How about a Petition

[Titan]

Just a thought, since many members here are CM players how would it go if all use members that wanted battlefront to revisit the cost of some of the armoured vehicles for QB. Surley if a playing group with so many players that support there products asked them to review some aspects of the cost of units it would carry alot of weight and may get there attention. One person on there own in comparison would go nowhere, but an email with several hundred members supporting a change would get there attention surley

 

[Larsen]

I would love that. In fact they should let us have a mode that modifies the QB prices. At the end the community will do the price discovery. Free markets is a wonderful thing!

 

[A Canadian Cat]

Just a thought, since many members here are CM players how would it go if all use members that wanted battlefront to revisit the cost of some of the armoured vehicles for QB. Surley if a playing group with so many players that support there products asked them to review some aspects of the cost of units it would carry alot of weight and may get there attention. One person on there own in comparison would go nowhere, but an email with several hundred members supporting a change would get there attention surley

I suppose it is possible. It certainly has never been tried before. Here are my suggestions:
1) Write an introduction with an overview of why you feel its important - probably can reuse a bunch of words from this thread.
2) Point out which vehicles you think are over or under valued and what you are comparing it to - with a case for each comparison
3) Refrain from suggesting any specific values in any of the above
4) Present your proposed value changes in a list separate from the above
5) Don't add extra stuff that will distract from your goal - adjusting prices of some equipment (see below)

The reason I suggest pushing your proposed price changes until after your logical arguments is to not get people, including Steve, distracted by their opinion on your choice of value. Convince them of the problem. Nothing happens if you cannot accomplish that. Then propose a solution. Steve will certainly consider your value suggestions but first you have to convince him that you have a case. The biggest hurdle will be decent from others in the community. I disagreed with some of the specifics in this thread but didn't bother discussing them since I view it as kinda pointless. If you really want to build consensus and try to get Steve to change his mind you will have to deal with those decenting voices. I recommend doing so in a polite and logical way - even when they don't. Steve will not be particularly flapped over a discussion over a particular value that people think is wrong. If he is convinced that there is somewhat of a consensus that the is a problem. He'll pick a new value he thinks is reasonable but he'll only consider doing that if he is convinced there is a problem.

I would love that. In fact they should let us have a mode that modifies the QB prices. At the end the community will do the price discovery. Free markets is a wonderful thing!

Adding extra features such as this is a bad idea. Don't be tempted. I know we all have cool stuff we want but this kind of thing is totally against Steve's design philosophy so it will not help your case.

 

[Lethaface]

I'd support it as well. At the same time I think it would be wise to concentrate the effort on what is the most important issue and why it is wrong. Edit: while I'm typing this @A Canadian Cat already ninja'ed what I tried to say (and probably better).

Personally I think there is one 'significant' issue and that is the combat value of TDs without turrets vs Tanks/ TDs with turrets. However I haven't made a 'case study' to check if this is true for all vehicles, but it certainly seemed so. From a player perspective I guess it would be that there is never a reason to buy a casemated TD, because it has less combat power compared to tanks with similar armor/gun, while costing about the same amount of points.

 

[Bullman]

Just a thought, since many members here are CM players how would it go if all use members that wanted battlefront to revisit the cost of some of the armoured vehicles for QB. Surley if a playing group with so many players that support there products asked them to review some aspects of the cost of units it would carry alot of weight and may get there attention. One person on there own in comparison would go nowhere, but an email with several hundred members supporting a change would get there attention surley

An interesting proposition. Is this also including the units Rarity value?

I do know that there are MANY units that I have not been able to use in QBs simply because their Rarity, Cost or even worse Rarity & Cost just make it too prohibitive to invest in them. What ends up happening is that QB force selection can get very stale and same-same every battle and the only hope to ever see/use those high end units is to hope someone put them in an otherwise "realistic/balanced" custom scenario.

You can of course adjust the Rarity QB setting (Strict, Standard, Loose, None) to deal with the Rarity issue. OK, so as I was writing this, I actually opened up CMBN to check exactly how each of those Rarity settings work. Ummm, surely this won't make the first to point this out, but incredibly, there seems to be no difference between the Strict and Standard Rarity settings!!!! What is going on with that????

eg. Looking at say the Brits in a June 44, France QB, the "typical" Churchill IV has Rarity values of 0, 275, 825 and 825 for None, Loose, Standard and Strict settings.

If anything it looks like the Standard setting (probably the most common QB setting used, and probably the only one I recall ever using) is using the Strict value of 825 whereas it probably SHOULD be using a value between 500 and 600? It might even explain why there are so many units i just have never found feasible to purchase in even Standard Rarity QBs.

Surely we DONT need a petition to at least fix this!!!! As I said, I am just surprised this hasn't even been addressed/fixed in all these years!

