Suggestion: Teching and ability cost

I feel something needs to be changed about the way the red army techs, because right now there barely is any. Side from manpower there's no strategy involved in how you spend your resources at all.
ALL munitions go to upgrades
ALL your fuel goes to buildings and after that all goes to vehicles.

So here is a way you could do it:

You could reduce the cost of the tank factory slightly, place the T90 in T1 and the and T70 T2 in the and make them available after you purchase a cheap "light vehicle support" upgrade for say 20 fuel and some 200 MP. One upgrade for each.

So there you would have a simple choice of how to spend your early fuel. Do you want vehicle support quick, or save up to quicker get the more expensive, but more combat effective tanks.

To develop this idea further the IS2 could be made available only after you have bought (or researched if you wanna put it that way) both the T90 and T70. You could go straight for T4 without upgrading this because you could still build the T34 and SU-85 which can also receive global upgrades.

It doesn't have be this, just something that adds strategic decision making to resource spending.

Also since I'm talking about this: Abilities should cost munitions! Maybe not as much as for the other factions since they use it for upgrades. Perhaps it could be combined with some fuel cost since they don't use fuel as much as the other factions either. Throwing a grenade, which cost the other factions 35 munitions, could cost the soviets 10 munitions and 5 fuel.

You could balance the Il-2 without fundamentally changing how it works if you made it cost ammo and some fuel (or the other way around)

So there again you'd have to make strategic choices on how you spend your resources: upgrades, units or abilities.

In a hypothetical scenario: Do you want to use the Il-2 strafe/bomb run to take out a bunch of tanks, or use the resources to get some up gunned T34s and an IS2?

Last edited January 27, 2010 at 3:06 AM by maccollo

Very well put.  The soviets DO need more teching decisions and more complex decision making based on resources.  very good post./

Hi, agree with you that something should be done about teching.  Your solutions sound reasonable, and would definitely improve the game. I want something a little more dramatic myself, but I would take that happily.

I'm posting my own alternative here, rather than creating a new thread, hoping you don't mind.  It will bump yours in the process, and hopefully ad to the discussion, rather than convolute it. 

I posted this teching variation at an earlier point, but it was not well refined or particularly thought out beyond the idea at the time.  This version takes a lot more into consideration, and is at least somewhat more thoughtful of costs as they relate to other factions(I’m no expert here though).  Would these work?  Are these changes too extreme, too problematic, too lame? 

The intention is to work with the multiple tiers-per- building approach that Eastern Front has already established, and in-so doing, keep the tech choices for Russians unique, but also more varying.

The EF approach is novel- but the drawback is that teching is way too linear at the moment.  There are numerous ways to fix this, but I think my idea might have some interesting flexibility.

PROPOSAL: that buildings still have tiers.  However, my spin would be wehrmacht style teching , but in reverse.
From the start of the game, there would be no requirements, other than costs(as EF works now) to build any of the FOUR troop buildings.  A global teching would work just like wehrmacht in every other respect, except that it would unlock units in those buildings, rather than the ability to build the buildings in the first place. 

REASON:  This will open up quite a number of teching options, that if done right(balanced),  will provide the Russian player with a very flexible unit selection.  (some possible combinations at the bottom of the page—some may be far superior to others at the moment however)

Bear in Mind: This tech tree is predicated on a russian ability to OP points as all the other factions do.  Also, to fill a certain void I was running into, I currently have conscripts across two tiers, as well as out of the hq, which would allow for a spam fest of the low level units(to compensate of this somewhat whimsical change, ingenery has been recosted at 250, and command squads would not be available except in tier 1, and their fire-up would start to charge post-purchase of course.  Other changes would probably be in order- slight conscript cost buff, or maybe a build-time increase)


Tentative Tech cost at Russian HQ

T1 to t2  300 mp, 40 fuel
T2 to t3 300 mp, 40 fuel
T3 to t4  300 mp, 40 fuel


Building 0 : – starting HQ-
          Tier 0:  Conscripts – 200, ingenery 250
Building 1 : 200 mp, 10 fuel
            Tier 1:  conscripts – 200, command squad
                    Tier 2:  tank hunters – 300
                              Tier 3:  medical supply truck 
Building 2: 200 mp, 15 fuel
              Tier 1: conscripts, sharpshooter
                          Tier 2: stelky
                                    Tier 3: guards
Building 3: 200 mp, 35 fuel
                Tier 1:  mortar 
                        Tier 2: at gun - , t-90
                                  Tier 3:  Su-84 
Building 4: 220 mp, 35 fuel
              Tier 1:  t-70
                    Tier 2:  nothing
                        Tier 3: t34                                         
                                  Tier 4: IS-2   

Some  possible unit combinations and the costs of their availability--

B0, B1 and B2 at tier 2  (700 mp, 65 fuel)
Ingenery, Conscripts, Conscripts, conscripts, command squad,  sharpshooters, tankhunters, stelky

B0, B1 and B3 at tier 2 (700 mp,  85 fuel)
Ingenry, conscripts, conscripts, command squad, tank hunters, mortar , at gun, t-90

B0, B2 and B4 ( 720 mp, 90 fuel)----expensive for what you get til t3(t-34’s)
Ingenry, conscripts, conscripts, sharpshooters, t-70, stelky,

