Emplacements currently

I don't see many complaining about them, yet these emplacements are still very frustrating to deal with. I'm not saying they aren't counterable, but its how easily they can lock the map down for a period of time.

Thoughts? How do people feel about emplacements right now?

People complain and make a thread about it nearly every day.

Most people with common sense agree with you

Expect two to disagree with you, one is katitof, other is aaa.

They are a cancerous addition to the game, that does nothing but leave a frustrated feeling to one player with no reward feeling even if the player is successful in destroying an emplacements or winning against sim city

Get over it, Intelligence209.

Seriously.

It's not like beating Axis is rewarding in any way either; especially OKW.

People complain and make a thread about it nearly every day.

Most people with common sense agree with you

Expect two to disagree with you, one is katitof, other is aaa.

They are a cancerous addition to the game, that does nothing but leave a frustrated feeling to one player with no reward feeling even if the player is successful in destroying an emplacements or winning against sim city

Emplacements are fine and counterable. Leig/mortars/AT/Tanks/puma etcetc.. i don't see the problem.
Also emplacements are expensive as hell, 300mp for bofors + you need tech/fuel + you can't make a tank against light armor the entire early-mid game...... exploit this and you win.
Puma outranges bofors I believe.

you get bofors or two covering vps, mortar pit in the back and vickers on cutoff. and ppl still tell you to be patient, wait for late game and go around
by the time i can get to late game im already down to 100 vps

so l2p issue basically

I mean it's mainly a planning problem, you have to force them to brace, then preserve your true strength to hammer one of the emplacements when brace wears off. In a solo context they're such costly investments that losing one early will typically result in axis snowballing to an easy win.

In larger team games, it's a battle of shit gameplay with emplacements facing off against endless OKW infantry blobs backed up by stukkas into panthers / KT. Boy is that not even remotely fun to play against.

I think the biggest issue here is the same-thing people complained about when OKW came around. The factions are not necessarily balanced or even unbalanced, but the style in which these factions are played and the results they produce are just not enjoyable to play against.

Even if you win, lets say against a double brits team in a 2v2 that both spam emplacements, one could assume that the game is balanced in a sense, but the important issue for the person is, was it a fun match to play?

So in all honesty this may not be a balance issue at all, but rather very poorly designed faction(s).

I dunno about you, but I have a blast obliterating emplacements. It's like dominoes once you take out one the rest are usually pretty easy to rip apart.

I think the biggest issue here is the same-thing people complained about when OKW came around. The factions are not necessarily balanced or even unbalanced, but the style in which these factions are played and the results they produce are just not enjoyable to play against.

This is the main issue. I can't get my head around why they're implemented the way they are, or even in the game in the first place. The British were seen as one of the worst parts about CoH1, so why one of the worst parts of that faction's design were carried over in to CoH2 is beyond me. It changes the gameplay from a contest of position and manoeuvre to a boring battle of attrition.

Emplacements are OP in some situations though, particularly 2v2 on smaller maps where they get more coverage and the teammate can screen during construction and produce the vehicles/AT the emplacement builder foregoes. Most of the time however they're balanced by their cost and vulnerability during construction.

I think the biggest issue here is the same-thing people complained about when OKW came around. The factions are not necessarily balanced or even unbalanced, but the style in which these factions are played and the results they produce are just not enjoyable to play against.

Even if you win, lets say against a double brits team in a 2v2 that both spam emplacements, one could assume that the game is balanced in a sense, but the important issue for the person is, was it a fun match to play?

So in all honesty this may not be a balance issue at all, but rather very poorly designed faction(s).

I can't believe they brought Emplacements back for the British after the lessons learned from COH1. But really the game has had major problems since WFA came out - forward retreat points are arguably one of the biggest mistakes they made.

It's shit game design on their part. This game is about manpower bleed and emplacements bleed the other guy without taking any damage themselves. Brace structure should cost manpower and repairing british structures should decrease your manpower income even more than it does.

But it doesn't, because this game has never had a competent lead game designer. Just a bunch of programmers adding features after the original design crew released a mediocre game with an awfully optimized game engine.

