Feedback: Resources, Upkeep, Veterancy, and Comebacks

Let me preface by saying that I am a competitive company of heroes player that would like nothing more than to see coh2 be a success:





I understand Relic’s reason for omitting a dynamic pop-cap system. However, since this is the beta phase and a lot testing is being done, I was wondering if it were possible to implement coh1’s system in custom matches to see what the feedback is like from players? The beta version doesn’t have to be fine-tuned to work with every map; a simple system that’s very similar to coh1s (perhaps increase base pop-cap to 45) would suffice to just receive feedback on its effect.

Resource system:

Thus far, I’ve probably played close to 20 hours (+25 hours of the alpha). It’s perhaps too early for me to really evaluate the flow of the game, but nevertheless I feel comfortable analyzing the current resource system and how it affects the game. I was already quite flabbergasted by Relic's decision to omit a dynamic pop-cap system, since I believe it’s an essential ingredient to coh’s gameplay. While punitive, it was one of the only incentives a player had to cut-off in coh1’s late game. Most veteran coh1 players would agree that the whole cut-off dynamic is really what dictates the ebb and flow of the game and so it should remain quintessential throughout the game.

Furthermore, coh2’s cold weather system, by nature, will incite slightly campier gameplay, and so if anything, coh2 should encourage players even more than coh1 to be proactive and harass-ive. I fear the possibility that most players who have fallen behind in the game will be forced to create outposts on their adjacent territories to compensate for their loss of territory, and the game will only encourage them to do so, since it’ll be relatively inexpensive to them due to their MP income being 1.5-2x that of their opponent (because of massive upkeep costs).
It seems that from the alpha version to the beta version, the resource system has been altered to resemble coh1’s system a bit more. Cut-offs have improved and high resource points have increased. However, all strat points are still of equal worth, which makes choosing to cache adjacent territories a no-brainer. This proves counterproductive to Relic’s aim to increase map diversity and dynamism. It also counters the whole cut-off mechanic since players now have the incentive to cache cut-offs to both increase their income and to prevent their opponent from cutting off supplies.

As a solution, I thought of a system where strategic territories that aren’t directly adjacent (connected) to your main base have an increased value over those that are. Consequently, all ammo/fuel caches should provide a greater resource increase when built on non-adjacent territories (since they work by percentages, right?). Naturally, all adjacent strat points function as cut-offs, and so by providing players with the incentive to cache further strat points, adjacent strat points will remain susceptible to being de-capped. If desired, strat points that are adjacent to your opponent’s base could be of highest relative value. I am not sure how useful this is, but it could prove intriguing. To summarize everything: adjacent territories provide the lowest income, non-adjacent territories provide medium income, and territories adjacent to your opponent provide the highest relative income. Needless to say, high ammo or fuel points should still remain the most valuable and sought after. Just as an example: adjacent territories provide +2 ammo, +3 fuel, non-adjacent territories provide +4 ammo, +5 fuel, and territories adjacent to your opponent (if chosen to be implemented) provide +6 ammo, +8 fuel. In addition to that, it would be nice if territories provided a small manpower increase, similarly to coh1. This will encourage players to hold and capture territories no matter what their munitions and fuel savings are like. It also gives players an option to slightly increase their manpower income, irrespective of their upkeep cost, kind of like the supply yard upgrade in coh1. This is especially important for mid to late game meta.

I realize that coh2 is already pretty late in its development cycle, and so any changes at this point to something as fundamental as the resource system are undesirable, but considering that most players agree that the current resource income rate is far too high and that the implementation of the system detailed above is rather simple, I believe and hope that making the change is still viable.

I honestly feel that the current resource system of the beta is just a dumbed-down version of coh1s that provides for slightly more diversity. It might welcome casual players, however not without alienating competitive players. The resource system I detailed would probably make amends to this by encouraging risky capping without being too punitive, since players can still opt to play it safely and just cache adjacent strategic points.

Manpower income and Upkeep

The current upkeep system facilitates frequent comebacks, as it is very punitive to any player that is in the lead. In a way, it "rubberbands" the experience, by artificially closing the gap between two opposing players. Needless to say, it makes the games very exciting and action-packed, and I quite welcome the change. However, there should still be a means by which a winning player can maintain his/her lead; a player should be rewarded for playing well and should remain at an advantage unless (s)he makes an error. Earned veterancy is the obvious solution, since naturally a player that’s outplaying his/her opponent will have more of it. Unfortunately, in coh2, units receive vet both by doing and receiving damage, and vet bonuses are very marginal,as a result having more or less of it is rather negligible. Also, gone is the whole mechanic of denying your opponent veterancy to further your advantage.

