A Path Beyond Grenadier

[Coolrock]

Why does he suck so much now? I know that people said to try it against a tank, but that's why Soviets have a rocket soldier for, right? I can hardly seem to kill infantry at all with him now. Maybe I just remember how good he was on maps like FoI and Fissure. Not exploding on death was kind of a let down too. 

What're your thoughts?

[Pushwall]

Yeah Grenadier is admittedly in a tricky spot. "Now" is disingenuous though - before Delta he always sucked, except for Fissure where he was apparently deemed too broken because when I finally started playing in 1.4, he wasn't even available to buy on Fissure! Though all this did was just bring flamethrowers to the forefront instead, because the issue was not grenadiers, the issue was that the map layout put way too fucking much emphasis on splash damage.

The issue with the Grenadier before the attempts to fix him, is that he has always just been a worse Flamethrower. Nobody used him because it is almost impossible to be in a situation where you can't just afford a Flamethrower instead - or even better, a Shock Trooper back when he had the splash of a Flamethrower. The only situations where you could afford a Grenadier but not a Flamethrower was early on in silo-only maps. But in the old days, spending money on infantry period at the start of Metro/Canyon River was a death sentence as it delayed your tanks, and on Forest of Illusion, there was only one piece of cover on the whole map: the church. Hanging around there was the only way a grenadier could ever hope to get in range to hurt someone as going anywhere else would result in being outranged to death - so definitely not worth the investment compared to just waiting for a flamer.

In Delta the Grenadier has gone through many iterations to try to make him actually worth using, and a lot of these failed.

• The initial Delta Grenadier was basically like the old Grenadier except he actually had range (about as much as a shock trooper instead of less than pistols) and his damage against vehicles/building exteriors was no longer merely comparable to the rifle/kapitan. In spite of this, he was still almost never used.
• At one point I wondered "hey, Volkov is essentially a composite of several different units, what's the Volktillery supposed to be a clone of?" And so the previously forgotten Grenadier found a new lease on life as a "siege infantry" who could throw his grenades about as far as the old Volktillery. This got people to use him... because it wound up making him completely broken.
• So after that failure, I removed the Grenadier from the game completely while I tried to figure out how to handle him, and to make sure the Soviets still have a "grenadier", the RPG Trooper got renamed to the "Grenadier" (because he has a Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher, see) and instead of a Makarov he had a limited supply of "old-style" frag grenades. The limited grenades were kinda controversial and people were still clamoring for a real Grenadier to come back, so...
• He found ANOTHER new lease on life: instead of just being a budget Flamethrower, he became more of a "jack of all trades, master of none" hybrid between the Flamethrower and Rocket Soldier; instead of just being worse than the Flamethrower at everything, he now has anti-tank power that's better than the flamer but worse than the RS, his anti-building siege is better than the flamer but worse than the RS, his infiltration is still bad because he doesn't get a weakpoint bonus like flamers do and he's liable to splash himself, and his anti-infantry power is - as you would expect - worse than the flamer but better than the RS. So now your question is probably "how does this deviate from the issue of being a budget unit when you can almost always afford the non-budget unit"? Because unlike a flamethrower or rocket soldier, he is still available when the Barracks is destroyed. Which goes all the way back to you 2 years ago bringing up how Rocket Soldiers were too overpowered to be available without a Barracks (which I can agree on). Of course, one team having more options with a dead building than the other team just doesn't fly, so the Allies got a Grenadier too, which I had also hoped would lead to slightly more diverse infantry loadouts than "rockets, mechs, and nothing else".

The newest Grenadier still hasn't been a particularly great success on some of those fronts, but it's still seen the most use of any excluding the overpowered ArtyNader, and has been regarded with hardly any controversy compared to that travesty of a unit. So it's unlikely he'll go into a different role unless someone has a particularly great idea. Next build he's receiving the following changes:

• he's going back to 50 health with armour instead of 80 with none. This improves his durability against tank splash and all small arms except the Remington and machineguns, but worsens it against fire/tesla weapons and the aforementioned exceptions to the small arms rule. So most importantly he won't have to fear basic infantry, tanks, or his own splash damage as much.
• just like the old Grenadier, his grenades will bounce if they hit terrain too quickly. Which means that you are at a much lower risk of accidentally hurting yourself when trying to throw around cover (especially combined with the addition of armour).

