Rocket Arty is too abusable - ruins games

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The artillery is limited, its why there is probably not any sort of indication or cooldown for it. I think just making them a big investment such as a Hs 129 or a B-26 is a fair thing to do with it. It is a potent weapon that can be shut down with some recon and some artillery or a bomber. Whenever I see off-map hit I immediately hunt for the car and can usually get it after its first or second barrage.

This is increasingly ridiculous. For every single artillery piece, you make the argument that it doesnt matter because you always kill it after it fires once or twice. Stop using stomps as evidence for anything. You can't strafe artillery or prematurely kill offmaps unless they fuck up or you're already winning the game quite heavily.

Lemme put it this way. Logically, the power of a unit is completely irrelevant if you can kill it. A given unit could be twice, three times, twenty times as deadly and you could still make an equally valid argument that its fine because you can just kill it.

You keep boiling your arguments down to L2P. It's very silly. The OPs example games wern't losses. Super heavy arty isn't necessarily OP, and that is tangential to the arguments at hand. Arty spam isn't usually effective at winning games. It is however highly frustrating to play against, and boring, and essentially shits up the game - just like Eugen has had consistent problems with in the Wargame series.

 

[Rojan]

This is increasingly ridiculous. For every single artillery piece, you make the argument that it doesnt matter because you always kill it after it fires once or twice. Stop using stomps as evidence for anything. You can't strafe artillery or prematurely kill offmaps unless they fuck up or you're already winning the game quite heavily.

Stop using stomps? I'm playing top twenty players on the leaderboards regularly. Smart positioning of recon teams makes it stupid easy to see their backline. I'm sorry if you're incapable of counterbatterying or dropping 500kg bombs on paper cars.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Cue surprise: heavy artillery irrelevant in 1v1s. Film at 11. Hard to pull off omnipresent recon against competent players in team games, and omnipresent recon is a horrible baseline assumption to make for balance or design.

 

[Rojan]

Cue surprise: heavy artillery irrelevant in 1v1s. Film at 11. Hard to pull off omnipresent recon against competent players in team games.

I never said I did 1v1's exclusively... I've done ranked team games as well as custom games against some very good players. The solution to off-map artillery is not easy to do -nor should it be- but you will be rewarded if you have good recon put up.

 

[Kampfkekskrieger]

I DONT think that Arty is even a bit off the target, its just right as it is now. You cannot call in Artillery if your frontline is melting, so those units are second priority, if you need a tank to save the day. So, you dont have the money for Artillery and other units, too, and if those would be even more expensive, I could not play other units anymore.
Those pieces tax your economy a LOT imo, even if its just 60$ for a nebelwerfer. I must be careful to spend money on those because I am afraid of lacking something more important.
Artillery Observers need to be cheap enough to play without loosing your frontline in the 1-2 minutes you need to hold your front to be able to afford them, because they dont defend your frontline, so you can only use them if you are already save. The range of them is also not very high so you have indeed not a calm day to bring them into range. Its just outside tank range, so you must be careful not to loose them, I need the 'last' existing bocage before the tank comes into range to target the bulk properly. Without the backup you are quite lost with an Observer, because as soon as the enemy comes into movement towards you, its all over, you dont make good targets and lost your money.

Especially in Phase A, an Observer is difficult to bring in, you need to be very good with your other units to make up for the missing defense on your frontline.
After phase A, BOTH players have the possibility to arty down each other, with as many rocket launchers as they wish, even 20 would be okay, because you can stun each others rocket launchers, too.
After the frontline is static, there is nothing better than a good artillery, and I find the arty battles very exciting, very different to wargame, where you never had a chance to hit them properly, it was really a cat and mouse play, that could be improved, sometimes you were lucky, but it was a lot of work to hit arty with yours.
So if you dont get further with tanks and infantry, supporting up with arty makes a REALLY good game for me, because you are not lost into paintballing each other, but you can actually hurt the frontline very fast, bringing things into movement again, and help your tanks to move forward again. You do not stay in the arty state for long time, because the other units come into play again.
Your many Nebelwerfers will be pretty useless if you run out of front troop e.g. infantry. The weakness you get then despite having artillery is so big that you cannot defend yourself, if you go big on arty, especially rocket arty, but expose AT or AA capability. If both players have forces in front of their artillery, the better artillery commander can shaken the pinch of your forces, whereas the other player might have stunned my arty, but cannot stop all my tanks from approaching.

