The OKW raketenwerfer...

[A Table]

...needs to be more reliable and less cheesy. Right now it's a mixed, but awful bag with the following problems:

1; The ability to move while cloaked makes this a very cheesy unit that can capture points whilst remaining invisible unless you send some infantry to find it. I don't think the Raketen was given cloak with this in mind, but rather as an ambush tool to deal with overextended allied tanks(something it is good at). Removing the ability to move while cloaked would go a long way of eliminating its ability to provide reconnaissance, something that should be left to the 251 ''Uhu'' searchlight.

2; Speaking of ambushing, the Raketen suffers from the fact it has a lesser firing range compared to all other AT guns like the M1 57mm or the Pak40. Additionally, the models of the raketen are more prone to being killed en masse by artillery due to the crew's nature of clumping together frequently when in cover. Supposedly this is to compensate for the ability to cloak, retreat, being available at T0 and entering buildings but this really hurts the raketen's overall reliability against vehicles.



That is all, really. I just want to see how others here think about it.

[XvX]

It already got a stealth nerf if I remember correctly, and they removed the range increase by vet, in what I assume is an effort to increase strategic diversity, as it just turned them into normal ATguns, but now thanks to that, the creep cheese is literally all it has left and only reinforced the twin-rak->camo->creep->fire->retreat mentality. It's all very confusing.

The Rak is crippling for OKW, and I still don't get why they don't just give them the smaller Pak38. Or hell, even the Pak40, instead of a bizarre unit that's annoying to use, annoying to go up against, and gets killed by the very thing it's supposed to counter.

[ShodaN]

It NEEDS to do this kind of recon. You cannot just leave recon to the 251... This thing is in no way fit to do regular spotting duty simply because of the way it works (no true recon). The only other standard option OKW has is the Kübel with 50 sight. Some unit that wont make it through most of the match.

Both Kübel and 251 agruably don't have any other lasting use than recon. Compare that to other factions that get recon abilities and scaling on units that don't just block popcap specifically for that task.

It's also not like the Rak has a special sight range to accomplish recon. It's still the basic 35, which means in order to get any info, it needs to extend forward a lot. A high risk as it's a vital unit and fragile and also not something you'd like to see in enemy hands.

To make up for its lack in range, it should get more survivability and possibly even a acc buff to the first shot taken out of camo. Because that's the only way I'd see to keep the ambush design, make it more reliable and not just turn it into another regular AT gun.

[Nequis]

Originally posted by SimplyDelicious:

The Rak is crippling for OKW, and I still don't get why they don't just give them the smaller Pak38. Or hell, even the Pak40, instead of a bizarre unit that's annoying to use, annoying to go up against, and gets killed by the very thing it's supposed to counter.

OP should ask himself why people prefer to use it as a creeping sneaky cap tool than as AT gun,as they say,looking at the finger instead of the moon.

Originally posted by A table:

...needs to be more reliable and less cheesy. Right now it's a mixed, but awful bag with the following problems:

retreat, being available at T0 and entering buildings but this really hurts the raketen's overall reliability against vehicles.

Except it doesn't even work properly at that since the ability to retreat is useless when it gets 1shot wiped 80% of the times,being available at T0 again barely has any significance since it's an AT,who's gonna deploy anything that requires dedicated AT by then? To top it off with the fact that garrisoning it doesn't give you the option to target vehicles only or hold fire/don't switch up firing side (MGs lack this basic function too) resulting in a weapon that's far better off left in the open field than garrisoned most times.

[saymyname]

OMG you can put it in buildings !!11!!!1!!111!


Must be a joke....

[ShodaN]

You do realize it says:

"Supposedly this is to compensate for the ability to cloak, retreat, being available at T0 and entering buildings but this really hurts the raketen's overall reliability against vehicles."

clearly implying that none of that makes up for the more fragile crew right? But sure it's much easier to just add the same as always instead of actually reading what you reply to.

[saymyname]

Originally posted by SimplyDelicious:

It already got a stealth nerf if I remember correctly, and they removed the range increase by vet, in what I assume is an effort to increase strategic diversity, as it just turned them into normal ATguns, but now thanks to that, the creep cheese is literally all it has left and only reinforced the twin-rak->camo->creep->fire->retreat mentality. It's all very confusing.

The Rak is crippling for OKW, and I still don't get why they don't just give them the smaller Pak38. Or hell, even the Pak40, instead of a bizarre unit that's annoying to use, annoying to go up against, and gets killed by the very thing it's supposed to counter.

And what would it ever fix other than pissing off Katitof ?

