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The One True Change That Must Happen

This is pretty long, but it regards an urgent issue for as many players to see, so please read through and support this important issue for Call of War.

I have played in over fifty matches. I have seen many players come and go. I have won matches and I have lost matches. I have observed many different tactics as employed from the most experienced players to the most inept of the truly unimaginative. I have faulted no one when their strategies fail. To each his own and that includes how you play this game. Be it for fun, social interaction, the thrill of the challenge, or simply to pass the time, I've seen so many players play in so many ways and it pleases me to see the creativity that many people employ.

But there is one way of playing that I can no longer tolerate. It is the methodology of the mediocre strategist who employs a virtual cheat with a failed design element -- an exploit that must be stopped. And that is the usage of the all-powerful tactical bomber. In small numbers, the tac bomber is a normal unit that aids your ground forces in assault of the opposition. That is what the unit is supposed to represent. That is the way it was used in real life.

However, in Call of War, there are some players...whom I have come to loath...that build nothing but endless tactical bombers accompanying only light tanks. This unrealistic and very basic strategy is designed to quickly conquer land that is unwarranted to have been captured at the speed in which it has been captured. The way the strategy works, is that the player, building a chain of airbases, and focusing almost exclusively on tactical bombers with maybe a few interceptors for their support, use massive fleets of these tac bombers to wipe out almost all opposition so that his few light tanks can sweep through and take all the good land...often bypassing the "useless" provinces that would serve only to drag down their food and goods resources.

In the process, many players quickly abandon their nation out of frustration before this onslaught. The AI, having taken over, is then kept "alive" by that other player who leaves several of those worthless provinces for the AI to keep rebuilding it's capital in the face of completely hopeless odds...a trick to garner very-unwarranted additional morale boosts. The effect of which can enable a player to keep his entire empire at maxed out morale levels by daily capturing only one or two AI capitals in an artificial and unjust exploit of a pitiably-designed system AI.

Furthermore, to facilitate the success of this oft-used strategy, those players that do commonly exploit it, will typically employ arrogance tactics against other players in the diplomacy and herald papers...with some even taking to baiting them like prey to be pounced upon. As much as I like Call of War, I find this particular behavior to be very reprehensible.

Interestingly, the only reason this tactic works -- and the only reason that most players have difficulty fighting back -- is because of the overly-powered strength levels of the tactical bomber. Unlike most other units in the game, the tactical bomber has been given far too much offensive power against ground units while the AA levels of most ground units are too under-powered. Even the AA and self-propelled AA -- at equivalent tech levels -- are severely underpowered against the tactical bomber. Now, I would claim that the nuclear bomber is underpowered against AA units and can frequently get shot down when it would not make sense to do so. But the tactical bomber, when used in large numbers, has a tendency to take out the enemy in numbers at nearly four to one against ground forces guarded even with large numbers of AA.

As an example, in one match recently, to quantify and test this strength imbalance, I sent out several large armies against an opponent that has been using this strategy throughout the match. Each army was very powerful, with good numbers each of tanks, mechanized infantry, and tank destroyers, all fully upgraded and in good condition and guarded from air attack by large numbers of self-propelled AA. In fact, I sent 5 large armies in a wide front and watched as each one was picked off by the tactical bomber screen. The casualties were at least three to one in his favor. Though the AA did do it's job of shooting down some tac bombers, the fact that everything in each group would be destroyed while the enemy only lost 2 to 3 bombers per battle was -- to say the least -- disappointing. It was a slaughter. I had a superior army, the enemy didn't even have an army nearby...just the bombers. In fact, I had built, just for this experiment, about 80 self-propelled AA's and yet the losses suffered by the other player amounted to about 20 bombers and less than 10 interceptors. I lost nearly 200 units.

The loss was, of course, devastating and I will lose this match because of this. However, were the tactical bomber not so overly-rated or else had the AA been sufficiently set to counter the bombers, then I would not only have won those battles but would likely be winning the match.

