Tips and Tricks for Newbies

The COH2.org came together in this thread to share some neat "behind the scenes" tips and tricks of Company of Heroes 2. Here they are:

• You can activate grid keys in the options menu, by doing this you don't have to memorize every command for every unit, you just have to check where the wanted command is situated and press the corresponding key. This way you don't need to think as much and you won't have to move your hand. This might save you some time and improve micro.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Cover is directional, except craters which work in all directions.
  
• A vehicle's side armour is split into one "front" part and one "rear" part; by using the attack ground command when attacking enemy tanks and aiming at the rear part of the side armour, you will score a rear armour hit with a higher chance of penetrating.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Many units can shoot farther than they can see, using attack ground will let you shoot into the fog of war. However it will decrease your accuracy.
  
• With the default hotkeys, pressing T retreats selected squad(s). With grid keys, R retreats selected squad(s).
  
• You can see if a house is manned by right clicking it with a unit, if it flashes red it is occupied.
  
• You can move the camera with the middle mouse button.
  
• You can estimate where the enemy armour is in the fog of war by listening for engine sounds and looking at where bushes and fences are being torn down.
  
• Use shift clicks after giving an order. Always shift click away from mines so units wont stay on mines after construction (engineers will have a very specific pose after constructing, making it easy to spot for enemies). Shift click with US tank crews is also good when making them re-crew tanks as soon as the vehicle is repaired. Mobile artillery should be shift clicked to your base too, so immediately after barrage it will move back to base. Be sure to shift reverse so unit won't turn around.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• You can shift-click on Retreat to have units automatically retreat home after performing an action. This can be useful when capturing team weapons, or for having low-health squads retreat automatically after capturing a point.
  
• It is always cheaper to reinforce squads than to buy new squads.
  
• If you want you to destroy an abandoned team weapon or vehicle, order your units to attack it with an Attack-Move order (default hotkey: A, grid key: Q). This is more accurate than using Attack-Ground.
  
• Attack move is better than normal move on almost every occasion, units will engage at the longest range so if you don't pay attention to that squad you will not lose a lot of hp. Once your squad starts to shout or the combat icon is flashing go there and move to cover if needed. Very good for OKW since pretty much any squad is best on long range. Also good for snipers and Raketenwerfer.
  
• Check the opponents base at the start of the game. By memorizing the shape of the base buildings you can see the trace or "splat" of a building trough the fog of war. Smart players will attempt to fake tech by building and then cancelling it so you only see the splat. To get around this just keep watching, there is not much stuff you need to do anyway if you cap via the Minimap. If you hear an explosion it means he cancels the building and if you see the XP marker popup it means he finished the building.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The above tip can be used to confuse your opponent. By placing down a building and cancelling it before it is built you will produce the "splat" without actually building the building.
  
• Put -nomovies in the launch properties for the game in steam to skip the launch videos.
  
• Listen to what your units are saying. They will often tell you when they engage an enemy, what kind of enemy it is, when grenades are being thrown and so on.
  
• If you want to know what path an enemy will take when retreating from a certain point of the map you can put one of your units on or near that point and right click (move order) the enemy base. On the Minimap you should see a white line for a brief moment, this is the closest path to the enemy base and this is the path enemy units will use while retreating. You can use this information to set up mines or ambushes along the retreat path to secure those critical squad wipes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Putting wire on cover will deny the cover.
  
• "Neutral" Panther wrecks can be salvaged (for example on the map Rails and Metal)
  
• Be very aware of where windows are situated on buildings and how many are on each side. Some buildings don't have any windows at all in certain directions and you will not be able to fire at an enemy approaching from this side. Rotate your camera to see where the windows are. Also, if there is only one window, you might not want to put, for example, a conscript squad there since you will get much lower DPS. Buildings with less windows are more suited for MGs and Raketenwerfers.
  
• Also note if the building entrances and use that knowledge to exit buildings away from/to enemies.
  
• Destroying fire pits gives XP.
  
• Throwing a grenade can be cancelled by issuing another command to your unit.
  
• When throwing a molotov or grenade into a building, it can be a good idea to throw it outside the house just by the exit instead, if you catch a squad on the exit it's an almost guaranteed squad wipe since the soldiers are clumped up when exiting a building.
  
• Clicking alt+. cycles trough your idle units.
  
• Assigning units to control groups will make it much easier to select and control them in the heat of battle. You do this by selecting a unit, then holding down ctrl and the number you want to assign, for example ctrl+1. To select the assigned units, just press the "1" key.
  