The faction is extremely badly designed.
As it is now, to counter light vehicles it requires a bad player to get a light vehicle snared and at gunned, or go into a lucky mine that will mostly get triggered by infantry. By removing cloak, despite fixing the late/mid game 1 shell wipes you are effectively breaking the early phase, where the ability to set up ambushes is the only thing keeping okw afloat. Mech for a puma is not viable in the slightest, especially now that allied infantry steamroll volks even in slighly inferior conditions/micro and you NEED flak ht to survive. So you'd be forced with a good yet slow moving gun that get nowhere as much support as tellers, panzergrens, and readily avaiable fausts give in the ostheer faction. You are litterally trading one weakness for the other. Nothing but a major overhaul would fix OKW, but the priority went to pathfinders, Dodge WC51, fancy coh1 nostalgia yet useless mp40 volks, butterfly bombs, hit the dirt, hetzer and nerfing panthers......

Another exmple is recon (brought by DarTH speaking about raketen "free" recon), Pathfinders have been massively and rightfully buffed to supplement as auxiliary long range unit, arty off map spotter and recon troop, and JLI were outright ignored despite being trash.
OKW can rely at best on a few doctrinal offmaps for recon, and yet both soviets and usf as aggressive factions have several nondoc recon (and selfspotting) abilities linked to veterancy (and usf has even a nondoc recon off map). So we are stuck with this "recon" unit that risks being wiped before retreating anytime it overextends, and to add insults to injury we are bound to hear people complainin about said capabilities. There's nothing to save, not at this game cycle, and not with such teething issues.

[ShodaN]

Originally posted by SAY_MY_NAME:

And what would it ever fix other than pissing off Katitof ?

The faction is extremely badly designed.
As it is now, to counter light vehicles it requires a bad player to get a light vehicle snared and at gunned, or go into a lucky mine that will mostly get triggered by infantry. By removing cloak, despite fixing the late/mid game 1 shell wipes you are effectively breaking the early phase, where the ability to set up ambushes is the only thing keeping okw afloat. Mech for a puma is not viable in the slightest, especially now that allied infantry steamroll volks even in slighly inferior conditions/micro and you NEED flak ht to survive. So you'd be forced with a good yet slow moving gun that get nowhere as much support as tellers, panzergrens, and readily avaiable fausts give in the ostheer faction. You are litterally trading one weakness for the other. Nothing but a major overhaul would fix OKW, but the priority went to pathfinders, Dodge WC51, fancy coh1 nostalgia yet useless mp40 volks, butterfly bombs, hit the dirt, hetzer and nerfing panthers......

Litterally all it needs is a bit more durability on the Rak and there you go. Maybe then people could look into how LMGs work in general to make them less of a nobrainer upgrade. Hardly a massive overhaul required.

[Izayo]

vet 1 speed already nerf

[saymyname]

Originally posted by DarTH ShodaN:

Originally posted by SAY_MY_NAME:

And what would it ever fix other than pissing off Katitof ?

The faction is extremely badly designed.
As it is now, to counter light vehicles it requires a bad player to get a light vehicle snared and at gunned, or go into a lucky mine that will mostly get triggered by infantry. By removing cloak, despite fixing the late/mid game 1 shell wipes you are effectively breaking the early phase, where the ability to set up ambushes is the only thing keeping okw afloat. Mech for a puma is not viable in the slightest, especially now that allied infantry steamroll volks even in slighly inferior conditions/micro and you NEED flak ht to survive. So you'd be forced with a good yet slow moving gun that get nowhere as much support as tellers, panzergrens, and readily avaiable fausts give in the ostheer faction. You are litterally trading one weakness for the other. Nothing but a major overhaul would fix OKW, but the priority went to pathfinders, Dodge WC51, fancy coh1 nostalgia yet useless mp40 volks, butterfly bombs, hit the dirt, hetzer and nerfing panthers......

Litterally all it needs is a bit more durability on the Rak and there you go. Maybe then people could look into how LMGs work in general to make them less of a nobrainer upgrade. Hardly a massive overhaul required.

I'm not talking about raketen being "good", i'm sure 6 men raketen will be ok (if i recall correctly your idea was to make 6 men crews). I'm pointing out how a more reliable at gun (or a different one like pak) would end up losing moving camo or become kinda OP (i was actually answering to the user asking for pak40). Double raketen hunting would be terrible and raketen spotting would be riskless.

It is definetly a mess of a unit, but any at gun with "heavier" (pak 40 like, to return to quoted post) stats would make the situation worse because of being worse vs lights despite being better vs heavies and less wipeable.

In one way (6 men raketen, that must lose cloak as we know it) or the other (pak 40), okw at gun WILL be worse vs light vehicles, in a way that could make things worse.

