One thing that has been mentioned a lot about CW was that their main rifles have not been changed, while the US and Axis rifles received some significant buffs in the past. There were several ways to approach this - flat damage buff, higher rate of fire, higher accuracy etc. In the end we decided to improve a little the damage and also increase the rate of fire. This places the Lee-enfield rifles more on the current level of other rifles.
We also lowered the cost of the "Expert engineers" upgrade for Sappers. This upgrade use to allow "over-repairing" tanks. It was a very powerful feature and so the cost of 75 ammo for the upgrade was justified. The over-repair feature has been removed in 5.2.0 so the benefits of the upgrade got reduced to "faster repairs" and we forgot to adjust the cost accordingly, that's why the change is here.
Those were general changes for CW, now for specific doctrines.- Changed cooldown on Lee-enfield rifles for Sappers, Rifle sctions and Commandos to 1.5 (from 2)
- Changed damage on Lee-enfield rifles for Sappers, Rifle sctions and Commandos to 22-29 (from 19-29)
- Lowered the cost of "Expert Engineers" upgrade of Sappers to 40 ammo (from 75 ammo)
There have been a few topics about changing the RE doctrine. Details differed but one thing was almost universally agreed on - add a buildable Churchill Mk VII. It is now added in the Armour Truck. There have been more Churchill-related changes requested for RE doc but we first want to see the impact of this new tank on the gameplay and then add other changes. So, more changes will come after the Mk VII is put into right place.
There has also been a "complaint" that the RE glider costs a lot of MP, drops one squad and is useless after that. This was true so now the glider can build more RE Sappers, Repair Bren Carrier and after the landing, two Sappers are spawned that automatically repair vehicles around (the glider works as a "repair station"). The glider is pretty fragile so it should be placed carefully or it will be lost very quickly. The Repair Bren Carriers were largely under used vehicles so they got a new feature - they can detect and defuse mines around them + the one built in the glider comes with the "Advanced repairs" upgrade installed. It will most likely not make the vehicle a lot more used but it might be handy at least sometimes.
There have also been some requests for changes for RAF. We currently have a lot of suggestions from the community and some ideas of our own and we need to decide what to implement and how, so bigger changes will come later. For now we changed the Commandos Captain to be a 3-men squad to improve the unit's survivability. People also pointed out that the doctrine lacks some artillery unit. There has been a suggestion to return the 95mm Cromwell but we feel it doesn't fit the doctrine thematically, instead we added the Pack howitzer into the Tetrarch glider.- Added a buildable version of Churchill MK VII to Armour Truck (700MP 90F, requires unlock)
- RE glider can now deploy additional Sappers and Repair Bren Carriers
- Repair Bren Carriers can now passively detect and defuse mines at the range of 20
- RE glider now deploys two sappers who repair damaged vehicles near their position
RA doctrine has been talked about a bit too. There have been several suggestions for changes. One of the suggestions/complaints was that the ammo upkeeps drag down the intended theme of the doctrine. That was somewhat true, especially when we consider that "air" doctrines were often able to provide better support with their planes with no ammo upkeeps at all. The suggestion was to remove the upkeeps from the doctrine completely but we don't want to go down that path. Instead, we added two upgrades into the main HQ truck, that each lower the ammo upkeep of units (similar to US upkeep-reducing upgrades). This way an RA player will be able to reduce the ammo upkeeps by nearly 50% which should provide significant edge over other "arty" doctrines. Please note that it is pretty much impossible to predict the correct cost, availability and effect strength and overall impact of these upgrades on the gameplay so changes are expected based on feedback from players.- Commandos Captain is now a 3-men squad
- Pack howitzer added into the Tetrarch glider
We also have a few changes for the US faction, although less impactful than those for CW.- Added 2 upgrades to the main HQ truck for RA, each lowering global ammo upkeep of artillery units
-- 1st upgrade requires the Field Support Truck (100MP 30fuel, lowers ammo upkeep by 25%)
-- 2nd upgrade requires the Armour Support Truck (120MP 50fuel, lowers ammo upkeep by 25%)
All doctrines now have Ranger Captain as a 3-men squad - again, to improve survivability of this command unit. The Captain can once again call in the 7-men Rifle squad, although this ability is only available in the Infantry doctrine. The "Demoralize the enemy" ability has been swapped for a smoke cover barrage call-in, which sould provide more tactical options.
We also increased the immobilisation chance of Sticky bombs. These things are hard to use because they require the squad to get very close to the target. This is already hard enough because of all the MGs, HE ammo and other stuff that can easily suppress or wipe entire squad. But, when you somehow managed to get close and use them, they often didn't immobilize the target anyway. This change improves the odds. The skirt upgrade still offers some protection from the effect, however, the chances are set in such a way that Vetted infantry with the "Double sticky" ability has pretty much guaranteed immobilisation on their target.