• Units can reinforce through a hedgerow, as long as they are within reinforce range.
  
• Stand still to fight. Precious DPS is lost by moving due to reduced accuracy. Take cover instantly and don't move.
  
• Heavy cover like sand bags and walls even provides cover against many medium tanks cannon fire. They will break quickly under heavy fire though so don't stand around too long.
  
• When firing/throwing grenades on units in heavy cover, maximum damage is achieved by placing the grenade a bit behind the unit you want to eliminate.
  
• The AOE of a grenade thrown inside a house determines the damage the grenade will do. In a large house the units will be more spread out and thus take less damage from a grenade. Molotovs will however deal damage to the whole house and assault and infiltration grenades will deal damage to a much bigger portion of a house due to the amount of grenades thrown.
  
• Tanks with HE rounds do huge damage to units in cover if they manage to flank the unit. If the HE shell hits the cover on the same side that the unit is covering there will be much carnage.
  
• Incomplete sandbags can also block shots but will get destroyed easily.
  
• Terrain has a big impact on tank combat. Tanks will often miss uphill shots against infantry. It is, if possible, better to have the high ground and shoot down on the infantry. There is also more chance of hitting the ground if shooting uphill.
  
• Tank shells rendered in game actually do have trajectory. So its always a good idea to issue your tanks/AT guns to overshoot in fog of war when catching a fleeing tank. Its possible for tanks with shells that have high scatter to travel further and possibly knocking off something that its not intended and that is way out of the tanks supposed max range.
  
• You can use secure mode as hold fire mode. This can especially be useful when running away from enemy tanks. Use secure mode so your tank don't reveal itself in the fog of war.
  
• You can instantly stop your vehicle by making it face different direction via right-click drag.
  
• Shift clicking to reverse your vehicle is better than reverse sometimes.
  

• Some (all?) of the "ability shots" like Target Weak Point or the Puma's Aimed Shot have longer range than the "regular" shot from the same gun.
  
• A re-crewed team weapon like a Pak or an MG will have the reinforcement cost of the unit that crewed it.
  
• Using attack ground with flamers allows you to attack things that are out of your line of sight (behind a wall for example).
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Be aware of what the base bunkers cover. In some maps you can sneak around the bunkers and into the base and in some you can move trough the cone of fire before the bunker has time to suppress you. Some maps even have neutral buildings inside the base sectors (Ettelbruck north and Rails and Metal south for example).
  
• PaK43 can fire through buildings and terrain.
  
• Panzergrenadiers and assault engineers have no movement penalties in deep snow and shallow water unlike every other infantry unit.
  
• Repairing units (such as pioneers and engineers) will take more damage while repairing. Don't repair under fire!
  
• Putting demos behind sight blockers is great because even if they have a sweeper the player might not see the demo. Most players rarely rotate their camera.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Mines will detonate if hit by anything but small arms. It is therefore usually a bad idea to stand on top of your own mine. You can also use this to defuse enemy mines from distance.
  
• Be careful when defusing demo charges. They can still be detonated after being detected.
  
• Trip wire flares can provide LOS for demo charges (but can also alert the enemy). You can also build them close to mines to provide sight when someone hits your mine. You can also use them to provide sight for your mortar(s).
  
• If you crew a team weapon with Pathfinders (or other scout infantry), it will have very good sight range, but will be more expensive to reinforce. If you crew it with shocks or sturmpios for example, it will have very potent close range protection.
  
• If you infiltrate far enough behind your enemy's lines you can hide snipers (or other cloaking infantry) in cover and use them to sight. Try not to panic retreat unless you know you have a clear path out. The Ostheer sniper in particular is often better off hiding and jumping from cover to cover.
  
• Tank destroyers are NOT tanks. You need to keep them at long range and out of trouble.
  

• OKW minesweepers can be "put away" so you don't lose DPS in firefights.
  
• You can crush fences close to your base with the starting OKW truck to ease movement (e.g.: Moscow Outskirts, Faymonville, Kholodny winter, Rails and Metal).
  
• The Flak HT has minimum range of 3. If players attempt to drive m20 and m3s close to you to shoot at the Flak HT, simply attack ground behind the enemy vehicle since the splash will take care of the vehicle.
  
• OKW flak emplacements take popcap to recrew, even for an OKW player.
  
• If you don't need to build another base structure, SwS-trucks can be used as one-time mine sweepers.
  
• OKW medics can heal infantry in buildings (might be a bug).
  
• Sturmpioneer minesweeper upgrade provides increased repair speed also.
  
• Volksgrenadier panzerschreck upgrade makes you immune to cold, great on winter maps with blizzards.
  
