Black Prince Poll

You mean those Infrared "Assaults" that the Germans actually made use of?

I seriously do not understand why you can't seem to grasp the difference between things that were used in WWII and things that were not used in WWII.

I can’t seem to understand why you can’t understand the concept of a video game

I can’t seem to understand why you can’t understand the concept of a video game

Pathetic attempt. Non-sequiturs are not arguments.

Relic themselves have stated they are trying to be as historically accurate/authentic as possible with CoH3, and so feedback to the effect that the BP is not correct for the game is entirely valid.

Well its Pre-Alpha right now so things can be changed. And Relic wanted feedback. This is Feedback.

They could literally just replace the Black Prince with the Churchill 75NA with pretty much the same stats, and make it so that the regular Churchill upguns from a 2 pounder to a 6 pounder with an upgrade in the files and be done with it.

I can't take anything serious in this thread after I read "waaaa black people are in my WWII video game."

Pathetic attempt. Non-sequiturs are not arguments.

Relic themselves have stated they are trying to be as historically accurate/authentic as possible with CoH3, and so feedback to the effect that the BP is not correct for the game is entirely valid.

I mean they haven't, that's projecting.

They have said that they will be considering historical accuracy, not make a 1:1 historical simulation and ban anything that's not 100% a reflection of history.

You can't make an open campaign with 1:1 historical accuracy because the second a unit goes outside where it did historically the accuracy is gone. You're ahistorical. Ship's sailed, barge sunk. Anything else is just extra toppings.

I mean they haven't, that's projecting.

They have said that they will be considering historical accuracy, not make a 1:1 historical simulation and ban anything that's not 100% a reflection of history.

You can't make an open campaign with 1:1 historical accuracy because the second a unit goes outside where it did historically the accuracy is gone. You're ahistorical. Ship's sailed, barge sunk. Anything else is just extra toppings.

Sure, you can't make everything 100% historically accurate, for the reason you stated, but that isnt what I said either, you're strawmanning.

Even in this case, using totally ahistoric units that werent actually participating in the conflict is hardly one of the unavoidable elements of historical inaccuracy. There are plenty of units/vehicles around to fill the same role as the BP, and they actually participated in WWII.

Sure, you can't make everything 100% historically accurate, for the reason you stated, but that isnt what I said either, you're strawmanning.

Even in this case, using totally ahistoric units that werent actually participating in the conflict is hardly one of the unavoidable elements of historical inaccuracy. There are plenty of units/vehicles around to fill the same role as the BP, and they actually participated in WWII.

From a campaign perspectrive?

We get to pick what our fictional commanders send on fictional missions for fictional generals in fictional operations. That's fine for the bar of historical platitudes, apparently.

We can choose to request planes that never landed at X airfield or did Y raid over Z location, and that's fine for desired standard of historical accuracy. We can ship more of a vehicle than existed, never mind served. We can mix and match gear and manpower and hardware and send it to places where literally nobody foguht for brutal slug fests with enormous axis or allied armies.

But a commander requests a vehicle that's sat in the mainland UK to be shipped to the front line, and suddenly that's where the line in the sand emerges... that's the step too far. Now it's a problem?

You're already accepting that none of the battles you do in the campaign are true to reality, using hardware and material and locations that's ahisoirical but available to the army in question.

The BP... is ahistorical, but available to the army in question.

I can't take anything serious in this thread after I read "waaaa black people are in my WWII video game."

I'm not even considering that tidbit in this thread.

This thread is about Tanks named Black Princes, not Black People.

The BP... is ahistorical, but available to the army in question.

No. It isnt. It never reached the stage it was available to the UKF by the war's end. The BP was categorically not available.

The rest of your post is a series of meaningless platitudes. Your unit being able to stand on a patch of sand they never walked on in real life is not a legitimate criticism, and I refuse to believe you're arguing this in good faith.

From a campaign perspectrive?

We get to pick what our fictional commanders send on fictional missions for fictional generals in fictional operations. That's fine for the bar of historical platitudes, apparently.

We can choose to request planes that never landed at X airfield or did Y raid over Z location, and that's fine for desired standard of historical accuracy. We can ship more of a vehicle than existed, never mind served. We can mix and match gear and manpower and hardware and send it to places where literally nobody foguht for brutal slug fests with enormous axis or allied armies.

But a commander requests a vehicle that's sat in the mainland UK to be shipped to the front line, and suddenly that's where the line in the sand emerges... that's the step too far. Now it's a problem?

You're already accepting that none of the battles you do in the campaign are true to reality, using hardware and material and locations that's ahisoirical but available to the army in question.

The BP... is ahistorical, but available to the army in question.