It is really a matter of how you play whether you loose or win against artillery, you have the same strength, mortars and howizers are equally strong, a rocket artillery player cannot ignore and laugh about them. Taking out each other makes a heck full of fun and the arty play is really not boring or lengthy, but you instantly get the flow running again, it is really fun to play with.

And whether its 1v1 or 4v4 or 10v10, you just knock out each other massively like the village people in Asterix and Obelix, you throw yourself into the turmoil and dont want to miss it.

And again: you really must be careful not to risk your frontline to be able to call in artillery. The game can punish you a LOT if you are too confident in calling them. If the price is too high, you cannot recover from a mistake or 2 if you need arty as a counter to turn the key tide. Especially if you are in a weak position.

AFTER the game is once in imbalance, one player has 10 artillery pieces and you have none and also no tanks AND no Aircraft, its all over and out. But that does not happen that easily. You stand on a solid position for very long, you have your own tools to counter that, you are not defenseless. MANY things must go wrong to loose a frontline (you loose a unit or 2, but the enemy does just as easily as you). And then not to unfair reasons. (See the post of the last page. It really connects!) You only get the loss if you REALLY deserved it!

... And I keep editing and finding important things: If you make arty more expensive, you just make the stronger player stronger, and the weaker player weaker, because only the stronger player can afford those then only.

 

[GenFelix]

Am I the only one who has the impression that whomever created this game is a nazi lover ?

The germans have better tanks, better arty, better units and far better airplanes..

Interesting..

 

[Kampfkekskrieger]

Eugens said that the balance is pretty much exactly at 50% if they look for win loss ratio for their games Allies vx.Axis.

 

[Village Idiot]

Cue surprise: heavy artillery irrelevant in 1v1s. Film at 11. Hard to pull off omnipresent recon against competent players in team games, and omnipresent recon is a horrible baseline assumption to make for balance or design.

Oh, come on. Recon is THE most important thing. If you scimp in recon you deserve every evil your opponent manages to pull off.

Everyone gets cheap two man teams you can saturate areas with. just turn off weapons and they have a decent chance of being unnoticed even if enemies pass close by.

 

[Ahab78]

3vs3 and 4vs4 games currently have a tendency to deter into arty f** fest. And no, I'm not playing destruction. I never do.

I miss the early day Beta days of Blitzkrieg when everyone was still messing around and attacking boldly.

Now, as most have recognized how powerful (and mandatory for many divisions) artillery is, some games come down to the standard arty party.

Don't get me wrong I'm absolutely in favour of powerful arty, as it is a tool needed to overcome entrenched positions.

But I feel like if there currently were too much arty available at much too affordable levels.

Some divisions are utterly dependent on their arty capabilities because infantry dies too quickly and is useless in pushes if you don't saturate the ground with HE.

It's not heavily disturbing right now and in a much better place than RDs bunny hopping tube arty and MLRs of doom.

But I think Raven has a point when he claims that the artillery centered playstyle has the downside of turning matches into a rather disheartening experience.

There should be more incentives not to trod on that evil path. I know because I submit to that beckoning all too often

 

[Kampfkekskrieger]

. . .

I dont want to contradict, but let me respond that.

Who is the guy who needs artillery? The weaker or the stronger player?
I assume the weaker player, because you need some sort of mass destruction to get the balance again if you have lost too many units to saturate an enemy that is about to steamroll you.
The stronger player does not need the arty that much, because his push forward does not need speed up, he just needs to pinpoint last resistence thats all.

And you also need some kind of a 'nuke' in the game to handle if too many units accumulate. Thats what the Observer Units do. And I wonder (astonish) you dont even need to call in a magic superweapon. Just heavy arty! How realistic that is! Very good!

So you need a weapon that becomes increasingly strong, the more units there are on the field. If there are many units, the massive use of artillery is justified! You need this in order to handle the battle again at all!

A steamroll, once in position is not to impair, even with the strongest tank, so you need a counter for the steady growth.
Because otherwise, once one of the players fails to keep up, the game is over for him. So he needs a way to shaken and repulse the stronger force that is about to crush him.

A strong artillery is mandatory to do that. On the other side, the stronger player does not get an advantage with lots of artillery (the few units you could aim for are not worth the use. You only get more fireworks but not more kills, once the enemy is saturated), because he already succeeds, its very difficult to push faster with artillery, if your frontline is moving to the enemy, because your artillery usually stays back and needs time to re-adjust to cover the next free kilometre.

