Kar98 Changes (5.1.8 beta)

[kwok]

I mean fundamentally this was the issue with tweaking basic infantry weapons... This whole non-stop balancing of k98 and garand changes started with garand changes. While it's true that k98's do a lot better than garands at long range, that's only at a value of like 40 damage per 5 seconds for one k98 unmodified for cover meaning that on a 6v6 full health squad fight assuming no volks die it'll take approximately 7 seconds to wipe out rifle men with no cover at long range which is plenty of time for riflemen to get to cover and make some move back including calling in mortars, flanking maneuvers, etc. The reason why it works so well with volkssturm is because you literally have like... 14 k98s firing against one squad. Despite them being pioneer level k98s, it's still a LOT of dice rolls.

Meanwhile, garands at their effective range are hitting like over 100 damage within 5 seconds, so 6 men will literally wipe a squad in 2 seconds which sometimes isn't enough time to throw a grenade depending on how good a player's micro is. This is why in the past players will usually rush a volks in cover position and be willing to lose 2 of their guys and fight a 4v6 and comfortably come out winning. Now, that's not a viable tactic because you'll likely lose half your guys rushing volks and 3 men isn't enough to cut down the volks.
If you say "BuT tHe GaRaNdS aRe SeMi AuTo" so they should be able to do over 600 damage in less than 3 seconds... then i'll just say "BuT k98S aRe BoLt AcTiOn AnD gErMaN sOlDiErS aRe VeTeRaNs".

I'm honestly done trying to balance this and really think the solution is a nerf to both k98's and garands for basic units so that elite units have their place to shine again. But what do I know. I just have over thousands of games in regular and hundreds in beta and get 500 steam messages a week with 500 perspectives on what's the proper way to balance.

[Walderschmidt]

I honestly think things are fine as they are.

But if there was a change made, I'd prefer to go with Kwok's suggestion, though I know that would have plenty of players bitching and moaning about how much riflemen suck again.

Wald

[CGarr]

I think weapons are perfect as is, only one that might deserve a change is bar, and its possible to get by without it. Only mentioning the bar because its just underwhelming as an "upgrade", not because riflemen are fucked without it. As far as standard rifle vs volks engagements with no upgrades go, positioning and occasionally grenades are pretty much the sole determining factors for how those fights will go, as they are pretty even if you just leave them in cover against eachother. If either squad tries to run up on the other without an SMG upgrade, chances are really high the one leaving cover will lose. Grenade ranges being different is obnoxious, but it's not game breaking in this matchup.

My vote would be to stay with the stats currently in the beta, I really don't think kars or garands should get nerfed. Seeing rifles completely incapable of doing shit to an elite inf squad approaching on open ground is just dumb, and kars were buffed to be on par with the buffed garands so just nerfing one would be counter-productive.

But if there was a change made, I'd prefer to go with Kwok's suggestion, though I know that would have plenty of players bitching and moaning about how much riflemen suck again.

Wald

You say that like rifle garands weren't squirt guns before they got buffed.

[mofetagalactica]

Release the beta as it is, wait for more peopple to test it out, i think they're fine, do something to counter cloaked units like mortars or soldiers being able to use/deploy bengals it was proposed by someone on the forum was a pretty cool idea.

Figree

[Warhawks97]

I think weapons are perfect as is...

My vote would be to stay with the stats currently in the beta, I really don't think kars or garands should get nerfed. Seeing rifles completely incapable of doing shit to an elite inf squad approaching on open ground is just dumb, and kars were buffed to be on par with the buffed garands so just nerfing one would be counter-productive.

So this is in complete opposite to what you actually demanded:

- Changed the accuracy and damage of Volks' and Gren's Kar98 vs enemy in "open" cover type to 1 (from 1.25)
- Changed the accuracy and damage of Volks' and Gren's Kar98 vs enemy in "negative" cover type to 1 (from 1.25)

So approaching K98 in the open more or less hasnt changed in how much of a suicide it is.
In fact, it became less deadly. Before the change K98 accuracy at long range against approaching inf in the open was 43,75% compared to 40% right now. And damage in average was 35 compared to the 30 now.
The only thing we achieved is that cover lost a lot in value, esspecially yellow cover feels far less effective as it used to be because the core K98 stats got buffed so hard.

The problem is (and that was also an issue with old HMG42) that you just put a unit somewhere and its able to completely annihilate anything that is coming in on them without support weapons, even when there was lots of cover available. Thats actually not the way infantry fights were fought or should be in game: Very short lived.


