Most important glaring balance problem = Battle Fortress are OP. This was adressed in a previous patch but then backtracked because patchers seem to be allies lovers. BFRT loaded with GGIs beats every units in the game no exception, even probably every unit composition. The long range means you can't even get close. The answer for soviets "just use siege choppers" only works in maps with steep hills (even then its pretty hard), otherwise you get massacred. And allies can spam rocketeers to make it much harder to you, while Soviets can't spam any late game infantry. The problem mainly has to do with GGI using the deployed weapon, which already has long range, and then gets a staggering +2 from the battle fortress. In comparison, Soviet bunker is immobile, can only have conscripts, and only has 5 fixed range.
The patch also gives mega advantage to allies in making allied power plant 25% cheaper and faster to build. This makes it more efficient than tesla reactor (which was also less efficient in base space use). If the problem was that it took longer to build, you could have just adressed that by BuildTimeMultiplier
My proposed solutions:
- Battle Fortress GGI range inside re-nerfed (-1)
- Allies power plant back to 800 cost, buildtimemultiplier 0.75
Extremely bad and underused units:
- V3 rockets are absolutely dismal terrible, you only see them in 10% of games and mostly from absolute noobs. At least extend range of V3 and make it cost 600 (Dread missiles have range 22 and are omnifire, dred missiles have range 18, don't omnifire, and have much lower ROF, not to mention v3 is even more fragile than Prism without any of the advantages).
- Crazy Ivan is seen even less than V3, it is too expensive, slow and a danger to yourself if killed (extremely easy). Plus HP, self-regen and faster would be a start (although I still don't think anyone will use it): The real alternative would be make the warhead of its bombs like 300-400% vs tanks. It is already very hard to use a single bomb, and Ivan is as expensive as a tank, yet the bomb only takes 25% of the health of an MBT, after a lot of time.
Other OP units:
- Nerf Desolator (yes, I am not pro-soviet, Desolator is obviously OP top the point that Iraq was the only viable soviet competitive alternative). The Desolator beam (practically unused) could have higher ROF or range, but the deployment shouldn't have such a large range and radlevel.
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Now these are more suggestions which aren't 100% vital to balance but can enrich the game, similarly to the already made useless units useful (such as Tank Destroyer):
Yuri:
- We also have a problem in the GAP generator, the late game becomes completely assymetrical because allies can see everything but you can't see them as soviets or yuri (not even with crates). There are two or three soviet unused psychic buildings which could be this for both Soviets and/or Yuri, even if less efficient and more power hungry (they are already larger) it is worth looking into. After all, Soviet special nuke doesn't allow anything else that Allies cannot do (is just "power, but more"), they used to have psychic radar but that got taken away. And Yuri doesn't even have an equivalent building to Gap Generator + Spysat / Nuclear Reactor
- As Mental Omega 2.0 first noted, Yuri has less variety of units and buildings (no separate refinery, no AA infantry, only one naval combat unit, AA and AG defense is the same...) that any addition would be welcome to rounding them up as a faction with more variety rather than just spamming DISK. The naval combat is specially lacking. The default game comes with an extra DRED (Vladimir's Dreadnought) which could be coded, for example, though this is just a random idea. Most easy is to re-purpose the campaign soviet Psychic Beacon into Yuri/Soviet Gap Generator.
- The other poster is correct that Brute needs to be buffed (although look into Genetic Mutator problems). Yuri has no dog. Brute should have significantly more HP and maybe also be faster (at least as a dog). Brute also can't jump making its targeting harder. A cost of 400 like the new tesla trooper would help.
Other things to look into:
- Enable Soviet cosmonaut as an answer to rocketeer
- Allow soviets Spy. Spy is disabled in most multiplayer games, but it could be used if it was not obviously unfair. OIL maps already enable soviet Spy and give him a Russian voice (I believe Romanov's voicelines). Thus this would not be enabling Soviet spy only, but also Allied spy which is mostly banned, which is a shame because it has interesting mechanics. This would also lead to seeing secret units more often (chrono ivan, etc.) - Red Alert 1 has an approach to balance similar to this, giving Soviets Tanya due to them not having heroes/commandos in that game.
- Soviets and yuri don't have way to transporting engineers (or units in general) up a hill, while allies have both Chronosphere and Blackhawk. non-allied Engineers not being able to reach neutral buildings positioned over hills or ineccessible islands is a mayor problem, which even crops up in default maps (such as Arctic Circle). We have an unused asset of Soviet transport heli intended to address this [HIND] which wasn't finished from the beta. Enabling this as a tech lab transport even without any special combat abilities would partially address this.
