Cruzz's fantasy patch thread

Trenches for everybody, tanktraps for everybody but not free (like 5 muni/trap).
Democharges for every faction.
t34/76 upgradable to 85 for some muni + fuel.
Possibility to build a roof above artillery so it doesn't get wiped by offmap arty.

I like the rest.

good job cruzz, agree with most of your points.

Especially this one: Heavy vehicles now require tech before they can be called in:

100% agree. Great work, Cruzz.
Relic, read carefully please.

good job cruzz, agree with most of your points.

Especially this one: Heavy vehicles now require tech before they can be called in:

That's actually what happened in closed beta, dunno why Relic changed it.

I don't agree with reducing Tiger's AOE radius. It's fuel cost has been increased and it's finally worth getting in competitive games.

It is out ranged by Soviet AT tanks and is supposed to close in with its health, but is so slow and gets AT naded all the time. It can't be a long range killer or a break the line tank -- it's just in limbo as a damage soaker right now. Nerfing its AI ability doesn't make sense.

These changes are mostly aimed at increasing viability of underused units and abilities and fixing some issues with popular units. Pretty much purely from a 1vs1 perspective because it's the only gamemode I regularly play.

Unit changes:

German sniper: to 64 hp (from 48)
German halftrack: cost down to 220/20 (from 270/30)
German halftrack: flamer upgrade down to 90 munitions (from 120)
Panzerfaust: trigger range to 23 (from 25).
Add 125mp/30f research for pioneer demolition charges for germans.
Elefant: range to 75 (from 100)
Tiger: AOE radius reduced to 3.0 (from 3.5)
MG42: setup time reduced to 2.5 seconds (from 3.0)
Panzergrenadiers: 1.2 armor (from 1)
Trench: health doubled
Pak43/LeFH/ML-20/B4: Increase gun health significantly (350/470 --> 620)
AT Gun camo (both sides): Reduce movement penalty to 50%
Guard grenade: Reduce AOE radius to 4 (from 4.5)
S-mine buildtime increased to 5 seconds (from 2.5)
Soviet TM-35 mine: Damage far to 0.2 (from 1)
KV-1: Increase front armor to 290 (from 240).
M42 45mm AT gun: increase damage to 100 (from 80), increase penetration to 130/95/60 (from 100/80/60)
ISU152: range to 75 (from 100)
KV-2: Decrease manpower cost to 540 (from 630)
Sherman: Reload speed slowed down by 0.75s
Maxim: team crew logic changed to mimic how soviet MG42 teams setup
PPSH damage drop-off for midrange improved, damage at range 12 to ~1.2 (from 0.8)
M3 cost to 200M/15F (from 190/10)

Heavy vehicles now require tech before they can be called in:
Tiger, Elefant require Battle Phase 3 OR T3 building
Command Tank, Puma, Stug E requires Battle Phase 2
KV-1, KV-2, KV-8, IS-2, ISU-152, T34-85, Sherman require either T3 or T4 building.

Commander ability changes:

Sector Artillery: Make ability either predict unit movement, or reduce time to arrive significantly
Stuka Close Air Support: Tracking of target improved massively, first round should always hit on target and further ones then try to track target as much as the plane turn rate allows.
Rapid Conscription/Relief infantry: show how many more losses you need to take to get a new squad on top of the ability icon. Decrease cost by 20 munitions.
Vehicle Detection: to 30 munitions (from 60)
Fear Propaganda: Guaranteed suppress on every tick in AOE. Pin and Retreat chances unchanged.
Stuka 50kg bomb drop: Damage to 600 (from 750). Damage far to 0.3 (from 0.25) to keep aoe.
Reduce Soviet Industry manpower penalty to 40 (from 65). Reduce fuel income to 11 (from 13)

Unit veterancy changes:

Soviet Sniper Vet1 Sprint: Increase cost by 15 munitions
Blitzkrieg Tactics: Increase speed max by 0.3 while engine not damaged.
German sniper: incendiary rounds available at vet0, vet1 infantry awareness
Puma: Target Weak Point replaced with Infantry Awareness (or Blitz)

General gameplay changes:

Removal of heavy engine crit chance from faust/atnade
Reinstate plane direction controls from vcoh for plane-based offmap abilities.
Fix automatic reload when a squad weapon (Shreks, PTRS, etc) gets swapped to another member due to model death.
Attack radius of all plane loiter abilities shown on map for both sides with a red circle.

