I bring this up because the officers being "free" as part of your tech basically make these units the same as that Starcraft Zealot or Zergling. I don't really care if they die since they were free and they gain Vet much faster than Riflemen so losing them doesn't have that same emotional impact as it does when losing a Vet Rifle Squad does.
This is one of the things about USF that I dislike the most and would like to see changed. I agree with you that LT/Captain should be made into support units. They should be vital to USF and not just a Rifleman clone without a soul that you do not care about.
Losing "free" Officer Squads and having to pay for them would be a fair trade if it meant USF had easier access to HMG/AT Gun and making the LT/Captain have some useful abilities built in since you would be paying for them instead of getting them free.
I personally don't have the feeling that officers being "free" contributes to having no connection to them, because I do not see them as free. I pay for them as part of the tech up. They are basically the next mainline infantry that I would buy, they just happen to come with an odd mechanic due to USF teching.
If they were not free and teching costs the same, USF would need some serious remodelling of their MP spending. The problem is that they are not "officers", they don't lead your troops into battle or command something. The Captain's "On Me" is the only thing that goes into that direction.
But back to topic:
Riflemen by themselves are okay, they are just stuck in a faction that has no strong options to inflict MP bleed, especially in the late game. No sniper early/mid, no long range infantry, only the scott as arty.
In 1v1, they can still sometimes single out enemy squads and go 1on1 on them where they perform very well. But the larger the mode, the more enemy squads will shoot on you when you close in. That's what most close range infantry suffers from in these modes.
Modding team when they redesigned USF tiers set the lieutenant and Captaine build time to the maximum possible, to delay the HMG because at that time the .05 was effectively good. Then they nerfed the .50 but never really buffed the LT timing, they did it long after, one or two patch ago and nothing really significant.
They also made them be called from outside of the map to delay even more their presence. Note that if you rebuild them they pop in the base.
Today all of this doesn't make sense anymore, Lieutenant and captain timing are way too long for two units you must get to complete your BO, because of this excessive timing USF is outnumbered before them come and when they hit the field they don't bring any powerspike.
Build time was increased because the price for requisitioning Cpt/Ltn got 20 fuel cheaper, meaning they come out almost one minute earlier assuming a fuel bottleneck, which translates to 40-60 seconds in the game. USF can float a bit of fuel at this time with a standard 3x Rifle build, still this doesn't delay you for a full minute.
I don't know the exact build times before that patch, but by gut feeling anything that delays the officers for 30-40 seconds is probably sensible.
With the .50cal you mean the sprint removal and slight suppression nerf back in 2018?
The suppression change is a token change, the weapon suppresses super quickly anyway. Sprint removal is indeed a nerf, but a good one. A flanked MG should be properly countered at that point, it should not be able to just run away from the danger.
When 5 entities fire on 4 entities it is certain that at least 2 entities will be firing on a single entity.
I did not object to that.
What I said was that, in a real game, you'll most likely get a 2/3 split of Riflemen firing on Grens and 2/2 split of Grens firing on Rifles in an open field battle. On top of that, cover will split the damage more equally, which will more often benefit defensive factions than offensive factions.
You can always change the officer's build time, that what the modding did, nerfing it at max so USF had the later powerspike possible, not even being a powerspike anymore.
I don't get what you are saying in this one. Could you rephrase that please?
Do you know that Grens have better DPS than rifles until 12 range ? The moment you lose your extra model over grens, you insta lose the engagement. That is also not factoring in the moving accuracy penalty that the rifles will take.
You're comparing a single weapon, not squads.
In this specific fight, the DPS evens out at about 17-18 meters. Even if one model gets sniped but you manage to get to that distance, you have better win chances in a 1on1.
Especially when in fight between grenadier and riflemen one grenadier entity is bound to be focused fired by two riflemen.
The formations have been changed quite some patches ago to address the issue of model snipes. They happen way less frequently now for Grenadiers. Choice of target seems mostly to depend on the distance to the target. On open field, both formations have 2 men in front that will likely get the heat.
Grenadiers will more often stick to cover due to OST's defensive design which allows them to split the damage more equally across all models.
I don't think balance team had much of a choice. From even some smaller things that they publicly said that Relic would not allow them to do, I doubt that Relic would have allowed them to fully rebalance USF tech structure.
Anyway, back to the point:
USF is short on MP in the beginning. In any normal build (3 Rifles into officer, but I think it is the same for 2 Rifles into officer), you will hit the 35 fuel for tech up way before you'd tech up anyway. The only way to make the teching up faster would be to reduce MP cost, but this would also mean that USF had a very cheap backup officer squad for the late game.
I absolutely oppose giving more LVs a recon mode. The game has already made factions more "samey" across the board, they don't need to make the units feel the same, too.
It is fully fine if some factions shift more of the cost to combat, while you pay for utility in others for the "same unit type".
The huge sight range KT is obviously stupid, as are highly mobile TDs that spot for themselves.
