Pushwall

3.2.1.2: Reverted some stuff until we can get the new stuff right (if ever). Volkov is now back to his old self, but with the following changes: Points reward up from 100 to 125 (same as last patch) Only moves at average speed (rifle soldier speed) instead of fast (tanya/starshina etc speed) Price up from 1500 to 1750 Volktillery range reduced from 170 to 150m Shock Trooper is also back to his old slow speed. Small Sniper tweaks: Now has perfect accuracy when standing - not too significant as its standing inaccuracy before was already 1/5th of what a crouching rifle soldier had, but now you just only have to worry about the delay and drop and nothing else. Price down to 500

The problem with "walking mammoth that doesn't do much to buildings" is that having a unit deal strictly bad damage to buildings, especially if they're a slow unit in general (which encompasses all infantry, even the fastest ones), is that they mostly just end up as a counter unit you buy to deal with enemies in/near your base and then switch away when the threat is gone (see also: snipers). With a unit the price of Volkov, that second part is never going to happen, anyone who buys him as a counter will just stick with him to save money and camp the game out, and since he's also a counter to almost everything especially with your suggestions, that leaves Allies in a bit of a predicament where they also have to camp the game out because they can't really attack once the Soviet base is full of "stronger but slower" Volkovs pitching tents and maybe one V2 to ward off arties. Of course that's not to say he'd be fair if he did do good damage to buildings on top of that. Rangers are probably one of the biggest current examples of the bad-vs-buildings counter unit, and they work and see use without being overpowered or camptastic because they are extremely limited in what they can reliably deal with - it's pretty much just arties/v2s, low-tier infantry, and flame towers if you can keep the juking rhythm going without some anti-tank unit interrupting you - as well as being more than just a combat unit: they have utility in being good scouts and taxis for c4/support infantry due to their unmatched ground speed. Soviets have quite the lack of utility units - the only thing they have in that department that Allies don't is the phase detector TT - though it may be odd for Volkov to take up a utility role and really what additional utilites do the Soviets need with all their power? Nothing can really be added there without swinging the game even more heavily in their favour.

Until we can get a good grasp on how to get him "right", I'm just going to revert him to how he was before the patch and before this discussion, but with a couple of tweaks: Rewards 125 points on death (so like it is in the current patch) Movement speed is the same "average" speed as a rifle soldier, not the pre-patch fast speed or post-patch molasses speed. Shotgun damage up from 45 to 50. So there's a little more reason to not just nade everything. Volktillery range down from 170 to 150m. Still quite a lot. Price up to 1750.

No more than they did with Oldkov tbh. At least having a weapon entirely specced for artying so it can get target boxes means kovs can more easily coordinate attacks on a building to try to take it down, rather than just spraying at random buildings for points. If people don't like being pointwhored they can always go and attack him since he'll be so much more vulnerable up close than Oldkov.

The nades are still arguably viable for infiltration depending on the building, definitely not to the degree they were with Oldkov though. I might try this. Returning speed in this case seems fair so he can escape from things harassing him in the field, since he's still not going to have long range damage potential coming anywhere close to a TT/V2 whose sluggishness force them to commit.

Right, that iteration of Volkov didn't work out. Sergeants don't seem offensive from what little we played earlier but it was pretty clear that Volkov was a problem. Main problem was dealing way too little damage to pretty much everything (not just the things it was meant to be bad against) and increasing damage is probably not the answer because then we'd just be returning to the same old problem of him dethroning the intended Soviet infiltrators at the infiltration role because he can just lol over everything with the shotgun. Lower price also probably wouldn't help because really the only instance I could ever see anyone wanting to buy this nerfkov instead of a shock trooper is for sniping buildings. Which, while a decidedly less rare niche than the old shock trooper's "oh god the Allies have 3 field mechanics making their tank push invincible to non-tesla weapons and we can't get a V2 out to splash them, who can we call", still doesn't justify nerfkov. My next thought was focus him even harder into anti-tank/building and cripple his anti-inf prowess by replacing the AP arm with just a makarov or something, but then he'd just be a better RPG trooper (except for anti-longbow) instead of a better shock trooper...

