BK mod Is awesome ! One small error about realism (Axis have nukes?)

[MarKr]

I am not ignoring anything practical but you guys are giving me your FEELINGS from the game where one Hotchkiss barrage kills your units and based on this experience you tell me "Barrages kill my all my units, they deal too much damage, lower the damage". And you assume that the rockets deal more damage because the damage was increased. But it wasn't.
Pre-change damage of the rocket: 350
AoE Damage scaling: 1/0.75/0.5/0.5
Ranges of in the AoE: 2/5/8/12(15)
After-change damage of the rocket: 350
AoE Damage scaling: 1.8/0.75/0.5/0.2
Ranges of in the AoE: 1/5/9/15
This means that the rocket (after changes) deals more damage on direct hit, true, but the area that counts as "direct hit" is smaller. The rest of the scaling is the same execpt for the most distant area where it deals LESS damage than before.
I don't think anyone complained about the rocket killing their soldiers when the rocket lands on their head - it is logical and this would actually happen with the old settings too. So I dare to say that you are not complaining about direct hits but rather about the AoE damage that the weapon has. Again, look at the numbers - apart from direct hits, the rockets deal same or LESS damage than before and the actual AoE is the same as before. This means that the rockets themselves are NOT more deadly than they were before the changes.

And you still say that the Hotchkiss rockets kill everything and are OP. And I believe you (at least for the 5.1.5), but it is not because of individual rockets - it is because of how close to each other the rockets land. This is what changed compared to pre-5.1.5 version of Hotchkiss. The range is shorter and because of that the rockets land closer to each other and because of that there is very high chance that your unit takes damage not from 1 but 2 or more rockets at a time. This means that the unit which is hit takes more damage because it piles up the damage from several rockets, but it is not true that the rocket damage needs to be lowered. All that needs to be done to put the effectiveness to pre-5.1.5 version is make sure that one unit does not get hit 2 or more rockets in one barrage (or at least not always; there is still RNG so it can happen that two rockets land close to each other but it should not happen in 95% of cases). And how can this be achieved? By making the scatter bigger - which will in terms of damage "lower" the damage of the barrage inflicted on one unit.

So that is it. You want less damage for Stuka, I'm saying you will get it. But you demand to lower the damage in specific way which will not solve the current problem.

7. Ammo cost. Currently it costs 55 ammo which sounds fair to be honest for 4 rockets. But again once the TH player unlocked the ammo upgrades he can spend alll his ammo on salvos only. Suddenly 55 ammo is not that much anymore.

This one something I can agree with but this is not about the damage as most of you keep saying here.

[Viper]

hotchkiss does not need more scatter. does not need less damage. hotchkiss needs more ammo cost for the barrage. from 55 to 80 ammo.
and it is easy change to do. without need for another beta.

[MarKr]

How does that change anything, seha? As DankMan wrote - TH doctrine usually has lots of ammo in reserve because they don't have much to spend it on - with unlocks you get ammo upgrades for free and they don't have any expensive offmap arty or airstrikes to spend the ammo on, so if you only increase the ammo to cost to 80 per barrage, it will still allow to TH doc to shoot those barrages quite often and they will still keep killing everything because of the rocket hit area being too small.

[Viper]

increasing the scatter will make it worse. this way you will never know where the rocket will land and hit your units.
it will be more unexpected and harder to dodge. at least now you know where the rockets will land so you move away.
and lowering the damage itself will not make sense too. because it is still 210mm rocket. as dankman also said.

and you already increased the scatter. you made rockets later available. and you made it slower too.
next step is to increase the ammo cost. so players can't spam many hotchkiss barrage at the same time.
if they want to fire 2 hotchkiss. they should need 160 ammo instead of 110 ammo. it is a big difference.
80 ammo or 90 ammo will be fine. but 55 ammo is just too cheap.
and barrage ammo price change does not need more beta testing too.
so it is best thing you can do now in my opinion.

[The New BK Champion]

And I believe you (at least for the 5.1.5), but it is not because of individual rockets - it is because of how close to each other the rockets land.

No, it's the individual rockets that kill whole squads. I tolf u before, u dont need to be accurate beacuse those rocket kill anything even when only a *single* rocket lands *somewhere near*, not on the top of the heads..

[MarKr]

OK, I admit you're right, I've just found something in crits that makes infantry die almost every time - this has been around for years so it is not something that the patch would bring in but it is harsh in the AoE to infantry. Will be changed for Hotchkiss and Stuka HT both.

