[2.300] What to do with RCA?

[Leobardis]

Ok. When I play brits this is one of my favorite doctrines. YES. Even 1v1 automatch.

Why?

Officer arty, supercharge and the priest.

But, there are glaring problems with the doctrine that need to be addressed to make it more comparable to other doctrines. RCA does not see a lot of love because it is 'gimicky.' It works at the moment because people expect a quick Churchill or commandos.

Problems:

1) All the abilities (exception: officer barrage of 150 MU, Priest for 625 MP) require something on map to already be built. That's 4 out of the 6 abilities!

2) Overwatch takes control of your precious + expensive arty piece (and is currently bugged)

3) Counter barrage takes control of your precious + expensive arty piece (and micro makes it better)

My suggestion (here for your discussion) is to take counter barrage and overwatch out of the arty piece as a selection (ie. I click my mortar and click overwatch/counter) and place it as a selectable 'passively active ability' similar to: FTFL, Resource/Armor Blitz and IA.

How I propose these changes should work:

Overwatch:

I click the overwatch button to activate it (make it 200 munitions or something like creeping - depending on the duration of course), now I either:

a) select one spot with current LOS

b) select up to three spots with current LOS

Assuming the duration is similar to sector arty, now off-map arty watches the each chosen section and bombards it.* The reason it should be off-map is because you shouldn't be tied down to an expensive arty piece that you have to build.

Caveats: my reasoning behind multiple spots is that if LOS is lost, that 'spot' should be lost until LOS is re-established.

*Note - if multiple spots are allowed, the ability should cycle through each spot selected (without letting the enemy know) and only bombard in the active spot. IE. for 30 seconds spot 1 is watched, then spot 2, then spot 3, then back to 1, etc. until the duration runs out. If an enemy comes into spot 1 when 'overwatch' is looking at spot 2, nothing happens.


Counter-Barrage:

Right now the ability is too slow and barely captures the opposing arty. I think the ability should be similar to Overwatch, in that it costs a certain amount of munitions and is active for a set duration. Considering it is very situational, maybe the cost should be 75-150 munitions (determined by how long it is active for).

a) duration should again be similar to sector arty for PE.

b) once the ability is active, the off map targets any arty piece that is currently shooting as well as anything that shoots during the duration

c) the counter-arty shots should not be directly on top of the arty it is countering. it should shoot a series of shots (once again, depending on th munitions cost) that make a spiral towards the arty. ie. maybe make it look like a '6' so it is harder to get away, instead of the 3-5 shots it does currently in a circle. (or make it random, whatever)

d) 'artilery' pieces that should count are: hummel, stukka, nebel, mortar, mortar HT (even though that is a little ridiculous), and the flak88 (not the stuh, that is more ridiculous than the mortar HT).

CAVEATS: overatch and counter barrage are mutually exclusive (ie. only one at a time).

This makes the arty doctrine even more munitions heavy, without forcing the brit player to make arty pieces but still enjoy some of the benefits.

What do you guys think?

EDIT: Curses! wrong section! Thank you friendly admins!

[Heroin]

well i like the idea to take overwatch fire as an call in ability for 200mun because its pretty nasty for free and it allows you to use it even without an arty emplacement.

[troglodytejb]

Here's my perspective on RCA (as an RCA-heavy player when I random the brits):

1) Counter battery needs to be faster, more accurate, or track the enemy battery. It's pretty meaningless against anything but an American howitzer. I like the idea that you have to give up an active arty piece, but if I'm giving up command on an arty piece I want it to be effective. Perhaps the best option is pinpoint accuracy-- you aren't going for bombardment, you want to take out a SPECIFIC target. If it fired immediately upon facing the correct direction with good accuracy and minimal spread, I'd love it. I could then set up facing in the direction I expect arty and leave it. The opponent could avoid it by firing from an unexpected area and moving quickly.

Overwatch... again, I like the idea of giving up a battery to gain specific functionality. Changing it not require an arty piece would make it identical to PEs SE overwatch... Basically, this needs to have a larger detection radius and commence fire much faster. It should fire until the unit dies or leaves the section, with an increased rate of fire on mortars since they don't have a cooldown anyway. Basically, this needs to be more effective than Attack Ground on a mortar.

I see where you're coming from with the points about requiring arty on map, but honestly, I like the fact that it's a characteristic of the doctrine. You depend on your defenses and arty, as you should. Plus, supercharge is so good it nearly makes up for any drawbacks.

[shiner980]

Overwatch Artillery is NOT sector artillery, so why must you make it so...no actually you're making a sector artillery with 3 points instead of one, and requiring line of sight. I think the reason why Overwatch came without a cost was because of the fact that it locks down one of your artillery emplacement. Now in any case, I prefer that they just fix Overwatch artillery to how it should be, since the ability itself can be very very effective and be a game winner, since it is basically a rapid fire defense artillery that could potentially stop any kind of capture of victory points or where ever you want, and causes all kinds of nasty problems, and can be highly accurate to boot.