As for not exploding on death: he is not meant to be used in CQC, and this is another part of trying to make him a different unit to the Flamethrower.

I am considering backtracking on having him as an Allied unit, but he'd have to become Barracks-required again so that both teams lose equally from losing their Barracks. And we'd have to return to Captains having more ridiculous anti-vehicle damage - the addition of a double-owned, no-barracks explosive unit allowed us to tone down the small arms vs vehicle damage.

[Raap]

I think I said it before somewhere, but either way, I'd rather see the unit replaced entirely. A unit focused on niche weaponry is limited to what that weaponry can realistically deal with until it becomes something else. There are plenty of more interesting unit concepts to slip into the position of the Grenadier, and people who only want to keep it due to "RAlism" need to understand that what works in an RTS, does not always work in a shooter... A lesson that everyone who ever played APB must have learned by now.

I mean conceptually the Grenadier is a unit concept that backs you into a very tight corner. You cannot give it too much damage to infantry because then it is just an alternative Flamethrower, you cannot give it too much damage to vehicles because it is too cheap for that and would just compete with rocket/RPG units whom are much better suited for those tasks (from both a gameplay and immersion point of view). And to make it effective against buildings/defenses, you need to turn it into superman, capable of throwing grenades 150 meters with a projectile you can hardly see.

And then there are the grenade physics in W3D which are just broken, so the whole unit currently pretends to be something that it actually cannot even be.

So yeah, axe the unit, that's what I would seriously be considering after everything else has been tried already. It just gives you breathing room in the unit roster to add roles that are actually needed and fun to play.

If you truly want to keep the Grenadier, then make it an Allied unit to mirror the Soviet Flamethrower, and then the Soviets just lose a unit. I prefer a universal removal however because the Grenade weapon type still suffers from all the other problems... Plus when it comes to cutting units, it should really be done for both sides, since the Allied roster for both vehicles and infantry is already larger than the Soviet one.

---

And speaking of a similar topic, axe the Radar Jammer by merging it into the MGG. Just like the Grenadier, the RJ is too much of a niche unit, and also incredibly unrewarding to use (and way too easy to find and destroy if you didn't already do so while it is on route to the Soviet base).

The Soviets got their Radar Jamming tech built into the Tesla Tank so why can the Allies not get the same treatment? Again, this would help with some of the purchase roster bloat as well. Art-wise, just use the RJ model, and slap a Gap tower on it next to the spinning dish (from the base defense version). The MMG model is ancient anyways! In all naming references the unit would still be an MGG and the term Radar Jammer would stop being used.

Gameplay bonus: You could consider deploying the MGG for the radar functionality, as well as a stationary unmanned Gap field, allowing you to defend or repair your MGG at the cost of keeping it in one place. Either way it adds more depth to a single vehicle.

Edited July 22, 2018 by Raap

[Pushwall]

On a similar front, for the longest time I've really wanted to axe the Thief and merge him into the Spy.

Recently the Spy gained an ability that allowed him to deny the Soviets some of their dump money. Nobody has complained about this being too strong for a unit that can avoid base defenses, AP mines, and looks like a Soviet soldier. So it would seem that it is not considered controversial for the Spy to have a Refinery ability that tilts the economy in the Allies' favour (as long as it's not nearly as strong as the Thief's, obviously) instead of the completely useless "here's how much money the Soviets have!" report that he had for the past decade or so prior to this change. So if we were to axe the Thief, the Spy would most likely lose this functionality and gain the ability to steal like, 10-15% of the Soviets' total money at a refinery (compared to a Thief's 50%)? Or maybe slightly more but also have a long "chargeup" at the MCT?

It'd also allow us to make use of the AR updated spy logic without multiple units sharing the exact same appearance - give the Spy the same "default" model that the Thief currently has, and let him disguise as any infantry.

[Raap]

Yeah, as I said, I'm all for merging units and simplifying the current roster of units, or at the very least bring the number of units of both teams closer to each other.

The Allies in particular got significant roster bloat with very niche units. Better to merge those which make sense and have those combinations result in very fun units to play.

