Pushwall

Don't think the sub script even currently supports switching between two weapons, only having 1 weapon that either is or isn't capable of firing underwater. If it were able to have two weapons I would just make the submerged torpedoes identical to normal except for doing no damage to buildings and leave it at that - it was able to fire submerged in testing but that was problematic due to it being able to hit the naval yard while submerged (a much more common scenario than missile subs being stolen). There's still a remnant of those days in that submerged subs are actually resistant to torpedoes (though not by a lot) because sub vs sub fights did occur in testing and they were deemed to be over too fast

Thanks for Bioshock!

What, do these pros of the Heavy just not matter? Having 115m range compared to the Medium's 110m - making it pretty great at kiting in spite of the speed difference Using the same "bad armour tolerance" damage type as the Light Tank, so it's actually getting a ~15% boost against light vehicles compared to the Medium - that means the Ranger, Artillery, Phase Tank and MGG, among other less important ones. Granted, Mediums don't have many light vehicles to fight where their "doesn't care about armour class" damage typing rears its head, but well-protected Tesla Tanks are one of their bigger worries. The only Allied ground vehicle the Heavy's damage type has to worry about (minus ~15% dps)? The Ore Truck. Oh no Except every other Soviet AT unit (which are all either infantry or costlier than a heavy) doesn't have that penalty. Having a harder-to-hit weakpoint due to the rear being partially covered by the fuel barrels which are damage neutral, and the front actually having some plates protecting its underbelly. Not to mention all the crap I've been hearing about how the Heavy is sooooo much better than the Mammoth. Also this is how the Heavy's been since the dawn of APB, except before 3.0 it was $150 pricier than a medium and had harsher turret restrictions. Soviets already have better anti-tank infantry than the Allies, does their MBT really need to be that much better considering they already have a decent win rate?

The radar dome becomes invulnerable when the cruiser event starts so that shouldn't be a concern.

If "moderately good" is taking longer to destroy boats than a rifle soldier (due to his warhead being coupled to the Destroyer/Missile Sub's) then sure I guess? Problem is it's just not threatening enough. It's a joke. And making it threatening enough that it's actually worth buying for any reason other than pity would require some of its roles to be severed or for its price to be increased. And I'm leaning more towards the latter so that they don't get spammed so much on Fissure. Can't get any better than a sprayangle of 0 I'm afraid. Did I mention that this isn't renegade? Also, are there even any Russian grenade launchers in existence that aren't rocket-propelled, aren't under-barrel AK attachments, and are at least as old as the MP5? As it stands I'm just going to toss out the extravagant ideas and the Grenadier is going to stay as its own unit, I'm just going to give him more damage/range and remove his splash falloff so he does his "field artillery" job better, and add charge time and remove his death explosion so he's not so great in buildings. That's what the flamethrower is for.

Yeah if you want your kill icons to look like this then sure The kill icons in the current font have their own problems too - they don't stretch but a lot of them are cropped awkwardly and are hard to see due to their smaller size: And then there's the smaller issue of having to make new icons for a bunch of stuff (refill pad, RPG-7, strela, MP5-N, every single non-weapon such as the golden wrench, possibly more mystery stuff in future...)

The fact that his "anti-building" artillery is in fact the worst weapon the Soviets can possibly use against buildings, except for small arms against exteriors, and (currently) grenadiers?

Yeah I caught some of that match from IRC and both teams were destroying buildings left and right (if you mean the one with all the banter about giving the Soviet WF a makeover after you destroyed it). It didn't look one-sided at all, Allies just happened to destroy a little more. Of course, we'll have to see a lot more matches to see how it plays out, but I feel like it can easily go either way now that the defenses for both sides are much weaker.

Also, before this patch, Under was the most Soviet-biased map with Soviets winning about 70-75% of games. I'm curious how TK's suggestion of bringing the coil back but not the gap gen would make it less biased. Hell, Soviets at least get something to replace their lost tesla coil (2 frontal flame towers). Allies don't get anything except the defenses that they already had. Why do you want it to play out exactly the same old boring way as those? APB isn't meant to be a mindless reskin of Renegade anyway.

Turn your gamma correction or contrast up? I can see all of those just fine.

