Unit Balance Thread - WIC: Modern Warfare Mod for World in Conflict

Hello, I have really been enjoying 4.3, and I must thank the development team for their continued support and work on this mod. If I may make a few suggestions:

1. I really think that the T-90 should receive a buff with regards to its survivability. This becomes rather apparent when two T-90s get destroyed frontally by an Abrams or when a rear facing Abrams beats front facing T-90. While I believe than an Abrams is a superior tank in real life, I do not think that the two tanks are well balanced in this mod as they are so similarly priced.
Additionally, is the T-90’s reactive armor functional, as it always seems to get one-shotted by a Javelin, or Hellfire which it should protect against (although I honestly do not know how effective reactive armor is)? Would it be possible to make it so that while a T-90 is at 100% health, when it is hit the missile will do 25% of its normal damage to simulate reactive armor, and then every hit to the tank afterwards will do normal damage, until the tank is repaired back to 100% again?

2. I also believe that the Mi-28 should receive a scanning function similar to the AH-64 for balance. I am assuming the United States uses more sophisticated avionics, so perhaps the Mi-28 could have a shorter range, or a smaller reveal radius? Honesty, even if it is given the same exact ability, I still think the AH-64 will be worth the cost due to the effectiveness of the Hellfire missiles.

3. Can a second expert AH-64 be added with the beginner AH-64 load out (including the AIM-92 Stinger missiles) be added?

4. I think that the United States’ ballistic missile launcher should receive a price reduction of at least 5 points. I think that it is too expensive at 30 points, especially due to its recent nerf to its arrival time. The Russians will still have an advantage with regards to ballistic missiles as theirs are all significantly cheaper.

5. I think that the K-9 Thunder and Pion howitzers should get their original accuracies back, even if they should get another price increase to perhaps 2001 points. The reason is that before they offered a tactical value of quickly clearing command points with precision strikes. Now they are utterly useless for their price.

6. Please consider putting the old Russian announcer VO back in? The new one ironically sounds less modern than the old one. He sounds like he belongs in WW2 with multiple references to Soviets, and retreating soldiers getting shot (although perhaps it is fitting since the T-90 has the durability of a T-34 on a modern battlefield, just kidding ).

Thank you for reading; I am sorry that it is a rather long post.

Edited by: ConstantinoP.

Thanks for your post.

Regarding #1 and #2, we are still continually reviewing the unit balance vs. simulation balance.

With respect to ERA on T-90 -- it is indeed simulated into the game. This is the reason why the T-90 does not die in one shot when M829A3 hits it in the front armor -- ERA stopped the fatal penetration.

So the next question then is, why does the T-90's unit health/armor deplete more quickly than M1A2? That's becvause T-90's are completely dependant on their ERA so after one non-penetrating hit, the ERA would be destroyed leaving the bare armor and thats it. If you look at the ERA configuration on T-90, there's only a few kontakt-5 blocks in the front turret, meaning one hit by AT munition will knock out significant portion of armor coverage.

The main source of M1A2's protection comes not necessarily from its DU armor per se, but the fact that M1A2's armor configuration allows it to sustain multiple hits, where the armor does not quickly become dissipated with a non-penetrating hit. The impact calculation and armor dissipation rates are calculated in real time for each shot in MW Mod, based on amount of armor coverage footprint and AT hits made against the tank. This explains the reason as to why T-90 health dissipates more quickly than M1A2, despite it having same armor performance in game.

But having said all of this, TL;DR;, we do certainly recognize the challenges in balancing in pure armor battles. We're thinking about numerous ways to continue to improve on this for next version (including, adding more features, stand-off capabilities and reduction in price to Russian armor). Expect to see some more edits/improvements in next versions (though I can't promise that we would implement them to your liking, it will still be better).

#3: Regarding addition of Expert Apache with 16x SALH load out yes, we can do that.

