The current state of infantry - DPS and Utility

To put it simply, the current state of infantry isn’t good for the game, and is actually taking away from what makes the series interesting. So much DPS and Utility has been consolidated onto squads that blobbing has become the optimal strategy at every level of play, short of the absolute top levels.

To me, the game has always been about unit positioning and flanking; using cover, creating traps and so on. For the most part, the game actually supports this very well; there are 4 different levels of cover, directional cover, camouflage, ‘true sight’, mines, suppression, smoke, various forms of recon and so on, allowing for players to create interesting situations. However, the current game is not design around this; it’s designed around infantry blobs.

Consider an Ober squad in green cover, with its LMG upgrade and veterancy; it will lose to an “attack-move” group of two '7 mam’ cons, just as a double BAR rifle squad will lose to two STG-Volks in the same situation. Statistically, this expected; the amount of DPS on the attacking side can overwhelm the relatively low amount of HP on the defender, even with cover bonuses, and the defender won’t deal enough damage to force a retreat due to the attacker’s larger total HP. The issue arises when considering the counter; to fight off these blobs of infantry, the opposing player will need to increase their anti-infantry power, which almost always means more of their own squads; and since those squads will need to be able to focus on the same units to increase their total DPS toward their target, they’ll need to be nearby… i.e. in a blob.

“Punish the blob!” is the expected reply here, but the problem is the ‘punishment’ isn’t significant enough. MGs can be countered frontally by blobs quite easily, and there’s always smoke. Tanks can work, but with 2-3 squads, snares become significant issue even at full health – and infantry AT can always be mixed in. Artillery can work, but most blobs focus on highly mobile units, which can prove nearly impossible to hit. Blobbing is even the optimal strategy against mines, since the inclusion of a single sweeper squad protects all of the infantry at the same time. Basically, a well-controlled blob can completely ignore its intended counters, or even counter them.

Ideally, infantry blobs should be balanced out by population cost and upkeep; more infantry means less support weapons, less tanks, less engineers building important assets like cover, caches and repairing, and so on; but this isn’t the case. So much utility has been focused on these units that there’s really no downside to filling most of your population with a single type of infantry unit. Consider UKF’s mainline ‘Infantry Section’ - that one squad has access to:

• 2x Brens
  
• 2x Piats
  
• Gammon Bomb Grenade
  
• Mills Bomb Grenade
  
• Pyrotechnics Supplies Upgrade (artillery call-in) – Blocks Medic upgrade
  
• Medical Supplies Upgrade (healing) – Blocks Pyro upgrade
  
• Bolster (+1 model)
  
• Sandbags
  
• Point Caches
  
• Additional abilities from doctrines

Similarly, consider Volks:

• STGs
  
• Incendiary Grenade
  
• Vehicle Snare (faust)
  
• Sandbags
  
• Salvage Vehicle
  
• Additional abilities from doctrines

In both cases this is an incredible amount of utility, and almost all of it can be had on a single squad at the same time.

With so much utility, there isn’t a downside to fielding many squads of the same type, since they are so versatile – you aren’t making a choice between firepower and utility, or even specific types of firepower; so now you can have lots of "good vs. everything" firepower blobbed together, with massive utility to overcome nearly any opposition.

Can anyone think of a match, recently, where after 20 minutes infantry engagements remained small; consisting of only a few squads? I certainly can’t.

So what can we do about this? Simple; reduce the overall power of infantry squads to force diversity. Move utility to other dedicated squads (i.e. construction to engineer units), lower their DPS (no 2x upgrades, etc.), and increase the number of ‘exclusive’ upgrades to prevent upgrade stacking on single squads.

For example, for the previously mentioned UKF Infantry Section:

• Construction moved to engineers
  
• Grenades become a choice; mills or gammon.
  
• Bolster, Medic and Pyro upgrades become exclusive choices, all taking a weapon slot.
  
• Weapon upgrades become squad-level upgrades and only one can be picked (similar to Gren's LMG, G43, VSL).
  

Since their power and utility is now lower, the price can also be lowered; and since the utility on a single squad is lower as well, diversity is now required to field the same amount of power and utility. Perhaps, in the case of Infantry Sections, a snare could now be added since many more support utilities have been put on other units.

This same approach could be taken for all of the infantry squads in the game, with similar results, and with those changes, I believe that the game could regain its interesting infantry combat, while also increasing the diversity of units and abilities seen through a match.

I agree and have pointed out similar things for year now.