Because of the missing artillery, right after a tank push, that is the only reason why a weaker player can use the time, regroup and try to push back, that would otherwise be impossible. Only the slow moving speed of the tanks, that allows the weaker player to react for some time, keeps the balance of the game.

And only if your tanks feel resistence, your artillery comes into play, to knock/break the core.

I dont know exactly why this is true, but it strongly feels true, that this very important for the game.

 

[Nussor]

I miss the early day Beta days of Blitzkrieg when everyone was still messing around and attacking boldly.

Yeah, some more rushing would be neat, but the accuracy of all AT weapons is enormous. In effect, everything but a Königstiger or Sturmpanther feels like a glass cannon.

I understand the frustration about rocket arty. It frustrated the hell out of me when I was still learning the game. one can actually avoid a great deal of the damage not only by spreading units, but also by simply moving them away. A slight debuff may be in order. I'd advocate making "rockets" a distinct form of supply, so one needs to be more deliberate in their use.

 

[Sarin]

Counter battery is an important part of the game.
Too many games I see people ignoring using counter battery.

Rocket arty fires 1600 meters ? Ok, that is why 2000m and 2400m artillery exists.
Or why you have bombers.

Can't bomb because their AA net stops you. Well that again is why 2000m and 2400m artillery exists.

The enemy wants to cluster units together when possible, it means a large amount of damage can be applied to a small area, annihilating the units that blob is moving towards.

Arty is the counter to this.
Your own longer range arty is the counter to their arty.

As is spreading out.

In my German decks I will have mortars for infantry support, smoke and helping to panic enemy vehicles that push.
Rocket arty for if the enemy clusters up in a group.
Longer range 2000 or 2400 range arty for counter battery (or if the deck has it available at the right time the 4k)

My first target is always the enemy arty though, as soon as it fires I counter battery.
I don't expect my 2000 range arty to rack up tons of kills. I expect it to stop, or at least slow the enemy from being able to arty my own stuff.

Many players would just like to buy an extra few tanks though, gather them into a death ball and Q attack forwards. Then complain when their stuff gets picked apart.

 

[Coyotl]

I made an account to post here.

I've played wargame since EE, almost entirely singleplayer because every time I tried to get into multiplayer the meta was brutal. I've had SD since beta, I'm steadily working through the campaigns and enjoying skirmishes against bots on hard. But today I played my first four games on multiplayer (always Allies).

I was rocket-spammed twice at the start of each game. By the time I had recovered from the rockets and tried to counter, they had brought up heavier arty or consolidated their position on a strong defensive line. There was nothing I, or my team could seem to do. By the time they got to phase C, we just collapsed. I was pushed to spawn by infantry and arty in combination. I know I'm no expert and I really only play the game for singleplayer, but the community is already toxic, why does the gameplay have to be against newer players?

There is a difference between skillful strategy, and breaking the mechanics. I feel that the arty mess, specifically rocket, is what's being broken at the moment. I bought the game for a friend who is a huge Brit ww2 buff, and he loved it, until, this afternoon, his first multiplayer match, he got ganged up on by two divisions in rocket spam, knocking him pretty much out of the game.

I really don't want this game's multiplayer to be like Wargame series. I was really looking forward to a solid, historically accurate RTS.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I dunno. I don't enjoy being on the receiving end of massed rocket/arty/OBA any more than the next guy, but I think they are a necessary evil to prevent even more static gameplay of interlocked AT guns and MGs. Once that sets in, you HAVE to have some arty or somesuch to break up the defense. Sure, you can make due with less of it, but a few losses and you'd be out and stuck in static mode for the rest of the game.

I think it's pretty close to 'the chicken or the egg' if you don't have arty, you get static lines, but WITH all the arty, it's also fairly easy to break up an attack, which leads to....more static lines. But I think it would be worse without it.

As far as the OBA, I lost quite a few units to it in a game tonight (guy was 6th AB and brought in 3 spotters which called in all 9 strikes...) but at the end of the day, I still had possession of most the front line and was prepping to push again when the game ended. Did it shut me down a few times? Yep. Was it fun to get blasted like that? Nope. But did it really have an effect commensurate with the cost? No, I don't think so...not at all.

