5.3.0 - CW Artillery Spotter - Incorrect tooltip or incorrect call-in location

[RellHaiser]

Regarding the Artillery Spotters in Canadian Army Support for the British, the description states they can be dropped behind enemy lines but in practice they can only be dropped in territory you own.

Skimmed through several threads of change notes from 5.3.0 and the betas leading up to it and saw no mention of this unit so I'm not sure that is intentional. I think in previous versions you could drop it outside your territory, but not in fog of war.

[Diablo]

It's been this way for a long time. Now I can't say for the time before 2018, but as long as I remember this was the way for the CW spotter drop.
Only dropped in friendly territory and without crawl, you really have to use your brain while deploying. It's actually a bit tricky to use, which I don't hate.

[Lionelus]

Artillery spotters can be dropped "on" other friendly unit (aim the ability on it)

ex: while pushing with unit in enemy territory, drop an artillery spotter on this unit
Sneaking in a fast recon vehicule in enemy territory and dropping a spotter on it is viable move as well. Provided you play on a map big enough to maneuver, which is still quite rare nowadays on the lobby.

[MarKr]

It had been changed before I joined the dev team. From what I remember, it was because people would drop the spotters next to enemy bases and kept bombarding them with offmaps all day long. So it is intentional, just the text hasn't been changed.

[Consti255]

keep in mind it is a "instant" spotter, that is even armed with a Lee rifle to fight enemy spotters, has Offmap call ins and aswell isnt expensive. On top, it is just 1 CP.
I think the arty spotters in general are one reason to pick canadians at first, since they are THAT strong.

[Krieger Blitzer]

Ye, the RA spotter off-map is one hell of an orbital strike.
Not to mention the catastrophic aimed salvo ability combined with Priest.

[Warhawks97]

The spotter was originally a two men squad with the ability to drop anywhere. But it was way too OP even when this unit only had binoculars without any other ability. AB squad for this reason has no binos but can drop anywhere. But both combined, esspecially in teamfights, is extremely powerfull. Now add to that all the abilities it has. Thats why it got changed.

I think we had two ways to go. Either increase cost from 180 to well over 200 MP but would hamper its main role as arty spotters, or lower it two one men and only be dropped on friendly ground for lower cost. So we went the lower cost path but thus giving RA doc a more practically deployable spotter squad.

[RellHaiser]

Understood, thanks for the clarification.

I'll admit that I've been away from Blitzkrieg for a good while since it was mainly something I played at LAN parties with friends. Last time we were able to play was summer 2019, and at that point we were running legacy CoH for proper LAN support and version 4.9.8 of Blitzkrieg.