An additional solution is to move some combat power to abilities so that unit can be powerful but for sort time.

taking your signature as an indicator, i assume you're mostly talking about team games (and rather 4v4 than 2v2), because in 1v1s and, to a slightly lesser extent in 2v2s, blobbing is not really that much of an issue.

in any case, no matter how much people despise it as a noob tactics, blobbing or concentration of force is a viable strategy both in-game as well as in real life. you can create numerical advantage over your opponent in a specific area and use this to overwhelm the defense - but it comes with its own disadvantages. not only will you give up map control in other places where your blob isn't around, you'll also be much more susceptible to blob counters, such as arty, mgs and explosives.
now you could of course argue that these counters are too inefficient in coh2, but i think this is simply not the case. a lot of the frustration from fighting against a blob of infantry imho comes from sheer misconception about how effective the counters fielded should actually be. for some reason people expect a single mg to be capable of stopping a blob of infantry squads worth 5-6 times the mp in its tracks or having a single brummbär fending off three triple zook ranger squads with ease. that's just not realistic and i don't think the game would be in a better state if it were.

honestly i think the counters available atm are sufficient to deal with any form of blobs as long as you don't expect miracles and invest into an appropriate counter force.

i also don't quite get how your proposed solution would change any of that, since limiting the firepower of infantry globally across factions would affect both the attacking blob and the defending force equally, so not much is gained in total (except maybe mgs and tanks being slightly more effective against unit concentrations). especially giving IS access to a snare seems to contradict your proposed solution of making one-unit blobs less of an all around versatile option that is good against everything.

I think you are overlooking the fact that blobbing has always been the optimal way of playing at lower levels. At least considering the game modes you play and based your opinion on.
Reducing or increasing DPS won't solve the issue of playing with 2x or 4x popcap and resources on a playing field that doesn't escalate at the same rate.


Cover works for smaller modes (entirely on 1v1 and till midgame starts to kick in in 2v2) because the amount of units at your dispose is lower compared to how much you need to do.
If you want to cover to matter more, you would have to do the opposite of now. Increase drastically DPS and at the same time, cover modifiers. Making the game look like Men of War.


In regards to punishing blobs and MGs specifically, i think it has been overlooked for quite a long time that MGs don't get RA with vet. As well as the fact that light cover created by small explosives exist and that provides so much RA and suppression protection almost passively.

So what can we do about this? Simple; reduce the overall power of infantry squads to force diversity. Move utility to other dedicated squads (i.e. construction to engineer units), lower their DPS (no 2x upgrades, etc.), and increase the number of ‘exclusive’ upgrades to prevent upgrade stacking on single squads.

IS is a specific problem that unfortunately didn't get solved in the last patch, therefore practically impossible to address at this point.

I don't think you can just put every faction through the same filter when those factions don't have access to the same tools of similar strength or had them at all. Which is why you see these "uber" units having so much power budget.

I think you are overlooking the fact that blobbing has always been the optimal way of playing at lower levels. At least considering the game modes you play and based your opinion on.
Reducing or increasing DPS won't solve the issue of playing with 2x or 4x popcap and resources on a playing field that doesn't escalate at the same rate.


Cover works for smaller modes (entirely on 1v1 and till midgame starts to kick in in 2v2) because the amount of units at your dispose is lower compared to how much you need to do.
If you want to cover to matter more, you would have to do the opposite of now. Increase drastically DPS and at the same time, cover modifiers. Making the game look like Men of War.


In regards to punishing blobs and MGs specifically, i think it has been overlooked for quite a long time that MGs don't get RA with vet. As well as the fact that light cover created by small explosives exist and that provides so much RA and suppression protection almost passively.



IS is a specific problem that unfortunately didn't get solved in the last patch, therefore practically impossible to address at this point.

I don't think you can just put every faction through the same filter when those factions don't have access to the same tools of similar strength or had them at all. Which is why you see these "uber" units having so much power budget.

I think youre kinda conflating two different points with this comment, one about utility power creep and the other about blobs.

However I do agree with both of your points, I'd like to see mainline infantry as your DPS, your backbone. These squads should be fighting squads with little utility, no mainline should be building cover or having arty call ins etc etc. Those can come on doctrinal inf or elite inf you get from higher tech tiers, but the mainlines Id love to see stripped of the excessive utility.

On the other point I agree blobbing fucking sucks and goes completely counter to the design of the game. In my head you could easily fix this by evening out the MG rosters and making them all ACTUAL suppression platforms instead of like only two of them. This is further compounded by the fact some factions MGs are like 180 degree arcs and the others are like 90 degree arcs, so some factions blobs have easier times flanking them and running over everything.

