Seems like their is lots of broad agreement on a number of topics which is good to see. Hopefully this can get seen by relic. It all boils down to counter play that is available. The problem with rifle company as others have stated is the flames can be spammed on super durable infantry and if you are in cover you get decimated by flames and if you are out of cover you are decimated by BAR and M1 Fire. Simply making the rifle flamethrower into a special RET call in or something like that would go a long way to fixing that company. As some have said about flame tank countering ATG. I think it's ok for a flame tank to 1v1 a single ATG.
Flame tanks are highly specialized and crap vs armor (unless crocodile) so they need to be great at clearing team weapons/garrisons and infantry. It is a question of how good. The right point IMO is 2 ATG facing in same
Direction should be able to kill a flame tank before it wipes the second one. ATG spam is one thing I like using flame tanks against but you should at least have to flank or use smoke/dive in wipe 1 gun then reverse out, repair and go again. |
I would also add that rather than making upgrades make you worse at certain ranges every time and better at others you should just give players more choices so they actually can specialize more. G43 could be non doctrinal and same with LMG Browning. Add MP 40 to OKW and DP28 for SU.
Lastly. Give all units with rifle and LMG weapons a penalty for firing out of cover. It will penalize attack move blobs and anyone who has fired a rifle knows how much harder it is to aim when standing straight up alone vs resting on a tree, stand, lying prone, etc. this simple change would promote maneuvering to cover as soon as meeting with the enemy rather than standing in open blasting away with a blob. You could also slightly increase received accuracy from being in open ground/no cover and exposed/red cover. |
Like a lot of this except I think flame and indirect are fine except for getting rid of flames on rifles and further reducing suppression on ISG/PH. I see people often post that a weapon upgrade shouldn't
Make everything better and should involve trade off. But why call it an upgrade if you are giving up damage at one range to get it elsewhere. The munitions cost means it isn't a no brained to get say an LMG for every grenadier because you have alternative uses (mines, flame half track upgrade, etc) so I have no problem with an upgrade providing very few drawbacks such as bars, LMG, Bren). Choices still have to be made because there are always things that you can use them for. Only time I like seeing a weapon upgrade have drawbacks is if it makes on range particularly strong such as PPSH on conscripts which are actually quite strong at close and mid range but pay for it with long range DPS fall off. Because it isn't a straight DPS upgrade at all levels I think 30 munitions is a good cost point. |
I read a book called "The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle" and in that book, which traces warfare from ancient times (through the Iliad) to modern day. In the WWII section, there was one frightening statistic: 50% of all casualties were caused by indirect fire.
I believe that artillery is an integral part of coh. That being said, I think heavy artillery (anything larger than 155mm) shouldn't be build-able in game, but used as call-ins (like most artillery pieces are).
I think one thing that would be interesting to do would be, in the original factions, to swap the rocket artillery with the emplacements and put the rocket artillery into commanders. The rocket artillery is much more effective than traditional artillery simply because a player is able to instantly saturate an area with rockets, while traditional artillery is more about area denial or destroying fortifications.
I think every faction should get some sort of field howitzer and/or mortar and the overall effectiveness of them should be reduced (at least in terms of accuracy; German mortar sniping moving infantry is absurd).
Another note about artillery is the craters; heavy call in artillery (240mm, railway) should create huge craters with heavy cover.
indirect fire should play a big role in games, but with the current popcap system, adding more diverse artillery options would only serve to allow players to specialize in an area in large team games, and force players in smaller game modes to choose wisely.
In general, Artillery should be more accessible but also restricted both in terms of popcap and accuracy while still maintaining effective damage.
If there is some magic set of numbers Relic could come up with for these units that would minimize insta-wipes of lone squads in heavy cover yet allow artillery to accurately hit blobs, that would be an amazing step forward in strategy.
Reducing cool down of all built field artillery by 30-40% and then reducing damage a little and shell quantity to 3-4 would make it less an all or nothing unit and make its damage output more consistent as well as you could use it to support offensives more |
Since the introduction of the panzer IV F2 version the T-34/76 was pretty much outclassed. Simply because of the engagement range.
This gap was only closed with the introduction of the T-34/85. If you are saying that the T-34/76 and Panzer IV long barreled versions were on par, I have to strongly disagree. Biggest flaw of the T-34/76 being an overwhelmed commander, also fulfilling the task of the gunner.
But it was easy to produce and had great mobility. It's biggest drawback in early versions was cramped quarters and a bad cupola design so you could
Attempt some historical resemblance by making it less accurate and a little slower ROF. Keep better mobility, better armor, cheaper characteristics |
thats not how balancing works.
