A Path Beyond Shock Trooper

[Coolrock]

I'm curious on what everyone's thoughts are on the current state of the Shock Trooper?

I could be wrong, but is the range shorter than I remember? I find it hard to believe that the Rifle Soldier was always able to out range it. Also, I really miss the splash damage. Probably because out of habit, I'm constantly aiming for the legs. Still seems the same when it comes to vehicles. Haven't noticed anything that sticks out. Seem to do roughly the same damage to them that I remember.

[Pushwall]

Going through all the versions I have on hand:

.9935, 1.2: Shocky 50m, Rifle 62m (or 50m if you hadn't figured out the bad Renegade mechanic of non-hitscan weapons having more range than the target box suggests, while hitscan weapons are beholden to the target box), Medium Tank 112m (or 90m if you hadn't figured out bad game design).

1.4: Shocky 65m, Rifle 62m (50m), Medium Tank 107m (86m).

2.0 Gamma: Shocky 75m, Rifle 75m (60m), Medium Tank 118m (95m).

Now: Shocky 80m, Rifle 90m, Medium Tank 110m. (The bad game design of the Fake News target box is now practically nonexistent and everything has less than 2m more range than the box suggests.)

So unless he was some sort of antiveh sniper before .9935, I'm not seeing the range thing. The two times in the builds I have where he does outrange/match range, I don't remember you being around for. Gamma's shock trooper despite gaining more semblance of range became a total joke, because he had to charge his shots and the chargeup timer was maddeningly inconsistent, lag meant it could be anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 seconds, so hitting infantry became extremely difficult (and luck-based). It's also worth noting that nowadays, he's now only half as outranged by medium tanks as he used to be. For that long span of time between .9935 and 1.2? Outranged by rifles (if they knew about the bad game design of targeting range) and massively outranged by vehicles.

His splash is bad because why not actually give all these units different strengths and weaknesses instead of just making the more expensive one the same as the less expensive one but with one weakness removed? Back when "more expensive is better in EVERY way instead of some ways and worse in others" was the design philosophy, the cheaper units were basically never used. It used to be the case that the Shock Trooper was effectively a hitscan Flamethrower due to how ridiculous his splash was and had actual anti-vehicle power, whereas the Flamethrower was effectively a Grenadier who wasn't outranged by pistols and had actual anti-building power.

Still, aiming for the legs right now isn't a bad idea as due to the way the current shocky's weapon damage works, it is not affected by limb damage multipliers; if you land a direct hit, you get 25 damage (plus 5 splash if the server feels like being nice and letting your splash work), no matter if it's in the legs, pinky finger, stomach or head. And the legs are certainly easier to hit than the head and give you more chance at splash if you miss (or if you hit).

[OrangeP47]

TBH because of my absence it took me until like last week to realize the splash was gone   I miss it, but if it's a ploy to get the flamethrower used more, I guess I'll reluctantly agree that the current way is fine.

[Coolrock]

I guess the Rifle Soldier does out range it now. I’m pretty sure the versions before 1.4 when I was last playing had it out range Rifle Soldiers, which it looks like going by your note of 1.4. Oh well. 

As we've already discussed in other topics, I’d rather see infantry only maps make a small come back to try getting units not seen often used again.

No reason to keep changing them around when they excel depending on where they’re used. If you lowered the price of the Grenadier back to $160, I’m sure he’d be used more. Shock Troopers don’t really matter, because they’ll always be used the most next to Volkov once mid-game hits. This is why lower tech maps are good. 

[NodGuy]

The Shock Trooper is now too difficult for me to use in an anti-infantry capacity due to my high ping, having to connect to the EU from the US. That’s why I mainly use the unit for anti-armour purposes only.

I will take the advice of @Pushwall and aim for the legs. 

[Coolrock]

I’ve noticed this also. I had an extremely hard time killing a Captain the other day. This is a unit that shouldn’t have an issue being good at killing both tanks and infantry if used well. 

[Pushwall]

Depending on who you ask shockies are either useless or super OP against infantry 

[OrangeP47]

It's the ping, same reason I can't use snipers.  Unfortunately I don't think there's anything we can do about the engine's lag handling.

[Coolrock]

Probably could be fixed with a server change, but that would force EU players to have the higher ping, or just split the play base up. 

That probably goes for just about every unit in the game though. It’s a never ending battle with balance. That goes for about every game though 

[Threve]

14 hours ago, Coolrock said:

 That probably goes for just about every unit in the game though. It’s a never ending battle with balance. That goes for about every game though 

The shock Trooper is fine. In the unspoken reality of things he’s a cheap purist anti vehicle unit that people buy because they are getting destroyed by tanks and have little cash but need to defend the base with. In this “Cheap Pure Tank Defence” roles they will constant refill health after defending the base from the tanks. Spending all this hard earned cash on a infantry unit allows them to refill and be harder to hit instead of in a tank that needs repairs and is easy to target while getting rushed. They will have support from left over defenses and infantry units leaving base to go attack or distract as well, giving them enough time to refill. Watch a long match on under.mix with the soviets loosing for a VERY good example on the usage of shockies. 