Thieves barely function anyhow. By the time one can be purchased and reach a Refinery/Silo, the Soviets will have AP mined them to hell. The unit only functions to punish a Soviet team who did not do this, creating a lot of unneeded pressure on the Soviet team during the early game.

That said, I also think the stealing mechanic itself needs to scale based on population. In large games the amount of stolen credits can be so massive that it completely flips a match into Allied favor... And that is also where the Thief stops being useful, it is a one trick pony that is not fun to deal with on the receiving end.

Edited July 22, 2018 by Raap

[OrangeP47]

Back on the topic of the thread, I'd just like to say the other day or two we actually had a nice grenadier rush and everything seemed to work out fine.  It was Canyon River (or is it River Raid... the one where the river runs across the map, rather than down it, I always get the names confused).  Allies had taken out everything except the Soviet Refinery.  About 3-4 of us got grenadiers and rushed the allied bar, taking it out, and giving us enough points to win, somehow.

I guess my point is that it's rare, but sometimes they still do get used, and work just fine.

[moonsense715]

I always thought the Grenadier was generally better in infantry combat than the Flamethrower due to his faster speed and being cheaper, and I was using the flamer for attacking enemy buildings and vehicles due to better damage and easier-to land projectile (vehicles are big).

Maybe my memory serves bad but I don't remember people crying about the Grenadier being a ghetto Flamethrower.

About the Spy abilities, we should start setting up a page where the current unit lists and abilities are listed. Changelogs are one thing, but a "this is what everything currently does" would help a lot. E.g. I never noticed in the logs or ingame that the Spy is blocking ore truck incomes. Don't jump on the conclusion already that if people don't cry about it (maybe just not noticed) then it's all good  E.g. in AR I tend to shut the radar, power down, then sap the enemy refinery constantly and nobody notices that in the tests.

[Raap]

A unit info page would help. AFAIK there isn't enough space available for the in-game help pop-up? Or maybe the correct path to take is making the help pop-up contain basic text formatting functionalities and sufficient space?

Edited July 22, 2018 by Raap

[Coolrock]

PointlessAmbler had made a manual ages ago that was similar. Wonder if that's something to look into? I think I even have the one from .992 still. I vaguely remember there being an updated one.

[KevinLancaster]

Pressing H gives you a help pop up but last I checked after the update that added it, for some reason it was unbound by default.

[Coolrock]

17 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Realistically, I do agree that he's always been a budget Flame Thrower. That's what made it a fun unit to use on infantry only maps. It was a nice pick early on to build your cash up to get a Flame Thrower or even Shock Trooper (going by Fissure and FoI). I'm still all for keeping the teams focused on what they've always had, and not adding special units from one side to the other (this is similar to what WoW did). I can't argue with the Rocket Soldier, since everyone feels so strongly about it being on both teams. I don't see why the Grenadier can't be removed from the Allies, and made to be lost on Barracks destruction again. At this point, I've seen maybe two the last few days I've been playing the game (from the Allies side). Are FoI and Fissure still in the rotation? I feel like more infantry maps are needed in between matches that last 30 minutes. I'm sure you'd see a bigger use of them. I'd even say lower their price back down to $160 again, to make them more appealing. 

14 hours ago, Raap said:

While I don't like to disagree with you, this is one of those times. I don't like to think of shoving units together just to get rid of one. The Grenadier was great on infantry only maps. It should just go back to the Soviets only. I agree that the Radar Jammer was added into the game just to say it's in the game. I don't think it's ever been used since the first few days it was added into the game. It's a waste of money for something like disabling the radar.

14 hours ago, Pushwall said:

I disagree with this as well. The Spy is amazing compared to how he was ages ago. The last thing he needs is to steal money on top of that. The Thief is fine the way it is, and works perfectly fine. Spies get into the base all the time without people noticing, and I feel maps would completely change with a Spy running in without worry of being blown up by mines, and stealing money. Most games already see 2-3 Spies at a time as it is.

14 hours ago, Raap said:

I disagree here again. Thieves do exactly what they're suppose to do. You're basing the mining completely on veteran players being in the game. Whenever I see someone using the Mine Layer, it's myself, SileverLight, etc. I hardly ever see newer players (people who I don't recognize) mining the base. There's always a chance you can get in, and the price for a Thief isn't like it's the end of the world if you die with one from a mine. He should be used to change the tide of a match to the Allies if he successfully get into the Refinery. 

