Powercreep and Russian Armed Forces
ABG Matsozetex
Member Posts: 31 ★★
At this stage I feel that Russia as faction has no redeeming qualities that make me think "there is a trade off" to whatever kit or vehicle I am using against another blufor faction.
With the release of CAF, then AUS, then USMC, I always wondered what would happen to Russia, whomst has both inferior vehicles and weapons to make them a viable contender vs the kit of the new factions. The answer to that is nothing.
While I applaud OWI for making sure each layer is balance in terms of vehicles (something that was problematic in the past), they keep forgetting about the infantry kit that each faction has when it comes to this balance. Russia lovingly has the worse weapons of each conventional faction, from marksman, to auto rifleman, anti tank and even the base level rifles are pretty poor compared to the recoilless, high fire rate rifles that has been bestowed to us recently. Basically, Russian infantry sucks, Russian vehicles suck vs competitors, what to do now?
I have two solutions, and I can only put weight into one.
First solution, bring Russian infantry up to snuff, but how. Russia is in a tight place, partially because of OWI development trends and partially because of reality. OWI since ADF introduction has been drawn a line in the sand on limiting kit for a faction at 2010. We see that with Marines only partially having M27s, with the US still using M4s etc. Since Russia has basically not switched off the AK-74 in forever, and only recently started implementing optics wide spread into their infantry, for OWI to justify this would be another CTAS situation, cool, but a white elephant.
Second solution, play into asymmetry truly. Not just the fact that Russia has BTR-82s and CAF have Coyotes and they have different statistics, but actually play into the fact that Russia has more vehicles fielded. If there is a desire to make Russia more powerful as a faction, give them an extra vehicles to offset lesser power in both the infantry and vehicle department. I put more weight into this as a solution, since its easier to implement.
Interested in what everyone else feels about this, playing as Russia is always a drag and I even find playing MEA as more enjoyable as they don't play as "blufor but worse", a.k.a something unique.
Comments
If you are not sure what I'm on about, take this layer as an example. This is Yehorivka AAS v4.
M1A1 is better than T-72 by having better armor, fasting firing gun, more ammunition for the commander seat.
LAV-25s will win a fight against BTR-82s due to higher health pool, they also have a better commander machine gun and shots to the turret on a LAV will not inflict damage to the hull which occurs on the 82a.
So you have this instance of inferiority, plus having to deal with the USMCs superior infantry capabilities.
I would like more asymmetry in vehicle matchups, but I also play Invasion strictly so this isn't usually an issue. Invasion layers are highly asymmetrical, and it'd be nice to see that reflected in RAAS, not that I play it.
I will disagree though that RGF has severely inferior infantry kits. With their rifles sure, but their AT kits are phenomenal. Scoped LAT with two frag rockets is incredible, and I'm tempted to say the RPG 28 is the best HAT kit in game, given the insanely fast reload on it, which is a big factor in how good an antitank kit is.
bluefor in general is OP,if we keep statistics they would win 90% of time.
This one too.
LAV6 totally owns BTR(there needs to be a massive skill gap and mistake on LAV6's part for LAV6 to lose) and Coyote, like LAV-25, is still better than BTR.
See in OP's screenshot, RUS needed a BMP-2 on that layer(not replacing anything, just add it) at least.
And in most matchups against Bradley, a BMP-2M(but nooooooo how dare anyone other than U.S. have the ability to remove tank with two rapid shots anywhere...despite the fact that Bradley still has way more hp - which means it can survive more than two shots from tank).
RPG-7 LAT isn't that great because frag rockets cost 30 ammo points, if they cost 10 - you might have had a point. In 99% of cases it's just two kills, which doesn't make up for lack of scope on rifle(at least for a skilled player).
RUS HAT kit isn't that great. The 2nd rocket is typical RPG-26.
You're misled by the firing sound of RPG-28(sure, one of the most powerful-sounding infantry weapons). It's actually just 250m/s.
Carl Gustav and SMAW both have comparable velocity while having far faster HEAT rocket. (SMAW in particular could do the weapon switch "feature" and instantly reload the 2nd shot to basically remove BMP in under 5 seconds)
The thing about a good secondary rocket is that you can more easily land both on tank's ammorack and ignite it.
