Blitzkrieg Mod Forum

Hello BK Community

after playing several games with CW royal artillery (starting to understand how it works), I noticed that Artillery spotters are a must-have to perform correctly.

I'm writing for few suggestions. Not sure that would be a good idea. I mean it could ruin the balance.
These suggestions are not cumulative.

- crawling capacity, so they can infiltrate
- being paradropped out of ally territory.
- 2 men squad ? (price increased of course)
- increase detection radius ? (i've checked Corsix, detection radius is only 20, whereas other scout have 40)

Why touching them? They are op, can be dropped into cover, call in arty, can use victor target, they have cap of 4 or 5 irc. Besides, why the hell you want them to be 2-men squad? So it was 3 time harder to conceal them? What for seriously?

Why touch something that works well? You said yourself "Not sure that would be a good idea", no offense but:

Nieles wrote:1. Think about the impact on the overall gameplay and the other factions when making a suggestion.
2. Be as detailed as possible if you desribe a balance issue.
3. When making a suggestion, also describe the possible influence on balancing and why you think it wouldn't imbalance the game.

I just can't see the reasoning.

Im sorry lionelus, but arty spotters are fine, we will not touch something who's working extremely well in game, in a much general way, with the past years of working on the balance we have reached in bk what we call the balance thin paper cut line, and we honestly can't touch units that much anymore as they are working well all together, some will be lightly tweaked or corrected in the future, but overall, again we can't do much without ruining something else, coh is a giant puzzle with hundreds of units, especially in bk mod, all has been made and tweaked that every factions and players can win now fairly if they have better tactics and strategies on the battlefield, we can't just simply change units because you like that gameplay better for your games, Désolé man, mais la on ne peut rien faire.

Haha, je vois que tu parles français

Back to English

That was just suggestions. I'm not asking for it. But maybe other people felt the same and already thought about it, and jsut talk about it. That was the purpose of this thread, and the purpose of the forum, I guess. Karma police's answer makes me feel I should have keep my mouth shut

The detection radius seems the most important to me, as 20 is quite little for a recon unit.
Increasing this detection radius wouldn't do much harm to the balance. The only downside would be the following : giving the same unit the capability to detect and bomb might be over-powered. And I can understand that.

On the other hand, CW is struggling with scouting and detection. All the scouting tools are vulnerable and cost fuel / lot of manpower (captain, lieutenant, recce etc).

Royal artillery heavily relies on these spotters, which are kind of difficult to place actually, once game has settled and battlefield is locked in with Mg, snipers etc. That's exactly why other scouts perform so well, even though being limited to 2: getting close without getting killed, thanks to crawling.

If arty spotters are so important to CW RA gameplay, it seems they get countered and detected way too easily by other scouts (Ketten and auklaerer) who detect twice farther.
For this reason, increasing the detection radius seem important to me, to at least have a chance to counteract vs other scouts ; which is not possible as for now.


As for Karma Police's answer, i'm quite surprised, as I've known him to be a better tempered person. No offense taken, no worries ; I just found your answer a bit agressive. But nothing surprising with this community.

Bye for now

When I got to the BK mod I also asked why these spotters cannot be dropped anywhere and don't have crawl, the answer I got was that it used to work that way and people use to paradrop them/crawl with them near enemy enemy bases and just basebombed or did not send arty directly to the base but kept attacking anything that exited the base which was OP. As a consequence they were changed to what they are now.

Sorry if I sounded agressive, I just dont have time to write long posts . But I knew that panzerblitz and Markr will tell you eveything.

On the other hand, CW is struggling with scouting and detection. All the scouting tools are vulnerable and cost fuel / lot of manpower (captain, lieutenant, recce etc).

1st. You have recon plane in 2 docs.
2nd all your detection units have guns.
3rd. Captain and recce have large detection and both have guns (again)
4th. Kinda agree on last part. Oh you want to find a sniper? whelp your recon just got sniped. Too bad. Not actually an issue since you have 6man squad that can counter snipe and since recons dont have guns (except for birtish ones) I dont really see a problem with them being fragile, you know, since the enemy doesn't fire back.

I kinda want to hear your reason why you think they are vulnerable. Because we might make a miunderstanding otherwise.

