Getting a raw deal in multiplayer

I have many problems relating to gameplay mechanics in this game that I'd like to know an explanation for. There are many problems that occur to play that I do not see in other players.

Here is a list of problems I regularly see for gameplay in multiplayer.


1. My units will not respond to commands. This most often happens with retreat commands ("T" button on my keyboard). I will have to press the T key sometimes 10-20 times before the unit retreats.

2. Often units frozen in retreat animation. The unit will have the retreat icon above it's head but will just stand in place until it is wiped.

3. Units staying suppressed while retreating and in base. The unit will retreat with the suppression icon above its head and this will remain that way in base for 5-10 seconds sometimes.

4. My units do not seem to put out DPS as other players...sort of. They will drop the health of the enemy unit but probably at least 50-60% of the time the enemy unit will not drop models until it is at extremely low health. This happens across all infantry engagements- IE volk on rifle, rifle on volk, gren on infantry section, commando on volk, etc.

5. Occasionally my AT guns will require more than 4 penetrating hits on an enemy tank with 640 hp (IE Cromwell being shot with a Rak). In replay they are not misses/splash damage, they are penetrating hits.

6. My units often separate when moving. This usually happens at the beginning of a match where one model will move and the other stay in base. An example of this would be I send a sturm at the start of the game to the middle VP. One sturm model will walk all the way to the VP and the other 3 models will stand motionless in base.

7. Units not moving where I place them on the map. This most often occurs with putting units in cover, I have tried making sure the green or yellow dots are selected at the piece of cover for the unit to move to, they often move to the location but models will be off of the selected dots by 1-5 units of distance. This happens with click dragging as well.

8. My units VERY often cannot return fire to enemy units without being closer to the enemy unit. And example of this would be I have a volk in cover that is being shot at by a riflemen unit. When I select the volk to return fire the only way it will do so is to move out of cover and step 2-5 units of distance closer to the riflemen unit. If I put it back in cover the models will stop shooting while being shot at.

9. My user interface command box will very often go blank and I cannot use the unit after this except for moving it around with the mouse. This happens with all types of units. I have seen this bug for players using the ZIS gun, but I have this happen with every unit. Volk, Land Mattress, Mortars, Vehicles, etc.

10. Essentially impossible RNG rolls. The most recent one that sticks out in my mind is that I had a Vet 2 Firefly shooting at a King Tiger at medium-ish range. The Firefly fired 6 shots in a row which all hit, but were all bounces. According to pen/armor tables this would be an incredibly low chance, like winning the lottery type of chance.


Is there any explanation to this craziness? It's incredibly frustrating to play with all this stuff going on constantly. It seems like it has gotten much worse and my ladder rank has suffered a ton because of it seems. I have around 600 games 4v4 in OKW and was around ladder 400 for about 500 matches, my ladder rank has dropped to over 3000 in the past 100 games, although my stats are usually comparable to above average in matches, almost always positive KD and lead in damage stat. I guess this is a problem with matchmaking however. When I was playing mostly 2v2 my ladder rank was mid 200s to low 300.

I don't think I'm being hyperbolic to feel that essentially my account is handicapped.

Can something like ping or internet actually influence the mechanics of the game? I'm not sure what the ping is, my internet is decent, the MS delay at the top is usually 35-50ms. Computer has a Ryzen 9 5900x and RTX 3060ti.


Something else that is strange is the stats in after game are very often not any where close to what has happened in game, I can go back and watch the replay, tally every kill and the end stat will be wildly off.

1. You are not the only one, everyone has had issues with that. I think it is server side.
2. Game is buggy, shit happens.
3. Had this happen, what happened for me was 1 model was unable to retreat so it stayed in front of mg while rest of squad was in base. Got pinned until the model died.
4. If you are moving to much some units take a bit of time to sit and shoot. Happens to me with Penals, but trust me every one feels red units are to strong.
5. Some Meds have extra health such as T3486,Ez8 etc
6. Annoying but not sure what the cause is. IT aint just you.
7. No idea.
8. This one I have noticed quite a bit but specifically Sturmpioneers, they will fire at max range while Penals/airborne lmg/Rifleman/conscripts will not return fire it is extremely strange. I have comp stomped and played OKW and noticed the same thing. 1 or 2 Sturm models will fire while the opponent would not fire back my guess is something with weapon profile..
9. I think it is a map bug, heard that it happens on specific maps but no idea why.
10. It is part of the game, I have literally come close to uninstalling and swearing this game off forever. In 1v1 I have been playing Penals and depending on commander T3476 spam. If RNG doesn't roll my way I am fucked due to unit performance and Penal scaling. Like others have said you don't remember the good rolls only the bad. It happens. I have switched to 3v3 and tried to mix up strats a bit. Try different things and try not to get to worked up.

