Having a solid time in this game and enough difficulty to feel like I'll experience the grind of the stalemates war. But there are a few small things I'm not super keen on
1: trench fire arcs, Specifically how it is equally difficult to assault a trench on its broadside as it is the thin side. This means that trench placement is irrelevant, all that matters is the amount of rifles you can fit in a combat section
I want to have to seriously consider how to best make a crossfire, how best to funnel the enemy into that crossfire, and feel rewarded when I find a way to attack the enemy from an angle they aren't facing
2: machineguns, if I or the enemy attacks a machinegun head on bodies start piling up. I feel like the ai doesn't suffer from my machineguns as much as I suffer against theirs. But attacking them is still manageable. Having said that, it feels like a large investment for something that will be destroyed in 2 artillery barrages which I guarantee the enemy will throw at me.
I'd like to have them a bit more resistant to artillery barrages (the suppression is fine, just that they tend to die quicker than they get suppressed) maybe give them an ability to get down? hide in cover when given the order at the cost of not providing line of sight and not shooting at the enemy until you order them back up. Some kind of cooldown during the switch so that it takes them time to set up their fire point again. Enough time to let the enemy or yourself dive into the trench before they start firing. Alternatively, maybe let infantry lose a few men to "re man" destroyed equipment. doing so could provide reduced shot output/damage to represent untrained gunners
3: Aircraft. Maybe I'm just too early in the game however I feel like they have a very high use cost and very little impact on the battlefield.
Only suggestion I can think so far is to give a temporary view upon their flight path after they have run out of fuel to represent the airport picking up a phone and telling the front line what the pilots tell them on their return. Bombers are not (in my experience) worth the 90 supply to send them. Better to use it on the artillery and suppress the enemy rifles and machineguns while rushing in
Edit for updates for playing some more
I have discovered that allied units are cheaper to deploy than central power units. Which explains why they always seem to outnumber me in every match I play. With trench combat system as it is the only way to win is to have more soldiers than they do. Because soldiers die at roughly the same speed as each other. Which, for the guaranteed outnumbered central powers, makes holding connected trench lines all that much harder.
I'd like to be able to throw grenades into trenches same as how I throw grenades at machineguns and artillery. I want to be able to booby trap my trenches so that, even though I can't man them, I punish my enemy for hoping into them. I want to aim a machinegun down a communications trench and mow down any infantryman who refuses to pop his head and be shot by rifles.
for now, my only trench defence option is to ensure minimum connectivity between my trenches, maximum overlapping fields of fire for my riflemen, and the hope that I killed enough of them before they reached me that I can repel boarders and run reinforcements up before the second wave hits me.
I also think that sweeps are unrewarding. If I managed to take every single trench, capture point, command point, eliminate all the artillery and machinegun emplacements. I don't want to have to do it all over again from the same trenches I did from last time. I want the enemy to be stuck with dragging their own trenches out of my hands, even if I have to reinforce from my original trench line.
cease fire does not mean "i will go home for the day" it means "i'm gonna stop shooting at you, you're gonna stop shooting at me, and we'll all sit down to lick our wounds for a while"
edit 03/04/2023
I need to run some tests, which would be easier with some form of editor, but I think my trenches no longer fire along the thinnest lengths. I only suspect this however since a lot of the AI units will reach my trench line with relatively few casualties, at least compared to when I use the same trick against them. Though when I attempt to go at the allied trenches from the thin side they seem to be firing at full salvo so I really cannot tell just yet.
I'm also growing increasingly frustrated with enemy artillery. I've had repeated games where I've managed to push a few units up close enough to be fragging out the artillery. But I'm also constantly being pushed back by the same artillery firing at point blank range. Breakthroughs may not be common but when they happened getting "under the guns" was a terrifying prospect for artillery crews. The light horsemen at beersheeba were famous for charging under the guns. Some kind of minimum range would be nice for this.
Still on the subject of artillery. A very common practice was counter battery fire. Using your artillery to shell the enemy artillery. I've fired heavy artillery at light artillery after finding their artillery and I ran out of supply well before the artillery was destroyed. This makes counterbattery fire completely impossible. In 1918 the canadian corps that smashed through the Drocourt-Queant line were able to do so in no small part because their commander actively searched out every enemy artillery piece he could find and box barraged them out of existence. Artillery, especially heavy artillery, should reasonably be able to destroy an artillery emplacement. Especially since the sprite is asthetically "lightly dug in" at best
I'd also like to appologise to the developers reading this. It seems even to me that all I'm doing is brutally picking apart the game system that clearly took a lot of time and effort.
