and WM HT - main machine guns disabled. Purchase for 25 munitions re-enables.

20mm Cannons (Puma 20mm, Armored Car, Wirblewind, Flakvierling) - long range penetration changed from 0.15 to 0.66.

Armour Mid T4 Sherman HE shells fixed.

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US

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T17 - Gun reworked to be less "stuttery". Still rather luck reliant. Penetration and damage versus most light vehicles increased (should not bounce off bikes and kettens anymore). Rear shots against light vehicles now penetrate more often, instead of less often. Penetration at range increased.

Airborne explosives: - upgrade unlocks two different mutually exclusive mines. Same mines as now - one can only be triggered by tanks, the other only by infantry.

Smoke grenades - changed to 3 uses. Cost increased to 20 munitions.

Airborne top T3 - Amount of smoke dropped reduced.

Airborne top T4 - callin timers set to 20s instead of 10s.

T2 Armour Bot Mobility - Light Vehicle capping moved to Armour Bottom T4. T2 replaced with 15% accel/deccel buff to all tanks and vehicles. Accel/deccel buff in T4 reduced to 20% to tanks, 15% to light vehicles.

T4 Airborne Bot - Crocodile Churchill Armour removed. This will be replaced with:
"Replaced with AB support team callins parachuting after a 10s delay regardless of previous call-in timers."

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CW

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AVRE - cost to 300 FU, popcap to 9. Cooldown on AVRE shell to 45 seconds. Base range set to 45 from 40.

Heroic Charge - using it now makes your units take 20% extra received accuracy.

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PE

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Regular Hotchkiss - Price reduced to 70 FU.

Upgun Hotchkiss - Price increased to 90 FU.

Wirblewind -
Damage to 20-35.
Incremental accuracy reduced to 1.03 from 1.06.
Accuracy (L/M/S) changed to - 0.25/0.5/0.65
Suppression (L/M/S) changed to - 0.025/0.02/0.01
Scatter increased slightly.
Cost to 160 FU.

T4 Luft Bot - Ability now affects infantry without the need for veteran sergeants.

P4 IST - lockdown to become vet-free. Lockdown reduces range by 5m

Luftwaffe Boys AT - "Crew Shocked" ability granted (Identical to brits Boys AT). Price reduced to 75 mu.

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WM

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StuG - popcap to 8.

Goliath - price increased to 20 Fuel. Complete rework of the unit pending next patch.

Defensive officer - all current aura buffs removed.
Replace with a use-based aura ability (35m range) with 1.2 acc, 1.25 dmg. Lasts 20 seconds, recharge 120s.
Defensive positions T3 adds -10% rec acc on use.
Senior officers allows the ability to affect vehicles.
Artillery experts makes the aura add +5 range to all weapons for duration.

KT - speed to 3. Vet-based speed buffs returned (1.15 at vet 2 and a further 1.15 at vet 3).

Stormtroopers - Elite armour removed. Cost changed to 280 MP.
Stormtroopers - 4x STG upgrade adds old moving cloak back to unit. Cost to 120 MU.

Brummbarr - cost to 260 FU. Changes to weapon identical to AVRE.

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Explanations

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Jeep/Halftrack change - This change is to prevent extreme spam issues that allow a person to allow to use jeeps/HTs as anti-inf while having a boatload of munitions to buy HHAT and ATGs with. It might not seem like halftracks and jeeps are horrible things to deal with - but they are extremely pop-efficient and not exactly easy to deal with if you are not prepared for it.

20mm change - This change is merely a fix of a long-standing relic "oddity". I do not expect it to cause much of a shift in terms of balance, but it may become relevant if some future changes to the 20mm are deemed necessary and go ahead.

Armour Mid T4 - Bug Fix. No other way to slice it. Enjoy your HE shermans again, they might not last long!

T17 - although a good and powerful unit it rarely sees the light of day. This is probably partly to do with the AT heavy environment that makes going for heavier options more viable, but more importantly - this expensive unit is currently too narrow in its role to warrant its cost. The rework to how it cooldowns and reloads should make it a bit more intuitive to use, while it's anti-vehicle capabilities have not been upped by an extreme margin. Only really enough not to get owned by a 20mm puma over the 2 years it takes for these babies to kill each other.

Airborne explosives - I am not generally a fan of mainline infantry having mines - but it seems to work fairly well in Tank Hunters with the (expensive) Teller mines that serve only one use. Perhaps splitting the mine into two, mutually exclusive upgrades that only target one type of target will make the upgrade manageable in terms of how spammy it is, while still allowing for some interesting play from AB players who like to disrupt enemy supply lines.

Smoke grenades - As an avid user of smoke grenades myself I can see they are problematic. 15 munitions for 4 uses essentially allows the user to get it on every single squad and keep throwing them regardless of need and without much thought. Reducing the amount of uses and increasing the cost should help make use of smoke grenades a bit more tactical. If this proves to be insufficient more work can always be done.

Airborne Top 3 and Top T4 - At the end of the day these are cool abilities. However, a single called in squad dropped 3 mortar barrages worth of smoke over a large area, spread out over a good amount of time that made defending against the callins extremely difficult. Seeing as airborne callins do not suffer from incremental callin timers this combined with the T4 to create a near impossible-to-counter strategy of constant smoke bombardment supplied with instant capping units. A single player could hold off an entire map, given that it is small enough, and this was not OK. With the changes it should still be possible to keep up an aggressive, high-intensity playstyle, but not one that lets you simply call in a squad every 10 seconds to deny the enemy the ability to cap.

