Cover should increase armor

Cover at the moment gives a RA modifier and damage modifier, depending on the type of cover.
I was thinking if it weren't better if Relic had replaced some of these modifiers with an armor bonus instead.

Both make intuitive sense - hiding behind a wall both decreases your profile as well as your chance to be hit through the object. Harder objects such as brick walls (green cover) are also harder to penetrate than e.g. fences (yellow cover).
For small arms, they do almost the same thing: Increase the effective health of the squad.

However, there are two advantages:
- Currently, green cover grants an additional damage reduction modifier. Due to this, explosive weapons often behave unexpectedly bad. Most prominently, it is often better to wait and leave your squad in the blast radius of a grenade and then retreat if you reacted a little bit too late, because that way your squad benefits from damage reduction.
- Penetration values on small arms could finally be somewhat meaningful again. Almost all small arms weapons have a penetration of 1 at all ranges, with LMGs going up to 1.2 and HMGs even higher. These values barely matter. Only against the unicorn exception of Shock troops and some LVs, there is a difference. But even in these cases, it is often a bad decision to use small arms fire against that vehicle. To sum it up: The armor and penetration system of small arms has basically been removed from CoH2.

And that is bad. An HMG should just rip through some wooden planks, while and SMG should have issues doing so. There would definitely be some balance issues and even some logical issues such as craters providing very little penetration reduction, but overall this would be benefitial.
Obviously not for CoH2, that ship has sailed, but I assume for CoH3 there would be an advantage.

The damage of certain weapon like mortars and grenades can be fixed changing the damage modifier they have vs cover and imo it would make more sense since this weapon should be specialized in dealing with entrenched troops.

Cover and especially heavy cover increases the durability of unit significantly.

Combined with the ability of faction to create heavy cover become an issue.

An issue also seem to be the damage of indirect fire weapon where some people claim that do not do enough while other that are too power
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2) Certain weapon get improve modifiers for firing on heavy cover those can include Scott/Leig/mortars

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The damage of certain weapon like mortars and grenades can be fixed changing the damage modifier they have vs cover and imo it would make more sense since this weapon should be specialized in dealing with entrenched troops.

This unit specialization does not need to be touched at all. My main point is to give more meaning to weapon penetration. Removing the oddity of staying within the explosion radius on purpose is a bonus and just an example of how the current system leads to unwanted side effects, which then have to be countered with special modifiers to make it more believable.

To my knowledge, the target tables don't check for directionality. If that's true, adding modifiers will lead to other issues, mostly with grenades. For example, if you storm a squad behind sand bags and lob a grenade behind them, currently you do half damage (odd behaviour). Introducing a 2x damage modifier will bring it up to full damage again and negate the benefit of sticking to cover (wanted behaviour). However, throwing the grenade in from the side, you'll suddenly do double damage, because the target table still applies while the damage reduction does not.

Given that much of this could be fixed by updating the engine, I'd rather focus on small arms. As stated above, explosive weapon behaviour against green cover is an odd symptom of the current system.

Due to this, explosive weapons often behave unexpectedly bad. Most prominently, it is often better to wait and leave your squad in the blast radius of a grenade and then retreat if you reacted a little bit too late, because that way your squad benefits from damage reduction.

Big if true

This unit specialization does not need to be touched at all. My main point is to give more meaning to weapon penetration. Removing the oddity of staying within the explosion radius on purpose is a bonus and just an example of how the current system leads to unwanted side effects, which then have to be countered with special modifiers to make it more believable.

To my knowledge, the target tables don't check for directionality. If that's true, adding modifiers will lead to other issues, mostly with grenades. For example, if you storm a squad behind sand bags and lob a grenade behind them, currently you do half damage (odd behaviour). Introducing a 2x damage modifier will bring it up to full damage again and negate the benefit of sticking to cover (wanted behaviour). However, throwing the grenade in from the side, you'll suddenly do double damage, because the target table still applies while the damage reduction does not.

