[1.2 Balance] Suggestions for balancing the BAR

[blah238]

In order to provide some kind of counter for the BAR's Supression Fire ability, and the fact that its a universal instead of per-squad upgrade, consider these changes:

1) Axis infantry veterancy provides some supression fire resistance.
For example Level 1 Axis infantry veterancy grants 15% supression resistance, Level 2 35% and Level 3 55%. These are modified by the unit's built-in supression resistance so KCH would have 100% supression fire resistance at level 3 veterancy, while Volks would have only 55% at level 3.
2) For the Fatherland (Defensive Doctrine), Assault Grenadiers and Blitzkrieg Assault (Blitzkrieg Doctrine), and Inspired Assault (Terror Doctrine) abilties override supression fire while active. These are all little-used (and quite expensive compared to Supression fire) abilities that may now see action if they provide some real benefit in infantry vs infantry combat.

Note that changes 1 and 2 protect only from being supressed and pinned, not from the extra damage output supression fire gives (see next change).

3) During Supression fire, the squad's damage output is signficantly increased. However, after using Supression fire, the 2 riflemen with BARs have to reload for about ~5-10 seconds, during which the squad's damage output is significantly reduced. After all the BAR only has a 20 round magazine, it can't unload all its ammo in full auto and then continue shooting. The net effect is that you're doing a lot more damage in a shorter timeframe, which can be devastating, and during the reload period you can issue other orders like a tactical retreat to better cover or a full on retreat to base. Or you can stand there and take 5-10 seconds of reduced damage output while the BARs reload.
4) Instead of researching the BAR at the Barracks and making it a universal upgrade for all rifleman squads (which encourages riflespam instead of combined arms), make it a per-squad upgrade that costs 125 munitions (to outfit the squad with 2 BARs, like the recoilless rifle), but requires a Supply Depot. This makes it more on-par with Axis upgrades and also encourages combined arms strategies instead of massing a single unit. This also means it will cost slightly less fuel but significantly more munitions.

[Bentguru]

To be honest, all of those suggestions are too big of nerfs. Especially considering suppression fire lowers the damage the squad does, not raise it.

The simple solutions are:

1) Make it so the ability supresses but not pins.

2) Make it so the ability still pins, but is a targetable ability (IE, you can only do it to one squad).

[blah238]

It does raise the damage output DURING supression fire, its just that afterwards there needs to be a brief reload period (5 seconds really isn't very long, just enough to give the Axis player time to issue an order, whether it be retreating the pinned squad, or moving another squad up to help out). And all the guys with rifles would of course still be firing.

Don't you agree though that for a mere 200 MP and 60 fuel you can outfit ALL your infantry (assuming riflespam, which everyone does) with such a powerful weapon? The most important change, if you throw the rest out, is to make it a per-squad upgrade. It's far too cheap for its effectiveness, even disregarding the fact that going armor company means you can spend all your fuel on riflemen upgrades and still get main battle tanks in the form of Calliopes essentially for free.

[PrinceMyshkin]

@Bent: A BAR gun is supposed to pin down troops -this beast had an effective range of over half km...

What I don't get is why Americans get a BAR upgrade (2xBAR/squad!) to every single squad for no real cost (200MP,60FUEL)! Moreover if they are hurted or damaged they get back their BARs back for free!

On the contrary Axis has to spend 50MU/Volks, 2x75MU/Gren to get some decent weapons there... Let alone the fact if a squad gets hurted axis player has to re-arm it!

If you do the maths you find out, that any axis player who wants to have a decent infantry has to cost 400MU+ only for constantly re-arming the troops with weapons...

I suggest to disable BAR upgrade as a universal buff and have BAR upgrade costsing 2x75MU/squad. This would be more realistic and also will result in players having rarely more than 2,3 BAR guns in the early game.

The same should apply for panzershreks.

In this scenario it would make sense to give a 30-40% MU reduction to all weapon upgardes.

Thank you,
N00bMysh

PS: Solution no.2 sounds good for me.

[Bentguru]

The issue with making BAR's a per-squad deal is that you're making the sides to alike.

In general Axis pay munitions on a per-squad basis, Allied pay manpower and fuel for a global upgrade. Airborne and Rangers are the obvious exceptions to this, probably because they're command tree specific units and don't have a building they're built from and could subsquently research the global upgrade from. Both allies and axis have advantages under this structure and it forces different playstyles. Thats a GOOD thing.

I'd like to keep the sides different. Balanced yes, but I don't want them becoming clones of one another.

