Lets discuss Shock Troopers (Red Alert)

[Prince Blueblood]

Aannnnddd... making an entirely new map with large open areas to test the theory as well...

with added rules about grenadiers (Thanks to Noobmapmaker and Re4ch), they are buffed sightly, but now Ukraine specific.

http://resource.openra.net/maps/3866/

SOVIETS:

Flak Truck
- Sight range increase from 6 to 7
Rationale: Flak Truck sight made a bit larger, as more reliable ground scout (and to make them not merely 'shoot into the fog' like AoAGeneral said), Hind with micro should still be able to take them down though, just harder because Flak have easier time spotting them as well.

Heavy Tank
- Price reduction from 1150 to 1000
- Health increase from 550 to 575
Rationale: Despite their supposed role as main Soviet battle tank, Heavy Tank has only a very specific use in multiplayer, and thus, rarely used, this boost specifically aim for heavy tanks to be used more as the main force instead of an overpriced support unit, yes they're may be deemed as sightly OP, but that's why you allies should focus less on arty and develop your own tank forces

Mammoth Tank
- 120mm cannons range increase from 4.768 to 5.768
Rationale: Very minor improvements on Mammoth Tank range to give them very slight edge against heavy tanks

Hijacker
- Price increase from 500 to 600
- Speed increase from 56 to 64
- Hijacker is cloaked when not moving
Rationale: Previous hijacker stats made him practically usable only if you pair him with an APC and use him to go GTA on enemy harversters, interesting use, but definitely not something doable against good enemy players. So the Hijacker is buffed to act more like GLA hijacker, that's it, an ambush capturer.

MIG
- Sight range increase from 12 to 13
- Get air-air capability
Rationale: Soviets have NO WAY to stand up Allied Helicopter Force... who coming from a big body of water. MIGs with Anti-Air capability and increased vision should help.

RUSSIA SPECIFIC:

Shock Trooper
- Price increase from 400 to 500
- Health reduction from 100 to 80
Rationale: Shock Trooper is too strong and sturdy for it's price, they got nerfed but maintain their prodigious offense, should work better when mixed with other infantry instead of a single flavoured ball of shock troopers now

Tesla Tank
- Price increase from 1350 to 1400
- Health increase from 400 to 475
Rationale: Tesla Tank is weaker and mobile mobile Tesla Coil, they are now sturdier stuff, but also more expensive a bit to reflect that

UKRAINE SPECIFIC:

Grenadier
- Now Ukraine specific unit
- Price reduction from 160 to 150
- Grenade effectiveness vs infantry increased from 50% to 60%
- Grenade effectiveness vs light vehicles increased from 25% to 50%
- Grenade effectiveness vs heavy vehicles increased from 5% to 20%
Rationale: Previously, Grenadiers are good for one thing mostly, rushes and micro against buildings as well as flanking attacks. Their death explosion chance stays, but at least now they're marginally buffed because real life concussion grenade DO has the potential to severely damage vehicles as well, just ask an army vets, will you

ALLIES:

Light Tank
- Price reduction from 700 to 650
- Sight range increase from 4 to 5
Rationale: cheaper because Soviet heavy tank is also cheaper, also they are supposed to be scouts so they should not has worse vision than medium tank at least

Medium Tank
- Price reduction from 850 to 800
Rationale: Also marginally cheaper because soviet heavy tank is cheaper

Sniper
- Given to Allies, buildable after you get Radar Dome
- Price increase from 700 to 800
- Health reduction from 80 to 45
- Sight range increase from 6 to 7
- Sniper now permanently cloaked even while moving, still decloak when firing though

[Canavusbis]

Do NOT add the sniper, it will be removed from the game's source in a future version!

Also, have you tried giving the missile subs anti-air instead of the MIGs? It would make them worth their high price tag imo.

[Prince Blueblood]

anti air missile sub?

Stealthed anti air that also has long range...

dang... Stealth + Anti everything is a recipe for an OP unit.

At least MiGs need to reload...

[Canavusbis]

Missile subs aren't anti-everything and can still easily be detected by destroyer subs. Besides, the missiles are incredibly slow from those subs.

[Prince Blueblood]

Missile subs aren't anti-everything and can still easily be detected by destroyer subs. Besides, the missiles are incredibly slow from those subs.

Just tried.

They have prodigious 16 range AND splash

with simple help from another sub to spot them, a missile sub could easily destroy a swarm of hind from afar.

Maybe you do have something, but still, Soviet lacking in air-to-air despite having planes instead of helis are indeed something frustrating.

[Canavusbis]

Don't forget, the hinds can still dodge missiles if their user is paying attention, then fly out to find the sub. I think it is more reasonable than a nearly unavoidable airstrike of MiGs. Phrohdoh has suggested Yaks in the past, which would be a better trade than MiGs imo.

[noobmapmaker]

Oh and how about a buff for the minelayer? 5 mines. Even then I doubt people will build them..

Edit: a stocklike balancing system would be interesting imo. Computer checks how wanted units are by recording how often they are built in multiplayergames. On forehand there are % for each unit. If there are less units built in a number of games -100 for example- the price of the unit goes down, and vice versa.

So if flaks should be 10% of all soviet forces over 100 games, and it turns out they have been 8,9646% then they'll become a bit cheaper.