He's already getting more damage less ROF next patch, in practice the stats above don't work out too well. Actually I'm reverting him to how he was before the patch but with a couple of nerfs, until we can figure out how to really deal with him (or maybe we'll just leave that as it is if it works out).

Hence the "should". I just took a look and they seem to be damaging MCTs at the same rate as they used to, which may look a bit high, but that's kind of the idea. I've always felt one of the purposes of the shotgunners should be for staging comebacks - you always have a strong, cheap infiltrator no matter how far on the back foot you are. Of course it helps to also have a transport for them, the means to keep your base safe while some sergeants are infiltrating, or have better infiltrators like flamer or Tanya, so it's not always easy to make said comebacks from a position where you're missing buildings - just more feasible than in say Reborn where all the cheap/free no-barracks infantry tickle buildings so a match where both teams have no production is doomed to be a 20 minute waiting game. The recent reductions in defender's advantage (i.e. no purchasing things while in combat) further mitigate that issue too.

Nope, it's the same as what it's been since the last time I tweaked the shotguns' MCT damage; I forget when that was but it was many versions ago. These new shotgun modes have the same total base damage and damage multipliers as the old dragonsbreath, except against infantry where they're different, so they should be behaving exactly the same as they used to against non-infantry.

Too easy for Soviets to clear mines compared to how long it takes Allies to set them up.

Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update The shotgun/volkov overhaul is done, hope it works out! Next on my plate is some more map fixer-uppers. In the future, expect to see RockTrap revisited as a Fissure-esque barracks/silo map, and Coastal Influence set up so that boats/missile subs can actually attack things going around the ocean side of the central island! General Replaced the incredibly low quality team icons on target boxes with higher-quality RA team flags. Reduced frequency of texture cleanup calls (so more performance boosts) Sun dazzle actually works now (it was broken the whole past 2 years). Be wary of this beast on sunrise/sunset maps. Infantry Engineer Mine detection radius reduced (37.5m -> 32m) Number of Clearing Charges reduced (5 -> 3) Clearing Charge damage to hedgehogs doubled. Shock Trooper Move speed up (6.5 -> 7m/s) Bonus damage vs MGGs increased; now lands a 3-hit kill. Shotgunners Removed the original secondary firing modes. Sergeant's Remington primary is overhauled; it's still dragonsbreath, and is somewhat weaker per shot than the original (-17.5% armoured damage, -45% unarmoured damage), but instead of causing burn damage, it now melts through infantry kevlar rapidly (armour shredding up from 75% to 200%) - making it twice as good at this as the previous armour-shredding top dogs were (the Captain and Flamethrower). Starshina's TOZ primary is overhauled; it is now buckshot which acts more like the original dragonsbreath, having medium range and accuracy, but not burning. Combat-wise it acts pretty much the opposite of the Sergeant's dragonsbreath, dealing damage like a pistol; armour penetration and shredding ability are very poor, so performance against armoured infantry is not amazing, especially from midrange where it doesn't burn anymore, but it improves significantly when facing an enemy that lacks armour, like Tanya. (-2.5% armoured damage, +30% unarmoured damage) TL;DR these guys are pretty heavily specced towards taking out the enemy commandos, but are a little worse at general combat than before, especially at mid-range. Accuracy is now more heavily affected by crouching/jumping (jump inaccuracy up from 4 -> 6, crouch inaccuracy down from 2.75 -> 2) Starshina TOZ tracers are smaller than before and do not have the "bullet whiz" sound attached. Volkov Points value increased (100 -> 125) AT cannon range up (90 -> 120m) AT cannon ROF up (0.75/sec -> 1) AT cannon damage down (70 -> 50) AT cannon now uses the same warhead as the Light Tank; this means that it now suffers a damage penalty against the armour of heavy vehicles (Medium Tank, Minelayer) and especially against super-heavy (APC, Ore Truck), but its DPS to buildings is now a little better than the previous Kovtillery (+3%) instead of the terrible damage of the original AT cannon (which took 2 Volkovs to equal the DPS of one rocket soldier). Kovtillery no longer exists as the AT cannon now fills the roles of both previous AT modes. Shotgun ROF up (1.5/sec -> 2) Shotgun damage up (45 -> 50) Shotgun inaccuracy down (3 -> 2) Shotgun range up (60m -> 70m) Shotgun tracers are smaller than before and do not have the "bullet whiz" sound attached. Napalm grenades have a delayed explosion at close quarters again. You might want to rely more on the shotgun in such circumstances. Napalm grenade splash radius up (10 -> 12m) Napalm grenade range up (100 -> 105m) Movement speed way down (7.5 -> 6m/s) Vehicles APC Armour shredding up (100% -> 150%) Artillery Points distribution changed; gives 75 points for being killed and 25 points for damage (was 50/50). Price down (900 -> 750). Damage credit rewards actually reflect its price being increased from 600 now (Soviets get 75 credits for killing it and 75 for doing 300 HP of damage to it, instead of 60 credits each) Phase Tank No longer has the special armour class that receives extra damage from tesla weapons; that weakness is exclusive to the Mobile Gap Generator now. Ranger Special armour class that slightly resists tesla damage has returned. V2 Launcher Points distribution changed; gives 75 points for being killed and 25 points for damage (was 50/50). Fixed missile on snow camo still being visible after firing. Fixed snow camo variant being considered a "bot-usable" vehicle. Maps All snow maps Fixed rooftop snow being immune to damage on buildings that got new rooftop access routes. Antlion Removed Engineer crate. Added Flamethrower infantry and Shock Trooper crates. [blurb]The shotgun/volkov overhaul is done, hope it works out! Next on my plate is some more map fixer-uppers. In the future, expect to see RockTrap revisited as a Fissure-esque barracks/silo map, and Coastal Influence set up so that boats/missile subs can actually attack things going around the ocean side of the central island![/blurb] [blurb]The shotgun/volkov overhaul is done, hope it works out! Next on my plate is some more map fixer-uppers. Expect to see RockTrap revisited as a Fissure-esque barracks map, and Coastal Influence set up so that boats/missile subs can actually attack things going around the ocean side of the central island![/blurb] [thumb]thumb_apb.f.png[/thumb]

