) You guys also played the most season games which I appreciate a lot too.With that out of the way lets get into the good, the bad and the ugly. Starting with the ugly. Obviously this season was a dumpster fire. When 6 of 9 teams would have been DQ'd it's pretty ugly. While I'm not going to shirk the blame, having an active admin to hold people accountable is important, the simple fact is, if players want to play they don't need an admin to hold their hand. Getting 4 people together can be difficult but allowing a substitute player is part of the rules for that very reason. Obviously sometimes a sub won't be able to fill in but I feel like that should be the rarity. Maybe it was a bad time to start ratl over a holiday break, maybe it was the maps, maybe it was a cosmic trick of fate. It's over now. Feedback of what you think went wrong is pretty important. If there is to be a ratl s4, then knowing what went wrong and how to avoid it again is crucial. Knowing when is a bad time to start or not would be very beneficial as well.
Now for the good. Despite the difficulties I thought we had some interesting games. It was pretty fun even if Orb and I got salty at each other (or maybe especially because Orb and I got salty at each other!) I think there were some good maps and some bad maps. I know Whai Hua seems a bit contentious to some on whether its a good or bad map. I think it offer a lot of new dynamics and isn't so simple. Fresh Rain also seemed to stand out as a very dynamic map. Kosovo was by far the most popular map which was interesting. On Bad side of things, it'd mostly just a rehash of the ugly so I'll skip that bit.
The last thing I want to talk about is balance. Overall, I liked 4.1 but there are some things that I don't like so feedback on this is very important.
Here are the changes from 3.6 that were used in ratl:
Iron Curtain cost increased to 2000 from 1500
Tanya cost increased to 1800 from 1500
Tesla Coil power decreased to 80 from 100
Heavy Tank speed 64 from 60
Yak min range 2.5 cells from 3.0 cells
rocket tracking reduced to 9 cells from 11 cells.
tech/rockets can fire out of pillboxes.
Arty range decreased to 11 from 12
Arty turn speed increased to 16 from 8
Ranger hp increased to 18000 from 15000
Personally for me the first 5 worked really well or were non-factors. The IC change I didn't notice. No one really tesla rushed. Tanya cost increased definitely help slow down her recovery after getting killed, but I still saw lots of use out of Tanya. Tesla Coils definitely felt a little better not having to constantly tie up power to build them. Heavy Tank speed was mostly noticeable when transferring tanks to infantry blobs. I like them faster. Yak min range had concerns of being OP pre-season but honestly I think they worked fantastically. They stilled died in droves, but at least took out more value before getting shot down. Blackhawks were still better at clearing blobs, but there was never too many yak flocks to compare to.
Rocket tracking I was worried might make air OP as bh/yaks could dip in an out easier but I didn't notice much a difference. More testing needed I think. Tech/rockets in pillboxes were not seen nor do I expect people to use them but I can't really see any major imbalances there.
For the last 3, I didn't really like them. I suppose arty decreased range wasn't too bad, I did see them getting picked off slightly more, however, the doubling of their turn speed I definitely noticed. I think I'd prefer either a lesser increase or none at all. Arty are still such huge force multipliers when used properly. Ranger health increase I don't think had too big of an impact but considering their speed and vision, I think leaving them as weak HP-wise is okay. So RIP ranger danger. Regardless of what I thought please let me know your thoughts!
As for the naval side of balance I'll split it into non-factors, good, bad/need more work.
Non-factors:
sonar pulse available on tech center infiltration
Sonar pulse reveals shroud 10c0, detects subs, must be targeted on water
Spyplane reveals subs
Infantry and ground defences have sub detection
transport health 40000 from 35000
Fake Shipyard cost 60
Flame tower detectcloak 5co
LST Sprite size increased
msub Detect Cloak 7c0 (up from 4co)
Most of these were unseen or had little to no impact of gameplay. I saw only a few defenses ever shoot a sub. Transport HP was also negligible to balance. I don't see any reason to make adjustments to these until they become a factor in games. Still, and feedback is appreciated.
The good:
Naval have steel armour type
Subs can be damaged while underwater, surface upon taking damage
Ships only autotarget subs if they have torpedoes or depthcharges.
Subs cost 750 (down from 950), Turnspeed 24 (up from 16), Speed 85 (up from 78) Cloak delay 20 (down from 50)
Missile Sub tier 2 (down from tier 3), Turnspeed 16 (up from 12), cloak delay 20 (down from 100),
Missile Sub Missile reload delay 250 (down from 300), none damage 80 (up from 40), light damage 48 (up from 30), heavy damage 38 (up from 30), steel damage 48, speed 215 (up from 162)
Gunboat Depthcharge reload delay 100 (up from 60), range 6c0 (up from 5c0), speed 148 (up from 125), inaccuracy 1c0 (up from 0c128)
DDDepthcharge burst 3 (up from 1), reload delay 150 (up from 60)
Destroyer turnspeed 24 (down from 28), reveal shroud min 4co (down from 5c0), reveal shroud 5c0 (down from 6c0), detect cloak, 3c0 (down from 4co)
Stinger damage 2500 Light 34 wood damage 66 (down from 88), light damage 66 (down from 88), heavy damage 100 (down from 120) steel damage 100
StingerAA light damage 1650 (standarized to release)
Gunboat turnspeed 24 (down from 28)2inch damage 3500 (up from 2500), steel damage 105, speed 682 (up from 426)
8 inch none damage 100 (up from 60), light damage 75 (up from 35), heavy damage 35 (up from 25), steel damage 40, speed 215 (up from 204)
transport cost 500 (down from 700) capacity 10 (up from 5)
sub pen/Shipyard cost 600 (down from 800/1000), health 75000 (down from 100000) Power -20
Steel armor is working exactly as intended, though I did notice a bug with infantry doing more damage then they were supposed to. LT damage to steel also needs a slight decrease. Otherwise steel is grand. Subs being able to be targeted underwater works nicely for when it did come up (rarely, as it should). Allies no longer being able to double tap subs with both weapons also is nice. Subs being cheaper, faster, turn faster, and cloak faster worked nice. I am considering making them 500 as well but we'll get into that when we get to torpedoes.