I am not saying that I want things to change so that I can have better results. I am just tired of seeing so many players (besides myself) have everything they have done...to employ all kinds of interesting and bad and good strategies...to have it all shot down by this one strategy.

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This tactic reminds me of something from the game "Starcraft". In that game, in multiplayer matches, there would be two kinds of players...those that followed the various strategies of which that game makes possible and those that would simply build nothing but a basic unit...the "zergling". Those that built only zerglings found them cheap and easy to build and thus would send endless numbers of them against a single enemy to overwhelm them with the death of a thousand cuts. Other players, who refused this strategy for it's unimaginative ways, often derided those players and despised them for "ruining" it for everyone else.

So too is it true of Call of War, when someone builds only one type of unit -- particularly the light tank or tactical bomber -- that they ruin the experience for everyone else. The worst part about it is the arrogant bragging that these players like to employ. They think they are masters at strategy because they have practiced and perfected one single strategy and reuse it throughout most of the matches that they play. They think that because they win lots of those matches by this method, that they are a superior player.

The truth is, I am a superior player. I can and do employ all kinds of strategy. I can think inside and outside of the box, so to speak, and I can easily out-think my enemies in this game. And I can use that zerg-like tac bomber strategy...and I have to great affect, but I loath it and despise those that do use it often. Surely, the tactic makes sense in some few circumstances as I have indeed seen. But to constantly rely on this tired old strategy because the developers at Bytro seemingly refuse to nerf the overpowered tactical bomber makes for a miserable gaming experience for the vast majority of us when facing those unimaginative users who refuse to use any creativity in their strategy.

So I make a call to the people of Bytro. Please, either reduce the power of the tactical bomber or else ramp up the power of the ground-based anti-aircraft units in Call of War. And, the opposite is true of the naval bomber. I won't go into it, here, but the naval bomber needs to be ramped up or else the AA capabilities of naval units needs to be nerfed.

Please bring better balance to this game. Please "like" to show your support for this.

It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.
R.I.P. Snickers <3

51 Replies

Agreed. Tac Bombers are supposed to be OP, like this meme shows

PhantomNiqht
RPU Website Manager

In WWII, Tac Bombers were not that powerful...they carried good explosives, but they often had to carry lots of air defenses from enemy fighters just as ground forces had to have anti air against them. The fighters weren't the end-all-be-all of air defenses...they just were good at intercepting before the target reached it's destination. But once in range of an AA with elevation charges and flak, the odds of getting shot down were actually pretty high.

Of course, fighters are better than AA -- and they're supposed to be so -- but that shouldn't negate that AA has to have some firepower against bombers. The only reason I'm complaining about this is because the ratio is all wrong. Against 80 bombers, I had 200 land units, all equivalent strength with 80 AA. The combined strength of all the land units was equivalent to 100 AA. So, if 80 bombers vs. 100 AA, then I should at least be able to get half the bombers even if I lose all 200 units. But I only got about 10 bombers.

That's 10 bombers (and a few fighters) for 200 land units. Regardless of a lack of air support on my part, I should have at least destroyed half of his forces. Frankly, with the total hit points at my disposal, I should have wiped him out. He used separate groups to keep his SBDE high, but so did I. We were on equal terms and I lost by overwhelming proportions.

This is why I say the Tac Bomber is far overpowered and/or the AA are far underpowered. According to the numbers, even if I had my own fighters, they wouldn't have made that much of a difference unless I had nearly 200 of them on scene to counter my ground losses.

It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.
R.I.P. Snickers <3

Ah, I understand your thinking but I think the devs thought about more than just the math of the situation. My guess is that you had these AA stacked instead of spread out correct? Now even if you have the worlds finest kick ass AA regiment how many of those TB's have to hit their target to take out a whole shitload of your stacked up AA's? Same theory applied to the use of the MOAB for infantry, it only takes one well placed hit and if you have them all sitting in the same place well then there is your math.