#4: Currently the US ATACMS launch is virtually unstoppable b/c we have not yet upgraded S-300' program code to enable TBM search algorithms. So Russian SAMs don't even detect incoming ATACMS unless anhCheats is turned on. Until we fix this (this requires significant rewrite of S-300 code, like we did for Patriot when we moved to FLINT 4.x recently), ballistic missile for US side will have to remain expensive for now.

We do however have an interim fix in mind -- it's possible that we may bring Tomahawk cruise missile back into game, using FLINT system -- this requires sophisticated AI for auto-pilot & waypoint navigation, but is probably faster for us to code than adding new TBM search functions to S-300. If we do bring back the Tomahawks, they will have fairly affordable prices, comparable to that of Russian TBMs.

#5: The accuracies on gun arty is based on more realistic CEP values, so it's unlikely to be changed. However, we are working on adding more enhancements to JFSN artillery system to make it more useful & playable in game.

#6: The Russian announcer VO was changed purely for the benefit of comedy -- we understand that this pisses some fans off, but ultimately I think people should just realize that we all play the game for fun, laugh and giggles.

Edited by: blahdy

Thank you for the satisfying responses blahdy. This mod is one of the best on moddb, and the only reason why I still play World in Conflict. I still hate the Russian VO though. Since the United States audio was updated with high quality and accurate audio, I was hoping the same would be done for Russia. I understand though: it is just a game for fun.

I am a little curious: you said that the T-90 is completely dependent on their ERA, but don't they also have a steel-composite underneath which offers additional protection? I actually tested the three different Russian tanks (T-72, T-80, and T-90), and all three take 2 frontal shots from an Abrams to be destroyed. That just does not seem to make sense to me. Surely the T-90 has at least the same armor as a T-80, so with ERA on top of it, shouldn't it take at least three shots from an Abrams frontally before being destroyed? Besides, I am pretty sure that the T-80 has much better armor than a T-72, so perhaps it should take 3 frontal shots from an Abrams while a T-90 should take 4.

Also, is it a bug when the T-90 gets destroyed by a single by the Javelin or Hellfire missile, since the T-90 also has ERA on top, or is it simply not enough to stop a lethal hit?

I am really interested in tanks, although admittedly I do not know much about the armor protection of modern ones.

Edited by: ConstantinoP.

The Russian VO is indeed lifted from a WW2 game, Company of Heroes 2 if memory serves. I wonder where the new Abrams voices came from though.

cym104: The Abrams voice comes from Act of War series iirc.

ConstantinoP: Yes, composite armor behind the ERA is calculated as well. Also I forgot to mention that, one change we've added (it's not in 4.3 though, it's scheduled for next version under development) to T-90 is a smaller hitbox, in order to more accurately reflect smaller target as it is in real life. It should make the unit a bit harder to hit at a distance, due to the smaller footprint.

The new change will be applied to next update of the mod, including new 9M113 Konkurs ATGM using FLINT system (for Bmp) and significant enhancements to networked artilleries (JFSN).

Thank you for the continued responses blahdy. I am sorry, but I do not think my previous post was very clear. I was wondering if the composite armor on the T-90 was weaker than the composite armor on the T-80 or T-72. The reason is that the T-90 takes 2 shots (from an Abrams) to destroy, just like the T-72 and T-80. If we assume that the armor on the T-90 is at least as effective as the armor of the T-72 or T-80 (I would imagine that the T-90 would only be better) then a theoretical T-90 without ERA would also take 2 shots in this mod. Since the T-90 in this mod always comes with ERA, shouldn't it require 3 total shots to destroy? 2 shots for the composite armor and 1 for the ERA?

Currently the T-90 can only take 2 shots from the Abrams meaning that after the ERA is gone, the composite armor on the T-90 can only take 1 shot, unlike the composite armors of the T-80 and T-72 which can both take two shots.

In short, I am wondering why the T-90 can be destroyed as fast as the T-72, despite an active protection system, reactive armor, and assumably better composite armor. I feel like it would be like the M1A2 Abrams being as survivable as a M1A1.

As for the artillery changes, I can say that I am very excited for them!

Edited by: ConstantinoP.