Xeon Wraith

Ehhh... Probably. Yeah.

Hey Thommy, a few thoughts: - GDI's harvester has pretty incredible amount of cover provided by the tib hill. Nod would have a pretty tough time pushing up around the hill to kill the harvester, especially so considering it'll likely be arties used to control field & siege the base. Perhaps move GDI's harvester route a bit further outwards or increase the cover for Nod's harvester. - GDI's north entrance seems to have little strategic value aside from the harvester and infantry path. Even less so if additional entrances to the infantry path gets added. Sieging refinery would probably require heavy investment to push up far enough and switching to WF would require vehicles to re-orientate themselves up to hill, giving time to defenders. Not sure if its possible to stack up decent vehicle numbers on the hill anyway. Seems like a pretty large opportunity cost considering you could just go on the south path and hit everything. Try widening/decrease the curvature of the north path? iunno, something to consider. - Its possible to swim past GDI's southern GT to avoid damage and access WF/Bar. Slow as hell, but possible. Your call. - GDI's Barracks is kinda floating. I do very much like the open field, should make for some interesting tank fights. is this where light tanks can finally shine?!

@Ryz Do keep in mind a lot of players enjoy playing competitively and trying their hardest to win, which usually means following the Most Effective Tactic Available (META). The primary issue is that what you've suggested on Whiteout is neither advanced nor daring. In the hypothetical case where your MRLs rush goes unspotted and somehow kills both the Ref and HoN, you've still got a mass of arties on the hill, they've still capable of killing every building in GDI's base and you're still stuck with arguably the worst vehicle in the game at holding field. The idea to go into the tunnels on Canyon has a similar problem. You're not dealing with the issue at hand. It simply doesn't matter how hard you think you've tried when you're actually not trying to deal with the primary problems at all. The problem with doing this in a PUG is that you're actively taking players and resources away when they could be spent elsewhere and that really sucks for the competitive guys trying not to lose. If you're playing to try different things, you can always try to get a rush going a public game.

I tried shouting at some people for 2 hours. Here's a writeup. TL;DR We suck at keeping our field repairs alive and theirs dead. @TK01044-2 @Xeon Wraith Canyon: Nod Xeon [Full-base] > GDI Thommy Both teams go for harvester. As Nod requires less money for the initial arty push, priority was on killing GDI's Harvester over saving Nods'. Both harvesters die. My team gathers for a quick free infantry rush through tunnels while GDI kills Nod's second harvester. Rush is spotted and quickly shut down. Shortly after, Arties roll out and kill GDI's second harv with little opposition. GDI donates for Meds to combat Nod's rollout and a little later is supported by Gunner support. GDI manages to regain some field control, though unable to apply sufficient pressure to save their harvester. Flame tanks start being thrown in the mix and GDI are unable to counter. Arties move in and kill the Ref, WF and Bar in rapid succession. Mesa: Nod Thommy [Full-base] > GDI Xeon My team all-ins on harvester side. Nod harvester dies and GDI's stays alive. During the latter half of the harvester's return journey, I organise another free infantry rush to Nod's PP. The intent was to run in during Nod's initial Arty rollout, where most of Nod's team would be idle on the Airstrip and defenders would be scattered mining the base. It gets spotted however and moves early with no success. GDI harvester dumps and Meds rollout to counter the Nod Arty push. High amounts of field repairs keeps the Nod's arties competitive and holds long enough for flamer support. Lacking a adequate means of killing Nod's repairs, GDI resorts to a mixture of EMP/airstrike spam to hold Nod off. Ultimately we lacked the sustain and anti-sustain to keep a significant number of tanks alive to make use of any opportunity granted. Nod shells the crap out of GDI's base and GDI tries to seek refuge in Nod's PP. It didn't work. Gobi: Nod Xeon [Full-base] > GDI Thommy Harvester. Arty. Donated meds. Something happens. Dead GDI. Islands: Nod Thommy [Full-base] > GDI Xeon Dumb inf skirmishes around the place, nothing meaningful happens. GDI donates for Meds, Nod for arties and flamers. Once again, GDI lacked any meaningful way of killing their field repairs. Few GDI players decide to abandon field to go through tunnel but are met with the wall of @yosh56 (i think?). Ref and WF explodes eventually. GDI goes for a last-ditch Mobius rush which was totally not spotted at all shut up but the Barracks explodes before anything happens. Snow: GDI Thommy [Full-base] > Nod Xeon I thought it might be funny to vote for Snow. And it was! Kinda. In a self-deprecating way. Dumb infantry battles around the place initially. Nod goes for the typical Arty rollout and GDI with Meds. Slugfest occurs for a while until @CampinJeff slaughters all of Nod's sustain. Repeatedly. GDI comfortably holds the tunnels with their field repairs and infantry bunker with snipers. Things explode. Crash Site: Nod Thommy [Full-base] > GDI Xeon Due to spawn RNG, almost the entire GDI team goes to tunnels. Nothing significant happens. GDI goes for a early double APC rush, but it gets spotted and blocked by Arties (who the hell decides to take the long route as a slow arty?!). Meds rollout to combat the arties but unsurprisingly, GDI are yet again unable to eliminate their field repairs. Flamer support prevents any form of counter push and GDI remains locked in base. Eventually, the refinery dies from sneaking. Nod cleans up the rest of the tanks and the base shortly after. In retrospec, there a ton of things that I probably should have set clear. Organsing so that our field repairs would have a guy on comms to alert tankers if they're getting flanked. Putting people on dedicated anti-repairs or EMP spam to counter the typical sieges. Setting clear who to donate for early tanks. Paying more attention to individual player skillsets would have helped too. Eh, whatever. I'm willing to try shouting at people again at some point. dibs not next week

