Update 12 Initial Feedback

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Adronio
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Update 12 Initial Feedback

Unread postby Adronio » Wed Apr 22, 2020 4:15 pm

Specialists rebalanced, more and meaner specialists, the return of the soviets, this update has it all!

-Specialist Rebalance

A small nerf to the offensive Power of all the AT specialists apart from the 17pdr, the engineers got put up on front just like the german engineers making them that more fragile. All seems pretty good so far.

The Armoured specialists seems to have gotten an extra +1 armoured shift across the Board, medium tank specialists giving +2, Heavy +3, super heavies +4. Recon got made even cheaper to make up for the fact that they die all the time. the A and D values also got mixed up a little. All of this seems good so far.

Special Forces also got buffs depending on what kind of special force they are, some helping With river crossings, others turning them into Budget engineers and some might even have both. From what ive noticed they all also reduce the casualties you recieve on the attack, the same bonus you recieve when having a veteran or elite unit attack. I am unsure how I feel about it, but I dont think the fact that the bonus stacks with other specialists you have in the same division is a good thing. The fact that you can in theory get a unit with -5 casualties recieved on the attack (elite -2, 3 special forces specialists -3) seems quite funky.

In general I think the rebalance definitly helps giving everey specialist a place they are useful. The powercreep could be a bit worring, especially now that you consider that 2 medium tank specialists can give the same amount of armoured shifts to an infantry division (+4) as the average US armoured division (30 armour = +3 shift, +1 from recon specialist). I am not quite sure how that system that apparently shuffles specialists forward if you fill a division with them Works quite yet, but specialists do seem to die more, which helps offset their power. The Germans seems to have been the definite losers this update, just because they have less specialists then the Allies. Its going to be hard for them to compete with the new and improved armour specialists.

-New Specialists

They lookin' mighty fine. Not much else to say about them yet, Id need to take a deeper dive into them.

-Soviets

Uuuraaaa! The return of the Soviets is even more glorious then I could've hoped for, and definitly came much sooner then I thought. A very welcome to suprise.

I very much like how the Soviets are presented here. An experienced, Dangerous and numerous opponent, yet clearly one without the same economic powerhouse backing the Allies. Without the same, ridiculous number of specialists the Allies have on the field the Soviets clearly had to prioritise, and they went for Tanks, Artillery and Sheer Mass. There is no recon, no Special Forces, no nonsense. It really shows a lot how the Soviets waged war, and Im very impressed with how you managed to show it here.

The Soviet Tank and Mechanized Corps are well suited for both running over infantry and slugging it out with tanks, and even though they tend to be woefully lacking in support the Soviet infantry can still be counted to hold bitterly, an unsupported Infantry Corp able to trade well vs the average Allied Infantry even out in the open. And for what they lack in the number of specialists they definitly make up for in the quality of specialists. The Katyusha specialists are nasty, and the less said about the IS-6 the better. I also like that my favourite artillery piece of the war, the zis-3 field gun, has been well represented.

In the right hands they definitly could be a force to be scared of, and I think a decent player would definitly make Unthinkable all but impossible to beat, maybe even being able to turn the fight all the way around. Sadly the AI doesnt quite seem to be able to handle the incredibly large scenario to the same Level that they handle the smaller scenarios. (Wacht am Rhein and Market Garden seems to be the scenarios where the AI shines the most) Still, some bad moves could rapidly see Your offensive assets grinded to dust.

In short, I really like the Soviets.

-Other Notes

Talking about the Soviets, I think we need to have a look at the straggler ratio for the Allies. The 50% ratio for the Germans are just fine, and I think the 33% ratio for the Soviets fits them aswell. They had to make up for all the losses they had to replace with simpler, more brutal tactics that could often result in higher casualties for them. However, the Allied ratio of 66% seems kind of ridiculous in comparison now. Is there any good reason for why the Allies need such a good straggler ratio? I know they were the side that had the least losses in WW2, and that they were probably the side the most Casualty averse compared to the Germans and the Soviets, however this is already represented well ingame. The players want to keep their veteran and elite troops alive and will generally balk at throwing them into the grinder. The Allies in most scenarios are very well set up to reduce their casualties with special attacks, and the ones where they might not often had very Equal Casualty ratios with the Germans IRL. Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge both ended with very even amounts of losses, and the Battle for Hürtgen Forest ended in more casualties for the Allies. Allied soldiers died just as much as German ones when thrown into the grinder, the Allies just generally were more cautious about doing so.