7 hours ago, moonsense715 said:

The Flame Thrower was great for both buildings and infantry. I noticed today that the fire rate seems way slower now, which made me not want to use it again. That'll have to be another topic 

[Pushwall]

40 minutes ago, Coolrock said:

Are FoI and Fissure still in the rotation? I feel like more infantry maps are needed in between matches that last 30 minutes. I'm sure you'd see a bigger use of them. I'd even say lower their price back down to $160 again, to make them more appealing. 

Fissure is gone. The map layout makes flamethrowers unstoppable and we cannot balance flamethrowers around this one map otherwise they would be completely worthless everywhere else. But even without flamethrowers the layout is still just painful; in the no-tunnel version you really can't get out of your barracks once a medic team or grenadier team plops their arses down in front of or above it, and in the tunnel version they are way too complicated and that's very bad when using them is required to save half of your silos, plus they are about as wide as the characters themselves which is not good for infantry combat, so those would definitely need to be remade.

FoI... well, someone left an "updated" version of FoI lying around and I fixed it up to be used in the game. It looks really neat but does not play well at all and would continue to not play well even if it was, like RockTrap, retooled to be a barracks map (which the updated one originally was too) instead of a domination map. It was split into 3 different "arenas" (forest, graveyard and garden) which you would jump between with teleporters.

I'm really not keen on making any more maps from scratch to eliminate the problems these maps have that are innate to their designs, mostly cause it takes bloody forever, so these two maps will likely remain in limbo. I guess I could do a basic modernized version of "old" FoI by frankensteining together parts of new FoI but that's about it.

I would not mind seeing some more infantry maps, especially if my suspicions are correct that the MapGuard plugin (which locks certain maps out of the rotation depending on what the player coutn is) is finally working correctly, because nobody wants to get thrown into an infantry map in 10v10. At first my feeling was that people just don't like infantry maps, but when it comes to Delta I think the real problem is that Fissure is broken and domination is not fun, because people don't seem particularly offended by Wasteland or Antlion.

40 minutes ago, Coolrock said:

The Flame Thrower was great for both buildings and infantry. I noticed today that the fire rate seems way slower now, which made me not want to use it again. That'll have to be another topic 

His fire rate is once every 3 seconds now, and it was once every 3 seconds a decade ago.

[Coolrock]

13 minutes ago, Pushwall said:

I remember Fissure being a lot of fun to blow steam off in. I'd actually like to see it back.

I played one match on the new FoI last time I played, and I didn't like it. I really loved the older FoI, and was fine with the first update that added the ghost soldiers (but they were freaking annoying). I'd really like to see that get thrown in again, but I'm just one person. I wouldn't want you to make anything, just want the older ones back. We used to have a crazy amount of fun with 32 players on those maps, so I don't see why anyone would be mad about it. Maybe we should get a vote and see what others think. Can't blame an oldbie for trying ❤️

13 minutes ago, Pushwall said:

His fire rate is once every 3 seconds now, and it was once every 3 seconds a decade ago.

Wasn't around for Gamma really, but it just seemed slower. Maybe I'm just not used to it anymore.

[Pushwall]

Removing the grenadier from the game again might be a bit much especially since the current one is hardly controversial especially up against the ArtyNader. Maybe make the flamer different if we can't make the behaviour of grenades different? Like, a stream of fire (still long-ranged) instead of a single fireball? Sure, it may not be RAlistic but it would hardly be the first weapon to behave differently to its RA incarnation:

• Phase Tank fires in salvos of 8, instead of its 2 in RA.
• Rocket Soldier's anti-tank rockets have been non-tracking for the past 7 years until this patch (and they will probably be non-tracking again next patch anyway), unlike RA where they were tracking.
• APC and Tesla Tank are notable here for being some of the strongest anti-aircraft options despite not even being able to target aircraft in RA. Of course, basically nothing was able to do that, but these two going from "forbidden from taking this role" to "among the best in this role" is quite a shift.
• Grenadiers can't throw grenades base-to-base like they could in RA

[Coolrock]

I wouldn’t be opposed to the Flame Thrower change. It’s true that a lot is different simply because not everything can mimic how it was in an RTS.