From my experience any infantry could do well against enemie infantry that "simply approached", even before buffs on rifles.
But when the path was clustered with craters that provided cover and also infantry had vet experience, it was possible and fine to be able to approach any unit, even HMG´s to a certain degree (which mainly just suppress).


As of right now again, that lacks a bit. Esspecially when simply putting an officer nearby. Any basic inf shreds enemie incoming inf even when those have lots of cover available to close the gap.



So while the power against charging infantry in the open stayed more or less the same (basic stats buffed, modifier nerfed), it is now easier to mow down infantry that does use appropriate cover to close in.
And thats what i am not ok with. I would have left most rifle stats so that engagments between units in cover would take long to end and thus giving time to bring support units into position or to execute maneuvers, but meanwhile open charges over open fields would be more risky. Esspecially early games charges are performed over open fields.

But later on, when cover is available due to craters etc, closing in would be easier. But as of right now i´ve been able to kick enemie infantry asses rather quick with my cheap Volks even my opponent used cover. And they did it so fast, that yellow cover became more or less a non-factor and that any kind of gun fire exchange was short-lived giving barely any space to react.


I mean idk if anyone has ever fired a bolt rifle at a shooting range. But i assume that hitting running targets, even in the open, is not an easy job. And now imagine the running guys would appear and disappear from crater to crater...



So, my suggestion would be to bring K98 a little bit back to more reasonable stats and instead bring back the modifiers against enemies in the open and negative cover.

[MarKr]

The problem is (and that was also an issue with old HMG42) that you just put a unit somewhere and its able to completely annihilate anything that is coming in on them without support weapons, even when there was lots of cover available.

You mean...like the Riflemen with the Garands do? When shooting at targets without cover the Garands are similar to Kar98 at longer ranges a LOT more effective than Kar98 at closer ranges. Even if we take into account the cover, the Garands are pretty close or better than Kar98 when it comes to shooting at approaching infantry.

I mean idk if anyone has ever fired a bolt rifle at a shooting range. But i assume that hitting running targets, even in the open, is not an easy job. And now imagine the running guys would appear and disappear from crater to crater...

The "in reality it is like that" is secondary. Gameplay comes first and as people have said here - from gameplay perspective, they are fine.

[Warhawks97]

My vote would be to stay with the stats currently in the beta, I really don't think KARS or garands should get nerfed. Seeing rifles completely incapable of doing shit to an elite inf squad approaching on open ground is just dumb.

You mean...like the Riflemen with the Garands do? When shooting at targets without cover the Garands are similar to Kar98 at longer ranges a LOT more effective than Kar98 at closer ranges. Even if we take into account the cover, the Garands are pretty close or better than Kar98 when it comes to shooting at approaching infantry.

Missleading players at its best.


Ok. The Logic:

Garands:
We buff Garands to be effective because before they were utter trash.
We buff Garands to be able to stop enemie inf that attacks over open fields.

Ok, i got that part.

But Now K98:
We Buff K98 across the board so that it starts shreding enemie inf even when they use (yellow) cover.
We nerf the K98 at the same time against enemie infantry that is approaching on open fields.. Thats exactly the opposite what player wanted.

Bottom line:
The k98 was effective before, alright. Just couldnt keep up with new with Garands anymore.
So we nerfed Garands a max range a bit to compensate for it and added the possibility to use MP40 right from the start.

But now we have K98 melting down infantry in cover quite effectively and at the same time we nerf K98 effectively against incoming enemie infantry that is approaching on open fields. Meanwhile players think: "My k98 is now better against stupid enemies that charge at me on the open field". Reality Meanwhile: "K98 got a buff vs infantry in cover but a nerf against targets in the open field."




And brits start to suffer because they pay twice the ammount for infantry but coming off far worse when it comes to damage output of their rifles.

[MarKr]

Meanwhile players think: "My k98 is now better against stupid enemies that charge at me on the open field". Reality Meanwhile: "K98 got a buff vs infantry in cover but a nerf against targets in the open field."

So they will think this for the first time, see how the rifles perform against charging infantry and the next time will adjust and prepare for situations based on experienced performance and not expected performance. And it seems players actually adjusted to the new setup without problems because I haven't heard a single complain about "Kar98 performance sucks since the stat change".