Moreover, because upkeep costs are so high, I often felt like losing some squads to reduce upkeep wasn't that bad of an idea, especially since veterancy is so insignificant. I believe altering the system so that veterancy is more valuable and only earned by doing damage will in effect mitigate comebacks while not completely preventing them either. Also, since popcap is fixed at 100 and manpower will buy you all the assets you’ll ever need to counter your opponent’s army, map control isn’t even required to comeback. This leads to games being needlessly dragged out and frustrating, since putting that last nail in your opponent’s coffin can be very, very difficult.

I think upkeep is the most obvious outlying issue and the most simple fix for Relic at this point. It will be interesting to see if they do anything about it.

The problem with any fix at this point are the ensuing repercussions. I spoke to Quinn about it, and he told me that a resource system change of some sort would provoke so many adjustments (map design, res layout, unit costs, code change, etc) that it just wouldn't be viable at this point. Kind of a shame, tbh, cause I really don't think they nailed it just yet with coh2.
Interestingly enough, he also told me that coh1's resource system received a revamp just before release, so you never know. I suppose if enough of the pro community draw his/the teams attention towards these glaring issues, they'll consider it.

Although, it has to be said, I have the feeling that Sega is pushing them to just release the game as soon as possible. In my opinion, now that they received some of our criticism (better late than never), they could use another 4-6 months. Unfortunately, the game definitely needs it...

Completely agreed.

Most strategy games follow a pattern where, once a player gains more than 50% of the battle advantage (territory, resources, army size, etc), the game begins geometrically tilting against the loser by design. CoH was no different: less territories meant not only less resources, but also less population, and this meant that your chances of a comeback were inherently reduced.

What was the difference between CoH and most other RTS games, though? That upkeep truly played a role in army composition. Having less soldiers in the field meant less resources penalties, so you could try and bring that special unit or call in to attempt to regain your stance. This, coupled with the randomness and dynamism of the gameplay, made comebacks possible even in the face of overwhelming odds, sometimes due to a lucky mortar shell or 5% bug, but most of the times because of pure player skill.

Without the dynamic population cap, all of this is out. Upkeep becomes deadly to the winner, and risking a push deep into enemy territory to cut off his resources becomes much more risky than beneficial.

Which is why I haven't been seeing any attempts at the likes of base-pins to seal the deal early on. It just becomes too costly for the ahead player.

Although, I'm pretty sure the lethality of mortar has something to do with it as well

supply yard upgrades could be good to fix the mp income ,for the germans they should be global and you could upgrade the upgrate to get more mp income and you should be able to purchase it from hq , for the soviets it should be cheaper in the form of tier upgrates and it should affect only the units produced from the respective tier , couple that with other upgrates that will allow you to produce specific units from each tier and you tackle both the lack of an early game and the income problem . On population issues , you should start with a fixed population ( 50 would be nice ) , with each territory capped that number (pop) should be multiplied with a number ( say 0,3) and then added to the total

supply yard upgrades could be good to fix the mp income ,for the germans they should be global and you could upgrade the upgrate to get more mp income and you should be able to purchase it from hq , for the soviets it should be cheaper in the form of tier upgrates and it should affect only the units produced from the respective tier , couple that with other upgrates that will allow you to produce specific units from each tier and you tackle both the lack of an early game and the income problem . On population issues , you should start with a fixed population ( 50 would be nice ) , with each territory capped that number (pop) should be multiplied with a number ( say 0,3) and then added to the total

I quite like this.
It also allows you to build upon an advantage you may have gained.
If anything, atm, coh2 punishes you for being in the lead, which is one of the cardinal sins when it comes to competitive gaming.

Territory sectors

I want old vCoH sectors back, ofc strat sectors would still give munitions and fuel but we need more of these territories, you can't properly cu-off opponent since territories are too big and there's too little of them

also OP's should also be build on those fuel/muni territories and gives more resources than normal

Hm, not really seeing this. Dominating the map is extremely effective because every connected sector gives you resources (which translates to LMGs, doctrine abilities, mines, faster tanks, maxim/flamer halftracks and whatever). Cutting off any sector, not just the resource points, now impacts on your opponent's resource income and gives a much bigger role to cutting off non-high-resource points throughout the game than COH 1's dynamic popcap did.

