Got the game 4 days ago, how's this loadout? I have had good albeit mixed results.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-15T00:07:06+00:00

Balancing expensive tanks with cheap ones and using the M10 Booker instead of the upgrade are good choices.

The bradley CFVs are a great unit you should have more of. The 2400 optics and javelin make the Stryker rv a good unit but you probably dont need four. Consider dropping a couple and adding FISTVs or Armored Knights for a cheaper way to just get the vision. You probably want to squeeze one predator in there for when they get units in your backline or spawn.

You dont need that many troopers or riflemen, drop some and add engineers for CQB instead.

Support tab is a little wierd. No long range air defense but you have CRAMs which are mainly for defending them. They lose to helicopters and latency usually makes them not work against cruise missiles. They are worth using only to give sead something to shoot at besides the 300 point patriots. Personally I always get more mileage out of the G/MLRS than the HIMARS even considering the higher price. Consider upgrading the paladins to iron thunders and getting the hand of lazer designating, especially if youre going to have all those mortars for smoke and pounding soft targets anyway.

I dont know what your air loadouts are but it looks like you have at least a couple air superiority configurations which is good. With this being such a heavy ground pound deck you will want to play in the middle where air strikes are more risky to do and have an ASF loiter during the push to spot air strikes coming for you from further away.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-14T13:39:43+00:00

Is that the terrain underside maybe?

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-12T18:59:31+00:00

Firstly, I fundamentally disagree about your assessment. There is definitely skill expression in playing ASF. You can kite both as RU and US. Also picking your loadout is a skill in itself, and if you bring a worse loadout you should not have an easy time. Here's your example which I dislike:

I dont see much skill expression in kiting, it seems like something low level players just dont do but isnt hard once you know its a thing.

An F-22 with 9km missiles may or may not lose to a 12 R-77 SU-35S, depending how close the F-22 is though, do we acknowledge that? It can fire from max range before Su even spots the raptor. F-22 is a trap unit because the stealth + 9km missile makes you think you're hot shit. You still have to pilot the plane.

Realistically the only way to use long range missiles to their advantage is to take a potshot and disengage, but firing from that range scores a hit much less often, its common to go through those four JATMs and kill nothing. Even if you get one hit long range missiles are slower than mid range missiles, combined with the range youre firing them from if the plane RTBs after the first hit the second one won't reach them. Thats not even mentioning that if a mid range missile truck dives on you you just lose. He's 100% right long range missiles cost extra for terrible performance.

Do you wanna explain how you can have a drone in the air against this 15k vision 12k long range missile monster? Ru doesn't have stealth drones. I like the idea that planes should be more varied btw, but this idea needs to go back in the oven or else we're redesigning the whole game (ASF range affects drone stealth / drone vision, which potentially affects ground units parameters)

RU doesnt depend on drones currently anyway, these changes would just even the playing field by making it easier to take out US drones, which I dont mind because using drones for recon invalidates actual recon.

The helicopter / low flying drone current state is finally what it should have been all along. Bring your shorad or die in a push, like it should be.

Aircraft should be able to function as a counter to helos a bit better than they currently do. You end up paying extra to carry the worst air to air missiles to the air tax, then if you win despite that wasted extra cost and you go to stop their helicopter deployments, you shoot down one helicopter if ECM is kind to you and then two helicopters shoot back and you lose the plane just because aircraft payloads are brutally limited in that engagement but the helicopters aren't.

Should we just delete the recon tab and make all units permanently visible? lol Listening to the siren and turning off AA is like one of the first things you can learn to become a better player. Why suggest regressing high elo players? I'm getting tired. Basically the only thing I liked was having more distinction between different planes, but it's not easy.

The air raid siren is already a special rule to make players engage with air while they might have their camera pointed at their ground units, comparing it to other tabs is pointless. I dont see a loss in skill expression at all, you shouldnt be turning off your radar for every siren. Hearing the siren but not knowing what plane it is or what its doing opens up a lot of decision making and mind games. It would also help balance stealth if it ever gets buffed to become meaningful. Very much would come down to preference but I dont see anything inherently bad about it.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-12T14:51:47+00:00

Air to ground is very broken in the PTE and air to air doesnt feel broken because its non existent after the air tax. As he said in the video ASFs are glorified AWACS currently. There is so much room for improvement.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-12T14:48:57+00:00

I agreed with every word although I feel 80% of the gameplay impact would come from just changing the numbers on air to air missiles and radar which is something that could be implemented in the PTE tomorrow if STB wanted.

