Increased RA from nearly squads - Antiblob measure.

This is exactly why I prefer CoH and DoW over Starcraft. I played Starcraft and the combat was shallow as a puddle. It's all about how many units you produce over your enemy. Doesn't matter where they stand or which unit they prioritize or even if you keep them alive. The fact that Starcraft style "build and throw away" strategies can be effective in this game does it a huge disservice.

Those strategies fall flat in higher skilled games where enemy knows how to implement werfer/stuka into builds. Only faction that is vulnerable to blobs without the doctrinal options is the USF, especially on larger maps where CQC is less pronounced. Obers, grens, volks, pgrens, falls, are all exceptionally good in long range. And obers/grens are stock. Rifles are close range mainline with some decency in medium range.

Build and throw away is not really viable in COH2 due to the manpower bleed and the fact that the MP income is tied to current pop. Sure Axis has a bit of an advantage in the MP bleed war due to the smaller and more efficient squads. OKW in particular can shift from infantry to tanks and spios for lategame. All in all, both axis and allies can't really "build and throw away" in the non-newbie ranked games. Blobbing in particular is more pronounced in larger game modes due to the fact that the enemy ally can help out the guy you're trying to destroy and thus turn the tide completely. Hence, you need to kill as quickly as possible. Hence you need a lot of units firing at one target. Blobbing in 1v1 is a sure way to lose, especially since the enemy can play around the blob without the risk of running into another enemy. USF is probably the best in this regard due to the weapon racks. You can equip rear echelons and a major and send them to cap marginal points with the ability to defend themselves from the tanks/vehicles the enemy sends to defend the said points (since infantry is far too slow)

Those strategies fall flat in higher skilled games where enemy knows how to implement werfer/stuka into builds.

I'm not talking about higher skilled games. I'm talking about the fact that it works at any skill level at all. It shouldn't. It should be the easiest thing in the world to counter with a single MG. But it isn't, and that's stupid.

I'm not talking about higher skilled games. I'm talking about the fact that it works at any skill level at all. It shouldn't. It should be the easiest thing in the world to counter with a single MG. But it isn't, and that's stupid.

Everything is a blob in 3v3+ because the maps are not proportionally bigger than 1v1 and yet they house 400 to 600 more population. So you have a much denser infantry population in larger game modes. It's completely impossible to play 3v3 as you play 1v1. The real "definition" of a blob in 3v3+ would be 5+ squads in a small radii. Otherwise you distribute them along the frontline. And it doesn't work most of the time. Just now played a game vs g43 pgren blob. 3 pgrens with g43s and one JLI with g43. They literally melted one rifle squad in yellow crater cover on Steppes in 2 seconds. One volley and poof. Rifles gone. Do you know what happened next? My Pershing came and nuked the squad, instant retreat. I lost 0 territory, 1 squad and induced bleed/time to heal/retreat time on the enemy, on a large map. Blobbing can work, but it can also backfire immensely

what if it was inversed? what if blobs got cooldown/accuracy penalties instead? so blobs wouldn't instadelete their targets?
IMO that is the greatest problem with blobs since they show up and there is little to no time to react to their insane alpha damage.

How about people stop complaining about blobs and just learn to deal with it? I mean, it's not like blobs don't have a clear counter. If there is one thing you can do to a blob is to nuke it. You not only have a clear target but the damage you can inflict is massive.
Soviets have katyushas and 6 man double maxim
UKF has vickers, centaur, long range sections which are hard to push out of cover without the munition expenditure.

USF has a bit of a problem early on due to the backteching, but later on you can somewhat use scotts to deal with them.

what if it was inversed? what if blobs got cooldown/accuracy penalties instead? so blobs wouldn't instadelete their targets?
IMO that is the greatest problem with blobs since they show up and there is little to no time to react to their insane alpha damage.

This is an interesting idea. I would suggest moving accuracy personally. Blobs are most effective when combined with squads with high moving acc like G43s . If a blob can't run and gun as much then they are much less effective...

In principle though I don't think the concept of antiblob measures can be implemented effectively. There just isn't a way to "turn off" the measure when it in theory it shouldn't be used. For example, if you mass retreat to your base should you be punished for "blobbing" there? It makes getting base locked that much easier because your "Blob" is going to get nerfed just for leaving your base together. That's just one example but I'm sure there are other times when a "blob" isn't really a blob and coding for all those exceptions would a nightmare.

you can make this penalty like an "aura" kinda like AoE supression, so blobbers would have to at least have some trouble spreading their squads out, it could also only works with 3+ squads.

they also could go the rout in coh1 and make all guns in the game have supression and make some have more supression than others (BAR for example) so you could supress in a different form other than machine guns.

I personally think that a simpler implementation of an "anti-blob" mechanic is to simply make the "near-miss hit" mechanic work for all weapons.

I don't recall the exact name of it, but some weapons like the MG can still roll for a hit against nearby squads after missing the squad its firing at. This should be the case for every weapon in the game. Think about it: you're firing your garand at one squad with three others behind it. You miss one entity. How likely is it that you hit one of the twelve men standing behind that one? Very likely indeed. That's my opinion, anyways.

