Snipers rebalance

[MEFISTO]

you can counter snipers with either a M5 Stuart "Recce ,M8 Armored Car, Motorcycle, vampire, jeep. Are they expensive?. The solution could be give then less HP that's it.

-M5 dosn't have a good radio detection
-M8 dosn't have a good radio detection
-Vampire is a cheated unit that should dissapear or completely be reworked also only 1 doc has it unless you want CW adquiring somekind of own "vampyre" with maphack cheat hability.

that's is not true, you know M5/-M8 they have a good sniper detection

[kwok]

Bump for the cry babies in the community

[mofetagalactica]

Bump for the cry babies in the community

lol

[CGarr]

Bump for the cry babies in the community

My idea with the mark target on observer units was the only one that nobody disagreed with, it wouldn't be directly changing snipers so that crowd is still happy, but it'd give an option to deal with snipers more easily. I assume you're posting this because of the game last night, the guy that was complaining the most about snipers isn't active on the forum and only recently started playing. If you're posting it because of Figree, I think he was just tired, he was slowing down a lot towards the end.

One other alternative I can think of that could make sense alongside these changes or on it's own would be to give observer units (spotters, ketten, and dingo specifically) a mark target ability that also prevents the target from entering/returning to camo. This would help make snipers be less of a pain in the ass and would also help solve the issue regarding TD's and AT gun's re-cloaking mid fight. The ability would need some significant range to be effective but would pretty much negate all of these issues.

This is the only real change I would like to see to snipers and I think it would be more than enough.

Maybe also give the Stormtrooper squad in the tank hunter doc a marksman ability similar to all British tommmies.

Wald

Walder also suggested a fix that'd make the SS squad on PE less obnoxious. It'd also allow the new PS doc to countersnipe without having a sniper of their own. Seeing as how that doc has a lot of trouble making it to late game with any map control whatsoever against snipers, this might help their earlygame out a bit without affecting their late game directly. Currently, I find that PS doc is really easy to lock down on many maps long enough to get armor way before they do with just snipers, a bunch of AT units, and a couple rifle squads to scare away the half alive squads. A better mark target for spotter units would solve this without hurting much aside from US since they are dependent on cloaking AT units in the mid game, and I think it would help US a lot more than they would be hurt by it.

More smoke options wouldn't hurt but the best option is probably a change to spotter units like I suggested.

[MenciusMoldbug]

My proposal is to fundamentally change the snipers and if that isn't what people want, they can ignore the stuff I'm about to write:

My proposal to change sniper in short text:

- Higher aim time (from 0.75-1.25 to 4-5 seconds)

- Quicker decloak time (should be revealed on the 2nd shot instead of the 3rd, don't know if it needs to be changed more than that but it should be enough to keep them visible for a counter-snipe after the third-fourth shot).

- No caps on snipers

What this attempts to do:

- Stop snipers from bypassing normal cooldown values to fire quickly on targets with buff stacks (inspired assault + rapid fire ability buff stack, etc.)

- Let infantry units fire on snipers in firing range who are constantly shooting at them instead of remaining invisible

- No caps on snipers needed now as I will explain why in the longer text format

Longer text:

The reason I'm not putting caps on the snipers with higher aim times (so you can have 20 snipers if you wanted) is because of how aim time generally works in the game. If two units are aiming at the same infantry model (not the squad itself, but a single soldier in a squad for example) and they are capable of instantly killing the infantry model; only one of them will be able to do so and go into 'cool-down' for his sniper rifle, and the other one will not be in the cool-down phase, but the aim-time phase. Since it's kind of hard to explain in text, I will explain in images:



I hope this image makes it a bit clearer on what I mean by the aim-time phase and cool-down phase. Simply put, aim-time is when the unit wants to fire on the target but can't until meets the first check-mark to do so, the cool-down and reload times are the second check-mark to allow him to fire. For example, a unit can aim at the target but can't fire because he has to reload, so he will reload first and then aim at the target to fire (interestingly in COH, reload bypasses cooldown, so if a unit's reload is shorter than their cooldown, then it might be beneficial for them to be in the reload phase than the cool-down phase). Now I will move onto an example involving snipers:



In this image, I have put 2 snipers close to each other, and an enemy infantry squad is approaching them. Usually, snipers will fire on the first target in their sights, or if they have a priority in their target table, will switch to the most suitable target to fire on (So if a enemy tank shows up and they are still aiming and then an enemy infantry model shows up, they will switch targets from the enemy tank to the enemy infantry model unless they are told to attack the enemy tank). Most infantry squads in the game travel in a triangle, diamond (sometimes a square), or line formation. Most familiar one for people should be the triangle formation, where the squad leader is ahead of the pile and the rest are following him on the sides like they are forming a wing. So in this case, since Sniper 1 and Sniper 2 see the squad leader first, they will both target him first. One sniper will be able to connect the shot and go into cool-down phase, the other will not:



Now to extrapolate this, in the current BK version: If you let someone build 6 snipers and he put them in a line, and an enemy infantry squad size of 6 approached them. The squad would be dead in 4-6 seconds if the 6 snipers chose the first 3 infantry models to shoot, and the 3 who did not shoot chose the other 3 infantry models to shoot afterwards because of how aim times are set to around 1 second. However, if their aim times were set to 4-5 seconds. The entire squad would be dead in 12-16 seconds, if they shot the first 3 models and the remaining one shots the 3 who were still alive. This assumes that every sniper is neatly picking his target and making sure the other snipers around him are not aiming for the same guy. Because of how COH works, this is rarely the case, and you will see 'mis-fires' from 2 snipers next to each other where they will both shoot but only one of them will get a kill and the second one will shoot 2 seconds afterwards having already 'fired a shot' (though it was just a visual effect and not a real shot in the game engine). So in my proposal, if aim times work as I think they should (there's no bugs where aim-time can be bypassed if they switch targets or something like that). Then someone having 20 snipers makes no difference if they are all bunched up instead of being all over the map. Since if a infantry squad approaches, they will all usually aim at the first 3 models, and the rest of the squad can safely run away after figuring out there's a lot of snipers in the area and they can't approach it safely. So sniper blobs are the hardest hit by this change, but single snipers should work as they do before with the only noticeable difference being that since the aim-time and cool-down times are about the same length, they will not fire their first shot immediately and instead wait to fire. So units running across shot blockers and stuff will not get shot immediately and lose squad members.

I personally don't care about snipers, I will always artillery them and/or strafing run them since I just have to make sure they don't pay themselves off in costs or are at least negligibly useful if I just spam vehicles instead. However, this is one way it could work but it entirely depends on aim time values in COH 1 not being bugged to shit (I know how to bypass handheld anti-tank weapons aim time but not sure if it applies to sniper rifles). If they are bugged, the idea is pretty much bunk but I'm still throwing it out there if anyone has some interest in how aim time and cooldown works in COH.

[kwok]

Here's my personal suggestion that I've held back and tried not to be a part of the conversation because of all things going on right now, getting into paragraph long fights on this particular topic is NOT my priority.

The most hilarious thing is that this was said right at the beginning as a problem and no one suggested the most simple solution:

We all had those games where we had double sniper on the other team completely locking infantry offensive formation with pretty much 0 skill, we all also tried running into them as fast as possible to detect them and shot them, we all also had stupid situations where we had 3 of the models that had survived to the stupid super rate of fire of such snipers and couldn't deal with it at point blank range with the sniper just running away for uknown reasons maybe super high hp pool or "armor"?

So my solution is to adjust their veterancy. Since people like to make suggestions without doing research (except for warhawks, if there's one thing I have to give him credit for is that), here's some interesting facts.

Sniper HP stands at 140 right now, which is already nearly 3 times the amount of regular infantry.
Sniper veterancy HP increases are the following:
Vet 3 = +5%
Vet 4 = +7%
Vet 5 = +7%
Sniper received accuracy modifier are the following:
Vet 1 = -5%
Vet 2 = -5%
Vet 3 = -6%
Vet 4 = -6%
Vet 5 = -6%

Before players knee jerk reaction and exclaim WTF WHY DO SNIPERS HAVE SO MUCH HEALTH THATS TOO MUCH MAKE IT 50 LIKE OTHER INFANTRY! No. Absolutely not because it's not like snipers are unkillable. Snipers has had and always had that health for a reason and snipers weren't ALWAYS a problem. I can go into a really long rant as to why snipers are a problem NOW and it has to do with garand changes but that would take forever. Instead of that, the question here is this:
Do people have problems killing the sniper at vet 0 through 2 or does it really just get terrible at vet 3 and forward when those HP modifiers start kicking in with stacking received acc modifiers? From what I've seen, players in the early game dont have issues with snipers at lower vets because they can properly send in units like jeeps or cheap infantry to kill. It becomes harder at higher vet because even when you can make a maneuver to get at the sniper and take shots, it's never enough before a reasonably skilled player (or even unskilled) can press the retreat button in time.

My proposal is to ONLY remove the HP and received accuracy veterancy buffs. Even then I fear would be too much but meh we'll see.

WARNING: Constructive suggestions stop here. I basically just critique every idea proposed.