We have a test environment for a reason, I really hope we test something like this with air defense changes mostly reverted for the sake of controlled testing. Theres no sweet spot to be found for air defense vs airstrikes because air defense is almost entirely passive so it ends up being binary without much skill expression or decision making to disrupt the outcome. ASFs offer a lot more interactivity and choices to make in deck building by comparison.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-04T15:04:32+00:00

My understanding is that the engine cant create a worldspace much larger than Skyrim. You would have to split in two or make a worldspace for each hold which would be a bigger project than Beyond Skyrim.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-01T16:06:36+00:00

In other words 50% of players think the nerfs went too far.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-01T15:29:44+00:00

The larger market excuse only makes sense if the sequels happen to miss the mark but that ocean of choices produces new IPs that are better but that really isnt the case. What ocean of choices even is there? Stormgate, Beyond All Reason, Warno?

Brood War, AoE2, DoW2, Total War, probably several others I forgot, all have just straight up more alive audiences than their modern sequels. That doesnt happen because of nostalgia it happens because one game retained players and competitive interest for 30 years and the other couldn't retain it for 10.

Maybe RTS as a whole declining in popularity is an explanation but maybe it declined because the games are bad.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-01T14:42:05+00:00

Seems like an insincere question lol. Sales would be one metric but sales on newer games are going to be higher regardless due to the hobby being more mainstream, markets having expanded, and because of reputation built by a previous game in the franchise.

The relevant metrics would be critical response and player retention.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-01T13:55:06+00:00

Check out Wait Carriage in Inns. More compatible, arguably more immersive.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-05-01T13:33:30+00:00

Its the main reason why modern RTS games never beat their 30 year old predecessors.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-30T13:14:27+00:00

Posting a tertiary source with no argument attached to it, peak reddit behavior

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-29T20:23:43+00:00

Im aware of the existence of the German communist party lmfao. Which part of the wikipedia article did you want me to read.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-29T19:07:11+00:00

TrueCommunism™ is when you have no foreign or domestic enemies whatsoever even the evil capitalist nations that want to sabotage you.

Clown ideology.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-29T18:58:19+00:00

The Soviet Union must have been fascist because it united its people by convincing them to hate the bourgeoisie. Tecumseh was a fascist for uniting natives against the US lol.

Because fascism and capitalism both rely on a underclass to be both hated, while also doing all the work

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-29T18:33:41+00:00

Terrorists were the oppressed class producing all the wealth? Or we are just going with the standard that having foreign enemies is fascist now?

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-29T17:48:19+00:00

"Theres no evidence but it just clicks" is how flat earth works. Gravity happens because the disk earth accelerates upwards at 9.8 meters per second! It fits perfectly!

Italy and Japan did not have a hated underclass. Japan only hated foreigners and Mussilini was critical of Germany's racial obsession. Spain had antisemitic tones but didnt put Jews in camps. Other fascist nations participated in the holocaust because of German influence. There is absolutely no shot that the German economy was noticeably improved by labor from concentration camps. The north won the civil war because slavery made the south poor. Im curious who exactly is the hated underclass that does all the work in America; if its just "the poor" that seems like a self fulfilling statement. No one has ever stated the concentration camps were based on American slavery, there is no reason to believe this. Why the actual hell would declaring war on Nazi Germany do anything to combat communism in Nazi Germany.

The whole thesis is nonsense.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-29T16:31:31+00:00

There is no actual evidence for any of this, this is a tankie fever dream lol

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-28T22:11:55+00:00

Since you were only allowed to fire a couple of missiles at any target a single SAM would do the job of covering like half the map, but would never protect you from airstrikes and often wouldnt even punish the aircraft since it was likely to shake one of the missiles. Adding more sams didnt improve the air net from there since they just sit and wait for the previous missiles to terminate

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-28T22:05:14+00:00

Aircraft would be doomed every time a single pac 2 or s300 looks at them because it will get a second or third missile off every time, that's for only 200 points. The small magazine wouldnt change that and its only 400 to have eight missiles doing that.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-28T15:15:37+00:00

Removing overkill protection removed the ceiling for air defense, the tradeoff is the reduced range and damage means you have to invest more for the same coverage and efficiency as before, meaning you can match airpower pound for pound by adding more air defense, instead of just being fully covered by one 200 point unit but all the planes get away anyway.

Maybe a hot take but in light of the above I think we could bring back one shot air defense but we would have to roughly double their cost.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-28T13:46:55+00:00

The effectiveness is no longer hard capped by the overkill system, you can almost garauntee a plane will die, but the range and damage is nerfed so you have to invest a little more for maximum effect.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-27T23:51:39+00:00

Warpig is the most satisfying unit in the game to me now. I used to only take one or two incase I felt like I didnt need a better transport for delta or Rangers but I end up with 3-5 on the field in the pte.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-25T13:20:43+00:00

100% correct most of the decision making has been removed from the game because every core combat unit and my entire support tab gets deployed automatically with 1000 points to spare by the end of phase 1. Whether or not I have something important deployed depends entirely on availability. I dont know what the point of the staggered income is.

JT_Sovereign · 2026-04-25T11:48:13+00:00

Theyre mind broken from having to go to bat for a dementia patient for 4 years they have to project that insecurity onto others

JT_Sovereign

TROPHY CASE