I'm still keeping the old shotgun/volkov settings sitting around just in case any of this ends up being such a bad idea that I really need to revert quickly though. I've just gotten done implementing everything and a patch will be coming later today. Let's get a game going this evening to see how much of a bad idea all this really is

Don't let the spy do his rounds tbh. It's already not that hard to know that a spy exists, he needs some time to reach your base after being bought, and with this patch he is also much more fragile so the only "combat" he is really suited to is picking off the unaware from the shadows before they can notice him - if anyone is aware of his presence he is really easy to deal with. But even then, if there's a spy going around your base unmolested hitting up all the buildings because your entire team is on the front lines, then that means the Allies have one less tank/rocket/Tanya/whatever able to sit around and defend from whatever's coming their way. That was a pretty big problem with spies before - most of their contributions for their team were absolutely not worth giving up an extra combatant for, especially if the Allies are stuck on the defensive which is more likely when they have less manpower to push out to the field. Oh good, manifest says the Soviets have 5 mammoth tanks, we kinda already gathered that from their limited war factory purchase pool, would have much rather had a medium tank/rocket at home to actually deal with that! And if your base is completely empty so anyone wanting to infiltrate will have a field day, would you much rather that the infiltrator was a spy signaling your sneak attack, or a phase-thief destroying mines and stealing half your credits, or a phase-tanya or phase-engineer destroying a building? I'd be open to maybe adding a slight delay for the hacking, but an absolute no to letting the Soviets know that they've been spotted. Soviets not knowing that is kind of the entire point. You can't get airdrops with a relay. And if Allies want to get radar back, they have to render themselves one tank/tanya/rocket/other-inf-of-choice short for as long as it takes the spy to reach the enemy base, which on most dome maps is a fairly long time even if the spy is taking the shortest possible route which would almost certainly involve running past multiple Soviets, at least one of whom should recognise him. If the other spy abilities get a chargeup delay I would do it for this one too just for consistency. I had only considered it for the refinery ability initially because of how incredibly powerful it is and the fact that its eventual effect can be pretty heavily delayed by killing ore trucks. The "one man down = gg" and "spy is easy to spot" arguments may be less applicable to larger games; however, it's been a thing for all of Delta that map victories have gotten more and more skewed in the Soviets' favour the higher player counts get. The spy seemed a pretty obvious choice for a unit who could be buffed to help give Allies a bit more of a fighting chance in larger games without suddenly causing the Allies to dominate small games. You really can't afford to dedicate someone to "reveal the sneaks/slow the economy/get the radar back" duty in a 4v4 unless there's a pretty severe player skill imbalance.

