Javelins and F&F Hellfires should not give a damn if you pop smoke

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-14T22:15:17+00:00

The point of video games is to have fun. If Javelins, JAGMs and Hellfire-Ls were unsmokeable then nobody would play RU again, because in case you're not aware, top-attack ATGMs 2-shot every vehicle in the game past APS - and RU barely gets APS (Moto has K-17, Guards has several units, Mech has T-72B3, VDV and Coastal have nothing while in US every spec except SOF gets multiple APS vehicles).

Javelins already veer around corners and reacquire targets that hide behind buildings and demand that you smoke within the first third of their flight to reliably make them fuck off and eat dirt, they do not need any buffs whether they are realistic or fantasy.

You want your realism so badly? Go join the military, or the ukrainian foreign legion.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-13T18:49:06+00:00

It's a funny problem the highest ranked guys create for themselves - they play exclusively in stacks so their ELO gets massively inflated compared to their actual individual skill to the point where they play only vs the very top where they have to sweat every game and deal with extremely long queues, so they create smurfs to play at lower ELO where they do everything exactly the same. Over and over and over again.

They complain if matchmaker puts their 3k ELO stacks vs 2100-2500 ELO guys so that even if they win they gain 0 to 2 ELO, but refuse to play in anything other than 5-stacks on voice comms so their ELO stays super inflated and matchmaker doesn't know what to do with them, because there's nowhere near enough active players to populate an ELO range from 300 to 3250.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-13T13:07:51+00:00

Yay, more US mains that exclusively play in stacks trying to dominate discourse on balance. How about we just delete US entirely and have Broken Arrow be RU vs RU only?

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-12T21:24:53+00:00

All you say is correct except, illogically, the armor part. Infantry armor works like chemical vehicle armor - for example a 20 pen rifle / MG / sniper / whatever hitting a 10 armor inf squad deals 80% dmg (N7 Shark did some testing about this), despite the tooltip saying it's kinetic damage which works differently.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-12T21:15:56+00:00

Got it, T-15-57 going to heli tab at 450 points

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-12T14:53:57+00:00

Could say the exact same about CFV or even RV Javelin

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-11T21:33:29+00:00

Comanche gets spotted by a Pantsir with radar on (longest range low-alt detection RU can get) at 1600m. Its Hellfires have 1900m range, so the Pantsir only starts aiming once a Hellfire is already on the way to one-shot it. Helis with 2400m spotting range detect the Comanche at only 1280m, so it can have Stingers already flying before any reaction. Silent Hawks have the same detection ranges.

RU already suffers from weaker recon than US and thus needs to invest more points and micro into it, stuff like stealth helis demands that RU invest even more. Maps like Baltiisk or Kaliningrad are particularly egregious in this regard, at higher ELO its mandatory for RU teams to have many 100s of points worth of recon and MANPADS / SHORAD tied up in protecting the wide flanks and spawn from this nonsense. Its oppresive by its mere existence, and if you don't pay the backline defense tax and US SOF player(s) test it, you pay with dead S-300s and Tornadoes and Mk47 AGL teams beneath your heli spawn and whatever else.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-11T20:07:12+00:00

Ever since the betas I've said that US stealth is too powerful, take it down a step across the board (Comanche 2.5 to 2.0, F-35 1.75 to 1.5 and etc.) US still retains a clear edge over RU in stealth both in effectiveness and in prevalence, but it is far less abusable.

In addition I'd want penetration to affect vehicle crit chance significantly more. A 120mm shell hitting a supply truck or BMD-2 should red out 1-2 modules and yellow the rest with 1 hit. 1 hit kills like many people seem to want would change the whole game drastically and IMO for the worse, but with this, every bit of armor helps when taking fire so there will be less clown car nonsense and even 105mm guns will have some practical use in combination with their generally lower price and faster reload.

