Patch v11.4.6 - Satchels, Grenade & Engine Fire Changes

Gameplay

Grenades

• The amount of grenades that players spawn with has been increased from 1 to 2.

Developer Note

This reverses a long-standing change made years ago that was intended to reduce grenade spam. However, the change was largely ahistoric, as most troops were issues with 2 or more grenades, depending on the unit. We will evaluate how this shifts the nature of firefights, and may issue additional changes to keep grenade spam down in the future.

Satchel & Engine Fires

• The radius of resupply points attached to vehicles (i.e., logistics trucks) has been increased by ~1 meter.
• Satchels that explode on the tops of tanks and within range of the engine will no longer 100% start a fire in the engine. The likelihood of an engine fire is now determined by how close the explosion is to the engine.
• The likelihood of an engine fire spreading to the hull has been dramatically reduced.

Developer Note

In reality, most vehicles had firewalls that separated the engine from the crew cabin, making this type of thing unlikely.

Previously, due to some wonky programming, the likelihood of the hull catching fire was virtually 100% (and ironically, made worse if your engine had a lot of HP), since it was doing a fire-spread dice roll every second while the engine was on fire. This system makes it to difficult to reason about and balance the likelihood of fires for different vehicles because the probabilities have to be amortised in relation to the vehicle's HP which is far too much complexity for what should be a simple dice roll.

These two changes together make it so that satchels are no longer a guaranteed one-hit kill weapon against every tank in the game.

Infantry Howitzers

• Reduced the reload time of all infantry howitzers from 12 seconds to 6 seconds.
• Reduced the resupply interval of all howitzers from 25 seconds to 12 seconds.

Developer Note

This change was submitted by community member Punic, and it's one we agree with. Historically, the howitzer reload times were set as high as they were because we feared that they would be overpowered when used in battery. We feel safe in making these more viable now and reevaluating the balance once the changes have had time to settle in.

Maps

Berezina Advance

• Added 2 Combat Engineer roles for Soviets.
• Reduced max tanks for both teams, Soviets now have 2 tanks active at once, Germans have 3.
• Made BT7, Panzer III and Panzer IV Ausf. F1 spawns unlimited.
• Reduced max active logi trucks for both teams from 3 to 2.
• Implemented gun limit of 6 for Soviet light AT guns.

Cholm Advance

• Fixed issue where Axis would bleed tickets while still controlling objectives.
• Improved spawn protection minefield around Axis main spawn.
• Added additional cover to Axis main spawn.
• Disabled Karma collision on all wooden fences.

St Marie du Mont

• Added new Northwestern and Eastern Road objectives, replacing the old Stable objective.
• Added new spawn protection minefields for both teams.
• Added some additional light cover around the Church objective.
• Added artillery triggers to static radios on the map.
• Added additional logistics truck spawn for Axis.
• Reduced Axis main spawn cache limit from 8000 to 6000.
• Reworked Axis main spawn protection minefield.
• Reworked Danger Zone influences of all objectives.
• Reduced artillery strikes available to both teams significantly.
• Removed US Automatic Rifleman roles and instead increased Machine Gunners to 2.
• Fixed an off-grid BSP building that caused an invisible wall near the stables.

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games