Why was the 7-man rifle squad removed?
Posted: 30 Jun 2020, 03:47
The original reworks set out to change doctrines and factions to be more readily capable to balance towards 1v1 games in BK from a doctrine vs doctrine capability perspective. BIG NOTE/WARNING THE BETA IS NOT MEANT TO COMPLETELY BALANCE THE GAME!!!!
In that quest, we discovered a really major balance flaw in the countless 1v1 games that the beta has gone through. The 7-man rifle squad was without a doubt OP on really high levels of play. Its early availability, cheapness, and general combat effectiveness allowed really good players to win a really strong majority of their 1v1's playing as US no matter which doctrine against any doctrine post preliminary rework changes (in other words this might not be 100% true in current version games today for a lot of reasons i'll explain in a bit). I have really really old replays to show this.... but I don't think they could really be used anymore since those were old versions of the beta in which the files would be needed to run the replay. Here is the gist of the analysis though:
The 7-man riflemen's biggest advantage was its ability to be a pre-upgraded rifleman squad that could be built with very little additional cost from a regular rifleman and with no build time. Having no build time was a HUGE build order accelerator in low resource and high resource games. In a 1v1 scenario, the ability to field another unit instantly to gain a 1-unit lead on the enemy was extremely powerful and can be used extremely aggressively by high level players. Players will usually have the same amount of units on the field assuming they are efficient with their build order. In the early game, most units are only capable of pairing against one other unit. It isn't until the mid game where units start to be able to multi-face other unit match ups (for example, one puma can handle more than one rifleman, but in the early game no axis unit can handle more than 1 rifleman at a time). The fact that a US player can have two units in the same time that an axis player can make one was devastating because gave US players a huge advantage in handling any build order the axis player can throw out. Not even MG counters (which were designed to face hordes of inf) would work because it was as simple as send one rifle or even the captain to make the 7man squad to find the MG, then the 7man squad to flank.
A lot of good players know that sometimes games can be decided within the first 5 minutes of the game. A lot of maps are "if you lose the fuel in the center it's GG because the enemy will have tanks out first" (metaphorically). The ruthless combo for the 7man squad is that the build order is accelerated even faster for US because the riflemen squad has the fastest capture rate in the game. So not only can the extra rifle squad give combat advantage but resource advantage as well. This turned the first 5-min game end statement into "if you lose the fuel in the center it's GG because the enemy will have tanks out BEFORE AT CAN EVEN COME OUT".
The short term solution was to just remove the 7man squad. This was necessary for the 1v1 doctrine reworks to continue because other doctrine structure balancing was constnatly overshadowed by the 7man squad imbalance (just as the CW fuel advantage imbalance overshadows any CW doctrine imbalance). We considered bringing it back as a infantry doctrine specific ability that would be available late game. In fact we considered giving all officers some type of doctine specific ability (looking for that old post now... will edit this later with that link). So is the 7 man squad gone for good? I dunno probably not. It didn't really come up in discussion for a long time so it was sort of forgotten and never come back to among other major changes necessary for the beta to go live. But it seems like it might come back in discussion and I wanted to answer the inevitable question before we hear more screams of shadow nerfs (BY THE WAY IT WAS IN THE CHANGELOGS).
Hope to have continued constructive discussion on the future of bk!
In that quest, we discovered a really major balance flaw in the countless 1v1 games that the beta has gone through. The 7-man rifle squad was without a doubt OP on really high levels of play. Its early availability, cheapness, and general combat effectiveness allowed really good players to win a really strong majority of their 1v1's playing as US no matter which doctrine against any doctrine post preliminary rework changes (in other words this might not be 100% true in current version games today for a lot of reasons i'll explain in a bit). I have really really old replays to show this.... but I don't think they could really be used anymore since those were old versions of the beta in which the files would be needed to run the replay. Here is the gist of the analysis though:
The 7-man riflemen's biggest advantage was its ability to be a pre-upgraded rifleman squad that could be built with very little additional cost from a regular rifleman and with no build time. Having no build time was a HUGE build order accelerator in low resource and high resource games. In a 1v1 scenario, the ability to field another unit instantly to gain a 1-unit lead on the enemy was extremely powerful and can be used extremely aggressively by high level players. Players will usually have the same amount of units on the field assuming they are efficient with their build order. In the early game, most units are only capable of pairing against one other unit. It isn't until the mid game where units start to be able to multi-face other unit match ups (for example, one puma can handle more than one rifleman, but in the early game no axis unit can handle more than 1 rifleman at a time). The fact that a US player can have two units in the same time that an axis player can make one was devastating because gave US players a huge advantage in handling any build order the axis player can throw out. Not even MG counters (which were designed to face hordes of inf) would work because it was as simple as send one rifle or even the captain to make the 7man squad to find the MG, then the 7man squad to flank.
A lot of good players know that sometimes games can be decided within the first 5 minutes of the game. A lot of maps are "if you lose the fuel in the center it's GG because the enemy will have tanks out first" (metaphorically). The ruthless combo for the 7man squad is that the build order is accelerated even faster for US because the riflemen squad has the fastest capture rate in the game. So not only can the extra rifle squad give combat advantage but resource advantage as well. This turned the first 5-min game end statement into "if you lose the fuel in the center it's GG because the enemy will have tanks out BEFORE AT CAN EVEN COME OUT".
The short term solution was to just remove the 7man squad. This was necessary for the 1v1 doctrine reworks to continue because other doctrine structure balancing was constnatly overshadowed by the 7man squad imbalance (just as the CW fuel advantage imbalance overshadows any CW doctrine imbalance). We considered bringing it back as a infantry doctrine specific ability that would be available late game. In fact we considered giving all officers some type of doctine specific ability (looking for that old post now... will edit this later with that link). So is the 7 man squad gone for good? I dunno probably not. It didn't really come up in discussion for a long time so it was sort of forgotten and never come back to among other major changes necessary for the beta to go live. But it seems like it might come back in discussion and I wanted to answer the inevitable question before we hear more screams of shadow nerfs (BY THE WAY IT WAS IN THE CHANGELOGS).
Hope to have continued constructive discussion on the future of bk!