But yeah I would buff all MGs across the board except the 42 since its performing exactly as it should when it comes to countering blobs, which is almost instant group suppression when it runs into the arc.

taking your signature as an indicator, i assume you're mostly talking about team games (and rather 4v4 than 2v2), because in 1v1s and, to a slightly lesser extent in 2v2s, blobbing is not really that much of an issue.

in any case, no matter how much people despise it as a noob tactics, blobbing or concentration of force is a viable strategy both in-game as well as in real life.

In real life you need to advance in line parallel to position, not in a tight pack of 15-20 people or else stray bullets have significantly more chance to hit soldiers near the target and the tighter the formation the higher the chances. But in terms of pure infantry vs infantry combat those two to examples in COH 2 are identical, since COH2 bullets do not have scatter, like tank shots do.

taking your signature as an indicator, i assume you're mostly talking about team games (and rather 4v4 than 2v2), because in 1v1s and, to a slightly lesser extent in 2v2s, blobbing is not really that much of an issue.

I'd say it's about equal for 2v2 and 4v4 in "top 200" level play; I've only ever seen it fall off completely in the top ~50 (or better), where players are really good at positioning, flanking, and using every single utility they have (I'm not quite at that level).

in any case, no matter how much people despise it as a noob tactics, blobbing or concentration of force is a viable strategy both in-game as well as in real life. you can create numerical advantage over your opponent in a specific area and use this to overwhelm the defense - but it comes with its own disadvantages. not only will you give up map control in other places where your blob isn't around, you'll also be much more susceptible to blob counters, such as arty, mgs and explosives.

I don't think this is fully accurate. While concentrating troops is a viable strategy in both real-life and in game, blobbing (i.e. 10-20 people in a 5m radius) is purely a "video game" concept, as pointed out by Klement Pikhtura earlier. While suppression does have an AoE mechanic, small arms damage does not; missed shots can't hit another model or squad, which is what would happen in reality. If anything, damage against blobs would be increased, since bursts and fire control basically wouldn't matter.

Additionally, due to cut-offs, pressuring other parts of the map isn't always possible especially if playing as factions with static structures (UKF, OKW, other doc-locked stuff), since the the investment loss there can be devastating if overrun. Again, maybe this is true for the absolute top levels of play, but from my experience at around ~200 rank, this isn't what I've seen.

for some reason people expect a single mg to be capable of stopping a blob of infantry squads worth 5-6 times the mp in its tracks or having a single brummbär fending off three triple zook ranger squads with ease. that's just not realistic and i don't think the game would be in a better state if it were.

This is an interesting comparison, and I think it shows part of the problem. From my experience, a brummbar can actually hold off 3x 3-zook rangers if micro'd very well. While they both have the same range (35), the brummbar can fire on the move (and while reversing) whereas the rangers can't - allowing it to effectively kite them.

The MG42 however, is a bit of a different case. I'd say it works really well early game when facing unupgraded and unvetted units; the issue is in the mid-to-late game stage of the game, against heavily upgraded and vetted squads, which can deal incredible damage to units even in cover. Additionally, as pointed out by elchino7, by mid and late game, yellow cover is so prevalent that suppression isn't reliable, especially against vetted squads. Unfortunately, there isn't a "micro" solution to this; no amount will make the MG win against even three fully upgraded/vetted squads in yellow cover.

limiting the firepower of infantry globally across factions would affect both the attacking blob and the defending force equally, so not much is gained in total (except maybe mgs and tanks being slightly more effective against unit concentrations). especially giving IS access to a snare seems to contradict your proposed solution of making one-unit blobs less of an all around versatile option that is good against everything.

Lowering the DPS of units increases the time in battle which also (usually) means more time spent as stationary targets, increasing vulnerability to indirect fire while also giving suppression platforms longer to suppress (which would help with the yellow cover issue). It also makes cover more effective, since we're applying it's damage reduction to smaller amounts of damage, while keeping unit HP the same. Additionally, since blobbing would now be 'slower', pressuring multiple parts of the map could become more efficient.

As for the IS', adding a snare would only make sense if their utility (and a few other units) was brought inline with other basic mainlines; so for example, one weapon upgrade OR one squad-type upgrade (medic, pyro bolster), and one normal grenade.

I think you are overlooking the fact that blobbing has always been the optimal way of playing at lower levels. At least considering the game modes you play and based your opinion on.