I think the point people are trying to make is that there's a difference between historical realism in terms of aesthetics and in terms gameplay, and that you can have the former without the later.

CoH isn't a "realistic" game in terms of gameplay; it's based on reality, sure - but it's in no way a simulation. Units are "stylized" to fit the mechanics (ranges are reduced, HP and armor is increased, etc.), but they do remain true to their source material; the Tiger has a lot of HP/Armor, a big cannon, and is slow and expensive. The T-34 is pretty cheap, but not that great, etc. When you look at those units, though, you can say "yea, that's pretty much a [Tiger/T-34/etc.]", and more importantly, the interaction between the units makes sense. The JT doesn't tend to bounce off mediums, air-attacks do a ton of damage to slow/immobilized heavies, and so on.

When you look at CoH1 and CoH2, every single unit and ability is at least plausible. Railway artillery existed and was used - probably not on the battlefield - but if the situation arose there's no reason it couldn't have. The same can be said of the "tactical V1"; it doesn't make a lot of sense historically, but V1s were real, and could be aimed to some degree. There's nothing (at least that I can think of) that immediately jumps out as 'impossible' in either games; there's no Maus or E100, Panther 2, T28/T95 (US), IS3, Tortoise, or any other "slightly too late" late-war or 'never produced paper prototype' in the game.

The BP however, is exactly that; there's simply no reality in which it could've appeared in Italy. The design started in 1943 and the first 6 prototypes were delivered in May 1945 - after the war ended. No commander, no matter how persuasive or powerful, could have summoned these vehicles to Italy, and no incredible chain of events or coincidences could resulted in them appearing, because they simply didn't exist - there was nothing to send.

It opens up the door to other units of this type, which some people (myself included) just don't want.

What's stranger is that most of this could be avoided by simply switching the model to CoH2's "Comet". While it didn't historically serve in Italy, it did first see action in December 1944 in Belgium, during which the Italian campaign was still ongoing. The "ahistorical, but available to the army" idea would actually work with it.

There was a thought that the Black Prince is needed as filling the gap and an analogue of the Tiger. The British don't need this, they have tank destroyers with a 17-pounder cannon. The Italians also do not have such an analogue for fighting Churchill, so let's give them a completely paper P43 bis which was only like a plywood model. But this is not necessary for the fight against Churchill, there is Semovente da 90/53.

Snip

Honestly, this is a very well worded post.

The only comment I really have to make is that the Italy campaign ends in mid '45.

Is it unreasonable for the end of the tech tree to be the same as the end of that theater's?

I admit, the year is the thing I give people most reasonable grounds for objection over. I don't know if they intend to run the campaign to its conclusion or not - I certainly hope no BP turns up in North Africa, at the very least. But assuming Italy does run to its conclusion... they do, in fact, exist by then.

(The comet would still seem like the better pick in either scenario to be fair. And given it already exists as a model, I wonder why they didn't. Unless it's already earmarked as the end of the tech progression for a different campaign unit?)

You gotta zoom a little bit. But this whole thread reminded me of this meme from Stonetoss.

You gotta zoom a little bit. But this whole thread reminded me of this meme from Stonetoss.

Wait where do you see a Panzer III in a CoH game lol.

Besides mods of course.

History end where game mechanics starts.
This is all i want to say about agruments like "V1 can snipe like BGM-109".

When devs said that this game would be about Italian theater this means that it should fit the atmosphere of choosen setting.
Maximum historycal accuracy, that we can get are laid in the visual base of the game. It means, that we can't fight in china, we can't recive leopard 2a7a1 and we can't recive BP.

Chaffee, Archer and StG44 also don't fit the setting. But everyone fine with it because "We already had ostwind, JT,ST and so on". Don't you think guys, that if we will go futher we ended up with nazis UFO from the moon faction? Why we justify obviously wrong decisions by obviously bad precedent?

Historycal accuracy also affect some vehicle stats to justiffy obvious things, but this is not the theme of conversation(yet)

I think the point people are trying to make is that there's a difference between historical realism in terms of aesthetics and in terms gameplay, and that you can have the former without the later.

CoH isn't a "realistic" game in terms of gameplay; it's based on reality, sure - but it's in no way a simulation. Units are "stylized" to fit the mechanics (ranges are reduced, HP and armor is increased, etc.), but they do remain true to their source material; the Tiger has a lot of HP/Armor, a big cannon, and is slow and expensive. The T-34 is pretty cheap, but not that great, etc. When you look at those units, though, you can say "yea, that's pretty much a [Tiger/T-34/etc.]", and more importantly, the interaction between the units makes sense. The JT doesn't tend to bounce off mediums, air-attacks do a ton of damage to slow/immobilized heavies, and so on.

