Doctrine Specialization: Example Firefly in the RAF doc and Grenadiers in Wermacht

[Walderschmidt]

To me this feels like it's actually a discussion of whether or not people want this game to be balanced for 1v1 or team play.

If you want it balanced for 1v1, you want well rounded doctrines.

If you want it only for teamplay, you want specialized doctrines.

Right now it feels like we have a mix of both.

G

[kwok]

I think walder speaks better/more precise that i did.

[MEFISTO]

Well, i did throw my detailed opinion back then; viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2670 where I explained my point of view about that.

However, i gotta have to say that my opinion has now changed a bit concerning few things.. but overall, the topic should still represent my thoughts.

I'm voting for "All doctrines be well-rounded" but not exactly though... There has to be some exceptions.
As I believe that things need to be discussed deeply, rather than a simple "left" or "right" direction.

For example, I don't think Firefly should be restricted.. but Hetzer and Achilles should be restricted, the Firefly can stay in all CW docs.

Hey bro ,Achilles is the only real tank that you can use (CW) to destroy Germans heavy tanks (using in camouflage mode) remember that all German doctrines have heavy tanks except (SE)

[Death_Kitty]

I like the metaphor you used with rock-paper-scissors, but in reality its more of an office-max in terms of how the counter game goes... but that is obvious. (I am way more proud of this joke than I have any right to be)

Anyway, I chose specialized docs; no surprise there. But for me, I always thought the balancing was backwards... Germans should be specialized: they have some really specific vehicles and units to that end, while allies tend to be a mish-mash of average units that rely on countering to win battles, i.e. something that germans can use an AT gun/TD/tank/AT squad to do is best done with just a straight up TD for the allies.

to use the metaphor, say allied docs has 1/3 or 2/3 of the rock-paper-scissors. Germans have 2/3 or 3/3, being more well-rounded, but the quality of the R-P-S is higher. That is what gets me.

Now this balance is not changing, that would mean reworking... everything. And even someone as crazy as me can recognize that this is not a good idea. So I chose to specialize the German docs. So to justify this, lets stretch the metaphor. Lets go to office-max.
lets arbitrarily say
infantry is paper, weapon teams are scissors and Vehicles are rock. now lets break this up
Basic infantry is computer paper, AT teams are a good strong fiberglass, and elite infantry are a really nice stationary.
MGs are your standard scissors, mortars are the precise hedge clippers and AT teams are sledgehammers.
finally tanks are good sized igneous rock, and lets say TD's, LV's, Heavies and other vehicles have their own rock, because I don't care what that rocks is and you don't either. Lets not forget categories of defenses, arty, and off-map aircraft. Not to mention others.

The point is, if you break stuff up into more categories, balance becomes easier. I feel like there was a more... concise way to put that, but oh well.
Lets take the much maligned luft. look at above, and you will see a luft lacks very little in these categories. sure their arty is much to be special, but the aircraft more than make up for the difference, and everything else is either the shinny PE standard, or bloody KCH reborn. Now im not saying that x faction's docs have to only be good in x categories, but we should ask, given the quality of the units in PE/US/wher/UK, how many of these categories do we need to make a good, viable doc, while at the same time including some interesting combinations to spice stuff up a bit. Like say a PE doc that has a bunch of TD's, little in the way of any other vehicles, elite infantry, At weapons, elites, but has some really good weapons teams in MG's and Mortars, and some solid basic infantry to boot. Yes i realize this doc sounds very familiar (mostly). Now how about an allied doc that relies on armor and elite infantry to break through. The german doc is more general, countering the allied tank advantage, but will the basic infantry of PE hold up against crack allied troops? Both factions have tanks and TD's out, to punish the other for not countering, but the real game revolves around weapon team, infantry, and ability micro. Food for thought.

So then how about breaking everything up into more specific categories, then reworking from there. Do we want elite infantry to be able to persevere past MG's? Will the counter to them be a swarm of basic units? Or the other way around? Then ability/bonus tweak from there.

[kwok]

Good assessment deathkitty, your analogy doesn't go too far from what I have planned out. I have a few more categories if you check out the survey or if you go here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1G7_nd ... iJr1lp7dEq
What do you think of the categories in the second page?

The problem is, before I sent the survey out and people are coming up with relaly good ideas that the survey might not capture. Which is both good and bad. Good because we have more ideas as the survey was intended to do. Bad because players might feel like somethings weren't considered even though they were. It's just hard to catch up on all the responses and details, tricky to keep adding/rewording questions on the survey. The survey is already really long, if it is longer people might give up and not do the survey, too short and players will feel like the reworks will not capture the necessary nuance.