@Blah: Can you back up the statement that BAR's do more damage durring suppressing fire with evidence? Because in every combat situations and lab that I've run on them (and i've got quite a few of both) it seemed to be that suppressing fire brought the total damage output of the squad much much lower than it was active. I mean I could be wrong, and will gladly admit that if you have a replay or stats figures that clearly show it, it's just that it runs contrary to everything I've previously seen.

[blah238]

No I don't know if they do currently or not, I'm saying what they SHOULD do, both realistically and from a good gameplay standpoint, is damage output should be increased during supression fire, but decreased for a short reload period. I'll clarify that in my original post.

[Bentguru]

Well it was my understanding that supressive fire usually involved everybody firing as much as they could as fast as they could to make the other guys duck and hide.

Such coniditions are not very conductive to accuracy...

Suppression fire doesn't need to be buffed either ffs. It needs to be toned down from the I-Win-Button it currently is.

[PrinceMyshkin]

All right, but consider this. An ally spams 6 uber-teched riflemen.

The guy uses his advantage in the ealry game to gain map control. Then sits there and trades back some of the map till Calliopes come to aid. gg.

In simple maths 6 riflemen=12 BAR guns (lol?!). Can you counter them with infantry? For example 6 grenadiers with 12 light MG-42s, would cost 12x75=900MU (lol?!).

Another suggestion would be to cut off Axis upgades by 50%. So you can get 12 MG-42s for 450MU...

This of course is just an example, and won't be the real case. But I would like to see grenadiers becoming MUCH more sexy.

[blah238]

It's a minor buff, just something to offset the fact that Axis would now have a counter to the pinning effect. And overall you would see a lot fewer rifle squads with BARs because it would actually cost munitions to upgrade them.

[TarlSS]

You could give KC or Stormtroopers some kind of 'Fire it Up!" ability to counter. I think that'd work fine. They could even use it to fight MGs.

Riflemen are supposed to counter Volks. You're investing 200/60 into that for sakes, that's alot of fuel. You need a 100/40 upgrade to get grenades! So we're looking at 300/100 so these riflemen can beat Volks, and occasionally, MGs. Fighting MGs and high infanry all costs a buttload of ammo.
If we're looking at real riflespam with 6 riflemen, that's 320/16 a pop.

[Bentguru]

The disadvantage to going with BAR's is that you severly slow down your teching. If you don't get map control very quickly you run the risk of being hit with armor that you will not be able to deal with.

Prince your situation is flawed in that it's not BAR's that are the problem there, it's calliopes. BAR's will be much more balanced once allied players cannot get shermans without teching or spending fuel. 60 fuel will really slow down a teching ally, currently they have a workaround in calliopes, soon they wont.

Also, I'm going to immediately dislike any suggestion that forces me to pay MORE munitions than suppressing fire to counter it, or that forces me to pick a certain doctrine. KHC should even enter the picture, why you would bring them up I don't know...

[blah238]

And how is that more expensive than 6 Volks (280MP/50MU a pop). Or 6 Grenadiers with LMG42s (367MP+150MU+18 Fuel) a pop.

+ veterancy upgrades to make them resistant to Supressive Fire (between 100MP/30Fuel and 700MP/150Fuel), assuming such changes as I've suggested.

[PrinceMyshkin]

MP is never the real problem. You wont get 6 squads with one click... but usually one after the other.

So the real cost is 60+40 fuel. And that's a fixed price you don't have to spend anything else in the mid-game.

On the other side think of the cost in terms of MU, an axis player has to spend 300-400-500-600? Depends on your playstyle and the length of the game. But maybe this is the reason no sensible player spends much on axis infantry.

That's why all of them puma/stug spam.

[Bentguru]

there's an easy solution to not spend alot of munitions upgrading.

Don't let the squads die!

[blah238]

Face it, your Axis squads are GOING to die, what with Shermans one-shotting 2-3 guys at a time. Hell I've had a Sherman take out a full Grenadier/Panzershrek squad in 1 shot. And if you start getting BAR-spammed and 40-Mu-force-retreated all the time it's game over. You've lost map control and its just a matter of time before you get barraged into oblivion.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Very true. But you know sometimes they lose weapons only by taking casualties!

You can minimize almost to 0 squad losses, but you can't minimize casualties!

[Victrix Legio]

Suppressing Fire does reduce accuracy to 30% of normal, but it also doubles the firing rate of the squad's weaponry in addition to multiplying their suppression output by a factor of 10 (all of this is straight from the files). Right now I'm in favor of changing Suppressing Fire into a targetable ability; one squad of Riflemen being able to simultaneously pin three squads at once for 40 munitions is absolutely insane from both a balance and reality standpoint.