Most of those are server issues. Packet loss leads to all sort of wonderful features. It could be on your end, but it's most likely the servers derping out, nothing you can do about it. Heck, I've had unplayable games with a delay of 5 seconds between a command on my computer, and the game executing the command. Don't know what server issue could cause such a massive 5000ms ping, but eh.

Considering the other non server issues. It's RNG. I've had obers retreating with 1 pixel health and 4 models, it's pure RNG. Tanks can be left on one pixel health and a critical damage, but not destroyed, it's part of COH2.

The suppression features are really just bugs induced by the server packet loss. I've only ever had such problems when there were high delays and poor network performance. Eg, my captain not being able to retreat and staying pinned until dead. A couple of occasions in all of my playtime though.

Simply put the game is trash.

A lot of your unit movement issues sound server related. But the bullshit RNG is one of those things that must also have a server based issue.

I can tell when server is penetrating me because:
1) Mortars will erase my army all game long on the move with no sight. My mortars will finish the match with zero kills or damage.
2) MGs will insta-suppress me but my MG never suppresses anyone.
3) My units can never see anyone unit in smoke. But my units are always being targeted in smoke.

I recently made a half track upgraded to MG that could not suppress a unit. The unit just walked right up to it take quad 50 cal to the face. Then I backed away and they just followed me across the map never being suppressed.

As I have said before, I do better connecting to a server closest to the players I am playing against. If I play on the close server, 22mS ping, my units act like yours. Not moving when being shot at and cant shoot back at the enemy, etc.

The server is a mess. The match making is completely broken. But hey give us money for Coh3 please.

If Relic does not add some tools to see your ping and lag in Coh3, no one should buy it. Quake 3 had these tools in 1999. Like WTF relic.

But Reverb you need to run some kind of Quality of Service tests to verify your network is not the main issue for you. Because some of your stuff sounds like missing packets etc.

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I recently made a half track upgraded to MG that could not suppress a unit. The unit just walked right up to it take quad 50 cal to the face. Then I backed away and they just followed me across the map never being suppressed.
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I am not sure if I missed anything but I do have to point out that quad does not suppress on the move so if it moving it makes sense that it was not suppressing.

Some of the issues you posted sound very familiar, especially units not moving behind cover where I had ordered them to, MGs not setting up correctly, rubberband selection not working properly, etc. As it turned out, in my case my mouse was to blame since one of the buttons was doing double clicks every now and then when I drag-moved somewhere. Getting a new one fixed this immediately, so maybe it's worth a try to see if you have the same problem.

Other than that, RNG is strong in CoH as everyone knows, and sometimes it's difficult to judge how likely something actually is to happen. Some stuff, like a Firefly bouncing off the KT's armor multiple times in a row seems astronomically unlikely at first glance, but may be much more probable than you think.

quad does not suppress on the move

Thanks Vipper. The first 2 bursts it was not moving. Then I had to move it or they were going to kill it. But I recall getting one or two more bursts off after it stopped the 2nd or 3rd time. Because they started to back away. But they were never suppressed ever.

I should have saved the replay so we could figure it out. But I was fingering the uninstall button at the time... so....yeah....the typical coh2 experience.

RNG is strong in CoH as everyone knows

This is a point I was wanted to make earlier. Coh3 needs to reduce the RNG a little. The server issues are already too much RNG. Then you have crappy pen issues and fights that should clearly favor a certain squad but instead they lose. It is a little too much.

Little RNG = Fun, favors micro, creates replay ability.
Too much RNG = Smashed keyboards and low sales for Coh3.

Things also happen too fast. Things like grenades are impossible to dodge on the server for many people. Or Close Quarter units that erase your squad before your message to retreat gets to the server and back. It feels like bad server code was not a factor in the timing decisions for Coh2. Maybe that is why more people like vCoh???

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Things also happen too fast. Things like grenades are impossible to dodge on the server for many people. Or Close Quarter units that erase your squad before your message to retreat gets to the server and back. It feels like bad server code was not a factor in the timing decisions for Coh2. Maybe that is why more people like vCoh???

I think that part of that happened progressively since many balance decision where to buff unit's DPS. Think power creep was quite strong in the game over the years.

This is a point I was wanted to make earlier. Coh3 needs to reduce the RNG a little. The server issues are already too much RNG. Then you have crappy pen issues and fights that should clearly favor a certain squad but instead they lose. It is a little too much.

Little RNG = Fun, favors micro, creates replay ability.
Too much RNG = Smashed keyboards and low sales for Coh3.

Things also happen too fast. Things like grenades are impossible to dodge on the server for many people. Or Close Quarter units that erase your squad before your message to retreat gets to the server and back. It feels like bad server code was not a factor in the timing decisions for Coh2. Maybe that is why more people like vCoh???

I don't know what they did with the last server update but performance has gotten really bad for me personally since.

Simply put the game is trash.