I'd thought i'd do a writeup of some sort. Give me a shout if i miss something. @TK0104 3-0 @Schmitzenbergh Gobi: Nod Thommy [Full-base] > Schmit GDI Both teams go for Harvester. Team Schmit overcommited on Nod harvester, leaving their center undefended. Two infantry from Nod walk into their WF from the center and causes a large portion of GDI's force to divert to defend. As a result, GDI Harvester dies and NOD harvester returns unharmed. Once again, two more people sneak into GDI's WF though it is quickly shut down. GDI donates to get a early Mammoth to defend but it overextends and quickly falls to mass Arties. GDI Sadness ensues. Canyon: GDI Thommy [-Airstrip] > Schmit Nod Team Thommy all-ins on GDI's Harvester meanwhile team Schmit all-ins on a tunnel rush to WF. Noticing a lack of opposition, team Thommy redirects to kill Airstrip. Both teams succeed. GDI immediately commits to a rocket/gunner rush through tunnel to Ref but is spotted before arriving. The rush gains a armour break and some permanent damage before dying completely. Nod commits to series of Mendoza rushs both through field and tunnels but with limited success. In the meantime GDI holds the field with a couple APCs, giving them free reign over the Silo and harvesters. Eventually, GDI goes for a APC-Ion rush to Nod's Ref and Nod fails to provide sufficient AT to kill the APCs. Nod Ref dies. Nod tries to go for a cheap rocket rush through tunnels but fails to do so before GDI's second APC-Ion wave hits. The APCs die, but sniper cover keeps the Ions up. GDI wins. I should also mention at some point (not sure when) @DarkSn4ke and @Havoc89 decided they quite liked GDI's Ref and politely asked one of Nod's rush to leave (murdering them horribly). Xmountian: Nod Thommy [Full-base] > Schmit GDI Team Thommy goes for a balanced attack/defense while team Schmit goes for a infantry rush to Hon/AIr. GDI's rush fails, though Nod also fails to take GDI's harvester. GDI goes for the standard Med rollout, Nod with a Arty/Light composition. The Meds rolls over much of the initial Arty force, but are unable to protect their field repairs from the remaining infantry. A lack of adequate field repairs made it impossible to hold field and the second wave of Arty/Lights regains the field. Nod locks GDI in their base with Adv.Engie support and rotates fire across their buildings until Ref falls. The remaining tanks are cleaned up and GDI's base soon follows. Generally a pretty standard game plan for team Thommy, but adapting when needed. Many rushs from team Schmit but a lack of a follow-up.

