Slow armored cars - topic split

[Krieger Blitzer]

Camo is an important factor of the game.. and i think it's fun.

Already mad on the various nerfs been implemented on camo throughout the recent patches, just as i am also unhappy on how other "fun" tools were nerfed to death as well.. such as hindering vehicles mobility and making them slower and not fun to use anymore.

EDIT MarKr:
As this convo was getting off topic, I split it so that the original topic stays on track.

[MarKr]

such as hindering vehicles mobility and making them slower and not fun to use anymore.

The problem is that people usually consider as "most fun" those things that give them an easy advantage. The problem is that the advantage comes pretty much exclusively at the expense of that thing being hard to counter (which is why it gives an easy advantage; it's kinda viscious circle). There were many examples in the past:
- StuPa that could always hit any unit. It was ridiculously abused and considered "fun" by Axis players but really hated by pretty much any Allied player that had to face it.
- Air Patrol abilities - one click and the opponent could easily lose units worth of thousands of MP and hundreds of Fuel. People who used them, loved them, people who faced them, hated them.
- CW HQ cars driving over HMG/mortar teams - easy advantage in early game. Some CW players abused the crap out of it, all Axis players hated it.
- Immortal MG gunners in bunkers - very sturdy bunkers with a fixed MG and a gunner that could only die with the bunker that pretty much denied infantry infront of it. Def doc players loved it, people who had to face bunkers hated that.
- Ultra fast emplacement build speed for RE - I remember how people just rage quit when they finally managed to destroy that durable 17pounder emplacement just to see it built back in 15 seconds. But CW players thought it was a great thing to use.
- Early game 7-men Rifle squad. Came with two free BARs and often completely dominated early game. Axis players really hated when their infantry got run over by these early on, but US players used that almost every time when they found out how strong it was.
- Fallshirmjägers dropped into FoW right next to a quad .50cal. They decrewed it with a grenade and often lost just one soldier or none at all. Great fun for Luft players, allies thougth the quad gunners were drunk all the time.
- Probably don't need to talk about "spawning units from empty emplacements"
The list would go on...

The armored car speed is another example of "fun to use but not fun to counter". It was fun to use because it was a great counter to pretty much every early game AT unit. The "clown cars" were actually very good counter to units that were meant to counter the "clown cars". I understand that people who used these units feel that the game lost some of its "fun factor" but at the same time I understand people who are grateful that these things were changed because those things were a huge "not fun factor" for them. I believe that changing these things made the game more skill-rewarding, even if (for some people) less fun but these are the decisions we have to make.

[Krieger Blitzer]

The problem is that people usually consider as "most fun" those things that give them an easy advantage.

Not trying to completely drift this topic into the vehicles speed nerfs, but i would have to say that the first time i saw this being introduced.. was actually in Kwok's own CoH2 Mod called Platoons, where he made all vehicles' turrets all rotate slower.. in addition to decreasing their mobility on craters, etc. Only to see this same change being implemented in Bk Mod after he joined the Bk Mod team...

I disliked the change in his mod, and hated it in BK Mod because CoH (specifically CoH1) already has bad mechanics when it comes to vehicles pathfinding.. and the counters were only limited due to nerfing AT guns mobility as well. if AT guns don't take 99999 years to rotate, and vehicles would finally become agile as they used to be, then the game would be fun again.. and no one will complain about countering them.

[Walderschmidt]

^So how would you fix the AT-gun fast firing exploit?

Wald

[MarKr]

and the counters were only limited due to nerfing AT guns mobility as well. if AT guns don't take 99999 years to rotate, and vehicles would finally become agile as they used to be, then the game would be fun again.. and no one will complain about countering them.

AT guns were given setup/packup delays because some people couldn't stop abusing the "reload glitch" and having 17 pounders shoots ever 3 seconds isn't really a good thing.

But the whole "clown car" problem was built on the fact that if the AT gun missed the first shot on an armored car, the car could just circle around and kill the gun crew because 1) the cars were fast and so the gun never managed to rotate and setup fast enough if the car was circling around. And 2) it had so fast turret rotation that the turret could easily stay on target and keep shooting while the car was circling.

Thus if you microed the car, it was constantly on the move and shooting from close range while the gun would never catch up. Remember that even before the setup time change, the AT guns still had the "set up" animation that had to take place before the gun fired, it was only about a second or so but because of the speed of the armored cars, it was enough for the car to get away from the gun's shooting arch and so before the gun setup, the car was not in range any more, so the gun packed up again and so on and on until the crew died.

