A question on airborne and its uses

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[Nevyen]

This game was well played  and was fun and tough BUT i question this game on a design level.

Forefall and I faced 16 RR squads out of  53 airborne sqauds  and 5 tanks in a 2v2.

Now im not acting the sore user but im worried about the design balance of such a make up.  With out skirt upgrades on axis and so on the average player walking into this type of game will be very put off about such a approach.

Surely this is not the objective of the game.  And while I know that a dynamic pricing system is inbound in the current environment im a little concerned the effect that this will have on the new players coming into the game.   

Hats off to my opponents they used the current system to thier advantage BUT this is in my mind should not we are looking to achieve. 

battle 1708 



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[Days of War]

To their advantage? They were very obviously AT centric. 16 RR squads would cost a huge amount of munitions. Doesn't leave much for other stuff.

[Nevyen]

Thats a fair comment but 53 units all with supression removal, able to drop on the front line constantly. Constant pressure and players  can canabalise hmg and support weapons with the strength of thier fireup option and speed movement.   

What im asking for is an objective look at this don't get backed into a corner, im not saying "OMG airborne op"  the unit in itself is fine what im looking at is the doctrine design.  Anything in large numbers is spam and op so how do we balance it out to make it not op.   

[Forefall]

It's true - couldnt' stop the airborne.  And these were vet 0 mostly.  Imagine vetted!

[scrapking]

With sideskirts only being available at vet 3, it does leave a huge loophole to be taken advantage of (abused) by an Airborne player.  Indirectly the skirt / vet change was a huge buff to RRs, and to a much lesser extent, to Rangers.  Panthers and Tigers are one thing as they are not terribly hard to vet up, but Stuh, Stug, and to some extent PIV are all quite rare to see at vet 3.  You can probably count on one hand how many of those 3 combined are going to be eligible for skirts over the course of an entire war.  If I am wrong, use both hands.

If it were not such a drastic change in gameplay and balance from previous (i.e. skirts always being available), I don't think it would be an issue, except all forms of manpacked AT, and armor prices had been allegedly balanced on that prior condition.  It either requires consideration of changing the point at which you are eligible for sideskirts, or another look at the relative costs of manpacked AT, particularly Allied.  Another option would be to change the rate at which Stuh, Stug & PIV earn xp, similar to a reverse of what was done with superior Allied infantry vet by making the rate more steep.

But yes, there has been a shift in things, and players who realize it can use it to their best advantage. 

[Draygon]

When they limit Storms/KCH/Rangers/AB then people can say things about "spamming."  I really really dont understand why people have such a problem with AB, not because I myself play AB for allies but because there are soooo many counters to them.

So they fireup to get out of a suppressed or pinned state, or to get to a MG.  If they get a nade on the MG, chances are they wont kill the entire thing.  If they use it to get out of a suppressed/pinned state have a MG in place to get them as they are retreating.  Its been done to me, Ive done it to others, its not that hard.

Ostwinds backed by  MGs will tear AB up.  KCH will eat them for breakfast.  If you faced 53 squads, Im going to guess that you faced 3 AB players.  If you take into consideration the cost of AB without the cost decrease (Tier Ability) they are expensive, so they didnt have a lot left.  If you faced 16 RR squads that is about avg with 5 per player.  I myself run with 6 RRs, again expensive and doesnt leave alot of Munitions for other upgrades.

Again, this isnt because I play AB, I play Terror too and counter AB pretty readily, sounds like you guys just got out played.

[Nevyen]

draygon we faced 2 airborne players

but anyway like i said im not complaining about the loss we nearly won im wondering about the design.

[Draygon]

Im not trying to degrade you Nev, you know I like ya

But if its 2 players you faced then thats even worse.  26 AB per company is a hell of a MP sink and then if you figure in 8 recoiless....then wow they were very short elsewhere in terms of upgrades and other troops.

[asmithally]

The thing is, with 53 airborne, this meant they had 28 and 27 airborne; without the tree ability, this means they spent 9520 and 9180 manpower on them, which means they had very, very little left for anything else. This is without the T4 of course.