• Artillery Flares from the SpecOps commander are good for scouting unnoticed. It is pretty hard to spot for your enemy.
  
• Assault grenades deal huge damage to buildings.
  
• Popping out Fallschirmjägers behind an enemy Katyusha is a great way of taking it out, if it's not guarded.
  
• The Sturmtiger destroys a huge area of ice. Your enemies will not even try to get on the ice with one of these near by (or they will die trying).
  
• The IR STG44 upgrade ignores cover and is excellent against units in buildings for example.
  
• If your Obersoldaten drops their LMG34, PICK IT UP! This weapons turns any squad that picks it up into a killing machine. Even engineers become a huge threat.
  

• A Major can "lock down" a sector when vet 3.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• American rifle smoke grenades fired at a vehicle makes the vehicle move slower (and disables its main gun?).
  
• You can transfer veterancy between your tanks and light vehicles by switching crews. If you for example have an M20 with vet 2 you can take that crew and put it in you brand new Sherman to get some veterancy on it instead.
  
• You don't need to have your priest crewed while on cool down. You save up MP and Popcap by just crewing when you need to barrage.
  
• If you are using AT mines from Infantry/Assault Engineers put them down in groups of 3 or 4. Debuffs don't apply with 5+ mines.
  
• Airborne MG and AT gun drops briefly give vision. This could potentially be used to call down a P47 strike for example (Might be a bug).
  
• Assault engineers can (and should) lay demo-charges.
  
• M20 mines immobilize tanks.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Screening your Jacksons with a Sherman or Bulldozer is very advantageous due to the Sherman's superior armour, health and AI capabilities. A Jackson+Sherman can often be more effective than Jackson+Jackson against enemy armour.
  
• BAR upgrade on pathfinders are very strong due BAR's DPS and Pathfinder's ability to "snipe" models.
  
• The Captain has an ability to speed up production. This is very useful to get your first Sherman out a bit faster.
  

• Ostheer soldiers upgraded with the G43 can reveal enemy units on the Minimap by right clicking on crawling(dying) enemy units.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• You can deploy smaller patches of minefields by simple moving away after each batch of mines is built. This lets you customize how big you want it to be. By placing down small patches of mines over a large area of ice you have a good chance of sinking enemy tanks for a relatively low cost.
  
• You can also destroy ice under enemy tanks with a rifle grenade.
  
• The Spotting Scopes upgrade, from the commanders that have it, on a scout car is a great way of scouting. With vet 3 you can see huge parts of the map (on 1 vs 1 at least). Just remember that you need to be standing still for the spotting scopes to work.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Elite troops Model 24 Stun grenade is excellent against enemies in buildings.
  
• The Stuka AT strafe of the Close Air Support commander can one-shot B4s and many tanks but needs to be aimed manually.
  
• The Hull Down ability of the Festung Armor Support increases your tanks range and rate of fire which makes them great at holding positions. The Ostwind shoots down planes really fast this way and the Panther will have the same range as an SU85.
  
• The incendiary round of the sniper is not on the same timer as the regular shot so one regular shot and one incendiary round can be fired in very short succession.
  
• When using the artillery officer you can fire Panzerwerfers normally and then use the officer barrage ability to get 2 sets of barrages instantly.
  
• Artillery officers also double the range of regular mortars.
  
• The 222 Scout Car (with upgraded gun) is excellent at hunting undefended Katyushas.
  
• If you are being harassed by partisans, the flame upgrade on your halftrack is excellent at destroying buildings.
  
• The sniper becomes visible when jumping fences.
  
• The Panther actually has more penetration and longer range than the Tiger and is therefore better against heavy tanks. On the other hand the Tiger has superior anti-infantry capabilities
  

• If you merge a conscript into a shock squad, the conscript entity will not have the same armour value as the shock troopers.
  
• T-34 ram cancels if the target unit dies. This can be very useful when chasing an almost dead tanks. The t-34 will fire a shot, and if the tank dies it will stop ramming. If it doesn't, the t-34 will ram. If both the shot and the ram penetrate, it will do a whopping 320 damage (half of Panzer-IV health)!
  
• The first volley of a Katyusha lands a bit further than the centre of the circle.
  
• Dropping a PTRS with guards can be a good thing. You will lower the chance of dropping your main DPS dealer, the DP machine gun, and you actually get more anti-infantry DPS without it. However, if you need to fight light vehicles you will be at a loss. Think twice before picking one up.
  