Yeah it's kinda odd, currently Volkov compared to the Shock Trooper is like if a mammoth tank had the superior speed, range and anti-building-exterior power of a TT while retaining its armour and reliable anti-infantry rockets, and if a TT had the inferior speed, range and anti-exterior damage of a mammoth tank while still being stuck with its own inferior armour and a weapon that isn't always great against infantry. It probably makes sense to have the shock trooper beat him in more than just the anti-mechanic niche. Taking into consideration just how much the shock will get out of this though, maybe they could do with a bit more of a health difference. Like either bringing the shock down from 70 to 60 health or Volkov up from 100 to 110 or something. Or as you said, more armour for Volkov (but not too much). Or alternatively perhaps I need to reinstate the Ranger's unique armour class that let it survive an extra shock trooper hit; I forgot that that armour type was actually doing something worthwhile for mainstream gameplay when I removed it - whoops! So that would further reinforce the "Volkov does best vs light vehicles" thing.

Being generous with his armour has led to problems in the past. When he had more armour than health, this was at the same time when armour was made of paper and basically anything that wasn't a pistol melted it pretty fast, so it was somewhat balanced for him but not for everyone else who had no longevity at all. And when he had infinite armour he was just a virus that if played by a skilled player was impossible to remove from inside the Allied base unless he was outnumbered 5 to 1. And that's not what he's supposed to be, he's supposed to be attacking buildings from the base perimeter, or crushing units in the middle of the field - where, on many T5 maps, supply truck respawns are available to refill his armour. And he already has more health than any other armoured infantry.

So here's what I may be deciding on. I will still run this through some people I can find to test with. Shotgunners: Pretty much what I said before; Allied shotgunner has a new dragonsbreath round which, instead of inflicting quick burn damage, melts through armour like butter (twice as much armour damage as a captain or flamethrower) but is a little weaker in raw damage. This can easily force retreats out of enemy shocks/kovs if he gets close enough to land some good blows even if he doesn't manage to kill. However, it's not strong enough to break through the Stormy Valley church barricade despite being somewhat fire-based, just so that there's no "imbalance" where one team's shotgunner is allowed to breach that place solo but the other isn't. Secondary fire is removed. Soviet shotgunner has a new buckshot round which behaves a lot like the old dragonsbreath in terms of range/spread/damage, but doesn't set people on fire and has very weak anti-armour damage. However against unarmoured targets, its damage is comparable to what the old buckshot secondary fire used to dish out - its damage mechanics are basically identical to that of a pistol, only in shotgun form with high raw power. Secondary fire is removed. They may have a bit of a harder time struggling against vehicles due to lacking their old secondaries (Allies no longer have slug for reliability, Soviets no longer have uberbuckshot dealing extra damage to point-blank vehicles), but if you want to tackle vehicles, you should really be getting pretty much any other non-free non-pistol unit. These guys are CQC, anti-MCT, anti-infantry and more specifically anti-the-enemy-team's-commando through and through. As for Volkov: Slowing him down to the same speed as the NBNW Sentinel (6m/s, slower than the 6.5m/s of captains/rpgs/flamers/snipers), so he is more forced into committing to fights and shouldn't be able to kite Allies around their own base as much. Instead the shock trooper sort of takes up his old "mobile AT trooper" mantle by being increased to 7m/s (same as a rifle soldier). AT cannon range up by 30 metres; now outranges RPG (but not by much). AT cannon damage down from 70 to 50, ROF up to 1 shot instead of 0.75 per second, and uses the same warhead as the Light Tank (which suffers a damage penalty against the armour of heavier vehicles). So he should be great at taking down incoming light vehicles like rangers, phases and LTs, but not so great against medium tanks and APCs which have heavier armour and enough health to not get killed in one magazine. His range still means he can harass the heavier vehicles though. This should set him somewhat apart from the RPG/Shock who ignore armour strength entirely, and should give the Allied APC a bit more of a relevant niche in non-air maps (its superheavy armour knocks the AT cannon down to a mere 30 damage a shot as long as its armour is up). This warhead change also allows it to deal ever so slightly more damage to buildings than the old trishot. No more trishot as the AT cannon kinda fills both roles. Instead he has a scope to scout with (and to get more precision against vehicles when he doesn't need to make use of his speed, given that scoping in forces you down to walking speed) AP weapons might stay relatively unchanged, maybe with the shotgun becoming a little better so it's more worthwhile, and napalm grenades also becoming a little stronger in exchange for either becoming bouncy grenades again like in the old days like Raptor suggested, or maybe sticky like early Delta. Why would I bring back this feature? Because the fact that both of those tend to end up as "duds" in CQC, discourages them from being used in such a way. At long range they never had problems with noclipping through terrain, flying 50 feet into the air on touching a slope, or anything like that - only when up close. So then the shotgun should be more prominent for CQC, with maybe one or two napalms to try to apply burn, instead of the current situation where if you're 1v1 you can just unload 6 napalm nades while sitting in prime shotgunning range and autowin with hardly any aiming necessary. Unsure on price. Being more reliable at vehicle-sniping can be deadly especially with multiple... but then he also lacks the alpha-strike damage of the old one and is also much more vulnerable in close combat than before due to his speed, as well as the new behaviour of the Allied shotgunner making it hard for him to stay in the field for too long especially in areas that are too far from a supply truck. May keep it price as it currently is, and tweak it up if he turns out too OP or down if UP (Price will probably not go down too much in the latter case as he still has considerable overlap with RPG/Shocky) So basically taking my initial "no kovtillery" idea while also keeping a modest enough level of long-range building exterior damage that he isn't useless if the Allies are pinned in their base, while also not being able to snipe buildings from halfway between the range of an RPG and a V2 which kovtillery could, and also trying to reduce his overlap with the shock trooper.