A lot of your unit movement issues sound server related. But the bullshit RNG is one of those things that must also have a server based issue.

I can tell when server is penetrating me because:
1) Mortars will erase my army all game long on the move with no sight. My mortars will finish the match with zero kills or damage.
2) MGs will insta-suppress me but my MG never suppresses anyone.
3) My units can never see anyone unit in smoke. But my units are always being targeted in smoke.

I recently made a half track upgraded to MG that could not suppress a unit. The unit just walked right up to it take quad 50 cal to the face. Then I backed away and they just followed me across the map never being suppressed.

As I have said before, I do better connecting to a server closest to the players I am playing against. If I play on the close server, 22mS ping, my units act like yours. Not moving when being shot at and cant shoot back at the enemy, etc.

The server is a mess. The match making is completely broken. But hey give us money for Coh3 please.

If Relic does not add some tools to see your ping and lag in Coh3, no one should buy it. Quake 3 had these tools in 1999. Like WTF relic.

But Reverb you need to run some kind of Quality of Service tests to verify your network is not the main issue for you. Because some of your stuff sounds like missing packets etc.

I ran a test and it was
89.89 mbps DL, 5.8 mbps UL, 29ms ping, 1 ms jitter

Another test saw 56 ms latency, 20 ms jitter, 3.1% late packets

Is that decent? Says it's rated as excellent.

It's not RNG.
I just went over a replay and every single infantry engagement I had the opponent unit would not drop models until it was at the absolute lowest point of health.

Harware or connection MUST influence the way mechanics play out and this basically screws players that have something going on with either by letting other opponents essentially put out higher DPS or people like me put out lower DPS than what is intended.

I ran a test and it was
89.89 mbps DL, 5.8 mbps UL, 29ms ping, 1 ms jitter

Another test saw 56 ms latency, 20 ms jitter, 3.1% late packets

Is that decent? Says it's rated as excellent.

Jitter is on the high side. Generally jitter should be below 10ms, above it, you will start having packet losses. 3.1% late packets is also bad. Anything above 1% of lost packets means there will be problems in the connection stability. If I remember correctly, people say that 1-2.5% is "acceptable" for streaming video/audio.

56ms latency is just dependent on geographical position if there are no packets losses or jitter.
For example, I've got 12ms ping from Zagreb, Croatia to Frankfurt, Germany and ~110 to US East and ~200 to US West with 1-3ms jitter and 0% packet loss.

Download/upload speed doesn't mean too much when it comes to stability. It's just the speed of downloading/uploading stuff. Most video games need only about a couple of Mbps Dl/Ul.

Point is, I would not trust anything that has jitter higher than 15ms and packet loss higher than 1%.


Concerning models dropping. I'll speak only from my knowledge gathered during physics studies (had plenty of IT subjects) and general computer knowledge.
I don't see how connection can affect model drops.
Mechanic plays out by pure logics and statistics. You can have the best hardware and connection, it should not matter.
Games run in a server client architecture, which means the server is responsible for running all the game logic max frame rate and sending all the data back to each of the clients. That's added onto the inherent geographical latency of each player. Hence why people tend to have worse server stability when playing with opponents that are all far from each other.

Example: (3v3) I'm from Europe, Croatia and if I play with US players, or Europeans or [north] South Americans, I'll have decent overall server latency because the "TRIANGLE"

[ US(server)-US(player)-Europe(players)-north South America(players)] doesn't have large latency deltas between each location.

If I play with Asians or Australians/Oceania or south Africans or south South Americans, I'll get HORRIBLE server stability because of that nice little thing called the Pacific ocean which is extra large, so the "TRIANGLE" has a massive delta.
That's something I've tested each and every time and concluded that geographical locations of players matter in the overall stability of the game (even though we all connect to the same server).


So, game logic is not something that can be influenced by the latency because the server will sync everything up, no matter what. The only way I can see that the server influences "RNG" is if by some miraculous non-logical way the server "forgets" to remove models because the "damage" is "late"... but then again, you would not see enemy models dropping health.

What could happen theoretically, albeit rarely is that since each model has a fixed HP pool, if there is a significant latency, some models would not start firing on the "closest" model but would spread out damage across all models, dropping HP but not dropping models.

Example: 5 model rifles vs 4 model sturmpios

Rifles engage on charging spios. Under normal circumstances the spio model closest to the [parallel placed] rifle squad would get gunned down by all 5 rifles, hence the spio count drops to 3 and all is well.

Induce large latency and the location of spios gets jittered, hence the game logic sees more than one model as being the "closest" and decides to engage (hence why infantry cover to cover tests on TestMap are generally done by using smoke between them, and not just setting the other unit to "enemy").

But this is just one large theorycraft and I HIGHLY DOUBT that's what happens.
I think that the models not dropping is just piss poor luck where the damage is spread out over all models evenly.