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[Retropunch]

I think for my next deck (whenever I play Red Dragon) I'll go for a sniper build... based around higher-quality armor positioned so as to hit the enemy before they can hit back, with medium/basic-quality troops held in reserve to counterattack without necessarily losing an important unit.

That's exactly the way I play as NATO and it seems to work well. However, I tend to have a 'roving reserve' of better quality troops that can be used to reinforce any points needed.

 Having long range and a lot of good recon allows me to basically move my reserve into place before the enemy get within their preferred firing range.

As I normally play 2v2, I tend to be the front line defense, and have my ally basically be that roving reserve. As I've softened everything up, they can then clean up and then push through after we've defeated their assault.

[sambojin]

What do you think the likelihood is of this going on sale around Easter time? If it probably won't, I might pick it up this week.

-11% as the "with all DLC" pack isn't a huge bargain, but I'm part Finnish, and like the look of the Israeli deck as well, so I'll probably get the whole thing.


Anyone know if there's more DLC planned in the near future? Or an entirely new game or anything? I know about Steel Division from Paradox. But W:RD seems a lot more fun with its tech, helis and troop types than the WWII style of SD.

[umiman]

Currently there's no news about anything Eugen is up to so who knows if there's a new game in store.

You don't need the DLC but if you like the factions then there's no harm in picking them up. As far as I'm aware, they're all pretty strong with all having unique and powerful units. Some might say overpowered in some circumstances, but your mileage may vary.

Though, fair warning, this game is hard as balls.

[sambojin]

Oh, another question. What happens when a player drops connection? I've seen it happen quite often in 10v10s and 4v4s on youtube vids. Does the AI take over that person's stuff, or are you completely down a player? Mainly because I live in Australia (+10GMT), so might end up playing before work a bit, which should put me at evenings in America (I start work fairly early). But when I've got to go, I've got to go. So I won't bother starting a game if it means I'm letting down the whole team if I have to leave, even if it's just a funsies game. If the AI takes over, then spamming a bit of cheap mortar and AA and mike-dropping probably isn't too big of a letdown if the AI takes up the slack. Not an intended plan, but like all RTS games, what looks like a 25min game can drag out to 50mins pretty easily.


(it being hard is half the fun)

[umiman]

Someone else gets all your stuff and your whole team gets a big boost to income and availability.

Sometimes it's super clutch to lose a really bad player as a good player gets a shittonne more money and troops to work with. It's also why 1v2s and 1v3s are way more balanced than you might initially think.

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When you start out I recommend you try out tactical modes as a sort of tutorial so you get firsthand experience on what every unit is. I also recommend capture modes over modes where whoever loses the most points loses. This is because in the points lost / gained mode, everyone just turtles as it's super hard to attack without losing more than you gain. Whereas in the capture modes, people fight over the locations on the map without consideration over losses or gains. It's just more fun in general unless you like camping in one spot for hours.

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If it's not ranked and you're not having fun, you don't have to stay in a game if you don't want to so don't feel bad if you have to leave or just don't want to play.

[sambojin]

Yeah. I'll be theory-crafting the hell out of this one. Only to watch it all fall apart against real players.

Still not sure exactly what nation/coalition, or even side, that I'll use as my main. There's so many, all with some nice options for some niche uses. I've got this terrible idea I'll end up as either French or Dutch mostly, because of their playstyles.

Or USSR, because 20pt mortars, no matter how short ranged or crappy, will look glorious when spammed. Really low HE (2?), so probably won't even tickle infantry in towns much, but being able to roll out three pieces and a ten point supply truck for 70pts seems to be pretty useful. I've rarely seen people use smoke all that well, but it seems to be one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. A slight softening effect against infantry is just a bonus in comparison. Also nice to make small AA traps, ATGM traps, everything really. It demands a response, because they often won't know that they're the worst of the worst. They probably aren't THAT vulnerable if spread out a bit, and the moment someone sees a fair bit of mortar fire arcing, you can expect counter-battery fire, which politely reveals their artillery positions to you for a cheap price. There's better mortars, but 20pts is horrendously cheap for how useful they are, regardless of softness, autonomy or firepower. Kinda useful to have a spare supply truck hanging around too, which you'll probably need with these anyway.

[Xardalas]

I've been getting back in to this with a Norad Airborn deck. Sheesh. I forgot how annoyingly complicated this game is.