B0, B1, B3, B4 at tier 1(620 mp, 80 fuel)
Ingenry, conscripts, conscripts, command squad, mortar, t70

B0, B4 at tier 3(870 mp, 115 fuel)
Ingenery, conscripts, t-70, t-34

B0, B2 and B3 at Tier 2(700 mp, 90 fuel)
Ingenery, conscripts, conscripts, sharpshooter, mortar, stelky, at gun, t-90

BO, B1 and B2 at tier3(1000 mp, 105 fuel)
Ingenery, conscripts, conscripts, conscripts, command squad, sharpshooter, stelky, tank hunters, medic truck, guards

NOTE:  High teching in the first two tiers is going to present a vehicle and anti-vehicle disadvantage even while spending much manpower and fuel to do so.  Remember though, how easy it is to shift gears at this point, adding building 3(tier 3 ready)for just 200 mp and 35 more fuel, for example:

BO, B1, B2 and B3 at tier 3(1200 mp, 140 fuel)
Ingenery, conscripts, conscripts, conscripts, command squad, sharpshooter, stelky, tank hunters, medic truck, guards, mortar, at gun, t-90, su-84

Agreed that teching is extremely linear with Russians atm.

Your tech tree is just too similar to wehr.  Adding the OPs also makes the strategies more similar to wehr as well, less aggressive and more defensive.  But its a good start and the tech tree definitely needs some changes.  I feel like its even more linear than the brits, conscripts>snipers/mortar/AT gun>t34>is2>game.

I think that when I build "tank depo" its to late to produce light veicles. So usually going to t37 or is-2:i never build little tanks

This is hypothetically speaking, but it has been brought up in other threads, that resource gathering in team games might break the game with russians at the moment.  If the faction isn't balanced to work with op's, then it is just overly advantaged when it has an american or brit ally.  The easiest sollution in my opinion is to balance it with some sort of faction-unique resource booster. 

I was thinking you were right about observation posts making the russians more defensive, but really, the americans are an offensive faction, and they can op things.  They still have to continue to apply the pressure most of the game...just slightly less pressure when teching.

my idea might be a little overbearing on resources though---I wouldn't want the trade-off for teching to be almost no russian units on the field(and I don't think they would fare that well compared to the wehrmacht in that regard)

I don't think this sort of teching would play out quite the same as wehr though... it allows the russian player to focus on which high tier units he will have access to.  Wehrmacht either has access to none or all of it's tier 4 units.  Russians would have a choice..they could diversify more, and tech up  later(more similar to wehr), but they have a choice where wehrmacht doesn't,

this is a trade-off for the fact that wehr essentially gets to do the same thing by turning low end troops into(ti worthy) million-dollar men with bought veterancy, at the cost of teching....

The original poster's idea would probably be easier to implement though, and might not run the same risk of screwing with the russian flavor, while still introducing some solid choices

Heres a tiering system that would work perfectly.

Id like opinions on this system in which to unlock units and make resourcing decisions.  I believe this would be the perfect unique, playable and fluent system that the soviets need.

THE ZIP FILE IS A POWERPOINT EXPLAINING THE SYSTEM IN DETAIL, WATCH IT BEFORE POSTING PLEASE.

If you play with comps please don't post your opinion. Thank you.

Check out the resources photo, this would be an approximation of costs

Last edited February 1, 2010 at 12:39 PM by WhiteFlash

Wow...you win for powerpoint use and a picture tree alone...

I like your idea, it's not so different from mine, except that your unlocks work more like PE than Wehr, more focused, and the nice thing about it is you don't change around the units or add buildings like I do, and you manage to work towards the same general purpose.

Kind of wish you made possible, if harder, a way to skip building 1, for opening flexibility, and so, developed some synergy between building 2 and 3 the way you have synergy between building 1 and 2 and building 1 and 3.  Of course at their current costing, that's not really possible, and looking at that set-up, you probably wouldn't want to be changing that.

I will say that I've watched a few of the replays that have been posted of 1.01 over at gamereplays, and was surprised at how differently the russian faction played out each time, even as is.  I wish people would post more replays.  I may not be thinking outside of the box enough in my own play.


I  think right now the munitions globals are what determines which units a russian player will buy, which is pretty interesting I guess, and i didn't think about how that would in itself tailor the army, in spite of all units being available at a middle point, but it seems like it would be a problematic system in multiplayer, when munitions can pour into the faction, and eliminate the need to focus on certain units.

I think some sort of op should be possible for the russians, and that 1v1 should be balanced accordingly, so that 2v2(cross faction) doesn't get out of hand.


I still think munitions globals should only work on existing units (with rebuys possible) for about half the munitions.  The rebuys would charge timers, as well as give the upgrade to any new troops of said type.  In so doing, this would somewhat create a need for unit preservation, because new units would only get upgrades with a new rebuy.

I still think that a very long timer retreat should be implemented on all soviet troops, or that they should be able to retreat to command squad as some people suggested, or that stelky and guards should be able to retreat(balanced accordingly),

but watching a couple of those games was pretty awesome, and I'll keep playing.  Maybe my opinion will change.

Last edited January 29, 2010 at 7:08 PM by Joshua9