How can you be so sure it's biased from two games that weren't even won by the same team?

His role is to be a jack of various trades, but missing some important aspects so he ISN'T a master. The AP shotgun and napalm essentially make him a Starshina/Flamethrower with no anti-MCT power, the AT cannon essentially makes him an RPG Trooper with no super-ranged AA option, and the Kovtillery... right now there's not really anything to compare it to but when the next hotfix comes and improves the Grenadier, the Kovtillery essentially makes him a Grenadier (minus the splash damage, but that's covered by the napalm instead). And on top of all that he has unmatched durability unless you're careless enough to get directly hit by tank shells, so he makes a great field sentry compared to Shocks who have much less health and speed and regen slower. Demo Trucks may kill them now but they have much more leeway with how close they can safely be than other infantry; they have 100 health and 120 nuke damage to contend with while everyone else except Tanya has much less health and everyone else except Engineers has 160 nuke damage to fight against.

Volkov can be great in base assaults if he's supporting the attackers. Say, mammoth tanks filled with shockies and was protecting them from rockets and helping kill tanks? I meant by himself, or only with other Volkovs. Previously people just used to spam nothing but Volkovs because he was a jack AND master of all trades (except arguably AA), and I'd rather discourage that. Allowing the infantry that actually have good MCT damage a chance to shine might help. Don't want to give engineers enough time to react and flood the MCT room? Then rush it with starshinas, flamethrowers, shocks, even kapitans, almost anything but Volkovs.

Nope. Well, besides for de-temping a few things.

Which is only two buildings: the construction yard and the advanced sub pen. Both of which are on only 1 naval map. Shock/Flame do much more to MCTs though. That's the point. And Volkov is meant to be the opposite of Tanya: great in the field, poor for base assaults. Flamethrower was considered "too strong" against exteriors before.

There was actually a hidden link for something already ingame before because I copied an older post.

Sorry, would it have been better to make the gunboat redundant by giving the destroyer the newer more useful depth charges, or leave the old depth charge logic in for the destroyer and get barraged by people asking why the destroyer hasn't been updated? Balance and consistency trump realism I'm afraid.