As I said earlier in this post, my comments are based on my experience at around the "top 200" level, which can often mean facing opponents a fair bit higher than that; and outside of maybe "top 50" players, blobbing seems extremely prevalent. I'll admit that "top 200" isn't top-level play, but I also don't think it's "low level", either.

Reducing or increasing DPS won't solve the issue of playing with 2x or 4x popcap and resources on a playing field that doesn't escalate at the same rate.

Cover works for smaller modes (entirely on 1v1 and till midgame starts to kick in in 2v2) because the amount of units at your dispose is lower compared to how much you need to do.
If you want to cover to matter more, you would have to do the opposite of now. Increase drastically DPS and at the same time, cover modifiers. Making the game look like Men of War.

I admit, the pop-cap issue is a problem, and I don't fully have an answer for it. That said, combined-player blobs aren't all that typical from what I've seen, except in some 4v4 games. It's usually individual players pushing 'their side' of the map, etc. where they still have a significant amount of power concentrated in a small group - but then again, they also need to cover a smaller area.

As for increasing DPS and Cover modifiers, I find it interesting that both you and MMX suggested this; but I don't think it's necessary, or the only approach (it would work, though). While doing so would decrease the power of blobs against units in cover, it would increase it against anything out of cover (or even in yellow cover), which isn't my intention with these suggestions - the intent is to decrease the power of blobs in every situation. By lowering mainline infantry DPS (and utility) fights inherently would become longer; both for units in cover and out of it - and as I said before, that would make other specialized 'anti-blob' type units much more powerful, pushing optimal gameplay away from blobbing.

That said, some adjustments to unit stats would likely need to be made as the DPS/EHP wouldn't correlate in the same way anymore, which could cause issues (i.e. everyone has lower DPS, but now some squads can last much longer in combat).

In regards to punishing blobs and MGs specifically, i think it has been overlooked for quite a long time that MGs don't get RA with vet. As well as the fact that light cover created by small explosives exist and that provides so much RA and suppression protection almost passively.

Regarding MG vet RA, this is actually a really good point I wasn't aware of. Similarly, the yellow cover issue is something I forgot to mention, but is also very valid.

IS is a specific problem that unfortunately didn't get solved in the last patch, therefore practically impossible to address at this point.

I don't think you can just put every faction through the same filter when those factions don't have access to the same tools of similar strength or had them at all. Which is why you see these "uber" units having so much power budget.

Yes, unfortunately it seems that UKF in general has some seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what can be changed - but perhaps this could change sometime in the future (or CoH3, who knows).

As for the 2nd comment, this is why I mentioned moving the utility to other units when it's not redundant; moving all sandbags to engineers still grants all factions the same access to them (except UKF, depending on doc). Similarly, making upgrades exclusive (or at least more restrictive) also doesn't remove access to them. In the case of IS' it just means that every squad can't have double brens, healing/artillery, bolster, and two grenades all at the same time. One squad could have a bren or two, another could have healing, and another a special grenade (and/or artillery) - the utility is still there, but it's spread across more units.

But yeah I would buff all MGs across the board except the 42 since its performing exactly as it should when it comes to countering blobs, which is almost instant group suppression when it runs into the arc.

This is also a good approach; however, I'd take it one step further and add elchino7's suggestion of Vet RA bonuses, as well as something to deal with yellow cover prevalence in mid/late game stages (MG vet increases suppression against yellow cover?).


One last thing, as this post is now far too long...

I find the poll results interesting; as of this comment, the first two polls show a ~40/60 split in favor of infantry DPS and Utility not being too high, but a ~60/40 split in suggesting that more infantry upgrades be made exclusive. I'm not sure how this works, though; If more upgrades are exclusive, it means less can be stacked on a single unit, and so DPS and utility would decrease (or at least, that's what I intended).

Low DPS means cover doesn't matter at all. As transitioning from one range to another goes unpunished.
Now you just favoured CQC units as they can't be punished by long range DPS units.

That's how the game looked like at release.

Low DPS means cover doesn't matter at all. As transitioning from one range to another goes unpunished.
Now you just favoured CQC units as they can't be punished by long range DPS units.

That's how the game looked like at release.

Even higher DPS, even higher cover bonuses, or least just the latter. That's the way to solve this, I think.

Blobs are nice, but if you're taking mental damage while trying to walk at an unit in cover, it really ain't efficient. A specific "blob debuff" isnt necessarily needed if wandering outside of cover is a bigger detriment than the added firepower of multiple squads blobbed up is a benefit.