Kinda off-topic-ish but whatever. Y'know, normally one would think smoke grenades would be a pretty standard way of countering precision gunfire. Not too sure why smoke grenades are so terrible at doing at in Ren X. The only time you see them used is usually in a dumb officer rush of some sort, which is kinda weird in itself (lol shitty smoke > cloaking tech apparently). Buffing them might be nice for alleviating some of the stress against snipers. Having dedicated 2-3 officers being able to provide a constant smoke cloud over a area for the rest of the team encourages teamplay and doesn't provide a direct counter to make snipers useless. Can't comment on infantry balance, but I think 2-3 offices for constant smoke cover on tanks is pretty fair. Considering the opportunity cost of it is 2-3 advanced repairs, which by itself is enough to sustain a tankline, it seems to be a reasonable tradeoff. The whole base defense jamming thing would probably have to go though.

Can't really be helped if people don't question the standards. A similar thing also occurs with getting out of tanks due to the risk of having it stolen, despite there being many ways to minimize the risk and many benefits to reap.

Heck, you don't actually need to have meds actually shoot the arties - so long as the arties are shooting your tanks and not killing your buildings. It is considerably harder to repair 4 different buildings than it is to repair a few short-side tanks after all. Of course, shooting someone is pretty good way of getting their attention. Also unless if Nod seriously overextends during the first push, they'll usually become self-sustaining on building damage and tank kills alone. Killing Nod harvester might help GDI's VP gain but is unlikely to affect Nod very much.

Somewhat varies on the numbers but generally against. Having a tank to keep other tanks alive seems like a GDI Tanker's wet dream, but its completely dependent on the numbers with it. Too high repairs and it makes the GDI Med deathball even more powerful than it already is. Too low and it becomes a light tank waste of a vehicle slot. Additionally Nod tanks and GDI tanks inherently play differently so it wouldn't be possible to have identical stats on both teams. All of this just seems like a balancing nightmare for something that doesn't actually fix much. Rather than snipers being overpowered, it seems like more of a case that field repairs are too strong. Snipers feeling overpowered is just a byproduct of it. Don't actually know how it is for other inf battles though.

TL;DR: Salt? Seems like the only reason this topic got brought back up is due to @ghjke attempts to justify his cognitive dissonance. I don't see anything of value that has been added to this topic. Laugh and move on? Edit: One could sort of argue this is pretty good example of the lack of counterplay the average player has against good snipers and the frustration from it. But that's whole other can of worms that I don't know enough to talk about.

Use a arty. Very little reason to get out of cover when your range is pretty much the entire field. Grab a stank if you're not confident with handling GDI's burst damage.

I don't think I've ever actually used a light tank in a PUG yet. There just isn't a reason to. Arties can also utilize cover and hold open areas of field. They're also cheaper and they kill shit. APCs and Buggies are also pretty fast. They're also cheaper and they kill infantry. Stanks can also utilize hills for cover and can provide sudden rushes. They also have stealth and they kill shit. Flamers can also tank a ton of hits for a team. They're also perceived as a MUCH higher priority target than Lights and they kill shit. Light tanks, can't kill shit. If they can't out DPS a Hotwire's repairs it really doesn't matter how good you are as a player. You simply can't win against someone with a infinite effective HP. You might be able to win if you kill the repairs, but given the terrible DPS of light tanks and flak armour of hotties, there's a fair chance you'll end up dying before that. I don't mind.

Keep in mind having balanced teams and organised teams aren't mutually exclusive. The former is just about knowing the strengths of each player during picks and the latter simply requires the commander to set dedicated roles in the pregame. It might be better to have a second-in-command to help pick teams if a commander isn't confident about it. Not my field, but the better field repairs are the players who will actively communicate with their tankers about enemies in their blind spots and are mindful over common sniper positions. I imagine some players might position themselves so enemy tanks can't see/aim at them as well. Knowing how to properly B-hop helps. Also on a side note, if you have a question like: "How many meds do we have?", "Do have have field?" or "Whats the going on in the ref?" - use your map. Its faster, often more detailed and doesn't clog up the teamspeak channel with unnecessary chatter. Ask away if you need further info. Also please stop using teamspeak for suggestions. There's literally nothing gained from using teamspeak over teamchat. If a suggestion takes too long to type out or requires some sort of fast response then the suggestion itself probably needs to be rethought. Intel and orders should take priority.

Tank speed is vastly overrated in large games. Dodging enemy tank fire just means the guys behind you take the hits instead - the field repairs. If you're trying to achieve field control its usually much easier to achieve a higher "effective hp" by just keeping your repairs alive than it is to do any fancy dodging. The useless additional speed, low profile and low damage of light tanks makes it a terrible choice for holding field when you can easily achieve way more in cover with a artillery or stank if in open field. I'd like to see light tanks get remodeled into a bit more of a hit & run unit. Like adding a long reload autocannon as a secondary fire or something. Having a some form of burst damage to (briefly) overwhelm enemy field repairs would help counter GDI tank sieges.