[Warhawks97]

Meanwhile players think: "My k98 is now better against stupid enemies that charge at me on the open field". Reality Meanwhile: "K98 got a buff vs infantry in cover but a nerf against targets in the open field."

So they will think this for the first time, see how the rifles perform against charging infantry and the next time will adjust and prepare for situations based on experienced performance and not expected performance. And it seems players actually adjusted to the new setup without problems because I haven't heard a single complain about "Kar98 performance sucks since the stat change".

Dont you understand what i am actually saying?


Of course the Garand is not the issue here:

- Changed the accuracy and damage of Riflemen Garand against infantry in "open" cover type to 1.25 (from 1.1)
- Changed the accuracy and damage of Riflemen Garand against infantry in "negative" cover type to 1.25 (from 1.1)

You cant charge garands, esspecially not over the open. You buffed its effectivness here.




But the K98 is an issue:

- Changed accuracy values for Volksgrenadier's Kar98 to 0.7/0.55/0.4/0.4 (from 0.7/0.55/0.35/0.35)
- Changed accuracy values for Grenadier's and Stormtroopers' Kar98 to 0.8/0.65/0.5/0.5 (from 0.8/0.65/0.45/0.45)
- Changed damage of Volksgrenadier's, Grenadier's and Stormtroopers' Kar98 to 30-30 (from 23-33)

- Changed the accuracy and damage of Volks' and Gren's Kar98 vs enemy in "open" cover type to 1 (from 1.25)
- Changed the accuracy and damage of Volks' and Gren's Kar98 vs enemy in "negative" cover type to 1 (from 1.25)

You buffed the overall performance of K98. Ofc no one´s going to complain. It is kicking butts right now and the biggest loser out of this is the poor brits standard inf that has hard times fighting regular volks.


But what is wrong is that you improved the K98 accross the board. EXCEPT against enemie infantry that charges them on open fields. The straight stat buffs do not compensate for the loss of its modifiers against inf on open fields.

You made it harder to use cover against K98 but easier to charge them on open fields.


And people think they got better to stop charging inf. They believe it bc the K98 was good in stopping infantry already under any circumstances and is still doing decently.
What they really recognize is that you cant charge K98 anymore even when you use cover.



You buffed the K98 under the pretext to make them better against charging infantry on open fields but in fact you buffed every other factor except this one.

[MarKr]

Sorry, it is kind of hard to keep track of what you're saying because when you bumped up this post, you were talking about possible infantry combinations with the 20mm vehicles and that "infantry feel like snipers", then you talked about Kar98 being nerfed against infantry without cover, then you focused the gun's effectiveness on aproaching infantry through yellow cover, then you put in some "realism" argument, then you talked about what a player might expect vs what the game gives, then aproaching infantry again, then you mentioned that Brits struggle with their rifles and now you say that people think that Kar98s were improved to better stop charging infantry.

I don't know who thinks that but if people really think that, then why nobody complained about the performance in this role? People have said here that the K98s feel OK in the game. The only difference here is that you looked into the game files and try to poke into something that seems off but in the game it actually works fine.

[Warhawks97]

Sorry, it is kind of hard to keep track of what you're saying because when you bumped up this post, you were talking about possible infantry combinations with the 20mm vehicles and that "infantry feel like snipers", then you talked about Kar98 being nerfed against infantry without cover, then you focused the gun's effectiveness on aproaching infantry through yellow cover, then you put in some "realism" argument, then you talked about what a player might expect vs what the game gives, then aproaching infantry again, then you mentioned that Brits struggle with their rifles and now you say that people think that Kar98s were improved to better stop charging infantry.

Well, yeah, sorry for that. The early 20 mm gun access has to be considered when balancing stuff like rifle stats of starting units.

But the top line is that i feel like the cheap regular infantry is currently super effective and deadly even against enemies that use cover and that just by using the normal k98.

The second issue is that the main reason for any buff for the k98 was to make it easier to repell enemie charges. And this pure irony now is that everything got improved for the k98, except its potential in stopping enemie infantry charges over open fields.

I don't know who thinks that but if people really think that, then why nobody complained about the performance in this role? People have said here that the K98s feel OK in the game. The only difference here is that you looked into the game files and try to poke into something that seems off but in the game it actually works fine.

For the most part i played with the same people in Beta. But in every game i played the infantry fights ended up always in favour for the axis inf. I had no issues killing lots of enemies with Volkssturm and Volksgren squads. Reaching even vet 4 just with Volkssturm units and without using any ability that debuffs my opponent.
Single Volksgren units took on Enfield Commandos many times in a single game and beating brits infantry that had more men and lmg without using an lmg by my own.

