Units that are way too cheap/expensive

[Thexder]

I've played this great game for six months now and it has become (too large part of my life. During these six months I've found only one thing that is (potentially) really bad for the game enjoyment: the units which are off-balanced in cost.

I've found quite a few units that are way too cheap and concequently screw the balance of the game. Off course one can avoid this by modifying the OOB's or banning the units, but I found these measures to be unsatisfying.

At least the following units are IMO too cheap:
- on-map Russian Uragans and USMC Mars artillery
*For a cost of less than 60 these units can fire 6-8 rockets of 60/60 a turn!
- Chinese F-98 LAW team
*acc 50, range 16, HEAT 80, cost 20(!!!)
- Chinese F-97 FAE team
*acc 20, kill 36, HEAT 27, range 17, cost 17(!!!)
- Most of the attack helos
*These are the true kings of the battlefield that are very accurate and destructive easily killing 3-5 times their points worth before being destroyed (or fled from the battle field)

I'm sure there are others as well. I hoped that these would have been corrected in WinSPMBT but was wrong. Maybe we could try to find a consensus about the cost of these units and correct them to the next official version of the game.

Do you find these units to be too cheap and do you know other units with similar problems?

[PlasmaKrab]

If you feel like the job, you can reprice ALL units in your game,with the Costcalculator.exe utility, using unit class factors. These are dividers that decide of the final cost of all units. If you tweak these dividers you can make definite classes to be uniformately cheaper or costlier.

These are the true kings of the battlefield that are very accurate and destructive easily killing 3-5 times their points worth before being destroyed (or fled from the battle field)

Well, that IS what they are made for, aren't they? You just have to know how to use them right and make the enemy lose his ones miserably

Maybe you got a point though (no offence meant), that is that the AP ability is mch overrated, which implies that ATGM units (tank hunters, AT helos, ATGM teams) are much costlier than say FAE rocket units, which bring devastation on infantry units, which in turn are way chaper than AFVs... and so on. It all relates on what you consider as the most important...

[Thexder]

PlasmaKrab said:

Well, that IS what they are made for, aren't they? You just have to know how to use them right and make the enemy lose his ones miserably

Yes, that's exactly my point. Let me give you an example. I'm currently playing a USMC vs. Germany 2006 game. We agreed on using two attack helos. I bought two AH-1 Supercobras with vis40, EW8, TOW-2B AT-ATGM and two DAGR-cannons. They cost 464 a piece. My opponent bought two PAH-2 Tiger UHT with vis60, EW7, HOT-3 and SYROCOT for 415 a piece. I planned my whole strategy for countering the helos - that ment not buying a single tank and only a very limited amount of APC (which are all destroyed now). We both had 18k points to spend. The whole combination of my forces was as unrealistic as it gets but I'm winning the battle!

My opponent is very good in preserving his tanks and APC's but with superior helos I've been able to easily kill five (out of eight) of his Leo 2A6-EX tanks and dozens of APC's. My opponent spent heavily on AntiAir systems as well but my artillery has been effective against them as they're very vulnerable. My helos have now (turn 31/40) about 30 kills, most of them AFV's. Another of them got hit and fled, but the other makes sure my opponent can't show his tanks any more as they would be instantly killed. And my opponent is very good player, much more experienced and probably better than me. The explanation of my good situation lies solely of my tactic of not buying AFV's because of the helos. This made the game more one-sided and, in some way, I feel like I cheated somehow.
The helos of my opponent are both untouched and have killed lots of infantry (which I have plenty). I've been able to try to hit them with Stingers 12 times without any success.

So the helos were the single deciding factor in our game. Without VIRS we both stayed almost put for 20 turns until I made a large parachute drop which "opened" the situation. The helos, for the cost of less than 1000 or 1/18 of the points in the game have destroyed units for worth of more than 5k (about) with only 1/4 fled from the battlefield. This can't be right, can it?

There are three ways to correct the situation:
1. Make the attack helos less destructive
2. Make them more vulnerable to AA-guns
3. Rise the cost of them

I'm not an expert, so I don't know how realistic the two first are in the game. But at least the third is nearly a joke. The correct value of one new attack helo is maybe 3-6 times the best MBT there is IMO, so the accurate cost would be maybe 1500-3000 points for the best helos.
This would be problematic though, because losing one would be too big a setback and rest of the game would, in many cases, be just fighting against the inevitable.
I think the best choice would be the second option, to make the helos more vulnerable to AA-units. Maybe a 33% accuracy when firing with the best kind if Stinger or so would be suitable.

Well, these are just my experiences and ideas and might not be shared by the majority. But I've found out that many players like to play without attack helos and when playing with them, almost all players like to set strict limits to their numbers.

So, the Gunships are the kings of the battlefield, and rightly so, but wouldn't it be time to make them cost accordingly?

[PlasmaKrab]

About the loss of one helo as a critical aset, you have to remember how easily they flee from the field at the first damage. Or even if they happen to be really suppressed, they walk much faster than anyone else and can get off-map before you can catch them!

