Eugen Systems Forums

I've played ALB since beta and I have never seen any discussion of weapon toggling to avoid reload times on these forums or in game. For those of you who don't know weapons still reload even when they are turned off or not being used. You can use this to your advantage in some situations by turning off the reloading weapon so another weapon can fire. The most obvious use of this is with atgm tanks. While in gun range you can turn off your main cannon, fire your atgm, turn on the main cannon, fire twice, switch to the atgm and fire immediately. I have made a quick video demonstrating this.

http://youtu.be/7CtPmW9aGEQ

I'm not sure this is working as the developers intended, but I have been using it to great effect for some weeks now. It definitely requires a lot more micro, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

As a side note this works for any unit with more than one weapon. You can do the same thing with atgms/autocannons on ifvs.

This has recently seen an uptick in use. I doubt it was unintended.

solaris wrote:This has recently seen an uptick in use. I doubt it was unintended.

I find this hard to believe. I check these forums almost every day and have never seen this mentioned. I've played hundreds of games and never seen anybody else use it. I've even watched tournament games and never seen it used. I guess it's possible I just have never run into anybody using it, but that is doubtful.

This trick massively improves the effectiveness of some units.

Rizzmond wrote:

solaris wrote:This has recently seen an uptick in use. I doubt it was unintended.

I find this hard to believe. I check these forums almost every day and have never seen this mentioned. I've played hundreds of games and never seen anybody else use it. I've even watched tournament games and never seen it used. I guess it's possible I just have never run into anybody using it, but that is doubtful.

This trick massively improves the effectiveness of some units.

iirc that was already possible in W:EE.

the reason why you don't see it used in tournament matches - well, over all it's a negligible advantage. in a standard battle situation you rarely will have time to manage a single units weapon system with that frequency. more often than not you'll be busy cutting off enemy flanking forces, relocating units and bringing supplies/reinforcements to the front, while you probe the enemy positions and try to infiltrate their lines.

if you can pull it of reliably - the better for you. but overall a good tactical layout and combined arms are often far more important than micro'ing a single unit.

This is a glorious Battlefield 3 design where you first fire normal shell so that you damage the vehicle followed by canister round in 0.5 seconds to kill people that bail out.

Wow that T-80U 1v2'd those Leo2A4 lol..

But the thing is most people can't even micro well enough to prevent their tanks from driving into forests, so I doubt that this can be exploited too much. Not to mention you can't fire missiles on the move so this is only good for when your unit is stationary, and for when the enemy unit is both within your missile AND gun range at same time.

Rizzmond wrote:I find this hard to believe. I check these forums almost every day and have never seen this mentioned.

FLX mentioned it and explained it in great detail.

I think it was in the ATGM/non-ATGM Soviet tank debate tread or some thing like it

Rizzmond wrote:As a side note this works for any unit with more than one weapon. You can do the same thing with atgms/autocannons on ifvs.

Do weapons always prioritize right-to-left?

Do weapons always prioritize right-to-left?

I don't think their UI location has anything to do with priority, but I'm not absolutely positive. Tank main cannons have priority over atgms, that's why this trick involves toggling off the main cannon.

FLX mentioned it and explained it in great detail.

If you can find me a link I'd be appreciative.

Wow that T-80U 1v2'd those Leo2A4 lol..

But the thing is most people can't even micro well enough to prevent their tanks from driving into forests, so I doubt that this can be exploited too much. Not to mention you can't fire missiles on the move so this is only good for when your unit is stationary, and for when the enemy unit is both within your missile AND gun range at same time.

You're absolutely right that somebody who doesn't understand how to use it or doesn't have the micro abilities won't be able to make use of this. But for a game that has very little micro already, anybody who is used to other rts games will have no problem doing this in the middle of battles.

the reason why you don't see it used in tournament matches - well, over all it's a negligible advantage.

It's really not a negligible advantage. You can see 2 leo2a4s lose to a t80u in the video and that can easily be upped to 3 leo2a4s with the same result. We are talking about a massive increase in burst damage. Plus a 2800 range atgm has an extremely high chance to hit at sub 2200m ranges.

Rizzmond wrote:
It's really not a negligible advantage. You can see 2 leo2a4s lose to a t80u in the video and that can easily be upped to 3 leo2a4s with the same result. We are talking about a massive increase in burst damage. Plus a 2800 range atgm has an extremely high chance to hit at sub 2200m ranges.

Well firstly the Leo2A4 were grouped together which is dumb, otherwise one could've flanked the T-80U and ended it. The T-80U was also on "Elite" status right from the beginning of the video.

But anyway I don't think this is a big deal because although in your vid it looks really powerful, you did that in 100% perfect testing condition. In a real battlefield such a perfect scenario wouldn't happen often. For example the Leo2A4 may retreat, in which case you can no longer kill it doing that because ATGM only fire stationary, or enemy might arty your T-80U/move up an ATGM heli. This only really works under perfect testing conditions, the real battlefield is another story.