I think people have not yet realized what firepower you can get on the field when you just got for Volks units with officer nearby. Units like schwimmwagen or bike more or less dropped out of my starting build order because i just dont need them anymore to beef up my firepower.

On the other hand, i had no real options as to go Infantry doc right away as US and to rush the cal 50 jeep in order to get at least some firepower compensation without stripping me off from 90 mm guns for the late game. And so far the cal 50 jeep was the highest scoring unit in every game i had because my rifle the infantry will just die like flies. The max kill-count for them was 11 soldiers. Thats far less than my highest kill-count for Volkssturm units. You cant keep up in firepower and not even with numbers anymore throughout mid-early game. I ended up in being forced to play guerilla warefare style with US by using cal 50 jeep and 37 mm guns as well as mines occassionally and to entrench myself.

[Walderschmidt]

I made a poll.

https://forum.bkmod.net/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3687

Wald

[Walderschmidt]

Sorry, it is kind of hard to keep track of what you're saying because when you bumped up this post, you were talking about possible infantry combinations with the 20mm vehicles and that "infantry feel like snipers", then you talked about Kar98 being nerfed against infantry without cover, then you focused the gun's effectiveness on aproaching infantry through yellow cover, then you put in some "realism" argument, then you talked about what a player might expect vs what the game gives, then aproaching infantry again, then you mentioned that Brits struggle with their rifles and now you say that people think that Kar98s were improved to better stop charging infantry.

Well, yeah, sorry for that. The early 20 mm gun access has to be considered when balancing stuff like rifle stats of starting units.

Maybe if you have a problem with 20mm balance you should argue about it in the thread you created to argue about it, instead of spreading that arguing point around other threads when you don't get the answers you want on your own thread.

If you got a problem with 20mm, that's a vehicle problem not infantry problem. Yes, allies have delayed .50 cals, but not for their jeeps which at most cost under 300 mp and about 5 fuel compared to 300 mp and 20 fuel.

But the top line is that i feel like the cheap regular infantry is currently super effective and deadly even against enemies that use cover and that just by using the normal k98.

The second issue is that the main reason for any buff for the k98 was to make it easier to repell enemie charges. And this pure irony now is that everything got improved for the k98, except its potential in stopping enemie infantry charges over open fields.

I don't know where it was said that K98k buff was specifically made to make it easier to repel enemy charges. I mean, any unit that charges into another usually gets mauled unless other maluses/bonuses/some other outside force come into play. It's a fundamental principle of infantry combat in this game. And your sentence about "everything got improved for the K98 except its potentially in stopping enemy infantry..." is nonsensical because if you improve the K98k in anything at all, it's better at anything it does. Damage increase? Reload speed increase? Accuracy increase? Those all help the K98k fight in all conditions including "stopping enemy infantry charging over open fields". Please stop arguing nonsense, straw-man points.

For the most part i played with the same people in Beta. But in every game i played the infantry fights ended up always in favour for the axis inf. I had no issues killing lots of enemies with Volkssturm and Volksgren squads. Reaching even vet 4 just with Volkssturm units and without using any ability that debuffs my opponent.
Single Volksgren units took on Enfield Commandos many times in a single game and beating brits infantry that had more men and lmg without using an lmg by my own.

You winning every fight with axis inf =/= axis inf are just better and overpowered vs. all allied inf. There's a lot of factors that go into a fight other than just base stats. And when you mention volkssturm and volksgrens because you used any of the propaganda debuffs because those take any otherwise fair or unbalanced fight in favor of the enemy and turn it fair for you, or unbalanced for you, and that is regardless of weapon stats. Of course you kill riflemen way easier with sturms if you have 14 rifles shooting at 6 guys who are debuffed to be 5%, 10%, 15%, etc easier to hit! And thier accuracy suffers so they kill your guys less which means you've got more guns firing them longer, rather than slowly seeing your combat power dwindle normally as the fight progresses.

Tell me about that super hero volksgren unit. Did you use propaganda debuffs on the enfield commandos and or brit infantry that had more men and lmg. Did you also use inspired assault which increases firing rate and weapon damage? Were you in cover in hold position whereas the enemy was moving towards you?

