1.5 Railroad gun unbalanced

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  • the new railroadgun is even stronger then the old one. although the railroadgun might be harder to produce (because its more expensive and requires lvl.4 secret lab) but in the late game it isn't very much and easy to spam. another unit i think is OP is rocket fighter. they are just way too strong and anyone who uses them can easily have air superiority around the world and destroy all enemy aircraft.
  • Depends on what you mean with old one. Better than CoW1.0? Yes. Better than the Railroad Gun in CoW1.5 from 2 months ago? No. Compared to that it got slightly better vs. heavy armored (9 instead of 7), but got weaker vs. unarmored (6.5 instead of 7) and weaker against light armored (7.5 instead of 8), and lost all its terrain bonuses. Plus it got more expensive and has higher production requirements.
    But as I stated in my previous post, we will make another adjustment next patch by lowering their attack range and moving back their research availability a bit. I don't expect further nerfs past that though as we nerfed it quite a lot by then.

    I did not see evidence yet for Rocket fighters being OP. They are stronger than interceptors in a direct duel when they are on the attacking side (which is intended), but they have quite limited range (=harder to relocate and catch enemy planes outside their range). They fulfill a different role than the Interceptors so it makes sense to build them (faster, stronger in attack, shorter range, different costs and requirements, less level upgrades). The Interceptor is still the more versatile plane.
  • AdrianTheStrategist wrote:

    Thanks for the reply freezy, I think it's the combination with the Pan-Asian doctrine that makes the rail gun pretty much in invincible. It travels at a speed of 37 on plains, while in COW 1.0, it travelled at about a third of this speed. So firing rockets at the rail guns would often miss, when playing against a very active player. The issue about making troops to rush the rail guns are that the enemy could just simply split a portion of units to block. With the firing rate at every half hour compared to an hour in the old game, it quickly shreds anything coming at it. Possibly, one would need to outnumber the rail gun stack significantly and approach from multiple angles to have a chance to eliminate such a stack.

    Making a huge stack containing 10+ rail guns, with loads of anti-air, several spotting AC's, shreds almost any light tank rush quickly.
    Light tank rushes are never powerful, they are only good at taking out inactive players or blitzkrieging those who are currently inactive and don't rely on artillery or meatshield defence.
    Remember that units gain more speed as you level them up. You are missing out on an important factor here which makes railguns balanced.
    Though it's relatively fast at day 8, it's still vulnerable to different kinds of units and pretty expensive. If you lose the railguns it's a large loss, especially if you die easily to a stack of mot infantry for example. This forces you to make every counter unit and add it to the railroad gun stack, resulting in the counter units being behind in levels, as you just can't manage to upgrade infantry, commandos, anti air and armoured cars at the same time. You have to build a high level secret lab or lots of them on top of that. This means, if your enemy is using like Axis and focusing on levelling up and massing a unit type as much as possible, your counters will just be too much behind in levels and you will get easily destroyed.
    This makes railroadguns a good investment if your enemy is fighting at chokepoints and using the slow force. Railroadguns are very good at defending chokepoints. But, if you meet a player with a lot of high level medium tanks, SP Artillery and Interceptors, you will likely get destroyed as they are investing in just three unit types and therefore can afford high levels. High levels give large advantage.
    Though yes, they have to upgrade the factories for high level units, so it's just as expensive as for the railguns, making RRG a good investment for the first days of using it. If your slow force doesn't win by then and your enemy outplays you strategically it will only get worse and you'll likely lose. This I feel is a nice addition to the strategy of the game.

    I don't think RRG need a nerf really... for that reason.
    "In CoW, don't stamp on things before looking. Rakes are everywhere!"

    "Don't underestimate noobs; if they don't know what they're doing, how can you?"