Volks also only get 42 vision when in cover and at vet4, which takes a while to kick in. That vet is good for defense, but useless on the offense. No core combat unit should be able to basically self spot and dodge MGs (in cover and in the late game, you might be able to pull your squad out before it gets suppressed. And even if not, the MG will be almost useless since you can easily crawl out of range). We can see this problem with Pfusiliere already, where you just get artied all the time.
What I would have liked to see on USF is to make the officers into actual support units. The Lieutenant is almost a copy of a Riflemen squad, while the Captain has some quite limited utility. The major is good, especially after the sight buff, but with 3 models he can be easily forced to retreat. But the first two need something different. They could even get a single M1919 upgrade in my opinion to add more long range firepower for USF.
Not much to add here. Riflemen are decent in 1 on 1. I think the problem is that they don't leave you any tactical choice. Axis have by far the upper hand in long range combat. They can choose if they want to drag out a shoot out or not, they can also engage with a single Gren/Ober and get an overall win from that because Rifles cannot compete long range.
Because they can't "skirmish", they are always forced into an assault. And the only way to ensure that the enemy has not superior numbers and can concentrate his long range fire on you is to have an all out assault with all squads. Either that, or do not assault at all.
I think that with my idea, this could be implemented in the current engine.
(I know you said this is a hypothetical but if Vipper is correct about both being built on the same system then we'd have to do a little thinking about how it could be achieved in CoH2 anyways)
Realistically, the player won't be able to tell the difference between whether a bullet missed their soldier entirely or just failed to penetrate, so I think just modifying the RA of certain cover types based on the weapon would work just as well, and it still holds to the spirit of your "armor" idea.
What do you think?
The real question is: Would you think it to be beneficial for both game play and making CoH authentic?
Anyway, I just checked: There is already a solution fully implemented in the attribute editor. Relic has probably already thought about something similar. You can manipulate a weapons penetration value depending on the cover the same way you can modify accuracy and damage. That's the same thing as increasing the targets armor, just coming from the other end.
An accuracy modifier depending on the penetration could work, however this would technically not account for penetration changing based on distance. I assume no one would notice, but it is not quite correct as well.
I could see why one want to introduce an "armor" system for infatry so that certain units can be more durable to certain types of weapons (although if such a system did exist it should be as simply and easy to understand as possible and not the COH1 mess).
I can even understand if some does not like the damage reduction green cover offers for small arms fire. I simply do not see the "armor" brings to cover that received accuracy can not bring.
I don't want to introduce a general armor system to infantry, that was exactly the point.
I doubt you have properly read any of my posts or you didn't fully understand them. I mentioned all of the above in basically every post I made in this thread, including lengthy posts responding to Gachigasm how I see an issue in introducing a general armor system as he suggested.
And what I am trying to pointed out is that the current system applies to weapon not squad themselves and that is why direction cover and point mechanism works.
By giving an armor bonus to squad itself instead of the weapon one has to add a new calculation done by the squad to see if the weapon firing on the squad should get cover penalty or not. (not even sure if that is possible)
If one want to the effect you describe all one has to do is to adjust the cover tables of "high penetration small arm" so that they have lower accuracy/damage penalties so the DPS equals that of armor.
I've mentioned multiple times now that this is a design discussion that is untied from engine restraints. I've mentioned how the current system of RA and damage reduction is not authentic and what issues it creates, to then further introduce how my suggestion could at least partially solve even those. From the beginning I clearly stated my suggestion is not supposed to be introduced into CoH2 and that there would be issues in doing so.
Please stop with assuming to apply all changes to the CoH2 system. We don't exactly know how CoH3 functions, I assume similarly, but nevertheless we get a "fresh" start with people working on the game and being able to make larger changes even after release, as seen with CoH2. But even assuming all that, this discussion can be completely untied from both CoH2 and CoH3.
EDIT: In the end, even in CoH2 and since infantry armor is standardized, you could just apply a penetration debuff on the weapon if it shoots at squads in cover. Not sure if the Relic devs allow for that in the mod tools, but that would technically be a very easy thing to implement using even the old CoH2 system.
As I already have pointed out that can create issues with light vehicles and their balance.
And as I already pointed out, this is a general design thread, not a balance thread about introducing a new "feature" into the current CoH2 environment.
One issue I can see is AoE weapons like a tank hitting the cover in front, but still being able to heavily damage the model behind it. Although I assume that is probably quite realistic, it might not make for good gameplay.
The Cover tables system that is now used takes into account cover mechanisms like direction cover/point blank mechanism.
The armor bonus you are proposing which would be based around the squad itself and not the weapon firing would probably not since a squad with either have the bonus armor or not.
I didn't clearly specify, but the armor bonus should obviously be directional. This is also how defensive cover bonusses are currently applied.
You've also mixed up how the bonusses are applied in CoH2. Defensive bonusses are applied per model and are directional, the offensive ones are applied per squad, which is the opposite of what you wrote.