I think people have not yet realized what firepower you can get on the field when you just got for Volks units with officer nearby. Units like schwimmwagen or bike more or less dropped out of my starting build order because i just dont need them anymore to beef up my firepower.

This thread is about the K98K and Garand and YOU INSIST on bringing up every other unit in the game to show why K98ks are too powerful. Make separate threads for those if you must. Have you tried using the officer on the American side? Do you no longer get the jeep or .50 cal jeep? Do you stop using the V1 as the Americans because the Calliope is more effective? That last question is rhetorical and I hope you can see that.

On the other hand, i had no real options as to go Infantry doc right away as US and to rush the cal 50 jeep in order to get at least some firepower compensation without stripping me off from 90 mm guns for the late game. And so far the cal 50 jeep was the highest scoring unit in every game i had because my rifle the infantry will just die like flies. The max kill-count for them was 11 soldiers. Thats far less than my highest kill-count for Volkssturm units. You cant keep up in firepower and not even with numbers anymore throughout mid-early game. I ended up in being forced to play guerilla warefare style with US by using cal 50 jeep and 37 mm guns as well as mines occassionally and to entrench myself.

ALLIED JEEP OP. So wait, should I make a thread to nerf the .50 cal jeep again?

I really ought to play you one v one to see how you play. You sound like the inverse of Axis Weeboos. They suck as axis and claim allies OP. But you Warhawks aren't a bad player. So it just sounds like you play Axis better than you do Allies and come to the conclusion that Axis OP. Maybe you are just a lot better with Axis? Maybe the allied players you play against suffer from the same malady and stink with allies? Have you played against Kwok or Mencius as Axis and they Allies and see then complain, "Axis OP, Allies UP?"

You're all over the place. You need to focus your arguing in one place just like I need to get my attention in one place when I play my games.

Wald

[Warhawks97]

Wald. You couldnt twist my words more.

1.I said sorry for the 20 mm stuff. I just said it has to be considered but apologized. I only talk about k98 brutal performance and felt overwhelming firepower.

2. Did you check modifiers? Yes. K98 did got flat Stat buff. But these buffs do not compensate for the loss of power due to removed modifier VS inf on open fields.
Modifiers affect weapon stats in case you didn't know.

3.vs enfield commandos was under changing conditions in various firefights. End was that Volks won majority of clashes.

4.vs cw inf I ran into them and lost a man and lots of HP. They had yellow cover and lmg. I ran to cover after the loss of a man. Partially green and yellow but slowly managed to pull a draw against the brits.

5.i mentioned schwimms and bikes to underline how effective the firepower increase was for k98 was that it can literally compensate the lack of schwimns.

6.I mentioned cal 50 jeep not bc its op. It's not. I mentioned that I am forced to rush it so that I can stand a chance bc my rifles dropped like flies in every infantry gunfight.



As you can see. It's all about k98.

[mofetagalactica]

Warhawks if you wanna arrive to a point then use the argument of enfields being stantarizated to a more close level compared to kars and dig in there. Kars vs Garands dosn't seem a problem and obviously enfields that weren't touched are getting underpowered compared to kars.

[Walderschmidt]

Are any of the things you describe in any of the recent replays you posted, Warhawks?

Wald

[Warhawks97]

Warhawks if you wanna arrive to a point then use the argument of enfields being stantarizated to a more close level compared to kars and dig in there. Kars vs Garands dosn't seem a problem and obviously enfields that weren't touched are getting underpowered compared to kars.

I would have gone with the second post from Redgaarden in this thread. Scroll back and check what he said. That would have been the best way.
Instead we threw arround everything.
I wouldnt want the Enfield to be as good as current K98 either. The Enfield is the only rifle in my opinion (and the Ranger Garand) that are working as they should in hands of their respectively skilled soldiers.

Its just i dont get the point behind k98 damage buff, accuracy buff and at the same time accuracy and damage nerf against infantry in the open. Like you get more punished when using cover against k98 but less punished when not using cover against it.

I also dont get shadow nerfs on Garand like cutting its mag size by 50% when a simple max range accuracy drop would have been sufficient enough.


As for my part:
After 5 games as US i gave it up. All lost except for the one i uploaded (but over 50% of my kills was made with arty). Its not enjoyable anymore for me. Outgunned and outnumbered in the early and mid stages and you keep on throwing infantry into meatgrinders.
As axis i only lost a game with PE. But WH kicked buts with no losses yet.