When you look at CoH1 and CoH2, every single unit and ability is at least plausible. Railway artillery existed and was used - probably not on the battlefield - but if the situation arose there's no reason it couldn't have. The same can be said of the "tactical V1"; it doesn't make a lot of sense historically, but V1s were real, and could be aimed to some degree. There's nothing (at least that I can think of) that immediately jumps out as 'impossible' in either games; there's no Maus or E100, Panther 2, T28/T95 (US), IS3, Tortoise, or any other "slightly too late" late-war or 'never produced paper prototype' in the game.

The BP however, is exactly that; there's simply no reality in which it could've appeared in Italy. The design started in 1943 and the first 6 prototypes were delivered in May 1945 - after the war ended. No commander, no matter how persuasive or powerful, could have summoned these vehicles to Italy, and no incredible chain of events or coincidences could resulted in them appearing, because they simply didn't exist - there was nothing to send.

It opens up the door to other units of this type, which some people (myself included) just don't want.

What's stranger is that most of this could be avoided by simply switching the model to CoH2's "Comet". While it didn't historically serve in Italy, it did first see action in December 1944 in Belgium, during which the Italian campaign was still ongoing. The "ahistorical, but available to the army" idea would actually work with it.

+1,000

There doesn't need to be an Allied mirror to the Tiger, especially with the new side armor mechanics that will make flanking far more reliable. Ultimately, I'd much prefer an asymmetrically balanced CoH3, as long as each unit has an accessible non-doctrinal counter; asymmetric balance and faction design does far more for the game's variety than introducing units with mirrored stats, however novel the unit aesthetics may be. Replace the BP with one of many thematically appropriate alternative and let the tank destroyers do their jobs.

I think another huge point that we need to address is this:
CoH3 is looking very promising so far and Relic has done an outstanding job. The Black Prince is not going to make or break the game; I for one am going to buy and play the game either way. I'd just prefer if CoH3 did not open Pandora's box and risk devolving into fantasy with the Black Prince.

Chaffee, Archer and StG44 also don't fit the setting. But everyone fine with it because "We already had ostwind, JT,ST and so on".

While I have a strong opinion about the Black Prince, I am ultimately fine with the inclusion of certain weapon systems that are technically anachronistic for the setting, like the StG44, in Italy, as it existed in earlier configurations (MKb42H, MP43) and would eventually see plenty of service in Italy, very much unlike the Black Prince.

I am similarly fine with Archer, Wirbelwind, and to a lesser extent Chaffee as because they all saw combat in Italy eventually and would make sense as part of a larger picture (again, unlike the Black Prince). I think instead of removing them from the game, Relic should take them out of the campaign (or have them appear late in the campaign) and leave them in the game as multiplayer goodies. To illustrate, the Axis don't need the Wirbelwind in that campaign mission; they have the Flak gun team weapon that can take its place, and the US Chaffee could be replaced by the existing Stuart the British have - it is still a US tank after all. This preserves the historicity of the campaign while still having the rare but not technically incorrect vehicles for multiplayer, as part of CoH's special snowflake tradition.

That said, I love the Firefly and I'd love to see it come back and potentially replace the Archer.

I also agree that it's bad to follow the rabbit hole and make excuses for inappropriate units because of existing mistakes. However, unlike the complete fantasy that is Black Prince, the rare Archer, Wirbelwind, and Chaffee can have a potential place in the game somewhere.

+1,000

There doesn't need to be an Allied mirror to the Tiger, especially with the new side armor mechanics that will make flanking far more reliable. Ultimately, I'd much prefer an asymmetrically balanced CoH3, as long as each unit has an accessible non-doctrinal counter; asymmetric balance and faction design does far more for the game's variety than introducing units with mirrored stats, however novel the unit aesthetics may be. Replace the BP with one of many thematically appropriate alternative and let the tank destroyers do their jobs.

I think another huge point that we need to address is this:
CoH3 is looking very promising so far and Relic has done an outstanding job. The Black Prince is not going to make or break the game; I for one am going to buy and play the game either way. I'd just prefer if CoH3 did not open Pandora's box and risk devolving into fantasy with the Black Prince.

It seems Relic want to somewhat mirror factions in term of unit availability and bring the asymmetry around capacity of each units.

Honestly this conversation only have a meaning for a really few people, the majority of player don't really care about the version of unit they're using. At the end of the day the Black Prince is a Churchill with a big gun and people will simply see it like that.

Honestly this conversation only have a meaning for a really few people, the majority of player don't really care about the version of unit they're using.

the poll and the threads about it on the relic forums don't really tell the same story

[delete pls]

the poll and the threads about it on the relic forums don't really tell the same story

You mean the same persons here and on Relic Forum?