Point being many hypothetical situations can exist between AA's, TB's, Int's ect... to program an across the board way of handling the many different outcomes of such battle situations would be presumptuous at best. This is why we have the random function for randomizing the many different possible outcomes. I would consider that responsible programming. How much time and effort would you consider reasonable for your free game?

"It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past." - Karl Von Clausewitz

Since battle statistics are key to any war game, I consider careful programming of them to be very crucial to this game whether or not it is "free". As for the outcome of a battle, the statistics are calculated hourly and, for patrolling aircraft, quarterly per hour. The total hit points for each class of unit are subdivided as a portion of any damages and the actual damages are randomized, presumably.

That being said, there is such a thing as statistical trends. When you have a superior force in total hit points but the other side has a superior force in total firepower (with all conditions considered), then it's usually a matter of seeing which side wins out with both sides usually ending up with about the same percentage of damage, overall. But when one side is clearly superior to the other, then it will almost always win, even when considering random chance weighed in by number generators.

Your analogy of hitting everything in one spot does not hold against the top-of-the-stack method of calculating battle statistics in a computer-generated simulation. Since a unit "stack" actually consists of multiple stacks of separate unit types, it stands to reason that some of each stack are damaged...with each stack damaged according to it's appropriate proportion...thus AA are more resistant to air attack than infantry. Yet, infantry defensive rating should not be completely ignored in recording total damage rating against the aircraft.

But in this scenario, the AA from my test battle should have contributed much more total damage to the aircraft by simple fact of their published damage rating. In other words, either the system is wrong in calculations, or the numbers reported by the system are a blatant lie...either way, the result is the same: the tac bombers are over-powered and/or the AA are under-powered.

It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.
R.I.P. Snickers <3

Bluephantom956 wrote:

Agreed. Tac Bombers are supposed to be OP, like this meme shows
Except... the image shown is a strat bomber not a tac bomber....
Killings my business, and business is good!

Alphared wrote:

Bluephantom956 wrote:

Agreed. Tac Bombers are supposed to be OP, like this meme shows
Except... the image shown is a strat bomber not a tac bomber....
Illuminati Confirmed!
PhantomNiqht
RPU Website Manager

bumping thread, just because I think OP has a valid point that needs to have constant attention:)

Why...thank you!

It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.
R.I.P. Snickers <3

I agree with the above

PhantomNiqht
RPU Website Manager

It is interesting that we haven't seen any comments from the staff on this. If they don't agree with something they are normally on a post quick as lightning.

"It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past." - Karl Von Clausewitz

Well, I hope that any changes are done to correct errors in calculation, not to nerf the unit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_87

The Stuka Dive Bomber was a truly formidable weapon and was only countered by better air superiority fighters. Coming in on the target from an altitude of almost 15,000 feet in a dive that could be as steep as 90 degree vertical, it was not overly susceptible to AA fire.

Perhaps there is an error in how the AA defense is calculated. Perhaps it is an accurate reflection of what was.

I would say we should think carefully before adjusting numbers for "playability" if they have a significant divergence from what would be a historical situation.

The Allied response to the Stuka was to gain air superiority, not beef up their AA to knock them out of the sky. I would suggest that our players should do the same.

I just send in a tank, let it get bombed, then rocket the airbase they're returning to for refueling =P

All history aside, from a game design perspective, if we're talking hard counters, let's talk hard counters. Look at the hard counters that are already in-game.

Look at Anti Tank vs Light Tank.

AT vs LT

7 STR vs 20 HP : 3 rounds AT

10 HP vs 2.5 STR: 4 round LT

AT is very cheap and fast to produce, and will beat a Light Tank while defending.

Look at Anti Air vs Tactical Bomber.

AA vs TB

4 STR vs 25 HP : 7 rounds AA

10 HP vs 3 STR: 4 round TB

The AA is not very AA.The disparity only gets worse as the units are upgraded with research.

