Cruzz's Fantasy Patch Thread 2: WTFWFA Edition

Mostly based on 1vs1 with some minor consideration given to 2vs2 balance.

Call-in system:

Call-in 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.
Bulldozer, EZ8, Priest require Major
Greyhound, M10 requires Lieutenant or Captain
Ostwind, PIV J require two trucks setup
JagdTiger requires Flak HQ setup

USF:
Rear Echelon: near accuracy to 0.42 (from 0.35)
Shorten grenade throw animations and increase priority of animations(at nade and normal ai nade, smoke nade is already ok), fix AT nade cancelling on vehicles circling squads
Space out rifleman formation more
Make pack howitzer able to fire higher trajectory rounds without barrage so it can actually function on non-open maps
Add M7 light at mines to base construction selection of rear echelons
Add toggle to M8 Howitzer Carriage to make it only fire direct shots instead of high trajectory ones.
Let Shermans start smoke barrage while moving
Reduce Major artillery time to arrive by 2 seconds
57mm: Increase penetration values by 10 at all ranges
Bazooka: Increase damage to 100 (from 80), penetration to 150/130/110 (from 130/120/110)
Elite Rifleman training: require 1cp
WC51: Increase fuel cost by 5
Mortar HT: Reduce scatter further to match Ostheer mortar HT.
Priest: Cost to 380/90 (from 480/115), pop to 13 (from 16).
M1919 LMG: Only allow squads without one to buy one from armory
Airborne HMG/AT gun drop: reduce price by 30MP each.
Pathfinders: decrease squad cost by 20MP

M15 AA HT: Removed suppression from MGs, added suppression to main gun to mimic OKW flak

Soviet:
Increase maxim cost to 280mp. Increase aoe suppression value to 0.8
Penals: Increase SVT accuracy near to 0.65(0.6), accuracy far to 0.3 (0.25). Increase moving accuracy from 0.5 to 0.8 to match g43.
Dshk HMG: Increase aoe suppression value to 0.8, incremental accuracy of 1.04 (same as us 50cal)
Sniper vet1 sprint increased in cost to 25 (from 10)
SU-76: Increase weapon aoe radius to 1.5 (from 0.5), give it indirect fire capability similar to USF M8 Howitzer Carriage. And the toggle to force direct fire.
Katyusha: increase aoe mid range damage modifier to 0.5 (from 0.35)
T70: decrease fuel cost by 10
ISU152: add 1 second setup time
T34/85: Decrease aoe radius to 2.0 (from 2.5)
ZiS camo: reduce movement penalty to 50%
Conscripts: Give mutually exclusive weapon upgrades for a single DP28 or 2 SVT for 50 muni after T3/T4 has been built
Soviet combined army: Replace AT gun camo with KV-1 call-in.
Reduce Soviet Industry manpower penalty to 40 (from 65). Reduce fuel income to 10 (from 13)

Defensive doctrine (Ost/Soviet): 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.

M42 45mm AT gun: increase penetration to 130/95/60 (from 100/80/60)

Ostheer:
Stug E: Increase scatter by 25%
Rebalance cost distribution of tech building and battle phases by reducing battle phase cost but increasing tech building cost.*
Ostheer Panther stats changed to mimic those of OKW Panther (increased accuracy etc)
Panzerwerfer mid range aoe to 0.5 (from 0.35)
Brumbar: reduce average scatter by 33%
Reduce flameht upgrade to 90 munitions (from 120)
Increase halftrack MG penetration to 1.5/1.3/1.25 (from 1/1/1)
Increase Scout car MG penetration to 1.5/1.3/1.25 (from 1/1/1)
Increase Scout car armor to 11/5 (from 9/4.5)
Remove Ostwind minimum range (3 --> 0)
Increase smine build time by 50%
Reduce teller mine build time by 25%
Pak40 vet3 camo: reduce movement penalty to 50%
Osttruppen: reduce price to 180mp
Counter-Barrage: Reduce scatter by 33% compared to normal barrage.
German sniper: Health to 60 (from 48)
German sniper: incendiary rounds available at vet0, vet1 infantry awareness
German infantry doctrine: Replace Relief Infantry with G43 upgrade. Replace Fragmentation Bomb with fuel to munitions transfer.
Make Luftwaffe drops pickuppable by enemy units again, and targetable by enemy units.

Trench (OKW/Ostheer): Double trench health

OKW:
MG34 cost to 270MP
Move puma smoke to vet2
Fix buildable flak entrenchments so that their projectiles won't collide with ground 90% of the time when firing at infantry.
Decrease flak ht setup time to 2 seconds, 1 second at vet2, no setup at vet4.
Decrease jagdpanzer manpower cost to 360 (from 400)
Increase Kubelwagen weapon range by 5
Fix Salvage commander barrage so it no longer ramps up to ridiculous damage numbers with high munitions
Increase panzerfusilier squad cost to 320MP. Fix ATnade, has same issues as USF rifleman one.
Make raketen projectiles behave more like normal atgun projectiles so they don't collide with as many objects
Increase number of LMG34s in obersoldaten squad by 1, damage of LMG34 from 8 to 5.
Switch Jaeger Light Infantry to use Grenadier G43 stats (~15% damage decrease)


General:
Demolition charges detected by a minesweeper can be attacked and destroyed with small arms.
Remove heavy engine crit chances from all basic infantry at abilities (atnade, rifle atnade, faust)
Reinstate plane direction controls from vcoh for plane-based offmap abilities.
Remanning team weapons: Weapons get remanned with the minimum crew count.
Fire only on vehicles toggle for all vehicles and atgun crews.