Another patch has been released! Get more information and the changelist in the full update! Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update Hey everyone! Another patch has just been pushed to the launcher and server based on your feedback! Changelist GENERAL Mines' trigger range is increased; 4 -> 6 for AT mine, 4 -> 4.5 for AP mine. This makes it much less likely that units will be able to go directly over AT mines without triggering them, and provides more leeway for imperfect AP building mining. Nuke damage to mines down by 25% (0.5 -> 0.375) Nuke damage to Volkov up by 20% (0.125 -> 0.15). Demo blasts can actually kill him now, but they have to be pretty damn close to him as this translates to 120 damage at point blank range. Nuke damage to Engineers down by 25% (0.2 -> 0.15) Damage of Explosive weapons increased (Grenade 30 -> 35, Destroyer 75 -> 90, Missile sub 42.5 -> 45) Explosive warhead (used only by those 3 weapons) has been overhauled a bit: Damage to buildings down 11% (0.225 -> 0.2) Damage to aircraft down 17% (1.5 -> 1.25) Damage to seacraft down 20% (0.5 -> 0.4) Damage to concrete walls/bridges up 11% (0.45 -> 0.5) Long story short, their damage to aircraft/seacraft is actually almost identical to before, they just have a bit of an easier time against everything else that they can directly hit, and take out bridges pretty quickly too. However Missile Subs now have identical DPS to Destroyers instead of just being better. INFANTRY Grabbing a ladder from the top should be a little easier now. Volkov's AP shotgun damage down from 87.5 to 75. Volkov's Volktillery ROF down from 1 / 1.33 seconds to 1 / 2 seconds. Shock Rifle's accuracy increased; spread when standing/jogging down from 0.4 to 0.33, spread when jumping down from 2 to 1.5. Flamethrower's splash damage down from 30 to 27.5 Flamethrower's accuracy increased; spread when jumping down from 5 to 3.75, sprinting down from 3.75 to 2.5, injured down from 1.5 to 1, crouching down from 0.25 to 0.1 Flamethrowers are up to Tech Level 3 (now absent from Guard Duty) Remington slug velocity down from 500m/s to 375m/s. Remington slug accuracy decreased; spread when standing/jogging/crouching up from 0 to 0.25, spread when jumping/sprinting up from 1.25 to 1.5 Remington slug now has a unique warhead, here's the rundown of its new properties: Damage to armoured infantry down 17% (0.75 -> 0.625) Damage to light/heavy vehicles up 25% (0.5 -> 0.625, 0.4 -> 0.5) Damage to superheavy vehicles up 9% (0.275 -> 0.3) Damage to landmines up 100% (0.5 -> 1) Damage to all types/parts of buildings is now equal to the damage of the primary fire. Basically it's now a little less of a close-quarter sniper clone and more of an answer to non-mammoth vehicles and AP mines. Vehicles get taken down with roughly Captain-tier efficiency but you still have to be in shotgun range. VEHICLES Tesla Tank splash radius up from 5 to 7.5. Hind damage to heavy vehicles up by 12.5% (0.2 -> 0.225) Longbow damage to buildings (except defenses) up by 11% (0.18 -> 0.2) Longbow damage to submerged naval units up by 100% (0.1 -> 0.2) Destroyer/Missile Sub range up from 160 to 170. Naval units are worth less points (Gunboat/Attack Sub 125 -> 100, Destroyer/Missub 200 -> 150). Gunboats now have their depth charges controlled by an AI "turret", which automatically attacks any enemy unit (submarine or not) in a 120 degree cone starting from the back of the depth charge rack and extending out 100m in the direction of the ocean floor. Players will no longer get credit for their depth charge kills because of this, but subs will certainly be discouraged from going too deep if there are gunboats around since charges actually have range now in addition to being automated! To accommodate the new delivery system, the depth charge projectile has also had its behaviour overhauled: Is homing, and no longer affected by gravity. Projectile speed increased from 5m/s to 25m/s. Rate of fire reduced: 1 / 1.25 seconds to 1 / 2.5 seconds. Damage reduced from 300 (50 to surfaced) to 120 (30 to surfaced). Splash damage reduced from 100 to 40 and downgraded from Artillery to Normal splash warhead (no burning, negligible armour damage). Not that it'll matter much given how few situations allow infantry to actually get hit by them. Projectile Extension is gone; it doesn't need it anymore and it previously caused the charges to harmlessly clip through everything if there was any terrain nearby. Destroyers no longer have depth charges. BUILDINGS If you attempt to stand on the insignias of the Refinery/Power Plant you will slide off. So no flares that are even harder to disarm than normal roof flares. Refinery ore piles now have blockers to prevent vehicles from climbing them and getting stuck. Flame Tower no longer has projectile extensions. This is both a blessing and a curse; it is harder to exploit around corners, but it's also easier for fast vehicles to dodge. Raised Flame Tower anti-vehicle range from 115 to 120 and anti-infantry range from 100 to 105 (same ranges as the Pillbox). Destruction of the Radar Dome prevents Tanya/Volkov from being purchased. AESTHETICS Barrels using the flammable material despite not actually being destructible (Guard Duty, Ridge War, Wasteland, Zama, KOTG house) have been turned into normal ones. Refinery ore piles are upgraded to piles of the new ore rocks instead of lumps of dirt. Fixed Soviet MCV having Allied insignia in Soviet tunnel construction yard. Fixed various VIS errors. Explosion effects for Volkov's AT weapons and Gunboat cannon have been made wimpier to reinforce the idea of "hey maybe you should be using this against armour and not buildings". Adjusted nuclear explosion effect to be more mushroom-cloud-esque. Destroyer has a bigger explosion. PERFORMANCE Optimised barrels in WF/Barracks/Ref/CY and various maps which were using more materials/textures/draw calls than necessary. Vehicle and infantry models are now pre-loaded depending on what buildings are on the map. This means that maps will take a little longer to load but there will be much less loading (and therefore much less frame stuttering) happening during a game. Nuclear explosion effect is less particle-heavy. MAP CHANGES RA_HostileWaters is back in the game! See here for changes since the public beta. RA_AS_Seamist: During the endgame event, Soviet aircraft will be shot down by super-long-ranged Destroyers. Hey, it's probably better than being Gulag'd for failing and retreating. RA_AS_Seamist: Removed a Light Tank and Ranger from the 10-minute reinforcements. RA_Bonsai: Spies can infiltrate the radar dome now. RA_Bonsai: Water behind Allied Radar Dome hill has been made too deep for units to traverse safely. RA_Bonsai: Allied defenses shuffled; Turret on Radar Dome hill is now a Pillbox, the Missile Silo Pillbox is moved closer to the Refinery, and the frontal Pillbox is now a Turret and is moved back to the Service Depot, RA_Bonsai: Put a no-beacon zone in the Allied ore tunnel. RA_CamosCanyon: Added a Pillbox/Flame Tower on top of each side's ore hill. RA_CamosCanyon: Made the big rock by the Soviet ore field bigger. RA_Fissure: Barracks gives no points for damaging/repairing, but gives twice as many points for destruction as normal (500). RA_GuardDuty: Added an extra pillbox to the Allied Ore Silo side. RA_KeepOffTheGrass: Placed vehicle blocker around a sticky tree stump near the Allied WF side supply truck. RA_ForestOfIllusion: Cyborg Commando health down from 200 (player) / 500 (AI) to 150 (player) / 375 (AI) RA_ForestOfIllusion: Cyborg Commando move speed down from 5.5 to 5. RA_ForestOfIllusion: Cyborg Commando kill points down from 1000 to 500. RA_ForestOfIllusion: Temporal trigger items can now take anywhere between 1-6 minutes to spawn (was 1-2). RA_ForestOfIllusion: Walking into the Chronosphere will now warp you back to the graveyard surface. RA_Under: Removed the Flame Tower overlooking the Sub Pen/Barracks dock. RA_Under: Replaced power plant with radar dome. RA_Under: Removed gap generator. RA_Under: Replaced tesla coil with 2 flame towers. RA_Under: Removed archway over Soviet base entrance, giving Artillery more freedom to hit things around it. RA_Under: Moved Allied rear pillbox and shuffled some rocks so that it's hopefully more useful. RA_Under: Deepened water behind the island. RA_Under: Removed deep snow as mines laid inside it were nigh-indestructible. RA_Under: Removed Underlying Thoughts and added Creeping Upon to jukebox. RA_Wasteland: Barracks gives no points for damaging/repairing, but gives twice as many points for destruction as normal (500). Get to the launcher and grab the patch! Be on the lookout for more updates, and we hope to see you on the battlefield!