There are plenty of other 'unfun' things in the game...having your tanks picked off by AT guns, having your squads get vaporized in the open by even AFVs or MGs, Having a plane come in and blast your AT guns (and AA guns!) etc etc. I think in the end, it's not a lot of fun to be hit by enemy weaponry lol. It's far better to give than to receive...

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I made an account to post here.

I've played wargame since EE, almost entirely singleplayer because every time I tried to get into multiplayer the meta was brutal. I've had SD since beta, I'm steadily working through the campaigns and enjoying skirmishes against bots on hard. But today I played my first four games on multiplayer (always Allies).

I was rocket-spammed twice at the start of each game. By the time I had recovered from the rockets and tried to counter, they had brought up heavier arty or consolidated their position on a strong defensive line. There was nothing I, or my team could seem to do. By the time they got to phase C, we just collapsed. I was pushed to spawn by infantry and arty in combination. I know I'm no expert and I really only play the game for singleplayer, but the community is already toxic, why does the gameplay have to be against newer players?

There is a difference between skillful strategy, and breaking the mechanics. I feel that the arty mess, specifically rocket, is what's being broken at the moment. I bought the game for a friend who is a huge Brit ww2 buff, and he loved it, until, this afternoon, his first multiplayer match, he got ganged up on by two divisions in rocket spam, knocking him pretty much out of the game.

I really don't want this game's multiplayer to be like Wargame series. I was really looking forward to a solid, historically accurate RTS.

I think that (or something similar) happens to most people when they first play MP games. I guarantee if you play again, you'll do something different and you'll eventually be able to fight against players like that and win fairly easily. The AI doesn't punish players for slow, methodical, pushes...human players do.

I'm not sure how you reacted to the 'rocket spam' but usually they don't inflict too many actual casualties (unless totally caught in the open). So just grab your guys and retreat. Sure it sucks to lose the ground, but he'll have less stuff too if he's 'spamming' rockets (and then the ammo trucks).

And if one player is getting 'ganged up on' by TWO players doing rocket spam, then that player's teammates aren't pushing when/where they should. Sometimes you're hammer, sometimes you're the anvil. But there is now way his sacrifice should be in vain. That many people spent on rockets should leave them mighty thin on the ground.

 

[Sarin]

but the community is already toxic, why does the gameplay have to be against newer players?

There is a difference between skillful strategy, and breaking the mechanics. I feel that the arty mess, specifically rocket, is what's being broken at the moment. I bought the game for a friend who is a huge Brit ww2 buff, and he loved it, until, this afternoon, his first multiplayer match, he got ganged up on by two divisions in rocket spam, knocking him pretty much out of the game.

The community is toxic ? Gameplay against newer players ?

Allies get cheaper units generally. So they have more units on the field.
To counter this Axis gets rocket arty. To stop the Allies bunching up their forces too much.

As allied you should have arty that out ranges his rocket arty, so you can counter battery it.

Two division (if i remember correctly) get Rocket arty in Phase A.

Windhund. 110 points and only 1 per card activation cost. up to 2x cards.
Expensive, low availability. Two volleys with long wait in between firing. Then needs to be resupplied.
They get this because they get almost no infantry in Phase A. All their phase A infantry has 2x units per card.
Without you could just swarm them in a death ball.

Grenadiers 60 points. only 1 per card activation. up to 3x cards
Fires one volley and then needs to be resupplied.

You said you didn't like multiplayer in EE, or RD,
Sounds more like you just don't like multiplayer, you prefer scripted type stuff. Nothing wrong with that.
Humans can be hard to play against, especially at the start.

A big reason that I love multiplayer is the human element, not knowing what they will do, how to counter it.
Learning what risks you can and cannot take, being prepared for as much as possible while walking a fine line between risk and reward.
As Allies I never punch up my units on rollout if I am going to face masses or mortars or rockets.
I always have a counter battery arty as early as possible (phase A) and often bring it on rollout.
As soon as he fires his rockets, usually not doing much as I don't group up. I then counter battery and attack before he can get an opportunity to do so again.

You have to play the game protecting yourself and countering the opponent as much as you are doing what you yourself want to do.
Countering is half the game.

 

[I WUB PUGS]

I think they need a lethality nerf, but I think the suppression needs to probably stay about the same as it is, like .9 percent of where it's at.