[Death_Kitty]

IMHO, I think the best way to do this is by "balance crusade". A survey will give you a good feeling or what everyone wants, but it does not allow for discussion. I think the best way to go about it, it topics like this: how to we want to balance stuff, what logic will we use to achieve this goal. Lets say we go with rock-paper-scissors idea, broken up into categories. The next topic will be a series of threads on how all the categories work: how do we want x to interact with y. then we widen it to factions: How do we want to separate the styles of the 4 sides, while still holding true to principle. How general should PE or wher be? how specialized should allies be? should firefly be everywhere? so on. Then we get to actually rework a doc. Arduous, I know, but it will give us a strong base-consensus to work from (that hopefully most of us can agree with). From there, testing can begin, and smaller, numerical tweaks can be made.

As for you categories: I love your 1v1 philosophy, except I would add even more categories: pak 43 and 88mm emplacement both are defensive AT, but are countered by different things: anti-infantry, and anti-emplacement. I would add a couple more categories though: offensive: Anti-stationary (arty, mortars, rifle nades to some extent. To counter weapons teams, but distinct from anti emplacement, which would include arty and assault guns, as well as flamers and flame tanks.) defensive: fast-attack (mobile infantry and units that don't quite fit into the other category, but sally forth to counter attack and kill mortars, arty, snipers and the like. Would include certain elite infantry, scouts, medium and light tanks, autocannon units, the quad 50', so on.). I'm saying the categories will need to be played with.

As for team games... Not so sure. I think every doc should be able to compete with every other doc on some level, whether because it has a couple of hard counters, or a wide range of soft counters that require, say, micro. My main concern is to make sure that a solid meta pick does not come out, where a couple docs get picked all the time because their strengths perfectly cover their weaknesses. If this happens, then a doc either has too much features, or the opposing faction has not enough. ( and for all that I hate PE, it and US will be far easier to balance in this respect than wher and UK)

[kwok]

You are right in the ideal is definitely to have a discussion, but the forum exists for "discussion" and we can see it hasn't been as successful as hoped. This is not to say ideas aren't being extracted from the forum, they are definitely in consideration. The main thing the survey provides is structure which is going to be important for making changes, something we both definitely agree. Unfortunately and fortunately, I think given the size of the community it is impossible to have it entirely open and free-form to discuss what that structure should be. This is why the survey was created, an attempt as a launching place for structure that starts centrally but provides a voice for the community. If I were to do this survey over again from the beginning based on what I learned recently, I would have set the expectation that the survey would be iterative and I'd ask the players to complete MULTIPLE surveys over time. It may not be too late for this... but there are also pressures for patch updates soon. The deadlines are artificial and more of a looming atmosphere rather than hard deadline. Hopefully I can share "survey results" and assessments soon and discussion will follow.

In terms of breaking up more categories, yes it definitely goes down deeper. Please keep providing ideas on those additional categories and considerations. The only thing I'd say is be patient with the details that are able to be provided. Yes anti-tank can be further categorized, but if the categories become TOO granular then we can get trapped in analysis paralysis. By bringing info to larger categories, it is quicker and easier for players to consume and understand quickly. Communication is an important factor to ensuring a "democracy" continues to exist. Further categories can exist as breakdowns that will be provided as subnotes that can be summarized within the grading system I provided already. Let me know if you think more "large categories" should exist, and then what are some sub categories within so that we make sure the analysis is full and complete.

About team games, yes this is something that I think I need to clarify. Even though the survey asks for one or the other, it is definitely not black and white but more of a spectrum. There is existing structure in the game where skill can overcome build order and "counters", this is something people always wanted to nuance within the survey and I probably didn't give players that explicitly ability to express that within the survey. But it is definitely heard and I think generally agreed among some devs (won't speak for them but heard some thoughts already) that this won't go away. BUT, strangely this survey compared to the poll I set up here... results are quite... different.... so we'll see with more survey results coming in. I might be a little sad because I'll be bound to the survey results even if I wanted it to be different.

All in all for full transparency, the survey and reworks is something I want to propose to the devs but hasn't been really discussed in depth yet. You might've seen in other posts, devs are definitely thinking about reworks and have their own ideas. I wanted to approach the topic differently with more direct lines of communication between players and decisions (the survey). Still working on this though, there's a lot to read and put together in a structured argument. I haven't even TALKED about reworks, only ABOUT reworks and look how wordy this post has been. Just shows how much work needs to be done so please be patient all, I promise I'm trying to make this work for as many people as possible.