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I have a spreadsheet sitting around covering all weapons vs all vehicles/buildings that I keep up to date when adjusting stats to make sure nothing absurd slips through the cracks. It deals with DPS vs health and damage modifiers though rather than ingame seconds to kill, but the difference isn't significant except with things with really long reloads (Volkov and arty-type units). Here's a column that's relatively unimportant as an example: time to kill supply trucks. Light Tanks may not look that bad compared to Medium Tanks but the difference comes in against vehicles with "super-heavy" armour (mammoths, MADs, ore trucks). Light shells take a 20% damage penalty against heavy vehicle shields and a 40% penalty against super-heavy vehicle shields, while Medium shells are unpenalized. Light Tanks have a lot of trouble scratching mammoths unless their armour is stripped. As you can see from this supply truck snippet, Lights actually kill supply trucks FASTER than Mediums do - this holds true for all light vehicles. Problem there is how many Soviet vehicles count for that? Tesla tanks, which eat up light tanks due to the range difference (unless they get flanked), V2s which can't defend against anything that flanks them anyway, and of course, supply/demo trucks which are dead anyway. So lights are not as amazing as they look, but they definitely have their uses if you're good enough or the map presents a lot of flanking opportunities. Captain outperforming Kapitan is a conscious decision because Allies don't have very many good field infantry compared to the Sovs. You're sure Captains kill buildings from the outside nearly twice as fast as Kapitans though? LevelEdit claims they have the same warhead (i.e. collection of damage bonuses/penalties to various targets). Volkov doing that well against buildings is an error (yeah, good job on my part). Next release Kovtillery DPS to building exteriors will be comparable to Flamethrower's. Also the numbers in my sheet are based on the upcoming patch so it's not 100% accurate to the current game, though the only things that have changed (as far as damage to vehicles goes) are kovtillery getting weaker, the slug getting stronger, and the Depth Charge rows becoming even more irrelevant for ground vehicles than they normally are, to the point that I forgot to update them. Gee I wonder what that could mean