I recently got bitched at hard for making "too drastic of changes" to bk mod even though the specific thing being complained about came directly from the community and I hard agreed with the person but I had to respond "that's what the community wanted" and his response was "yeah but devs get the final say so the responsibility falls on them" which he's right. I am so vehemently against so many of the suggestions here because they are NOT isolated as they claim to be. Continue to read if you want I got the constructive stuff done, the rest is not constructive:

About mark target, this would require micro similar to using the marksman ability the brits have. Will players have the speed and micro fast enough to be able to pull this off or will this essentially be more of a "pros with good micro" available ability (which would give a significant advantage to higher tier players). I know personally I DONT have that speed. I can barely get my tommy squads to counter snipe, I rely on other methods like offmap attacks to kill snipers. Additionally, it's not focused solely on sniper balance, it will impact ANYTHING with camo, including MG's, TD's, AT guns, etc that really rely on camo. THOSE will need to get balance because of this sniper topic. That is my biggest critique on this idea.

Panzer Elite counter snipe ability is a stressful idea because countersnipe can obviously be used on things other than snipers. While I agree that the PE SS squad is annoying and one way to tone it down is to make the sniper an micro required capability rather than position-based, it doesn't directly address the overall complaint about snipers.

Improving detection is a difficult idea because it also impacts not just snipers. You improve detection against snipers, you improve detection against all things including really core units like AT guns that heavily require that ambush ability now with the teardown time. Sending a detection unit in towards a hidden AT gun should be a viable tactic, no doubt, but not sending a detection unit towards the general direction of a defensive line. It takes away from the "skill" of defense if someone wants to lay an ambush. Not all defenses are skillful, true, but we don't want to take away from good positioning skill in any nerf, a drastically different type of nerf when we make changes that take away from good micro when it comes to strategy games. A strategy game should reward good strategy always. It's a really hard line to balance, even if it's not perfect I'd stay away from it in general. Unless there is across the board complaints about being unable to detect all kinds of units, I'd rather not adjust detection radius for the sake of one kind of unit.

Two man sniper squad idea, no I really don't like this idea because having any more than 1 person in the squad for camo is a freakin nightmare to deal with because of individual model AI. Not a good idea especially for a unit the heavily relies on the camo mechanic. CoH2 does it well because their unit AI is drastically simplified which people actively complain about which is really ironic. People in CoH1 complain about how units don't get to cover and stay in it when they need to. People in CoH2 complain about how infantry look "lifeless" and don't respond at all when they're getting shot at resulting in unforgiving squad wipes.

Overall, I flat out don't understand why these really really far out derivative ideas come out when the solution is super simple and clearly explained in the problem.

[kwok]

HAHA ah... mencius just made a post that starts with "i want to fundamentally change snipers".
I just posted a post saying "we should try to change as little as possible"... I'll read it later mencius. Hope you read mine.

[kwok]

ahhh your idea mencius is heavily dependent on understanding how squad AI works. For example, I think your concept breaks down if you space your snipers out well enough. Because then they will all target different individual models.

I do like the idea of adding aim time to snipers in general though. That just.... makes sense.... even in like "theater"... in movies snipers take their time to line up a shot. It would prevent sniper kiting too.

[CGarr]

ahhh your idea mencius is heavily dependent on understanding how squad AI works. For example, I think your concept breaks down if you space your snipers out well enough. Because then they will all target different individual models.

I do like the idea of adding aim time to snipers in general though. That just.... makes sense.... even in like "theater"... in movies snipers take their time to line up a shot. It would prevent sniper kiting too.

I'd be down for this, I don't really care what the change is as long as it fixes the issue at least somewhat.

About mark target, this would require micro similar to using the marksman ability the brits have. Will players have the speed and micro fast enough to be able to pull this off or will this essentially be more of a "pros with good micro" available ability (which would give a significant advantage to higher tier players). I know personally I DONT have that speed. I can barely get my tommy squads to counter snipe, I rely on other methods like offmap attacks to kill snipers. Additionally, it's not focused solely on sniper balance, it will impact ANYTHING with camo, including MG's, TD's, AT guns, etc that really rely on camo. THOSE will need to get balance because of this sniper topic. That is my biggest critique on this idea.

---------- Strays off topic towards but you brought up micro as an argument so here's my response to that part -----------

The part about micro I kinda understand in the sense that it'd be harder for players who have bad micro, but then again wouldn't that just raise the skill ceiling? That seems like a good change if that's the case. It's not like it's hard to mindlessly play BK in its current state, it'd just reward higher levels of micro. Judging just by the people that have posted suggestions for the changes, I'd assume the main reason people support changing snipers at all is because it's really easy for even newer players to hold off better opponents by just using obnoxious units like snipers that don't have a counter other than "just dump all your muni into bombing that general area" or suicide rushing them. Same reason I posted about the SS squad, it's a crutch that makes the game less fun for people with good micro rather than incentivising players to get better at the game. Hell, my 1v1 buddy uses these units all the time because he knows they're obnoxious enough to at least delay a loss, if not snowball into wins if I make enough mistakes. He's content with just using these units rather than trying to improve in other areas so we're at a point where every single 1v1 is just a slugfest of me waiting until I get some sort of indirect fire so I can just bomb these units to death since they're the only thing keeping me from ending the game once his initial push with a more standard unit comp is over. It is objectively less fun to be in the game for 20 mins after taking the entire map, especially if he pulls a heavy call-in tank out of his ass and I fail to kill it (shout out to propaganda tiger ace post tank ace buffs vs RE doc matchup). I don't want to basebomb but it's getting to the point where I am considering doing so when I have 90% of the map just to end the game quicker so we can try another one instead of dragging it out.