Tactical Bombers are a bit beefy (moreso than a light tank), AA is a bit weak, and tactical bombers are far too mobile for something like AA. This means that you'll usually have a stack of TB's going after AA which are very spread out.

Overall, air units may be a bit too durable. Either their HP values could be lowered, or the strength of anti air could be increased.

One possibility could be to modify the tech trees to make AA, AT, etc more viable for upgrade.

Notice the Russian 85 mm 52 K Anti-Air gun (lvl5 AA)? That was also a powerful anti tank gun... Which was used to make the SU-85 Tank Destroyer (lvl3 Tank Destroyer... which is available before the lvl5 AA) and KV-85 heavy tank

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/85_mm_air_defense_gun_M1939_(52-K)#Tank_guns

Same is true with the 8.8 Flak guns by Germany used for the Elefant and Jagdpanther and turret-mounted 8.8 kwk 43 heavy tank gun of the Tiger II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.8_cm_Flak_18/36/37/41

...Same for the 90mm M1/M2/M3 American Anti-Air / Anti-Tank guns being used on heavy tanks and tank destroyers...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90_mm_Gun_M1/M2/M3

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Point is, it wasn't uncommon for guns to literally be their own "tech tree," while tank chassis set the stage for self-propelled platforms. Having the pre-requisites (Gun, Chassis) could make the self-propelled version very quick research upgrade.

Tactical Bombers are a very efficient, all-in-one tech tree. Other tech-trees could be simplified and made more modular (as well as historically accurate)

Sorry... but I just don't agree.

If you make a proper amount of infantry and AA combined with some heavier HP units like LT your stack can operate for long. It's pretty obvious that you must have planes to defend yourself in addition. These units can all be made from the get go...

Yes Tacs are more powerful than a single AA, but the cost of that one plane and the build time is also much higher.

If the planes should be nerfed I think it should not be their damage output, but perhaps a small decrease in their HP or a small buff in the HP of the AA.

I've noticed that infantry seem to die faster than AA in a big and varied stack, giving notion to the idea that heavier HP'ed units take a lion share of the damage and the AA can actually survive a bit longer, making the stack able to endure attacks from air for a good period of time.

A good thing would be if the AA could cost less manpower to build, then it would be easier to build in the matches where manpower is of the essence.

Sincerely, wildL
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wildL SPQR wrote:

Sorry... but I just don't agree.

If you make a proper amount of infantry and AA combined with some heavier HP units like LT your stack can operate for long. It's pretty obvious that you must have planes to defend yourself in addition. These units can all be made from the get go...

Yes Tacs are more powerful than a single AA, but the cost of that one plane and the build time is also much higher.

If the planes should be nerfed I think it should not be their damage output, but perhaps a small decrease in their HP or a small buff in the HP of the AA.

I've noticed that infantry seem to die faster than AA in a big and varied stack, giving notion to the idea that heavier HP'ed units take a lion share of the damage and the AA can actually survive a bit longer, making the stack able to endure attacks from air for a good period of time.

A good thing would be if the AA could cost less manpower to build, then it would be easier to build in the matches where manpower is of the essence.

I don't deny these good ideas. But my idea is still so simple it would eliminate any need to nerf anything. Let's just make overlapping aircraft in a patrol have to combine their SBDE to block the exploit from happening. If two groups of 8 bombers overlap a target while on patrol, each should fight with their SBDE set as if fighting with 16 units.

Problem solved. No more exploit, no more need to try to "tweak" ground unit stacks. No more need to have to build up more than four ground units for every single enemy bomber. And, no more players building only Tac Bombers and Light Tanks...this would force them to diversify like everyone else and make this game realistic once again.

It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.
R.I.P. Snickers <3

Diabolical wrote:

And, no more players building only Tac Bombers and Light Tanks...this would force them to diversify like everyone else and make this game realistic once again.
If there is still someone left who uses this tactic you should be ashamed if you are not able to defeat them. If someone focuses on tactical bombers, and has n tactical bombers, you are probably good to build just n/2 interceptors, kill his bombers one day and he has no bombers anymore. And if he also focuses on light tanks, since you will have n/2 tactical bombers, you can deal with them on second day. So, in two days, your enemy is dead. Pretty simple.

