Profile of James Hale

EDIT: Nevermind.

Hey guys, just going to paste this from the official forum as I know not all of you frequent it. I'm new here and you have loads of different sub-forums, so feel free to move this to the correct one. I'm not really sure which one it'd go under here.

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Okay, I've been thinking about a unit we all know will be added to the game at some point - the mighty King Tiger. It seems inevitable that it will appear at some point in 2014, and so the only question is how. Also, we need not throw around too much hyperbole as to its power and the general fear that it will be inherently OP and destroy the Soviets immediately. It won't.

Firstly, a brief note on specifics; when Relic decide to model the Tiger II, they should do the square Henschel turret and not the more rounded Porsche turret used in vCoH. We can (and will) all argue about stats and balance, but they can always change; the model is something that won't be changed and so the more popular variant should be designed.

In the spirit of vCoH and the much-loved Terror Doctrine, I've been thinking about a way of creating a DLC commander that provides some of the late-game awesomeness of the Wehrmacht, but combined with the total war/last stand mentality they had after 1944. I always loved the premise of the King Tiger in vCoH, but I felt the unit itself was something of a liability, and that added to its charm and helped balance it. My favourite doctrine in vCoH was always Defensive, and it touched on the late-war 'dig in' mentality that the Germans had, and I think that can (and should) be brought to CoH2 in some small way.

This post will be quite long because as well as listing what this commander would have, I need to explain the new units/abilities to you and my ideas as to how they would all function. Obviously this is all fictional at this point, but it's something to consider and discuss.

The trick, as ever, is to try to balance things. I'll follow Relic's template and suggest three new abilities and two vanilla ones.

Armored Reserve Doctrine

2CP: Volkssturm Militia
4CP: Smoke Bombs
5CP: Hull Down
6CP: People's War
11 CP: King Tiger

Note: I am going by the current game's CP system, but ideally I'd like to see the KV-2, ISU-152 and Elefant dropped to 9 CP.

Thoughts:

Volkssturm Militia

These guys would be like a cross between Osttruppen, Partisans and Shock Troops; they'd be self-balancing by being physically very weak (the same HP as Osttruppen) but having good weaponry. So, at around 240 MP you'd get a five-man squad armed with Volkssturmgewehr 1-5 assault rifles, which would be similar to MP44s in terms of damage but with the caveat that these guys are untrained conscripts with poor accuracy and longer reload times. It wouldn't be anything like a 240 MP Panzergrenadier squad with an extra man; Volkssturm would be quite good at augmenting your regular troops or for throwing at enemy weapon crews, but unlike Osttruppen they'd have no defensive modifiers and would die quickly under sustained fire.

2 CP is early enough to make them relevant for most of the game, but not too early so as to attempt to use them in lieu of Grenadiers, for which they are not designed.

Smoke Bombs

An underused vanilla ability only available with two other commanders, and so I thought it'd be nice to have here. I think this is neglected because it's not a very flashy or exciting ability, and against the AI is of limited use, but if you've ever had it used against you in MP then you'll know how annoying it is for a good chunk of the map to all of a sudden become FoW whilst some enemies you were chasing seemingly disappear. I think combined with clever micro and the prospect of a King Tiger this would be a great asset. It's a very good stock ability.

Hull Down

Another great but underused vanilla ability, and especially since it was buffed a few patches ago. This can be used both offensively - moving your frontlines forward - or defensively to protect a bridge or choke point. I think it fits the theme of the doctrine, and of course a hulled down King Tiger would be a very dangerous (but vulnerable) prospect.

People's War

The signature ability of this doctrine and another hark back to the Terror and Defensive doctrines in vCoH. The idea with People's War (aka Volkssturm) is that all player-controlled units within your own territory will have accuracy, cooldown and RoF boosts whilst active. This means that your Grenadiers, Panzergrenadiers and Volkssturm Militia will be able to do more damage, more quickly, for 30 seconds, and is particularly useful for the latter as their default values for those attributes would normally be quite poor.

The downsides to this ability would be its long cooldown, the fact that it is only applied in friendly territory and that it immobilizes all units whilst active - and so they would be particularly vulnerable to things like flanking, KV-8s or doctrinal abilities such as bombing strikes and artillery. Naturally, it would leave your precious King Tiger at its most vulnerable. Timed carefully, however, People's War could save you from a potentially game-changing offensive and let you turn the game around.

King Tiger

Realistically, this is what most people would be paying for, and for good reason. Unlike the poorly-implemented Tiger Ace, however, the King Tiger could be a popular and well-balanced unit. Yes, it is supposed to be a bitch to take down, and yes it is supposed to make people think 'oh ****' as soon as they see it, but by limiting it to one at a time, giving it a reasonable price tag (~820/290) and because it has such a high CP and pop cost, it's normally something you're only going to see once per game - and even then, only if the German player has bothered to save up for it.

There's no reason that the King Tiger needs to be given ridiculously artificial mobility nerfs, as in reality it was a surprisingly agile vehicle considering its size and weight. The actual idea behind the King Tiger was to combine the best aspects of the Tiger and the Panther, which was fast, maneuverable and had effective sloped armour. This influence is obvious given that the King Tiger looks like an enlarged Panther, and indeed the Allies often saw Panthers (and even late model Panzer IVs) and mistakenly identified them as King Tigers.

Make it seriously bloody dangerous by all means, but balance this with the fact that a few T-34s and Conscript spam can still reliably cripple it.

This commander doesn't get Panzer Tactician or any gimmicky stuff like Troop Training; there's a defensive focus here, and I'd like to see a doctrine in which if you lost a King Tiger, you'd really feel that loss. It's big, it's mean, but it's seriously expensive and needs a lot of support to be used effectively. I also don't think this would be a commander that everyone bought and played all the time (*cough* Tiger Ace *cough) as I specifically gave it abilities which are not overly popular, perhaps even underused, and are very circumstantial. It's something that would fit a particular playstyle quite well but would not necessarily be super effective in competitive MP games, and certainly not an 'I win' commander. There are some serious flaws with these abilities, and they are intentional; Volkssturm Militia would sap your MP and drop like flies to Shock Troops or a Quad Mount, but equally they could push the game in your favour if used to bolster your regular troops, and if you wanted a defensive commander that played noticeably different to Defensive or Osttruppen (which is why I specifically avoided adding Trenches or the Officer, both of which were tempting) then I think this would be a great - and different - choice.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I know it's a massive post but I wanted to explain everything properly, so it didn't seem like a 'OMG! WTF?' post to Soviet players - of which I am one, incidentally.

Technically two Grens can beat a Shock, but it would require some lucky rifle 'nades.

Personally I like that it has access to both of those artillery types, and I do use them both with some success. I wouldn't change that myself, but I see your point.

I'm not convinced that adding the anti-personnel mines would achieve anything except making the Soviet Defensive commander even less useful than it already is. The main issue there is that tank traps are absolutely useless (literally *useless*, as opposed to just being rubbish) - but that's for another thread.

That's much less likely to happen, though. I dislike the Storm Doctrine because it feels like the runt of the litter, but that may just be personal opinion and other people may like using it. I think it is by far the weakest commander because of its bizarre mix of abilites and misleading name.

That said, it does still feel different to other commanders and so in that sense it is okay. Terror/AI don't because of the high ability overlap. I reckon if they patched in the IS-2 instead of the KV-8 for Terror it'd solve a couple of issues.

Heh, maybe this is just down to mild OCD. I do think it is a sensible idea, though.