Vet bonuses aren't really marginal (accurate mortar shot, mark target, sniper sprint, T-34 capping etc.), but the balance of the giving and receiving damage is way too tilted towards receiving atm.

I'd like to see a little softening of the manpower dropoff so it doesn't feel like a player who's got a biggish army but good map control has trouble making their top-end units but the resources in general still reward aggressive play and constant harassment with a better quality army.

I don't see how a resource system that encourages you to cache your cut-offs and does not provide increased pop-cap provokes aggressive play and harassment. There's a reason why in almost every game I've played the frontline was located in the center of the map throughout the game, no matter how the game evolved.

While it may be the case that having more troops gives you less MP-income, then you must also keep in mind that you also actually have more troops than your opponent. This also means that you probably have better map control, more vet and soon - access to higher-tier units.

I'd say that CoH2 doesn't punish the winner that much, but keeps it interesting.

more units do not equal more vet, in fact, they equal LESS vet, since the experience you gain is distributed over more units. the fuel caches he can safely build close to his base ensure him of enough income to comfortably tech, even with a lot less map control.

coh 2 does reward turtling game styles way more than coh did.

more units do not equal more vet, in fact, they equal LESS vet, since the experience you gain is distributed over more units. the fuel caches he can safely build close to his base ensure him of enough income to comfortably tech, even with a lot less map control.

coh 2 does reward turtling game styles way more than coh did.

And due to the upkeep system, an ahead player oftentimes only has about 60-70% of the manpower income that his/her opponent has. Therefore, to win the manpower war (which is a crucial part of every engagement), the ahead player has to inflict a minimum of 10 causalities for every 6-7 causalities sustained. This makes it very hard for the winning player to finish off an opponent or at the very least maintain the gap.

I don't see how a resource system that encourages you to cache your cut-offs and does not provide increased pop-cap provokes aggressive play and harassment. There's a reason why in almost every game I've played the frontline was located in the center of the map throughout the game, no matter how the game evolved.

Because every single point that you harass or cut off reduces fuel and munitions income, and every connected point you gain increases it. This is tangible throughout the game, whereas VCOH's popcap wasn't *that* big a deal in yer average game until the late game call-ins turned up and frankly led to a lot of weirdly pedantic counter-intuitive things (like the incomplete OMCG, or reckless and obviously unholdable capping to give you the popcap to rush out a big call-in...). There's a reason in COH 2 to contest and to grab every point at all stages of the game, not just cut-offs and resource points.

(In my experience, frontlines on Pripyat are fairly central because it's a blargh map where the guy with the bridge will normally win, but I still see a lot of cross-river harassment of the south fuel cut-off and the VP in the north. On Kholodny I've had some varied lines of engagement.)

@Crawler: your income depends on ALL of your connected territory, meaning that good map control will let you tech faster and get more munitions upgrades and bad map control will slow your tech down. I.e. it's not just VCOH's resource system with ultra-caches added on, which is what people seem to be presenting it as. Also, you have to keep units alive to keep the vet, so if you're killing enough to drive them below 25 popcap, you're probably ahead on vet anyway.

@BarbieCrack: If you have better map control, you have more fuel and munitions. Winning the manpower war is a lot easier when you have T-34s vs. Halftracks or can afford to upgrade all those grens you kept alive with MG-42s while your opponent can't. In addition to which, the VP game is still going on, which makes saving up income for a concerted push problematic. At the moment, having a bigger army than your opponent is a liability if you're not managing to use it to control the map, but if you are you are going to be consistently in a position to stay ahead.

What would you guys say, if OP's worked as miniature Supply Yards? Do you think it might work?

I'm not too familiar with the upkeep system in CoH, only the basics, but now that sectors can be used to requisition further resources, this would promote further guerrilla tactics against OP's.

Then you could in theory:

-Destroy the enemy OP's: you don't deny them the sector or the population, but they'll have to invest in an OP if their army is too large, or suffer the upkeep increase. One OP shouldn't be bad, but get several at once, and you've got yourself a good enough penalty.

-Capture the territory. IMHO, OP'ed territories should take a little longer to cap, in order to increase their viability. An OP'ed territory also represents a higher benefit in resources if you capture it, so it should also be harder to get. You'd not only be getting the extra resource free of charge if connected to your own, but also gain the upkeep benefits.