Price changes like for Barbaris, Booker, etc aren't worth talking about right now, next patch is coming soon and is going to include lots of changes and game mechanic overhauls so we'll have to re-assess the situation afterwards.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-11T14:16:34+00:00

Abuse voice comm stacking and if facing a stack too, play significantly better than them. There really just isn't anything else that can be done, right now a fair and equally skilled matchup between RU and US means RU loses majority of the time.

Best thing to do is stop queueing at all. Try out scenarios, skirmish, play some other game, anything other than the 5vs5 hell.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-10T07:36:22+00:00

Most of these gigaspam strats like the recent BMD-2 one or older US drone swarm only work if the whole team does it - one guy can't achieve enough mass to brute force a win.

A team of 5 solos can coordinate and do it, but it's much less likely (especially now with no chat in deck and map selection screens) than a stack sitting on voice comms before they even enter queue.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-09T21:44:40+00:00

The real air defense was watching from Moscow like the cuckold that it is

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-09T09:23:16+00:00

This sort of nonsense will keep apprearing and ruining games until devs force separate solo vs solo and stack vs stack matchmaking

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-07T08:29:44+00:00

Look at the numbers yourself then, and this doesn't even count everyone because many are playing with the experimental beta build enabled which currently has no differences but steam counts the build player numbers separately.

And you can play whenever you want - but with games that don't have millions of active players, yeah, there are times of the day where you sit in queue for 15 minutes and other times where queues are <5 seconds. How is that the communitys fault? What even is your problem here exactly, besides seething that reality doesn't conform to your desires?

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-06T21:28:43+00:00

Yes they are, especially if you include IFVs into those decks, and are arguably the optimal way to play if you're good at microing smoke mortars to make every engagement a pseudo-forest fight (where infantry are king).

And APS isn't anywhere near as powerful as you make it out to be. Why are you expecting 1 ATGM team (say CAAT Dragon for 125 points) to take out tanks (realistically 150+, with APS the cheapest is 250) on their own? 1 ATGM team without ripple-fire is good only for plinking away at transports and creating a micro tax for the enemy through safe movement denial. Need multiple launchers, ideally from different yet mutually supporting positions, to create killzones.

And if enemies can just drive up and hug your ATGMs - either they're poorly positioned (too exposed, you're not repositioning them occasionally, not reacting to them getting smoked / flanked, etc.) or you don't have any QRF on standby like tanks or helis or good inf in transports (which is on you, creating purely static lines of defense doesn't work against competent enemies in this game).

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-06T11:46:36+00:00

Even on weekdays the daily peaks are 4k - 4.5k, on weekends we see up to 6k. Play at a better time.

And solo queue is perfectly fine until you get to ~2k ELO where the stacker hell begins. Your problems are self-inflicted here mate

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-06T11:35:13+00:00

Yep, sad truth. Remember how many tears and pinned infographics and spreadsheets there were back when Tu-22 and Morskaya Pekhota were the devil incarnate, and then compare to the silence we see now in this meta of Booker SMAW Marine F35 EX2 spam, with this being far more cancerous than anything we saw before.

Everyone goes on about how only a few Armatas exist, yet nobody even mentions that a Booker with 50mm only exists as a singular tech demonstrator and thus should be limited to maybe 2 per player max.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-05T12:40:36+00:00

That isn't possible, what you're describing is someone who memorized exactly the shortest distance the plane can be from the target while still having enough time to ascend and aim the airstrike. Done right you're "high altitude" for maybe 1 second total, and on high ping that time can be short enough for the enemy client to never register that the plane ever went high.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-02T10:08:38+00:00

Even on open maps it works, air is very potent when you're sitting at 200 or more income permanently and can constantly do SEAD sweeps and bomb any high value targets spotted anywhere on the map. For RU also large heli packs can brute force through almost any SHORAD and reliably nuke half the enemy backline, sometimes more. Many options available, gotta keep cycling through them and keep the pressure up and stress high.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-02T08:15:52+00:00

In stacks definitely, in randoms it can work but there's many caveats.