I just checked CMFB and it didn't seem to have the same problem.

Back to the discussion, it is also worth noting that there might be some cursory value in at least comparing how other games "cost" their units. The game that has a similar OOB range to CM and has a "unit cost system" is Steel Division: Normandy and Steel Division 2. It definitely would be interesting to compare how the relative costs of units between the games compare as well as the relative cost "ranking" of each unit within their own game.

Has anyone actually created a spreadsheet of all the CM unit costs for any of the releases? If so, I would be fun to play around with it.

 

[Abbasid111]

If you are going to approach BFC about changing point values you need to make a ' case study '. Going in saying "I think" or "I feel" without any back up is not going to get you anywhere.

 

[Gorst]

You can of course adjust the Rarity QB setting (Strict, Standard, Loose, None) to deal with the Rarity issue. OK, so as I was writing this, I actually opened up CMBN to check exactly how each of those Rarity settings work. Ummm, surely this won't make the first to point this out, but incredibly, there seems to be no difference between the Strict and Standard Rarity settings!!!! What is going on with that????

eg. Looking at say the Brits in a June 44, France QB, the "typical" Churchill has Rarity values of 0, 275, 825 and 825 for None, Loose, Standard and Strict settings.

If anything it looks like the Standard setting (probably the most common QB setting used, and probably the only one I recall ever using) is using the Strict value of 825 whereas it probably SHOULD be using a value between 500 and 600? It might even explain why there are so many units i just have never found feasible to purchase in even Standard Rarity QBs.

Surely we DONT need a petition to at least fix this!!!! As I said, I am just surprised this hasn't even been addressed/fixed in all these years!

Rarity Multipliers

Loose
Standard: x0
Common: x0
Uncommon: x1
Limited: x1
Rare: x2

Standard
Standard: x0
Common: x1
Uncommon: x3
Limited: x5
Rare: x8

Strict
Standard: x0
Common: x1
Uncommon: x3
Limited: x7
Rare: x16

 

[Bullman]

Rarity Multipliers

Loose
Standard: x0
Common: x0
Uncommon: x1
Limited: x1
Rare: x2

Standard
Standard: x0
Common: x1
Uncommon: x3
Limited: x5
Rare: x8

Strict
Standard: x0
Common: x1
Uncommon: x3
Limited: x7
Rare: x16

Wow Bremer, that definitely explains what I was seeing then (Churchill IV must be categorised as "uncommon"). Thanks for the comprehensive breakdown of how CM actually handles it all.

 

[Bullman]

Just a thought, since many members here are CM players how would it go if all use members that wanted battlefront to revisit the cost of some of the armoured vehicles for QB

Back to the actual vehicle costs, I am certainly interested in knowing what would be considered amongst players to be say the "top 5" QB cost offenders. Could even go further and ask "top 5 too cheap" and "top 5 too expensive" offenders list. I personally would struggle to list any of those top 5 because I can't say that I have ever really thought about it too much. I just accept the values Battlefront assigned as being 'fair enough". Would be great to hear what others might list in their top 5 to see if there is some kind of consensus amongst players.

 

[Drifter Man]

Has anyone actually created a spreadsheet of all the CM unit costs for any of the releases? If so, I would be fun to play around with it.

Here you go for CMBN: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/0wdei6af4jurjjc/CMBN QB Tank cost.xlsx

If you are going to approach BFC about changing point values you need to make a ' case study '. Going in saying "I think" or "I feel" without any back up is not going to get you anywhere.

I agree, and particularly the question of how much disadvantage it is not to have a turret is hard to answer with objectivity.
Ideally we would have statistics of how much certain vehicles are used in QBs. Adding variety to the QB purchases should be a main point of this effort.
By the way, my tests are ongoing, but it will be long time before I have enough results for sharing. There is only so much that can be achieved by running one computer around the clock.

 

[Bullman]

Here you go for CMBN: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/0wdei6af4jurjjc/CMBN QB Tank cost.xlsx

Legend! Thank you! .....hmm, now you got me thinking!

 

[Bulletpoint]

By the way, my tests are ongoing, but it will be long time before I have enough results for sharing.

What are you testing these days? Something to do with unit costs?

 

[Drifter Man]

What are you testing these days? Something to do with unit costs?

Nope - that file was just an old (and incomplete) spreadsheet that I made long time ago, so I shared it.

