Brit blobs

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[tank130]

In a very small community like this one, I think LOLOO, Wind and Ray using the strat is all the data that is really necessary to be honest.

It clearly shows an issue with the balance and most people want to avoid playing against it. Asking more community members to use a strat that appears broken is counterproductive to the overall health of the community.

[CrazyWR]

Heroic charge needs to get toned down, probably moved to something equal to sprint.

Officers need to be reduced to one man squads again, to reduce survivability.

Finally, the lit-up timer needs to be increased or the ability needs removed altogether.  I'm in favor of the second solution.

[GrayWolf]

is also an unlock.
WM Defensive officer gets foo mortar barrage, and also is unlock.

Captain gets FOO, which is better and also isn't an unlock

[TheWindCriesMary]

It's certainly not broken. Definitely effective and once the super unbalanced strats in the mod get adjusted down it will be the next in line for tweaking as well for sure.

It's very effective if used right and if there are the right circumstances. If you accumulate about 1200 mp of tommies and officers and about 500muni on the field, you will hands down beat any infantry or support weapon you encounter -- as you would expect with such a colossal and risky investment.

With that being said, because basically no one uses this strat (LOLOO very infrequently, maybe 1/10 of his games and Ray just starting using it regularly in the past few days) we have almost zero data on if this strat is outperforming its cost, or performing at its cost. Is it outperforming officially broken strats like TR, AB smoke, Elite armour grens? Is it outperforming in even games as well as uneven ones? Is it outperforming versus its direct counters, or against larger resource/doc cost blobs fielded by axis? These are all questions we don't have answers to yet.

One important thing we know for sure about EiR, if something is broken basically everyone and their mother starts using it. WM officers, Tiger Aces/SPs, 5 man g43s. We are a community (mostly) of min/maxers, and when dozens of people are using heat rounds, elite armour grens, TR, AB smoke etc. but only 1 (maybe 2) guys using brit blobs with incremental accuraccy... that's a red flag that she isn't the prettiest girl at the ball.

We have some work to do fine tuning the brit blob, that is definitely true. But in a mod with some tremendously broken units and strats running rampant and being used by dozens of players at once, we can see in the play data this would rank as a defcon 3 in a world of defcon 1s.  Once the far more devestating strats and units (elite armour grens, TR, Airborne smoke spam and SP/TA) are adjusted to be rational I have a suspicion that the Brit blob will move up to be a dominant defcon 1 strat instead of a 3 as it is at the moment.

I agree with Crazy 100% that Heroic charge getting toned down is a great start.

[TheWindCriesMary]

Heroic charge needs to get toned down, probably moved to something equal to sprint.

Officers need to be reduced to one man squads again, to reduce survivability.

Finally, the lit-up timer needs to be increased or the ability needs removed altogether.  I'm in favor of the second solution.

Having tried the new officer squads I'm inclined to agree with you. 3 men is way too surviveable. And they get decent dps too. They are just vet accumulating monsters on both Axis and allies.

As for Lit-Up, i don't know if you know (it was under the radar for non brit users) but lit up basically does nothing but reveal cloaked units in an area now (the same as the Vamp flare). It doesn't do anything else at the moment like increase received accuracy for units in the area. With that in mind I wouldn't recommend changing the Lit Up timer. I don't really know anyone who uses it atm or buys it for their officers.

As for Heroic charge, agree with you 100%. That and Blitz need to be seriously looked at because they really are too powerful.

[tank130]

One important thing we know for sure about EiR, if something is broken basically everyone and their mother starts using it.

I agree to a point. The reality is the majority of the community has never really preferred playing Brits. There has always been a few that prefer them, and even a few that have dabbled in them. But a quick scan of the SQL shows us that American companies far surpass Brit companies.

The fact that a couple of high skilled players are now gravitating towards Brit blob play should be a pretty good indication there may be an issue. I think we also need to consider not everyone is inclined to learn how to play Brits just to abuse a potential balance issue.
It is much easier to use the other broken mechanics in another faction they are familiar with.

Just because there are other broken mechanics is no reason to push this potentially broken mechanic to the back of the bus. All balance issues should be dealt with quickly.


Are brit blobs only a problem because of vet bonuses? Or is it doctrine bonuses, or a bit of both.
Is the survivability of the officer really the problem or the bonuses he gets after vetting?

[aeroblade56]

All balance issues should be dealt with quickly.

that sense of humor.
 

[Hicks58]

I'm sure Myst will be on top of that ASAP...

...Right?

[TheWindCriesMary]

The fact that a couple of high skilled players are now gravitating towards Brit blob play should be a pretty good indication there may be an issue.

I would 100% agree with the conclusion if the observations leading to it were happening, but I don't think we have that data yet. Here's what I think we know up to this point:

a) I use Brit blob regularly and actively as my main allied coy atm. I've been experimenting trying to make this strat work (to mixed results until the past week or so) for several weeks.
b) Ray has played (that I've seen) maybe 1-3 times with a brit blob in the past week out of many games he has played.
c) LOLOO used to play a brit blob back in the day but now rarely if ever plays it in favour of his Mando/RE brit coys. I'd guess 5-10% of his brit games are on his blob coy these days.

These are underwhelming numbers and seem to suggest that high skilled players really aren't gravitating toward the blob at the moment. Especially not compared to the mass exodus to PE and Ranger/AB centric strats that has been happening over the past few months. We're talking orders of magnitude here.

I think we also need to consider not everyone is inclined to learn how to play Brits just to abuse a potential balance issue.
It is much easier to use the other broken mechanics in another faction they are familiar with.

