Balancing the Japanese--ideas?

[Blue Crab of PAIN!!!]

IMO if the Japanese are allowed regular access to the Type 89 mortar, a group of skilled users can more-than even the odds against a regularly equipped American infantry group.
Granted, mortar rounds flying everywhere doesn't sound particularly fun either.
In defensive situations, the IJA could be balanced with entrenched tanks and heavy gun emplacements.

For maps where the Japanese are assaulting... uhh.. I guess the 75mm field cannons and the Type 97 Chi-Ha [57mm stub gun] would work if the Americans themselves didn't have access to armor.*

In regular situations maybe they can have be equipped with more grenades? I'd say better melee weapons, but I don't know how far that would actually go for balancing.

*How would a duel between the early Chi-Ha variants and the M3 Stuart turn out? I know the Stuart's 37mm gun would be of high performance, but it isn't exactly rife with armor. A Chi-Ha Shinhoto should be able to wipe the floor with a Stuart, but the 57mm was of poor AP performance. I just don't know if its poor AP performance would be matched by the Stuart's own poor armor protection.

 

[The_GAP_Trixie]

How about giving the Japanese a higher proportion of marksman class soldiers, as they fielded a significantly higher proportion of optics-equipped rifles than other armies of the era. Combined with superior terrain and defensive positions and the game would be balanced and offer an interesting dynamic. I don't think other special help is needed.

 

[Seamie]

In the screenshots I couldn't help but notice that the Japanese in their khaki uniforms tended to stick out against the jungle backdrop
How about field improvised camouflage
[url]http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt08/japanese-camouflage-garment.html[/URL]
The quality of japanese players camouflage could be tied into game progression.
The more experienced a player the better their camo

 

[Grabbed_by_the_Spetsnaz]

I have been looking up some of the jap weapons used in ww2, and I have a little suggestion that might help with a little with the Japs. Explosives!

This has probably been discussed already but the Japanese loved Thier mobile artillery, maby you guys could import a couple of potable, easy to use, hard hitting explosives such as The


Type 89 "knee mortar"


Type 100 overbarrel grenade launcher
2nd grenade launcher down

And more common rifle grenade mounts and motor/artillery strikes.

IIRC the Japanese were almost always superior in these factors right until the ending of the war, however I have lost these links and will try to find them a little bit later.

 

[Forssen]

I hope that knee mortar make it in, looks like a good way to give the Japanese some additional firepower. According to that link they had about as many of those as light machineguns

 

[Hilldog]

I hope that knee mortar make it in, looks like a good way to give the Japanese some additional firepower. According to that link they had about as many of those as light machineguns

The Japanese love them some mortars!

 

[Britney Federline]

Those look like they'd have a bang right about halfway between RO2 grenades and RO2 artillery. How many do you think you would need to counteract the rapid-fire nature of the Garand? Maybe 4 on a team of 32?

Also, I don't think having optics would really help in mountainous and jungle maps, particularly since RO2 has zooming already.

 

[Raptor341]

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[Mosin]

One thing that may help would be to remove the "Killed From Location" feature that's in RO2. I would help the Japanese stay concealed longer and better.

However, I think within a playable reason the game should stay a bit unbalanced. It would be a huge shame to see a vast amount of rare weapons (like the insanely rare Japanese Garand clone rifle) running around the battlefield. Talk about an immersion killer. Besides, I personally sometimes enjoy playing the losing team. Defending to the last man and desperately trying to hold off a superior fighting force makes for some of my favorite memories from the RO series and it's mods.

 

[Wookie87]

Booby traps. Obviously such implementation of traps would have to be done carefully due to the possibility of griefing or over use, so perhaps only engineers get access to AP/AT mines and tripwires and are only allowed to place a certain number down.

Perhaps replace the Satchel charge with those booby traps. Might be worth also having US engineers being able to disarm such traps too.

 

[vincini]

I can tell none of you know anything about Japan vs China during WW2 and thats alright. The Japanese had 5 SMGs that were actually used more than any other country besides Russia. We Americans dont recall this in our pacific campaign because the Japanese thought they could hold us back by crashing their planes into our carries. Basically their goal was to restrict us from crossing over to their country. When Russia and China teammed up and destroyed the invading threat the Japanese figured they could win if they kept throwing more and more, soon the entire army was dwindling down and then big uncle sam reaches the surrounding islands of Japan, Japan realises they are having their back door beat down, so they pull out of china and rush to the main islands, by the time they got there we were already defeating them in every corner. So what did they do? Dropped all their equipment and rushed for mainland Japan, there they would make a stand, there they would meet Mr.Atom and surrender. Japan had plenty of SMGs, they just didnt have time to transfer all of them to face America. Japan made a vital mistake of splitting its troops, the Navy faced us while the army faced Russia. You never fight a two-sided war.

So all i can say is if you want balance, then remake the blanced battles! simple as that. Do not do the battles where Japan was utterly defeated, remake the battles that were hard and struggling for both sides heres a few

Battle of Bataan
Battle of Okinawa
Battle of Mount Austen
Battle of Tarawa
Battle of Attu
Battle of Mindanao

Re-create those battles and it should be balanced enough to keep weapons the same, and some of those are late war so it should help.

 

[Nazarov]

Give Japanese better range with bayo and more damage.
increase sniper slots for japanese
More reinforcements for japanese
bonzai charge bonus
slightly better stamina

I don't know. All I know is they will be crushed by the Americans.