RPG-28 is only "better" when you have free ammo to spam only that, but in actual gameplay that kind of situation is rare and it's still not a significant advantage compared to NLAW, for example. Also there is the fact that Bradleys don't start burning when hit with both RPG-28 and RPG-26(and the less-accessible ammorack of M1).
When compared to UK HAT, UK actually has grenade to go with ironsight HAT while RUS gets none...for some reason Russia can't afford grenade again(remember when U.S. medic had grenade?).
So yeah, overall Russian infantry do not hold a candle to any of the blufor. (including the ones that don't have scoped MG, because of how much better standard guns are and extra scopes on other kits)
I wouldn't say 90%.
But the "good guy syndrome/russiabad propaganda(blah blah blah it's just a game, tell that to the noobs)" is strong so often you see around 5 or more people on RUS waiting for slot to open on blufor to swap to it. USMC being the new(and clearly op) faction makes that even worse.
"Russia is in a tight place, partially because of OWI development trends and partially because of reality"
Not reality, just OWI biases.
Russia in-game is based off Crimea era which already had plenty of optics like 1p78(and others).
The problem here is OWI neglects RUS on purpose(someone had to go do it intentionally and say "this is fine"). Squad's ballistics is unrealistic(x2.8 gravity for small caliber rifles) so reticles are naturally unrealistic to be usable, the bullet drop is so exaggerated that 400m battlezero that RUS uses(thanks to the superior ballistic coefficient of 5.45, more on that later) doesn't work, hence 1p78 which ranges from 4-700m IRL goes down to 1-400m.
But here's the problem: ACOG got a dot added to its reticle that wasn't there IRL for 200m, 1p78 on the other hand has a very close 500m dot next to 400m top chevron that wasn't added(in-game this would also be 200m and be useful).
Also in-game 5.45 from AK-74 doesn't only do less damage(60 vs. 62, and yes that does affect where you can hit enemy to down them with two shots), it also has worse damage falloff range(starts and ends earlier than competitors), inferior accuracy(4moa vs 2moa l85, because someone at OWI is british), and obviously rate of fire. (L85 may have same rate of fire, but it has far better stats elsewhere; G3 only shoots 50rpm slower and it has way more damage/accuracy). It doesn't even have the best recoil(0.47 vertical, easily beaten by m4a1/l85/ef88, m16 even lower; m4 and C7/c8 are only slightly higher in recoil but have far better scopes...etc.) This does not fit reality, which goes back to the fact that 5.45 has superior Ballistic Coefficient compared to 5.56(even if m855a1 improved BC, it's designed to match M855 closely such that ACOG reticles for M855 still works, so it's not that much better). (in-game it's identical in speed and gravity modifier to M4's 5.56, because how dare russia have anything better)
In reality AK-74 has nearly half the recoil energy of M16.
"Tests indicate recoil energy delivered by the AK-74 is 3.39 joules, compared to 6.44 in the M16 and 7.19 in the AKM. In short, the 5.45x39 is a sweet shooting little cartridge."
(in-game M16 has 0.40 standing ads vertical recoil vs. AK-74's 0.47, OWI: haha funny number AK47 get it guys?)
Even worse, OWI throws reality out the window to make AK-74 worse but make M4/M249 better(they both shoot way faster than IRL counterpart, when you see an "average" rpm for M4 and M249 online, you're seeing the average between the normal cyclic rate and increased cyclic rate from using old-ish suppressors; clearly there's no suppressor in game so M4 and M249 should shoot around 720 and 740rpm respectively, not in-game biased blufor standard, minus l85, 830 and 858rpm)
This kind of neglect is obvious in many other areas Russia-related, such as BTR-80/82A side doors being only partially modeled(only the top half), BMP-1 malyutka missile lacking the rail that it's pre-assembled with before being loaded into vehicle, BMP-2 got rigged with Kornet model instead of Konkurs tube(which OWI has the model of, it's on the Spandrel), T-62 commander takes the place of gunner nightvision sight(that's why it can't look 360 degrees), T-72B3 wind sensor is textured like optics(purple-ish; because OWI thinks that's a camera or something lol - and it's sold as unreal asset despite that fact), T-72S was named T-72AV in v1.0 testing(since OWI clearly don't know what they're making, you can assume they just took base model of T-72B3 and swapped the gunner sight/ERA, and that's basically what they did since sights are identical - this suggests either T-72S or T-72B3 has slightly misaligned sight due to difference in height of gunner primary sight), SU-25 bomb has "training" written on it in Russian(because googling what that means in Russian is soooooooooooo hard when looking for reference photos).
