Luftwaffe feedback

[Devilfish]

-Falsch commander can call in stuka and it doesn't share the cooldown with the generic stuka call-in, intention or bug? If the former, why?
-Support Equipment - desc says it will allow Falsch to upgrade schreck, incorrect info?
-Luft pios costs 360 in Forward barracks, while drop only 300, forgot to adjust the FB price?
-pz4 E can't get HEAT round, because luft can't construct jager suppport anymore
-marder I fires timed HE instead of HE shot
-Butterfly bombs from base building can be dropped anywhere in the map, including enemy base. Intention, bug?
-Luft Flak 88 only pays once for HE upgrade and then can switch AP/HE for free with 3s cooldown
-vampire truck still exists, why?....

btw great henschel rework, gj. question, does it shoot limited number of shots or as much as rof and number of targets allow? Does it work in a manner that the two planes fly in a straight light and their cannons can actually aim a little to the side? Do they shoot only targets around the marked area or everything on their way?

[MenciusMoldbug]

I wonder if it's intended that you can only get 1x G43 scoped rifles on gebirs? Doesn't seem like it's intended to me considering you can get FG42 upgrade 2x on falls.

Also, even with the MP cost change on falls and gebirs, their reinforcement cost still remains at 45 for both. Don't know if that's an oversight or it's supposed to be intended.

EDIT: Ah ok I checked patchnotes and gebirs only having 1x G43 scoped upgrade is intended.

[MarKr]

- Fallsh commander Stuka: that is intended because the ability requires Vet4 and so it should be rewarding to unlock it. You can only use it in certain range from the squad and the commander (the soldier) needs to be alive so if it also shared cooldown with the global ability there wouldn't be many reasons to use it over the global one.

- Support equipment Desc: that remained there from previous versions

- Luft Pios cost in FHQ: that is an oversight.

- HEAT of PIV: that sucks.

- Marder I HE: that has been like that for Marder I for as long as I can remember. Marder III has a single HE shot ability, Marder I has timed ability.

- Luft 88: that has been like that for a long time too. We can change it if needed. Does it make it OP?

- Vampire: why should it be removed?

Henschels: they basically have a "magazine" with 5-6 schots if they empty it, they need to reload and the reload is long that they won't shoot again. The cannons can aim about a few degrees to each side and have their own range so they have a "fire cone" in which they "search" for vehicles along their entire flightpath and attack them. If targets are in FoW, they are ignored so the plane or some other unit needs to "lift" the FoW and see the target. They also have another weapon that is same in strength but it doesn't "aim" and only shots in a "direct line" (same as e.g. rocket planes of US and CW) in the "strike area" where you sent the plane. The Henschel shots in general have no AoE so you need to hit directly with them and so it is easy to "dodge" the shot from the weapon that doesn't aim but they still manage to hit or destroy something from time to time.

[Krieger Blitzer]

Henschels: they basically have a "magazine" with 5-6 schots if they empty it, they need to reload and the reload is long that they won't shoot again. The cannons can aim about a few degrees to each side and have their own range so they have a "fire cone" in which they "search" for vehicles along their entire flightpath and attack them. If targets are in FoW, they are ignored so the plane or some other unit needs to "lift" the FoW and see the target. They also have another weapon that is same in strength but it doesn't "aim" and only shots in a "direct line" (same as e.g. rocket planes of US and CW) in the "strike area" where you sent the plane. The Henschel shots in general have no AoE so you need to hit directly with them and so it is easy to "dodge" the shot from the weapon that doesn't aim but they still manage to hit or destroy something from time to time.

just little inquiry, both the 2 planes will fly from the same direction the player sets?
Or the 2nd plane will spawn randomly from a different direction?

[MarKr]

They both fly from the same direction the second Henschel enters the map a few seconds after the first one.

[Devilfish]

Thanks for the answers Mark.

- HEAT of PIV: that sucks.
Does it mean it's been overseen and will be fixed or it is intentional, can't tell from the answer .

-Marder - I thought there was a attempt to standardize all the HE shots to one-shots, so thought this one was just forgotten. So this is intention? What's the idea behind it?

-88 - hard to say if it makes OP, but it's quite uncommon compared to other units, like HE tanks and vehicles. But it makes it super-effective against both inf and tanks at the same time. However, if it is to stay, would be nice to fix the UI because unaware players might think it costs 75muni and not use it.

-vampire - this unit doesn't make any sense, it's like a cheat_mode=1. Ambush, hidden units and spotting is one of the fundamental mechanics of the game/mod and this one just straight up breaks it. It doesn't invoke any gameplay mechanic either, it's a simple as place the unit, press button and you see all enemy units in vast radius.

-henschels - wouldn't it be better if it only opened fire in the targeted location? so if one wants a little help with SP, for instance, it doesn't target some random unimportant targets on the way

-what about the butterfly bombs from base building?

