I also think their support weapons should be more accessible. The whole faction teching system promotes blobbing. T0 you start with rifles or REs. Teching gives you a rifle squad with bar and Thompson or zooks. If you start the with 3 rifles then once you have all support weapons unlocked you have essentially 5 baseline infantry. This bleeds mp and makes it iffy to invest more mp into support weapons as well. I think it should be easier to access support weapons as the USFs.
Agreed by if you do that, I'll have to nerf éarly RM and UP USF late game.
One sniper, maybe two with a radius of negative zeal, could have made sense in COH1. One could be used to scout, as a counter to support weapons, etc. But they became a force that was on par, or greater, than your armor, arty, etc. The problem with that isn't balance but design. A strategic war game that becomes all about microing the snipers, over and above concern for infantry, armor, AT, support weapons, etc. just doesn't feel like a WW2 based wargame.
The sniping concept introduced with JLI and Pathfinder is interesting, sniper could only kill models under % of health. It could be easily implemented with Sov/Brit/Osth with different stats and you decrease their prices. They could share Pathfinder stats if they keep their camo.
It have more to do with USF inability to deal with increased range KT and OKW blobs, which only indirect fire can counter and that is where calliope comes in.
That being said, armor company sees 2nd wind now with M10 spam which counters armor and might do some nice crushes, so at the end, it comes down to the better player with OKW having great advantage late game unless you spam M10s or calliopes.
Not really, I have been a big user of Armor commander since months now and M10 has been nerfed as well = +1CP and 10 fuel increase.
The Armor commander efficiency has decrease with the OKW resource buff, it is simply mathematics:
You need 2 M10s to counter 1 OKW P4 or P5. Before the buff, you barely see more than one of those together in a game. Now OKW can field really fast 2 P4 or 1 P4 and 1 P5, if he is not stupid he will simply stale a bit with them. You finally finish not having enough firepower on your M10s to counter them, and when he lost one, he'll replace it with a KT.
The question is serious, every time I watch on divers channels a USF/OKW balanced match-up USF player always end up to select one of the two new commander and 50/50 manage to win the game.
On the other side, I barely see any USF player winning any game vs OKW without one of those commander.
I don't own any of them, and I don't plan to buy them. And I include myself on what I describe above, I barely win any game vs OKW. I'm on constant losing streak (you can check my playercard), with some wins from time to time, sometime vs Ostheer 50/50 chance, sometime vs OKW when the skill gap is highly on my favor or the player made continuous big mistakes.
To conclude this little mylife, i was ranked around 200 with USF and now around 700. I had no intention to enter top100, clearly aware I'll never get the skill to do so, or never have the time to up skill that much (not anymore a student since long time now).
The feeling I have, on the many games I played, vs OKW:
1- Early game, You are on the backfoot, an OKW player who rush you and you'll be late in resource while he caps his side of the map without any problem.
2- Mid game, you have nothing to take the upper hand, everything you have , OKW has it better and faster and if not has easy access to counter
3- Late game, is where the pay-to-win consideration goes in: Many games, I manage to fight till late game to only be raped by tanks + final shreck blob. No pershing to sponge damage and go toes to toes with panthers/KT, no Calliope to pushing his blob = lose on the long run.
I had a game where I have been rushed early to my cutoff while he caps 1/2 of the map. I'm talking about 2 minutes not being able to cap anything and to use my entire force (1RE + 2 RM) to get his sturm in cover to retreat. He use that time to cap and occupying all the strategic houses with MGs. I came from this situation to myself overwhelming him, I had more than 3/4 of the map (3 vic points), killed 2-3 (including 1 Ober and 1 Falls) of his squad while he only killed my initial RE squad. I couldn't push farther thanks to his PanzerHQ close to his cutoff/fuel point.