* Like this for example (slightly reducing manpower cost for BP1+T2 because of the USF light vehicle rush, and of BP3+T4 because T4 is too expensive)
200/45+120/15
200/55+140/25
200/60+160/30
-->
160/40+130/20
180/45+160/35
180/50+160/35

Reasons for changes:

Call-in system:
Show Spoiler

USF:
Show Spoiler

Soviet:
Show Spoiler

Ostheer:
Show Spoiler
OKW:
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Yes , all of the suggestions are good, well thought out and just flat out everywhere pure on full on super fleshed out good amazing spectacular.

Molotov currently not enough time to throw.

Molotov currently not enough time to throw.

If you can't dodge it, you definitely need to work on your reaction time as it have the longest animation and shortest range out of all nades.

Regarding the changes, I don't like some of them(for all factions), but most of them look decent.

I'd play that!

German sniper might be a bit too good but I'm a low level player so I don't know. I have a lot of success with him vs US as it is. Maybe just the health upgrade would be nice.

If you can't dodge it, you definitely need to work on your reaction time as it have the longest animation and shortest range out of all nades.

Regarding the changes, I don't like some of them(for all factions), but most of them look decent.

Conscripts die before they can throw molotov

Pretty good values and fixes.

where can I buy this game??!!

Is there anyway to change Flak HT so the shots don't collide with cover so much?

Also I think the OH flamer HT requirement of BP2 needs to be removed.

It's... Beautiful...

nice post +1 to almost everything!

What makes the MG34 a "super MG42"? Unless the stats pages I checked are wrong, the MG42 indeed does more damage and more supression than the MG34. Putting it on a similar price as a supression buffed Maxim also feels wrong to me. The whole concept of basically declaring a WW1 machine gun the best and most expensive machine gun of WW2 feels ridiculous as well, completely apart from gameplay point of view.

There are some other changes I find weird, some others are good, but I am not going in detail on all of them now, after all I won't pretend to be a balance expert.

Cruzz, excellent suggestions once again.

The only thing I would add is swapping the T70 with the SU76. For reasons mentioned in the thread dedicated to that subject.

I dont agree with all your suggestions, but your list is so exhaustive, and because I get how your mind works, in that you have already considered reciprocal relationships across all factions, that I cannot do but support your list in its entirety.

If this was from anyone else, I would second guess some of the changes, but because it is you, I have a great degree of confidence you have already considered those into your cross-faction total summation in ways that I have not, and quite possibly, I might be unfairly biased towards.

Its almost scary how many minute changes, and issues that most others have long forgotten or glossed over, that you include in this.

Only a true student, no, a scholar, of CoH2 balance and this game, could produce such a meticulous and interconnected list.

You really created a beautiful patch entirety in this, which aesthetically portrays one mans balance opinion, just as a master painter considers every stroke in a masterpiece painting, to maintain a balance of form, color and personal vision.

TLDR: Your list is not exactly my view, but there are many ways to go around balancing. Yours, and especially with how meticulous and comprehensive you are, I have confidence in it.

Well done. +1

PS: Please just promise that if large parts of this do get imolemented, that you will return with another list, because though this list is very thorough, we bith know there are still units/abilities that didnt get representation 1 chunk at a time, eh?

Great work.

Only thing I would like to see added is a buff to the MG42 to bring it more in line with other MG's. Either make it suppress faster and reduce its damage or up its damage.

I also really think adding an upgrade to conscripts would be a very good idea to help them stay relevant.

Good thread, what I would add though:

Add a limit of 1 sniper team at any given time for both sovs and ost. Especially if you buff ost sniper which I don`t think is really needed but with the limit I think it would be actually OK. Since you also want maxims less spammable, without the limit of max 1 sniper squad at anz given time, sniper spamming for sovs would become even more prevalent on open maps.

If there is to be set-up time for ISU 152, fine, but give the same set-up time to Elefant and Jagdtiger.

Lastly I think slight dmg nerf for both BARs and M1919s is in order.

I support Cruzz's patch ideas wholeheartedly!

I like it overall, however, I fail to see how a two-SVT upgrade would make a significant change to Conscripts--I would personally just opt to get Penals and have a ROKS flamethrower and satchels as icing on the cake.

Your German Infanterie Doctrine changes are good (I'd play that all day erry day myself), but adding both G43s (that are a no brainer and fantastic) AND a muni-to-fuel or vice versa dump seems a tad much.

The SU-76M, I think, doesn't need to be a Soviet Scott; I quite like it being a PaK on Kettenkrad treads (or, in this case, a ZiS on Kettenkrad treads). The issue is the plethora of very long ranged, very lethal German AT that renders its own long range a null advantage versus facing armies of StuGs and Pz IVs--if it was an Allied Marder and this was vCoH, per se, it would be a great unit. I think it honestly needs to go into T3 and give that building viable AT options (the T-34 obr 1942 is okay, but doesn't have the punch I'd like ). The SU-76M's barrage is also good at the moment, it just needs a barrage cooldown reduction with vet.

Just something I really hate seeing, you do know you can fire the Sherman's smoke barrage on the move already? Just order the barrage and move your Sherman as it's doing it - hell, the devs even showcased that in the USF stream some months ago. It might not work with shift-clicking and stacking orders, but it works.

EDIT:
Also, for the 20mm flak halftrack, when you say no setup time at vet 4, does that still mean you have to stop the vehicle in order to fire? Please say yes, or that part will pretty much be nullified.

Nice one, I like most of the proposed changed so far