When I say "only affects" I mean only affects in a significant way. They'll definitely hurt infantry. But as for bigger things, no. Because while we're on the subject of things that confuse players, how about weapons that do "negligible but not zero" damage to certain things? Hitmarkers exist and they will not pop up if your weapon is doing absolutely no damage to a target. This is why I changed pistols, which used to do something like 0.01 damage per shot to vehicles and MCTs, to now do a big fat 0: to avoid confusing players. And at least a clearing charge is relatively transparent in its purpose from its name unlike the Gamma golden wrench, whose secondary fire looked identical to the primary, and you would not know that it was a minesweeper unless you actually used it near enemy mines. Not to mention, killstrings for non-weapons are actually a thing now, so anyone with basic pattern recognition skills will notice the killstrings popping up in chat that indicate that people are using this new "Clearing Charge" weapon and only ever seem to use it to destroy mines, and figure out that it's an anti-mine explosive from that.

This is why the Engineer's getting clearing charges, which are essentially a C4 that only affects mines, has a 3 second timer, has a 25% larger radius and pierces cover. And the engy gets 3 of them at a time and can of course restock with a supply truck. Giving the "no damage falloff" feature back to Grenadiers would also make them better at mineclearing.

In Gamma, grenades had no damage falloff, so everything within the splash radius took maximum damage. (This is the same behaviour tesla weapons currently have but it's only really notable on the tesla tank.) I could bring that back to make them even more risky to use in tight quarters and make them easier to use in the field. I'd have to make the grenadier more fragile though (maybe giving him the same splash damage weakness that flamethrowers have) so careless use is more likely to get him killed than his target. I could also make it so the grenades always have a "safety time", like how the secondary fire currently works, so attempting to throw them short distances will result in them sticking around for a while before exploding (giving targets a chance to duck behind cover), but at long ranges they will explode on contact.

To compensate for him actually having a defined role that he doesn't blow chunks at I'll probably raise his cost to something in the 300-500 range though. A damage radius of 20 or even 15 is kind of absurd when you consider that the 155mm has a radius of 18, and some buildings have pretty spacious interiors (particularly the WF and CY) so he can easily defend himself in those without risking self-harm. Then again, his current radius of 8 doesn't do him many favours in the field. So if he had a larger radius he would definitely have to keep his current 0% wall penetration and perhaps his weapon could have a charge-up time (pulling the pin, though the engine doesn't allow for charging animations for weapons as far as I'm aware so he wouldn't actually appear to be doing that in first person) to discourage corner peeking. Normally I am not a fan of this engine's treatment of charging weapons but if you're using grenades for the intended purpose of shelling buildings and splashing infantry in the field rather than trying to hit them directly or corner peek (attempting to directly hit infantry with charge-up shock rifles was a huge problem due to it being impossible to predict when the charge-up would actually end since the delay was affected by lag, and this was probably the biggest issue with them that led to charge-up being removed) it shouldn't be a big problem.

He's already "a little less squishy" than the flamethrower at 60 health vs 50. You're thinking of splash damage, which doesn't matter much once he performs his intended task of getting into a building. Something I could do is jack up his range and velocity a bit more (considering people already seem to be able to suspend their disbelief over him having more range than the RPG Trooper and being able to fling grenades at speeds of 50 metres per second, I don't really see this as much of a concern) and essentially turn the Grenadier into an on-foot Artillery (intended for hitting buildings from outside, not inside) - a role no other Soviet infantryman can usurp, except Volkov, who could probably stand to have Volktillery removed anyway - it makes him too good against buildings which he's not meant to be, and when did he ever have long-range artillery in RA anyway? Speaking of RA, you know what the RA Grenadier was known for that set him apart from the Flamethrower? (Of course he wouldn't have infinite range like them)