I keep working on the spotting tests. I completed all Sherman variants and moved on to CMRT to do the T-34. I am having trouble with getting reliable results at the longest ranges and am still figuring out what the "error bar" is on my data. Observations so far (qualitative):
- Differences in spotting ability tend to be more pronounced at longer ranges. For example, a Sherman spots about 5% better than Pz IV at close ranges and about 15% better than Pz IV at long ranges.
- Shermans with commander's cupola have better spotting when buttoned up than those without cupola, but there is no significant difference when opened up.
- Shermans with cupola are on par with Panther A (both buttoned up and opened up)
- Firefly has weaker spotting ability than the other Shermans without cupola - they have one pair of eyes less - but still better than Pz IV
- CMRT Shermans have the same spotting as in CMBN (note that the M4A2 has no cupola, M4A2(76)W has one)
- T-34-76 has inferior spotting to Pz IV. The M1942 early model is pretty much blind when buttoned up, the M1942 late model is better but still inferior to Pz IV. When opened up, the difference is small but Pz IV is better.
- T-34-85 roughly on par with Pz IV when buttoned up and slightly better than Pz IV when opened up

 

[Bulletpoint]

For example, a Sherman spots about 5% better than Pz IV at close ranges and about 15% better than Pz IV at long ranges.

Damn, I was hoping that the Panzer IV would at least spot better than the Sherman... even though I always felt it spotted worse. What a piece of overpriced jünk.

- Firefly has weaker spotting ability than the other Shermans without cupola - they have one pair of eyes less - but still better than Pz IV

Sigh.

 

[Lethaface]

I agree, and particularly the question of how much disadvantage it is not to have a turret is hard to answer with objectivity.

Indeed it is and it depends on the context imo. One thing we know for sure is that going forward from WW2 the casemates died out. So at least the armies thought there was some value in it ;-). But quantifying that value in a single number for all situations (QBs) objectively is indeed rather hard.

Although I feel it is still easier to reason that the combat power of a Stug is less compared to a vehicle with a turret (should all other parameters stay the same), in contrast to reasoning that a specific tank for the Axis is better/worse than a specific tank for Allies and how that should quantify in points. For one it's not that there is a choice between the two, so if there is a problem it is not the same problem wrt the lack of casemates featuring in QBs. Secondly, the conclusion that tank X or Y is better against the other in a specific context, doesn't account for other things a tank can do better then the other.

 

[Bulletpoint]

I'm wondering if the reason I don't see much value in turrets in CM is that I don't play the modern warfare titles. Shoot and scoot doesn't really work when you can't reliably spot and engage the target in the brief time you're exposing the tank. I wish somebody would explain what exactly they can do with a turret that they can't with a casemate. Maybe it's just me being daft.

 

[Lethaface]

Damn, I was hoping that the Panzer IV would at least spot better than the Sherman... even though I always felt it spotted worse. What a piece of overpriced jünk..

I get the impression that for you the Pz IV performs like a R35, or at least that's the impression you share ;-). Let's assume the tests are accurate, 5% spotting differences is 5%, not 50%. In a normal fight the 5% wouldn't really be noticeable.

Personally I don't think the PzIV is a crap tank at all. It's right there in the ballpark with Shermans and has some advantages over it, mainly the gun. Although the Sherman certainly has advantages as well. The .50, fast moving turret, etc. Had I be given the points the PzIV variants would probably be a tad bit cheaper or the Shermans a tad bit more expansive compared to now, but not by that much.

 

[Bulletpoint]

Anyway, about the topic at hand, could we even agree enough about what the problem is to make a petition? There is no hard data to show that people don't use StuGs for example. Everybody who plays CM regularly knows it, but since Steve doesn't play his own game (by his own admission), he probably thinks everything is just fine. If some of you guys who are high on the ladder could agree that "people avoid these vehicles in competitive QB's" then maybe that could be a documentation of sorts. And then a list of people who don't play ladder games, like me, signing it because we agree.

 

[Bulletpoint]

I get the impression that for you the Pz IV performs like a R35, or at least that's the impression you share ;-)

I'm just a grumpy old man of 41 I'm not saying it's useless, just that I find it a tank with poor spotting, poor armour and a poor price point. I've never been in love with Panthers and Tigers.. I prefer units that punch above their weight. So would have loved for the Panzer IV to be a value star. But it punches well below its weight, as I see it. Least favourite vehicle in the game for me.

 

[Lethaface]

I'm wondering if the reason I don't see much value in turrets in CM is that I don't play the modern warfare titles. Shoot and scoot doesn't really work when you can't reliably spot and engage the target in the brief time you're exposing the tank. I wish somebody would explain what exactly they can do with a turret that they can't with a casemate. Maybe it's just me being daft.

Well if you feel that shoot & scoot doesn't really work I don't know where to start. I shoot & scoot all the time and it works great for me at least. There's no guarantees, just like there is no guaranteed spotting even if you have better spotting statistics.

Also it is quite nice that if your tanks is moving somewhere it can actually shoot to it's left/right, without coming to a halt and turning the vehicle. Also, try quickly area firing around a corner with shoot & scoot using a casemated vehicle.

In short there are a lot of things I do with tanks, which are less viable with casemated vehicles.