Map Changes:

Fix hedges. Many hedgerows in the game still have very strange behaviour in terms of unit vision. Hedgerows on Semois summer (such as the ones near the strategic point on the left that connects to the munitions point) let you see through them but don't allow direct fire units like snipers to fire through. Hedgerows on Langres behave irrationally after they are destroyed, units won't autofire even into a unit that is just sitting where the hedges used to be in complete view, or any units behind the destroyed hedges. Yet abilities that require direct line of sight like the B4 anti-tank shot still work over these flattened hedgerows but won't over the intact ones.

Crossing in the Woods: Similar to the hedge problem, this map features numerous points where units can't fire through despite having full vision (bushes at the strategic points next to corner fuels, trees around the water crossings)

Road to Kharkov: Redesign the north cutoff by moving or completely removing the bigger building overlooking it and getting rid of the trees that block view of the cutoff when coming from the north base.

Langres Winter: Remove a large portion of heavy snow, particularly from around the two munition points.

Kholodny Summer/Winter: Move right side south cut-off strategic point a bit to the right.


Commander tree changes:

German infantry doctrine: Replace Relief Infantry with G43 upgrade. Replace Fragmentation Bomb with fuel to munitions transfer.

Defensive doctrine (both factions): Change the commander ability to "doubled health on tank traps and halved build time on all defensive structures", add tank traps to the normal build options of pioneers and combat engineers.

NKVD Rifle Disruption: Replace Rapid Conscription with ppsh. Any good ideas what else to do while staying in an NKVD theme?

Soviet combined army: Replace AT gun camo with KV-1 call-in.


Reasonings for changes:
Show Spoiler

I don't agree with reducing Tiger's AOE radius. It's fuel cost has been increased and it's finally worth getting in competitive games.

It is out ranged by Soviet AT tanks and is supposed to close in with its health, but is so slow and gets AT naded all the time. It can't be a long range killer or a break the line tank -- it's just in limbo as a damage soaker right now. Nerfing its AI ability doesn't make sense.

Have you tried using a Tiger this patch? Or had one against you? Compared to the IS2, which fires 30% slower, has 25% less health, and faces weaker AT abilities (though the armor value largely compensates for this part), the Tiger has pretty much equal squad wiping capability while fighting against the larger soviet squads. I don't know how you're managing to get at-naded so easily with your tigers because I can pretty much rely on my Tiger alone to twoshot any conscript squad that tries to get in close, it's only mines that are a danger and for that you have your pretty much mandatory sweeper army this patch anyway because of how the aoe on soviet mines keeps oneshotting infantry squads now.

This is in sharp contrast to the previous patches where the Tiger was clearly the more AT focused of the Tiger/IS2 matchup. This also leaves Panthers very little point in existing in 1vs1, though this is nothing new. The Tiger fills the exact same AT role while providing insane AI on top of that. Ram is also mostly gone now, so the old cheese counter to Tigers no longer exists, making it very difficult to deal with one on more closed quarters maps where ATGuns have a hard time getting firing lines without coming into range of the Tiger as well.

On a theoretical level if I wanted to optimize play as germans this patch in 1vs1, I'd never tech beyond T2, always just wait out for tigers. They're that good, against any situation you'll see in 1vs1.

dude, youre awesome! +1

Brilliant! Good job.

Might I add (to shameless plug own ideas as this might get attention):

• Capture abandoned weapons with the minimum crew count (two). So Axis can capture crew weapons without creating 1-man-squads.

• Add Health bar to support weapons (AT-Guns, Howitzer, HMG, Mortars). Either white/grey bar above blue health bar or overlay (stripes?).

• Add unit stats instead of grey, empty, dead space when unit description is disabled. Example (with beta values): StatUI.jpg On infantry it can display available pick up slots and the weapons they acquired.

• Add an accuracy multiplication to HMG fire for each model in its (direct) cone of fire. HMGs should punish blobbing more severely. If more models are in the cone of fire the MG should hit (deal damage) more often as there are more targets that can be hit. One squad can seek cover behind a ridge but not four at once, there are bound to be casualties. Especially if there is no or negative cover.

