Protoype test: Ground to air balance

[Reto.Hades 3,433]

Next to the infantry combat changes we have also made these to vehicles.
Most of these changes have been made to planes. We are interested to hear if you feel this helps balance, or that we should make bigger/smaller changes to the ground versus air balance.

 

General Changes:

• Planes are more vulnerable, especially to ground fire
• Plane cannons deal less damage against ground targets.
• Tank armor is worn down slower.
• "Light" Tank Destroyers have decreased hitpoints (same as the light tanks) (Hellcat, SU-76, Hetzer)
• Heavy Tank Cannons damage and reload times tweaked.
• Mounted Machine Guns capacity and reload time tweaked.

 

Damage Multipliers:
*All aircraft cannons*

•  Armor Damage decreased (also against other planes)
• Panzer 2
  • Armor Damage decreased
• Recon DT
  • Armor Damage decreased
  • Penetration value decreased

Health:

• Recon health decreased
• Fighters health decreased
• Heavy Fighters: health decreased
• Transport health decreased
• Several medium tank destroyers now have the same health as light tanks

*Note that planes now do less damage to other planes as well

 

Vehicle Armament Changes:

•  Mounted MG-34 w/ Saddle Drum
  • Ammo Capacity 150 -> 75 rounds
  • Reload 6 -> 5 seconds
• DT (Coaxial, Turrets, and Vehicle Mounted)**
  • Magazine Capacity = 63 rounds (Some were 60, others were 63 already)
  • Reload 6 -> 4 seconds
• **Panzer I**
  • Reload 6 -> 4 sec

 

Tank HE Ammo:

• US 76mm explosion damage decreased
• US 75mm explosion damage increased
• T-28 Explosion damage increased
• IS-2 Explosion damage increased

[Xeator 743]

Even after changes on proto I think planes are still a bit too vulnerable. Doesnt take a whole lot when a short burst will destroy your plane and with the previous AA update its easy enough to keep on target with a completely free AA weapon to down them with minimal effort.

 

However one of my biggest concerns is how HE is "working" at the moment. Some times it will do damage on vehicles, some times it wont. Something is definitely up, possibly bugged.

 

AP planes have been worse against tanks after the "Armor 2.0" update. I fear that nerfing armor penetration while making armor weakening take longer it will lead to unacceptably poor performance for planes.

 

You need to take into consideration that planes are on top of the food chain. They cost the most and they are scarce so making them worse doesnt really make a whole lot of sense to me. And this is just the mediums and heavies. Recons while already quite useless will be nothing but cannon fodder after these changes. After the previous AA update they already kind of were...

 

If its to protect new players against dominating planes, there already is a infantry only assault staged match possibility. If you are introducing new planes for anti tank purposes then I can accept some nerfs for the air superiority fighters, but I doubt that is the case here. If we see rockets, bigger cannons or bombers then by all means weaken air to ground performance of the current fighters, but before that dont go too crazy with the changes or you will upset the whole pilot community of the game.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2020

[VenstreDjevel 386]

Aircraft being more vulnerable is necessary as long as there are regularly 6 enemy aircraft vs 0. Weapon damage reduction is all well and good provided bullet/shell cost is also reduced and or spawn cost. As it stands everything will live longer and the lions share of money/xp is tied to a kill so it will just force more spam from the more dominant side.

 

Assault battle breakdown- 1 side (usually defenders) closes down a line or gets into a position that the ground battle is stable then multiple people switch to whatever prolongs survivability while enhancing earnings. It happens constantly that the spam of aircraft or tanks (enemy without transport) kicks in at this point. No class limiting is an incentive  to spam and high spawn/ammo cost and low pay without a kill mean the pilots/tankers that would normally balance out the enemy attacker chose not to spawn at all because they just feed the dominant force and make a loss at the end of the battle. 

No pilot nowadays will volunteer to be the equivalent of a CAM ship hurricane for his side, to defend and pull away enemy attackers from the main force to ensure victory. Lower damage weaponry will still mean that lone pilot dies and won't even walk away with a kill unless he rams.....

[b.j.blazkovitch 580]

1 hour ago, Xeator said:

You need to take into consideration that planes are on top of the food chain. They cost the most and they are scarce so making them worse doesnt really make a whole lot of sense to me

still it makes more sense to have planes respawn cheaper than keep them op

[guncolony.com 528]

Feedback from just looking at the changelog:

 

- Finally some justice to T28 and IS2 the two great HE tanks of WWII.

