Company of Heroes 3 with WhiteFlash Addendum

@Relic https://www.visualcapitalist.com/esports-boom/

I would LOVE a Japanese Faction/Pacific Theater! Other than that very well done guide i feel like Coh3 has to hit home with the leaderboard aswell.

Solid article white flash. Totally agree with most points. But do you honestly think there is hope for a CoH3 to be made? I say that hoping that you do. For me CoH 1 and 2 really tick alot of boxes, they are such enjoyable games, but I am definitely worried that relic will pull a Valve or a Blizzard on us. RTS as a genre isn't as popular as it used to be.

Thanks you for bringing up the important points of the game that can be improved for a potential great CoH3. Another aspect that I hope to see more improvement is the replay system. Currently, I cannot back track the replay at a critical moment I might have missed. I also cannot access the file if there's any update happened after the game.

Also, there can be a lot more information, number displayed for the information sake. CoH Stat is also something that a lot of us are interested in. As of now, CoH2 severely lack numbers for us to understand the unit's strength.

Should Relic wish to make CoH3, I hope they will listen closely to the player base, pro players to come up with a great game that we all anticipate. My thanks to all the dev, balance team who have great passion about the game!

I only have unique idea for Doctrine. Which is

All faction must have Engineer to build(or all faction have it by default) a building "Commander HQ" where all doc units have to build from there. No more call in. Both infantry & vehicle must have build time.

Bring back Coh1 2 branch tech tree. Where Players can completely custom their Commander abilities. Instead of buying a new Doctrine, players can buy Commander Abilities, then they can put them into the Commander tech tree slots.
6 types of tech tree, where you can put Commander abilities as you want in

1st floor can only put tactical abilities
infantry weapon ungrade/elite infantry must be from 2nd floor and above
premium medium must be from 3rd floor and above
heavy can only put into 4th floor.
=> Each ability has its own Commander point. So to make a Commander not too op. Limit the Commander point so they just can NOT put in 2 types of Premium medium and 2 types of Heavies in the same Commander (tech tree 1)

To make the game play roll around core units. All doc units are abit more price effective but limited to 1 Heavy tank, 2 Premium medium, 2 elite infantry (except units like Partisan and Ostruppen). Im tired of Fusilier & Fall blob that force me to use Ranger & Para blob.

Hi,

agreed with pretty much everything. I do not agree that balancing 3v3 and 4v4s is hard until we tried everything outside engine and unit mechanics.
By that, I mean there is a lot to be tried in map design and economy, which wouldnt take much of engineering time.

For example:
With each additonal pair of players the amount of strategic points could be multiplied by 1.5 and income devided by 1.5.
Ammo/Fuel Cache should add max 50% more of resources or cost at least 1.5 times more with each additional pair of players.

Such changes would balance the economy, while making blobbing less stratigic, because you can simply outcap blobbing opponent even more.

Long story short: Coh2 is not scaling right. If you play 4v4, you, as a single player, need to put pretty much 4 times less effort than player in 1v1. You have to cap 1-2 strategic points and fight for 1-3 points. You have to invest in just one cache. Very often one in 4v4 match will explore less map area than single player in 1v1 match. Where the most of exploration is in coming back from spawn.

In terms of engine/gameplay, I suggest giving blobs, X models on certain area Y-i x Z+i (4x4, 2x8, 8x2, 5x3, 3x5 etc), additional received accuracy %.

There are many more ways to do it for sure.

A couple things I want to add:

Doctrines: Scrap doctrine ability overlap completely, no more duplicates. And preferably return closer to the COH1 system where you have fewer doctrines but 2 branching paths. Less is more, 3-5 doctrines per faction that are very distinct and well thought out is far superior. And IMO all doctrines should be available to pick in game, being in a situation where you could've been better equipped to counter the opponent if you had made a different selection prior to entering the match is frustrating.

Autonomous infantry animations: Haven't played COH2 much in the past couple of years so this may have been addressed, but a major gripe I had back when I played a lot were the overly dramatic infantry reactions to incoming fire. Nearby impact of anything other than small arms fire resulted in guys just diving all over the place. I vividly remember playing in a tournament game like 7 years ago and I micro'd away from an incoming molotov only for my guys to go "oh shit" and dive in to the fireball they just dodged...no bueno. The infantry panic reactions happened for all sorts of things including incoming AT rifle shots, AT gun fire, grenades, artillery misses, etc. This was a thing in COH1 but it was far more subdued, it generally required something like a direct hit from tank/artillery and it seemed like they recovered much faster.

Vaulting: I like the idea but not a huge fan of the universal implementation. In COH1 it was easier for the defensive oriented faction to go on the counter offensive in the early game after repelling a major push. You could use map objects like fences and short walls to limit the enemies avenues of attack and secure your flanks, it made aggressive defensive playstyles more rewarding and it was very satisfying when you pulled it off. Also at a high level players would do things like use attack ground with bazookas or flamers to burn down fences to open more flank routes or enter a base, and neat quirky things like that were good for the high skill ceiling. However the maps need to be made accordingly, there needs to be an appropriate amount of openings so that aggressive MG play is rewarded but not too overpowering. Ideally I think vaulting should be limited to special elite units and possibly as a veterancy perk for main line infantry units.

Optimization: I have a rig that should be very overkill for a 7 year old RTS yet it barely performs better than the system I was running when the game came out. The framterate still dips in to the 40s and 50s when there are lots of units on the field and this is on a PC that runs most new FPS on high/ultra at 100+ fps. In theory it shouldn't be a big issue because high framerate isn't super important for a RTS, the problem is in COH2 the camera panning really goes downhill as the performance dips, it gets extremely choppy and sluggish. A long time ago I used to play COH1 and other rts games on a laptop running at 25-30fps, and the camera movement still felt much more snappy and responsive than COH2. This is something that really needs to work well in a competitive rts game.

I hope that my grandchildren will be able to see COH3 released one day.