What was some viable defense against this? To cover an AT gun with another AT gun or AT team?

And again - it was only seen as "fun" because it gave to players a light armor that was effective against infantry and also AT guns (which are meant to counter these units).

[mofetagalactica]

and the counters were only limited due to nerfing AT guns mobility as well. if AT guns don't take 99999 years to rotate, and vehicles would finally become agile as they used to be, then the game would be fun again.. and no one will complain about countering them.

AT guns were given setup/packup delays because some people couldn't stop abusing the "reload glitch" and having 17 pounders shoots ever 3 seconds isn't really a good thing.

But the whole "clown car" problem was built on the fact that if the AT gun missed the first shot on an armored car, the car could just circle around and kill the gun crew because 1) the cars were fast and so the gun never managed to rotate and setup fast enough if the car was circling around. And 2) it had so fast turret rotation that the turret could easily stay on target and keep shooting while the car was circling.

Thus if you microed the car, it was constantly on the move and shooting from close range while the gun would never catch up. Remember that even before the setup time change, the AT guns still had the "set up" animation that had to take place before the gun fired, it was only about a second or so but because of the speed of the armored cars, it was enough for the car to get away from the gun's shooting arch and so before the gun setup, the car was not in range any more, so the gun packed up again and so on and on until the crew died.

What was some viable defense against this? To cover an AT gun with another AT gun or AT team?

And again - it was only seen as "fun" because it gave to players a light armor that was effective against infantry and also AT guns (which are meant to counter these units).

??????????? You can still "clown" car around AT's since they have "pack time" lmao. But tiger is true, is really unfun and boring to have vehicles move stupidly after going trough yellow cover or wathever weird shit on the field, not all maps and neither the pathfinding is good enough to have something like this implemented.

About AT's, plz.. just cut in half the time for all AT's.

[MarKr]

Sure you CAN do it but now you cannot just run behind an AT gun through its fire arc without the AT gun taking a shot at you because the cars are slower and also the "circling" strategy is harder to pull off because the turret rotation is slower and so if you keep circling at close range, your turret doesn't stay on target all the time.

The fact that people don't use the "clown car" strategy anymore (or just very rarely) proves the changes had the intended effect.

[kwok]

The problem is that people usually consider as "most fun" those things that give them an easy advantage.

Not trying to completely drift this topic into the vehicles speed nerfs, but i would have to say that the first time i saw this being introduced.. was actually in Kwok's own CoH2 Mod called Platoons, where he made all vehicles' turrets all rotate slower.. in addition to decreasing their mobility on craters, etc. Only to see this same change being implemented in Bk Mod after he joined the Bk Mod team...

I disliked the change in his mod, and hated it in BK Mod because CoH (specifically CoH1) already has bad mechanics when it comes to vehicles pathfinding.. and the counters were only limited due to nerfing AT guns mobility as well. if AT guns don't take 99999 years to rotate, and vehicles would finally become agile as they used to be, then the game would be fun again.. and no one will complain about countering them.

Actually the funny thing about my COH2 mod was I set those speeds SPECIFICALLY to experiment and prove a point that historical realism is NOT what players want in the game. Of course after I've made my point to enough people I tweaked it back up to the values I intended.

As for the implementation into BK itself, I think the concept was brought over but the values themselves were a problem. They were too slow at first so that was tweaked. The actual "behind the scenes implementation" part of it was also changed if I recall so there was some further tweaks out of that also. So we are here today and they can still be tweaked if theyre still an issue.... But as I try to look into it more and more I think that there's more on the AI that can be tweaked rather than the speed. I think a major reason why there's "issue" is the decision of when a vehicle decides to just rotate and run, do a k-turn, or do a curved retreat. Those were not "noticed" in the past because the vehicle speeds for rotate was so fast that it didn't make any difference. Also, the maps played were much less customized back then so there was fewer issues to run into. Also notice that a lot of the problems today are more around unit types rather than a blanket thing. For example, we hear this more as a problem for armored cars instead of tanks. I think it goes even deeper than that.... for example the speed changes impacted ALL vehicles including the tetrach and daimler... Both those units are basically the same in armament, almost the same in cost, and I think nearly the same in speed... But the daimler has SO many pathing issues relative to the tetrarch. Which makes me believe that it's not a speed modifier problem but a vehicle AI specifically wheeled. I think it might be the K-turn AI.... Anyways this is just my hunch. I was looking into this like maybe a month ago? I dont know if there's a record of it... Other devs might remember I was mentioning it. But then we got bombarded with other balance stuff so I stopped.