In general perspective higher scatter should help to some extend because if the rocket lands somewhere and does not catch infantry in its AoE, the crits don't affect anyting but the crits will be changed so that the kill-rate is not so high. In combination with the rest of the changes it should put the Hotchkiss to a bit better position.

[The New BK Champion]

OK, I admit you're right, I've just found something in crits that makes infantry die almost every time - this has been around for years so it is not something that the patch would bring in but it is harsh in the AoE to infantry. Will be changed for Hotchkiss and Stuka HT both.

In general perspective higher scatter should help to some extend because if the rocket lands somewhere and does not catch infantry in its AoE, the crits don't affect anyting but the crits will be changed so that the kill-rate is not so high. In combination with the rest of the changes it should put the Hotchkiss to a bit better position.

I am happy to hear that. I know u face a lot of rant everyday and most of time your job is to refuse to people and keep the vision of the mod straight. But in every rant there is at least 1% of truth I think. Generally I like the path that the mod follows. That's why I am even more happy that this sneaky crit from hotchkiss will be removed. Thx for your hard work.

[Viper]

so there will be beta 5 ?
i think it will need to be tested again after you remove the crit to make sure it's not suddenly too weak or still too op

[MarKr]

I know u face a lot of rant everyday and most of time your job is to refuse to people and keep the vision of the mod straight.

I wouldn't say that my job here is to refuse most things people want. I would say that my job is to be sceptical about problem reports that don't seem to be right when we check the files. Over my time in the dev team there have been countless cases when someone was claiming that there was some problem (which I could find no proof of in the files) and after a lot of debating and finally testing it, the person admitted it was a false alarm. On the other hand this is about 4th case in the same time period when such a report proved to be true. So I usually tend to be very sceptical out of experience, though I don't stop looking.

so there will be beta 5 ?

No, there won't be beta 5.

[Warhawks97]

Wow, i feel sorry for markr that he went through all this now. Its funny how a single tweak (range reduction) that forces players to use the units correctly or in the most effective way, becomes suddenly OP. I can agree that the damage etc hasnt been changed for ages and the way Dankman described the gameplay of TH is the exact way ive been doing since this doc got changed by xali in 4.7 beta.

I think the majority of players were simply not aware of hotchkiss and used it only as a randomly shooting machine from a range where it couldnt hit anything.


Anyway, hopefully this crit change will solve the main issues of hotchkiss.

But something i want to add:

1. Perhaps we can make the Hotchkiss upgrade to be a CP unlock
2. limited down to two upgraded hotchkiss at a time.
3. 75-80 ammo cost per barrage.

Why? I think the reason is obvious. This unit is most usefull against inf and emplacments but this doc is designed to have a weakness exactly against this (at least inf). So this single unit more or less helps to overcome the only weak side of TH doc. Only a good AA tank is "missing" at this point.

I would say that we either get rid of the so called mass-prod upgrade (bc to be honest, these tanks have already the cheapest design avaialble to a tank and are the result of the german late war production efforts) and instead tweaking perhaps the one or other cost of their TD´s.

For example if we would remove the mass prod upgrade and add hotchkiss upgrade as a CP unlock:

1. In case Hetzer is going to be removed from luft doc (see kwoks luftwaffe rework ideas) the hetzer can get a general cost drop for TH and SE doc.
2. The Jagdpanther doesnt need to be treated like a elite heavy tank with better rear armor than normal panthers and 1000 HP (with zimmerit it takes at least 3 pen hits of a 76 gun to kill it). The HP can drop to normal Panther level of 800 HP and rear armor could be weaker similiar that of normal Panthers rear armor. (I dont get btw why Jagdpanther has a weaker front armor than a skirted Panther... The lack of turret actually removes one weak spot of a tank).
So Jagdpanther could be cheaper at default by dropping cost to Panther lvl, rear armor changes and higher upkeep (its damn cheap to maintain even two of them. Much cheaper than a normal panther and more like a tank IV).
3. The Marder III sometimes feels a bit expensive for 360 MP. But perhaps its just me.



Another option would be to replace Zimmerit by hotchkiss upgrade. Honestly, Zimmerit is nonsense. Its a anti-magnetic paste against magnetic mines that got removed by 44 due to complains about catching fire easily. In game its some sort of advanced Star Wars material that magically reduces any damage by 25% which is...i massive reduction of damage being taken in regular engagments.

Perhaps we could remove both thse things and replace one by hotchkiss missiles and the other thing by something else.