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As for other units, MG's aren't super dependent on camo. AT guns are but there's a thread up about buffing them since they underperform even with camo due to how unwieldy they are, so depending on how much they get buffed, camo may become less necessary for their role in killing armor and more for just hiding from counters. Mark target also requires that the unit gets spotted to begin with, at which point the ability wouldn't make much of a difference since it's not going anywhere fast, you'll know where it is anyways and can just bomb that area. TD's I feel would be improved by the mark target on spotters in the sense that there are a lot of people (myself included) that are annoyed by TD's ability to just cloak in combat. Mark target would solve that issue. Spotters themselves might get hurt a bit by it since they're really easy to kill, but you'd have to find them first anyways and normally they're dead once they're spotted in the current game, so again I don't think much would change.

Again, don't really care what happens, just throwing ideas at the board until people agree on something. It's not like the game is unplayable, it's a minor annoyance. It's obnoxious when you see it every single game but even still, it's just that, obnoxious. You can beat it with the current tools, I'd argue that this is another change where balance isn't really the problem, it's just not a fun mechanic to deal with even if you're significantly better than the person you are playing against, and if a better player is using snipers against you I'm sure it's even more aids to deal with.

As a side note, more smoke options is another easy solution. Smoke is used a lot more heavily in coh2 vanilla than BK and it allows for a lot more creative plays even at low level, as well as making aggressive play more rewarding, which I thought was one of the main focuses of the reworks. It even benefits the defender in that you can expect attackers to make more risky plays and as such there is even more potential for ambushes.

[CGarr]

Overall, I flat out don't understand why these really really far out derivative ideas come out when the solution is super simple and clearly explained in the problem.

The "solution" (assuming you mean just lowering health/armor/RA) wouldn't make much of a difference against well supported sniper spam. They're an annoying unit to even find, being hard to kill just adds to it. Changing their offensive stats just makes them less uesful, and increased aim time would also make countersniping a lot harder if I'm understanding it correctly (not 100% on how that specific stat works).

If you make them easier to spot (visible longer, mark target, etc) then they're fine as is stat-wise, although they could be cheaper since they'd be way easier to kill (250MP maybe). Hell, I'd be fine with them only having passive camo and that'd be a super simple change (remove crawl, drop price, maybe received accuracy buff)

The more out-there ideas like the sniper squad are more just food for thought to try and rework the unit into something more fun to play with/against, they weren't declarations of "the only good way" to balance this unit.

[kwok]

increased aim time would also make countersniping a lot harder if I'm understanding it correctly (not 100% on how that specific stat works).

ah yeah really good point.

The more out-there ideas like the sniper squad are more just food for thought to try and rework the unit into something more fun to play with/against, they weren't declarations of "the only good way" to balance this unit.

fair enough. as someone who hears people complaining about changes all the time, i'm more prone to say change as little as possible if possible. status quo is always better when managing a more mature game. Ironic because reworks does the opposite but that's because it was deemed necessary. Also why might not (still in discussion) get around to updating RE, RAF, AB more until after the beta goes live.

[CGarr]

fair enough. as someone who hears people complaining about changes all the time, i'm more prone to say change as little as possible if possible. status quo is always better when managing a more mature game. Ironic because reworks does the opposite but that's because it was deemed necessary. Also why might not (still in discussion) get around to updating RE, RAF, AB more until after the beta goes live.

I should probably note that my posts (aside from anything regarding PS doc recently) are generally not about urgent issues so much as just pointing out flaws that can be worked on later, I don't really expect changes to come soon even if somethings agreed on. I generally just post to confirm that the issues I point out have been acknowledged and then use the threads as a place to brainstorm with everyone on possible solutions. Don't be pressured by them, being stuck at home working/attending zoom lectures gives me a shit ton of "free" time to bombard this board with beta feedback and I'm sure its too much to read all at once. Most of it is more centered around ideas that'd be a few months out minimum (depending on how long implementation into the live version of BK takes), if not further.

[sgtToni95]

I like snipers as they are even tho i'm not able to use them and i suffer high casualties from those bastards.

But I'd be really disappointed If i was trying to play my rambo playstyle luft/whatever doc and something like snipers got in the way.

But I'd still like snipers as they are.