T-72B3 has 80mm areas in frontal profile due to mudguard being made of side armor material:
And terrible modeling(these are automatically generated by unreal, not even hand-made, and nobody even checked if it made sense; the irregular shape of upper hull made T-72 upper frontal plate weaker overall because that's right in front of the incorrectly-positioned ammorack).
Meanwhile M1:
500mm mudguard at steep angle, it's like it's made of vibranium/oil composite. (this is why shots randomly bounces off angled M1, not because angling the hull armor is useful, but because people shooting the front sprocket can accidentally hit the vibranium mudguard).
Again, someone had to intentionally assign these generated polygons to be that 500mm material.
OWI is so lazy they wouldn't just edit out the whole mudguard...etc.; instead they gave frontal hull value to front mudguard of M1, but not T-72, because russiabad.
And of course there's Bradley that can frontally win engagement with any tank(even their own M1) with two clicks and a reload in-between(reload rate being faster than the opposition, same as M1), that also survives 3 or *more*(depending on distance and ammo type) shots from tank, unless tank is using missile(which tank only gets two of, and only RUS gets it, but it's still slower at reloading than Bradley's TOW, MEA can eat dirt).
Did I mention TOW has 10m penetration distance? Which means it can hit T-72 ammorack from front at any angle without issue while Kornet can't do the same to M1(1.5m only, M1 ammorack being toward rear of hull means it's almost impossible for kornet to hit M1 ammorack from front).
And some people think BMP-2M would be OP...(since it's OWI, it probably only gets two tandem missiles, other two are likely consider he-frag so they do nothign to armored vehicles)
Also, extra vehicle doesn't necessarily mean it's more powerful; because that means less infantry in the field(whether those vehicles will be crewed isn't even guaranteed). CAF(and just about any other western conventional faction) has superior infantry that will magnify that effect, resulting in more AT being freed to hunt down/react to BTR(which is also more fragile since it blows up at 4 LAT hits).
That attempt already failed with 2xLAV6 vs. 3xBTR-82A, or 3vs4. It's far harder(if not impossible) to coordinate more, less powerful vehicles in public games. Better than the extra disgusting layers with same number of LAV6 vs. BTR, sure; but it's still not balanced.
Since OWI don't care about details, they can just swap BMP-1 turret with BTR-82A's and paint it green to make it BMP-1AM(this has already been produced and shipped to Russian military), which would logically have the 1250 hitpoints needed to win against LAV-25 and variants(still no good against AAVP but that's another can of worms) at close range(because russian 30mm has worse damage dropoff than 25mm). To avoid changing its color, just put that turret on Bmp-2 hull lol.
Also: BTR-82A (and most likely also MTLB 30mm) turret is unmanned:
The gunner is right at the turret ring, which is inside the hull; this means shots to BTR-82A turret should not transfer damage to the hull.
But of course, as always: "how dare russia have anything better"
The part about ak74 damage and accuracy is something i noticed a while back and has bothered me since. ak74s max moa should be 3-3.5 and the damage actually should be more then 556 since it does more yawing and tumbling in the body in real life.
5.56 like even the infamous m855/ss109 can do a bit more flesh damage in the very close ranges where it fragments more reliably.
The kinda do yaw a bit(hence the reliance on fragmentation for serious flesh damage) but no where near as much as 7n6 and such.
But that's a fairly close range(~100m or so for m4's barrel length, ~150m for m16 barrel length).
UK's "improved performance" bullet is all-steel(likely far worse flesh damage potential; also 62g so it likely matches m855/ss109 hence still inferior BC compared to 5.45) and is out of squad's timeframe, then again that didn't stop OWI from adding 40mm warrior.
If they give AK-74 4moa then every rack-grade(including m4 and m16) should be 4moa as well. (some are going to say "but going from 3moa to 4 moa makes no difference" - in which case why not have them be identical in first place???)
