Hello once again!
A new update for the Beta has been released and this topic should give you some details on what it brings.
This update is rather small, mostly fixing reported problems of the last release but also bringing some new things and requested changes.
There were some requests for lowering the costs of Luftwaffe infantry and Henschel ability. We agree that some cost reduction was justified because the infantry now unlocks weaker than before and the Henschel's strength was reduced too. We, however, decided for less cost reduction than what was often suggested because the infantry is still relatively strong when it is unlocked and very strong later on whith all their passive unlocks and the ammo cost of Hesnchel can be further lowered with an upgrade to a total of 145 ammo, which is quite low price for a good chance to kill Pershings or Churchills.
Luftwaffe doctrine:
- Fallshirmjägers cost dropped to 500MP (from 550MP)
- Gebirgsjägers cost dropped to 450MP (from 550MP)
- Henschel ability cost dropped to 185 ammo (from 200)
Changes to RA doctrine include further tweaks to Canadian infantry, the special infantry squad of RA. In the first release they were basically just a copy of normal Infantry sections, only with slightly different voice lines. They no longer have Riflegrenade upgrade nor the Marksman shot ability however they received an option to mark a target for artillery units (same ability as the Artillery spotter has) so if you build a 25 pounder, it can provide these squads with relatively accurate indirect fire support, it requires a bit of micro though.
As for urban combat in late game, RE has their Engineers and RAF has Sten Commandos but RA lacked some good close range squad. Canadian infantry can now be turned into a close range squad by upgrading Sten SMGs, which will provide some options for urban combat when the new 4-men Assault squad becomes too weak in the later stages of the game.
We also took a look into 25 pounders which seemed to be wastly underused and people usually went for 95mm Cromwells or Priests instead. Some of the issues here was a relatively low damage, combined with small AoE, combined with relatively big scatter. We made a a poll in another topic to see what your thoughts were and in the end we decided for some changes. Basic barrages from 25 pounders now have less scatter which should compensate a bit for the smaller AoE, the damage has been increased agains infantry so the shells no longer need to land on a soldier's head to kill them (damage against everything else is still the same) and finally the cooldowns on the 25 pounders have been lowered so they can shoot pretty often. The howitzers still have ammo upkeep so building lots of them will drain your ammo income a lot and shooting them all the time will deplete your ammo pool quickly too, so we shouldn't see any crazy "25 pounder spams".
Royal Artillery doctrine:
- Removed unit limit from Canadian Infantry
- Removed Rifle grenade upgrade from Canadian infantry
- Removed Marksman Shot ability from Canadian infantry
- Added Sten upgrade to Canadian infantry
- Added "Mark Artillery Target" ability to Canadian infantry
- 25 pounders have now lower scatter (so shots hit closer to the selected position)
- 25 pounders now deal more damage to all infantry (damage to vehicles, tanks, buildings and other targets unchaged)
- Lowered cooldown on abilities of 25 pounders to approximately 10 seconds
- Emplaced 25 pounder has now correct ammo upkeep of 7 (from 70)
An often requested change was a standardization of re-camo times for tank destroyers, where Axis TDs took longer time to re-camo than TDs of Allies. Now Allies take the same time as Axis.
In a reaction to some reports that Garands have made SMGs pointless, we tried to find some way to tweak this without returning Garands to their previously useless state. In the game each bullet fired that hits has a certain chance to kill the target soldier immediately, even if the soldier is at full health. This obviously means that higher RoF gives higher chance of this "one-shot" chance occuring. Garands received a huge boost in RoF in the past and even with crappy accuracy at longer ranges, at closer ranges they became several folds more deadly because of higher RoF+one-shot chance. We decided to try a change where each shot has a lower chance for one-shot killing enemies. This does NOT affect the effectiveness as much as it sounds as the high RoF is still providing significant advantage but it should provide a bit more breathing space for SMGs.
There was also a report stating that building several CW Command tanks stacks the bonuses and can lead to ridiculous situations so we decided to limit the number of command tanks for CW to 1 at a time.
General changes:
- Re-camouflage times of Allied TDs set to same values as Axis ones (from faster re-camo)
- Lowered the chance to one-shot kill a soldier on Riflemen's Garanad rifle
- CW Command tank limited to 1 at a time
Bug fixes:
- Triage centers now have healing radius of 15 (from 10-20)
- Panther in Luft doctrine costs 4 CP to unlock now (doc now has 30 CP in total)
- "normal" StuG IV no longer appears in Tank Factory for Propaganda doctrine
- PIV J and Command tank now requires correct unlocks
- StuPa is now correctly displayed in Heavy Tank Factory
- Officers in BK and Def doctrine can now use their Propaganda abilities
- StuG IV Late can no longer capture points
- 6 pounder can now be built from CW HQ
- Emplaced 25 pounder requires just Armored Truck (same as "naked" version; used to be truck + Captain for emplaced version)
- CW M3 T48 no longer lacks the AP ammo upgrade
- Fixed missing Resource Gathering upgrade on Field Support Truck
Text corrections:
- Wasp/Bren reward option now has proper description
- Corrected description of CW Staghound
- Corrected description of Luft Henschel unlock
Graphics:
- Added own icon, portrait and symbol to CW Assault Squad
The next update will bring reworked Tank Hunter doctrine which should conclude big changes and should leave mostly smaller, more ballance-oriented updates.
Thanks for your feedback and as always, report anything you come across and share your feedback.