I don't know about you, but real enemies are not those who use two units types only, they die before even try to use them, real enemies are those who have a counter for everything you can build, balanced airforce, doom stacks, lone light tank and armored car rushes. If you want to beat them, you are forced to diversify.

No....just, no. Those bad guys you are describing that barely exist anymore....they don't like to lose. They really don't like to lose. So, you actually build enough fighters to counter them, maybe you even talk your allies into helping you out a little bit. Then your enemy just gets a cadre of allies of his own and they all give him bombers so he can mess you up.

So, while you manage to scrounge up maybe a dozen fighters to patrol over your pathetic "doom" stack, he's got 40 bombers with at least another 10 or so fighters split up so as to max out his SBDE and they overlap your stack and your fighters. Then, your fighters get shot down, sure, you take a couple of his fighters and maybe up to 3 of his bombers. But then your ground force starts dwindling, ... and dwindling...faster and faster. You've got a couple more fighters fresh off the line. You hurry them to the front to shore up your defenses, but your enemy just got a fresh crop of 10 new bombers to add to his line because his team doesn't like the fact that he actually lost even one -- let alone three -- bombers and they all want you GONE!

Then, after he's effectively squashed you like a bug, he'll return some of those bombers to their owners and lend some of his to them so that they can crush the next lone wolf enemy of theirs who also mounts up a valiant but futile effort. Then, someone starts a rant about nerfing Tac Bombers and then a few others will rally to the defense of the "no-changers" and side with a despicable team even though in their heart of hearts these other people know full well that this is an inherit problem with the mechanics of Call of War.

Rather than admitting that it needs to be changed, they just trot out the tired arguments of "everybody does it" and "you're not good enough of a player if you can't stop it just because I said so". In frustration, some people would just quit, but that lone ranter, sensing that his detractors are afraid of the truth, doesn't shy away from shouting from the mountaintops "FIX THIS GAME AND MAKE IT FAIR FOR ALL PLAYERS!" He offers a whole slew of ideas for adjusting the situation and making things palatable for "nice guys" like himself.

Finally, out of a genius inspiration, he comes up with the ultimate solution that would eliminate the exploit once and for all...and, so therefor, all of the naysayers come out of the woodwork...desperate to protect the tactic that they secretly love to use to pounce on anyone that threatens their status as "good" players, clearly not willing to admit that true skill is in winning while playing fair, not by finding every possible way to game the system and exploit subtle problems that the dev team has yet to solve or to go around flatly cheating in every way imaginable (and I won't even get into what I think about golders, but that's a discussion for another day ... and another forum).

But, the lone wolf player who does not back down eventually starts a poll to gather the votes of those that agree with him. Of course, this is not acceptable to the poor sport so-called "winners", so they trot out every single one of their demons, so to speak, to be sure to vote against him -- desperate not to give the dev team any incentive to listen to his words of wisdom. They will post all over the place, calling his kind less-skilled and implying that they should just accept the status quo or go away. They don't want to lose. They just don't want to lose.

So, go ahead and tell me I'm fighting an uphill battle against the status quo. Sure, you can think my efforts are futile, if not a waste of time. But I have right on my side and I will be heard.

And don't be afraid to make YOUR name be heard. Vote to end the tyranny of those who exploit a broken SBDE circumvention that allows them to unjustly defeat anyone who actually plays this game for fun and not just to "win win win!" Be sure to vote and then check out the link in that post for my ultimate solution to fixing this exploit from ever happening again.