Eh, I beg to differ. They're tricky to pull off, but you can definitely headshot infantry on purpose with careful aiming. A lot the time it comes from players not moving, moving in one direction or peek-shooting in the exact same spot. In all cases its pretty easy to tell where your head will be so the rest is just timing. You'll can get randomly headshot sure, but this is pretty normal considering you can also get "lucky" headshots from playing infantry as well. The difference in rarity is simply since tanks tend to rely on splash most of the time, making it appear unfairly random.

Mammoth tanks can apply already incredible amount of pressure on arty-techs, considering a cannon volley deals around 50% of their hp instantly. Carefully poking at a mammoth's repairs while preserving your own is pretty much the only reliably cost/player efficient method of killing one. Nod tanks simply aren't competitive against them in a direct fight. That said, anti-infantry for tanks on the whole is pretty terrible. I wouldn't be against seeing a increase anti-inf/rep somewhere - just not on the massive burst damage tank. Rather than increasing the splash on mammoths tanks, why not increase it on MRLS? MRLS generally don't do anything in the late game that Meds can't do except on extremely open maps and base siege. Nod would still be able to competitively counter with lights/stanks with sufficient coordination. A little side idea that might be fun is to give a extra laser-guided fire mode to MRLS/Mammoths so players can manually curve missiles around tanks and cover. But that sounds like work and that is probably unfun. iunno.

In that sort of scenario where one team has complete field and tunnel dominance over the opposing team, then is it is expected that the dominating team wins. My suggestion is aimed at the case where both teams are crippled to a extent where neither team can make a game ending push, but can still go to field. For the specific example of Field, AT Infantry (Gunners, PICs, Ramjets for arties) are still extremely strong at pressuring Tanks and the APC/Humvees are still available for infantry suppression. I'd also advise against keeping full Refinery tick rate, as it enables the rather bizarre case where is it more beneficial for the opposing team to leave the enemy refinery alive to kill the harvester for veterancy.

I'm generally against increasing building functionality when destroyed with maybe the exception of allowing Chinooks to be purchasable and increasing refinery tick rate. Vehicles and infantry between the two factions function differently enough that selectively enabling units will lead to a heavier disadvantage to one side. For example, its pretty well known that a tank front solely composed of medium tanks is more than enough to hold field. A force of only light tanks on the other-hand won't be able to adequately break through such a force. The addition of artillery would enable a even fight, but then Nod would have a massive advantage for base siege. Giving GDI the MRLs back evens it again in that respect, but now you're in a situation where the loss of WF/Air changes very little in the field. It seems to me that any method of reliably acquiring additional vehicles or infantry would result in longer stalemates, unless you can change player mentality to stop camping. Players just don't have a big enough incentive to go to field on a individual basis when they're already handicapped against their counterparts. The one change that I'd like to see tested for a while is a significant increase in the random character and vehicle (ideally faction-specific) crates. They're unreliable enough to make the loss of a building hurt, but they can still provide opportunities for losing teams to do things. Most importantly they're on the field, which will force players to go out to get them. Winning teams shouldn't be affected much, as they can just directly buy want they want. This does make Nod a tad stronger as they can do more solo stuff though.

A bit before my time (I think?) but wasn't there a period where 2 timed and 2 remotes were just enough to kill a building - so that defenders could briefly repair a building to prevent destruction? Reverting back to those damage numbers seems like a fair way of nerfing sneaking effectiveness. A team that notices mines dropping and reacts in time should be punished less than one that fails to notice entirely. Losing the majority of a building's hp already applies a heavy amount of pressure on defenders and any medium sized rush should be able to finish the job. Veterancy should be able to scale the damage back to normal values at later ranks, though will require sneakers to actively contribute to the team beforehand. Removing the heavy pistol would also increase the effectiveness of other infantry at anti-repairs, which is currently dominated by snipers. On a side note, I don't really know why Technicians/Hotwires can carry a heavy pistol with 7 pieces of C4 and a repair gun. Just sayin'.

!noob freak Also hi forums.