Gachigasm posted this basically two years ago already.
This might be "dead data" by Relic and they do not plan to follow up on it but make something completely different instead, but I find this hard to believe.
Best bike in COH history but also countered by A-moving Britblob. I'm all for full combined arms, bike, 2 Pzgrens, MG34 + ISG etc. going as far as WWI tactics, but this isn't for most people lol. Also forget about MG ambushes, due to recon flares, unless they get really sloppy. Speaking of flares, they'll see your camped StuG III D as well.
Slightly off-topic but that's an interesting point about the Marder.
I still have no real idea what i'm doing in COH 3, so take this with a pinch of salt, but I find it quite tough to get the most out of them, they seem to be very clumsy and they barely have more range than regular armour. Obviously, it's a casemate so I know its not supposed to be very agile when it comes to moving and targetting, but unlike the previous game, its gun barrel can't 'move' at all so it relies completely on the whole vehicle rotating to find its target before it fires.
Anyone else noticed this? If its by design that's fair enough obviously. But they seem to have a noticbly harder time adjusting to close up, or moving targets compared to similar units in the previous game.
It's not just the Marder III, all the casemates have less 'free' gun traverse in COH3 when compared to COH2. But it's not without a plus side, eg: WM casemates (eg: Brummbar!) come with Hull Down, which reduces incoming dmg by 25%. Prob best for those dastardly laney maps that are very campy.
Marder III is hard to use, unless they dive you or present nice open map options. General casemate manoeuvrability problems plus easily getting into trouble if they push too hard. Forget about shots on the move, if that's even mechanically possible with COH3's casemates. A pair of them has a strong tendency of getting in the way of each other. But these are not new problems tbh, anyone who used a pair of SU-85s or JP4s knows instantly these things. I find it best to simply have them lined up and then fwd or reverse in a straight line. Turning seems to cause the biggest problems. The WM version seems to miss a lot more than the DAK one IMHO. Now aerafield is correct in saying they, "....out-rotate shermans and crusaders trying to circle them from 3 meters away". Of course, they only have 360HP normally, so 3 med tank shots. The DAK one however scales to have 440HP and finally 520HP with the two durability upgrades. And 160dmg increasing to 192dmg with the Tungsten core ammo upgrade.
Marder III has apparently 50 range to a typical tank's 40 range. Even Hellcat only shoots out to 45. AT gun range is 60. Use that info as you will.
StuG has a longrange smoke launcher vs AT guns after the upgrade, and on what planet do two AT rifle squads beat the StuG?? Go run some tests yourself. And at vet 1 you can easily shoot at them from far away, especially on a lane map
Delaying your p3 doesnt matter at all when you have 25 fuel tank destroyers that out-rotate shermans and crusaders trying to circle them from 3 meters away
In a slug out yes, the StuG III D will beat 2 AT boys, barely. But the latter outranges the former and a bit of thinking will allow them to kite it. Very discouraging to be shot at before you can even get in range and not wonder what else is out there. Of course in an actual game the Britblob will have the healtruck and (just noticed the unlisted change to Volunteer Infantry of 33% to 25%) Indian Arty MP cost/time reductions so you're not beating the squads no matter how hard you try. 21MP reinforce is still cheap.
I have to ask where DAK is getting all the MP and FU for these upgrades with an extra delayed tech (100MP & 25! FU) to unlock StuG III Ds? Because they'll have no problem walking you off the map before your StuG III D arrives. Hell I've had games so dire that the Achtrad was literally the only thing between me and getting drowned in infantry.
Firing Positions still needs a spotter and vet I gained in the first place. I'm sure it can be cancerous for camping VPs, esp with its AT gun range but it's still just a StuG at the end of the day. Ppl have no problems handling StuG III G's armour.
Ehh I've been expecting for weeks that they'll nerf the DAK Marder IIIs, IMHO ppl just haven't really noticed them due to the usual casemate aversion in players. That said, IS/AT boys literally hard counter Marder IIIs so not sure what your point is.