Helicopters and planes would be insanely overpowered if most infantry and vehicles couldn’t fire at them anymore.

Just my two cents though. I wish more people would chime in their thoughts. I agree that the Grenadier, Flame Thrower, and Shock Trooper were all the same, just did more damage for their price. It seems silly, but we never heard many complaints about it (at least I don’t recall). It just made sense since most of the Soviet infantry was the same. They were always more explosive, while the Allies were more focused on tactics. 

[OWA]

Perhaps it might be an idea to play around with the Nader's RoF and give him a clip with a reload time? So he can throw, lets' say, 4 Grenades in quick succession before he needs to reach into his pouch for more.

The Grenadier, Flamer and Shocky weaponry all have one major thing in common, which is the fact that they fire a single projectile and then have to wait for the next one to be ready. Shaking up the number of projectiles a bit by giving the Grenadier more Grenades to throw at once and giving the Flamer a stream-fire mode might be a good way of giving these units more of an identity past their damage types and the amount of splash they deal.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, OWA said:

Perhaps it might be an idea to play around with the Nader's RoF and give him a clip with a reload time? So he can throw, lets' say, 4 Grenades in quick succession before he needs to reach into his pouch for more.

The Grenadier, Flamer and Shocky weaponry all have one major thing in common, which is the fact that they fire a single projectile and then have to wait for the next one to be ready. Shaking up the number of projectiles a bit by giving the Grenadier more Grenades to throw at once and giving the Flamer a stream-fire mode might be a good way of giving these units more of an identity past their damage types and the amount of splash they deal.

I actually like this idea quite a bit.  Overall I don't want things to change too much, I feel they're fine, but the underuse is indeed a noted problem I suppose.

[Coolrock]

I like the idea, but I think more infantry maps would help see better useage of the lesser used units. If you have the money, you aren’t buying Grenadiers or Flame Throwers. They were extremely popular on infantry maps for obvious reasons already stated. I don’t think you need to try balancing them constantly to make them appeal in bigger maps, but focus on what they have always been good at. 

[ChAoS]

I've said it before but there is a reason the renegade grenadier uses a grenade launcher.

 

I think the best solution was merging the soviet grenadier and rpg trooper. It's a shame that it wasn't very popular.

[Pushwall]

So here's a test of how a "stream" flamethrower might look.

It's actually pretty similar to the current flamethrower so as to not shake things up too much; the full 10 "round" salvo is only slightly more damaging than the current fireball but that's ok because the time between salvos isn't much greater than the reload time for the current flamethrower (3.125 seconds instead of 3). Will definitely need a beefier sound for this if it goes in. I wanted to give it a larger magazine and thus longer burst time but then we run the risk of it basically being a Splash Kapitan. Really the existence of sargs/caps makes it even harder to make these other units unique - another example of this is how if we ever get around to adding Attack Dogs, they'd be competing with the Starshina for the same role - but then we can't really remove sargs/caps because then the Allies would be even more starved for infantry options.

[Raptor29aa]

I though the thief was too powerful of a unit and thus only put into the maps with AP mines.

anyways my feelings on the grenadier have always been give the allied one a decent splash and the Soviet one decent armor. Give both a long range (70m) primary and a short range secondary (10m). 

[Pushwall]

5 hours ago, Raptor29aa said:

I though the thief was too powerful of a unit and thus only put into the maps with AP mines.

He appears on Pacific Threat and Hostile Waters, those don't have AP mines.

He's still relatively fair on Pacific Threat because in order to steal money he has to run right through the middle of a base that only has 2 buildings with spawners and so will almost always have Soviets running through it, not to mention the fact that stealing from Silos gives less money than it used to (25% instead of 50%)

And he's fair on Hostile Waters because in order to steal money, Allies have to successfully sneak some Destroyers to the rear sides of the Soviet base (which takes forever and sacrifices field manpower for a long time) to kill the flame towers and then the thief has to successfully sneak the same route in a huge transport vehicle that is pretty likely to be detected by Hinds before getting there.

It's Tanya who is too powerful for maps that don't have AP mines and have buyable vehicles. I thought she might be tolerable for Hostile Waters since it is normally impossible to infiltrate the advanced naval building but apparently that was a bad idea.