Now the counter barrage thing, it can only costs munitions if its half way effective... which is isn't. I don't care if its an off map or on map ability, so long as when people try to bombard my emplacement, I can counter immediately to make trying to bombard my area a bad idea, but make it so it can only counter in the direction the emplacement is facing, since it'd be almost OP if it fired at artillery anywhere, and it's also unfair to have the flak and mortar teams be considered for counter battery, since the mortar has absolutely no chance against counter battery, and the Flak is not artillery at all...

[daroach1414]

Speaking of counter battery...does it work on 88s?

Ive used CB plenty but dont remember ever having an 88 used against me at the same time?

[Ano2]

Having an entire doctrine dedicated to artillery was a HUGE design flaw. That said I support your suggestions, as anything to make it more interesting/competetive is welcome.

[Decker]

I have no problem with RCA. It is extremly good in teamgames and even good on certain 1v1 maps. I also like the way overwatch and counter battery works, although counterbattery is not very usefull atm because every axis arty can escape it. And as I said in another Thread, no ammo costs for overwatch, with Officer Barrage and Creeping Barrage there are already two expensive abilities in this tree, another 200ammo overwatch would kill this tree.

[sporty]

For 1v1 games, the reliance on 25 pdrs is a big hindrance. Currently Overwatch is a saving grace, allowing you to fire deadly and precise AI shells with comparably little cooldown restrictions. We might see this addressed today though.

Counter Battery is largely okay. British players usually compain about Nebels firing from the safety of a Wehrmacht base, CB punishes this. It allows an artillery piece to fire more often, relieves you of some micromanagement and forces additional micro on your enemy... quite decent actually, a bit poor for an end-tree ability though.

The only problem I see is LHS of the tree. It's definitely the more offensive side, but in this case you'll get little out of Creeping Barrage once you unlock it. Maybe the Priest could be increased by 1 CP, Creeping decreased by 1 CP, and places switched?

[Schwarzwald]

RCA is not underpowered in 1v1, sorry i have to disagree. In fact creeping barrage is quite powerful along with overwatch if you fire it correctly your enemies infantry will be eliminated with no hassle...too much artillery is in CoH now and i agree with ano on why in world was a doctrine dedicated to artillery needed?.

[troglodytejb]

I agree that there's too much arty-- offmap arty. I love the idea of on-map arty and a doctrine dedicated to it, because you sacrifice powerful abilities and units to get it, and it's counterable. I think offmap arty spam is out of control, and I'm not sure how to fix it.

[Leobardis]

Cheers for the criticism, I look forward to hearing more thoughts on the doctrine.

In response, I’ll give you some background on where I am coming from with these suggestions...

1) My experience is from playing RCA in 1v1 Automatch. This means: Standard Resources, small maps, 1v1 and VPs. My rank is about 8 or so.

2) You are typically hard-pressed to get defenses up around one of the VPs/high points, and typically cannot afford to get more than one 25 pounder up at a time. Each 25 pounder is 450MP/75Fu, almost as much as a cromwell!! you sure as hell aren't going to spam these emplacements when you need bofors, at guns, etc.

3) Only having one arty piece but 3-4 abilities on that piece (that are mutually exclusive) is ridiculous!! 4 mutually exclusive abilities on one very expensive emplacement that requires emplacements to protect it is not good design.

This means that if a player wanted to use all three abilities, they need 3-4 arty emplacements. This is essentially rewarding arty spam and punishing the player that wants to focus on arty support but not spam the emplacement itself.

NOTE: spamming any artillery in a team game or in an annihilation game is counterable as long as you don’t let people turtle. Overwatch and counter barrage as they are now make it much more difficult to beat turtle players because they are constantly active. My proposal is to have it active for a set duration and have a recharge, AS WELL AS COST MUNITIONS, which would otherwise be spent on creeping barrage/officer arty.

I really don’t see how this would increase the arty, in fact it would reduce the available munitions to be spent even further and lessen the really devastating arty barrages: officer arty + creeping.

[troglodytejb]

Leo, you're forgetting priests. If you're fuel limited, than priests are useful. Plus they're easier to keep safe than the 25 pounders.

[Leobardis]

@troglodytejb

i'm not. having 4 doctrine abilities confined to two on map units, one being a special call-in at the end of a tree and the other an expensive emplacement, doesn't seem strange to you? especially when:

1) all abilities are mutually exclusive (I can't have more than 1 active at once)

2) all trigger the same cooldown (and nothing decreases the cooldown)

3) all give some kind of on map warning (be it sound, weird graphics, etc.)

4) all essentially show the enemy where my one unit is that has all my abilities?

the RCA doctrine is a all-eggs-in-one-basket approach, and that approach only begins mid-late game. as it stands, the doctrine is very underutilized because of this.

The doctrine needs some kind of flavour.