[PrinceMyshkin]

BTW yes, I have noticed that the AI is sometimes horrible and packs a 5 member squad behind 10pixels -literally one on top of the other.

In these situations you can have a single sherman shot taking out a squad completely.

Typical example try to unload a unit from a halftruck. All of them will be stucked one on top of the other. :)

The answer here is better AI. But i think it's good that we point out these things, so Relic guys can fix them. :)

[Bonnet]

Bent: I like your second option, making it so that they only effectively supress one squad at a time is a great idea. However, the first option is flawed because those supremely expensive rifleman would now get owned by (admittedly expensive) Grenadiers with LMG's and any volks squad that can crawl forward.

Secondly: While you are quite entitled to dislike the requirement that an Axis player spend more to counter the BAR's than they are worth, but right now the game has an asymmetric balance. Eg: The Allies must be stronger early on to counter late game Axis dominance. So no, the Allies can not be on equivalent ground early game and honestly expect to win.

My suggestion to tone it down would be to simply make it so that the Allies player can't BAR + Nade at the same time. This would effectively eliminate the super-squad effect, forcing the allied player to have at least two Rifleman available for an engagement against numerically superior enemies to be practical.

Prince: Occasionally the allies loose there bars by only taking casualties to. Also why are we discussing Sherman Tankss, if he has thoughts chances are you aren't long away from Flaks (or already have them) and are no longer concerned with infantry. Simply put, pointing out the massive damage Sherman Tankss do is not relevant.

[Vicious_CB]

Also I'd like to see BARs drop more often. Too many times I have wiped out a BAR squad with my volks and left behind not even 1 BAR.

Grens/storms on the other hand,90% of the time will drop atleast 1 pickupable weapon when their squad is wiped. Sometimes the squad doesnt even need to be wiped out and drops a weapon when the 2nd or 3rd man is killed

[Timeless]

If a good player executes his early game advantage (ie, early Allies need to be stronger early) well enough, there is very little power to the Axis late game. That sort of balance is asinine in competitive play, but works fantastically well in a game with average players just out to have a grand ol' time.

[Virigoth]

@zobet2012


The Allies must be stronger early on to counter late game Axis dominance

What late axis dominance? If you meant T4 armor, I've had upgraded smoke sherman with occasional AT gun support take on a panther and two stugs and make it to base almost dead with all 3 germans dead.

I keep hearing occasionaly about this late axis power, but from my experience in playing allies that's not really true.

[Demon_Eyes]

Suppressing fire as it is now is pretty much a forced retreat when used and offers very little in damage in that scenario, however the ability to quickly switch targets appears to be a problem.

I would suggest a 3rd option of making riflmen suppressing fire a targeted area ability, like propoganda or an offmap artillery ability it would affect a static area over it's duration, this should prevent the BAR from being able to suppress indiscrimently regardless of location but would not lack horribly by only being able to suppress one sqaud. Additionally the suppressing fire cost and multiplier rate could be scaled down if needed.

[DrunkenOne]

Secondly: While you are quite entitled to dislike the requirement that an Axis player spend more to counter the BAR's than they are worth, but right now the game has an asymmetric balance. Eg: The Allies must be stronger early on to counter late game Axis dominance. So no, the Allies can not be on equivalent ground early game and honestly expect to win.


I actually completely disagree and would say its actually the opposite. If Allies can survive early game they win. Axis need a strong early game to cut off all fuel and not let the axis rush quad 50s or ACs, and eventually need enough stugs out to confront the inevitable calliope.

[[CW]Sabotage]

axis should just make pumas if allies go bars, theres an existing counter that totally owns them.

[TarlSS]

Also, I'm going to immediately dislike any suggestion that forces me to pay MORE munitions than suppressing fire to counter it, or that forces me to pick a certain doctrine. KHC should even enter the picture, why you would bring them up I don't know...

You might dislike it, but it's a solution. Sure, it's going to cost you some ammo, but then so is Suppression Fire. If is costs slightly less, say 30/20 ammo, then you're still coming out on top.
It breaks the monopoly and turns Suppression Fire into a strategic decision with a keyed counter that also has additional uses. Making Suppression Fire blanket useless after some kind of onetime upgrade is just going to send it into the recycling bin.

[Sirex]

The Bar should be made more like the LMG upgrades. I mean is it in essence the same wweapon. A squad based light machingun. They should function the same, son't you agree?

But if the ability has to be in, it should only be able to supress one squad and not pinn instantsly.