Vote HERE:

Tactical Bomber Problem - Revolutionary Solution

It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.
The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.
R.I.P. Snickers <3

Diabolical wrote:

No....just, no. Those bad guys you are describing that barely exist anymore....they don't like to lose. They really don't like to lose. So, you actually build enough fighters to counter them, maybe you even talk your allies into helping you out a little bit. Then your enemy just gets a cadre of allies of his own and they all give him bombers so he can mess you up.

So, while you manage to scrounge up maybe a dozen fighters to patrol over your pathetic "doom" stack, he's got 40 bombers with at least another 10 or so fighters split up so as to max out his SBDE and they overlap your stack and your fighters. Then, your fighters get shot down, sure, you take a couple of his fighters and maybe up to 3 of his bombers. But then your ground force starts dwindling, ... and dwindling...faster and faster. You've got a couple more fighters fresh off the line. You hurry them to the front to shore up your defenses, but your enemy just got a fresh crop of 10 new bombers to add to his line because his team doesn't like the fact that he actually lost even one -- let alone three -- bombers and they all want you GONE!

Then, after he's effectively squashed you like a bug, he'll return some of those bombers to their owners and lend some of his to them so that they can crush the next lone wolf enemy of theirs who also mounts up a valiant but futile effort. Then, someone starts a rant about nerfing Tac Bombers and then a few others will rally to the defense of the "no-changers" and side with a despicable team even though in their heart of hearts these other people know full well that this is an inherit problem with the mechanics of Call of War.

This is actually complete nonsense. Nothing even remotely close to this can ever happen. I am sorry to say, but if this are your arguments they are completely flawed. I am not even sure what sentence is more wrong than other. But I will try with this about 40 bombers. If enemy has the resources to make 40 bombers, that means by that time you can make probably 60 interceptors. And that is an overkill. Give me 20 interceptors, I will kill those 40 bombers. I think you lack understanding how air combat works if you can write these things you wrote (even though you seem to have read my guide). Tactical bombers are weak against interceptors and they should never be a focus of your production unless enemies are noobs. Interceptors are the main pillar of air force, tactical bombers only follow them.

Paramunac wrote:

Diabolical wrote:

No....just, no. Those bad guys you are describing that barely exist anymore....they don't like to lose. They really don't like to lose. So, you actually build enough fighters to counter them, maybe you even talk your allies into helping you out a little bit. Then your enemy just gets a cadre of allies of his own and they all give him bombers so he can mess you up.

So, while you manage to scrounge up maybe a dozen fighters to patrol over your pathetic "doom" stack, he's got 40 bombers with at least another 10 or so fighters split up so as to max out his SBDE and they overlap your stack and your fighters. Then, your fighters get shot down, sure, you take a couple of his fighters and maybe up to 3 of his bombers. But then your ground force starts dwindling, ... and dwindling...faster and faster. You've got a couple more fighters fresh off the line. You hurry them to the front to shore up your defenses, but your enemy just got a fresh crop of 10 new bombers to add to his line because his team doesn't like the fact that he actually lost even one -- let alone three -- bombers and they all want you GONE!

Then, after he's effectively squashed you like a bug, he'll return some of those bombers to their owners and lend some of his to them so that they can crush the next lone wolf enemy of theirs who also mounts up a valiant but futile effort. Then, someone starts a rant about nerfing Tac Bombers and then a few others will rally to the defense of the "no-changers" and side with a despicable team even though in their heart of hearts these other people know full well that this is an inherit problem with the mechanics of Call of War.

This is actually complete nonsense. Nothing even remotely close to this can ever happen. I am sorry to say, but if this are your arguments they are completely flawed. I am not even sure what sentence is more wrong than other. But I will try with this about 40 bombers. If enemy has the resources to make 40 bombers, that means by that time you can make probably 60 interceptors. And that is an overkill. Give me 20 interceptors, I will kill those 40 bombers. I think you lack understanding how air combat works if you can write these things you wrote (even though you seem to have read my guide). Tactical bombers are weak against interceptors and they should never be a focus of your production unless enemies are noobs. Interceptors are the main pillar of air force, tactical bombers only follow them.
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