My biggest issue is that they take like no supply cost, reload and re-aim quickly and are plentiful enough that they are constantly in play. I'm fine with them being in the game and the availability because they are utterly useful for pushing into built up areas, but I don't like how shit gets murdered by them. Suppress the hell out of stuff, sure, but right now I'm seeing a development where people don't even follow up. They just rely on massed rocket attacks to kill whole areas of the map.

Also, they obliterate buildings so it's becoming a tactic to just level villages and parts of towns rather than using combined arms. I don't know if the HE value just needs to come way down while leaving the AOE and flame ability, but I do think something needs tweaking, just not so much that they are discarded.

It is starting to feel a bit like ALB Beta Buratino, but not nearly as bad (I've yet to see lakes of fire), but people are just using them as the sole weapon rather than an asset to assist other units. This is bad for gameplay as it just makes people lazy.

And yes I know, I'll get plenty of red X's for this, people will defend their preciouses forever. No sacred cows, please. Let's just get some tweaks.

 

[Rojan]

I think they need a lethality nerf, but I think the suppression needs to probably stay about the same as it is, like .9 percent of where it's at.

My biggest issue is that they take like no supply cost, reload and re-aim quickly and are plentiful enough that they are constantly in play. I'm fine with them being in the game and the availability because they are utterly useful for pushing into built up areas, but I don't like how shit gets murdered by them. Suppress the hell out of stuff, sure, but right now I'm seeing a development where people don't even follow up. They just rely on massed rocket attacks to kill whole areas of the map.

Also, they obliterate buildings so it's becoming a tactic to just level villages and parts of towns rather than using combined arms. I don't know if the HE value just needs to come way down while leaving the AOE and flame ability, but I do think something needs tweaking, just not so much that they are discarded.

It is starting to feel a bit like ALB Beta Buratino, but not nearly as bad (I've yet to see lakes of fire), but people are just using them as the sole weapon rather than an asset to assist other units. This is bad for gameplay as it just makes people lazy.

And yes I know, I'll get plenty of red X's for this, people will defend their preciouses forever. No sacred cows, please. Let's just get some tweaks.

They drop around 10-12 models out of 40 and I sat there and tried it for an hour. Same thing every time. This is in a cluster of buildings on Colombelles factory with 300mm incendiary rockets. The smaller caliber ones like the Xylophone and Panzerwerfer do even less, around 5-7 models. That isn't unreasonable for what those things are.

 

[Sarin]

My biggest issue is that they take like no supply cost, reload and re-aim quickly

They CHEW through supply. More than any other unit.

You can feed 3x arty pieces from a supply cart for ages. Your single rocket arty will devour that same supply.
The reload is also not quick at all. The aim is longer than mortars, less than 2400 range self propelled I believe.

I bet you could empty an entire mortars ammo supply in less time than it takes to reload a rocket arty to fire again.

In over 200 games played, mostly as Allies I have never seen

but people are just using them as the sole weapon rather than an asset to assist other units. This is bad for gameplay as it just makes people lazy.

I have to say that just is not true. They are not plentiful enough to do that, they do not fire fast enough to do that.
It really seems like too many people just don't know what counter battery is.

If your opponent is buying enough rocket arty to just use that solely as a weapon, which is pretty much impossible. How hard is it to just buy 2x counter battery arty, and with the "SUPPOSED" constant stream of rockets he is firing, just fire back from outside his range...

 

[I WUB PUGS]

They CHEW through supply. More than any other unit.

You can feed 3x arty pieces from a supply cart for ages. Your single rocket arty will devour that same supply.
The reload is also not quick at all. The aim is longer than mortars, less than 2400 range self propelled I believe.

I bet you could empty an entire mortars ammo supply in less time than it takes to reload a rocket arty to fire again.

In over 200 games played, mostly as Allies I have never seen



I have to say that just is not true. They are not plentiful enough to do that, they do not fire fast enough to do that.
It really seems like too many people just don't know what counter battery is.

If your opponent is buying enough rocket arty to just use that solely as a weapon, which is pretty much impossible. How hard is it to just buy 2x counter battery arty, and with the "SUPPOSED" constant stream of rockets he is firing, just fire back from outside his range...

You are arguing L2P (I know how to play) and I'm arguing that it's shitty gameplay.

Difference.

I'm not losing to rockets. I don't have to in order to see that's it's fuggin dumb where it is at the moment.