I can't believe they brought Emplacements back for the British after the lessons learned from COH1. But really the game has had major problems since WFA came out - forward retreat points are arguably one of the biggest mistakes they made.

I'm going to defend both emplacements and forward retreat points.

Emplacements have noob appeal. When I first started playing CoH1, I played Brits and absolutely spammed emplacements. It's much easier to passively defend points and arty your opponents to dust than to attack. This does, of course, mean that emplacements should be less efficient than mobile options in direct proportion to the effort involved in using them but doesn't mean they should be removed from the game.

Playing CoH1 Brits poorly led me to playing CoH2 UKF poorly, but with mobile units and I'm sure it introduced many other people to CoH. The important thing to remember is that this forum is mostly populated by players who are above-average in skill so the unanimous agreement that emplacements are bad should be filtered by the understanding that these aren't the players who would usually use emplacements anyway.

Forward retreat points have somewhat the same defense. It's more fun to be fighting than to be waiting for units to retreat on larger maps, it's easier to hit retreat than to order several squads to go to the nearest retreat point et cetera. From a more competitive design standpoint, the game is balanced primarily around 1v1 so the 1v1 retreat time is likely to be a major part of that.

Either way, the issues with retreat points are more that the Soviets and Ostheer don't have them (I made a mod adding them to Command Bunkers and M5s a while back) and they haven't been properly balanced with regard to cost and timing (flat cost or free instead of a manpower/munitions drain while active, compare OKW/UKF timing to USF).

I don't think emplacements or forward retreat points need to be removed from the game, but I don't think they're necessarily balanced either.

FRP's should have cool down to prevent spamming, like in coh1.

If there are any FRPs they should be things that you capture on the map, rather than things that you build.

If there are any FRPs they should be things that you capture on the map, rather than things that you build.

That probably wouldn't be too difficult to add but at the end of the day you have a vital capability being left at the mercy of whoever made the map. Map design is already an issue with flanking routes for example.

Adding FRPs to the Soviets and Ostheer would at least allow you to balance them independently (to a degree) of map design.

That probably wouldn't be too difficult to add but at the end of the day you have a vital capability being left at the mercy of whoever made the map. Map design is already an issue with flanking routes for example.

Adding FRPs to the Soviets and Ostheer would at least allow you to balance them independently (to a degree) of map design.

I just think that in some way you need to scale back the efficacy of infantry blobs, and increase the value of wining (non-lethal) engagements. Adding FRP will make the game more even between factions, but still promote Shrek blobs etc that you can just instantly retreat if an engagement looks unfavorable without conceding significant field presense like you would if you removed FRP from the game. The value of spreading your units out vs concentrating them and risking losing everything off the field for a period of time is warped by their very existence, imo.

Big maps are big maps, they are kinda sucky but we managed in Vanilla ok without the factions having FRP. Soft retreats to bunkers or half track strong points were a perfectly reasonable medium, imo. Getting pushed off should hurt. FRP as capping points would mean that on very large maps you could have modestly placed FRPs to get you back into the fight "somewhat faster" than a full retreat, without being able to plonk them right on the front lines. That is, the map is large and can feature spread out engagements, but will also not fuck with 1v1/2v2 or the balance on smaller 3v3/4v4 maps.

I absolutely agree though that the map balancing has been very sub par historically for CoH2. That's one area they need major improvement on.

I don't see many complaining about them, yet these emplacements are still very frustrating to deal with. I'm not saying they aren't counterable, but its how easily they can lock the map down for a period of time.

Thoughts? How do people feel about emplacements right now?

all players know Emplacements are OP and are a problem, relic know, all of us know
but relic dont want fix that, so complain is useless

all players know Emplacements are OP and are a problem, relic know, all of us know
but relic dont want fix that, so complain is useless

Actually, last thing relic said on emplacements was they want commanders for that playstyle as well, that just because some vocal players don't like them doesn't mean they will nerf them and that players should basically L2P.

Emplacements are boring to play against.
Emplacements with cancer commander are overperforming.