But like Markr mentioned: there was a problem people reported (admit I was one of them but not the only who wanted), this was the attempt to fix, the problem was solved to a degree... I think there's just a new problem that needs to be worked through. Now that we're off the beta for doctrine reworks I think I can go look at it again.


As for the AT guns.... yeah.... for me personally i'd rather NOT reduce the teardown time. I'd rather balance AT guns to be either more powerful or made cheaper to make up for those changes. But I think we had the discussion on a different thread. We can revive that.

[Warhawks97]

Alright, seems like i am not the only one having issues with vehicle pathfinding.

I think i am one of the guys who got his as kicked the most by the vehicle changes because i always trolled my enemies with double puma or double or even triple m20.

Using vehicles in numbers can still be quite effective. I learned to live with the change to honest. It totally ruined my gameplay but at the same time i often i pitied my enemies. So it was some sort of fun and eventfull and super exciting when you rushed the enemie down from the field within a few mins. But i think for the sake of fairness to have the as they are now.

But its always a preference whether you are a mobile player doing sevral clicks in a second or more careful and static. The real work is to figure out the balance between those two.


But what i might try is to make vehicles just a tiny bit faster just to see if it solves the pathing errors. Way too many vehicles dying a pointless death because of that. Perhaps it might be the fault of the acceleration penalites in yellow cover.

[kwok]

Like I mentioned I think it’s more AI setting, which is something I kind of looked into. Turn path tables are more of a setting that be tweaked. So it’s not pure AI scripting, I should be able to figure something out. If not that, I was thinking it’s more turn rate than flat speed.

Like I said no one seems to have a problem to have a problem with tetrarchs but it shits the bed with Daimlers. The Daimler uses the jeep pathing I think while tetrarch uses tank.

[TANEBIRD]

What particularly sucks is that there are a few maps that have areas that are like DEATH zones for armored cars, and they're really in the worst place possible 90% of the time. To illustrate what I mean, I offer you the map Sainte-Mere-Eglise. This is a 1v1 map and I'm using it just to illustrate my point. In the center of the map we have a square sized rock wall with 2 passable arcs on both teams side of it. Some players might think this would make decent cover for the armored car under attack by AT gun because it would sometimes blow the stone wall up first instead of the car, however, it is so unmaneuverable from flanks on the left and right side that if the play sends any heavy infantry in (which I remind you is a unit that armored cars should be able to handle well as long as they stay out of bazooka range or panzerfaust range) it becomes a death trap, to even turn the vehicle in a direction where you can fire at them before you're blown up. Is this intentional?

[Warhawks97]

I wanna bump this topic.

A lot of players (including me) have issues usigng vehicles bigger than bikes and jeeps. Today one complained about it and then i had a funny game that made me thinking.

At the time i retreated a inf unit a vehicle left the base towards frontline. I reinforced my inf, send it back to front and guess who arrived first at the fron? right, the inf squad. It left base later than my vehicle but went past on it.

When i checked the vehicle it was slow like a snail and everytime it crossed a dirt trail that gives yellow cover it got even slower and made some weird "dancing moves" on it.


Srsly, using vehicles became so awkward. Every tiny yellow cover or dirt trail it has to cross means its literally dying.

The only vehicles that do a good job are bikes and jeeps. But how stupid is it that these things have overall less issues with dirt trails and, grassland and other things than Tracked vehicles?


The only other vehicle that i currently use is the M20. Its just good enough for its cost and its detection capability.

[Sukin-kot (SVT)]

I fully support, those vehicles changes is the worst thing ever happened to BK. It gives nothing but frustration of the gameplay. Every time goddamn stupid tank starts dancing instead of driving back I am close to deleting Coh. Funny thing that it happens even on a flat terrain with a hole from 105mm shell for instance.
I think this change has to be completely reverted.

Same thing about AT guns, makes no sense turning them into slow retards for the entire community just because a couple of dickheads abused the fast reloading bug. 17 pounder for instance takes more time to turn than Panther needs to close the distance and roll over a crew with its trucks.

[TANEBIRD]

i just finished a game using the propaganda doctrine as wehrmacht and the 20mm halftrack is really slow. Mostly the problem I've been having with vehicle movement is infantry units getting "snagged" up in them. whenever a unit that was supposed to counter something across the map doesn't show up and more of your other units die as a result it is at least a bit frustrating.