Adding a couple of extra points shamelessly stolen from others or which I forgot in original:

Riegel Mines: trigger on M3s
Counter-Barrage: Reduce scatter angle and scatter distance by 25% compared to normal barrage. Give same range as normal barrage.
Remanning team weapons: Weapons get remanned with the minimum crew count (1 for 120mm, 2 for anything else).
Show team weapon health bar on crewed weapon teams.

Why:
Show Spoiler

• Add an accuracy multiplication to HMG fire for each model in its (direct) cone of fire. HMGs should punish blobbing more severely. If more models are in the cone of fire the MG should hit (deal damage) more often as there are more targets that can be hit. One squad can seek cover behind a ridge but not four at once, there are bound to be casualties. Especially if there is no or negative cover.

The HMG42 already has this as far as I understand. Maxim and the Douche don't.

- When the MG of either factions is retreating, if the gunner is killed the MG is automatically given to another member while the squad keeps retreating (like in COH1) instead of having the squad stop and one member going to get the MG, which usually causes every single member of the MG crew to die in the attempt to grab the MG.

While I generally agree with this, there's one elephant in the room before it can actually be implemented: Maxim spam. As I'm already trying to get them to not get riflenade cleared nearly as easily, letting them run away far better might cause a big balance issue because germans are largely dependant on munitions for countering them early game.

Heavy vehicles now require tech before they can be called in:
Tiger, Elefant require Battle Phase 3 OR T3 building
Command Tank, Puma, Stug E requires Battle Phase 2
KV-1, KV-2, KV-8, IS-2, ISU-152, T34-85, Sherman require either T3 or T4 building.

Not sure about this one as you descibe it. Wouldnt this cost to much of mp and fuel meaning you seldom could afford to call in the call ins? You could build the buildings or tech up without building any tanks from it but would this actually help the meta in any way? If the call-ins require tech or buildnings you maybe have to make the call-ins a bit cheaper? Making them cheaper would make the commanders with call-ins much better than the commanders witout call- ins. Just some thoughts.

Not sure about this one as you descibe it. Wouldnt this cost to much of mp and fuel meaning you seldom could afford to call in the call ins? You could build the buildings or tech up without building any tanks from it but would this actually help the meta in any way? If the call-ins require tech or buildnings you maybe have to make the call-ins a bit cheaper? Making them cheaper would make the commanders with call-ins much better than the commanders witout call- ins. Just some thoughts.

No, there's absolutely no need to make the call-ins cheaper. The fundamental issue here is that tech units are not efficient at all for their cost compared to call-ins considering the length of an average game when you add in the sunk cost of tech. Currently I can spend 200+160+320=680 manpower and 55+30+115 = 200 fuel to get a PIV, or I can get a Tiger for 640/230 that is usually just as powerful as two PIVs and far less likely to die to being outmaneuvered than an individual PIV. If I go for the PIV and my opponent saves for an IS2, I'll in all likelihood lose unless I can gain a huge advantage with the PIV in the 5-ish minutes it gets to be on the field before the IS2 arrives. While if I go for the Tiger, I'll be evenly matched with my opponent once the call-ins arrive, or ahead of him if he decided to tech instead.

I do not think a single call-in unit is in any way cost-inefficient compared to base tech required units right now.

Adding a couple of extra points shamelessly stolen from others...

No probs, if it helps to get things fixed around here.

Sector Artillery: Make ability either predict unit movement, or reduce time to arrive significantly

stopped reading, huge german fanboy that wants an Iwinbutton when hes being attacked

stopped reading, huge german fanboy that wants an Iwinbutton when hes being attacked

Accusing Cruzzi of being a German fanboy? I never thought I'd see the day.

stopped reading, huge german fanboy that wants an Iwinbutton when hes being attacked

You sir, are an idiot.

stopped reading, huge german fanboy that wants an Iwinbutton when hes being attacked

Thanks, I'll put that up on the wall next to my previous title of "Hardest Soviet Fanboy".

stopped reading, huge german fanboy that wants an Iwinbutton when hes being attacked

We have a new winner of the "Biggest Moron on Coh2.org" title. Congratulations!

We have a new winner of the "Biggest Moron on Coh2.org" title. Congratulations!

I'm pretty sure that still belongs to wiking, but he can have 2nd place.

That must make you third katitof? Why are 90% of Katitofs posts are bashing other forum members?

Nah, you're third.

Being general a-hole is also scored and in that only wiking is better then you.