Given that much of this could be fixed by updating the engine, I'd rather focus on small arms. As stated above, explosive weapon behaviour against green cover is an odd symptom of the current system.

There is no need to add target tables one can simply change the cover table and change the damage cover modifier of mortars and grenades from 0.5 to 0.75 vs heavy cover for instance.

The problem with removing cover damage modifier and replacing them with armor is that it will increase the damage for light vehicles weapons and HMG/AP rounds.

For instance m20 has penetration values of 3/2/1 and Dhsk has penetration values of 7/6/5.

There is no need to add target tables one can simply change the cover table and change the damage cover modifier of mortars and grenades from 0.5 to 0.75 vs heavy cover for instance.

That's what I meant by target table. The problem I described stays the same.

The problem with removing cover damage modifier and replacing them with armor is that it will increase the damage for light vehicles weapons and HMG/AP rounds.

For instance m20 has penetration values of 3/2/1 and Dhsk has penetration values of 7/6/5.

I already acknowledged that this would not be an easy change of some numbers and then everything were perfect in the opening post.
I am making a general point about the design of cover. The current system works for gameplay, but falls short on authenticity and intuition on quite a few ends. However, while AoE weapons can be solved by an engine update, small arms not so much

The last part would be working though as intended. Concrete numbers aside, large calibers and armor piercing ammo should have higher penetration and be better suited to hit enemies behind cover.

There is currently a complete penetration system implemented for small arms that next to useless. Introducing different armor values to infantry squads is neither authentic nor intuitive. The battle hardened PGren is not able to magically deflect a bullet because of his experience any more than a green Conscript on his first day of battle. He will have a better understanding of how to keep his profile low and how to move, which is summarized in the abstract RA value in CoH.
Cover can be an interesting way to give relevancy to small arms penetration without sacrificing authenticity.

That's what I meant by target table. The problem I described stays the same.
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If I understand correctly you are suggesting to remove the table cover damage modifiers from weapon and add a armor bonus to units instead.

What I am saying is that the armor bonus is rather irrelevant to mortar and grenades. If the damage modifier are completely removed these weapon will do full damage probably more the normal since the squad would probably be more bunched up.

What I suggested was that instead of removing the damage modifier was to reduce the penatly from 0.5 to something like 0.25.

On an separate issue:
It is correct that Armor in most case does really come to play in hand held small arm.

The complication of introducing armor in the cover mechanism is that certain weapon (mostly vehicles based weapon) that are balanced around light vehicle play will start to over perform vs infatry in cover.

And on separate issue:
When UKF infatry used to get an received accuracy bonus when in cover that bonus messed with cover mechanism since it applied even when directional cover was not applying or when the point blank cover mechanism kicked. Maybe there is a way around that but I do not know.

I think it would do game unnecessary more complicated. Its either RA or Armor which should stay.

Advantages of RA - its easier to balance, since only accuracy and RA RNG are affected, at the same time lack of any complacency behind it means that RNG can screw you over. With either models being sniped, or squad taking almost no damage.

Armor on inf on the other hand provide somewhat more or less predictable outcomes, BUT in CoH2 armor was much stupider iteration of RA, when squad effectively ignored damage if hit wasn't a penetrating one.

vCoH "armor" was much deeper system, but at the same time a very complicated one, with different armor types and different weapons which had different bonuses against different types of armor. But essentially it was just either reduced or increased damage, depending on who is attacking who.


What I think should be done for CoH3:
1) Keep Armor in favor of RA, simply because it allows more macro balancing of units.
2) Inf armor should not work like in CoH2\vCoH.
3) Instead armor should act like a damage reducer. Meaning, say we have a squad A with armor value of 1 and squad B with penetration value of 0.5 and damage of 1.
*If squad A was hit and hit was a penetrating one, it takes a full damage.
*If squad A was hit, but it hit wasn't able to penetrate armor, it takes half of the damage, meaning 0.5, because squad B was able to pass accuracy check and was able to hit the target, there is no reason to force it pass another check to even deal the damage. Its better then RA\vCoH with only one check, and better then CoH2 old armor system with 2 checks.

