OWB 5.0.3 Tech, Equipment and Unit Balance Changes

# 5.0.3 Tech and Units Balance Changelog


General Changes:

	Rooted Unit Leader trait Entrenchment Speed +20% -> +15%, Max Entrenchment +2 -> +3
		(Dev Note: The relatively low availability of entrenchment compared to planning and lack of an Engineer company equivalent in OWB are enough that we feel right pushing the baseline available amounts of the stat in this way now that breakthrough units are more accessible even for smaller nations.)



Infantry Changes:

	Militia Urban terrain Speed +20% -> +10%
		(Dev Note: From everything we've seen over the last few months monitoring the community's experimentation with Militia after their various buffs, it seems their added speed has actually paid off! While we're happy about this, and would hate to kill it in its tracks, we've found that in a majority of cases, this added speed tends to be less in service of encirclements, faster retreating and other use cases and more in service of simply snaking for victory points. Old World Blues's AI still needs a lot of work, and there are things for us to do within that space that limit the effectiveness of this strategy for cheesing wars, but it will always be possible. Lowering the movement speed for Militia on Urban tiles specifically helps make them slightly less effective at performing this job while being a negligible change to their movement speed over all. It's not like this change will make snaking with Militia suddenly no longer strong or accessible, but even small improvements towards making wars more satisfying can add up over time.)

	Plasma Rifle Soft Attack 16 -> 14, Hard Attack 8 -> 7, Air Attack 1 -> 0.5
	Turbo Plasma Rifle Soft Attack 18 -> 16, Hard Attack 9 -> 8, Air Attack 1.5 -> 0.8, Piercing 26 -> 20
	Mass Driver Defense 18 -> 17, Soft and Hard Attack 11.5 -> 11, Piercing 22 -> 21
	Gauss Rifle Defense 20 -> 19, Breakthrough 6 -> 5.5, Soft and Hard Attack 14.5 -> 13.5, Air Attack 3 -> 2.5
		(Dev Note: Considering how dangerous these equipment can tend to be, we're generally of the stance that they do not need to have the same level of power as they do currently to be enticing. After all, straightforward upgrades over existing equipment are going to be attractive if they're even remotely affordable when the thing being produced is as ubiquitous as infantry equipment. If these changes are too aggressive, we'll bring the production cost down slightly to match them, but we don't want to do Plasma and Gauss any favors that they don't actually need.

		We're also eyeing some larger changes to infantry equipment. It's possible they don't see the light of day for some time, but we wanted to include a mention of it here since they'd affect the game a great deal. If you've been around since the patches following 4.0, you'll probably remember when we made tweaks to bring the base stats (mainly defense in practice) of said equipment up for lower levels to narrow the increase per level. If these changes do make it through, they'll be made with similar intent to lessen the extreme stat disparity between equipment tiers. Keep an eye out for this down the road.)



Robot Changes:

	Thruster Robot equipment Breakthrough 7.5/8.5/9.5/10.5 -> 8/9/10/11, Maximum Speed 6/6/7/8 -> 6/6/7.5/9
		(Dev Note: Thruster Robots still tend to lag behind their Bipedal counterparts. Pushing their speed advantage in the late game as well as making a very slight boost to their Breakthrough should be a step towards accentuating their strengths and helping them get closer to establishing a proper use-case.)



Doctrine Changes:

	# Conventional Warfare
	Conventional Warfare (starting tech) Max Entrenchment +8 -> +10
	Mechanised Warfare granted Planning Speed +15%
		(Dev Note: The change to Conventional's first tech is similar to the reasons described for changing the Rooted trait. As for Mechanised Warfare, this is a very minor buff, but one that helps reinforce the utility of Conventional's earlier Max Planning bonuses by making Planning slightly more helpful to such fast-moving units as the kind you'd want to make in the tech's doctrine sub-path.)



Unique Tech Changes:

	Sentinel Command Slave Circuitry cost 1 -> 2, Production Cost 7 -> 12
		(Dev Note: Sentinels come online for Alamo Chapter at a stage in the game where the most immediate threats to your survival are dealt with, and due to their low manpower use they can be produced almost ad-infinitum. This change helps make sure they require more investment. Also note that the low amount of Sentinel equipment required per division makes this Production Cost change a far smaller increase to the total cost of the unit than it may appear.)