[sambojin]

Might not be too bad as a larger part of a team. Just kind of choose a role and stick to that. I'll wait to see if they have an easter sale, but after that, feel free to hit me up for a game.

On the mortar/smoke thing, this isn't too bad of an example. Admittedly, they're using Bluefor/US 7km versions, and I'm not entirely sure if it's good use of it, but it's certainly a lot of smoke used.  Bluefor probably only uses actual mortar shells once or twice the entire battle, but smokes every push (almost to the point where it seems counter-productive sometimes). Their enemies tend to use HE, but to little overall effect. USSR's ability to do this incredibly cheaply seems just as good as any of their other advantages, of which they have a few.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z347Clwt1f0


There's a few other teams with 20pt'ers, and plenty with 25pt versions. From memory, the Japs and the Aussies get fairly respectable 3HE versions at this price for Bluefor (along with most other people I guess).

Can anyone comment on if they've used them effectively? The higher rate of fire doesn't seem to be a disadvantage as long as you roll a truck alongside them. Between that and the tighter dispersion, I'm surprised I don't see them used more often. Lots of smoke, quick. For actual damage, not many things have more than 1-2 top armour. And you're going for panicked and stunned anyway, not kills, though every bit of damage helps. The decreased time between rounds and tighter spread (especially with three cheapos firing) is just what you need to hit infantry in towns too. ~4km range is low, but it's higher than anything else you've got. And I'd probably rather them getting missile'd than any other thing in my force anyway. So does anyone use them well? Or are they as bad as their points cost suggest?


If you can agonize between transport options and general usability of 20pt and 40pt infantry, why not mortars? Considering it's their smoke and support fire that lets all those choices actually work well in more than niche environments and match-ups anyway. You don't need a support deck to need smoke. But which one is best/most available/most useful? I'm wondering if the cheap ones aren't the answer, even with their downsides (range, ammo capacity and supply problems). At least they won't be lagging so far behind your pushes that you forget to use them.

If you can get 3 "good" mortars for 120pts, surely getting 3 "bad" ones for 60pts, with 2 supply trucks and some AA or ATGM infantry is "better"? Considering they'll be doing exactly the same thing. Sitting there, dropping smoke and barraging towns. Except your force balance is far better, you've got a few extra reserves, and plenty of supply to help out your real forces when needed.

I'm not saying it's the be-all-and-end-all, but points have got to budge somewhere for all the nice little extras (like supply, AA, niche vehicles). Mortars seem to be one of the few things that do "about the same job" on either end of the points scale. Better is better, but cheaper is better too.

[Burnt Pies]

From my vague recollection of USSR decks (I haven't played USSR since shortly after release), they've got an autoloaded mortar (Vasilek?) with absolutely crazy burst fire, or a really pricy one with very nice accuracy and range, and those are the ones I recall seeing most often.

Only 20 point mortars I recall seeing are the tiny little french cars, where did you find them on the USSR deck?

[sambojin]

I'm going from memory of a two year old review of USSR decks off youtube. So they may have been patched out since then. Or I may have misremembered.

[umiman]

Pfft... Soviet mortars...

Check this shit out:



Twin barrelled automatic mortar, baby.

[sambojin]

Found a couple of the "hidden stats" spreadsheets for calcs on W:RD numbers, here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lon0cgmjfqwq1oi/WargameRD_Hidden_Knowledge_Spreadsheet.xlsx?dl=0

and here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3-e_FMjlmWXOHlQTFVhUjF4X2M/view


They're not exactly up to date, but most of the basic figures are still relevant. Good to know just how good your optics are vs stealth, just what HEAT damage is doing on hits vs armour, how close is good for KE, and ballpark figures for HE damage.

Looks like 3HE is a good cut-off point for mortars. Even vs 2 armour top/sides/rear, you're doing 1.2pts of damage on a direct hit, and have a slightly longer dropoff range for non-direct splash than the really cheap 2HE versions. A decent barrage will usually ping at least a few side/rear/top hits, so at least it'll have some visible effect. It does keep parts of a hit, but it's nicer to see full blocks disappear, so you know you're actually doing something.

So pretty much everything other than heavies/super heavies is fair game for anything 3HE or more if they're splashy and inaccurate (like mortars), and "missing behind by a tiny bit" is an advantage in many cases . It might not do much, but it's still doing something at least. Something I wouldn't have credited such a low value to be able to do.