As for cover:
1) It can still work as a damage reduction, which will lead to a tougher squads being more tougher in cover, but it can result in a stalemates behind cover
2) Or it can work as additional armor, meaning that squad A in yellow cover will have armor of 1.5 and in green cover armor of 2. This will make whole cover system easier to understand, but can result in squad being damaged quite badly if RNG isnt on your side.
3) Or just add new value "accuracy against cover" and leave armor\damage reductions without changes. This will allow to create squads which are worst\better against units in cover and performance of mentioned unit could be balanced on macro level aswell.

I think it would do game unnecessary more complicated. Its either RA or Armor which should stay.

Advantages of RA - its easier to balance, since only accuracy and RA RNG are affected, at the same time lack of any complacency behind it means that RNG can screw you over. With either models being sniped, or squad taking almost no damage.

Armor on inf on the other hand provide somewhat more or less predictable outcomes, BUT in CoH2 armor was much stupider iteration of RA, when squad effectively ignored damage if hit wasn't a penetrating one.

vCoH "armor" was much deeper system, but at the same time a very complicated one, with different armor types and different weapons which had different bonuses against different types of armor. But essentially it was just either reduced or increased damage, depending on who is attacking who.


What I think should be done for CoH3:
1) Keep Armor in favor of RA, simply because it allows more macro balancing of units.
2) Inf armor should not work like in CoH2\vCoH.
3) Instead armor should act like a damage reducer. Meaning, say we have a squad A with armor value of 1 and squad B with penetration value of 0.5 and damage of 1.
*If squad A was hit and hit was a penetrating one, it takes a full damage.
*If squad A was hit, but it hit wasn't able to penetrate armor, it takes half of the damage, meaning 0.5, because squad B was able to pass accuracy check and was able to hit the target, there is no reason to force it pass another check to even deal the damage. Its better then RA\vCoH with only one check, and better then CoH2 old armor system with 2 checks.

As for cover:
1) It can still work as a damage reduction, which will lead to a tougher squads being more tougher in cover, but it can result in a stalemates behind cover
2) Or it can work as additional armor, meaning that squad A in yellow cover will have armor of 1.5 and in green cover armor of 2. This will make whole cover system easier to understand, but can result in squad being damaged quite badly if RNG isnt on your side.
3) Or just add new value "accuracy against cover" and leave armor\damage reductions without changes. This will allow to create squads which are worst\better against units in cover and performance of mentioned unit could be balanced on macro level aswell.

Agreed on almost every count for cover, since all I want is for the game to be more fluid and not end up in cover to cover stalemates that are just begging for a mortar/sniper/mg to break. I honestly believe that on this count COH2 is very good.

I am all for making tanks tougher though. Right now, every unit (except UKF) having a snare plus laser guided Shreks/Zooks/PIATs make tank play extremely underwhelming, and I mean that in every sense of the word. Tanks were the epitome of military technology in WW2, and in this game they are nothing more than paper nowadays. Snares eat up a lot of hp, etc. it's just way too immersion-breaking for me. I don't know if it's a personal preference or not.

The damage of certain weapon like mortars and grenades can be fixed changing the damage modifier they have vs cover and imo it would make more sense since this weapon should be specialized in dealing with entrenched troops.

Vipper arguing for target tables? Can someone bring a thermometer down to Hell real quick?

Vipper arguing for target tables? Can someone bring a thermometer down to Hell real quick?

Target tables and cover tables are two different things.

The post you quoted is about cover tables and not Target tables.