Additionally i'm not referring only to the at department as of "teething issues"
Recon, timing of certain units, scaling (and issues related to fancy vet 5 stars), unit and teching paths viability...

I'm not saying mid range lmg (actually assault rifles) are an issue, at least not as design.
I would actually for coh 3 rework those so that stg44 is one of those for an high quality infantry usf like axis faction (with the game having higher focus on mp40 as eventual cqb weapon rather than engineers/low quality smg). The issues is that those mainlines end up questioning cqb infantry superiority at point blank range and long range superiority of g43 weapons, while they honestly shouldn't. (Should be actually located in terms of dps curves between smg's and g43/long range semi auto/lmg.)
But that isn't the actual issue, the actual issue is that volksgrenadier (that IMHO were balanced as coverfighters that could put up a fight against 1 bar/bren allied mainline, given the ACTUALLY neglectible cost and bleed difference, but this isn't the point) now are problematic.
Even considering that they are mostly the same until vet 3, you are still forced to invest in a unit with a severe lack of lategame scaling, but that for some reason still has the same exact upkeep as rifles. If okw was already reliant on luchs to scare off allied infantry, now it is even more reliant on luchs (if you are brave) or flak ht.

[ShodaN]

Originally posted by SAY_MY_NAME:

I'm not talking about raketen being "good", i'm sure 6 men raketen will be ok (if i recall correctly your idea was to make 6 men crews). I'm pointing out how a more reliable at gun (or a different one like pak) would end up losing moving camo or become kinda OP (i was actually answering to the user asking for pak40). Double raketen hunting would be terrible and raketen spotting would be riskless.

It is definetly a mess of a unit, but any at gun with "heavier" (pak 40 like, to return to quoted post) stats would make the situation worse because of being worse vs lights despite being better vs heavies and less wipeable.

In one way (6 men raketen, that must lose cloak as we know it) or the other (pak 40), okw at gun WILL be worse vs light vehicles, in a way that could make things worse.

Yeah I don't want an regular AT gun for OKW either. But neither do I think a 6 men Rak would need to lose cloak. The risks of sneaking around persist, you just wont get screwed over by lucky one shot wipes regardless of how you use it. I think that's only justified.

Originally posted by SAY_MY_NAME:

I'm not saying mid range lmg (actually assault rifles) are an issue, at least not as design.
I would actually for coh 3 rework those so that stg44 is one of those for an high quality infantry usf like faction (with higher focus on mp40/38/35 as eventual cqb weapons). The issues is that those mainlines end up questioning cqb infantry superiority at point blank range and long range superiority of g43 weapons, while they honestly shouldn't. (Should be actually located in terms of dps curves between smg's and g43/long range semi auto/lmg.)
But that isn't the actual issue, the actual issue is that volksgrenadier (that IMHO were balanced as coverfighters that could put up a fight against 1 bar/bren allied mainline, given the ACTUALLY neglectible cost and bleed difference, but this isn't the point) now are problematic.
Even considering that they are mostly the same until vet 3, you are still forced to invest in a unit with a severe lack of lategame scaling, but that for some reason still has the same exact upkeep as rifles. If okw was already reliant on luchs to scare off allied infantry, now it is even more reliant on luchs (if you are brave) or flak ht. Puma may as well not exist and its a fact.

I simply dislike how LMGs are the king of overall dps gain in this game. Nothing else provides such an evenly spread boost at basically all ranges (varying by type, but you get the idea). Bleed, upkeep, scalability and all aside, that is just kind of a stupid mechanic. Bolt action and semi-automatic vs SMGs for example has a much more reasonable dynamic to it.

Sure that's not the immediate problem, but it's the issue with the underlying idea.

[Nequis]

^the only time you can go for T2 and a Luch is when you are steamrolling your opponent and just wanna end the match quickly,otherwise it's completely counterproductive unless you wanna either get tanks after 1 hour or not have any way of healing (the most expensive one when as USF you have access to however many ambulances you want which have a magical mmorpg heal aura that doesn't require medics to attend to every single model) and stopping the mp bleed.

[DirtyDog]

I think a good buff would be to make it gain veterancy quicker and spread the models out.

[saymyname]

Originally posted by DarTH ShodaN:

Originally posted by SAY_MY_NAME:

I'm not talking about raketen being "good", i'm sure 6 men raketen will be ok (if i recall correctly your idea was to make 6 men crews). I'm pointing out how a more reliable at gun (or a different one like pak) would end up losing moving camo or become kinda OP (i was actually answering to the user asking for pak40). Double raketen hunting would be terrible and raketen spotting would be riskless.

