The thing that really makes sturms good is their vet. If you can get em to vet 2 before there's a saturation of targets, they get pretty tanky (-23% target size) putting them to 0.67 target size.
Vet 2 sturms are a slight bit more tanky than vet 1pgrens are at 0.68 target size.
This is fair, their veterancy requirements are fairly low, too. I always forget that Sturms get /all/ their survivability at Vet2, which is really rather nice.
Its just you won't have them fighting all too often after the initial engagements, as they have a lot they need to be doing after that. Wiring, repairing (Especially if you went a Kubel or Elite Armoured opening), Mining, Sweeping, and providing healing to your other infantry. Thankfully this last part will need to be done rather less with the new patch... but they do have the new duty of "vehicle deterrent". (Obviously they could do this before, but the Shreck upgrade was generally non-viable before it stopped being exclusive with the Minesweeper)
I'm not a great player, but I frequently get vet 5 sturms in 2s, 3s and 4s (don't play 1s much anymore)
It hurts when you lose them, but they have a psychological effect on the enemy when they are on the front that can buy time for other units to position better.
I agree, that's mostly what I use them for at the beginning of the game. Simply charging them at your enemy is a foolish thing to do, but quite common. They're better to be used as a threat/to force someone to make poor choices.
Keep your Sturms in green (Even Yellow) cover nearish your opponent, and move your Volksgrenadiers to try and flank them (Or give them time to build Sandbags somewhere useful, or even just pick away at range). Your opponent is forced to try and keep pressure/damage on the Sturms, in which case the Volks can position themselves relatively unmolested... or your opponent switches fire to the Volks, allowing your Sturms to move in. Far more effective than just trying to run Sturms towards an unit, as many people try to.
They arnt pgrens, but they don't fall off as rapidly as people think either. Just as the enemy gets more firepower and vet they are less capable of soloing enemy squads like they can at the start of the match.
Oh definitely, it's not that they fall off a cliff or anything, but what they offer in terms of combat ability isnt really worth their cost later on in the game, not in comparison to Pgrens. Starting off with the Bundle Grenade really helps Pgrens be a massive threat straight out of BP2.
I'll admit, I'm being rather too cynical in regards to Sturm performance, it's just that you still see a lot of "Wow Sturms OP" floating around, and it is a little tiresome. |
There are a lot of unused cover types which could be utilized, also it would of course means adding this interaction with every single weapon.
Aura's and Near Entities would not provide directional cover. Crits could be designated between frontal and rear of entity, assuming infantry even have rear armor, but that would make side shot very unknown.
Target Tables are likely the only way, easy but time consuming.
UI would be another problem. Would green be incorrect? Would prebuilt map sandbags count? It would probably be best if sandbags remain heavy cover.
The is the problem, really. It would be an optimal solution, but unfortunately;
A: A lot of extra work would need to be done.
B: There isnt an associated symbol/colour for another type of cover, and I don't think it's the sort of thing that can be added by the mod team. ("Blue" cover, maybe? Not that it matters... Maybe for CoH3) |
Thanks for your feedback 
You're welcome.
As an aside, I don't really see the point in the "Command Point" system to begin with... It'd be a lot easier to balance things if all commander abilities were tied to teching rather than the abstract "Command point" resource. (All callin units being buildable rather than being callins would be good, too.) They're ostensibly meant to augment your faction's abilities, after all.
It's not something that's going away in CoH2's lifetime, of course, but I do hope Lelic consider just scrapping that system entirely in CoH3. |
Let's talk about the Lend-Lease Assault Team, again. Remember that the defenders of this ridiculous design justified this by the fact that the assault team appears faster than the building of T3. Now there is no such excuse. With the new T3 price, resources and T3 construction occurs before CP3. And I'm heading for the redesign of the assault team.
What, the Soviet one that gives Assault Guards and an HT? Yeah, zero reason for that to be the way it is, except for some weird "Thematic" argument that degrades gameplay.