I don't see this as all that bad. Sure, it means your entire army is paradropped, but it's just a different game style; surely you could make an army composed of 30 stormtroopers and have an all-cloaked army.

[scrapking]

When they limit Storms/KCH/Rangers/AB then people can say things about "spamming."  I really really dont understand why people have such a problem with AB, not because I myself play AB for allies but because there are soooo many counters to them.

So they fireup to get out of a suppressed or pinned state, or to get to a MG.  If they get a nade on the MG, chances are they wont kill the entire thing.  If they use it to get out of a suppressed/pinned state have a MG in place to get them as they are retreating.  Its been done to me, Ive done it to others, its not that hard.

Ostwinds backed by  MGs will tear AB up.  KCH will eat them for breakfast.  If you faced 53 squads, Im going to guess that you faced 3 AB players.  If you take into consideration the cost of AB without the cost decrease (Tier Ability) they are expensive, so they didnt have a lot left.  If you faced 16 RR squads that is about avg with 5 per player.  I myself run with 6 RRs, again expensive and doesnt leave alot of Munitions for other upgrades.

Again, this isnt because I play AB, I play Terror too and counter AB pretty readily, sounds like you guys just got out played.

Draygon, this isn't about what counters there are for Airborne.  The fundemental balance between Axis armor and Allied AT infantry (primarily RRs), just underwent a fairly large impact because skirts are going to be far less prevalent.  That in itself I don't necessarily have issue with, but RRs were supposedly balanced previously against the accessibility to skirts at any vet.  Accordingly, shouldn't RR's cost more?  Unless you believe that they were underpowered / overpriced before, I don't see any other conclusion.  Although I certainly see many possibilities to correct it, besides increasing RR cost. 

[Nevyen]

Thanks Draygon,

 fair call about being short but they where able to canabalise the short commings, this is it about the airborne unit is that it can do that very easily, no need really when you can isolate and king hit the units you need, and as for KCH i used the very effectively but still 2 kch vs 53 units its still tough.

Our positions where hit from behind they took what they needed and moved on.   all airborne drop so what im looking at here it fine for real world and simulation games but then airborne faced allot more nasties than what is currently on offer to the german.  In a gamplay sense where do you draw the line and say we need to make player diverse the company to effect fair and balanced gameplay?

[Avalanche]

most the time airborne > mg

if you backing up your ostwind by mg, chances that the mg is in open, they just fireup past the mg.
1 kch will eat 1 ab squad for lunch ok
but 2 vetted ab squad will eat kch for dinner, and kch are much more expensive, being 160 munition each


your arguement of backing up ostwind by mg is countered by ab backed up by mg.

ab with rr > all axis armour, then mg > all axis infantry without assult ability


so you have kch charging through my squad, i just drop some more, untill your kch retreats or dies.

my RR squad in frontline severely wounded? i just retreats them, then drop some more.

it doesnt matter if axis bleeds my manpower, if i keeps the pressure on, they shouldn't have popcap to keep coming back and bleeds me, by constantly dropping ab on frontline

we played 3v3 against 3 airborne, all 3 dropped 90 airborne soldier into the town of bastion before we even get there, which turns defense game into attack

[Draygon]

Have none of you guys ever heard of "covering your 6?"  Specifically when I am facing Storms as Allied, or AB as Axis I ALWAYS have a MG facing my ass end so that I dont get caught.  This also helps when they fireup to get out of there, they then get hit by it on the way out.

Scrap:  I personally think the Armor change was a needed change, and that RRs are fine as is, previously they were IMO underpowered.  As it is now you dont have axis tanks owning the battlefield, you dont have axis player just running a skirted tank into a the heat of battle knowing it will make it out because of the skirts, they have to actually think like a allied armor player and be smart with their tanks; like the allies do when it comes to shreks (yes still even after the so called "nerf").  I dont think RRs need to go up in price, because they are already expensive as is, and you cant have as many of them in your companies as you can have shreks as axis, if you want to balance out your company with other upgrades on other units.  Take into consideration the very high cost of grenades and your talking over 300 munitions for 1 squad.  As opposed to axis for similar man packed AT/ AI (speaking of AB only here not Rangers.)