It's okay to have AK-74 do slightly less damage in close range, but the problem here is it also does worse damage(far worse in case of later parts of damage falloff) at long range(not that the scope is good for that).
Decreasing AK-74/RPK-74M to about 0.30 vertical ads recoil(EF88 ironsight version has this), extend damage dropoff range by 75m for begin and end, and giving optional(replacing the green dorito sight that sucks, or add it as extra option) 1p29(range adjustable to 6-700m at least, if not 1km) to AK-74, RPK-74, and PKP(since it's okay for USMC to have scoped M27 for "ironsight" automatic rifleman slot, it's only fair for RUS to get scoped RPK-74 for the same slot, and the current scoped AR slot filled by PKP with 1p78, with 1p29 PKP replacing current MG slot), would have been a far more impressive buff than foregrip on the ugly ak74m3 kit OWI supposedly had planned.
That would actually be balanced because just about everyone else either shoots faster or hit harder at most infantry ranges(or both), and ironsight/reddot m249/c9 is close range god gun + fairly good at mid range too(provided people know how to aim, since these guns shoot so much faster than irl).
But then again, that would not be politically correct in canada.
Oh and an intermediate solution, given that Russians often are filled with low-zoom optics or even iron sights. The following changes can make it less painful:
one thing that needs to be added to Russian side now that marines have been added is russias 30mm grenade launcher AGS-30 . both on vehicles and base emplacement.
That's not going to help 99% of time because the only kits that are forced to use ironsights are CE and LAT(whose main weapon is RPG-7 anyway). Nobody willingly chooses ironsight medic. And they're still going to suck compared to actually scoped counterparts on the other side, because scopes reduce recoil(magnification might make recoil look harder to control but enemies are also bigger on screen).
AGS-30...etc. wouldn't be very useful in game because it would just be a weaker alternative to the primary 30mm cannon to BMP-2. Emplacement is going to be worse because it's in an awkward spot where it probably can't rotate 360 degrees(since OWI "logic") while having zero effectiveness against vehicles(again OWI "logic" - just like how RPG-7 he-frag does very little to logi trucks and mraps, if anything at all) and far worse range compared to HMGs - which already deal with infantry easily. It's more like a short range mortar so...why not just build mortars(which can do some funny things like shooting into a ceiling to splash enemies inside a compound due to them not having arming distance in game)
As for mounting it on TIGR, real life has both PKP and AGS-30 on the same vehicle, that is not really possible with squad.
There is no inherent "balance" reason to not have it, but then again...having it won't help either.
14.5mm buff actually is a nerf to RUS.
Because MEA and irregular factions have much more usage of 14.5mm. (14.5mm can now one-belt BTR at most engagement ranges at far higher dps of 220 as opposed to BTR-82A's 166.5)
Kohat is going to let MEA roll over RUS even easier.
Even BRDM-2 can beat BTR-82A 1v1 with decent efficiency(4.55ttk vs. 4.50, advantage over range before 1km for BRDM-2 as 30mm starts damage dropoff well before 1km while 14.5 starts damage drop at 1km).
An artillery-heavy play style would give them more power and be in-line with their actual doctrine:
Nothing changed at least not for the better. (narva raas v4, for example)
logi mtlb was only thrown in(no alteration of model either) as counterpart to usmc logi aav.
Hilarious to see political correctness ruin a game. "accidentally" putting cas huey in game was either actually intentional but too afraid to admit it or just pure incompetence, either one is bad for OWI. Tencent should be informed of this.
I'm fine with Russia having worse weapons and optics.
They should just do a similiar thing to the insurgent forces, but not to the same extent of course.
Some factions have higher quality gear, the others more ammo. Give them more grenades. Their LATs more rockets etc. That's a fine way to balance factions that doesn't break the "realism" of the difference in technology. More artillery sounds fine, too. Or maybe even an extra vehicle. Or make their munitions cost less rearm points.