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I did not argue to fully remove it. It can be a full removal, it can be a decrease. This is about general design, not exact numbers and the effect of this change to the current state of CoH2.
Basically, some of the durability of the RA and damage reduction modifiers should be moved to an armor bonus, the extend is debatable and the point of this thread.
Making explosives perform more as expected is one of the (minor) points of this change. What you point out as an issue is already in the live game: If your opponent is heavy on arty, it is better to keep squads in the open field than sticking them to yellow cover, which is the second prominent oddity additional to the one that I described. This doesn't make any sense. Every soldier would still stick to some wood or a crater during artillery shelling. CoH2 says the best thing is to stick to open field if no green cover is available.

I won't respond to the LV point due to the reasons mentioned above: This is a general design thread, not about the current balance of CoH2.

I think it would do game unnecessary more complicated. Its either RA or Armor which should stay.

Advantages of RA - its easier to balance, since only accuracy and RA RNG are affected, at the same time lack of any complacency behind it means that RNG can screw you over. With either models being sniped, or squad taking almost no damage.

Armor on inf on the other hand provide somewhat more or less predictable outcomes, BUT in CoH2 armor was much stupider iteration of RA, when squad effectively ignored damage if hit wasn't a penetrating one.

vCoH "armor" was much deeper system, but at the same time a very complicated one, with different armor types and different weapons which had different bonuses against different types of armor. But essentially it was just either reduced or increased damage, depending on who is attacking who.

I don't understand how in the current design armor will give you more reliable outcomes. There is no difference between a miss and a bounce, and not even a visual clue to what happened. Although there are three different results (damage/miss/bounce), the player will only be able to see two consequences: damage or no damage. He also cannot influence them, so the RNG overall is the same.

I don't like the concept of CoH1's armor. Your weapon is not suddenly less deadly because you shoot at a different soldier from the same distance. CoH2's old armor system streamlined the concept, but didn't solve the core issue: Getting scored hit with any caliber makes the same damage regardless of its target.
There's three things that CoH2 is currently abstracting:
1. A distant target is harder to hit - accuracy does the job -> easy and intuitive for the player
2. An experienced soldier knows how to not be hit - RA does the job -> easy and intuitive for the player
3. Cover makes you harder to hit - RA and damage reduction do the job -> RA is somewhat intuitive, damage reduction not so much.

I write 'somewhat ', because it works if you don't think about any further than necessary. I'll bring up the wooden plank example again: It obscures the target, so the target is harder to hit. Technically, it could also increase aim time, since the attacker needs more time to place his shot. However, simplifying this to accuracy is doing well enough to not look odd.
If you think about it however, this fence should not stop a 50cal at all. If the 50cal was dangerous to even light armor, the gunner will just shoot through that fence as if it were butter. However, this is not captured in CoH2 at all. The wooden fence will have the same effect on both the major shooting with his shitty pistol and the 50cal gunner.

What I think should be done for CoH3:
1) Keep Armor in favor of RA, simply because it allows more macro balancing of units.
2) Inf armor should not work like in CoH2\vCoH.
3) Instead armor should act like a damage reducer. Meaning, say we have a squad A with armor value of 1 and squad B with penetration value of 0.5 and damage of 1.
*If squad A was hit and hit was a penetrating one, it takes a full damage.
*If squad A was hit, but it hit wasn't able to penetrate armor, it takes half of the damage, meaning 0.5, because squad B was able to pass accuracy check and was able to hit the target, there is no reason to force it pass another check to even deal the damage. Its better then RA\vCoH with only one check, and better then CoH2 old armor system with 2 checks.

As for cover:
1) It can still work as a damage reduction, which will lead to a tougher squads being more tougher in cover, but it can result in a stalemates behind cover
2) Or it can work as additional armor, meaning that squad A in yellow cover will have armor of 1.5 and in green cover armor of 2. This will make whole cover system easier to understand, but can result in squad being damaged quite badly if RNG isnt on your side.
3) Or just add new value "accuracy against cover" and leave armor\damage reductions without changes. This will allow to create squads which are worst\better against units in cover and performance of mentioned unit could be balanced on macro level aswell.