As for Wehrmacht faction - people have reported that using bunkers if Def doc is excesivelly expensive and in combination with the long build time, make the bunkers not very viable option. There is also the thing that the bunkers can be captured, which is a risk, but if they are not worth building because of their cost, it is not really a factor. Bunkers are now built with an MG team inside which means you don't need to build a separate squad just to make use of the bunker. If we subtract the cost of an MG team from the cost of the bunker, the bunkers would be too cheap, so we increased the cost of the structure but the increase is less that MG team cost so in the end it is still cheaper than currently building a bunker and MG team separately. This will hopefully make the bunkers a bit more useful and remove some of the micro from using bunkers. There was also a suggestion to swapt Elefant for Nashorn between Def and SE docs. We liked the idea and reasoning behind it so we decided to give it a go.- Ranger Captain is now a 3-men squad
- Ranger Captain in Infantry Company can now call in a 7-men squad again
- "Demoralize the Enemy" ability of the Ranger Captain replaced by a Smoke Drop ability
- Sticky Bombs have now 90% chance to destroy tracks/wheels on vehicles without skirts and 70% chance to do so on vehicles with skirts
New stuff for the live version:
The beta players came up with a suggestion to make Elefant a buildable unit rather than a callin, so Elefant can now be built in the Panzerjäger building and the callin ability is now gone.
Another news is that the Wehrmacht high command re-evaluated their strategies involving bunker usage and after a thorough analysis came to a conclusion that forcing soldiers to use the "one soldier per window" strategy is a waste of firepower. Thus a change has been ordered - soldiers occupying a bunker can now share a window with their comrades, which should increase the efficiency of bunker structures in defense planning.
High command also finally got a new shipment of unbreakable bunker locks so leaving bunkers without a garrison will no longer pose a risk of those bunkers falling into enemy hands.
Last but not least, the PE. There has been a topic about a "early-mid game gap" for PE, saying that there are very few cost-effective AT units in this phase. There were suggestions to lower the cost of the 28mm AT car and make the 75mm Puma come earlier. Both suggestions got implemented, hopefully helping with this issue. There was also a request to return the scoped StG44 and they are now available for the SS squad. For now the squad keeps the sniper but we expect this change in the near future.- Elefant in Defensive doctrine swapped for a Nashorn
- Bunkers and Pantherturms are built with an HMG team inside
- Increased cost of bunkers and Pantherturms by 100MP
- Bunkers and Pantherturms no longer turn neutral when nobody is inside
- More than one soldier can now shoot from a single bunker "window"
SE doctrine - there were some changes last time but more suggestions poped up and we decided to try some of them. One of the suggestions was to make the Sabotage squad available a bit earlier as they usually came pretty late to be relevant. Now they are available at 4 CP instead of 6. They can also lay Teller mines when these get unlocked. There was also a suggestion to make changes to Bergetiger to make it more appealing to use, so we did. We are suspect that some of the options could become abuseable so it is likely to receive further changes if that becomes the case. The swap of Nashorn for Elefant has been already mentioned above. In SE this is also accompanied with a change in the unlock chain but nothing too drastic.- Lowered the cost of 28mm Armored Car to 230MP 10F (from 320MP 15F)
- 75mm L48 "Puma" now requires Logistic Kompanie upgrade (from Panzerjäger or Panzer-support Kommand)
- Squad called in by Hauptsturmführer can now equip scoped StG44 instead of normal StG44
Then there are some general changes and fixes, most noticeable should be the settings of HE shots. These should now cause missed shots to land farther away from their targets and thus lead to less often one-shot-squad-wipes.- Swapped the Sabotage squad and Scorched earth unlock in SE doctrine
- Sabotage squad can now lay Teller mines
- Bergetiger in SE can now build Road blocks, trenches and lay mines
- Bergetiger can no longer hold a tank commander
- Nashorn in SE doctrine swapped for Elefant
- Changed tank/TD unlock path to (2CP Beutepanzers) <- (1CP Panzer IV F2) <- (1CP JPIV/Hetzer) -> (4CP Elefant)
We'll need your feedback especially on the Churchill Mk VII and the upkeep lowering upgrades for RA. If you have any suggestions or insights based on gameplay, we'll be glad to read them.- Reverted the path-finding changes applied few years ago back to vCoH (tanks should no longer try to drive against enemies in reverse, hopefully will help with path-finding issues too)
- Increased the distance by which an HE shot can miss its target
- Unified accuracy values of HE ammunition to 1/0.9/0.75/0.65 (from various values)
- Flame weapons will now all kill infantry in buildings at about the same rate
- Made further changes to AA units - more range in AA mode, stronger stats etc.
- Corrections and updates to ingame texts
- Improved effectiveness of HE Wirblewind against infantry in trenches
We got reported during the beta that RA Churchill was not available and the smoke ability of US captain wasn't working - these two should be fixed now. There were some other reports but we either haven't got a fix for it yet or were unable to replicate the bug.