Hello,

i'm going to try and explain my point of view. Hope that's not to long for you to read

First of all, id like to answer Redgaarden that concerning brit riflemen, counter sniping works only if you can click-target the enemy sniper. Which is not possible most of the time, as the amentionned sniper is "invisible". Hence, you need detection for that.

Saying Arti spotters are"vulnerable" is quite deceitful, as it makes you think about HP, camo, capacity to defend themselves (guns) etc
I would say they are vulnerable for the way we have to use it. Especially when it comes to the "recon battle".

No crawling makes them hard to place. No paradropping out of ally territory makes it difficult to infiltrate

Yet, not being able to detect correctly, that's a real issue. What I noticed is that Arti spotters always get detected in some way, whereas my Arti spotters don't detect anything back. Kettenkrad and Auklaerer got 40 detection radius. RA spotter got 20. Which means RA spotter will always get detected first, and be killed. What I want to point out is that enemy get rid of RA spotter too easily

As for survavility, US and Axis scout got the "sniper" type, which means 0,75 received accuracy by most weapons. Arti spotters got infantry type, which provide no bonus.

Increasing detection radius would at least give RA spotters a chance not to be so easily countered by enemy scouts. As for now, RA spotters are always seen and killed first.
Giving crawling abilitiy back could do good, especially in "locked in" games (mg, snipers, pak, mortar...). At the moment, RA spotters don't even have a chance to get close to the frontline and do their job (because, can't crawl, they get killed right away). Yet, I perfectly understand the basebombing issue.

Why is it important ? because I feel RA lacks some offensive power to push. You have no good tanks (churchill), you have no good infantry (commando) ; you just got artillery, to cleanup the battlefield and advance with non doctrinal units. And you can't clean up, if your don't see your enemy. I know RA got cheap arti, but, most of the time, it's not that effective : blindly bomb at random places, hoping to kill something, that's no good. That's why RA spotters need to perform better, in my opinion.

These would make RA an independant reliable doc, instead of just being a support doc, limited to aim / bomb area for teammate, and needing recon from your allies, which is the way people play (see CW - Royal Artillery doctrine: tips & advice, in matchmaking category).

When I read the last post one thing in particular caught my attention. You say:

Lionelus wrote:Yet, I perfectly understand the basebombing issue.

but I can see you provide no solution to the issue at all. So it sort of sounds like "yes, there is a big issue with this but let's ignore it and see what else I have to say"
As I said - the ability to drop them anywhere (and potentially crawl) led to many problems in gameplay. It cannot be ignored. Maybe the spotters perform a little bit worse than they could but with crawl and/or "drop anywhere" they will perform waaaay better than they should - you will be able to send Arty anywhere on the map thanks to VT while forcing your opponents to focus their scout units on hunting this one spotter all over their territory.

IF there was some change needed, I would maybe agree to make the spotters able to drop on any territory (own, enemy, neutral) but not in FoW. RA got a recon plane few patches back so when your opponent knows you are RA and sees a recon plane he can expect a spotter being dropped somewhere along the plane's flight path + planes can be shot down so that would even things a little bit but I don't think changes are really necessary.

hello again

thx for your answer Markr

"Giving crawling abilitiy back could do good", as I said. Thus, not necessary (i said "could"), considering the basebombing issue.
Paradropping in all territory (not fog of war), is not necessary either.

"not being able to detect correctly, that's a real issue". Increase detection radius, that is the most important in my opinion. Give at least 40 detection radius, as other spotters. Even a little more, with binoculars activated (50 maybe), to compensate the lack of crawling capacity.
As I already said, RA spotters get chased down way too easily by other scouts at the moment, because of low detection radius.

If I'm the only one having difficulties with this, maybe all of this conversation is useless. But to be honest, I really struggle in 2v2 games with Locked-in scenario (pak, mg, snipers etc), on maps like High valley, as I can't recon et detect correctly with RA spotters (get detected, get killed, always). Can't wait to hear from the community on this

bye for now

Lionelus wrote:"not being able to detect correctly, that's a real issue". Increase detection radius, that is the most important in my opinion. Give at least 40 detection radius, as other spotters. Even a little more, with binoculars activated (50 maybe), to compensate the lack of crawling capacity.
As I already said, RA spotters get chased down way too easily by othere scouts at the moment, because of low detection radius.

