Some impressions after two rounds as Soviets on the 40-1 Classic server. Cheers to everyone on Soviet team, great work everyone that night.
Can't really say much about the first trenches objective, as for the first round I only finished downloading after the first three objectives had been capped, and for the second round I was Commander and hung back at the radio waiting for artillery strike coordinates, so never even really saw those trenches (i.e. the first objective) before they were capped.
The 2nd and 3rd objectives might be interesting, but I have a feeling the underground trenches system might be just too extensive. There was a lot of fighting on the right-flank objective (from Soviet perspective), but hardly any on the left-flank — with around 40 players there just wasn't anyone there, and so it fell infiltrated by two-three Germans.
Village, the 4th capzone, looks like a fairly fun capzone, but both times it fell fairly quickly.
The last objective, as per my experience as rifleman and commander on Soviets, might be just too hard for Germans. Now this is mainly the result of the good defensive setup with many windows on the ground and first floors, as well as the left-hand auxilliary building, which offers a sort of a flanking firing arc.
The Germans had a really hard time getting to the last objective building — we only got MP40s every so often, but never was a capturing process initiated (the Germans never had more than just a handful of players in the zone, from what I noticed). One thing that could be possibly done is to decrease the distance between the village and the station — but only very slightly, for starters. Maybe cut off some 10 to 15 metres.
What was also good, was the basement entrance in front of the station: a very helpful thing for the attackers, but I don't think it was utilised even once (my guess is the attackers didn't know the map well enough to know it was there). Once more people learn about it and mass-smoke the route to it, it might prove to be too advantageous to Germans, but we'll see.
The right flank on the last objective seemed easier for Germans, as in they got into the obective from that side mostly. They got to the left-hand building a few times, but didn't consistently make the jump from there into the capzone.
The Germans didn't use their arty nearly as much as they should have, but Soviet arty seems on a good cooldown. Four minutes is just about right, I'd up it to 4:15 perhaps. There is no recon, so good coordination with SLs is crucial — I was lucky enough to have good SL who yielded jackpot locations.
On reinforcements it's a bit too early to really tell, but with a full 64 player server it seems it's going to be really close. The Germans get roughly twice as many as the Soviets at start, from what I remember, but once players learn the German routes, it might be necessary to bring down the German reinforcements a little. This is because my preference is for two sides to have run out, rather than two sides not to run out: as it was on those two rounds, the Germans had plenty reinfo to spare, even though they were getting nowhere and were being decimated, while the Soviets ran out with about a minute or so to go (this was with approximately 40 players on the server).
Server administrators will have to make sure this and the Gumrak station map are not played close to each other, because they really are based off the same map and it shows in the layout.
EDIT:
A few more ideas, as an after-thought. German arty coming down on the building was able to take out the defenders on the ground, if near windows, which was perfectly fine. I am not certain, but so was the case with the first floor, central part. What you could do is remove the roof from the left-hand side of the final objective building (from Soviet perspective) — the part of the building where the Soviet radio is.
As the Germans seemed to have an easier time breeching the right flank (Soviet perspective), removing the roof on the left-side would allow a German arty strike to take out defenders on the Soviet left flank in the objective on the ground, as well as on the first floor, and perhaps facilitate the seizing of the left-hand side building outside the objective. That way they could later stage an attack from both flanks, or just the left-flank from the building, if well-coordinated. I hope you understand what I mean.
![[40-1]MORD](/data/avatars/s/34/34566.jpg?1568638684){kind=avatar}
