Hey guys,
In this thread I will speak of units and tactics at a "high level", meaning this doesnt apply to your average user, nor to your public games. Instead, think of Championship or Alliance Challenge level.
Artilleries are way too powerful. The value they offer is insane. They are the only units in game that can attack enemy ground units from save distance, without receiving any damage, while dealing a lot of damage. Having a batch of artilleries in a stack is like dropping a tactical nuke every 60 minutes on your enemy.
What is the artilleries role in reallife? Break heavy enemy fortifications? Siege him? Poke him? Annoy him?
What is the artilleries role in this game? The very best solution for anything ground based. Whatever the enemy has to offer you on ground, artillery is the best answer. Its high damage shreds through enemies and its mechanics make sure it stays safe.
The game is a game of artilleries. What decides wars is not the grand strategy, but your activity and the ability to hit the enemy artillery without getting hit yourself. The rest of your units have gotton one sole purpose: Enabling your artillery.
Here are examples:
In one championship round I was running this set up: 1 Awac to give my artilleries vision, 20 artilleries, 15 mobile SAMs to clear the skies, 10 Air Sups to clear the skies from helicopters.
The result? Winning the final war against a player ranked in the top 10 in the leaderboards with a 50 K/D.
Just because I was better with my artilleries
In another championship round I lost my home country right at the start fighting a 1v4. I had about 4 artilleries. This is the result: 6'943deaths vs 20'615kills. Why? Because I had 4 (later only 2) artilleries. I only surrendered until the enemy got Strike Fighters while I couldnt produce anything to counter it.
In an alliance challenge against Graywolf (ranked #4 right now), I achieved a K/D of 49'466 kills vs. 5'827 deaths with artilleries only.
I hope I don't need to explain further why artillery is too strong.
Most notably, I would like to look at this particular match up: Tanks against artilleries.
Tanks are supposed to be able to run up towards enemy artillery, engage it in close combat, kill it! Why doesnt it work? The tanks get killed by the time they reach the artillery because artilleries deal so much damage and can move away from the coming tanks, stop for 3 seconds, drop their tactical nuke, continue running away. It gets worse the moment the artillery player drops some units, such as anti air and infantries he most likely has, in a province between tanks and artilleries to stall the push by 1 or 2 hours. Giving the artilleries even more time to shred the tanks!
At best, the tank player managed to win a lot of ground, which he is likely to lose again because he just lost a bunch of resources thus is at a heavy military disadvantage. (Having lost many units without killing any/few.)
Here are a few balance changes suggestions to make it easier for tanks to engage the artillery:
1. Speed
Further improve the tanks speed. Especially the tank commander! Yeah, cool, tier 2 gives +20% speed. But it doesnt change the fact that the commander itself has a base speed of 1.3 only. All the other tanks are faster, but it doesnt matter since the commander is the slowest unit, capping the stacks speed at 1.56. Look at the cruiser! Why does the tier 2 cruiser(eastern, Kara-class, speed of 63km/h) have a base speed of 4.5 and the main battle tank tier 2 (eastern, T-90, speed of 60 km/h) only have a base speed of 1.4??
Look at the towed artillery, it can simply fly away. The mobile artillery even has a base speed of 1.3 ! Catching up to it takes a very long time! And the MRLs? A base speed of 1.5. Getting tanks close enough is impossible.
Reducing the speed of artillery is also a very good idea. Just don't take away the air assault ability of towed artillery, it is a neat feature and the 1 hour offload time limits its hit and run ability severely.
It's all about making the speed difference between artillery and tanks bigger. Making it easier for tanks to reach the artillery that is running away.
2. Nerf Artilleries damage
The artillery deals a lot of damage. Reducing it, gives the tanks more time to reach the artillery before the tanks lose too many hitpoints!
It also takes away their ability to simply shred any unit that comes into their range.
3. Reduce the cost of tanks
Tanks are one hell of an investment, super expensive, especially since they consume components and electronics, just like aircrafts and ships. If my team uses ships and aircrafts (very likely), we will have plenty of supplies leftover and try to not use components-electronics units since we don't have much choice looking at ships and aircrafts. Therefore we are more or less forced to go for artilleries that don't cost electronics+components, instead, they cost supplies+something else. Which suits our economy much better than those tanks, which cost more than artilleries anyways.
A new game mechanic.
In this case, I am asking for a lot, changing the way the artillery works, which will also change the way it is played:
The artillery has to set herself up to shoot after moving.
After the artillery moved, it needs 15 or 30 minutes to set up, only afterwards it is in "shooting mode", bombarding everything in range. BUT, it cannot move! If it wants to move again, it needs another 15 or 30 minutes to unload, only afterwards it can move once again, but not shoot.
Why is it so awesome?
First, it removes the annoying "ticking", thats the tactic to hit the enemy with your artillery without getting hit yourself. You decide battles ONLY with this "ticking", whoever has more activity and is better at it, wins the war. Thats all. No grand strategy involved at all.
Second, shoot&run no longer works! Everytime you want to shoot while you run away from tanks, you must set yourself up and then unload again, which costs you a total of 30 or 60 minutes! Making it a lot easier for tanks to catch up to these artilleries.
