Reflection on allied specialist steps

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Ryan
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Reflection on allied specialist steps

Unread postby Ryan » Sat Apr 25, 2020 12:10 pm

Dear devs:
I just played around with new contents in beta 12 and together with my previous experience (350 hrs), here's my reflection on allied specialist step.
I think having 3 specialist step is overpowered. The current campaign is basically a game where player collect/buying specialist steps throughout scenarios and maximizing specialist steps for all of their divisions (at least 2 arty and 1 engineer per division), making them incredibly strong, difficult to lose steps, and therefore easily promoted. I think the game should also encourage the player to categorize their division for different purposes, instead of allowing them to have a bunch of multi purpose divisions which can easily crush the best german/soviet armor unit and attack into a city.
My solution will be reducing the limit of specialist step to 2, and increase the price while reducing the number provided in each conference (best step(firefly etc) provided as cards). This allows players to consider tradeoffs when they replace a m10 with engineer or replacing arty with another m10(m10+ arty for infantry and m8/m4 + priest for armor should be the best default combination), and prevent them from getting too strong. Brigades can also have 2 steps as they are already every weak in defense. I understand this means to change all of the past scenarios, but I really hope this can be done to balance this game better.
Also I remember in past blogs(probably 1 year ago), you mentioned a possibility that player need to spend prestige to promote a unit to elite so that they won't have a full board of elite units. Are you still considering implementing this feature? I think this will help too to prevent getting overpowered units.

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Danielefc
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Re: Reflection on allied specialist steps

Unread postby Danielefc » Sun Apr 26, 2020 4:45 pm

Hey Ryan :)

I pretty much wholeheartedly agree. Bad news and good news:

Bad news first: the general spec setup for the base game won't change (3 for allies vs. 1 for everyone else). Realizing how arguably OP the right combo of triple specs can be.... takes time. It's difficult for you (300+hours) and me (2.3k+ hours) to even remember how overwhelming it can be to learn the game when you first start to play. The triple specs are a very powerful tool that we don't want to take away from new players. Once you reach the stage of "I know every little loop, strategy and exploit". That is when I would recommend turning to hard difficulty setting. (edit: historically speaking the Allies did "cheat" with their amount of "stuff" :lol: )

And now the good news: we are currently planning(!) the first DLC. And the current intention for the faction you will be playing in that campaign is almost precisely what you say. Current plan (things may change!) is to have

1. Double specs.
2. Mostly very powerful specs with tradeoffs.
3. Never enough specs to go around.

we'll see how things develop, but I hope this approach will work and be good for both experienced and new players alike.

Cheers!

Adronio
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Re: Reflection on allied specialist steps

Unread postby Adronio » Sun Apr 26, 2020 6:08 pm

Look guys, 3 spec vs 1 spec is fine, we just need to clean him up a bit!

I've talked a bit about power creep in my own post, and I think that might be the crux of the issue: Axis (and Soviet) forces rely mainly on their normal tank and infantry steps for fighting, and this latest update which increased the Power of the offensive specialists, especially tanks, have made them that much weaker relativly speaking. A full 7step axis tank division gets the same armoured shift (+4) as a mere two Allied medium tank specialist steps (also +4). This is a bit silly considering every single Allied division could theoretically fit 3 of those suckers in them, or 2 and then an artillery specialist or something. I know why Tank Specialists were buffed (m10 being the better pick 95% of the time) but otherwise I thought tank specialists were in a pretty decent spot.

How about we go back to the +1 Armour shift for medium tank specialists, +2 for Heavy, +3 for SuperHeavy and instead reduce the Anti-Tank Shifts Down one. (+2 for medium anti-tank like m10, StuG, m1942 field gun and +3 for heavy anti-tank like the 88 Flak and 17pdr) Combined With the updated Attack and Defense stats this will give all the specialists a Place and still allow for that 3 v 1 spec style without making it totally ridiculous, albeit still showing the overwhelming material advantage of the allies.

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Danielefc
2x2 Games
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Re: Reflection on allied specialist steps

Unread postby Danielefc » Mon Apr 27, 2020 12:03 pm

@Adronio

I'm giving it all a think and not bad ideas. However, lowering the AT spec values is sadly not possible since we want to avoid (towed) AT being useless as it was in UoC1. "4" was the sweet-spot we arrived at a loooooong time ago during development. Anything below 4 and the German armor "doesn't care".

Lowering the armor shift for the armor spec leads to it having the same armor shift as the recon spec. This in turn would make recon a hands down better solution for any situation compared to armor in terms of cost effectiveness.

Messing with the armored division's armor shift values might allow us to tinker with the above. But such a change would require too much internal testing and is as such too extensive until a DLC.