I don't fully agree on this.
Armor variation between different soldiers will yield odd results. A hitting bullet does the same damage, no matter how experienced the target was. Everything else would just be odd. A human cannot bounce a bullet to magically take less damage than any other human.
I actually support every soldier having the same armor value in CoH2. That's "realistic". What is not realistic though is that heavy weapons are affected exactly the same as small weapons by cover.
Your first point for cover (=current CoH2 green cover) cannot simulate that at all.
2) Is basically what I suggested. I assume you combine it with armor working as damage reduction, which would not really be intuitive, on the other hand it might still work because it is not really noticable compared to just dealing full damage, but less frequently.
3) Since we cannot tell apart a "bounce" from a miss, I see this as a variation of point 2).

Target tables and cover tables are two different things.

The post you quoted is about cover tables and not Target tables.

Cover tables, target tables, it's all obscure to the player. I thought that was the whole issue?

I don't understand how in the current design armor will give you more reliable outcomes. There is no difference between a miss and a bounce, and not even a visual clue to what happened. Although there are three different results (damage/miss/bounce), the player will only be able to see two consequences: damage or no damage. He also cannot influence them, so the RNG overall is the same.

I pointed out that previous CoH2 inf armor, was a stupid variant of the RA, with basically 2 checks hit\miss and pen\non-pen to even deal damage. I maybe should have been more clear, what I meant is a vCoH like armor system (or inf type as it was called).

I don't like the concept of CoH1's armor. Your weapon is not suddenly less deadly because you shoot at a different soldier from the same distance. CoH2's old armor system streamlined the concept, but didn't solve the core issue: Getting scored hit with any caliber makes the same damage regardless of its target.
There's three things that CoH2 is currently abstracting:
1. A distant target is harder to hit - accuracy does the job -> easy and intuitive for the player
2. An experienced soldier knows how to not be hit - RA does the job -> easy and intuitive for the player
3. Cover makes you harder to hit - RA and damage reduction do the job -> RA is somewhat intuitive, damage reduction not so much.

Actually its debatable what is more intuitive. On one hand, with vCoH system you just know that unit A cannot beat unit B, because unit A has different armor type. Its harder for new players to learn them all, but in a long run gives more or less predictable outcomes.
On the other hand, we have CoH2 system which is easy to understand, because it somewhat follows concepts of common accuracy logic, at the same time Sturmpios attacking might drop 1-2 models to RE on approach, and might even not drop a single model charging and beating rifles. The whole RA concept of coh2, while being superior from a immersion perspective and understanding, is ultimately having way too much what is uncontrollable by a player.

To summarise:
1) CoH2 basically only checks accuracy+RA. Easy to understand, but affected by RNG the most.
2) CoH2 old armor system. Checks Accuracy+Armor+Chance to penetrate to deal damage. Just bad
3) vCoH checks Accuracy + having flat damage decrease\increase based on inf armor type.

My proposal of armor:
Flat accuracy to deal damage. Flat armor+penetration to determine if damage if full or decreased.

Aim of this one, is to actually provide somewhat consistent damage, but at the same time decrease involvement of RNG. On top of that units would have a lot of ways to balance them out be it accuracy, armor, penetration and amount of damage decrease on deflections.

I don't fully agree on this.
Armor variation between different soldiers will yield odd results. A hitting bullet does the same damage, no matter how experienced the target was. Everything else would just be odd. A human cannot bounce a bullet to magically take less damage than any other human.

You are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Imagine its not a bullet what deal damage, but rather where the hit was landed. More experienced soldier maybe moving differently, exposing less of his vital parts, maybe he was just a scratched by a bullet and so on. You really can find logical explanation to any system, simply because CoH is not realistic.