1: trench fire arcs, Specifically how it is equally difficult to assault a trench on its broadside as it is the thin side. This means that trench placement is irrelevant, all that matters is the amount of rifles you can fit in a combat section
I want to have to seriously consider how to best make a crossfire, how best to funnel the enemy into that crossfire, and feel rewarded when I find a way to attack the enemy from an angle they aren't facing
2: machineguns, if I or the enemy attacks a machinegun head on bodies start piling up. I feel like the ai doesn't suffer from my machineguns as much as I suffer against theirs. But attacking them is still manageable. Having said that, it feels like a large investment for something that will be destroyed in 2 artillery barrages which I guarantee the enemy will throw at me.
I'd like to have them a bit more resistant to artillery barrages (the suppression is fine, just that they tend to die quicker than they get suppressed) maybe give them an ability to get down? hide in cover when given the order at the cost of not providing line of sight and not shooting at the enemy until you order them back up. Some kind of cooldown during the switch so that it takes them time to set up their fire point again. Enough time to let the enemy or yourself dive into the trench before they start firing. Alternatively, maybe let infantry lose a few men to "re man" destroyed equipment. doing so could provide reduced shot output/damage to represent untrained gunners
3: Aircraft. Maybe I'm just too early in the game however I feel like they have a very high use cost and very little impact on the battlefield.
Only suggestion I can think so far is to give a temporary view upon their flight path after they have run out of fuel to represent the airport picking up a phone and telling the front line what the pilots tell them on their return. Bombers are not (in my experience) worth the 90 supply to send them. Better to use it on the artillery and suppress the enemy rifles and machineguns while rushing in
Edit for updates for playing some more
I have discovered that allied units are cheaper to deploy than central power units. Which explains why they always seem to outnumber me in every match I play. With trench combat system as it is the only way to win is to have more soldiers than they do. Because soldiers die at roughly the same speed as each other. Which, for the guaranteed outnumbered central powers, makes holding connected trench lines all that much harder.
I'd like to be able to throw grenades into trenches same as how I throw grenades at machineguns and artillery. I want to be able to booby trap my trenches so that, even though I can't man them, I punish my enemy for hoping into them. I want to aim a machinegun down a communications trench and mow down any infantryman who refuses to pop his head and be shot by rifles.
for now, my only trench defence option is to ensure minimum connectivity between my trenches, maximum overlapping fields of fire for my riflemen, and the hope that I killed enough of them before they reached me that I can repel boarders and run reinforcements up before the second wave hits me.
I also think that sweeps are unrewarding. If I managed to take every single trench, capture point, command point, eliminate all the artillery and machinegun emplacements. I don't want to have to do it all over again from the same trenches I did from last time. I want the enemy to be stuck with dragging their own trenches out of my hands, even if I have to reinforce from my original trench line.
cease fire does not mean "i will go home for the day" it means "i'm gonna stop shooting at you, you're gonna stop shooting at me, and we'll all sit down to lick our wounds for a while"
edit 03/04/2023
I need to run some tests, which would be easier with some form of editor, but I think my trenches no longer fire along the thinnest lengths. I only suspect this however since a lot of the AI units will reach my trench line with relatively few casualties, at least compared to when I use the same trick against them. Though when I attempt to go at the allied trenches from the thin side they seem to be firing at full salvo so I really cannot tell just yet.
I'm also growing increasingly frustrated with enemy artillery. I've had repeated games where I've managed to push a few units up close enough to be fragging out the artillery. But I'm also constantly being pushed back by the same artillery firing at point blank range. Breakthroughs may not be common but when they happened getting "under the guns" was a terrifying prospect for artillery crews. The light horsemen at beersheeba were famous for charging under the guns. Some kind of minimum range would be nice for this.
Still on the subject of artillery. A very common practice was counter battery fire. Using your artillery to shell the enemy artillery. I've fired heavy artillery at light artillery after finding their artillery and I ran out of supply well before the artillery was destroyed. This makes counterbattery fire completely impossible. In 1918 the canadian corps that smashed through the Drocourt-Queant line were able to do so in no small part because their commander actively searched out every enemy artillery piece he could find and box barraged them out of existence. Artillery, especially heavy artillery, should reasonably be able to destroy an artillery emplacement. Especially since the sprite is asthetically "lightly dug in" at best
I'd also like to appologise to the developers reading this. It seems even to me that all I'm doing is brutally picking apart the game system that clearly took a lot of time and effort.
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