What are you on about? With 210 armor Stug Ds, Propaganda arty (which you can't counter), combined arms counter blob and the stuka, DAK has one of the best if not the best tools in the whole game to counter the current "blob near a heal truck" meta
StuG III Ds are abysmal vs anything bigger than a Stuart (which also outranges its 30 range by 10). I read somewhere that it has 100 pen far, but it tends to miss the target or detonate too early (eg: Chaffee seems to eat shots up like no tomorrow). AT guns pen that 210 with little difficulty. They have nice anti-inf cluster performance but let's not pretend it's a Tommy deleting machine. AT boy squads outrange it and 2 will beat it consistently. If one uses the StuG III D in places with lots of LoS blockers (to mitgate AT gun power) then it's asking to eat snares.
Combined arms (CA) is indeed fantastic. And vet I IS gets improved accuracy vs targets out of cover (Base of Fire), so forget about diving the heal truck. It evens out CA in my experience and stomps your men out of CA, at least until vet II. I suppose it could be the battle of the heal trucks but I never liked this playstyle. And your (usually) LVs are also countered by their A-move and/or Stuart(s). I can do the micro fine but most ppl will struggle immensely.
Propaganda arty is available in only 1/3 BGs and only really works once as a surprise. Hardly much micro tax to split the blob up into 2 slightly apart groups.
If you can make the Stuka work in the huge med tank spam meta, I salute you o7. Delaying your Pz III Ls that much is literally asking for you and your army to get rolled by Crusaders and 76mm Shermans. Unless you are already winning of course.
tl;dr: DAK does indeed have fantastic tools for dealing with Brits. Mainly in the late game and of course Achtrad
As WM, just go the Pzgren building and buy a Nebelwerfer. Get it a bit close to the Britblob then burn them all, esp if they're clustered around a healtruck.
As DAK, you are playing the COH2 OKW vs UKF experience and then some. So go play WM unless you're prepared to deal with the uphill struggle ahead of you.
Then why did they trimm the Wehrmacht AT damage of the combined loiter, but not for DAK. On paper its rather odd.
Edit: I'd imagine the AT-loiter of the DAK is a simple copy-paste from Wehr (or vice versa).
I can't speak for the damage of the DAK AT loiter, but the ability is different to the WM version. It doesn't target inf at all where as the WM one pins and shreds squads. I wasn't sure until I did some testing just now.
EDIT: Ok I think I understand the two Stuka loiters now after a lot of testing.
WM - Two planes. One targets inf and one targets tanks. If only one such target in the area, then the other plane just hangs around doing nothing.
DAK - Two planes. Both target tanks. If only inf then they hang around doing nothing.
They've nerfed the AT performance of the DAK Stuka planes too so I guess they might be identical AT planes after all. Each plane doing 225-250 sorta range damage per pass, same as the WM AT plane.
"Team-colours and some other BS. PS: we touched up some loiters."
DAK loiter as potent as before, and now cheaper.
To be fair, the DAK loiter doesn't track that well. I've seen med tanks reverse out of it no problem and the cannon trails land where the tank used to be. You can't do that vs the rocket planes as they have almost perfect tracking. I didn't know the Brit AT loiter was only 120 muni, that crazy lol.
As for the patch, I won't be able to speak for the balance until some games testing it against the usual FotM ppl. A big round of fixes and changes though.
Not exactly thrilled by it myself but I could see it being one of managements priorities to get the storefront open so that another revenue source is up and running. Gotta keep them lights on.
I wouldn't be surprised if ppl-above-senior-management are breathing on staff to try and cover the extra dev time costs when the game release was pushed back. The store is a necessary part of the game either way. Hopefully the monetisation is relatively benign overall.
Yes, this is true. I think what I was really surprised by are the flames; which, when combined with the armour, make them very dangerous. Not knowing the numbers off-hand, it seems like flames do more damage in this game. I have learned many lessons so far, some of them are what you describe- don't go toe to toe, 2xMG, sniper, mines... lessons that were abundant in CoH2, but became apparent extremely early in this game, with this unit.
I'll just add one point - I don't recommend double MGs against DAK. My MG comment was LMGs, so stuff like Brens, BARs etc. Though AT Boys also overpen the Guastatori armor easily too. COH3 has an easily accessible mortar to Brits, USF and WM, but DAK is forced to get a (zero fuel) mortar Halftrak for early light arty. If you go double MG opener they might commit to double mortar HT and then you'll be walked off the map because you won't have the assault force to push through their inf screen.