Face is a little better than what KY had though the idea would have been for his whole head to be human (except the eyepiece). Doesn't matter though as I am leaning more heavily towards the "still very much a cyborg = walks too slow to avoid fights he doesn't like as easily" route instead of "more human = more fragile". I could possibly have a "more human" Volkov as an alternate camo option though, whether it's this or something less cybernetic. (Which would of course be purely aesthetic and not change his performance outside of maybe more recognisable sounds for received headshots.) Part of me wishes sprint capability could be set per unit, in that case I would probably retain Volkov's current jogging speed but remove the ability to sprint.

Seems the mine logic is just "is this target an infantry preset" or "is this target a vehicle preset". I just tried giving Volkov the AI script marker for heavy vehicles and he doesn't trip AT mines. So we'd have to amend the script for that, however I also feel like this would result in Allies feeling like they have to AT mine their buildings to protect against the dreaded Volkov invasion, when they already scrape the mine limit just trying to cover all the best vehicle attack routes.

Thing is, then he just supplants the Engineer, Flamethrower and Shock Trooper at that role. Engy has C4 but no other weapon that damages buildings - and unlike the Allied issue of Engy vs Tanya, Soviets don't have to deal with AP mines so Volkov's lack of mine-clearing charges would be a non-issue for this role. Flamer and Shock only do good damage to buildings at their MCT - which is also what C4 does. If Volkov were to be good against buildings I'd rather go the siege route so he's different from those units - and nerf his CQC anti-infantry ability or speed so we don't get the current issue where he's still a comparable infiltrator to flamer/shocky despite not having a weapon with MCT bonus damage. I would love to give binoculars back to Tanya and Volkov. However there is a pretty big issue with binoculars which is that it is easy to accidentally select them when you want to select your other weapon. This was a pretty big issue for Volkov when he had them, since he has to constantly switch between the AT and AP cannon depending on what he needs to deal with. For Tanya it was a little less concerning but still noticeably so - an infiltrating Tanya, if her presence is already known by the Soviets, really wants to select her C4 ASAP when reaching the MCT without fumbling through binoculars, and then reselect the colt to fend off infantry without fumbling through binoculars. Though I might look into using Reborn's Elite Cadre logic for having a keybinding that adds+autoselects / removes binocs from your inventory.

