Profile of ThoseDeafMutes

Maybe the reload speed is doubled when it's down to 1 man or separated or something. I'm trying to make it a kind of hybrid crew served weapon, but without some of the drawbacks like needing to set up / pack up the gun. Like the Raketenwerfer, but probably a little better because the unit would be more responsive and can be used offensively a little easier. Worse in range most likely though.

I don't think there's any issue with a 4 man crew being too vulnerable, that's the Axis standard. If you could tone down squad wiping across the board in, say, CoH3, I would even suggest 3 man weapon crew.

I don't see Jacksons as much of an issue because they are themselves so fragile, however the IS2 would represent a major threat. Even so, it is as always a matter of balancing, it's entirely possible that despite those two being serious threats it's still a viable faction competitively, even in team games. At worst it could be a faction that is balanced in 1v1 and to some extent 2v2, but outclassed by the opposition in 3v3 and 4v4 (again, pretty much like USF and arguably allies as a whole!). I'm not convinced they wouldn't have units capable of dealing with them though. Even without OH / OKW allies.

Ita has medium tanks with 47mm and long barrelled 75mm guns available for the time period. Few that ever saw combat prior to the Armastice, but some that kept on fighting under German command later on. It has a 75mm AT gun it could theoretically use. It even has a 90mm tank destroyer that was produced in highly limited quantities. And a 105 as well. A static 90mm AT gun / AA gun that was actually used existed also.

Combined with various kinds of infantry, mortars, mgs etc, there is certainly the potential to actually have a faction that would be interesting to use and competitive. Let's not pretend like they've ever let the complete obscurity or lack of historical use ever stop them from including units in the game before anyway, so there's definitely room to use some of those "tanks that got delivered 2 months before the armistice then got used by Germans in Italy from then on". And units that were poor in RL but awesome in CoH, or vice versa.

Naturally the best we could hope for from Relic is "Africa Korps, featuring one commander who uses some Italian ostruppen style useless idiot infantry!"

Maybe if they stopped making every alternate Axis faction "The other Germans" they could avoid some of these issues.




Asymmetrical balance should be something to give flavour when appropriate, not a religious dogma that forces you to design stupid gimmick factions that lack basic core units and compensate in strange ways.

I think the fuel is 100% fine, it's actually somewhat too easy to spam them IMO. Especially if you're not going for a T3/T4 in a team game, which is a feasible strategy. I wouldn't want to lower the cost!

Pop cap reduced to 12 or 13 would be nice, but I'm not really crying myself to sleep because I can "only" have 3-4 of them in addition to a B4 and a couple of squads in the late game

B4 for the amazingly satisfying feeling of wiping out half a shrek blob in one hit.