• Vet 3 T70 with the scout ability activated will give you a huge sight range. Truesight is still in effect though, you will not see what's hiding behind buildings and trees.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Demos is an often overlooked but deadly weapon. Especially if your enemy blobs up his infantry.
  
• Soviet mines are cheap and should be placed often. A mine on negative cover (a road) will have a higher chance of dealing a heavy engine damage crit.
  
• A vet 3 B4 with "For Mother Russia"-ability activated will kill any unit in the game with 1 shot, even heavy tanks.
  
• You can make a "super heavy mine" by placing a demo-charge on top of a regular mine.
  
• Partisans' spy network works for your entire team.
  
• Partisans can lay TM35 mines making it easy to litter a map with them.
  
• "For Mother Russia" while near a forward HQs bonus is insanely strong.
  
• Penal battalion's flame thrower cannot blow up from a critical hit.
  

Please feel free to add more tips and tricks if you have one!

Some random things you may or may not have known about whatever.

Game mechanics

Since the last patch, merged conscript models are now easier to hit than the regular members of a squad because their penalty to received accuracy is inherited.

Similarly since the last patch, HMG and Mortar crews now lose their 1.25 received accuracy penalty permanently upon getting decrewed.

Vehicle Priorization will be disabled after using any ability that switches the weapon temporarily (SU-76 barrage, ZiS-3 barrage, Pak40/43 stun shot, Stug TWP, etc). You will need to switch it off and on again.

A squad does not need a minesweeper to defuse mines, all the 4 basic constructor units can always defuse (and usf assault engineers) though you do need a nearby sweeper for the detection part.

Picking up the crappy LMGs from Irregulars and Partisans actually gives you a full power one

Sweepers work inside transports, but not as usf vehicle crews.

Accuracy penalty while constructing is actually applied on a squad basis and only the 4 primary construction units+assault engineers have it. Grenadiers, volks, rifles etc building stuff receive no penalties in combat apart from obviously not shooting back. Planting democharges also does not have a penalty because it's not actually a building.

Flaming ground to destroy mines doesn't really work. Flamers have around 2 penetration, mines have 35 armor. And you need two to three penetrations to kill. You can clear demos though.

Don't complain about your squads getting wiped if you stand in front of cover against tanks. Especially against units like IS2 which has a tendency to overshoot you're increasing your chances of getting hit ten fold.

Negative cover increases received damage by +25% and this applies to all weapons except flamethrowers (which do -50% damage instead). Tank shells, mortars, and mines are extremely likely to wipe squads that are on red cover because of this.

Small arms, including vehicle MGs, ignore positive cover except for garrison cover within 10 range (use vet0 molotov targeting circles to learn ranges, inner circle is 5 range, outer circle 15). Negative cover applies at all ranges.

Green cover reduces damage from all attacks that aren't flamebased, including grenades and mortars which people tend to consider counters to cover. Whether the -50% damage is applied to a weapon depends on where it was FIRED from rather than on where the attack lands.

Code

                      Sandbags
			 ||
Grenadier    Conscript 1 || Conscript 2
                         ||

Grenadier firing riflegrenade on Conscript 1 will do full damage and thus is able to kill models outright on hit. Firing a riflegrenade on Conscript 2 will only do half damage and thus will only succeed in taking 50% off a model's health at best.

ATgun green cover has bugged directionality, tends not to work from straight on frontal attacks but often applies to attacks from side angles.

ATgun weapon crews will benefit from green cover nearby same as any other weapon crew, their own (bugged) cover doesn't interfere.

Units can't throw grenades to higher elevation because grenade ability traverse is too low, the ability will start triggering and then cancel after a few seconds. Pretty apparent on some maps with big elevation differences like Minsk or Hill whatever.

Bulletins

Stack. Except for these:

soviet\medium-tanks\t34_85_armor
west_german\artillery\ig18_ability_recharge
west_german\light-vehicles\ostwind_armor
german\assault_gun\stug_e_armor
medium_tank\officer_tank.txt (armor bulletin for sherman/okw panther, WILL stack on Panther but will NOT stack on Sherman)

Some Ostheer bulletins affect multiple different units:

Grenadiers & Assault Grenadiers (squad type: grenadiers)
Grenadier Accuracy
Grenadier cooldown
Grenadier reload & cooldown

Tiger Ace and Tiger: (squad type: tiger)
Tiger penetration
Tiger armor
Tiger sight & turret rotation

PZIV command tank and PZIV: (squad type: panzer)
PZIV armor
PZIV Rotation speed
PZIV Reload speed
PZIV penetration

Stug G and Stug E (squad type: stug_iii or unit type stug)
Stug G Mobility
Stug E reload
Stug G rotate & reload
Stug G reload
Stug G rotate
Stug E rate of fire
Stug G penetration

Panzer Grenadiers & Stormtroopers (unit type: panzer_grenadier)
Panzer Grenadier Accuracy

Panzer Grenadiers & Ostruppen & Stormtroopers & Artillery Officer: (squad type: pz_grenadiers)
Panzer Grenadier Received Accuracy

Abilities

A T34 in the middle of a Ram will instantly destroy any team weapons it hits.