Hmm. If we go up to say 1800-2000, people who know how to stay alive only need to wait 1-2 more minutes to be able to buy the only Volkov they'll ever need for most of the game, and by the time they finally die they'll still have enough money for another one, unless maybe the Soviet team lost their entire economy in the meantime, but even then he probably managed to make up the difference for himself by accumulating combat credits anyway. (Which is part of why I really wish we could do the Counter-Strike thing where money rewards for kills are based on your weapon/unit rather than being entirely based on target value. But still partially based on that. So then Tanya and Volkov would rake in hardly any cash for kills and Techies a lot.) So it barely makes a difference to the people who are actually threatening with Volkov. If we increase the price further beyond that, then the players with less self-preservation and situational awareness will save up all that money, get outsmarted by the first good longbow/phase tank/tanya/sniper that finds them, and then they've pretty much thrown the match by spending so much time relying on budget units and then doing nothing with the big chunk they spent. But then again, this is also a problem with phases and may also be with chrono tanks. 1800-2000 is probably the limit for how far we can push it, but I don't think a price increase alone is the solution. I might try it though since it's quick and simple, and if it doesn't help, then look into focusing him into a specific role.

Nope, she gets half as affected by jumping as the other pistol users do, who are also slightly less affected than assault rifle users. Accuracy loss from the initial shots leaving sprint mode got eliminated last patch. lol

V2s/TTs can't back into a bunker/infantry tunnel/rock formation to thumb their mechanical nose at rangers/longbows/phase tanks. Volkov can. As an artillery unit I don't think he needs to be so mobile when he has all the advantages of being infantry-sized. Especially since, as OWA said, he is one of the tankiest infantry - whereas V2/TT are some of the most fragile vehicles

Send it over please, I'd like to see it even if I don't end up using it. Basically we just need his face to look more like the RA boxart (with the eyepiece modelled on instead of just being a flat texture like the retexture was). ...oh. Well in that plan I had he did have a scope (which would have, again, been based on the box art eyepiece) to make it easier to scout and get precision against vehicles from afar. If his only weapons are artillery and maybe a Makarov though, I guess that's not a concern. And in "Situation Critical" he plays pretty much the same except everyone he shoots suffers fire death. Maybe that's where the inspiration for the napalm grenades came from...

With regard to the whole tankiness thing. We could definitely tweak that but the thing is, with his appearance the way he is, it is very hard to justify him being flimsier than a captain. I believe @Ice had a "more human" version of the Volkov texture sitting around at some point; I'd love to have that if I take the direction of tweaking him into a more fragile but more powerful artillery infantryman, justification being that he's only barely being kept alive by his cybernetic augmentations. From a bit of internal documentation we have:

While that would definitely be the easy way to fix the "everyone buys him and nothing else" problem, there are a lot of problems with it. One, it would just lead to people fighting over him like Reborn. Old players keep picking him because unit so OP and then the new players sulk because they never get an opportunity to try him out... so new players stay at home camping PTs hoping for Volkov to die so they can pick him... so then they get shouted at for hogging a unit that someone else would do better with. Two, it just makes low player count situations on the server even more painful. Who as Allies wants to play 1 vs 1 against a Soviet player using the unit that can counter everything even harder than current Volkov already does? Nobody, and thus it becomes harder to get the player count to rise past 1 vs 1. Three, the whole Reborn issue where multiple people can buy a commando at the same time and oh hey now you have 2 or 3 OPkovs running around when the game is balanced for only 1. Even if this somehow gets fixed or we aggressively moderate it (which is pretty harsh when it's possible for people to do on accident because EVERYONE WANTS TO BE THE COMMANDO) there's still the other issues. While we do use build limits on some things, it's all vehicles which aren't subject to that last bit of abuse, and can't really be "fought over" - Demo Trucks and Yaks have an incredibly high turnover rate and Yaks would create traffic issues if a bunch of them were landed at once, and you never really want more than 2 MGGs or MRJs anyway.