Shockies other role is when the player has a lot of money and is about to roll out in a tank for a massive battle. Having a 5/5 tank battle and having your tank get killed does not put you out of the fight. You can really hurt if not kill the remaining medium tanks or light tanks with a single shock trooper.

Anouther role of shockies but less commonly used now and days due to reasons was a chinook rush to a building. Shock troopers instant high damage would crush any building quickly.

Should the concern of anti infantry come to you then get a Kaptain and don’t loose your tank or get a Volkov. 

I don’t know if you were around for Beta but shock troopers would fucking WRECK your day no matter who tf you were. Imagine the damage to vehicles and the splash of a flame thrower in one uncrushable unit.  

Shock troopers are real good at infantry if you hit them in the head or hit them. It’s lights out as they say. The only problem is you have to be really precise and hit your enemy with the shock trooper to damage him which most people can’t. So people will run up to infantry point blank to hit them and wonder why they get chopped up by an automatic rifle.

They are not unbalanced if you run up against a captain. Look at the stats on Captains, they are massive killing machines and in the right players hands will annhilate anything. In the hands of a normal player they are extremely user friendly. They are cheap, have a lot of ammo to spend, quick reload, very high health, and can fire their LMG with ease. If they are loosing they can just move closer which will increase the chance of them hitting you and their high health will help prevent the Captain from dying first. Honestly you just get every single advantage handed to you when you’re a captain and it’s pretty hard to die against anything else unless you get headshotted, just really need to practice on your aim or got into a real bad situation/gangbanged

 

 Go up against some top player though in any unit and they will hack I mean kill you with a pistol. It’s just the nature of the game. 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Threve

[Raptor29aa]

On 7/22/2018 at 6:54 AM, OrangeP47 said:

TBH because of my absence it took me until like last week to realize the splash was gone   I miss it, but if it's a ploy to get the flamethrower used more, I guess I'll reluctantly agree that the current way is fine.

Well the flame soldier is more of a CQC unit due to the slow projectile and weakness to bullets. Flame solders either get run over, sniped, or killed by a Captain. Thus the best alternative is indoor where he can play his best game peek-a-boo. (Which is why the shock shouldn’t have splash for then he would be both CQC unit and field unit with long range) 

PS I still prefer the cheaper/half price shock trooper over volkov (I’m still inept at using his shotgun and die shortly after a captain pops out of the dead tank). (Although kov does make a good support unit)

[Raap]

On latency, there is no miracle cure for this. The network code has been tinkered with in the past and I'm not sure much more can be done to improve it.

All games have latency issues, the trick lies in knowing how to hide it. Rubber banding remains a true engine problem that most other engines managed to largely "fix" with more advanced prediction systems.

If you guys want an NA server, know that this costs money. A hardware mirror copy of the EU server will cost around 80-90 dollars per month, and more than that if you want to try running on more advanced servers, which by the way, have not really been tested for actual effect, to my knowledge.

[Coolrock]

I'm miss the days when n00bstories ran the servers 

[ganein14]

What if one had the money and knowledge to set up and buy a server of their own for us to use here in the NA?

[Coolrock]

The team tested a NA server last week. Just give it some time 

[FRAYDO]

Coolrock speaks the truth. It has not been publicly announced, though there was a quiet call for testing assistance on our Discord recently. Find Silverlight in the APB channel for more details.

[Jeod]

The cost of the shock trooper is too high for the difficulty compared to the captain/kaptain. That's the skinny. I much preferred Gamma's shock trooper.

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, Jeod said:

The cost of the shock trooper is too high for the difficulty compared to the captain/kaptain. That's the skinny. I much preferred Gamma's shock trooper.

Gamma shock trooper was much, much harder to hit infantry with thanks to the existence of a chargeup timer + the inconsistency of said chargeup timer. Also you're solely using the captain as a metric to compare him to when the Gamma captain was well known for being in most ways inferior to the $0 rifle soldier (his health pool was his one redeeming quality) while the Delta captain seems to be widely considered to be pretty strong.

e: okay Gamma's infantry maps finally cooperated and gave me a shock rifle to shoot myself with as a non-shock trooper. Turns out that there was one thing making the shocky easier to use: he had enough splash damage to kill riflemen in four shots. That's six seconds of being in a firefight and not needing to directly hit people. Now it makes sense why my memories of Gamma contain hardly any grenadiers and hardly any flamethrowers that were doing anything other than "shapeshift into an AP mine"  Thing is in an earlier patch where his splash damage was 50% higher than it is now (still not much) it was not uncommon to see him bunnyhop spamming the ground at point blank range to kill pretty much anything with no effort required, which is the complete opposite of how infantry combat should be unless maybe if you're a flame trooper.

[Coolrock]

At the end of the day, the Shock Trooper still deals with tanks very well. His damage seems to have gone down against buildings, and I dread getting into a fire fight with him now. Overall, I don’t really mind the way he is right now. I feel there’s still more to be desired, but I’ve only been back playing a few weeks. I’ll give it a little more time to really try it out in bigger games.