But you get 3 of them, I would say that 3 well placed arty spotters are definitely more than enough to detect the most important crucial areas of the map.. in addition to the recon plane.
Keeping in mind that WH doesn't have planes at all... For example!

I think there is misunderstanding

i'm talking about the capacity to detect camoed units. I know RA has recon tools (planes etc)

Sight radius is all fine for arty spotters.
The issue is about the detection radius => the area in which hidden/camoed units are revealed. This detection radius is too low for RA spotters (20, which is range of US riflemen hand grenade).



If you want to detect camo units, it means you have to get very close. Getting so close and surviving is near impossible, without crawling. Increasing detection radius would make it a bit easier, without making RA spotters over-performant vs camoed units.

As giving crawling is not an option, because of the basebombing /gameplay issue, increasing the detection radius would be a solution.

I hope my suggestion is a bit clearer now

I think this might go down to what the unit is meant to do...I think that it was meant to spot targets for arty that means clustered infantry, groups of tanks, emplacement walls or other "juicy" targets targets that are not camoed. But a single camoed Axis spotter/sniper/AT gun is not what this one guy was meant to send arty at. Along with the "no-crawl" and "drop in own ground" approach it seems to me that the intention was more of "walk slightly behind main attack force and clear the way with arty when they hit some strong resistance" rather than "sneak into enemy ground and shoot the arty behind their lines".
I cannot know what the original devs intended, this is just my opinion.

First of all, id like to answer Redgaarden that concerning brit riflemen, counter sniping works only if you can click-target the enemy sniper. Which is not possible most of the time, as the amentionned sniper is "invisible". Hence, you need detection for that.

Trust me. the biggest issue is not that the sniper is invisible. It will be revealed sooner or later. The biggest problem is the accuaracy and making sure nothing interferes with the infantry section while they deploy their marksman. And as I said earlier there are loads of way to detect it and not only arty spotter. And in my opinion arty spotter is a waste of cp early game as you need the cp for other more powerful stuff. My only problem with arty doc is how slow they are to start up to get their army, much like se doc.

As for survavility, US and Axis scout got the "sniper" type, which means 0,75 received accuracy by most weapons. Arti spotters got infantry type, which provide no bonus.

I think they still die in 2-3 hits? Having insanly low hp. But yeah you said their own survival depends on them spotting their threat and not their fighting potentional which makes alot of sense. In which the real scouts are much better at.

Increasing detection radius would at least give RA spotters a chance not to be so easily countered by enemy scouts. As for now, RA spotters are always seen and killed first.

What are they getting killed by? Can't you put them in some safe space where they wot get shot? You're speaking foreign to me right now.

Why is it important ? because I feel RA lacks some offensive power to push. You have no good tanks (churchill), you have no good infantry (commando) ; you just got artillery, to cleanup the battlefield and advance with non doctrinal units. And you can't clean up, if your don't see your enemy. I know RA got cheap arti, but, most of the time, it's not that effective : blindly bomb at random places, hoping to kill something, that's no good. That's why RA spotters need to perform better, in my opinion.

I highly disagree with pretty much everything you said. You can pretty much kill any paks from safe firing range. You get fireflies which destory infantry with their insane HE. And infnatry sections are good from the get go even better than commandoes in my opinion. Arty doctrine can have an insane field presence with good tanks, infantry, shitloads of spotting units, emplacements. But I think I see what you're pointing at. all this are only possible if you're in a winning situation where you have the momentum going, so you want the arty spotter help you break the deadlocks and being better as a lone wolf like the other spotters. But I would say making the arty spotter anymore powerfull than it is now would be pretty broken as arty doctrine alrady relies so heavily on this unit as it is. And giving birts any more spotting units would be overkill as they already have 5 differnt kinds of spotting units and recon planes. You also described a situation where the enemy has paks and mg's and spotters holding their positions. If you already know the enemy has these units you might as well bomb them with your 75mm halftrack or go for fast 25pounder with shraphnell shells and snipe them with your infantry sections. You have plenty of options to deal with whatever you want. As arty doc even if you blindly bomb enemy postions you have extremly cheap arty which has insane aoe and scatter that will spread to all their positions. I dont really see what problems you have with RA they have loads of counter spotter as long as they are on the frontline or behinde your lines.