 

[Britney Federline]

Could there always be more Japanese than Americans, maybe up to 2x as many? I'm not sure how automatic balancing could work in a practical way, though, especially since from the player's perspective you'd get assigned by the server to a team, which a lot of people would find annoying.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Shorter, smaller targets?

 

[bakabon]

From Japanese point of view

From Japanese point of view

Our huge inferior equipment quality was coming from infrastructure. However our manual bolt action rifles(if its properly made) were matched or better than other nation(see type 99 rifle), type 100 SMG equipped with bayonet and bypod.

So if somehow we rebalance the weapon and give players the meaning of use single bolt action rifle, Japanese may have better balance.

Also, historically we walked insane length due to that we didnt have good transport. So it is fair to say we have better fatigue resistance. And perhaps moves little faster than US people.

In tank battle basically our tank sucks, so I dont wanna see Japanese tank killing M4 by one shot. Instead infantry should have capability of taking down its crew by guns and grenade. Kamikaze will not help that much, and historically we took down tank by infantry not suicide attack.

so I gonna say

1.High utility SMG(bypod + melee)
2.overall strengthen manual rifle
3.High fatigue resistance
4.Faster movement speed
5.Infantly can take down Tank crew

I am grateful to hear Japanese voice in foreign software. And love to see this mod.

 

[UEemperor]

about balancing

about balancing

Im not experienced in pacific campaigns nor am in ww2 weaponry and stuff
yet i would like to give you some links about some weapons the IJA used

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/jp_tankhunters/fig1_japanese_lunge_mine_antitank.jpg[url]http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/jp_tankhunters/fig1_japanese_lunge_mine_antitank.jpg[/URL]

[url]http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/jp_tankhunters/fig3_japanese_antitank_grenades.jpg[/URL]

these 2 are for the tanks.

I heard from somewhere that the japanese buried some of their light tanks so that they could use it as a stationary turret.

Furthermore infantry had camouflage suits (cant find a link now)
so they could be harder to spot from usa units.

IJA officers used the type 14 nambu pistol BUT...they had katana swords as a symbolic and close combat weapon.
You could even implement a banzai charge as someone mentioned above: the increase in morale after watching an officer cut down troops with ease should be a great advantage game-wise, plus you have a killing machine in close quarters that one hit kills infantry.

Personally i want to request the devs to make a katana sword for the game ,as it would really increase the realism in terms of history and give (maybe) an edge over the us troops' just put it as a primary weapon,and the officer will have the close combat weapon for killing and the nambu for self defence/ranged combat plus the typical grenades and such.

p.sLEASE MAKE THE KATANA AVAILABLE!

p.p.s:ITS SO AWESOME AND HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!

p.p.p.s: please?

 

[filtratedbread]

In turth the reason they lost the war was that they
1) could not update there industry after the US put down trade restrictions. (japanese reason for war)
1a) There for could not get updated weapons, aircraft, ships, tanks. (they had quite a few, but could not make more than a few proto-types)
2) Most battles the US out-numbered them.
3) less trained.

The list of some pro-japanese advantages is later war, but maby it serves for mind set.

The japanese had a lot of explosive material, because they occupied alot of volcanic islands (so plenty of crude bombs)....

They are the inventors of many of the same booby-traps that we saw in vetnam....

They would make/prepare locations that they could open fire for suprise attacks, sometimes they would wait in spider-holes, let us pass, till night in and then fight...

They had a lot of riflemen that played like a sniper (without the scope)....

Some times, play dead or when dieing from a wound... but hide a gun/bomb/grenade/trap under them....

other times when shot, they pull a grenade and try to take you with them....

But most of the advantages came with the one thing they had plenty of before battle, time and prepration: from fortifcations to tunnels, to hidden firing points. The charges they used often when they ran out of ammo and sometimes they got very sneaky.

But all they had was despration tatics, and they did not have super-human stamina, they often were malnourished and sometimes ill. (we cut off the supply lines)

Both sides had a different idea for objectives (we still won ours, clearing islands out) (for them, increasing towards the wars end, killing more amount of enemy)

 

[Listingbadly]

Of course, a lot of the balance concerns could be sorted out if the Commonwealth forces were included and this would also give many more options for maps where Japanese forces are attacking.

The Advance on Singapore, The Kokoda trial, Burma, etc. These maps would allow bolt action rifles on both sides and varied and interesting games.

Eg, Milne Bay - Australian & US forces defended against IJN troops that were supported by tanks and Naval Arty. The Japanese tanks were able to be used where allied tanks weren't due to much lower ground pressure.

Another factor in favour of japanese forces was their superior training and tactics early in the war in night attacks. This might be reflected in game by advantageous spawn points when objectives are taken by japanese attackers.

Cheers - Listing

 

[Britney Federline]

That sounds like fun. I love the idea of Americans being on the defensive in a dark jungle night amidst the flashes of arty and grenades all around them. Also of Australians with knives coated in vegemite wading up riverbeds.

 

[Mike_Nomad]

Could there always be more Japanese than Americans, maybe up to 2x as many? I'm not sure how automatic balancing could work in a practical way, though, especially since from the player's perspective you'd get assigned by the server to a team, which a lot of people would find annoying.

A scenario on Guadalcanal would lend itself to that very nicely.

Just ask William Bendix. :IS2: