Commander Update Beta 2021 - Ostheer Feedback

Please post all feedback from the Commander Update beta for the Ostheer faction here.

Full notes here

Overview of old versus new line-ups:
Commander Balance Patch 2021 Spreadsheet

Forward Resupply Station

Converts a garrisoned building in friendly territory to a Forward Resupply Station. Converted buildings have 6 Pioneers that will repair vehicles and reinforces nearby infantry.

This ability should also countain somesort of a buildable variant of it, just like sov Urban defence has buildable HQ, if there is no buildings worth converting to. It has a rep bunker.

251 Mobile Observation Post
see little reason for the flare to cost more than soviet mortar one a price of 30 sound more reasonable.

Assault and Hold
adding durability seem like a step in the right direction.

Assault Officer
reinforcement cost reduction is step in right direction but the unit stop contributing damage in late game, add 1-2 ST44 with vet.

Breakthrough
step in right direction

Command Panzer IV
nice to see that my suggestion of removing CP is being tested. Some good changes.

Forward Resupply Station
These ability should probably repair the ambient building, add the repair bunker also for map with no ambient buddings.

Hulldown
Ability remains pretty useless for case mates. Rename to defensive position and change the bonus for case mates to increased rotation +5-10 sight possibly camo.

Luftwaffe Field Officer
Great addition, can we also add 2 more officers? A panzer officer and infatry officer?

Relief Infantry
Reduce the built/reinforcement bonus to 10% make it make it passive from CP 1-2 (same for the soviet ability)

Sector Artillery
increase tracking speed to much UKF one, tone down ability lower cost CP

Stuka Incendiary Bombing Run
a much needed change


Panzer IV Ausf. J
The unit is almost a vet 2 PzIV and does not really bring much to the table, redesign the unit to be closer to 76MM sherman with lower AI but better higher penetration so it can fight Allied heavy tanks better.

Mechanized Assault group, should also be replaced with just 250\1 to keep consistency.

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Also Ostheer LeFH commanders are a bit on the underdog side. Changes were brought to effectively give both soviets and ostheer access to Howis in a 2 commanders.

Sturmdocrine is counterparted by Soviet Terror Tactic. But I would have rather replace stuka smoke recon, by something else. Because it can self-spot for dive bomb. Both are fine and good still.

Joint opperation counter part is Guards Rifle combined arms. And imo Joint opperation is much worst here. Its just overloaded. Pack43 + LeFH, no arty and recon + new ability. Imo joint opperation, need rethinking.

Guard rifles gives you tank\call-in inf\main line upgrade\howi\loiter. Joint gives you officer\recon\repair station\two heavy support weapons.

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Heavy bombing run is way too expensive. 300 munition for effectively weaker Air Supremancy (250 muni). Less area coverage, takes hell of a lot time to arrive. Saving grase is that it can come from the map corner and cant be shotdown. UKF planes cant be shotdown either (before they drop bombs) and arrive faster. With a pop on the map, but still.

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Relief\Rapid feels like a gimmic to make bad ability work. I mean, even if you mass retreated to the base, and even if you did use it, unless all your squads have 1 model alive, you wont get any good use it. Sure you have faster reinforcement, but your alive models will be most likely beaten and requare medics to heal them, so you wont get any value from this fast reinforcement.

On top of that, unless you have multiple squads this fast reinforcement is pointless and waste of muni.

1 ostt squad arent worth it. 1 cons squad ... well debatable, but not worth it aswell.

Fast building times are good, they are always can be usefull. But how much units you will be building? Unless you are floating with MP, you will be building 1 max 2 units at the time. This is not worth it.

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Also can we have new portrait and icon for Jaeger command squad?

Forward Resupply Station
These ability should probably repair the ambient building, add the repair bunker also for map with no ambient buddings.

doesnt really matter much as relic has decided that mapmakers (whiteflash) are allowed to disallow abilities like the one above (and also forward HQ and brit FOP) and still be featured in the official map rotation. on some maps (as white flash plans to disable abilities he doesnt like in all his maps) this one will be a 4 ability commander

Luftwaffe Supply Doctrine

Supply Drop Zone replaced with Air Supply Drop
Stuka Reconnaissance Run replaced with Luftwaffe Field Officer
Stuka Dive Bomb replaced with Heavy Bombing Run

I think this is really shoe horning Close air support doctrine into a corner.
This is because a Luftwaffe field officer is one of the few abilities that could fit in to the commander’s theme while providing something that does not require munitions.

Could it be considered to make Luftwaffe supply with Ostruppen renamed to Luftwaffe ground troops (to stay on theme, just like how Luftwaffe officer is identical to artillery officer), and add Luftwaffe officer to Close air support?

If relic is feeling generous, maybe Luftwaffe ground troops could be made different, maybe they can’t use Fausts but can repair and build flak empacemts?

Relief Infantry
The number of squads it can grant is being lowered. In exchange, Relief Infantry will provide other boosts such as improvements to build-times and reinforcement speed. Cost and CP requirements have also been adjusted to reflect these changes.

Squad count from 3 to 1
Osttrupen Squad that arrives always has an MG 42 LMG
Now speeds up reinforce and build times of all units by 50%
Cost from 120 munitions to 90
CP requirement from 6 to 5

This is horrible design. You want the Reinforce and Build time buffs after an engagement, and you want the losses replaced with Ostruppen during an engagement. So essentially you are paying 90 munitions for either a squad of Ostruppen or faster reinforce times, which are not worth 90 munitions on their own.

Honestly, this ability is a terrible design, and goes against everything coh2 is about, which is preserving your units. Also, most of the time you do not want extra squads. That is the whole reason USF got the “transfer orders” ability to get rid of their officers


I really like most of the changes, which are the vast majority. They are very good. But these 2 stood out as maybe not so good.

I would love to see the Jager command squad and Puma in a second commander each. They are very cool units, and allow for lots of interesting strategies.
Also, maybe we could get the Panzer IV F1, the short barrel panzer 4, from the campaign? That would be super cool. It would be easily distinguished from the panzer commander as it would have the Pintle mg42 instead of the commander in the hatch

doesnt really matter much as relic has decided that mapmakers (whiteflash) are allowed to disallow abilities like the one above (and also forward HQ and brit FOP) and still be featured in the official map rotation. on some maps (as white flash plans to disable abilities he doesnt like in all his maps) this one will be a 4 ability commander

yeah i see a problem with this, too. though i can somehow relate to the sentiment that forward HQs are hard to deal with on certain maps/buildings, whiteflash's solution to this is highly unintuitive and effectively breaks certain abilities without any feedback to the player as to why it wouldn't work as expected. now that's totally fine for tourneys or custom games but should imho not become common practice for maps in the automatch rotation.

yeah i see a problem with this, too. though i can somehow relate to the sentiment that forward HQs are hard to deal with on certain maps/buildings, whiteflash's solution to this is highly unintuitive and effectively breaks certain abilities without any feedback to the player as to why it wouldn't work as expected. now that's totally fine for tourneys or custom games but should imho not become common practice for maps in the automatch rotation.

With recent patch, all flame weapons resieved buffs against ambient buildings, so they are nowhere near as hard to deal with as before.

And Whiteflash decision is honestly feels really abusive in the way. I mean, if you hate FHQ that much, then HP of the buildings always can be redused.

So are Storm and Joint Ops the only 2 docs with LeFH now?

Why on earth was that targetted to be removed from a faction with 20+ docs.

I propose 1 change. Since towed arty was part of Wehrmacht's Mechanized division. reintroduce LeFH 18 to German Mechanized doctrine. Remove smoke recon run and spotting scopes. And make a new ability. One that gives vehicles the ability to upgrade between spotting scopes or Rear Echalon like smoke canisters.

So many changes, so many good ones!
Here are my favorites:
1. Riegel finally removed from Storm commander and replaced by Jaeger Command unit. YES, YES, YES!
2. Luftwaffe Supply: Shit, the commander is so good!
3. Festung Armor: only 1 change but one with a big impact! Commander looking really good now!
4. Commando P4: Please stick to the mark target ability; it's really useful and it encourages to use combined arms because the P4 cant use this ability for itself.

Things that still need to be done:
- Reduce the CP requirements for smokebombs to 2CP to bring it in line with the OKW ability
- Osttruppen Commander needs some love: Entrenching tools is just a bad ability which is in dire need for a buff.
- At least 1 OST commander should get the Tank Commander upgrade considering that Germany's main tank forces were on the eastern front and most of his aces served there. I think it would fit well to Blitzkrieg (replacing Tactical movement then)
- Please take back the Assgren nerf, the unit is dead right now, really, REALLY dead. Don't understand why a doctrinal unit that costs 280 mp can't have an ability that 240 MP nondoc cons have right from the start. If Assgrens sprint to close the distance the Soviet player can shoose to "Hurra" to another cover. If you dont want a unit that allows to skip t1 then you should rework this unit. Put it behind t1 but make the unit better.

I have to still go through the changelog in more detailed but yeah, i think you are cutting down LEFH from 4 commanders to just 2. I don't think people will like it.

I think the new Forward Supply Station should be scrapped. It offers nothing substantial to an army with medic+reinforce bunkers and the 250HT. Moreover, I don't feel that paying fuel to get better repairs in a pre-selected position (if a suitable building exists at all) is better than just getting more engineers or the repair bunker with MP only.



The standalone repair station is interesting for team games and I at least would certainly choose to build it over the forward supply station.

Even then, I question placing it in an artillery-focused doctrine such as Joint Operations. This doctrine could have used the otherwise unique Defensive Fortifications, the one with concrete bunkers and other tools, from the community-designed Defensive Doctrine. Chances are that the player building the Lefh and Pak43 with this doctrine will have a medic+command bunker to support them anyway, rendering the supply station even less desirable.


The German Mechanized Doctrine feels like it doesn't have a purpose. I would like to see it either keep the LeFH or get something more unique such as the Stug E or the Mortar HT. The Vehicle Crew repair is awfully generic.

Is... CAS' Recon Flight bugged? It passes so fast that I cant see nothing, I cant target nothing with abilities...???

I propose 1 change. Since towed arty was part of Wehrmacht's Mechanized division. reintroduce LeFH 18 to German Mechanized doctrine. Remove smoke recon run and spotting scopes. And make a new ability. One that gives vehicles the ability to upgrade between spotting scopes or Rear Echalon like smoke canisters.

Combine Stuka Smoke Bomb and Spotting Scopes into a single ability: Smoke and Mirrors

Played some matches with Luftwaffe Supply, the Heinkel bombing run dont justify the huge mun cost of 300 ammo. Price should be adjusted to 250. I also think that more he bombs but less incendiary bombs would make sense.

Panzer Grenadier Support Package
The initial cost of the upgrade is being reduced because two of the three abilities provided already require additional munitions to function. Rudimentary Repair is also seeing a boost to make repairing somewhat viable and worth the cost of pulling the Panzer Grenadier squad from the frontline.

Munition cost from 30 to 20
Rudimentary Repair Rate from 1.1 to 1.4

Seeing the Support Package get a balance pass, the Panzergrenadier's Mark Target is hardly useful with the buff-debuff interplay. The modified Sturm Offizier's forced retreat operates on a similar principle and it is changed in V1 of the commander patch.



I would prefer to see the Mark Target ability on the Panzergrenadiers replaced by the same Smoke Grenades they get through Strategic Reserves.

I have nothing but praise for these changes and I'm dumbstruck with them. I literally thought balance team was just bunch of bitter middle aged USF mains trying to keep us ostheer players down until this patch. I presume that the new community manager John_TR also has some part in this progress but alas, I do not wanna risk taking any credit away from balance team in this situation.

So about the changes:
-The g43 upgrade change alone is enough for me to return playing 1v1s.
-So many great QOL and utility abilites added to units that used to be underwhelming lika command p4, assault officer, stug E ... the list goes on

The thing that i would love the balance team to take a good look at or comment is the 250 mortar. I have tried to make these things useful for a week now getting 2 in every 4v4 game I play but even after 30 min game of full microing these two I still land only on 10 kills max on each. And this is the case even if I get mismatched vs people who just stand around when in fight. The auto attack accuracy/scatter is just absolutely horrendous. I'm worried that somewhere along the line in the last balance patches it either missed out on some buffs when mortars were being standardized. Has the balance team taken a look at these values? Am I just schizo? Or is the current performance of this units auto-attack what balance team finds suitable and balanced?

Combine Stuka Smoke Bomb and Spotting Scopes into a single ability: Smoke and Mirrors

No not the stuka smoke. Add an ability to let vehicles use smoke ability similar to Sherman/Rear Echalon. Make it an exclusive upgrade with spotting scopes.

I haven't tested it yet but I am a bit worried about the G43 upgrade for Grens being the reincarnation of 5-man Grens just without the Rifle nade and free medkits, especially if they still have 2 weapon slots on top of the G43's. I would have liked to see the squad maybe receive a 3rd G43 and increase the cost to 60 maybe 65 munitions instead. G43's Grens should be be squishy imo because they are really good on the move.