Airborne Bottom T4 -Lets face it, crocodiles synergise well with airborne as is. There is very little reason to provide more of an incentive in this synergy, and the crocodile armour on crocodiles is just a bit too much. I personally would prefer T4s being specialisations in certain tasks, rather than the "do everything in a bland manner" snore-fests. The change should keep it more in line with the doctrine's general "utility" theme that it seems to suggest. Largely a placeholder, as I would like to rework the T4 from the ground up.

Armour Mobility T4 - The problem with greyhounds and the like capping is not the fact that they cap. It is the fact they can outfight most of the things that can catch up to them and can repair as they're taking damage in the skirmish. I am fine with the doctrine tree being about utility, speed and out-maneouvering the enemy (and, with LV capping being able to pick and chose your battles better). I am not happy with double T3 Greyhounds enjoying their repairs as they run around the battlefield, while still fighting the good fight. Splitting accel/deccel buffs makes tanks and vehicles just a bit more wieldly for most armour players, while still retaining the earlier potency in maneouverability for T4 players.

AVRE and Brummbarr - As it stands the AVRE is a very iffy unit that can sometimes, very rarely rape - but it's high pop cost does not warrant it's long cooldown on a short-range weapon. It seems to do reasonable damage when it hits enemy units right now, so I'm not too keen on playing too much with the weapon itself - but increasing it's cost and pop slightly while reducing the cooldown dramatically should make the unit a thing to consider in the average RE player's company, as opposed to being a flavour piece. The reasoning stands firm for the Brummbarr.

Heroic Charge - I have no issue with the ability allowing you to deal loads of damage alongside a sprint and suppression immunity - it gives you an exhaustion at the end, and I am happy with keeping the ability potent. I am not happy with people being able to pop it in up-front fire-fights as an I win button without any regard for cover. More received accuracy should make the ability a tactical choice, rather than a no brainer. If this is not enough, further changes might follow.

Hotchkisses - as it stands the regular hotchkiss is not a particularly great vehicle, and costing 80 Fuel without access to phase armour or a top MG is just unwarranted when compared to other LVs of its calliber (namely the greyhound). The upgun hotchkiss, on the other hand is a great tank killer, even if fragile - and there is no reason for it to cost less than the regular hotchkiss. It is the best anti-tank damage vehicle in the game, though it does melt like a snowball in hell. A slight increase in cost is not unwarranted.

Wirblewind - The reasoning for this is simple - the Wirblewind currently does not really fit any role. It deals terrible damage and minor suppression at long range, but moving into shorter range puts the unit in unwaranted danger while also pinning precisely one squad which it then can not kill due to the terrible modifiers it has versus pinned units. With these changes the unit will become a relatively reliable suppression platform at long range, and deadly if it decides to put itself at short-range danger. The changes are quite massive in this case, so I will be keeping a finger on the pulse with this one especially. I don't doubt you guys are going to be all over the tank now to help me see what we have created.

P4 IST - The unit derives most of its potential from the rapid-fire ability, and is it's main staple. You do not use it in any other capacity than to be able to do this, and if you are going Scorched Earth that is what 2 of your T3s are based upon. To make the unit lose most of its impact until it gets the arbitrary "vet 1" mark is simply a stupid hurdle that hinders a player from playing properly for exactly 1-2 games until he gets his vet 1 (and then loses the P4 ISTs due to their nature and has to grind up the vet 1 again). It reduces the use of the unit through annoyance, rather than actually making any sort of impact to its balance.

T4 Luft Bot - More of a bug-fix than an actual change, in my opinion. It might be too strong given that it was previously balanced against veteran sergeants costing manpower - but I want to tend towards stronger, rather than weaker doctrine abilities (I know, I know, except the Airborne Top T4+T3 combo, that was a bit much).

Luftwaffe Boys - Self explanatory change really. A doctrinally unlocked weapon really shouldn't be both weaker and more expensive than a freely available upgrade for another faction.

StuG - Rather simple this one - the +5 Range simply does not warrant them costing 2 extra popcap. They can be compared to Hetzers who are 10 popcap, yes; however hetzers come with 50 range, as well as far superior armour. Hopefully this will put StuGs back on the battlefield just ever so slightly.

Goliath - simply to combat spammability at the moment. An exciting future change awaits, as soon as we have our star coders finalise it. Promise you, it will be worth the wait.

Defensive Officer - The old defensive officer was very reasonably considered too strong. The buffs it gave made infantry and support weapons just absolutely demolish anything it came into contact with, and that was not OK. However, the nerf it received was far too high and defensive officers are not seen on the battlefield at all anymore. Changing it into a temporary ability that allows you to clinch a battle when you need it should make for far better gameplay and require a bit of thought before use.

KT - The unit got all that it needed as a boost from the buff to its accuracy versus infantry. It did not need a speed boost as a base, and this is one of the units that people want and like to keep alive, no matter how hard it is. Giving them a utility boost in the form of speed makes far more sense to me than buffing the base units speed and then stacking more death machine buffs onto the unit with veterancy. It is a fine unit as a base, it does not need to become significantly stronger - but it gaining more utility as it ranks up is great.

Stormtroopers - With the removal of cloak Stormtroopers needed something in return given their high manpower cost. But elite armour on 95 HP/man units is somewhat ridiculous and allows them to become more tanky than KCH. Simply reducing their price to be more in-line with other elite infantry should be a far superior decision.

Stormtrooper STG44 Cloak - Lets face it - the only reason stormtroopers were broken with cloak was because of their near-infinite anti-tank potential. As it stands the 4x StG44 upgrade offers very little extra in comparison to the 2x StG44 upgrade. They are quite expensive and are just not an attractive option. With the 4x StG44s the storms can not pick up any other weapons anyway, so we do not need to worry about people "scavenging" AT in a round-about manner and getting temporary AT squads. Should bring back a bit of that "infiltration" feel to good old Blitz.

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