    Hornetkeeper
  • freezy wrote:

    I did not see evidence yet for Rocket fighters being OP. They are stronger than interceptors in a direct duel when they are on the attacking side (which is intended), but they have quite limited range (=harder to relocate and catch enemy planes outside their range). They fulfill a different role than the Interceptors so it makes sense to build them (faster, stronger in attack, shorter range, different costs and requirements, less level upgrades). The Interceptor is still the more versatile plane.
    Now let me quote my reply in Rocket fighters unrealistic. RF are useless enough in high-level play I feel, we don't need to improve that :D
    "If you ask for my honest opinion, I agree with you that they are unbalanced. They need a buff
    As Axis they are a good option, questionable as Allies or Comintern and suck in every possible way as Pan-Asian.


    Please note I'm talking of real 'competitive play' between pro players, not just normal maps where every 'joke strategy' like flying bombs or heavy tanks can work.



    You aren't factoring in that Interceptors research and production are necessary for your airforce early before rocket fighters become available. This means that the research costs of lv1-lv3 Interceptors should not be factored in, as we're talking of "whether or not to switch into rocket fighters".



    The cost of Interceptor lv4, lv5 and lv6 is 6,350 goods, 6,350 oil, 9,450 rare materials and 29,150 money.



    The cost of the aircraft factories isn't factored in as you already built them for bombers and air transfer anyway.
    You may need a couple more air factories but also keep in mind the short range of RF means you need way more airstrips for proper air transfer.



    The cost of flying bomb, rocket fighter lv1 and lv2 is 2,850 goods, 6,200 oil, 8,800 rare materials and 17,850 money.



    Before celebrating how cost-effective that is... you also need secret labs (and high level ones) which means you have to start building them quite a while before rocket fighter becomes available, holding your production and economy back.



    It wouldn't be wise to rely on rocket fighters only and assume it will work. When you're defending they're great, but the only reason someone's defending is they want to resist, counterattack and win. In competitive play, using rocket fighters for offensives is rare to see and almost always fails.



    Rocket fighters only have 300 range at level 2. Could it ever be easier to snipe the airport and destroy them all? Likely not. Keep in mind RFs cannot scout so you're blind to stealth attacks, unless you also bring your raiding units there to defend - when those could be sneaking around, destroying enemy economy, picking off reinforcements or keeping your enemy on the defensive.



    And if your airports really get sniped (raiding units, rockets or just a fast assault when you're offline does it with ease) you may end up losing the whole airforce, not just the rocket fighters. Interceptors have way more range so they will be fine there.
    This means that even if you switch into rocket fighters, you need Interceptors. In competitive play you can rely on only Interceptors, but can't rely on just RF, you need Ints still. Int scouting ability can also change games pretty often, and you can't land RFs on carriers, so you'd have no air superiority on water.



    The short RF range, the need of densely placed airports and upgrading airports to minimize the risk of snipes means you can get paratroop rushed. Rare strategy to see though...



    Aircraft is especially important on large fronts. Even if you're defending, but it's a large front, guess what. RFs only have 300 range compared to 500 on Ints. When a sneaky assault comes in, you need the RFs to be within 300km compared to 500km for the Interceptors, meaning you need to place RF wings way more densely than Int ones.



    The need to cover the front means you have to spread out the airforce a bit, often ending up with less than 10 fighters per army. As Interceptors lv6 are cheaper, they get an advantage there - unlike 10+-stack fights, there having more numbers gives you more health AND more damage.



    Considering the rare material cost (as lots of airforce means you'll lack that) there will be 4 lv6 Interceptors per 3.3 lv2 rocket fighters.
    Now multiply the damage by the health (Allies doctrine used) 228*100 (Int) vs 188*105 (RF) and we find out the rocket fighters will lose. Now keep in mind those are lv6 Interceptors... in competitive play players will often have lv7.



    For lv7 it's 2.02 Interceptors per 1.9 RFs. That's 108*89=9612 (RF) against 151*65=9815 (Int).
    But this time I was using Axis, the doctrine which has RFs buffed, and still, the Ints ended up more cost-effective.



    As I don't like to torture joke strategy users with statistics, I won't continue with Pan-Asian who have Interceptors buffed."
    "In CoW, don't stamp on things before looking. Rakes are everywhere!"

    "Don't underestimate noobs; if they don't know what they're doing, how can you?"

    Hornetkeeper