The individual kit loadouts are already balanced for gameplay. In real life a soldier could carry 4 grenades if he wanted to, but in a game it would be too powerful or too annoying to deal with the nade spam if everyone was armed to the teeth. Giving one faction's soldiers less or more ammunition or adjusting its "price" is much better in my opinion than trying to make sure all the factions have similiarly powerful technology. After all, real life Russian infantry IS behind many of the other factions in equipment quality, but not in quantity.
Except russia having worse guns isn't realism. This is all artificially created out of sheer ignorance or political correctness.
M4/ef88(yep, ef88 has the same rate of fire despite UI says it has 750rpm)/c7/c8...etc. do not have that 830rpm rate of fire in real life, not without suppressor backpressure. They are closer to low-700rpm(almost like around there is a sweetspot between controllability, ammunition consumption, firepower, and reliability or something). Which isn't that far above AK-74's rate of fire.
And that extreme rate of fire really matters, because faster rate of fire offsets horizontal recoil for the most part and shooting faster means the recoil increase/variance over time isn't nearly as noticeable.
The damage falloff over range is also entirely made up; as is the recoil. Rackgrade M4 also don't have 3moa(L85 2moa G3 1.5moa rofl what is owi smoking), the "acceptable" dispersion was updated with m855a1 so that they can pretend it doesn't wear out barrel much faster(so it's more like 5.5moa, average being toward 4moa, in-game is about 25% better than it should be).
The scope being worse also isn't realism. (1p78 has less zoom but it should ADS faster because of more forgiving eye relief...etc.)
Hell, in real life it doesn't "glow" green in daylight, it's tritium that only is noticeable in low light situations; but nope, offworld it glows 24/7 making it less usable. (OWI not having the technical capability to implement tritium/fiber effect is hilarious, because that was a thing in even BF2 project reality)
Extra vehicle requires extra crew, which is even less infantry, meaning the difference in infantry equipment is worse(not to mention it takes way more coordination to use more vehicles against less, but more powerful ones).
IR lasers don't have a place in-game, so none of that matters.
Fyi in game there is a thing called ammobag which rifleman can pull 10 grenades(or ~50 magazines) out of.
I dont know, they should nerf Russia
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Jfc0InAjSL0
Nerf u.s. off any map layer that Russia is on.
If they dont nerf USA it might be a longer game than 3 day special operation lol. 125k and counting
Copium after getting spanked in sandbox? Didn't you people get enough opium?
Oh, and what happened to Soviet Union in Afghanistan? Lol, also, nice whataboutism. My boy you are delusional,
Your entire modern day international politics is whataboutism. You're likely just like most others in america who "learned" only from memes/msm...etc.
Soviet Union left Afghanistan in a far better place than U.S. did; for one Taliban didn't get to take over until multiple years(taliban took over kabul first time in 1996 while soviets withdrew in 1989, can you count the number of years on one hand?) later instead of, you know, ~3 months(throwing you a bone by counting from when the withdrawal began to taliban capture of kabul). LOL Actually learn history for once you whataboutism-reliant common-core reject child.
You're delusional and it shows; already called out your projection btw.
Soviet Union collapsed; yours is next.
i think all your words are wasted because OWI won't pass there 2010 cutoff point. We been waiting on T-90s and T-80s tanks for a while now and the BMP-3. Its funny that the Chinese IFV which is similar to the BMP-3 is in the game before the BMP-3. Considering the 2010 Russian Faction is winning matches in game i don't see the problem.
As for the Warrior CTAS yeah that can go because it never enter service or pass trials.
M17 was from 2017, well past 2010 yet it's in-game for usarmy.
In-game russia has worse than 2010 gear. Not only in weapon stats/models/even scope reticles, there are also blatantly biased layers against it.
Insurgents/militia can win games too(sometime in aas) does that mean they're just as powerful as usarmy?
There is even more bs against China:
So essentially China is just "balanced" against russia(barely; because russia doesn't have 2000hp vehicles) and maybe mea, and still is just a weak punchingbag for western factions.
Very politically correct in canukistan, but terribad game design.
Also, just giving Russia ability to choose the older scope(what insurgent/militia has, but with ability to adjust range out to 1km) would have been a buff, as that has more zoom.
Then make a suggestion with the accurate picture of weapon and optics OWI is not going to see it here.
They won't see it anywhere.
Literally everything has been suggested to death everywhere. OWI is intentionally being pc.