Profile of ZombieRommel

Yeah but assault pioneers still beat the much more expensive sturmpioneers and that is something that shouldn't happen. And with the mg 42 with it's great surpression rate or the kübelwagen you can't be everywhere. Had a game last evening, the pioneers were flanking my mates mg it was wiped in 2 secs and that's a joke. Earlier i had a game where i was standing besides a maxim with my sturmpioneers. They were standing there for 4 secs and killed 1 man. And when i ordered them to kill a 1 man conscript on retreat that ran right trough them they weren't able to kill it. In my opinion the sturmpioneers are underperforming while the much cheaper assault pioneers are overperforming.

It's a matter of range here. Sturm Pio in cover should handily beat Assault Engie charging over open ground. All Assault Engie got was DPS increase... their received accuracy still makes them fragile units, far more fragile than Sturm Pio.

It's not as simple as "Assault Engie beats Sturm Pio...outrage!" It's "If you let Assault Engie maneuver into pointblank range without incoming fire while they do so, they can win."

You can't simply talk about the two units in a vacuum absent cover and positioning. Intelligently used Sturm Pio should and will beat Assault Engie. It's two different designs. Look at it from the designer's perspective. He wants assymetrical, interesting balance.

So it's like this now:

Sturm Pio - You start with one for free. It beats every other free starting infantry bar none. It leaves you with the option to use any doctrine you want. So if you choose, you can pair it with an MG34. Sturm Pio has great durability and better DPS at mid and long range than Assault Engie. What this means is that early game, Sturm Pio is meant to be tough as nails and offer up good DPS at mid range and beat every starting allied infantry up-close EXCEPT for Assault Engie, which is the only starting infantry that has a near-range advantage.

Assault Engie - You have to buy him, which limits your other options. It has superior DPS but worse received accuracy than Sturm Pio. Assault Engie is meant to be a somewhat fragile, but versatile unit that is rewarded for using truesight blindspots and cover to advance as close to the enemy as possible without taking damage along the way. Hence the "Assault" part of their name.

A "blob" of Assault Engie can be suppressed by the terrific MG42 suppression AOE or you can take individual squads out of action with the kubel while supporting infantry stay back and focus fire the advancing ones.

TL;DR: Sturm Pio = great durability + good damage at all ranges. Assault Engie = bad durability + great damage up close

2 different designs -- 2 different intended roles.

Tying popcap to sectors contributed to the snowball effect, which Relic wanted to avoid this time. Sure, many old fans still think if you lose your fuel and cutoff, you should automatically lose the game. But that's not the philosophy in this game, they wanted you to have the option of fighting back.

Yeah good point, but we don't have to tie it to map control. Like I said, super heavies could have a large upkeep cost such that they couldn't ordinarily generate enough MP during their lifespan to become instantly replaceable once they die.

The idea is that the stock tanks were more common in WW2, so you're supposed to see them more often, whereas the big boys (elefant, etc.) were rarer, so they are tied to a doctrine.

However, I do think tying the call-ins to fuel hurts the other tech options... In vCoH you'd see plenty of Sherman play leading up to a Pershing whereas in CoH2 the choice is more binary... do you want vanilla Sherman OR Easy 8?

Because you won't have enough fuel for both.

It makes the gameplay less interesting.

A part of me feels the callins should be MP-only like in the past. This would allow normal teching and vehicles to be made. If you want to make a call-in more prohibitive (like Jagdtiger), you could force players to have all the buildings deployed first on top of the ostensibly very large manpower investment.

Due to real life obligations, I've had limited time to test out the new patch, but during a couple of the games I managed to get in, the new kubel almost insta-pinned my rifles.

I'm not against suppression weapons being effective... I think the MG42 is perfectly balanced for what it is... a highly immobile defensive area denial tool.

The MG42 can be flanked since its cone is static until it gets up and redeploys.

The problem with the Kubel is that it can rotate on a dime to stop flank attempts, which in my experience completely shuts down USF early game. Its armor was buffed a couple patches ago, but now its got armor, speed, mobility AND suppression.

So how is USF supposed to combat a well-micro'd Kubel with only rifles and RE (lol) ?

Solid advice that fully takes into account how a cache stops people from capping a sector for roughly 5 seconds in the mid to lategame of team games. 5 seconds should be enough for anyone to escape this artillery.

Yep... 1 roaming shreck blob or any medium tank = dead cache in about 5 seconds.

Maybe pqumsieh only plays 1v1.