An underpowered unit is a underpowered unit, it doesn't matter how well the rest of the faction is doing. Balance is done by a unit by unit basis and just because a faction is doing well doesn't exclude its underpowered units from getting buffs.
The Pershing currently isn't worth it's cost and needs changes.
True to an extent but each commander should take into account the faction's existing strengths and weakness. For instance people are complaining that Pershing doesn't rank with axis heavies but if it did match them for same cost that would be very bad as the USF already have a dominant early game. They should simply decrease the cost of the Pershing a little on both manpower and fuel. If you give the USF a heavy tank that is as good as any the Ostheer can field plus the Rangers for better AI than any Ostheer infantry (stock or doc) then the USF are better in every stage and in matches between equally skilled opponents the USF will be winning 75+%. |
I feel like OP's point was not full historical accuracy, more a greater historical feel and grasp of the period of engagement. Although balance will always dictate there being a few units that perform ahistorically(in terms of role, due to roster deficits) each of the armies should be represent the equipment available for them at the time, which we can roughly state as early 1945. Manpower and Production deficits are, of course, mostly ignored for balance reasons.
TLR - CoH 2 should try to be a little more accurate composition and equipment wise while remaining mechanically the same.
Thank you for comprehending what I wrote. I literally said we can't be exactly historically accurate because of balance and gameplay considerations. Otherwise a Sherman would die to 1 successful shot from a tiger and there would be 5 T34/76's for every P4. I just want it to resemble history so that there is at least a comparative basis for performance. |
I see lots of people make points and counter points about something not being historically accurate and then a reply that this game can't be historically accurate as it is an RTS not a comp sim war game. This is true, but it's no excuse to not use historical parameters to help dial in theme and asymmetric balance. What I am trying to say is sometimes doing things that aren't just not historical but actually completely 100% anti-historical is nonsense and should not be defended with "well we have to forsake accuracy for balance". Rather than just stabbing in the dark with unit values and then tuning they should try to get all their comparative data right not in absolute terms but in relative terms among other common units. Then we could get rid of ridiculous things like an SU-76 being same penetration as SU-85 and 34/76 having worse armor/hp than PIV ausf G despite being better armored with its famous 60° front armor slope.
This all happens because it seems like Relic just makes educated guesses at where values should be and makes the decisions almost in a vacuum then they start tweaking and tweaking and tweaking each unit without referencing it to its peers to get the game play not be game breaking based upon feedback. As they keep tweaking, you get to points where many weapon/unit comparisons don't make any logical sense. They should use weapons data from field tests to determine comparative accuracy and penetration between all armor and their guns then tweak cost and mobility/special abilities to get them into the right spot for their respective faction. |
I'd rather the game be about unit positioning. Not who amasses the most artillery and turtles up. This isn't real life. Artillery wars or spam is fucking stupid
artillery is what punishes turtling....if you are always on the move then field artillery barrage pieces are almost worthless...if you turtle you present a ripe target for said field artillery. The only time artillery leads to turtling is if one side gets no arty of their own either off map or on map and therefore teh opposing side can build massive batteries of rocket launchers/mortars/field artillery and the only threat is an enemy break through. I'm not saying make all artillery better but it is a great element of gameplay that punishes campy players and is so rewarding when you hit blobs |
You think I dont have good positioning? I can do it, but I am having the least fun out of any vs artillery players. Slip up for even a second and poof the squad is lost. The very presence of artillery is so annoying because if im not being super careful with all my units at any given point, a surprise squad wipe could happen anywhere on the map. Its dumb how hard it is to set up units to get wipes (like quick combined assaults, nade placement, flanking around into retreat points) while arty just clicks on an area and the RNG explosive rain will just one shot squads and rain down on buildings. Artillery is the weapon of the skilless.
I've got nothing against a mortar or 2. But anything beyond that is just pure faggotry.
"Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl." -Frederick II of Prussia
I am very glad for the changes to the ISG/Pack H that was just made because they were over-performing. I don't want artillery to be just mortars because one that kills theme of having massive engagements with shells/rockets soaring over heads and two as others have said, when an enemy turtles up on an area, the best method of punishing them and forcing them to move or die is with heavy artillery. I find that heavy artillery/rockets actually promotes fluid gameplay precisely because it punishes the turtles....if I play soviets and 2v2-4v4 and I don't see an Ostheer CAS commanders then I usually go Terror for the KV-8/shocks/ML-20 and have a field day against campy players.
With the most recent change to ISG/Pak H i think the indirect fire part of the game is as good as it has ever been. |