Profile of Trainzz

My only drastic change to the game atm would be to give germans normal mines, an equivalent to the soviets. It would lower the clown car dominance, since you can reliably defend territories simply by putting mines down. On top of that it would solve possible problems with t70 and and later in the game maybe even t34 ram (if they lower the speed at which the t34 rams the enemy tank, mines might be able to give you a chance of running away). The problem at the moment is that nobody is able to afford those expensive mines, since germans are already ammo heavy.

Otherwise I would only change some numbers and unit costs so far, as the balance is still very fragile and can quickly change, even without patches.

Yup experienced this as well. Infantry is very unresponsive. Even without nades or so. Just try to move towards one direction and then right away to the other. They will keep moving for another second or so, before changing direction.

This is basically nonsense wrt the COH-2 button. Button gets broken by vehicle smoke. It's also very munitions expensive and has a limited enough range that you can usually kite it if you see it coming. Guards are good anti-light vehicle, a reasonably good supplement to damage against medium tanks when they have some sort of backup (and/or mark target) but completely insufficient for dealing with hard AI tanks like the Ostwind or Brummbar.

Yeah, you are right, forgot about vehicle smoke. Still, I don't think it is good gameplay-wise to rely on a certain commander to counter another commander. Abilities should not determine the usefulness of a unit. And this is sadly the fact with guards, atm. The fact that it is munitions intensive if you spam it does not really make it any better. Every ability uses ammo, just that this one has this one particular problem. You cannot really counter it.

Concerning its range. I would say it is possible to kite, if the pathfinding was better. Atm, when you are moving forward with your tank and you get into sight range of the unit, it is too late, as the tank will keep driving for another second. If units were more responsive, I could say that the ability can at least be avoided, although that still does not really offer many counter play options, either.

I would be fine with it, if it offered a bit less utility. Mainly the inability to move should be removed, so that you can at least counter the inability to see and shoot with moving away for the duration it lasts. It can ofc slow the tank a bit as well, but a complete immobility seems just too much for how little skill and risk it takes to use.

can somebody explain why button actually damages the game, or quality of play? I'm not following why, sans balance issues that can be fixed if they exist, the inclusion of this ability is actually harmful to the game. What it does is give you reason to prioritize different targets during combat, depending on the biggest threat at the moment, which may just be the squad that can or is buttoning.

If its a matter of taste, you just plain don't like it, that's not an overly compelling argument in my opinion. From my perspective at the moment, its an additional dynamic that has to be taken into consideration. What are the true cons?

Same for scout car play. If the issue isn't balance, then what is it? I'd rather face different strategies when I'm playing ostheer then always see the same couple things, and while scout car spam is tough to deal with, I like that there is variety to the game. Maybe one of the Pros can do a better job than i've seen in the past, explaining how more ways to play hurts the game, just because some of those ways to play don't reflect "good play," whatever that is.

The main problem about it is that it does not have any counter play. You can do it without any risks.

In vCoH, every thing you did involved risks. And everything that does not really involve risks (namingly stickies, fausts and nades) had an effective counterplay (dodging/kiting). On top of that, these abilities did not even render a vehicle (worst case a panther/tiger) useless and unable to move, but simply slowed down the unit or just did damage.

This drastically changed with Opposing Fronts, where abilities like treadbreaker, button and stuff came into play. These things do not take any skill to use, are a hard counter to things like vehicles and cannot even be counter by good micro micro (ok, you can stay out of range, but let us be honest, you cannot react to things before you actually see them, meaning that you cannot retreat your vehicle fast enough, once you see the enemy unit that can use this ability).

Now, these abilities can also be found here, again. Button, vehicle crew stun. These things don't have a counterplay, and render a vehicle useless for a period of time. On top of that they don't involve any risk using them. You click on the ability and its done. It takes away the dynamic of the game, as you just have to click buttons to win engagements. Micro? Please, you don't need micro when you have long range tanks that destroy a tank before your crew is actually able to drive its tank again.

Quinns statement that the button ability would promote combined arms is pretty much non-sense, imo. You don't promote things like combined arms by having abilities on units. You promote combined arms by giving units different strengths. Now, a units strength should not come from its abilities. A unit should be useful without their abilities. (again, look at vCoH - not a single unit there was useful for its abilities, but for its strength in fighting infantry/tanks/buildings or just being able to tank a lot of damage.

To give an example. Conscripts are like rifles - versatile and your core unit. Shocks are just a strong infantry unit that is good against infantry only. Guards are a unit that is supposed to combine decent anti infantry and decent anti tank. The thing is, this is mostly achieved by the fact that they have the button ability. Their anti tank rifles are not really the best of anti-tank weapons. Compare that to CoH1, we had rifles, rangers, which were useful against infatnry and light vehicles and airbornes, that were only useful against tanks and to some extend light vehicles. Why? Because they had different weapons that made them strong against different targets. And you know what? It worked out very well and made the game dynamic.

Scout car play is a matter of balance on the one hand and the no risks involved on the other hand. But this can easily be improved by changing the price and making the units inside take damage from small arms and more damage when the vehicle gets destroyed.

Spam Grens and keep them together as 2 at least. So you can fend of most scout cars. I would try to go tier 3 asap, since your T2 does not offer very useful things, except for the flamer ht. PGs are good, but your opponent has the counter for them already in his tier 1 building (snipers) and I would only start building them after you got a p4. As AT, I would also prefer shreks, Paks are simply weak, atm.