It's more about getting as much HE actually hitting around the target as possible, as quickly as possible, than actually having high HE values. Yes, a 15HE bomb is 5x better than a 3HE mortar round, and with a far bigger radius (although I'm pretty sure HE damage dropoff uses some kind of sqrt function, so misses are more of a comparative waste). But you can launch a three shot salvo from three mortars in about ten seconds, giving 9 splashes of moderately accurate 3HE blasts. 27HE landing all around to hopefully hit sides/top/rear may be better than one big blast in some cases, and for a far cheaper price than a decent bomber.

Those Japanese 25pt mortars actually look alright now. 18 rounds/min, plenty of ammo, and not too bad autonomy. Bring a truck and they'll probably do more than most MLRSs, even if they do have to move into range. Good for smoke, but not too bad for town scrubbing either. (assuming they still exist with the stats I remember).


It also explains why having a point or two of armour on choppers is so good against even massed machine guns. 2pts frontal "may" make you immune to small arms (I'll have to test it), and 1pt gives you a 1/10th effectiveness against them. Same goes for transports too (but damn near everything has some sort of AP rocket, which you certainly aren't immune to), but it's harder to pick your auto-mulch targets in those niche occasions. Fair enough, there's AA, but it is something I didn't ever know accurately. Auto-cannons will still ruin your day, but there's times and places for a 1 chopper "Ride of the Valkyries" apparently, by the spreadsheets at least.

[sambojin]

Finally bought this, downloading now. Just the standard version, I'll grab some DLCs later. Had to even make a new steam account to do so (I'll be jiggered if I can remember the email I had my last one associated with).

I'll spend the day mucking around, learning how to play the game, and theory-crafting decks. But if someone's up for a game later on, give me a yell.

My new steam username is "sambojin69". I'm probably fine to play most afternoons for an hour or two, Australian Eastern Standard time (+10GMT). Early morning shifts for work though, so I don't know how well that fits into other people's schedules.

Eugen W:RD name is "sambojin".


It turns out that I'm pretty bad at this so far (2 quick skirmishes with AI help). We won the second one that was heavily in my favour, 3v2 and better AI on my side. Only felt like I was just helping, and grabbing cleared zones. Will go more tank heavy next run. I'll go through the tutorials and some campaign stuff soon too. My Japanese general deck gets used very well by the AI though. Spam those tanks and anti-air for me! Lol

Seems to be a nicer nation than it first appears.Them jets aren't as bad as they look. As long as you've already killed everything that can remotely hurt them. They help to do that too.

I'll put a deck string when I'm back on the PC in a sec, so you can give me some pointers on deck design if you want.

[sambojin]

There's only so much you can do with a Jap General deck, and this nabs all the good bits, and has a bit of eliteness mixed in with some spam. Not very much infantry, but what's there, is good (grenade launcher transports, vetted anti-air, etc). Plenty of tanks, and six heavies to play with. 10 planes, all with a vague amount of utility. And a vehicle tab to help spam ATGMs if needed. Heli-infantry and tank command squads, both pretty bad, but enough to go around, and some cargo trucks + FOB. Could easily drop the FOB for more trucks or points if you want. This deck doesn't tend to go backward that often. Recon isn't amazing, but it's usable (and that stealth chopper is superb).

No huge holes that I can see, except for the complete lack of any proper artillery, but it tends to roll forward too quickly or stop and "tactic" too much to really use it. Could probably drop the mortars for some proper artillery, or get better mortars, but it seems fine without it. I like cheap fast-firing mortars, but that's to taste. Could drop the tiny choppers or the second set of light tanks to squeeze something in if necessary too. I think I upped the mortar's level in the prototype deck, forget if I remembered to drop it back. Had two cards of them, but totally unnecessary. 5 or 8 is about as good as each other in this version.

So what are your thoughts on the deck? Too elite for its own good while keeping very useful things "normal"? Or ok'ish for a Jap deck?
There's not much else to add to it that I can see. It's a mono-type, multi-dimensional nation. And tends to seem worse if it's not a general deck.

It almost plays as an anti-air support deck, but also using air to accomplish this. With bad/ok'ish tank rush and infantry to bolster this. The AI loves it.

Deck String:
@Es8CIzVsiFUKOM1bIRSn4QrT8IVp+EKpORFInInvKgyNdJUSVEoorbS2ks9CmKBENRDUQ1kNYoBKiSdINDR+SgRH9R/EfwA=

[Xardalas]

Hey! I'm free. You for a few games over discord?