Problem with this system is that it seems to allow adjust only 1 variable (price of the unit). In some cases we'd rather adjust health, firerate, damage, armor and other things. Perhaps those things have to be adjusted by the devs. After that supply and demand takes over.

[Murto the Ray]

Perhaps make the minelayer need no service depot. It isnt useful now because by the time you get it there are already defences and units on the field preventing it from laying any mines.

[Prince Blueblood]

Minelayer isn't useful?

in 1 vs 1 they are indeed useless for most part, unless you are delving into some kind of trolling game.

They are quite useful in 3 v 3 or more party... quite useful when you mined the road to your soviet enemies with them and watch in glee the replay when their stuffs start blowing up.

They are still nigh useless against good Allied players however, as they could simply saturate the suspected area with arty before moving their troops...

[r34ch]

Don't forget, the hinds can still dodge missiles if their user is paying attention, then fly out to find the sub. I think it is more reasonable than a nearly unavoidable airstrike of MiGs. Phrohdoh has suggested Yaks in the past, which would be a better trade than MiGs imo.

Unavoidable? Except for micro, AA destroyers and AA longbows?

Am I missing something?

[SoScared]

I mainly play Russia and love using shocks as they are quite powerful. It's been said already, but they could take a health nerf and still be useful (-15% Health), perhaps giving them 80-85 hp instead of 100 hp.

With changing unit balance lets start with small changes and see the results on a playtests instead of changing multiple factors all at once.

PS - look at my avatar

This makes sense. I think you won't really get a feel for the changes if you change too many of the factors at once.

There are a couple of things mentioned I'd love to see being tested tho:
Shock trooper health nerf -%15. No change in costs.
Heavy tank buff $1150 to $1050 and proportionally reduced build time. I miss playing with and against a solid heavy tank dominated armies. Building other soviet vehicles simply takes precedence - needed harvesters, MCVs and flak trucks and then the heavy tank is competing against building V2's and tesla tanks. We've lost some incentive to build heavy tanks, especially as a main army ingredient.
Light tanks +1 sight range - I'm still baffled when I see players build more than 1 of this clown unit It could appeal to us better as a scout/harass unit and counter early light vehicles with a small sight range upgrade.

MIG
- Sight range increase from 12 to 13
- Get air-air capability
Rationale: Soviets have NO WAY to stand up Allied Helicopter Force... who coming from a big body of water. MIGs with Anti-Air capability and increased vision should help.

I don't like the idea of giving the MiG anti-air missiles. The flak truck was made particularly to counter the allied air dominance and you have mammoth tanks zoning out air units, taking down any of them off them with a hit from it's twin missiles. However I do see the problem with air-dominance over sea so...

Missile subs with anti-air missiles. Why not. Right off the bat this sounds like a fantastic idea. As of now the unit feels a little 1-dimensional. It's expensive as hell and you risk loosing it to 1 Hind hovering right outside the missile sub's sight range (6 to the Hind's 10). In a match, once you've established sea dominance as soviet you should be able to at least deter heli's from hovering forever at the same spot. A slow, but devastating couple of anti-air missiles could do that.

[Prince Blueblood]

But still as R34ch said, Anti-Air MIG could still easily destroyed by destroyers and AA, plus while missile sub is nice to have AA, the very fact that they are both expensive and easy to destroy is something to know...

while their range could be devastating though... their slow missile means that sacrificing one hind to take the missile in his ass while the others killing the missile sub...

[r34ch]

tl:dr; For cost, tech level, hp, separate production capability and lack of multi role attack capability, Migs make the most sense having AA capability.

AA missile subswould be a very late game and expensive unit. They wont help at all if allies have taken a body of water with air and naval at radar tech. Your spens will get rekt before you complete any naval unit. Whats worse, is that soviets are limited to using one production facility to produce different units for specific tasks in naval (msub AA, sub AN), while allies keep the two separate air and naval facilities to produce multi-role units. Factor in build time and cost on top.

AA Yaks would be a tech balanced AA air unit (to match the destroyer at dome tech) but imho I think soviets need a better ground attack role to balance against hinds. Soviets have no good anti inf air. Ukraine suffers so badly against shockies (and still will) because Yaks have a no splash ground attack weapon. The main issue, is the Yaks are complete fodder for destroyers. Bunch a couple destroyers with hinds and that is a terrible eco trade.

AA Migs would be sturdy enough to compete against destroyers and longbow groups, but their missiles could be dodged with micro, unlike the Yaks (hitscan?) weapon. Although allies could still take bodies of water at dome tech, soviets could actually contest it at stek level. Soviets could retake the air with a mig strike and spam spens to retake naval with subs. Both sides could then contest naval pockets when the other side captures them. Balance through production capability. Also means allies can't keep a single chinook above a mountain without having to do anything for the free vision.

AA flakboat could be an early option. This would remove the see-saw balance we currently have to level the playing field. This however would take much rebalancing. Gunboats would need buffed heavily to be dedicated anti flakboat units. Which actually could be really fun. Also subs would need to be moved to radar level to match destroyers. Soviets would then have cheap naval AA early game but once lost, they would have no way to take back a naval pocket just as they can't now lacking AA air.

[zinc]

What is the attack difference between shock troopers now and shock troopers before the improvement?

[Scott_NZ]

The shroud reveal range was increased from 4 cells to 5 cells, and the weapon range was increased from 3.5 cells to 6 cells.