But that not the point. Imo main point is to provide such system which would potentially allow to balance units on a macro level, without effecting the unit as a whole. Armor\RA system of CoH2 is a very basic one and unit can be balanced only globally aswell as its affected by RNG way much then it should be. vCoH system is very complicated, because a lot of inf types needed and again it can balanced only globally.

2) Is basically what I suggested. I assume you combine it with armor working as damage reduction, which would not really be intuitive, on the other hand it might still work because it is not really noticable compared to just dealing full damage, but less frequently.
3) Since we cannot tell apart a "bounce" from a miss, I see this as a variation of point 2).

There is a small difference.
If we assume that game has armor system I described. To be clear here, in my armor concept there is no such thing as a deflection with no damage. Hit is always a hit, and it always deals damage, but if its a deflection hit, damage is lowered. So the difference is:

1) For point two, you effectively need harder hitting guns or most of your damage will be lowered, because basic armor of a unit in cover is increased.
2) For point three however, basically your gun stays just as effective as if you was attacking unit out of cover (armor\damage reduction is standard) but its just harder to land a hit on a unit in cover.

vCoH like armor system (or inf type as it was called).

It is possible to do with the COH2 modding tools. The Issue with COH2 was that it was essentially a mod of COH1. During the Initial Alpha/Beta for COH2 for example Shock Troops still had the UI tooltips of Rangers from COH1.

COH2 doesn't even hide that its a mod either.




Anyway the current system that we have in COH2 is a result of Relic half assing their way during development of COH2 (They developed the game without a publisher as THQ had disappeared and later got picked up by Sega)

Hopefully with COH3 they actually put some real effort into the game instead of leaving it up to the community to make the maps and do the balancing of the game.

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My point was that the RNG of 1) and 2) is the same. There is no way to distinguish between a shot that missed and a shot that hit but bounced. The player only sees two outcomes, regardless if there are two layers or only one layer at work behind the scenes. And the chance for success in any matchup of two squads will be stable. For two squads, you can fully transfer the penetration chance to accuracy and the other way around, as long as there is no deflection damage. The main difference between options 1) and 2) is that the behaviour of 1) is more intuitive if you look at multiple different squads.
If we assume 3 squads, one having low armor and pen, the second medium armor and pen, and the third one high armor and pen, this becomes very clear: The low squad loses the medium one. The medium in turn is weaker than the high one. Everyone will assume that the last squad is just the strongest of them all and should absolutely wreck the low one. But nope. The low and medium squad die at the same rate, because the high squad will 100% pen both of them at all times, so armor does not matter. That is the problem with armor on infantry. Top it off with the fact that all of these people are made from meat and bones, there is no reason for them to have any "armor" beside gameplay reasons.

From my experience when I tested small arms fights, the main component for RNG was not accuracy, but if the squad focuses down one model or if they target different ones. If they target at least two models, early drops rarely happen, because too many shots have to be made before the first model is killed, meaning that you will be close to what you expect from the fight. Only the old vCoH system can actually lower the effect of early model snipes, but not cancel it out.

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I doubt your system will really solve the issue you are describing, but in the end also create other problems. From what I get, you want to remove e.g. model snipes and similar high impact RNG based stuff from small arms.
But as long as there is a decent chance to penetrate and deal full damage, model snipes will always happen at a regular rate. One option is to increase the range of armor values, so that your chance to penetrate is actually fairly low. Model snipes would then be a really rare occurrence. However, this leads to the problem I described above with the "low/medium/high" squads: If armor of infantry is not standardized, there will always be very odd and unexpected behaviour of different squad match ups. There are too many options to discuss them all, but at the moment I don't see how to really avoid that. Keep in mind that the average player only plays a couple of matches per week or month. He does not have the time to find out how a unit fares against the tons of different enemies.