In regards to punishing blobs and MGs specifically, i think it has been overlooked for quite a long time that MGs don't get RA with vet. As well as the fact that light cover created by small explosives exist and that provides so much RA and suppression protection almost passively.

Assuming this is 2v2+

This right here is massively overlooked. If you pay close attention you'll notice that MG's that normally suppressed in a reasonable amount of time will no longer do it the longer the game drags on. Simply due to all the craters and ground clutter providing light cover. I vividly recall a gren blob not getting suppressed in 3 bursts of my 50 cal simply because of late game veterency mixed with light cover. So more often then not you need units to screen for your late game MG. Which, technically means the blobber holds the initiative unless you scout out the incoming blob. This is why the mg42 is so fabled to steal from all sides (Even an okw player stealing his teammates de-crewed one).

One complaint I have, is that there doesn't seem to be much punishment for blobbing into an MG, inflicting dmg to it and any squads that were scouting, then hitting fallback. I base locked a few axis players the other night who blobbed and by just banging their head against a well set up defensive line they were able to break through. Base locking my opponent, yet I was the one bleeding MP.

As far as fixing it? Idk if it were up to me I'd probably make all MG's as strong as the MG42, but make the cones dramatically smaller on all of them (decrease the set up time? longer tear down?). That way micro is required to use the MG's and react to your opponents new positions. I don't build MG's for dmg, I build them because I want to lock down blobs.

Assuming this is 2v2+

This right here is massively overlooked. If you pay close attention you'll notice that MG's that normally suppressed in a reasonable amount of time will no longer do it the longer the game drags on. Simply due to all the craters and ground clutter providing light cover. I vividly recall a gren blob not getting suppressed in 3 bursts of my 50 cal simply because of late game veterency mixed with light cover. So more often then not you need units to screen for your late game MG. Which, technically means the blobber holds the initiative unless you scout out the incoming blob. This is why the mg42 is so fabled to steal from all sides (Even an okw player stealing his teammates de-crewed one).

One complaint I have, is that there doesn't seem to be much punishment for blobbing into an MG, inflicting dmg to it and any squads that were scouting, then hitting fallback. I base locked a few axis players the other night who blobbed and by just banging their head against a well set up defensive line they were able to break through. Base locking my opponent, yet I was the one bleeding MP.

As far as fixing it? Idk if it were up to me I'd probably make all MG's as strong as the MG42, but make the cones dramatically smaller on all of them (decrease the set up time? longer tear down?). That way micro is required to use the MG's and react to your opponents new positions. I don't build MG's for dmg, I build them because I want to lock down blobs.

Perhaps yellow cover simply shouldn't protect squads from suppression? (Or perhaps "Ignores yellow cover for suppression purposes" could become either a veterancy reward for all MGs, or a feature unlocked for all factions passively during teching?)


I wonder how that would affect the game as a whole?

Perhaps yellow cover simply shouldn't protect squads from suppression? (Or perhaps "Ignores yellow cover for suppression purposes" could become either a veterancy reward for all MGs, or a feature unlocked for all factions passively during teching?)


I wonder how that would affect the game as a whole?

In 1v1 it's nice to go to yellow cover if you are stalling an MG and no heavy cover is around. If I recall you recover from suppression faster in yellow cover so if you are flanking said mg you can recover faster to help your flanking squad.

I think that's just an unfortunate side effect that yellow cover gives "a chance to miss" and I believe to inflict suppression you have to actually hit the squad members. Which in team games gets created by all the explosions.

The solution should be that map created yellow cover should provide suppression resistance but player generated ones should not. At most it should be limited to heavy offmap artillery.

The solution should be that map created yellow cover should provide suppression resistance but player generated ones should not. At most it should be limited to heavy offmap artillery.

Doing that has the problem of not being intuitive/readable, you'd potentially have two sets of cover that are displayed identically in-game, but with different effects for no discernable reason. If it were possible to simply add a new UI element so we had; Red, Yellow, Green, Building, and a new, say, "Blue" cover, then this'd be fine. Mapper-placed cover could be Yellow, and player created "yellow" cover could then be "blue", identical to regular yellow cover apart from the lack of suppression resistance.

Doing that has the problem of not being intuitive/readable, you'd potentially have two sets of cover that are displayed identically in-game, but with different effects for no discernable reason. If it were possible to simply add a new UI element so we had; Red, Yellow, Green, Building, and a new, say, "Blue" cover, then this'd be fine. Mapper-placed cover could be Yellow, and player created "yellow" cover could then be "blue", identical to regular yellow cover apart from the lack of suppression resistance.

