like what weakness?
their biggest weakness is badly placed tech structures that allow for allied players to destroy them and hinder the OKW player significantly. arty spam should be the go to tool for any offensive OKW hq placement
Relatively weak team weapons and mainline infantry whose effectiveness drops off a cliff in the mid to lategame (though yes, they do have stock elites to compensate for this). Outside of certain doctrines they're pretty vulnerable to snipers and team weapon spam. Heavily reliant on the Ausf. J, which i don't think is the best medium either, for its cost, and rocket artillery that while incredibly powerful, is less consistent and easier to dodge than the Ostheer Werfer.
Of course, this isn't to suggest the they don't have a number of powerful tools that other factions lack (hello konig), but they definitely have weaknesses too. |
Agree. Spearhead coupled with Elite Armoured is broken. Aside from that though, the faction does have some pretty glaring weaknesses that can be exploited, particularly in the mid game. |
Oh man, if we're talking about OP stuff. Here's a list.
You were probably around for IL-2/T-34 ram combo. It wasn't OP per say but it was a high risk, high reward for a big swing in either direction. Either an enemy heavy tank died or you were out 250 muni and a T-34. Heavies were pretty powerful but they all had the weakness of dying to this combo.
Now going farther back. When Rifle Commander was released, the E8 was an insanely good tank. It was super accurate on the move and the AoE on the shell shredded infantry. You could run circles around enemy squads and still blast them with every E8 shot. Really fun to play until the E8 ran into a mine.
You used to be able to do call-ins on enemy home bases. So you would see artillery or loiters on your base sometimes if you were losing particularly hard. The worst abuser was the OKW tactical nuke from OKW Salvage Doctrine (iirc). Back in the day OKW had lower munitions and fuel income but their OST allies could build caches to up their income. OKW players using this would save up about 600+ munitions then call in the arty barrage on their base (most of the time on USF) and destroy their entire base with one click. It was pretty nuts. You can actually see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rp6gleSyDw
Penals used to get flamers (as someone mentioned) which was amazing on them because of the high member count and the already high AI damage. HOWEVER flamers back in the day had a random chance of exploding and killing units if being shot at.
Volk shrek blobs used to be a mainstay of the OKW army. They always had 3 volk squads with shrek upgrades which would counter any vehicle that allies could throw at them. What also sucked is back in the day, calliope wasn't in the game so only Soviets had rocket arty to counter these shrek blobs.Volk shrek blobs were insanely durable but also bled MP like crazy for the OKW player.
USF Riflemen used to have smoke grenade so they could self smoke MGs. What usually happened though was 2 Riflemen squads would hit an MG, one to smoke, and one to push up and throw grenade. Although 1 squad could do it themselves. I think MG42/34 suppression was upped so that 1 squad couldn't do it alone.
Up until recently, Soviet 120mm was basically a broken unit that didn't work for its price. The barrage took longer to fire than the autofire and the AoE was non-existent. Then it got fixed and then nerfed.
OST Close Air Support doctrine used to be insanely good. It had a button that let you instantly convert MP (then eventually fuel) to munitions, no pickup required. It had a anti-infantry strafing run call-in and an anti-armour strafe call-in. No one ever used the anti-infantry strafe because the anti-armour strafe destroyed infantry better than it damaged tanks. So you would have OST players just constantly calling in anti-armour strafes on infantry.
I'm trying to think of other stuff that was broken that come to mind but I think most of the stuff was mentioned like Tiger Ace and ISU-152 HE shells.
