Terror/Propaganda Doctrine Draft

[kwok]

Hello all,

We would like to thank you all for your patience as we work on this next patch. Before releasing the next iteration of doctrine reworks and balance updates, we want to share the initial draft of the doctrine for player feedback before committing it to the beta branch. We know this change will likely be tougher to adapt to than previous reworks, so this is an opportunity to provide conceptual feedback that we will take into consideration before releasing. As always, we want to repeat again that this is a TEST/BETA which means most of these changes are in an experimental stage. We will make sub-topics for each section of this doctrine for you to discuss. Please try to fit your comments within each section we provide in order for us to stay a bit more organized in feedback. The more organized the feedback, the quicker we as devs can assess and make necessary changes. Onwards to the notes.

Conceptual Summary of Doctrine:
After much feedback from surveys, forum polls, forum discussions, and the occasional direct message, we have tried our best to build a comprehensive and in depth doctrine loosely anchored around two core ideas: Propaganda and Volkssturm. This doctrine will replace the current Terror doctrine. From a unit composition perspective, the doctrine encourages the use of light conscription-based infantry coupled with terrifying heavy hitter war machines, including Tiger tanks and rocket artillery. From a playstyle perspective, while its larger weapons are strong, it won’t be enough to carry the game. To maximize the potential of this doctrine, the player will need to use a new arsenal of buff/debuff abilities representing propaganda warfare. The doctrine can roughly be broken down into three sections:
The Propaganda Path (with sub-sections of a volkssturm path and officer path)
The Tiger Path
The Artillery Path

Please go to viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3318 to discuss conceptual and structural feedback.

The Propaganda Path:
This path branches into two sub-paths. The first path is dedicated more towards improving a brand new unit, Volkssturm. The role of the Volkssturm is to act as a filler unit to help capture and hold ground in mass numbers. However, no matter how large of numbers there are, they will still need the support of other units and abilities. The upgrades to volkssturm are meant to help keep their utility useable into the middle and late game. This does NOT mean that they will be viable solo units in the late game after the doctrine unlocks. Their growing strength will depend more on their veterancy while the unlocks give them access to weapons that can be used to at least put up a fight against various kinds of enemy units in the different tiers.
The second path is the propaganda path, unlocking different abilities that will either apply tactically or globally. For now, there are ideas where the abilities give buffs to your or your allies’ units OR debuff enemy units. Advancing down this path will scale the general efficiency of your propaganda capabilities. You won’t find the same abilities you may be use to in the older terror doc; it may require a bit more thought on both a tactical and strategic level.

Please go to viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3319 to discuss and provide feedback.

The Tiger Path:
This path is a fairly straight-forward tank path. Unlock the Tiger tank, its variants, and other upgrades to the tanks. While it may be tempting based on previous metas on BK to rush this path as fast as possible, the new reworked doctrines will force you to need to be a bit more flexible in your doctrine choices. Getting the timing of when to unlock Tigers and upgrades will be a key skill in becoming successful with the new propaganda doctrine. If you unlock Tigers too early, you sacrifice many bonuses of the early game to give you the right support for your tanks. If you unlock too late, you may be left without any strong armor to take on the Allied war machine.

Please go to viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3320 to discuss and provide feedback.

The Artillery Path:
As mentioned early in this rework overhaul, we look to round out the capabilities of doctrines ensuring that each doctrine has effective means to handle most situations. This path is meant to ensure that the new Terror Doctrine is able to handle heavily entrenched positions, including emplacements and defenses. Each unlock within this path should steadily increase the power of your means of indirect attack, scaling with potential hardened defenses from other doctrines.

Please go to viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3321 to discuss and provide feedback.

Tank Hunter Unlock
The final piece of the new rework that is experimental as of now is a tank hunter unlock. In addition to doctrine reworks, we are also reexamining the general structure of base factions without doctrines. This tank hunter unlock is meant to make the faction itself more well rounded while doctrine unlocks are used to add a strategic boost to specific capabilities. So now the formidable anti-tank role StuG will be behind a doctrine unlock while the more well-rounded base Panzer IV will be available without an unlock. When the testing phase comes around, please let us know the impact of these changes.

This change will require testing before we will open a topic to discuss the impacts/feedback. Please be patient for the next patch release and we will return to this topic.



We look forward to your thoughts and continued patience.

[MarKr]

As a few questions came, we wanted to share a bit more about what we've come up with for the new Propaganda doctrine so that we can see what you think about it and you can express your thoughts on the doctrine design.

Any stats mentioned here can change.

As we have mentioned before, there will be a new infantry unit - the Volkssturm squad. These will be what is usually known in RTS as a "spam unit". They cost 190MP, can be built at HQ, Barracks and forward HQ and the only condition to build them is to choose the Propaganda doctrine. They are meant to represent conscripted civilians who got only the very basic military training and have absolutely no combat experience at all. This is shown in the game by a unit made of soldiers that have Kar98s as effective (or ineffective?) as Pionners, have 35HP at the start, can only use grenade as an ability and they will actually flee from battle automatically once they have only 3 soldiers in a squad left. Pair this with the fact that Volkssturm squads start as 5-men squads and you will start to see their weaknesses.

Their weaknesses will have a counter-balance. First of all, their Veterancy bonuses are different from other infatry, most notably in the fact that every Veterancy level increases the HP of each soldier which makes the squads grow a lot stronger with veterancy than other squads. They will also only "auto-retreat" when they have no combat experience (a.k.a. "Vet 0") once they gain their first promotion, they will no longer flee from battle unless you order them to.
They will also have a squad upgrage which will allow them to increase squad size...twice. This will be a squad upgrade, not a global upgrade so you will need to spend MP on each squad separately but at the same time it will allow you to upgrade only squads that you need upgraded. Need a cheap recon squad? Build one Volkssturm squad with 5 men and don't upgrade it. Do you need a meat-shield squad? Upgrade them twice. The upgrades are, however available based on the upgraded Phase - after the first Phase upgrade you will be able to get the first extra man, after the last Phase you'll be able to upgrade the other one.

This doctrine will have no access to Grenadiers.

An important unit for this doctrine's infantry play will be the Officer. Similarly to the Def doc Officer, the Propaganda Officer will be different too. He will have more abilities, some of which will be locked behind the "Officer unlock" which will give him Binoculars ability as well as make Volkssturms around gain more XP (helping to remove the auto-retreat faster) or an ability that will shrug off suppression from Volkssturms at the cost of Officers's own safety. The Officer will be a great support for your infantry but that also makes him a priority target for the oponent. The officer will come with two "bodyguards", however most of the abilities will only be available if the Officer in the squad is alive, if he dies and the bodyguards still live, you can retreat them and "reinforce" the squad, thus you'll get the commander back faster the squad will also retain its veterancy this way.

EDIT:
Also probably worth noting - the StuG unlock gives access to StuG IV "Late" version, previously only obtainable through BK doctrine's Combat Group ability. The Combat Group ability in Blitz doctrine was changed and in one of previous beta updates and no longer provides this unit and so it was unused in the game. This version comes with skirts upgraded but also is a bit more expensive than the StuG IV available in BK doc.
StuG III (reward option for StuG IV) has no camo but instead an ability that provides combat boosts to Grenadiers and Stormtroopers. Since neither of these infantry types are available in the new Propaganda doctrine, StuG III would be pointless there and so it is not available as a reward choice here and remains a Blitzkrieg doctrine specific reward option.