This is a good point about preferring to stay within their own factions that they are more comfortable with. That seems very likely to me.

With that being said, I don't think we have an indication that the brit blob is actually "broken". Very effective if used right in the right conditions, but extremely poor versus its counters (like ISTs, artillery, mass supression (especially) once the heroic charge is used, snipers, LVs etc.)

Something is only broken if it can not only earn vastly more than its cost on a regular basis, even in even matched games, or if its intended counters are not very effective versus it (as is the case with the TA). It's also broken if almost any player can do well with it regardless of skill or experience.  

My brit blob coy was the laughing stock of the EiR community for a long time. It could do fine in low level games of mixed teams but in stack battles it would consistently be demolished. Slowly over the course of dozens of games I learned how to refine it and get better using it and now it can perform in tough battles. Sometimes well, sometimes not well. Sometimes just average.

What's going to tell us, I believe, if Brit blobs are broken (something I'm very confident they aren't) instead of just in need of some minor tweaks once the other parts of the mod are adjusted is if it shows itself to be extremely effective for all kinds of players and in all kinds of games.

[TheWindCriesMary]

I'm sure Myst will be on top of that ASAP...

...Right?

He will. Because I need to believe that or else the only alternative is deep, unfathomable, cavernous sadness.

[Hicks58]

Last full patch that wasn't a hotfix was May 16th.

"Standard" routine was to have something ready every two weeks (Proper, not hotfix, those were on the fly stuff). "Ideally" a patch could be put out every single day back to back so long as the Balance Lead keeps spewing out notes and the coders are willing to make them happen. "Realistically" It's completely down to when the Balance Lead feels like putting together notes and when the coders can be arsed to stitch it together.

The Balance Lead will always know what's RGD, what's SQL, what's SCAR and what's Launcher, so patch notes will always be realistically prepared for who is ready to do them (Read: Niko for RGD/SQL, Xeo for SCAR, EiRRMod for Launcher). Patches can easily be shipped out with any of these elements present or missing, so if for example EiRRMod was snoozing for a while, the RGD/SQL stuff could still easily be put out there.

I could go into detail of exactly how long the department of organising Balance Lead notes and coding them takes, but I don't think that's quite necessary at this point.

Btw, 80-90% of recent/current issues are RGD/SQL work from what I can see, and from what I know Niko's been around.

So... TL;DR version Wind? Incoming deep, unfathomable, cavernous sadness.

Unless of course somebody would like to prove me wrong on that prediction, in which case it's something I'd happily be wrong about as it means I'm totally off the mark and we've literally got the next patch on our doorstep.

[TheWindCriesMary]

[aeroblade56]

vote hiks back into office cuz myst dereliction of duty

[CrazyWR]

Having tried the new officer squads I'm inclined to agree with you. 3 men is way too surviveable. And they get decent dps too. They are just vet accumulating monsters on both Axis and allies.

As for Lit-Up, i don't know if you know (it was under the radar for non brit users) but lit up basically does nothing but reveal cloaked units in an area now (the same as the Vamp flare). It doesn't do anything else at the moment like increase received accuracy for units in the area. With that in mind I wouldn't recommend changing the Lit Up timer. I don't really know anyone who uses it atm or buys it for their officers.

As for Heroic charge, agree with you 100%. That and Blitz need to be seriously looked at because they really are too powerful.

I was under the impression lit up still gave negative cover to whatever is in its area.  If that is not the case, which I'm still questioning, then sure, its fine, but the other two changes I'd like to see soon.


I think with just those two changes, the brit blob will be back to a fine level of balance.  I think a lot of the issue resides in the combination of vetted up officers being easily obtainable and the ridiculousness of heroic charge.  Lit up, if just showing areas in the area selected, is perfectly fine.  If it provides negative cover though, the time needs to be like 4 minutes or something.

[Hicks58]

Lit up does 30m sight and cloak detection for 20 seconds (That's a 30m no cloaking zone).

Handy for scouting, and fucking up any Sniper's day - Which should be a pretty welcome addition as a Brit.

Any combat modifiers besides the sight and cloak detection were removed due to it being horrifically broken.

It's also dirt cheap too, which is nice.

vote hiks back into office cuz myst dereliction of duty

No. I lost my passion for it, I don't want it again, and I heavily recommended the shit out of Myst because I was confident he'd do a better job than I was doing in my motivationally deprived state.

[TheWindCriesMary]

If you could just refind your motivation for like 5 minutes to fix the TA (and the SP to a lesser extent) I would build you a statue.

We're living in Uganda conditions right now in the mod under the brutal tyranny of these two units.

[aeroblade56]

If you could just refind your motivation for like 5 minutes to fix the TA (and the SP to a lesser extent) I would build you a statue.

We're living in Uganda conditions right now in the mod under the brutal tyranny of these two units.

[Hicks58]

If you could just refind your motivation for like 5 minutes to fix the TA (and the SP to a lesser extent) I would build you a statue.

We're living in Uganda conditions right now in the mod under the brutal tyranny of these two units.

To quote myself previously in the face of unreasonable requests:

"I'll get right on that."

Your energy may be better spent on somebody in a position of power.

[XIIcorps]

Lets just replace everyones guns with walkie talkies.

[NightRain]

I do have to repeat myself.

Myst is currently in a hectic life situation which involves finding a job and a place to live. Both which seem to be getting into order and he'll return shortly.

British Officers are getting a change and a rework.