In this thread I will speak of units and tactics at a "high level", meaning this doesnt apply to your average user, nor to your public games. Instead, think of Championship or Alliance Challenge level.
Artilleries are way too powerful. The value they offer is insane. They are the only units in game that can attack enemy ground units from save distance, without receiving any damage, while dealing a lot of damage. Having a batch of artilleries in a stack is like dropping a tactical nuke every 60 minutes on your enemy.
What is the artilleries role in reallife? Break heavy enemy fortifications? Siege him? Poke him? Annoy him?
What is the artilleries role in this game? The very best solution for anything ground based. Whatever the enemy has to offer you on ground, artillery is the best answer. Its high damage shreds through enemies and its mechanics make sure it stays safe.
The game is a game of artilleries. What decides wars is not the grand strategy, but your activity and the ability to hit the enemy artillery without getting hit yourself. The rest of your units have gotton one sole purpose: Enabling your artillery.
Here are examples:
In one championship round I was running this set up: 1 Awac to give my artilleries vision, 20 artilleries, 15 mobile SAMs to clear the skies, 10 Air Sups to clear the skies from helicopters.
The result? Winning the final war against a player ranked in the top 10 in the leaderboards with a 50 K/D.
Just because I was better with my artilleries
In another championship round I lost my home country right at the start fighting a 1v4. I had about 4 artilleries. This is the result: 6'943deaths vs 20'615kills. Why? Because I had 4 (later only 2) artilleries. I only surrendered until the enemy got Strike Fighters while I couldnt produce anything to counter it.
In an alliance challenge against Graywolf (ranked #4 right now), I achieved a K/D of 49'466 kills vs. 5'827 deaths with artilleries only.
I hope I don't need to explain further why artillery is too strong.
Most notably, I would like to look at this particular match up: Tanks against artilleries.
Tanks are supposed to be able to run up towards enemy artillery, engage it in close combat, kill it! Why doesnt it work? The tanks get killed by the time they reach the artillery because artilleries deal so much damage and can move away from the coming tanks, stop for 3 seconds, drop their tactical nuke, continue running away. It gets worse the moment the artillery player drops some units, such as anti air and infantries he most likely has, in a province between tanks and artilleries to stall the push by 1 or 2 hours. Giving the artilleries even more time to shred the tanks!
At best, the tank player managed to win a lot of ground, which he is likely to lose again because he just lost a bunch of resources thus is at a heavy military disadvantage. (Having lost many units without killing any/few.)
Here are a few balance changes suggestions to make it easier for tanks to engage the artillery:
1. Speed
Further improve the tanks speed. Especially the tank commander! Yeah, cool, tier 2 gives +20% speed. But it doesnt change the fact that the commander itself has a base speed of 1.3 only. All the other tanks are faster, but it doesnt matter since the commander is the slowest unit, capping the stacks speed at 1.56. Look at the cruiser! Why does the tier 2 cruiser(eastern, Kara-class, speed of 63km/h) have a base speed of 4.5 and the main battle tank tier 2 (eastern, T-90, speed of 60 km/h) only have a base speed of 1.4??
Look at the towed artillery, it can simply fly away. The mobile artillery even has a base speed of 1.3 ! Catching up to it takes a very long time! And the MRLs? A base speed of 1.5. Getting tanks close enough is impossible.
Reducing the speed of artillery is also a very good idea. Just don't take away the air assault ability of towed artillery, it is a neat feature and the 1 hour offload time limits its hit and run ability severely.
It's all about making the speed difference between artillery and tanks bigger. Making it easier for tanks to reach the artillery that is running away.
2. Nerf Artilleries damage
The artillery deals a lot of damage. Reducing it, gives the tanks more time to reach the artillery before the tanks lose too many hitpoints!
It also takes away their ability to simply shred any unit that comes into their range.
3. Reduce the cost of tanks
Tanks are one hell of an investment, super expensive, especially since they consume components and electronics, just like aircrafts and ships. If my team uses ships and aircrafts (very likely), we will have plenty of supplies leftover and try to not use components-electronics units since we don't have much choice looking at ships and aircrafts. Therefore we are more or less forced to go for artilleries that don't cost electronics+components, instead, they cost supplies+something else. Which suits our economy much better than those tanks, which cost more than artilleries anyways.
A new game mechanic.
In this case, I am asking for a lot, changing the way the artillery works, which will also change the way it is played:
The artillery has to set herself up to shoot after moving.
After the artillery moved, it needs 15 or 30 minutes to set up, only afterwards it is in "shooting mode", bombarding everything in range. BUT, it cannot move! If it wants to move again, it needs another 15 or 30 minutes to unload, only afterwards it can move once again, but not shoot.
Why is it so awesome?
First, it removes the annoying "ticking", thats the tactic to hit the enemy with your artillery without getting hit yourself. You decide battles ONLY with this "ticking", whoever has more activity and is better at it, wins the war. Thats all. No grand strategy involved at all.
Second, shoot&run no longer works! Everytime you want to shoot while you run away from tanks, you must set yourself up and then unload again, which costs you a total of 30 or 60 minutes! Making it a lot easier for tanks to catch up to these artilleries.