Are any of the things you describe in any of the recent replays you posted, Warhawks?

Wald

They happend in 1 vs 1. I dont upload 1 vs 1 games bc they are usually too boring to watch.
I only uploaded two games so far that were at least partially interesting.

[Walderschmidt]

Are any of the things you describe in any of the recent replays you posted, Warhawks?

Wald

They happend in 1 vs 1. I dont upload 1 vs 1 games bc they are usually too boring to watch.
I only uploaded two games so far that were at least partially interesting.

Would you consider uploading those? Perhaps I twisted your words. I certainly can’t twist replays.

Wald

[Redgaarden]

My experince in Kar vs Garand in beta is mostly that Grens can walk into an open field vs rifles with bars, build up sandbags, and then win the fight vs the rifles without losing more than 1 man, Not a big problem there since grens are quite expensive.
I did a 1v1 vs a quite wrongfully overconfident US player that thought that getting close via smoke was a viable tactic, the sheer dmg grens do killed them before they could get out of the smoke. Which only got alot worse when he started losing squads and me getting the mg42lmg which made it so they couldn't even reach the smoke before getting killed.

I dont think this is any big issue, and would call the Kar being too strong a minor issue, Rifles suck, we are used to it. The only difference now is that Not ALL US infantry is bad. You finally got something that can compete with axis infantry; Rangers and combat engineers. So the overall US infnatry has improved alot. And garands shred enemies in close range which makes them at least a tiny bit useful in combat.

[CGarr]

@Hawks
It's really not that bad dude, no offense but I think you're rusty or just not used to the beta yet. All inf excluding vsturms and the brit SMG squad are the most balanced I've ever seen them. Neither axis or allies feels OP or underpowered in the latest patch of the beta. I'm not including propaganda doc in that statement since it's just a really weird and difficult to balance doc because small changes to vsturm performance have massive impacts since there are so many of them on the field at once.

[Warhawks97]

@Hawks
It's really not that bad dude, no offense but I think you're rusty or just not used to the beta yet. All inf excluding vsturms and the brit SMG squad are the most balanced I've ever seen them. Neither axis or allies feels OP or underpowered in the latest patch of the beta. I'm not including propaganda doc in that statement since it's just a really weird and difficult to balance doc because small changes to vsturm performance have massive impacts since there are so many of them on the field at once.

Yeah, i am perhaps not as good anymore as i used to but since i got my GPU issues partly fixed i played Beta everyday and more 1 vs 1 games than ever before (i never played 1 vs 1 in the past. Perhaps two in five years). Now i had two 1 vs 1 on a single day.

But what gets me sick is that i get vet 4 Volksgren in my first 1 vs 1 game ever and that the first volley often took out one or sometimes two enemies.
That i get vet 2-3 Volkssturm with sometimes over 20 kills in a game.

But i never got a rifle squad over 11 kills (including pios) and vet 1. Most of the time a squad got 4 kills in a game. Thats what Volksgren get in one single engagment.
The last two days i played as and against US but rifle squads never played a really great role aside being stupid meathshields.
I got crushed by rushed shermans fromw wald that took my by surprise and i myself won my last 1 vs 1 due to a heroic jeep, M20 and shermans.


But in none of these games Rifle squads really got into veterancy. Meanwhile Volksrgens and Volkssturm units did so.

And if i am not mistaken its the Vsturm that is supposed to be more a meatshield than US rifles should be. But in reality every infantry unit in BK is able to rack up kills except US Rifles.
They are more usefull as light anti vehicle unit with their AT rifle rather than fighting enemie inf. And thats the only real source of gaining veterancy currently. I never saw rifles gaining vet without killing a vehicle with AT nade. They are utter trash right now.


So, if my skills would lack, i wouldnt score kills with any inf unit. But i do score lots of kills with all but Rifles. So it cant be blamed purely on a lack of skill.

[CGarr]

Try putting grease guns on them and pretending they're combat engineers, they don't have the same anti inf potential IMO but they can deal with armored cars so they're good for harassing. As far as just frontline combat, you're going to be heavily reliant on vehicles and support weapons until you get elite inf like rangers or airborne. It sucks balls, but its winnable, just don't try to use rifles like they're volks until the mag size thing gets fixed and maybe if the bar gets a buff. They're an AT/anti building squad with the grenade launcher, and they kill AT guns/squads well enough, I wouldn't use them for anything else but I also wouldn't say its reasonable justification for reverting the Kar98 buff. The garand mag was an oversight, the rest of the stats are probably fine. They'll be more consistently good after the mag fix, right now its less that they're flat out bad and more that they just don't get the intended number of hit rolls before they need to reload.