No reason not to just turn it into a regular callin that just provides the Assault Guards. (If you want to maintain the "Thematic" part of them arriving in an HT, you could even just have it drive in, drop them off, and then drive back off the map... Though I dont see why you'd bother) |
It is intended. M2HB stays in the same cathegory with DShK (0.50 cal HMG). Before it has had same icon with 7.62/7.94/0.30 HMGs, which is bad, since performance of M2HB is much closer to DShK. Now it helps to clearly see, which HMG you deal with (0.50 or default 0.30).
This is understandable, though wouldn't it be better if all units had an unique unit icon? This would solve both the issue you're suggesting, and also the one NorthWeapon is speaking about.
There are a few units that have similar/the same unit icon... for many this doesn't actually matter, as they're units used by different factions, but for team weapons (and even vehicles) this can be an issue, if either you or your opponent capture these weapons, you might be looking at two identical icons, but two different units.
MGs are the most obvious offender, MGs have one of two icons: "Normal HMG", or "Heavy HMG" (Redundant acronym, I know).
Mortars also generally share the same/similar Icons, the Pack Howitzer and LeIG being exceptions, though they both are distinct from "true" mortars.
To my knowledge the M57 and 6 pounder share an icon... which sort of makes sense, they have the same model... but the units are totally different. Other AT guns have an unique icon, but it's a silhouette, and so is kinda busy.
Generally tanks have their own unique icons, but they're very busy, due to being silhouettes of the unit, and can on occasion be a little confusing... it would be quite nice if they had more "abstract" icons, like infantry all do, rather than having silhouettes.
There are one or two other, more minor examples (Pioneers and CEs sharing an icon, possibly others). These don't really matter as much, but it might be nice if they had their own unique ones anyway. I assume, in the case of Pioneers and CEs, that this was done with the idea in mind that "An engineer is an engineer", but the fact the other three factions have unique icons for their engineer units (Despite being functionally pretty similar to Pioneers, in the case of RoyEs) means this has broken down a little.
I might have a look at trying to design some new, more abstract unit icons for some of these units (Though I'm not a fantastic artist, so they'd just be fairly crude proof-of-concept offerings, I'm afraid). Is it something the balance team might have even the slightest interest in, do you think? It would be fairly trivial to implement if the assets are made, and might serve to make some things a bit more readable/professional looking. |
Sturmpioneers aren't considerably worse than Panzergrenadiers though, and they're your starting unit. They're squishier and don't hit as hard, but I don't see why you couldn't use them.
Sturms are a lot worse than Panzergrenadiers, they have slightly better damage at absolute point-blank (sub-5 range), but their drop-off is a lot more severe, so they need to get a lot closer. Their RA is also significantly worse, which makes their having to get close even more of a hindrance. They also don't have Bundle Grenade... Stun is nice, but it's an utility, not a damage dealing tool. (There's also Combined Arms... but this isnt a constant thing)
This makes sense obviously, due to their /far/ earlier timing compared to Pgrens, and their better utility... But you can't really justify building more than one and trying to use them as a "real" combat unit past the first couple minutes, especially since they have other shit they need to do, while Pgrens have no job except "kill guy". Sturms are also supporting Volksgrenadiers, whereas Pgrens are supporting the much better Grenadiers (And the MG42), so they're kinda carrying a heavier weight which compounds all this.
Sturms are great, and the OKW early game would be pretty much impossible without them, but they're not really comparable to Pgrens. |
I honestly think that this team rank is the biggest, the most retarded and unfair mechanic relic introduced in coh2. Because its being abused like there is no tommorow. And with the amount of pre-made teams existing, because you can count pretty much every single pre-made ever created as a separate player, its slow in ranking up.
Yeah, that feature probably needed a bit longer in the oven before it was actually implemented into the game. Part of the issue is that the relatively small playerbase makes trying to create a balanced match a little hard, especially when you're doing premade team-games, which divides the functional number of players into a quarter of the actual total searching. |
I want to make a proposition for five commanders. All five commanders are medicore for different reasons and could be good with some minor tweaking. The idea is to put in not more than two changes to make them worthwhile. One commander for each faction - just to be fair.