[Demon_Eyes]

Not exactly on topic but the BAR is an automatic rifle, it was not classified as an LMG in the configuration shown. It doesn't have the rate of fire, bipod or belt/large box magazine to classify it as a LMG. Either way it appears to be balanced will in relation to riflemen, the main issue here seems to be the ability of a single riflemen squad to suppress multiple squads indiscrimenently from a single SF usage, it doesn't appear to be an issue with the BAR itself.

[GunMetal]

i dunno if someone has already mentioned it... and I DONT CARE IF ITS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!!!1one!1eleven! :P but how about just simply giving bars a set up time? same as a MG (only maybe half the time) hear me out :P but all of a sudden if a pro/con thing for getting the global upgrade all your riflemen squads have awesome firepower (pro) but a nade in there and they will get blown to sh!t before you can move/retreat them

Grenadiers all of a sudden become usefull and not everyone will instantly be saving fuel for their BAR upgrade...

[evotech]

everyone seems to think that BARs is massively overpowered, yet, axis seem to beat me more then i beat them.

I think its a matter of skill, not the units

[Fitz]

off topic postage and childish bickering removed.

[Vicious_CB]

Here are some alternatives to changing the BAR without changing its instapin ability

1. Once activated the riflesquad will be COMMITTED to firing at a specified unit until the ability runs out or they hit retreat or they target something else which will NOT instapin the other squad . Making suppression like a targetable ability ie click on suppressive fire then click on the unit you want to suppress/pin and it will suppress said unit and only that unit. If they target another unit while the ability is still active the BAR will have NORMAL suppression values

Basically its a targeted ability like a faust or a gernade

or

2. Still allow suppression to target multiple squads BUT have pin/suppress last only 1-2 secs after the rifle squad stops targeting them. Axis inf should realize "hey they stopped shooting at us,we can get up and move now"

[Rapier7]

Just give 2 additional BARs to the riflemen squad and remove suppressing fire.

[Plan6]

Without some sort of supressive fire, the MP40 will destroy riflemen. Also it would force Allies to go WSC to get any form of supression. Without supression, AT guns are basicly useless They are the ONLY non-company infantry for Allies and need to be well rounded.

[blah238]

^ stuck on his skill crutch.

Sorry but Riflemen with BARs are better than MP40 volks even without Supression fire. You just have to play a little smarter, firing from cover, using recon to set up killzones, and removing when they overwhelm you, which is currently impossible because of 1 BAR squad's ability to instapin 3+ Axis squads.

[Demon_Eyes]

The way BAR riflemen beat volksgrenadiers with MP40 (without suppressing fire) is if the volks do not close distance.

[Plan6]

Sigh, MP40s beat BARS at close range. Ive come out with 2-3 volks in a one on one fight with full health. Without BARs, MP40 rip throught the squad in under 15 seconds. So basicly without the BAR, rifles die.

Now with the BAR, they end the infantry war. Supression is pretty super, but a NEEDED part for Allies. I say it needs to be tweaked a bit to make the game more fun.

Also, I know it is POSSIBLE for one riflesquad to pin 3 sqauds, but I have never seen them pin more than 2 in any high level game. Most players(inculding myself) cant get 3 pins with the BAR.

Finaly, dont step on my skull, Im using it.

[PrinceMyshkin]

If people think BAR/Riflemen are OP in the game, all we have to do is to decrease the number of BARs per squad (3 I think now).

I would suggest to decrease the number to 1BAR per squad, and give them back the option for the Thomson sub-machine gun. This will solve the multiple pinned-down issue, and make MP40s/Volks less OP.

Thank you

[Demon_Eyes]

The spitfire did not use the BAR in any way, it used 7.696 mm machine guns (.303 british) machine gun and belt fed ammunitions. The BAR was a 7.62mm (.30-06 round), the same round used in the springfield and garand rifles (supposedly not all springfield and garand used 30-06 though). The bar is in a rifle configuration in its depiction and uses the lower ROF, it was never functionally used as a LMG, the 20 round box magazine was insufficient for such application, it was used as a suppression and support rifle, more similar to a modern day assault rifle but with a far heavier round and smaller magazine.

[PrinceMyshkin]

You are right I doubled checked it on the internet just now. I never realized that the 7.7mm browning gun was actually different than then 7.6mm one. Post edited.

[Demon_Eyes]

Usually best to specify the round, 7mm and even 7.62mm can be refering to many different rounds, examples: 7.62x39mm, 7.62x51mm, 7.62x54mm and 7.62x63mm. Sorry, got a little offtopic.

[evotech]

I agree that making supression fire a targetable ability is a good fix, and decreasing its cost to 30? ;) wish thinking

[Demon_Eyes]

Targettable by squad or an area target?