From a gameplay perspective this also tends to make the German Scenarios uniquely frustrating with the amount of stragglers that'll bog Down Your advance, or even more commonly, get away Scott free since trying to hunt them Down tends to get Your panzer divisions smacked hard for their troubles. On the Allied side this doesnt seem like any great loss to reduce it Down to 50% either. The main prestige drain in the campaigns, from what Ive noticed myself, is buying and replacing specialists, not normal infantry and tank steps. Ive never even been Close to running out of replacements. This straggler ratio gives the Allies an advantage into turning fights into meatgrinders, and I dont see why they need it.



Great Work. The time spent has certainly been worthwhile. Cheers!

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Danielefc
2x2 Games
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Re: Update 12 Initial Feedback

Unread postby Danielefc » Thu Apr 23, 2020 2:03 pm

Hey man - as always: thanks for kind words and the extensive post/feedback!

Yea, Unthinkable can grind you down in "endless combat" if you don't make large pockets.... Those 5 airborne divisions can really screw over the Soviet forces in the Berlin area though ;)

I agree with your concern regarding the possible "spec-powercreep". We are keeping an eye on it. Be sure to let us know if you stumble across combinations that truly "break stuff". Our hope is that the cost and increased spec losses that you mention will balance this out.

Regarding Allied stragglers: These are "late war values". I understand your concern and these values will probably be altered for early war campaigns (DLC). But it will depend on what early testing shows us.

Cheers! :)

Adronio
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Re: Update 12 Initial Feedback

Unread postby Adronio » Thu Apr 23, 2020 5:19 pm

Thanks for the paratroopers tip. Restarted and tried to use all my paratroopers to hold the 2 cities and bridgeheads on the river behind Berlin, and it worked gloriously. 10 Mechanized and Tank corps bagged (1 of them unwisely broke into the Pocket) + almost double that in Rifle Corps. What a steal!

On to the stragglers, I still feel like the Allies have more then enough Things to reduce their casualties without the high straggler ratio aswell, but I Guess we will see.
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Hexaboo123
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Re: Update 12 Initial Feedback

Unread postby Hexaboo123 » Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:00 pm

This looks extremely interesting, but is there a way to skip forward to these missions as part of a campaign? I tried opening the only save I had with the entire campaign completed (it has all the alternative branches and gold stars in all the missions), but it keeps crashing the campaign. Could anything be done with it to make it compatible with the update?

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Tomislav Uzelac
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Re: Update 12 Initial Feedback

Unread postby Tomislav Uzelac » Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:20 pm

You can use Daniel's save HERE.

Updating an existing save is not 100% safe (which is why we don't allow it yet) but you can try: un-zip your west.usg - it's just a zip file. In there, replace the "document" folder with the latest "document" from west.usc in the game folder and then re-zip. It should work in most cases.

Cheers!

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Tomislav Uzelac
2x2 Games
Posts: 2211
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2011 11:24 pm
Location: Zagreb, Croatia

Re: Update 12 Initial Feedback

Unread postby Tomislav Uzelac » Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:20 pm

You can use Daniel's save HERE.

Updating an existing save is not 100% safe (which is why we don't allow it yet) but you can try: un-zip your west.usg - it's just a zip file. In there, replace the "document" folder with the latest "document" from west.usc in the game folder and then re-zip. It should work in most cases.

Cheers!

Hexaboo123
Cadet
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 2:05 pm

Re: Update 12 Initial Feedback

Unread postby Hexaboo123 » Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:54 pm

Thanks (as you have probably seen, I've posted the crashing save in the other thread)! :)