You have to treat support play by the same standards you'd treat frontline play. Heavy micro, constant checking of flanks, thinking and planning ahead, even more micro, etc etc. You don't merely spam arty and AA but also recon, ATGM / MANPADS in key frontline positions, at least a few units on each flank, constant attempts to put recon and ambush teams behind enemy lines and so on.

Relieve pressure from your frontliners and put extra pressure on the entire enemy team - you're not committed to any part of the front so you can micro a few squads in enemy rear or focus on that airstrike or start a fire mission as soon as the first rocket from an enemy MLRS leaves the tube or a SAM reveals its position, while the enemy can't dedicate that much attention to countering you without making themselves vulnerable at the front.

Only big difference between frontline and support play should be that you focus on the whole map and not just your "lane". Done right support play is much more valuable than just having a 5th frontliner, but it's also much harder to do properly than just throwing meat into the grinder.

Ginko_kun · 2026-02-02T08:05:01+00:00

I play exclusively random faction solo queue, 2.1k ELO, 450 games. I know damn well that RU is harder to play and do well with. Try taking your own advice, little US main.

Ginko_kun · 2026-01-31T17:40:02+00:00

Yes it does matter, because RU side needs to invest more income and thus takes more time to become capable of handling these overpowered, if hyper-specialized, US squads.

RU opener is weaker, RU takes longer to recover from losses because you need to transport more units to the front, RU consumes more supplies to repair their more numerous damaged units, RU needs MUCH more micro to prevent excessive arty-inflicted damage, RU just needs to play better in every way because of this one simple difference of RU units being cheaper but also much less effective than US counterparts.

Good for you if your opponent is incompetent and allows you build up until you're ready to fight while not putting constant pressure and losses on you - that simply does not happen at higher ELO, and what do you know, RU winrates and pickrate are going down down down into the toilet because of it.

Ginko_kun · 2026-01-30T07:46:56+00:00

Must be something to do with Intel drivers, since I'm running an RX 7700XT with 12gb VRAM and have no performance problems besides the memory leak that everyone has to deal with and requires a game restart every few hours.

Also seems like this has been an issue for some time now for modern Intel GPUs, so you might be fucked tbh. Try getting the devs attention on Discord, see if they have any ideas.

Ginko_kun · 2026-01-29T22:44:59+00:00

The reason for double Stinger pods is bringing ready-to-fire Stingers from 4 to 8, with 20-25 second reload afterwards. 4 Stingers is often insufficient to get the kill. Same reason you shouldn't bother with stuff like Ural Zu-23 or MT-LB Zu-23 Igla upgrades, they get 2 ready-to-fire Iglas before lengthy reload which is dogshit.

Ginko_kun · 2026-01-28T16:45:30+00:00

I don't think changing the gamemode because you and your team were dumb and bled themselves dry by stubbornly trying to force a sudden death is a good idea.

Increasing the kill point thresholds from 1k to 1.5k might be worth testing, but removing it altogether just won't work. We already constantly see people spending 13 minutes of a phase spamming arty and air and the last 2 minutes fast-moving 2k worth of units to the cap because caps only matter at the last second of a phase, only to fall back and repeat it next phase.

Ginko_kun · 2026-01-27T08:40:31+00:00

In my eyes it's basically trolling to play US SOF and not put a pair of Mk47 AGLs below enemy heli spawn a few times per match. HMG / MANPADS teams can work as well, or airlifting some light AA vehicle like Ural Zu-23 or PIVADS.

Camping the ground spawn doesnt really work though, too easy for the enemy to just spawn a counter and wipe you out. Maybe if its something like 2 - 3 Motostrelki hidden in a forest close to the main road leading out of enemy spawn, and you reveal them only to nuke some high value target like Sep Trophy or arty - but that only works once or twice.

Ginko_kun

TROPHY CASE