 

- FINALLY A FIX TO SU MOUNTED VEHICLE MG!!! It has always bugged me that the Soviet MG reload is somehow just as long as US/GE despite having less bullets. The new values seem much more balanced now.

 

However, please take a look at the M3 Lee dual coaxial MG. They shoot slower than the single MG42 on the Puma and definitely should get fixed.

- I don't think a nerf to Recon plane health should be needed. They deserve to have the highest health because even then they are still the easiest to kill by AA.

 

- SU 76M does not need a nerf to HP, since its cannon damage and penetration is lower than ALL other tank destroyers (it is equivalent to a T2 medium tank, while all other TDs have cannon equivalent to a T3 medium tank). If you do nerf its HP at least consider buffing its 

 

- Hetzer also doesn't need a HP nerf. Currently it is quite easy to pop components on Hetzer but much harder to do so on the Stug, so the latter is already more survivable.

 

- M10 should get a HP nerf since it is very hard to hit components on it. M10 can win against every single medium tank in US/GE in a 1 on 1 since there's nothing the enemy can do to kill the M10 quickly. On the other hand I appreciate the Hellcat nerf.

 

- I don't think tank armor should be "worn down slower". I think fully worn down armor is just -20% thickness anyways so I think it should be viable for you to wear down the enemy's armor in a single engagement to add some more depth to strategy, instead of making the armor wear system merely a "your tank gets weaker over time" thing.

 

Questions:

- Does the 20mm armor damage nerf affect the 222? I feel like it is overpowered especially with the 222's fast turret turn speed making it so much easier to drive solo compared to the other factions' recon vehicles. It also kills enemy recon vehicles easily with the 20 round clip. On the other hand the nerf to Panzer 2 is appreciated, maybe now spawning a T70 to counter Luchs will actually work, instead of the latter winning most of the time despite T70 front armor.

 

- Since plane damage to other planes got nerfed, does this mean that planes will get less EXP shooting at other planes? IMO, since planes (except recon) are so expensive to repair they should get a ton of XP for shooting other planes and it should not be nerfed. Currently with tanks you can more or less pay for your high tier tank by killing another tank plus a few infantry, but with planes even killing 2 enemy fighters will still cause you to lose credits compared to just spawning infantry and AFKing.

 

- What are the specific tweaks to heavy tank damage?

Edited April 16, 2020

[bartalamey1 334]

Please increace production and decreace cost in warfounds for vehicles that have been nerfed

[VenstreDjevel 386]

2 hours ago, bartalamey1 said:

Please increace production and decreace cost in warfounds for vehicles that have been nerfed

This. The tiers need to be seperate ATs with earlier/weaker units both being faster to produce and earn bonus warfunds. Let the more powerful units actually be powerful and the inherent cheapness and quantity of units be what they were rather than anachronistically over buffing every medium to the same level etc.

[Polaras 25]

Were we going to increase the ammo count on the IS-2 or was that forgotten?

Can we address the hit box size of the internals and cannon on the IS-2 while we are at it?

 

I have a contention with making planes "fun" to fight against by making them this squishy.  And that is they are expensive warfunds wise.  They really need to be cheapened up if they are going to expect to die to ground fire.

 

[guncolony.com 528]

5 hours ago, Polaras said:

Were we going to increase the ammo count on the IS-2 or was that forgotten?

Can we address the hit box size of the internals and cannon on the IS-2 while we are at it?

 

I have a contention with making planes "fun" to fight against by making them this squishy.  And that is they are expensive warfunds wise.  They really need to be cheapened up if they are going to expect to die to ground fire.

 

 

I think they increased damage on IS2 to make it do more damage before running out of ammo

Quote

:Heavy Tank Cannons damage and reload times tweaked.

 

[Rdanzer 589]

On 4/15/2020 at 7:19 PM, Reto.Hades said:

• ...
• Heavy Tank Cannons damage and reload times tweaked.
• ...

 

 

 

Would it be possible to have a little more details here? What exactly does this mean?

[Reto.Hades 3,433]

We are going to close the prototype today, I have forwarded some last feedback.

 

Thank you for participating!