The BAR is objectively bad, but i think the best way to handle fixing that thing is to just make it perform exactly like the garand but with a 20 rnd mag instead of 8 (semi auto unless suppression is activated). Price might need adjustment and it would be worse at close range, but performance wise it'd actually be a worthwhile upgrade like the LMG on volksgrens, even if the potential damage output isn't anywhere near as high.

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@Hawks, I commend you for bringing up how poorly reworked US is on the beta, but not for the reasons you have brought up. Most of the issues with US in the beta are on a doctrinal level, not the unit level. Most of the individual units are good enough at a certain task that they aren't objectively useless, even if a lot of the are garbage compared to other factions' equivalent units. However, a lot these units are locked behind doctrinal unlocks entirely, rather than being available from the start like many of the axis and CW equivalents. This means you end up having to commit to only unlocking one of these units at a time if you want to play US, which can force the game to become very campy as the axis player can react much more fluidly to your macro decisions than you can to theirs. A good example of this is access to tank destroyers: US has to pay 2 CP (no matter what doctrine they pick) to have a tank capable of penning a medium, nevermind a heavy. Meanwhile, PE has universal access to marder and WH has either the panzer 4 F2 or the marder, depending on what doctrine you choose. CW doesn't really have a 0CP TD either, but the cromwell is extremely fast with decent pen and their sherman has AP so it actually has a reasonable chance against axis armor (not to mention 0CP tulips), so they're not helpless. US just has the slow basic M4 sherman with garbage pen values and negligible armor, and their only non-doctrinal motorized AT option aside from that is the halftrack with a 57mm that often has trouble killing panzer 4's and stugs (compare this to the axis AT halftrack/cars that are basically marders on crack). Elite inf are another good example, but I've already written an entire post about that (viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3630) and their inconsistent availability is an issue for all factions.

It's not so much a balance issue as just an area where the game could be improved in terms of fun, although I wouldn't necessarily say that means it should be a low priority issue. Pretty much everyone I've ever played BK PVP with (excluding one player who likes to roleplay whatever faction he plays and doesn't really play competitively, which is fine) agrees that US is just less fun to play than the other factions when I ask them their thoughts on the factions in general, regardless of their stance on the state of balance.

I myself try really hard to like playing US, but even as someone who used to mainly play as them before the doctrine rework beta, it's hard for me to enjoy playing this faction. I can live with having to micro more shit to be able to keep up with an axis player (flanking due to lack of mobile long range inf, unarmored TD's that need to be manually controlled to shoot at stuff when in camo, reliance on active abilities like sprint, suppression, grenade use, etc...). That issue is annoying, but it didn't ruin the faction for me. Lack of available options for dealing with certain scenarios and the general lack of 0CP options for doing anything past mid game is what bugs me about US. You have to commit to a doctrine from the start if you don't want to play BK like a world war 1 mod, as you have 0 access to core units like good standard infantry or the above mentioned AT capable tanks.

[kwok]

I can talk more about the 7man squad. I might as well make a new post to explain why.

[Warhawks97]

Try putting grease guns on them and pretending they're combat engineers, they don't have the same anti inf potential IMO but they can deal with armored cars so they're good for harassing. As far as just frontline combat, you're going to be heavily reliant on vehicles and support weapons until you get elite inf like rangers or airborne. It sucks balls, but its winnable, just don't try to use rifles like they're volks until the mag size thing gets fixed and maybe if the bar gets a buff. They're an AT/anti building squad with the grenade launcher, and they kill AT guns/squads well enough, I wouldn't use them for anything else but I also wouldn't say its reasonable justification for reverting the Kar98 buff. The garand mag was an oversight, the rest of the stats are probably fine. They'll be more consistently good after the mag fix, right now its less that they're flat out bad and more that they just don't get the intended number of hit rolls before they need to reload.

The BAR is objectively bad, but i think the best way to handle fixing that thing is to just make it perform exactly like the garand but with a 20 rnd mag instead of 8 (semi auto unless suppression is activated). Price might need adjustment and it would be worse at close range, but performance wise it'd actually be a worthwhile upgrade like the LMG on volksgrens, even if the potential damage output isn't anywhere near as high.

