Slitherine

boredatwork wrote:

deducter wrote:Just fyi you can make artillery less overpowered with a bit of modding. I've tested this for some GC43 and even if you lower ROF by 2 for all artillery, it's a pretty noticeable nerf.

ty.

I've been following your mod threads with interest as I tend to play with a closer to historical core. I will at some point likely give your rebalancing mod a go. Though I haven't done much with PzC, my main issue with mod solutions is, often they tend to be 2 wrongs attempting to make a right - that is deliberately fudging values to attempt to compensate for flaws in the underlying mechanics. The perfectionist in me would preffer the underlying mechanics were made more perfect to eliminate the need for mods other than those which add content.

Oh I agree, if it were possible to mod the underlying mechanics I would also try to do that, but since that is impossible, this is currently the best solution. I am always pro having more modding options.

brettz123 wrote:That is why if you read my posts I asked that it be added as an option. I understand not everyone wants the same thing. But if your answer is simply we may have differences of opinion nothing will get done.

I always read posts before responding to them.

My point was, as Alex had said a few months ago, that if he provided every option asked for the PzC option window would be 10 screens long. Given it's unreasonable to expect the developer to cater to each and every whim I was simply suggesting that rather than simplistically assuming the PzC player base is divided neatly into those who want an improved feature and those that don't - if a feature would improve the quality of the game it might be worth the developers time to look at it from a broader perspective as there might be a way to incorporate it so that **everyone** would benefit from it without having to make it "optional".

Back to artillery - rather than assuming only the ones playing high difficulty levels want improved artillery routines and spend developer effort writing and testing multiple versions of AI code, I would think it would make more sense to make the AI artillery to behave more intelligently for ALL levels of difficulty and simultaneously scale down the effectiveness of artillery at lower levels by applying a % based modifier to ROF or some other statistic.

That makes the game more realistic for everyone, keeps the spread between the levels of difficulty, but doesn't unecessarily complicate the the coding and future updates by adding redundant routines.

boredatwork wrote: The perfectionist in me would preffer the underlying mechanics were made more perfect to eliminate the need for mods other than those which add content.

This we agree on!

I'd have thought having artillery fire first seems pretty obvious to me (even if suppression is a bit overpowered) and think having an A.I. that plays more like a person would be a great improvement for the game but then, i don't consider what some 3rd party might or might not wan't. I don't need some other forum member telling me that coding concerns or the silent majorities wishes need to be considered before making a suggestion. The developers do that already.

State your own opinions on the forum, that's what its there for.

The trouble with changing the artillery is that it actually changes the dynamics of the game and by definition the difficulty levels. In a perfect world the AI would use its artillery more intelligently, i.e. for intelligent suppression like human players do. One solution to this being that the overall effectiveness of artillery would be reduced for both player and AI (as suggested by several posters above).

The problem I see is that whichever solution is offered the human player gets weaker and changing the artillery in this way is a fairly fundamental change to the difficulty levels. Therefore all the previous beta playtesting goes out the window. It becomes a new game and the playtesting would have to start from scratch to check balance of play across all levels. This is not a minor change, it would fundamentally alter the balance on all scenarios.

Bonners wrote:It becomes a new game and the playtesting would have to start from scratch to check balance of play across all levels. This is not a minor change, it would fundamentally alter the balance on all scenarios.

It won't happen for a while in any case. By then most players will probably have done the eastern front DLCs to death and may be looking for something new. PzC 2.0 with an improved AI doesn't sound that bad to me - and with new DLCs, expansions and options, perhaps set in Africa and western Europe. Sounds good to me!

El_Condoro wrote:

Bonners wrote:It becomes a new game and the playtesting would have to start from scratch to check balance of play across all levels. This is not a minor change, it would fundamentally alter the balance on all scenarios.

It won't happen for a while in any case. By then most players will probably have done the eastern front DLCs to death and may be looking for something new. PzC 2.0 with an improved AI doesn't sound that bad to me - and with new DLCs, expansions and options, perhaps set in Africa and western Europe. Sounds good to me!

I would agree with that, it would be far better to plan improved AI into new scenarios in an improved game engine that could be play tested from scratch to get the balancing right so that all players (including the average/rubbish ones like me) could benefit from improved AI.

Have to admit I'm a little bit biased in these discussions as I love the game as it is, despite only playing on the lower difficulty levels. I'm now running through the scenarios at the equivalent of just above the second easiest level. I've got a '39 core that I've imported from playing at the easiest level and am now running through on the third easiest level (currently on Leningrad in '41). It gives me a nice balance of slightly harder fighting, but having a better core and more prestige.

That's what the difficulty levels are for: to allow all of us to scale up to the extent and at the pace we want to. Most of us on the forum, it seems to me, love the game, too, and only criticise it to make it better (in our humble opinions, of course). If the game wasn't good I wouldn't spend so much time playing it and even more time designing campaigns and scenarios for it.

Please fix the artillery AI the DLCs get boring too fast!

I finished all Vanilla and DLCs scenarios on field marshal every single battle (with many retries) with a DV. My core reserve was reduced from my former 82 units (yes I try to play a historical core with also some low tech units) to ~40 units during DLC 43 until Kursk armories and my prestige is not sufficient to maintain or upgrade to more than 2 Tigers, 1 Panther and 1 Focke Wolf fighter. (Rest is mostly panzer 3 and 4 and some Messerschmidt fighters + support arty and stuff).
With this listing you can see that I am struggling to achieve DVs, BUT STILL I hate the stupidness of the AI and the enemy spamming units as the only solution the keep the difficulty level high. This behaviour is so damn repetitive and gets boring.

I dont want to fight against 300 stupid enemy units per map with my 40 units in every scenario. I´d rather like to fight against 100 smarter enemy units than 300 stupid ones.