It is just as good that things go this way, considering they get back to the rear area repair shops to get fixed before crashing down, and can't come back in time.

Considering that anyone can have a pot shot at them, and even one guy with an Enfield rifle can deal one critical damage point on a helo (not often, I grant you) and erase it from the field anyhow, in most cases attack helos don't last that long unless you base your whole strategy on them. If you go more daredevil and use them as recon, you have more chances to lose one.

Now about vulnerability, remember that all modern attack helos (both Cobra and Tiger, even more Apache and Hind) are meant to withstand 23mm AP shells. Apart from that they have a durability value which stands for the damage they can deal with.
And maybe that is one reason why air units look so cheap, if the cost calculation is the same as for the AFVs: these two factors (armor and durability) stand for the whole airframe, and these units have no other armor rating.
Since the armor deals a great part of the unit cost, and these have only two non-zero value out of 24, this may explain that.

Als consider that helos have far less ammo than tanks. Even if you equate one (guided) ATGM for two or three sabot rounds in a modern MBT, helos are still on the poor side.

Both helos and tanks are among the ruling classes in this game, and can reach pretty delirious costs. When trying an extended-cold-war oob for West Germany, I was quite surprised to seee that my TRIGAT-armed BO-105 were actually more expensive than the basis Tiger UHT! And by adding 140mm HV gun, .50 overhead mount, VIRSS, addon armor etc, I managed to raise my Leopard2A8 over 600 points!

Anyway, as I told you, you can correct that by shrinking the dividing factor for the "attack helo" class in CostCalculator.

[Suurajatollah]

As PlasmaKrab put it: it all relates on what you consider as the most important.

Lets do a little comparison with country training on:

INF AT
-------
China:
* PF-98 LAW Team, cost 20p, accuracy 50, range 16
Germany:
* Pzfaust 3, cost 19p, accuracy 5, range 10
Finland:
* Apilas Team, cost 28p, accuracy 5, range 7

Penetration is almost the same with these three units but the other 3 most important properties differ. Clearly the accuracy of the Chinese law is false. I suppose that the zero is there by a mistake -accuracy of PF-98 LAW should be 5, not 50.

China:
*PF-97 FAE Team, 17p, range 17
Russia:
*RPO Team, 35p, range 17

Double the price and you get the same unit in the Russian army.
???


ON-MAP BOMBLET ARTILLERY
-------------------------
For example

*on-map BM-22 Uragan battery(6 tubes) , 324p, 6 Ammo Carriers, 210p, total 524 points
*on-map BM-22 Uragan (one piece)54p , Ammo Carrier 35p = 89p
*off-map BM-22 Uragan Pl(8 tubes) , 690p

Basically with lower cost you get more devastating weapons as the on-map artillery is much better than off-map. One is able to fire several times more bomblet ammo (size 2??? What for? Israeli LARs ammo size is 8 thus they are slower to refill) in a game when he spends the money on 524p Uragan batteries with Ammo Carriers -all this with lower costs.

And when you compare
*on-map BM-22 Uragan (one piece)54p , Ammo Carrier 35p = 89p
to one
* Msta-S , 142p you only get more confused. Msta-S is nothing to that Uragan.

Not to mention the cumulative effect of the on-map bomblet artillery batteries, which can be horrible!

Conclusion is that on-map bomblet artillery should cost much more than 54p or so.

ATTACK HELICOPTERS
------------------
AH-64 Apache with 2 TOW-2B, vision 60 EW 8, Aero costs 747.
One of the best tanks, M1A2 SEP Abrams without VIRSS costs 465. That Apache is capable to destroy many Abrams without even to be seen! Look at the price of those units and see the fault.

And when one of the best SPAA sections, Tunguska (2pcs), costs 562p the blunder is clear. Apache can take, what would I say, 5 to 10 Tunguskas easily in a 25 turn game. It's game over before it ever started.

I really think that CostCalculator parameters should be reconsidered and be fixed in a future upgrade of winspmbt.

[shilka]

A Tunguska battery would probably shoot down a Apache before he reached fire distance on a western battlefield. They are excellent short to medium range SPAA units IRL. Probably one of this worlds most effective ones today besides the american 20mm Phalanx gun system.

Today the Russians have probably made them even more deadly then when I first saw them on a documentary called Dual In The Desert from 2003 with the export version of the 2S6 Tunguska system on the screen. Have anyone seen one of these systems engaging a flying object? I know this much, if you are having a ride with an Apache helicopter and your machinery is locked by a 9M311 SAM missile you are pretty much toast.

The Tunguska system is far from that old Shilka ZSU-23-4 system even if it still is a pretty good one depending on where you are posted in the world. In open desert it can be hard to keep your head cold in one of those coffins. But in a dense jungel as in Korea you can still get burned.

Just talk to someone that have been flying A-10 Warthog over Iraq and then moved to the Korean mainland. It is a great differance between open desert and European or South East Asian djungel areas with these babys on the ground.

Now I know the game has it´s limitations but I can really understand why those choppers are as expensive as they are. They are the games most effective flying artillery units. *lol*