I don't think it should be an issue to display as yellow. Right now we have green for both heavy cover and garrison cover which are different modifiers.
Ideally i would say give a small green border for yellow light cover to signify that it provides some sort of suppression resistance.

Alternative just give it the grey colour. I still think light cover created by any explosive is too strong for how "passive" it is available. It's 0.50 RA and 0.50 suppression modifier AND 2.5 suppression recovery rate.

While at first i thought of simple removing any cover properties, i thought it would kill any viability of camouflage units late game.
I think a more "neutral" cover should be added with 0.75 RA, 1.00 suppression modifier and 1.5 suppression recovery would been better. Leaving light cover generation to either big ordnances (offmap, Avre/ST, Howitzers).

I believe MGs should get +3 range when in cover

This would help stop A-move LMG blobs IMO

I don't think it should be an issue to display as yellow. Right now we have green for both heavy cover and garrison cover which are different modifiers.

True, but "in a building" vs "behind a wall" is much more readable and intuitive than "In a crater" vs "In a crater, but it's one the mapmaker placed", y'know? Doesn't "building" cover have a slightly different icon to "green" cover anyway, though?

Ideally i would say give a small green border for yellow light cover to signify that it provides some sort of suppression resistance.

Sure, that'd probably be enough, if it's actually possible to edit these sorts of UI elements. If we're going down that route I'd suggest the yellow shield, but with it being bisected diagonally, be used for "no suppression resistance" yellow cover. Having a gap in it would be a reasonable indicator that it's "worse" than regular yellow cover.

It would probably be cleaner to just have a different colour though.

Alternative just give it the grey colour. I still think light cover created by any explosive is too strong for how "passive" it is available. It's 0.50 RA and 0.50 suppression modifier AND 2.5 suppression recovery rate.

That's even WORSE, it's not recognisable as cover at all if it's using the "no cover" ui elements!

While at first i thought of simple removing any cover properties, i thought it would kill any viability of camouflage units late game.
I think a more "neutral" cover should be added with 0.75 RA, 1.00 suppression modifier and 1.5 suppression recovery would been better. Leaving light cover generation to either big ordnances (offmap, Avre/ST, Howitzers).

Probably a good idea, if this is within the scope of the Balance Team. It might be nice to do something sort of similar for player-built green cover too (if Mainlines keep their sandbags), as this would make map cover preferable to player-built cover.

I believe MGs should get +3 range when in cover

This would help stop A-move LMG blobs IMO

Would going from 45 range to 48 range really make all that much of a difference?

I believe MGs should get +3 range when in cover

This would help stop A-move LMG blobs IMO

And nothing will change, because sight range is still 35 and the only blobs HMGs don't stop are the ones that were not spotted from max range when HMG was not in green cover with gunner himself being targeted first, which is not the case with current formations.

True, but "in a building" vs "behind a wall" is much more readable and intuitive than "In a crater" vs "In a crater, but it's one the mapmaker placed", y'know? Doesn't "building" cover have a slightly different icon to "green" cover anyway, though?



Sure, that'd probably be enough, if it's actually possible to edit these sorts of UI elements. If we're going down that route I'd suggest the yellow shield, but with it being bisected diagonally, be used for "no suppression resistance" yellow cover. Having a gap in it would be a reasonable indicator that it's "worse" than regular yellow cover.

It would probably be cleaner to just have a different colour though.




That's even WORSE, it's not recognisable as cover at all if it's using the "no cover" ui elements!




Probably a good idea, if this is within the scope of the Balance Team. It might be nice to do something sort of similar for player-built green cover too (if Mainlines keep their sandbags), as this would make map cover preferable to player-built cover.



Would going from 45 range to 48 range really make all that much of a difference?

Whatever i suggest is more in the realms of COH3.

The only thing i see possible for COH2 is cutting down suppression recover and suppression modifier from 0.5 to 0.75
Anything from adding, modifying UI or using more type of cover i don't think it's gonna happen.


I still don't think it's confusing that light cover with and without suppression modifiers would be an issue because generally light cover is not good enough to play around when suppression is involved but enough to make frontal push good against MGs.

In case you are curious, the game has a lot of type of covers which are unused. I think all weapons have their profiles made to use them.

They are: Open, Ice, Water, Mud, Team weapon heavy, DefCover narrow, Snow, Deep Snow, DefCover, Smoke, Bunker, Haltftrack Garrison (?), Emplacement and Trench.

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