Opel Blitz truck gives: 5m/3f on regular point, 11m on muni point, 7f on fuel point. It also connects your territory, even when not set up.

The USF mortar HT vet1 delayed barrage has 105 penetration (regular mortar penetration 35) and has the following crit chances on penetration on vehicles:
15% disable movement for 10 seconds, 22% engine damage, 4% immobilize
Not that this will ever actually do anything because of the awful accuracy and aoe, but well...

Puma doctrine ostruppen have a 20% chance per squad of spawning with an LMG, and veterancy spawn chances are 0: 50%, 1: 25%, 2: 15%, 3: 10%

OKW Puma aimed shot can target any enemy unit except buildings and has differing effects based on target.
On penetration (double penetration values of normal shot):
Turreted tank: lock turret (15 seconds)
Assault gun: stun vehicle same as Ostheer TWP (5 seconds)
Light vehicle: engine damage (anything lighter than a t70 more or less, t70 still counts as a tank)
Team weapon gunner: temporarily disables weapon (5 seconds+redeploy)
Infantry (including team weapon gunners): death crit in 0.5 radius (for comparison grenadier riflegrenade kill radius would be 0.875 on full health models). But unlike riflegrenade this will not take any penalty from green cover.

USF Mechanized / Recon IR Pathfinder artillery has 33% chance of crew shock and 33% chance of engine damage on enemy vehicles hit.

Ostheer Railway Artillery first shell will always land close to the center of the targeting circle, the remaining 2 rounds scatter inside the area normally.

Stuart Point Blank Engine Shot is actually extremely potent. It is a guaranteed engine damage on any vehicle as it has no penetration and deals the engine damage on deflection. But it has 5 range so you probably will have a hard time getting it off against targets trying to move away from the stuart.

OKW Officer "Target Them" ability says it makes opponent units fight harder, but that's a lie. It just increases their received accuracy by 50% for 20 seconds which is not particularly useful with high accuracy okw units except when enemy is in yellow/green cover in which case it is a straight up 50% boost to DPS against that squad.

Ostheer 222/halftrack vet1 ability is 10 munitions for 20 seconds of 70 range detection on all infantry, including camouflaged ones. If you ever want to know where opponent snipers or pathfinders are, just pop this.

Anyway, because relic moved the squad base received accuracy to the model/entity SIZE instead of a squad modifier, this now means that merged conscripts are in fact easier to hit than the proper models of a squad for any kind of infantry squads. They are harder to hit than the regular members of an HMG/mortar squad, but...

The other implication of this change is that now only the initial squad of HMGs and Mortars sucks ass. As soon as they get decrewed and recrewed with something else, they lose their received accuracy bonus permanently. For instance HMG42, initial received accuracy/size is 1.25. Lose the initial crew and recrew with grenadiers and you now have an HMG42 with 0.91 received accuracy. Or with PGs for 0.8 received accuracy.

Exploity mechanics

You can over double the fire rate of Rear Echelon rifle grenades from a fighting position by leaving the FP immediately after firing and then immediately re-entering again, skipping the 5 second reload.

Democharges triggered through damage rather than the button do more damage. A democharge+soviet mine is supposed to be 250+200 damage, but it does around 700 to a vehicle hitting this combo and thus oneshots most tanks. Never did figure out why this happened, reported this as a bug to Relic over 6 months ago but hasn't been fixed so at this point I'll just consider it a "feature".

wire cutter can cut wire fences present in maps like city 17 and angermuende.

With regards to seeing the building splat through fog of war, you could add that it's easy to tell which tier someone has built by selecting a unit and seeing via the 'movement dots' whether that area is accessible or not.

If the dots can not be placed on the splat then this means that the tier has been built. If the dots appear over the splat then there is no tier built.

Also to add to this, when you have winter maps you can build your buildings in deep snow. When you do this no dots will appear regardless of wether the tier was built or not

- If you are using AT mines from Infantry/Assault Engineers put them down in groups of 3 or 4. Debuffs don't apply with 5+ mines.