As someone who played the original game to death, but not so much coh 2 until pretty recently, i am loving this thread. I have no previous knowledge of any of this stuff. Its a fun read. |
I agree. As an USF player, I know that if you manage to close in to grens or volks or pfussies, Rifles will dominate them hard, and I mean really hard... but there is a trick to closing in without losing models on most maps. Redball, one MG42 can lock down half a VP and fuel, and with pios dominating rear echelon, on such maps you really do have to be perfect in execution to avoid an MG42 while keeping tabs on grens. In 1v1 that's diffused due to the fact that there are no chokepoints on such maps, but teamgames... yeah. I mostly blame the retarded map design and especially retarded green cover placements on 3v3+ maps
You're right, the map pool probaby has a big influence on player perception of this as well. |
Truth be told, 80% of infantry engagements are medium-long range, where volks and grens win. Rifles win short to medium range (lower end of medium range spectrum)
Ok, but he's acting like you have to play absolutely perfectly to beat ostheer mainlines. It's definitely harder for USF against volks in the early game and during their STG spike, but against Grens? No way do you have to find the 'perfect engagement' to beat them, its exaggeration. Yes, rifleman get bled out at range but they murder them up close. |
You can't. You need to find the perfect engagement opportunities while paying MORE. This should be the other way around.
This simply isn't true, they absolutely can beat Grens at any range except long. I have no idea why you think the matchup is so difficult. |
While I agree that volks are useless late game. Truth be told, they do scale poorly.... but then again, OKW does have obers. And 280 MP 120 Muni vet3 rifles will maybe take down one vet2 LMG ober in longer ranges, while the obers on average will kill 2-3 models.
Hence why scotts are popular vs them. I mean, they have around 1/2 of the target size with veterancy. Good luck hitting that with BARs on anything beyond point blank. Not to mention that ober LMG long range DPS is the same as ranger tommies close range DPS. Sure, obers get one LMG, but rangers need to close in.
If volks scaled well late, then obers would need a price buff and a big performance nerf.
100%. have no problem with their poor scaling being a weakness given that OKW have stock access to very powerful elite infantry, it makes sense because of this. The Esxile rifles vs volks comparison being so disengenious, it's nice to read a sane post on the topic.
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OKW
Sturmpioneer is OP vs riflemen, for 300mp you get a unit that fight extremly well with no need for combat upgrade vs a unit costing 280 and needing 60/120 munition to perform the same. Cheery on the cake was the stun grenade gifted from nowhere because reason.
Kubel's nature is a hard counter to riflemen, even more with a SP close by. Modding team new it but still went that direction and nerfed RE vs it a patch later or so. Same for the 221, buffed it vs riflemen and nerfed RE vs it.
Volks shouldn't get sandbag vs USF but need them vs UKF and Soviet. With sandbag they value 280 mp in term of efficiency.
OKW Elite infantry in general just hard counter riflemen in almost every situations, usually they simply destroy them at long range and to fight them you must build a sherman/scott.
OKW is atm in a situation where they get better early game, even mid game and dominate late game with the association of elite infantry and superior armor.
Ostheer.
Pio 42 range makes early game harder for USF.
Gren are the best mainline infantry atm, almost no need for micro just a-move.
Superior HMG, superior mortar and the sniper.
222 competes with OKW HT for the best light vehicle title, good vs everything, comes in same tier as pak and supported with long range pfaust. Riflemen get destroyed by it.
As USF you just need to play perfectly to win, as Ostheer not so much.
Come on man. USF definitely has its problems but this is exaggeration. but The 222 definitely isn't good vs everything. Sturms fall off hard the further the game goes and Volks trade their early game for being next to useless in the lategame. |
So the overwhelming consensus seems to be that the combination is not overpowered, with quite a lot of extra arguing over 'word games' and semantics. |
120muni and 280 MP (not counting sidetech timing) to remain competitive with a 240 MP 60 muni squad that comes kitted with immediate snare and free grenade with tech. They are not "distgustingly" OP but they are definitely way too much right now (and likely will remain so).
I agree with you that in the lategame they are very efficient for their cost, perhaps too much so. But again, they do not just appear out of the gate with all of those advantages you are alluding to. They are a 4 man squad that needs to reach vet three and can easily be overwhelmed at close range. USF definitely has its problems (with the need to snowball the game early) but i think its a bit off to suggest that rifleman simply can't compete as Codguy said earlier in the thread. |