HQ Units (bike/jeep/37mm/transport) Unlocked by Krieg Barracks/Logistik Kompanie/WSC

[Walderschmidt]

Title is self explanatory. I think it would modernize each faction and allowed for more varied openers.

What do you guys think?

Wald

Edit: Clarity. I realized I wordes this way, way wrong.

[kwok]

What do you mean tier zero units?

[Diablo]

I think Walderschmidt means vanilla roster units, like without choosing a doctrine.

[Walderschmidt]

What do you mean tier zero units?

I mean HQ units, schwimm/jeep/at gun/opel/deuce

Wald

[kwok]

Would this really make more varied openings or just accelerate tiering?

The impacts I'd see from doing such would be:

-PE we experimented slightly with by including pgrens in the infantry hq. It confirmed that spamming the one unit was a viable strat. I feel like doing this would lead to shwimm spamming for pure map control which is basically a much more cost effective sct car spam which already gives PE a huge huge edge in the early game. This will only exacerbate this advantage
-WM would immediately jump to T2 on high resources since it can build its AT/extra eng in a different building which frees the HQ to upgrade
-US would spam 50cal jeeps even harder because it can produce 2 simultaneously. I don't believe US would build anything else because it doesn't really rely on a 37mm or eng spam since neither of those units scale in the game
-CW would basically take the biggest early game nerf because none would apply.

In summary, it leads to tier skipping and opens spam strats as an opening. I'm not saying these are bad things, but these are just some outcomes. Is this the future of BK you want? Personally I don't like the tier skipping since we already made a lot of efforts to put more emphasis on earlier tiers so that the game doesn't just turn into "who can rush pershing or panther first" games.

[Walderschmidt]

Would this really make more varied openings or just accelerate tiering?

I think it would make more varied openings, rather skip tiering because some T1 units in T1 buildings are unlocked when the T2 Building is built or T2 tech is researched. To get to T3, one still needs to build/research T1+T2. Hell, we could make T3 tech up slightly more expensive to accentuate that (prevent people from racing to T3 or T4).

The impacts I'd see from doing such would be:

-PE we experimented slightly with by including pgrens in the infantry hq. It confirmed that spamming the one unit was a viable strat. I feel like doing this would lead to shwimm spamming for pure map control which is basically a much more cost effective sct car spam which already gives PE a huge huge edge in the early game. This will only exacerbate this advantage
-WM would immediately jump to T2 on high resources since it can build its AT/extra eng in a different building which frees the HQ to upgrade
-US would spam 50cal jeeps even harder because it can produce 2 simultaneously. I don't believe US would build anything else because it doesn't really rely on a 37mm or eng spam since neither of those units scale in the game
-CW would basically take the biggest early game nerf because none would apply.

1) That’s a legit complaint except for the fact that it’s already a reality. PE can spam PGrens and get halftracks all day or support weapons already. Only difference from then and now is they have to build T1 to be able to get schwimm, pak, and opel. If you’re really concerned about schwimm spam, gate it behind T1 building but not the rest. Would that be a fair compromise?

2) Same thing as above. It’s already possible with Propaganda Doctrine (part of its strength I guess). Only reason I build T1 is to get the officer. It’s not like I can get a FHQ and pump out support units from there - I’d still have to build the T1 building before they unlock in FHQ.

3) How would US produce two .50 cal jeeps simaltaneously? Unless you mean it coule make one .50 cal jeep and one .50 cal halftrack. I could see that as a potential issue, but would that not be countered by Axis T2 units or extra 37mm? I don’t think it would make engies irrelevant (there’s always something to do with engies - repair, wire, sandbag, mines, etc). As for the 37mm AT gun, I could it scaling through the game being an issue but that is a separate issue entirely.

4) This is your most compelling point yet, but I see the issue as one of faction design. CW technically has only three production buildings which makes it slower to produce units and alot of its units are powerful and expensive which makes it hard to recover from losing any single one, let alone buy new ones in a hurry.

What if we gave the Brits four HQ trucks? Or what if we gave them a HQ back, in addition to the three trucks? Then they’d have four buildings that could spread unit production and tech costs around (at the expense of making their design less unique, I admit).

In summary, it leads to tier skipping and opens spam strats as an opening. I'm not saying these are bad things, but these are just some outcomes. Is this the future of BK you want? Personally I don't like the tier skipping since we already made a lot of efforts to put more emphasis on earlier tiers so that the game doesn't just turn into "who can rush pershing or panther first" games.

In summary, I don’t think it would lead to skipping tiers and I think that spam strats already exist and are already viable. Hell, propaganda doctrine was built partially around the idea of giving the Axis a spam doctrine for a change of pace, with the caveat that skill was needed to use it most effectively. I posit that the way to get around encouraging more spam would be to either continue to gate the worst offenders (schwimms/jeeps) while letting 37mm, transport, ammo trucks be unlocked by T1 or T2 building. An alternative solution would be to make spam strats require more skill to pull off, but in this case I would prefer to gate units rather than nerf/buff them accordingly.

I definitely don’t want the future of BK to be tier skipping or rushing to Panther or Pershing. My heart is not set on this idea, but I thought it was worth discussion. I personally thought this would make the early game a little more interesting and accessible to new and old players alike, given the flexibility of the build order of the first two buildings.

Wald

[kwok]

1) yeah it's a reality for one doctrine that had a built in design around pgrens, which is why it was included. would adding the pak and opel to logistik help in any way? because there's literally a bigger pak and tougher opel in the logistik company

2) i don't think this exists currently for propaganda right? you can't make AT or bikes in the barracks. The opposite is true, where you can make volkssturm in the HQ.

3) I guess do the specialized units like the 50cal/rec rifle jeep count as "tier zero" to you? I just assumed that it meant take all hq units and let them be used in wsc which included the special jeeps. So you'd be able to build the jeeps in the HQ and WSC simultaneously.

4) Ah... yeah HQ building for CW was hated by the community and came with so many bugs that were hard to dev around. I'd prefer to NOT go down that route...


Respone to summary: The example you gave is a bit of the opposite isn't it? We are adding availability to the HQ instead of the other way around, which is a big difference because the idea is that if i wanted a particular unit i DON'T need to get it from the HQ anymore. Which means that I can let the HQ focus on upgrading in tier. It doesn't really create variety. The variety and spam that you've described was pretty specifically designed with the tradeoffs in mind of 1) delaying tiering, 2) spamming only weak units.

[Walderschmidt]

I edited the title. I think we talked past one another.

Do you still think the same thoughts?

Wald