My main guideline is that the mechanics must be intuitive and as authentic as possible. Yes, you can find some explanations for basically everything in the game. You could even find very odd explanations for the old vCoH system. But the more explanations you have to strap on the less it will be authentic.
Assuming your explanation of

More experienced soldier maybe moving differently, exposing less of his vital parts

is true. Why then does this soldier know how to hide from a pistol shot (low pen), but not so much from a rifle and even less from an MG bullet? This does not make an awful lot of sense. Why does it depend on the calibre of the weapon? Behaviour in the game will therefore be unexpected again.

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Most of this I have covered with the above points I guess.

I'll leave it at some last comments/repetitions:
I am fully in favor of keeping infantry armor standardized. This is what I would expect from the game. Experienced soldiers being harder to hit can be believably described by RA.
Fiddling around with standard armor levels will almost guaranteed lead to weird behaviour in some or most matchups that is not intuitive.

And finally, I'd like to come back more to the actual point of the thread, because I initially did not aim for discussing infantry armor in general:
Cover should change armor. This makes sense intuitively and logically. All the penetration and accuracy values would affect the fight in an expected way. High penetration weapons ignore more of the cover because they can just shoot through it.

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Cover should change armor. This makes sense intuitively and logically. All the penetration and accuracy values would affect the fight in an expected way. High penetration weapons ignore more of the cover because they can just shoot through it.

As I already have pointed out that can create issues with light vehicles and their balance.

But there is another issue.

The Cover tables system that is now used takes into account cover mechanisms like direction cover/point blank mechanism.

The armor bonus you are proposing which would be based around the squad itself and not the weapon firing would probably not since a squad with either have the bonus armor or not.

As I already have pointed out that can create issues with light vehicles and their balance.

And as I already pointed out, this is a general design thread, not a balance thread about introducing a new "feature" into the current CoH2 environment.

One issue I can see is AoE weapons like a tank hitting the cover in front, but still being able to heavily damage the model behind it. Although I assume that is probably quite realistic, it might not make for good gameplay.

But there is another issue.

The Cover tables system that is now used takes into account cover mechanisms like direction cover/point blank mechanism.

The armor bonus you are proposing which would be based around the squad itself and not the weapon firing would probably not since a squad with either have the bonus armor or not.

I didn't clearly specify, but the armor bonus should obviously be directional. This is also how defensive cover bonusses are currently applied.
You've also mixed up how the bonusses are applied in CoH2. Defensive bonusses are applied per model and are directional, the offensive ones are applied per squad, which is the opposite of what you wrote.

And as I already pointed out, this is a general design thread, not a balance thread about introducing a new "feature" into the current CoH2 environment.

One issue I can see is AoE weapons like a tank hitting the cover in front, but still being able to heavily damage the model behind it. Although I assume that is probably quite realistic, it might not make for good gameplay.


I didn't clearly specify, but the armor bonus should obviously be directional. This is also how defensive cover bonusses are currently applied.

And what I am trying to pointed out is that the current system applies to weapon not squad themselves and that is why direction cover and point mechanism works.

By giving an armor bonus to squad itself instead of the weapon one has to add a new calculation done by the squad to see if the weapon firing on the squad should get cover penalty or not. (not even sure if that is possible)

If one want to the effect you describe all one has to do is to adjust the cover tables of "high penetration small arm" so that they have lower accuracy/damage penalties so the DPS equals that of armor.

And what I am trying to pointed out is that the current system applies to weapon not squad themselves and that is why direction cover and point mechanism works.

By giving an armor bonus to squad itself instead of the weapon one has to add a new calculation done by the squad to see if the weapon firing on the squad should get cover penalty or not. (not even sure if that is possible)

The gentleman has already stated this was a hypothetical for a future CoH game, so worrying about how it would be implemented into CoH2 is unnecessary.

However, if the game already has code to detect which models are inside of cover and which are out, I don't imagine it being too hard to implement.

Either way I don't think coh2 even has a way to differentiate covers besides directional or not. Cover from a dead cow is coded the same as cover from a shrubbery, etc.