Soviet: Defensive Tactics
Though it would be thematic to replace the M-42 with a different (and more "defensive") unit/ability, the M42 is a strong unit for Soviet, and this is one of the abilities people pick the commander /for/.
Regarding giving Soviet a "Riegel" mine equivalent; This shouldn't be an "Engineer" buildable mine. Immobilisation mines are built only by vehicles currently, which I have to assume is intended to make their placement more "costly", and to make them less able to be spammed. You'd want to give this ability to the Soviet Halftrack, not to Combat Engineers, if it were to even be considered to be added at all.
Why was that interesting soviet barbed wire removed from this commander ages back, anyway? The one that acted like deep snow? Was it bugged somehow, or was it just really AIDS for some reason? Its a pretty interesting and unique gimmick.
I'd suggest toying with the idea of giving the commander a "Soviet" version of Hull Down... but for whatever reason Soviet already have that as a specific vehicle gimmick, rather than being an ability you could just give to CEs and apply to any vehicle.
Ostheer: Defensive Doctrine
Sure, though I much preferred Unit G17's suggestion of giving any FRP functionality that OST might get to a sd.kfz.261, rather than to a bunker or similar ability. No other faction has such an ability tied to a vehicle, and it would be pretty interesting.
OKW: Elite Armored Doctrine
I like the idea of providing Elite Armoured with more options in terms of "Armour" units, though it's a shame the Ostwind doesn't synergise at all with HEAT nor with the Panzer Commander upgrade. Still, the Ostwind provides something quite desirable to OKW, and it kind of makes more sense for it to be here, rather than in Scavenge Doctrine.
A command Panther with HEAT (Combined with other vehicles with HEAT, thanks to the Aura) feels like it might be rather too strong, though. I shouldn't want to see HEAT be nerfed, so I don't think it would be a good idea to add that unit here... and it's ostensibly unique to another commander anyway. It's a shame, as it would be thematic. If the Command Panther were changed to not provide an aura, and instead provide utility castables instead, then this would be more reasonable. The Command Panzer IV would be a better fit, it's less able to abuse HEAT than the command panther... but it would similarly want to be changed to have utility abilities rather than an aura (Which would impact a lot of other doctrines)
If a "command" unit might want to be considered for the Doctrine, I'd suggest giving the 223 this functionality, increasing the cost of that upgrade, and replacing the "lockdown" function from the 223 with the OSTheer Opel Blitz.
UKF: Commandos
Sounds reasonable? Commando Regiment is insanely munitions-heavy for some reason. I don't know enough about this commander and its use to comment with any real authority, however, so I'm afraid I don't have that much else to say.
Given that this is the "Commando" doctrine, perhaps there is some design space left to devise a new sort of "Commando" squad, so that this commander has multiple options? Not really sure what it would do though, and honestly I dont know if any squad that doesn't just act like the current Commando squad would feel like a "Commando"
USF: Recon Company
The bundled airdops should simply be divided into the ability to requisition Paras, and the ability to requisition the team weapons separately. All "bundles" should be changed in this way, as they're too limiting, and make you pay far too much if you're only actually wanting one of the units within the bundle (which is more often than not the case).
The Greyhound is thematic; It's a recon vehicle... it's just it's historically been a little difficult to balance. I don't think the M-10 or 76 are particularly fitting thematically in this commander, incidentally... and the M-10 is underused because it doesnt really have much of a niche.
If you were going to give additional recon elements to the commander, I'd suggest giving them to the Paras or the Pathfinders, rather than to Riflemen.
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The Sturmtiger isn't good enough for this to be a problem
Maybe old ST + KT would be an issue, not the current version though
The only thing even allowing Sturmtiger + Konigstiger at the moment is poor design decisions/developmental oversights, in any case. |
I can see reducing their popcap, but not much more than that. The howies are really useful in team games and ISU/Ele cmdrs losing their bombs was significant to help them out
Reducing their pop-cap would make them a LOT more usable in smaller modes... though I think it's worth considering hard-caps on the units in team modes. |
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