Call to AA trucks - Gates of AA trucks

[Val Arx]

MP AI uses them way too much and I'm just so sick of these Anti-everything-but-air things.
Dude buys infantry. They rush across half of the map. They are greeted with AA truck. They die. End of the story. You have to wait for at least medium tanks to counter them, otherwise there's no guarantee of success because of their quick ttk. Or you can buy AA trucks as well. So it goes like the title: battles are always about AA trucks. The thing is, I don't want to buy them because I want to save mp to buy other units. Can someone stop this AA outrage?

The other thing is that MG42 destroys USSR trucks very quicky with decent accuracy even from long ranges and DP mgs can't do nothing with German trucks. This is seriously imbalanced, especially so considering MG42 NOW has even better performance than Truck Dshk in the game...

[SolidSpaceDisk]

that's why it is running joke the ppl play the game like war thunder since infantry are hard to use thus everyone just use tanks. And yes soviet don't have late squad mg option which is a problem...
btw use early at guns...

[cjprince]

ikr its so annoying
since AA trucks can even destroy light tanks, they are basically the only viable thing for the entire friggin early game
if you don't want to use em then you're just best off capping uncontested flags with conscripts/at inf and saving up the mp to deploy loads of mediums and heavies once their timer expires

whats even more annoying is that you can kill them efficiently by getting in close and shooting the crew, but it requires some micro and thus allied AI can't do it

i usually end up putting skirmish game settings on "custom" and excluding light vehicles in the menu. makes early game infantry focused while keeping tanks for later on as well. it takes away a bunch of other perfectly good units as well but ah whatever

[someone]

what
i have never struggled against AA trucks
wtf are you struggling against
do you mean the 2cm opel blitz? or quad maxim GAZ? or DSHK GAZ?

they are extremely weak to everything, mgs will kill them, any small HE caliber will kill them, mortars will kill them, light AT guns will kill them, light tanks outrange them, even AT rifles will give them hull break, making the AA gun on the flatbed unusable

AA trucks are easier to break than the standalone AA guns themselves that they are carrying

its not unbalanced, germans have good MGs to break them, soviets have PTRS which will eat trucks alive

[someone]

i think ur doing something wrong

[someone]

the only AA truck that has a decent chance at killing light tanks is the 25mm soviet one or the 20mm german one
DSHK sucks the range is too low and the pen will barely kill a pz1

[someone]

just outrange them, AP shell to the engine, causes hull break. AP has more range than hE

[cjprince]

Originally posted by cjprince:

ikr its so annoying
since AA trucks can even destroy light tanks, they are basically the only viable thing for the entire friggin early game
if you don't want to use em then you're just best off capping uncontested flags with conscripts/at inf and saving up the mp to deploy loads of mediums and heavies once their timer expires

whats even more annoying is that you can kill them efficiently by getting in close and shooting the crew, but it requires some micro and thus allied AI can't do it

i usually end up putting skirmish game settings on "custom" and excluding light vehicles in the menu. makes early game infantry focused while keeping tanks for later on as well. it takes away a bunch of other perfectly good units as well but ah whatever

damnit it doesnt work agh

[Saxhorn]

Sounds like he's playing battlezones and experienced players are setting up AA gun trucks out of range of his infantry and simply killing them in the cap zone.

The issue appears to be

I don't want to buy them because I want to save mp to buy other units.

Banking MP to buy expensive units later isn't going to work very well in battlezones.

Try buying a light AT gun, a basic truck and a recon squad and learn to use them wisely.
Or a towed AA gun instead of the AT gun.

[cjprince]

Originally posted by make it back:

the only AA truck that has a decent chance at killing light tanks is the 25mm soviet one or the 20mm german one
DSHK sucks the range is too low and the pen will barely kill a pz1

yeah no the MG trucks are fine, its the AA autocannon ones that are problem
they can be countered, but countering them requires a bit of micro (keeping out of range, in cover, hidden etc)
AI cant micro as a result the AI infantry will get flattened by enemy aa trucks and vice versa, which gives em way too big of an impact wiping helpless ai infantry in the open with withering 20mm fire considering THEY'RE MOBILE AA TRUCKS WHAT ARE THEY DOING IN FRONTLINE COMBAT SHOOTING INFANTRY (which is why i also disable on-map arty on small maps)

[someone]

Originally posted by cjprince:

Originally posted by make it back:

the only AA truck that has a decent chance at killing light tanks is the 25mm soviet one or the 20mm german one
DSHK sucks the range is too low and the pen will barely kill a pz1

yeah no the MG trucks are fine, its the AA autocannon ones that are problem
they can be countered, but countering them requires a bit of micro (keeping out of range, in cover, hidden etc)
AI cant micro as a result the AI infantry will get flattened by enemy aa trucks and vice versa, which gives em way too big of an impact wiping helpless ai infantry in the open with withering 20mm fire considering THEY'RE MOBILE AA TRUCKS WHAT ARE THEY DOING IN FRONTLINE COMBAT SHOOTING INFANTRY (which is why i also disable on-map arty on small maps)

doesnt mean they should be nerfed, friendly AI is pretty much useless against everything so, meh... just dont rely on them
literally just buy an AT rifle and aim for the engine, it causes hull break very fast

[Val Arx]

Well I'm more making a complaint than seeking serious answers but thanks for ya suggestions. I made a mod to limit AA truck by a number of three in each game but this has to be updated every time the game gets updated (and the config gets overwritten). I wish to bring up this to the devs so that I can avoid doing this again and again... So there's technically no problem for me at all, except for the AA trucks being annoying. My mod solution: I tagged AA trucks along with other personally-annoying things such as mortars with the same tag (there are several of them available in config) and they will be restricted as supportive tools that cannot come in overwhelming number, e.g. Deploying three AA trucks then the mortars become unavailable.

Again, I'm not technically struggling with AA trucks' existence in the MP game. It is AI's abusive use of them that I find annoying and sometimes unbalanced. Let's just hope devs notice that what they wish to promote (Infantry) is, in the current version, cruelly and constantly, countered by AA trucks.

[Val Arx]

And the other thing I mentioned before about balance is more about MP than gameplay (or "solution") Yes, nearly everything can destroy them, but they are like some mosquitoes on your face, weak but still annoying: smash one and you get another. You can't ignore them, and overkill is a waste of resource and the player's focus.
To illustrate the last lines, we might also review some "gameplay" since it's been put that they are weak therefore they aren't a problem at all. Let's just use artillery and "outranging" as an example: most guns have the same range, and that for HE shells is only 180m. There's no guarantee of hitting and there's good chance of getting hit by hostile units en route IF you don't constantly keep an eye on your guns. If you buy bigger guns just for the AA trucks, then it is overkill, you spend extra MP in exchange of a cheap vehicle, and you might not need that gun later. That's a loss.

The whole complaint would of course sound like a fuss without context. I play MP with heroic AIs and I just expect battles more than AA trucks being the hero. TBH I can also use them quite efficiently and that simply makes the game way too easy and monotonous.
(A less relevant fact is that my friends don't play this game, and people who play this game usually play with their own friends. That's why I play with bots. I appreciate minimum loss but AA guns kill my dear soldiers more than anything else.)

[someone]

Originally posted by Ruicius:

Well I'm more making a complaint than seeking serious answers but thanks for ya suggestions. I made a mod to limit AA truck by a number of three in each game but this has to be updated every time the game gets updated (and the config gets overwritten). I wish to bring up this to the devs so that I can avoid doing this again and again... So there's technically no problem for me at all, except for the AA trucks being annoying. My mod solution: I tagged AA trucks along with other personally-annoying things such as mortars with the same tag (there are several of them available in config) and they will be restricted as supportive tools that cannot come in overwhelming number, e.g. Deploying three AA trucks then the mortars become unavailable.

Again, I'm not technically struggling with AA trucks' existence in the MP game. It is AI's abusive use of them that I find annoying and sometimes unbalanced. Let's just hope devs notice that what they wish to promote (Infantry) is, in the current version, cruelly and constantly, countered by AA trucks.

at rifle to the engine block.

[F.U.D.F.]

Originally posted by cjprince:

Originally posted by make it back:

the only AA truck that has a decent chance at killing light tanks is the 25mm soviet one or the 20mm german one
DSHK sucks the range is too low and the pen will barely kill a pz1

yeah no the MG trucks are fine, its the AA autocannon ones that are problem
they can be countered, but countering them requires a bit of micro (keeping out of range, in cover, hidden etc)
AI cant micro as a result the AI infantry will get flattened by enemy aa trucks and vice versa, which gives em way too big of an impact wiping helpless ai infantry in the open with withering 20mm fire considering THEY'RE MOBILE AA TRUCKS WHAT ARE THEY DOING IN FRONTLINE COMBAT SHOOTING INFANTRY (which is why i also disable on-map arty on small maps)

If it takes "a bit of micro" then that's what it takes. The entire game is "a lot of micro"

[Val Arx]

"a lot of micro" isn't a problem; "a lot of micro at the SAME time" is. I'm tired of mentioning this but when you are dealing with four heroic AI who deploy countless AA trucks, it just seems annoying. And that goes back to the mosquito analogy. I know some people are about to jump out and say "if you hate them then it isn't the game for you." That is my game, I just want to make it less AA focused. Now I just wonder whether people love their excessive presence or not.