That's intesting, can anyone expand on this? That mechanic could be the solution that we are looking for.

That's intesting, can anyone expand on this? That mechanic could be the solution that we are looking for.

There is an option in the weapon profile called "focus fire". If set to true (the default used for most weapons), only the targeted model can be hit. If set to false, other models in the vicinity (probably defined by the scatter values, but I'm not sure) will roll another accuracy check if the one against the targeted model results in a miss. A good example to see this in action is the Kübel, which has "focus fire = false" and will thus spread its damage over nearby models, while other LVs (like the M-20) don't.

On paper, that sounds like a straight DPS increase against squads with more models, but I'm not sure if it really works that way (there was a thread about this a while ago, maybe I can dig it out later). I'd guess the effect maxes out with just a few nearby models already, so the difference between firing at a 6-man squad and a blob of 6 squads would be virtually zero.

EDIT: This one.

That's intesting, can anyone expand on this? That mechanic could be the solution that we are looking for.

I might have phrased it incorrectly in the thread that MMX is referring to. I cannot remember if this mechanic does 'additional' damage or if only hits get potentially rerolled to a different model. Maybe I tested it, but I cannot remember.

What we know though is that some weapons damage other models than the initially targeted one, too. This depends on some weapon stats, but as a rule of thumb only comes into effect if the enemy models are closely together, e.g. in cover.

Always thought Focus Fire off was simply spreading the damage to the entire squad instead of picking one model per one. It let into having squad losing health but no model until each hit 0.

Always thought Focus Fire off was simply spreading the damage to the entire squad instead of picking one model per one. It let into having squad losing health but no model until each hit 0.

I think you're right and I was mistaken. I think that it should roll to hit nearby squads though. It would be a good way to nerf blobs imo. It would probably be too resource intensive to be reasonable to add though.

how to punish blobbing without forcing retarded game mechanics:


put the power level of the mg-34 to the mg-42 (although it basically is IMO)
reduce vickers HMG damage (allowing it to suppress more reliably)
give the maxim firing arc width buffs


because why should only one faction have an amazing MG?

how to punish blobbing without forcing retarded game mechanics:


put the power level of the mg-34 to the mg-42 (although it basically is IMO)
reduce vickers HMG damage (allowing it to suppress more reliably)
give the maxim firing arc width buffs


because why should only one faction have an amazing MG?

Go to therapy dude, nobody is trying to hurt you.

On topic: IMHO is better to give a small penalty (To increase around 3% in recieve DPS by giving more RA) in a small radius (by example 10 mts, like the range that cover bonus gets negated) than making every MG the same.

2 blobed squads will get 3% extra DPS to each one.
3 squads will get about 6% extra DPS to each one.
4 squads will get about 9% extra DPS to each one.

It's something that will only punish blobs and nothing more.

your antiblobbing tools:

-land mattress MLRS
-BM-13 Katyusha
-Calliope


Additional information: as your enemy increases his infantry army, so too should your rocket artillery count increase.

Land mattress is a piece of crap that

- doctrinal
- very vulnerable
- slow
- 70% that even you shoot an area your enemy didn't even move, no one was killed

Go to therapy dude, nobody is trying to hurt you.

On topic: IMHO is better to give a small penalty (To increase around 3% in recieve DPS by giving more RA) in a small radius (by example 10 mts, like the range that cover bonus gets negated) than making every MG the same.

2 blobed squads will get 3% extra DPS to each one.
3 squads will get about 6% extra DPS to each one.
4 squads will get about 9% extra DPS to each one.

It's something that will only punish blobs and nothing more.

and then you also punish players whose infantry is clustered behind cover, entrenched up and defending an enemy assault.

there is not a real distinction between mindless blobbing and simply using more infantry, you can accidentally punish people who aren't a-moving blobs and instead use actual strategies.

meanwhile machine guns weren't actually the same before, but it just so happened that the monkeys in the balancing team, regardless of who they were, nerfed the maxim into the worst MG, while leaving the mg-42 to be the best MG in the game


also two squads definitely aren't "blobbing" lmfao, i think that would simply kill infantry play

well stacking "negative RA" aura kind of make sense as the most simple solution (in theory), while incremental accuracy is a weird one, since it stacks with models (AFAIK) not squads.

Also, as was pointed out earlier, what is actually a blob? 3 or more squads in a "tight formation"? Maybe 4 or more? Also if I spread my 4 squads with gaps between them and move them in that formation, should this also be punished?

Land mattress is a piece of crap that

- doctrinal
- very vulnerable
- slow
- 70% that even you shoot an area your enemy didn't even move, no one was killed

land mattress is deceptively strong in team mode because you have such a large saturation across such a large area, that you are bound to hit something.

the idea is that axis players almost inevitably blob massive infantry and team weapon concentrations, usually behind their frontline. The massive dispersion of the land mattress means that you will hammer the entire axis frontline, killing models inevitably, your efficiency often being like of a katyusha