Well, i am sorry to say that but i have a whole different point of view.
I do build a so called "backbone" unit. The one you throw in first into combat and that should be supposed to at least fullfill basic combat tasks. Just like the Volksgren do (esspecially when they have LMG. At that part i agree that BAR is garbarge. The reason is its low damage. The lmg 1919 had the same issue. Its damage per bullet got upped that of lmg34 and it worked well.)
So i dont want the Rifle squad to be just an "scare off enemie vehicles" unit that exists for the sole purpose of having a grenade launcher upgrade. If thats the case we could have removed the Garand completely and instead gave them grenade launchers right at start like the BK AT rifle squad.

Thats not for what i pay 255 MP. The cost have got increased for a reason. We had long debates how good basic units should be and that they should be able to stand chance in combat when their positioning is favourable. And i feel like this idea got reversed again. We will see how the magazin capacity fix will impact on the performance.

But i would like to see this fix rather sooner than later so that things can still be adjusted in the beta. Some sort of hot fix so that we can see how it might change things.


The Grease is good, yes. But my Volks units kill units even without many upgrades. Rifles only when having Grenade launchers and Grease guns. That makes them barely better than Volkssturm bc they can also get Mp40 which makes them quite effective in mass charges and close quarter as well as damn good Panzerfausts which have quite a big range. Almost as much as the rifles have with their AT grenade.


Something else i would like to mention is that BK doc can get Mp40´s on their pios right away.
For inf doc it would be great having a similiar option for their engis to give them grease guns as upgrade right away.


I Agree however with this part here:

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@Hawks, I commend you for bringing up how poorly reworked US is on the beta, but not for the reasons you have brought up. Most of the issues with US in the beta are on a doctrinal level, not the unit level. Most of the individual units are good enough at a certain task that they aren't objectively useless, even if a lot of the are garbage compared to other factions' equivalent units. However, a lot these units are locked behind doctrinal unlocks entirely, rather than being available from the start like many of the axis and CW equivalents. This means you end up having to commit to only unlocking one of these units at a time if you want to play US, which can force the game to become very campy as the axis player can react much more fluidly to your macro decisions than you can to theirs. A good example of this is access to tank destroyers: US has to pay 2 CP (no matter what doctrine they pick) to have a tank capable of penning a medium, nevermind a heavy. Meanwhile, PE has universal access to marder and WH has either the panzer 4 F2 or the marder, depending on what doctrine you choose. CW doesn't really have a 0CP TD either, but the cromwell is extremely fast with decent pen and their sherman has AP so it actually has a reasonable chance against axis armor (not to mention 0CP tulips), so they're not helpless. US just has the slow basic M4 sherman with garbage pen values and negligible armor, and their only non-doctrinal motorized AT option aside from that is the halftrack with a 57mm that often has trouble killing panzer 4's and stugs (compare this to the axis AT halftrack/cars that are basically marders on crack). Elite inf are another good example, but I've already written an entire post about that (viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3630) and their inconsistent availability is an issue for all factions.

It's not so much a balance issue as just an area where the game could be improved in terms of fun, although I wouldn't necessarily say that means it should be a low priority issue. Pretty much everyone I've ever played BK PVP with (excluding one player who likes to roleplay whatever faction he plays and doesn't really play competitively, which is fine) agrees that US is just less fun to play than the other factions when I ask them their thoughts on the factions in general, regardless of their stance on the state of balance.

I myself try really hard to like playing US, but even as someone who used to mainly play as them before the doctrine rework beta, it's hard for me to enjoy playing this faction. I can live with having to micro more shit to be able to keep up with an axis player (flanking due to lack of mobile long range inf, unarmored TD's that need to be manually controlled to shoot at stuff when in camo, reliance on active abilities like sprint, suppression, grenade use, etc...). That issue is annoying, but it didn't ruin the faction for me. Lack of available options for dealing with certain scenarios and the general lack of 0CP options for doing anything past mid game is what bugs me about US. You have to commit to a doctrine from the start if you don't want to play BK like a world war 1 mod, as you have 0 access to core units like good standard infantry or the above mentioned AT capable tanks.

However i am not sure whether its good the BK has storms right away or not or whether we should do the same with US or not.
Personally i would have kept the basic Grens with MP40 in BK doc rather than giving them Storms right away bc this way BK can get high health elite inf with long barreld Tank IV´s for 0 CP. And for just one more CP deadly Stugs.