[Nevyen]

I always keep 1 lmg / hmg squad some where in the rear but how does one HMG work against 8 airborne squads all with fire up? 

All round defence is a fine counter argument but!  I stress here that would be fine if they could do that once or twice but all game? all the time?  comon now from a fair play persepctive there is somthing wrong. But again im just throwing my thoughts out. 

[scrapking]

Have none of you guys ever heard of "covering your 6?"  Specifically when I am facing Storms as Allied, or AB as Axis I ALWAYS have a MG facing my ass end so that I dont get caught.  This also helps when they fireup to get out of there, they then get hit by it on the way out.

Scrap:  I personally think the Armor change was a needed change, and that RRs are fine as is, previously they were IMO underpowered.  As it is now you dont have axis tanks owning the battlefield, you dont have axis player just running a skirted tank into a the heat of battle knowing it will make it out because of the skirts, they have to actually think like a allied armor player and be smart with their tanks; like the allies do when it comes to shreks (yes still even after the so called "nerf").  I dont think RRs need to go up in price, because they are already expensive as is, and you cant have as many of them in your companies as you can have shreks as axis, if you want to balance out your company with other upgrades on other units.  Take into consideration the very high cost of grenades and your talking over 300 munitions for 1 squad.  As opposed to axis for similar man packed AT/ AI (speaking of AB only here not Rangers.)

I respect your opinion, and your therefore basing your logic upon that opinion.  I simply have a different one, and believe that RRs were previously fairly well balanced (having played Airborne last war, as well as facing them), and accordingly, I arrive at a different conclusion.  Furthermore, another dynamic that has drastically changed since then are the vet bonuses, although frankly where RRs are concerned, they were pretty good before too. 

But between the vanilla patch recently, and the change in vet bonuses, schrecks are vastly weaker than they once were, and are actually far more vulnerable now to tank fire than they ever were, with less accuracy (greater spread, whatever), than before, so I could also argue that relative to one another, RRs have also become more cost effective against schrecks than pre-changes (changes  = vanilla patch, EiR vet change, and EiR skirt accessibility, all within a short span of time).  But again, I don't look at this situation as involving anything but Axis armor and Allied AT infantry.

[salan]

With sideskirts only being available at vet 3, it does leave a huge loophole to be taken advantage of (abused) by an Airborne player.  Indirectly the skirt / vet change was a huge buff to RRs, and to a much lesser extent, to Rangers.  Panthers and Tigers are one thing as they are not terribly hard to vet up, but Stuh, Stug, and to some extent PIV are all quite rare to see at vet 3.  You can probably count on one hand how many of those 3 combined are going to be eligible for skirts over the course of an entire war.  If I am wrong, use both hands.

If it were not such a drastic change in gameplay and balance from previous (i.e. skirts always being available), I don't think it would be an issue, except all forms of manpacked AT, and armor prices had been allegedly balanced on that prior condition.  It either requires consideration of changing the point at which you are eligible for sideskirts, or another look at the relative costs of manpacked AT, particularly Allied.  Another option would be to change the rate at which Stuh, Stug & PIV earn xp, similar to a reverse of what was done with superior Allied infantry vet by making the rate more steep.

But yes, there has been a shift in things, and players who realize it can use it to their best advantage. 

a very well written argument.

 I don't think price increases on the allied side would balance it much, the allied tanks themselfs fall prey very easily to the cheapness of the axis antitank (shrek/pak/faust) just as easily as the axis tanks without skirts do to droppable rr's/zooks/stickies/57s.

it is a slippery slope that needs to be very carefully navigated, and perhaps your idea of the smaller tanks vetting faster (achieving skirts easier allowing survival vrs the drop readiness of RR's) would achieve a desired outcome in a far more balanced manner then another seesaw pricing war.   