My tip for you is not waste your cp on spotter and get preist as early as possible. They will give you enough cp for the rest off the shit you need. And officer arty has small range so dont rely on it to break enemy positions. I could go for much longer but I'll stop here. Sorry for the long rant

And I regret immediadlty posting this as it has nothing to do with what you said. Yes they lack pushing force. But arty doctrine is a slow but reliable pusher. You can even see it in the doc how many cp you need for every little thing. But I kinda got pissed off by you saying they dont have great inf and tanks.

Well, since I am passing by once again, lets throw my iluminated wisdom in too. As a player, I was never too much fond of (...or good at) RA, but I personaly agree that games against/side by side with RA are more fun and unpredictable now than it used to be in these ancient times of everlasting "recon hunting" as I remember it. RA reconnaissance feels mostly well balanced to me.

If anything about it (which is almost off-topic), it could by nice to see Recce machinegun assigned as secondary (I am not aware of which term I should use here....you know, these weapons where shooter might get killed (like Stug top MG)) rather than main gun. Recce would still remain cheap, very fast, relatively well armoured and only slightly more vulnerable tool.

P.S.: And since we are sort of in paratrooper theme and there was a discussion about gliders recently....have anyone consider the option to increase the price and in return allow the glider to land in the smog of war/possibly without the reach of lieutenant? I mean...450 MP worthy glider would be significantly less convenient to use as anti-infantry airstrike and any type of airborn operation behind enemy lines is usualy quite enjoyable experience. All in all, the main purpose of the real gliders was to drop whole squads behind enemy lines without risking dispersal on the huge area, no? I know this has become a sort of sensitive matter now, which is also reason why I did not really want to bring this up as a separate topic and prefer to silently spam with it, only to find out if anybody would be still willing to speak about it....? Feel free to ignore this part, it is off topic anyway.



And among other things I judge that the price of Königstiger should be decreased for 2 VP, 250MP and 25 Fuel (tlaking "the expensive" version), so it might have a chance to get in the game sooner (and make some more difference) and in exchange the price of Sturmtiger should be increased for 2 VP and 250 MP (and might be good to give it its frontal plate MG 34). Added due to the other mens usefull advice.

@Lionelus
RA spotters are for calling arty, not for detecting other spotters... You have Dingo, Recce and Lieutenants for that!
I understand your point though but don't forget that arty spotters are also armed unlike all other spotters.. and again you can have 3 of them instead of just 2. After all I actually have to agree with a lot of points that Red came up with!
in short, I honestly think that arty spotters are pretty fine as they are now anyway.

Quick reactions to the off-topic stuff by Le Grand Conde:-
- Recce main gun;
Hmm... I am not sure if this is possible, though it would be actually realistic!

- Gliders;
I heard that Gliders in the next patch are going to have a 5 seconds delay before landing, also with a green smoke.. so opponents could have some chance to re-locate their MG and mortar teams meanwhile... Which means that gliders would be no longer used as a silly "Surprise M*Fker!" tactic anymore Though it would be still possible of course to use it that way if the opponent was slow enough to move his MG or mortar teams.

- ST and KT;
What SturmTiger frontal plate MG are you talking about? It does already have a hull MG btw.
I honestly like your idea about swapping KT command points with the ST on the other hand.. seems legit, but definitely not with 2 command points, as just 1 command point seems more than enough... Even though it's such a slight change and not a big deal whatsoever. Nonetheless, this can be still achieved in many different methods! But just leave this subject for the other topic.

Alright,

thx for opinions and advice

i'm out of this

best,

L.

Lionelus wrote:

- being paradropped out of ally territory.
- 2 men squad ? (price increased of course)

It was that way when i started with BK.

As mentioned in previous posts they were dropped near enemie base and every unit leaving that base got hit by arty. IIRc the off map could also be used right into the base.

And the squad got reduced to one in order to reduce its cost.