And late game the super KT comes and the shreck blob take place. With the KT, he simple manage to two shots any of my squad at range, no skill just usual KT basic shot, one shot kill half of the squad, you hit retreat button, the second shot kill the other half retreating. I had 2 M36 I managed to save from the blob and kill his rushing panther but as you know, without squad screen, M36 are simply garbage. And building new rifles vet0 vs a blob of volks/Obers/Falls vet 3 minimum doesn't make any sense late game.
Here like in many games I had lately, I'm like: I needed a pershing or I needed a Calliope to fight one or the other, the KT or the blob". I have tried different vanilla commanders and there is nothing in them I find relevant to close the match mid or late game (since early game is all OKW advantage). If he doesn't do any big mistake. The game goes to late game and you are fucked up.
So to briefly put this:
-Game should be balanced from the top players
-Many factions are flawed in design (usually to cover up something that is missing another thing is buffed which may be or not be stronger for certain skill levels of players) which means that win rates between the different tiers of players are very different
-The fact that in CoH1 WM and US were well designed and balanced at a 1v1 level, meant that in all other modes (2v2,3v3,4v4) there were all the available tools to the players to survive each stage while creating dynamic gameplay around the strengths of the factions on these stages of the games.
That is my opinion so dont take it as facts.
Flawed factions are per design to create unique flavors (stupid idea imho). Now since they change so drastically OKW, we may expect something done with the USF as well. Removing free lieut/capt is an option.
Hello, I don't know if it has been already highlighted but HMG42/34/50/vickers (I don't know for the maxim/dhsk) are firing farther than their cone range.
This is really annoying because sometime you are really far from the edge of the cone but still get fire at and suppressed.
On the picture below you can see the cone far limit (3 dots on top of the riflesquad in the middle) but still rifles are suppressed without entering in it. Worst, to me they are quite far from it.
Then let's make Grens equal stronger than Rifles and RE equal stronger than Sturmpio and etc... You are calling for the wrong decision of homogenization of the game, not balance.
Top players want to win because they have outplayed their opponent in some fashion. Not because they were able to cram Rifles and an M20 down their Ost opponent's cutoff for 12 minutes until the Sherman comes to seal the deal.
In that case, ask Relic to create a league of top20 each faction only. Because right now, if I look into Top10, I see only people with +10 win streak and it is not difficult to deduct from it Top players aren't, almost never, playing together in auto-match. They are only playing vs random top200.
So question: How can they know better about balance if 90% of the time they are only winning because they naturally outclass their opponent. They know what unit is strong, what is not, they have a better understanding of game mechanisms, but have they better opportunities to test them in a balanced match than average players? not at all in my opinion.
In this department, average players have a better vision on balance simply because they have 90% more chance to match someone with a similar skill and knowledge level.
Balance isn't something on the top of what you want to achieve but in the middle. If you only balance by the top, you'll lose unskilled players, if you balance a new time even more by the top, you'll lose average players and the lower population of your actual TOP will become the average, do it again and you'll lose them leaving you a population of 100-200 top players. Enjoy your game now.
Balance is always something you do from the middle with visibility on how it will impact TOP and Bottom. If you balance well from the middle, TOP will not become suddenly unbalanced because it will mostly be a skill gap balance and unit easiness skill adjustment isn't something that unbalance TOP.
So a synthesis must be done every time we speak about balance between what average players say and Top players know, just saying to someone: The counter exist so it is balanced isn't the right behavior, you also need to think in skill level, is the counter easy to use at any level?
What is easier to use to counter light/medium vehicle play? A blob of shreck roaming on the map (supported by 1 or two shadow raken) or a Sherman/Jackson/Atgun/Capt supported by a stuart you need to bring close to your target to use its ability?
from a pure game stat, understanding, mechanisms, both methods exist and work perfectly but are they balanced in term of skill requirement?
You want to make volks shreck blob more difficult to use => increase the skill requirement and maybe lower the skill requirement to use 2 or 3 combined units Stuart+capt+ATgun/jackson/sherman. This will not impact high level players but balance average brackets.
So no, balance isn't something you do from TOP to Bottom, but from the Middle to TOP and Bottom.