Msubs felt real good. Lethal, out at tier 2 but still vulnerable if not well protected. Their increased damage to units and faster projectile really helped round them out as well. Both Depthcharge and the Dddepthcharge worked fine. Subs could mostly avoid damage if they moved and the Dddepthcharge packed a wallop when all three hit making DD's somewhat effective against subs.
The destroyer nerfs also felt nice. Having them not wreck everything was good. Gunboats supplanted their role as the all a-rounder, but DD's 3 native advantages (AA, longer range, and 3 depth charges) did shine through. I'll talk more on this later too. Likewise gunboat buffs themselves felt good though there are some things I would like to nerf about gunboats. More on that later.
Cruisers saw little action but when they were present they did fine. Transport increased capacity helped somewhat as I saw people utilize bigger groups. Their cost down to 500 was a big boon and help convince people to go naval for oil derricks. I do have 1 nitpick for transports but again later. Lastly the shipyard/sub pen cost/power/health decrease worked well. While you could deny the water simply by killing the structure you really needed to have overwhelming numbers to effectively do it. I saw multiple times a lone sub try and fail to kill a naval yard.
All of this leads to the final change, in which I got the general feeling people didn't like (especially upps
) and that is of course, torpedoes. Torpedoes are in a weird spot. Without homing, they don't feel good to use as any moving target is pretty much a miss. Because subs aren't turreted, they can't move and shoot. And allied players can just dance around subs. At the same time the tracking torpedoes were frustratingly slow. You might fair slightly better in bigger engagements as ships couldn't maneuver enough to avoid them, but subs were also more expensive so you traded even worse. Additionally, while Msub/cruisers can more easily avoid untracked torpedoes, tracking torpedoes almost always hit msubs/cruisers making them tentative to invest into because even at 950$ a sub could get it's value back so long as it actually got to a msub/CA.Despite the non-tracking torps, sometimes subs traded favorably and sometimes they didn't. I had a few games where my subs traded better but those were few engagements. Creo and fetus had the biggest naval battle in one of their matches. Creo lost 18 subs (13500$), 1 msub (2000$), and a transport (500$) for a total for 16000$. Fetus on the other hand lost 15 gunboats (7500$), 9 destroyers (9000$), 2 cruisers (4800), and a transport (500$) for a total of 21800$. However, some of that wasn't killed by subs but rather yaks and or infantry. So the total naval destroyed via naval means was only 9500$. Subs traded much worse. To be fair though, the subs were often completely out valued. Creo would have 3k in subs vs like 6k in allied ships. So of course the total navy vs navy would skew. But the point still stands.
So the way I see it there's a few things we can try. We can lower the cost of subs to 500. This makes them much more cost efficient and may allow them to blob better and deal with allied ship spam. We could revert to tracking again and give them a small speed boost. However, that makes it so msubs/CA are far more likely to die. If possible, we could remove torpedoes doing friendly damage. This is an indirect buff as in large naval battles allies rushing straight into balls of subs can cause the splash to kill multiple other subs. Depth charges do not damage ships so this would even the playing field. Additionally, I'm thinking of lowering both gunboat and LST speed slightly. These things are blazing fast and lowering their speeds might help subs hit a little more often. Lower gunboat speeds also makes destroyers slightly better against gunboats too.
The last feasible change I can thing of is a bit wild but hear me out. What if we gave subs turreted firing? One of the indirect and huge advantages allies have is that they can shoot and move. So even if subs have tracking torpedoes, allies can delay or outright avoid damage. Subs eventually have to stop to shoot which means they are going to get hit.
What this does in game is it means an allied player can dictate when to push and micro in a naval engagement and a soviet player cannot. On any map where navy isn't the bulk of the battles, that means allies have a huge innate advantage. You can't always micro your units unless your Flash on cocaine. An allied player can do simple move commands and kill subs and focus more on their land army, where for a soviet player it'd be like microing at least 2 armies at once. Considering naval micro is more like microing migs around AA it's even worse.
If it were possible I suppose we could make it so depthcharges were not turreted. But unfortunately, I dont think we can do that in yaml. If anyone has any other ideas I'm all for it but I've tried to come up with a great many and non seem as workable as these three.
On a more positive note I wanted to talk a bit about the allied side of the coin. Gunboats might be a little OP, hence the speed nerf at a minimum. I'd also consider lowering their 2 inch rain further to help make destroyers more tenable. However, I do like that each allied ship actually has a good uses. Gunboats are now the bread and butter. You always want to have them. However, their limited range means they can't harass the shore very well. Destroyers, I think with a possible range increase of half a cell to 8, are still needed to really hunt down harvs. Even with their nerfed damage its worth building them to kill harvs. Additionally, you can't just build gunboats because air hard counters them so destroyers are still nice. Lastly, while gunboats are better at dealing with subs due to their speed, mixing in some destroyers to quickly pop a sub can be really nice too. Cruisers, obviously are that late game bombardment but when they get out and especially protected, they can definitely do damage. I think this is a nice change over.
With naval out the way I'd like to briefly also talk about the next set of changes coming up:
harv scan fix (to stop them from jumping off mines)
MCV cost to build time standardized (mcv cost to 1650 same build time)
A nerf to Tesla Tanks. Proposals welcome.
Considering many other changes but not fleshed out yet. Will update at later time.