Japan is gonna be a prototype fantasy faction - why not be bold and apply full "asymmetrical" balance instead?

Suggestions
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Lets be honest, if the game would try to represent a historical accurate Japanese army - it would stop advancing at BR2.

So even at BR3 we already see most weapons and vehicles being either super rare prototypes, or even pure fantasy blueprint guns or strange import guns.

Now the devs even want to add BR5 for Japan - which is gonna completely alienate the faction from any believable WW 2 immersion.

Why does it have to be like this?
Are there really no other solutions?

I think Japan deserves better, so I encourage all of you here in the forums for Ideas to fix this issue.

Let me start with some thoughts I recently had,

fist, would we apply asymmetrical balance to the faction, we should address the big obvious first - Japan had almost no tanks, the Ha Go series of vehicles was the exception but it was so small, it could just as well be considered a light armored vehicle. Even the BR3 vehicles are gonna be prototypes, so everything above those is bound to be even worse than that - blueprint fantasy.

So now hear me out - what if - Japan would be the only faction to bring in 3 planes and only 1 tank? There are enough good pilots in this community that would enjoy a faction that is balanced around aircrafts and in the end a US Jumbo tank is only dominating Japan vehicles because of tank vs tank combat. A bigger number of planes in the skies would not only fit the faction perfectly well, it would take care of this issue.

Next thing I had in my mind, I remembered how Red Orchestra - Rising Storm balanced out the Japanese faction - better charge attacks!
In Rising Storm the game balance had found a compromise - the US had M1 Garands, Japan only Arisakas, so Japan exclusively got a special mechanic added to them, if a certain amount of players did Katana or Bayonet charges together, they would get a group charge buff - granting extra survivability, depending on how big the charge was you could survive multiple more hits.

That was actually pretty funny to watch, instead of seing constat pressure on the battlefields you had these weird silent moments where the Japanese would gather together waiting for enough players to prepare - and then all of the sudden all you could hear was this massive shout “BANZAAAAII!!!” and the entire Japanese team charging you, which was pure horror for the US side.

Now I am not saying that this mechanic should be copied, but I give an example that asymmetrical balance is possible to achieve in this regard, especially when we look at extra HP, which already is in the game - looking at you evil evil Soviet exclusive body armor.

A simple damage multiplier for Japanese could be added when charging, or even easier, the Japanese Catana could give moral stat boosts, like faster movement speed, more HP, faster bolt cycling, faster reloads, all you had to do is equipping your soldiers with a Catana and he would get moved into higher Battlerating.

Also Japanese could get special gear at higher battleratings, like gas grenades that work like improved white phosphorus - exclusive to Japan, or impact AT grenades exclusive to Japan, and if all things fail, Squad size could get increased at higher BRs.

All these things can be done, without needing to implement too many crazy prototypes.

6 Likes
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how about we use some of the AA gun emplacements that we have in the map or add more type of field guns to the Japanese to counter the US

6 Likes
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I believe these maps will have US defense missions

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Many of the famous Pacific battles were known to have the US in need to attack big artillery guns - Japan at high BRs could just as well get special constructible howitzers, good enough to deal with heavy tanks.

Good idea

4 Likes
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Heavy artillery pieces are good but I think we need more heavy AA gun to stop the plane spam which is the most devastating thing for the Japanese

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Premade emplacements are always problematic for map design.

I mean look at Normandy, you cant have MG bunkers being controlled by the US, that would look silly

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I mean if the Japanese get access to more active planes, air superiority should be achived automatically.

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That doesn’t mean anything if the Japanese can’t spawn in the air like the US can

5 Likes
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But its not exactly a disadvantage. Being able to take off from the carrier also means you can repair. Spawning from the air prevents you from landing and repairing, so any damage is permanent until you die.

Japan also have late fighters that spawn in air too that compete quite well like the Ki-91 II

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I guess that’s true but in high BR levels they need to Spawn in the air to return fire when the allies are spamming rockets

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11

Why not have selectable spawnareas for planes?

Problem with spawnkillings on a carrier? Pick a spawn in the air.

To be fair though, I don’t see a reason to start on the ground no matter what.

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The banzai charge in RO2 is just to balance the firepower difference between Garand and Type 38,

But the weapon gap between the two sides is even greater in enlisted situation, especially when you can control a whole squad of soldiers with automatic weapons in enlisted. It’s too difficult to balance with mechanisms.

As for the proposal for 3 planes, I can only say that the current efficiency of 3 Japanese planes is lower than that of 2 American planes. If there is a BR5 match, The attack efficiency of F4U and P47 is twice that of any Japanese aircraft.

Moreover, having three pilots means fewer people defending or attacking control points. As is well known, apart from pilots with oversized payloads like P47 JU188, most pilots make a much less direct contribution to the battlefield than infantry. Their job is more to assist in eliminating targets that infantry find difficult to destroy, such as tanks. So I don’t think this is a good idea.

Now riflemen can use AVT40 M2 FG422 instead of MN1930 Garand K98, which is already enough fantasy. I think DF will only continue to soar on the path of fantasy, rather than returning to history.

2 Likes
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This is indeed a good point - yet I would like to say that this might be a plane balance issue in general.

Planes are not as good in infantry support as tanks, this is an issue, and should be addressed.

I have said multiple times in the past, plane balance was the greatest during Moscow CBT - outside of planes being able to spawn right at the start of the game, their payloads were multiple times more devastating against infantry - however, planes were much much much easier to destroy.

One single soldier with some decent aim and a MG could down planes pretty quickly.
Planes were able to nuke half the enemy team but if played recklessly would die very fast.

A skilled pilot would either fly and drop bombs at much higher altitude, or fly super low to stay out of sight before dropping bombs. - this was great gameplay.

Now obviously it hurst immersion if heavily armored planes like a IL-2 crashes just because it has one hole in its wing, which is why I keep asking for proper AA vehicles to be added.

Powerful planes that can support infantry just as well as tanks are needed, but there also needs to be a way for ground forces to effectively fight planes - otherwise there is no risk / reward factor which hurts gameplay.

3 Likes
14

Not a good way to balance stuff. There is less plane players than tank players in general. There isn’t really enough competent pilots to use this advantage. Limiting their tank won’t encourage more competent pilot, in fact you will force tank player to bring plane for kamikaze purpose.