[MarKr]

-HEAT - it was a joke...yep, it is an oversight. We'll look into it.

- Marder I - I don't think there has been any such standardization attempt. There are more units that still have timed HE. From the top of my head, StuGs and 50mm Puma would be an example.

- 88s - I thought the HE rounds have been tweaked so that they are no longer super-effective against tanks and the AP rounds have been tweaked to miss infantry more often and so there is some reason to switch between the two. Also, are you sure the activation cost is payed just the first time?

- Vampire - isn't the "cheat_mode=1" thing pretty much the same for RAF with their triangulation stations? Why is it OK for one side to have it and not the other? However, iirc, the Vamire HTs are not limited in numbers so maybe they could get some unit limit so that a player cannot cover majority of a map with them and needs to at least decide where to place them?

- Henschels - impossible to do. The plane will either aim at targets but shoot at everything along its fligthpath or will only shoot to the target zone but not aim at anything, which will make the Henschels useless as the shots have no AoE and so they would need to hit something directly which is hard when shooting "blind".

- Butterfly bombs - I forgot that one the first time. They were set the same way as when the ability was in the command pannel and it was possible to drop the "bombs " into enemy HQ sector as long as you had vision there, so nothing has changed here. I can see the possible problems with this but at the same time one minesweeper upgrade can render all the mines useless...if people see it as a problem, we can make it so that they cannot be dropped into HQ sectors.

[Walderschmidt]

- Butterfly bombs - I forgot that one the first time. They were set the same way as when the ability was in the command pannel and it was possible to drop the "bombs " into enemy HQ sector as long as you had vision there, so nothing has changed here. I can see the possible problems with this but at the same time one minesweeper upgrade can render all the mines useless...if people see it as a problem, we can make it so that they cannot be dropped into HQ sectors.

I've never had a problem with this. And I am the guy who's complained about the recon planes being used to base bomb for almost two years now.

Wald

[Devilfish]

88 - yes there is reason to switch, but because you can do so every 3 seconds, it's practically all-time multipurpose. Would be same of sherman or pz4 E could switch the same as well, you could then fight both tanks/trucks and inf. Now you usually don't switch because the cooldown. But, I've just noticed this, if it's intentional ok, I can't really tell if it is unbalanced or something

- Vampire - yes, raf radios is the same BS, just didn't mention it because it's so hard to set up that nobody uses that. Heavily dependent on the map and super clunky for obvious reasons (need to place one radio deep behind enemy lines). By all means, remove this one as well, along with the vampire.

- Butterfly - my initial comment was about the call-in from base vs call-in from units, I was wondering what was the idea behind it. Because if you can drop it anywhere from the HQ, why would you use the ranged-limited ability of the units, considering they share cooldown.

Regarding my opinion about those, I do think they need some tweaks. They should be either a defensive ability, so you create a mine-field on your territory, or offensive ability, so you drop it on enemy units, but then they don't turn invisible. Definitely shouldn't be dropable into base, same as you can't drop offmap arty there imo. I still think they don't fit in the game much, because your own units can't trigger own mines, which put big minefields in a wierd spot compared to single mines placed on strategic spots. But I guess that's just my opinion.

[CGarr]

About the vampyre/triagulation issue, there isn't really any doctrines that heavily rely on ambush in the beta anymore (US air kinda does still with their lack of a 90mm armed tank but I've already talked about their issues in other threads so I won't readdress it here). TH doc got reworked to not be 100% reliant on TD's, and most allied docs have access to 90mm/17pdr armed tanks or TD's now, so cloaked field guns aren't as vital as they used to be.

Both vampyre and triangulation are on doctrines that can't really afford to probe with their units due to high reinforcement cost. Fallschrimjagers aren't that bad currently, but I think someone mentioned their price might increase in the future once people are more acclimated to the new metas and realize how stupid strong luft can be right now. Both docs are also on factions that rely on vehicles for vision instead of inf that can crawl (personally I find the latter a lot more useful), so it makes sense that they'd both have wide area detection solutions. Both the vampyre and triangulation radios are a lot harder to discreetly set up in a spot where they can make the most of their wide detection radius when compared to crawling spotters, so it makes sense that they'd be rewarded for the extra difficulty. If you use them in a less risky manner, the compromise changes to lack of actual vision range in exchange for their cloaked unit detection, which is fair when taking my first point regarding reinforcement cost into account.

Personally, I'd rather have wide area detection solutions like the vampyre be present for all (or at least most) docs since spotter wars are just obnoxious against players that like to camp with cloaked units, but I'm probably in the minority on that, so I'm not going to push it until its attractive to a majority. I will however stand by my opinion that the vampyre and triangulation radios shouldn't be changed.