It is definetly a mess of a unit, but any at gun with "heavier" (pak 40 like, to return to quoted post) stats would make the situation worse because of being worse vs lights despite being better vs heavies and less wipeable.

In one way (6 men raketen, that must lose cloak as we know it) or the other (pak 40), okw at gun WILL be worse vs light vehicles, in a way that could make things worse.

Yeah I don't want an regular AT gun for OKW either. But neither do I think a 6 men Rak would need to lose cloak. The risks of sneaking around persist, you just wont get screwed over by lucky one shot wipes regardless of how you use it. I think that's only justified.

Originally posted by SAY_MY_NAME:

I'm not saying mid range lmg (actually assault rifles) are an issue, at least not as design.
I would actually for coh 3 rework those so that stg44 is one of those for an high quality infantry usf like faction (with higher focus on mp40/38/35 as eventual cqb weapons). The issues is that those mainlines end up questioning cqb infantry superiority at point blank range and long range superiority of g43 weapons, while they honestly shouldn't. (Should be actually located in terms of dps curves between smg's and g43/long range semi auto/lmg.)
But that isn't the actual issue, the actual issue is that volksgrenadier (that IMHO were balanced as coverfighters that could put up a fight against 1 bar/bren allied mainline, given the ACTUALLY neglectible cost and bleed difference, but this isn't the point) now are problematic.
Even considering that they are mostly the same until vet 3, you are still forced to invest in a unit with a severe lack of lategame scaling, but that for some reason still has the same exact upkeep as rifles. If okw was already reliant on luchs to scare off allied infantry, now it is even more reliant on luchs (if you are brave) or flak ht. Puma may as well not exist and its a fact.

I simply dislike how LMGs are the king of overall dps gain in this game. Nothing else provides such an evenly spread boost at basically all ranges (varying by type, but you get the idea). Bleed, upkeep, scalability and all aside, that is just kind of a stupid mechanic. Bolt action and semi-automatic vs SMGs for example has a much more reasonable dynamic to it.

Sure that's not the immediate problem, but it's the issue with the underlying idea.

Yep agreed, i'm not against the idea, just pointing out it may bring new issues (just to give an idea of how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the whole thing is, heritage of a moronic design, and a lazy 2016 rework IMO).

That is something i dislike as well, at least in its current iteration. But as i said, it's not that senseless to think about mid-ish range units that receive upgrades and weaponry that can be fired on the move, in a game based on asymmetrical balance.

The big issues balance wise is the double upgrades. As long as specialized units hands down dominate at their intended range and with correct positioning, it is all about faction design and preferences to like and dislike such versatile troops.

[saymyname]

Originally posted by Nequis:

^the only time you can go for T2 and a Luch is when you are steamrolling your opponent and just wanna end the match quickly,otherwise it's completely counterproductive unless you wanna either get tanks after 1 hour or not have any way of healing (the most expensive one when as USF you have access to however many ambulances you want which have a magical mmorpg heal aura that doesn't require medics to attend to every single model) and stopping the mp bleed.

yep lol

[XvX]

Originally posted by SAY_MY_NAME:

I'm not talking about raketen being "good", i'm sure 6 men raketen will be ok (if i recall correctly your idea was to make 6 men crews). I'm pointing out how a more reliable at gun (or a different one like pak) would end up losing moving camo or become kinda OP (i was actually answering to the user asking for pak40). Double raketen hunting would be terrible and raketen spotting would be riskless.

It is definetly a mess of a unit, but any at gun with "heavier" (pak 40 like, to return to quoted post) stats would make the situation worse because of being worse vs lights despite being better vs heavies and less wipeable.

In one way (6 men raketen, that must lose cloak as we know it) or the other (pak 40), okw at gun WILL be worse vs light vehicles, in a way that could make things worse.

They could remove the stealth creep, and maybe turn it into a hull-down ability, providing more range, higher rof, higher accuracy and cover along with camo, but at the expense of moving. This retains the Rak's early strengths and ambush playstyle, makes it more susceptible against armor instead of infantry flanks, while removing the creep ♥♥♥♥ everyone hates, and provides new benefits in exchange of movement, as the good old Rak can't hit ♥♥♥♥ nor perform traditionally compared to its peers. Adressing the problem directly instead of ♥♥♥♥♥ footing around seems like a more proper course of action to me.

Though I honestly don't get the idea behind nerfing rewards for preserving the squishiest AT in the game, yet the zip-zoom stealth gib ♥♥♥♥ to take out priority squishy targets still remains. It's probably thought out by the same guy who designed the "no flare off map guaranteed kills in 30 range radius" trash.