Not to forget the distant cousins which also fall prey to such an abundance of these antitank weaponry, the ostwind and puma on the axis side and yet don't have any skirts available.  The low price on antitank was a desired function by the one man balance team and something the secretly operating secret balance team will hopefully balance out amongst themselves without completely upsetting the potential balance that lays before them, but thats a different matter... 

good post scrap.

also to note that while allies take longer to vet up, removing skirts from axis tanks allow both rangers and RR airborn to vet faster then they could before, because they will be that much more effective at destroying vehicles. Vehicles offer the best vet gains.  As well as being able to move the rr's between squads means that you can just swap them around to gain vet on which ever unit currently needs it.

[salan]

Have none of you guys ever heard of "covering your 6?"  Specifically when I am facing Storms as Allied, or AB as Axis I ALWAYS have a MG facing my ass end so that I dont get caught.  This also helps when they fireup to get out of there, they then get hit by it on the way out.

Scrap:  I personally think the Armor change was a needed change, and that RRs are fine as is, previously they were IMO underpowered.  As it is now you dont have axis tanks owning the battlefield, you dont have axis player just running a skirted tank into a the heat of battle knowing it will make it out because of the skirts, they have to actually think like a allied armor player and be smart with their tanks; like the allies do when it comes to shreks (yes still even after the so called "nerf").  I dont think RRs need to go up in price, because they are already expensive as is, and you cant have as many of them in your companies as you can have shreks as axis, if you want to balance out your company with other upgrades on other units.  Take into consideration the very high cost of grenades and your talking over 300 munitions for 1 squad.  As opposed to axis for similar man packed AT/ AI (speaking of AB only here not Rangers.)

I played infantry last war when the change went through and support weapon terror, and I'm playing support weapon heavy terror this war, although very few games so far this war.

I start with 3 mgs, 2 paks, 1 mortar and 2 pioneers.  Having three mgs covering each other lends you to a trade off.  If an airborn player or infantry player comes in with airborn or rangers vrs my three mgs, I will usually be able to remove them from the field.  In the process I will lose basically everything I have on, running my atgs away in stealth.  If i bring in a infantry killing puma or ostwind the ONLY chance i have at killing the airborn before they kill me is if I get under them when they drop.  Both of those vehicles receive very few hits before dieing to either rangers or airborn, the puma actually fairs better with the wierd hit tables.

for all of the power of the airborn, to change the RR prices by much would be folly when compared to the shreks, to this I agree.  But again I don't use shreks anymore because of their shortcomings except as a support antitank.  Paks are the wave of the future for anyone who knows how to play this version of the game, just as airborn RR's replaced the need for 57s in an airborn company.  That might be the biggest proof that there is an issue.  You no longer NEED you factions main AT gun, because your infantry can cover everything, aka the old shrek.

availability was broken at its conception, wrongfully implemented with its recharge starting at its BOUGHT time rather then lost time and not effecting upgrades.  But nevyens Original post is the same as all the other posts about 'bring back availability'.  They don't want availability the way it was, they want something to stop the over use of individual systems that in large numbers break the game from the potential RTT that it could be.

[Kolath]

Just watched the replay, guys.  I definitely agree with Nevyen here.  It was a very close faught game and both sides did the best they could with what they had.  But it tracks with my experience of fighting the AB, which is that they are just able to bring enough concentrated power to bear that it can kill anything if done right against a company that is not specifically designed to counter AB.

I think the problem is 1) RR effectiveness/cost and 2) rapid deployment of the AB.  Perhaps a greater delay on dropping would be good and would prevent instant reinforcement of any front (which was a major component in this battle).

[scrapking]

Just watched the replay, guys.  I definitely agree with Nevyen here.  It was a very close faught game and both sides did the best they could with what they had.  But it tracks with my experience of fighting the AB, which is that they are just able to bring enough concentrated power to bear that it can kill anything if done right against a company that is not specifically designed to counter AB.

I think the problem is 1) RR effectiveness/cost and 2) rapid deployment of the AB.  Perhaps a greater delay on dropping would be good and would prevent instant reinforcement of any front (which was a major component in this battle).

Bingo.  Biggest issue with AB.  Others, and myself have said that for a while.

[Nevyen]

yes i thought it was looked at but obvioulsy not.