This would promote mobile gameplay, constant scouting to see if your opponent has rebuilt OP's, and alternative tactical choices. Its not simple to implement, since map design would have to accomodate this, but CoH map design is intricate as it is, and as patches roll in, it can be perfected.

What would you guys say, if OP's worked as miniature Supply Yards? Do you think it might work?

I'm not too familiar with the upkeep system in CoH, only the basics, but now that sectors can be used to requisition further resources, this would promote further guerrilla tactics against OP's.

Then you could in theory:

-Destroy the enemy OP's: you don't deny them the sector or the population, but they'll have to invest in an OP if their army is too large, or suffer the upkeep increase. One OP shouldn't be bad, but get several at once, and you've got yourself a good enough penalty.

-Capture the territory. IMHO, OP'ed territories should take a little longer to cap, in order to increase their viability. An OP'ed territory also represents a higher benefit in resources if you capture it, so it should also be harder to get. You'd not only be getting the extra resource free of charge if connected to your own, but also gain the upkeep benefits.

This would promote mobile gameplay, constant scouting to see if your opponent has rebuilt OP's, and alternative tactical choices. Its not simple to implement, since map design would have to accomodate this, but CoH map design is intricate as it is, and as patches roll in, it can be perfected.

I like the idea, but I'd implement it differently. I think that strat points in coh2 should provide a manpower bonus similarly to how sectors in coh1 provided +3 manpower each. However, instead of providing straight up manpower, strat points should reduce your upkeep by a certain amount. This amount should scale with a fuel or munitions cache. This will gradually increase the importance of maintaining map-control as the game progresses. At the moment, it's kind of the opposite, since pop-cap is static and it's not uncommon to float 300-400 fuel in the latter stages of the game with nothing to spend it on; as a result, the importance of map-control begins to diminish.

btw, are you suggesting that cached points should be seize-able by your opponent? I don't know how much I'd like that, tbh.

the problem is, OPs at the moment are pretty cheap for what they do AND you can build them wherever you want and get the same bonuses. if i build a fuel cache after my first few T1 units... let's assume i have 1 less T1 unit. To be equal in resource income, you will have to cap 1 more point than i have. if you do not, i am ahead. so, if i even just decap 1 point, or disconnect you or anything, I am ahead. For fights, yes, i do have 1 less fighting unit, but remember: a) I have the higher manpower income, so the longer the game progresses, the smaller the gap becomes and b) in all likelyhood, since OPs cost 200 MP and most T1 (or early tier) units cost 240MP, i even have 40 MP towards my next unit and c) I am the defensive player, so I choose where and how we fight... If i choose wisely, i can probably hold, even with 1 less unit.

I am not saying this can't be balanced, but instead of balancing a turtling playstyle, why not discourage it? there's a million ways of discouraging turtling tactics...

the problem is, OPs at the moment are pretty cheap for what they do AND you can build them wherever you want and get the same bonuses. if i build a fuel cache after my first few T1 units... let's assume i have 1 less T1 unit. To be equal in resource income, you will have to cap 1 more point than i have. if you do not, i am ahead. so, if i even just decap 1 point, or disconnect you or anything, I am ahead. For fights, yes, i do have 1 less fighting unit, but remember: a) I have the higher manpower income, so the longer the game progresses, the smaller the gap becomes and b) in all likelyhood, since OPs cost 200 MP and most T1 (or early tier) units cost 240MP, i even have 40 MP towards my next unit and c) I am the defensive player, so I choose where and how we fight... If i choose wisely, i can probably hold, even with 1 less unit.

I am not saying this can't be balanced, but instead of balancing a turtling playstyle, why not discourage it? there's a million ways of discouraging turtling tactics...

Which is exactly why I think that strategic points adjacent to your base sector should yield less res than those that aren't. Sectors adjacent to your opponent's base could be worth even more, but this might cause problems. The exact amounts would have to found through balance testing.
The desired result should discourage players from just caching their cut-offs. And like you said, with the current upkeep system, it only makes sense to get a fuel cache early on, due to the manpower you'll be saving in the long-run.

All-in-all, the synergy of coh2's resource, pop-cap, and upkeep system just seems sloppy and unfinished...

btw, are you suggesting that cached points should be seize-able by your opponent? I don't know how much I'd like that, tbh.

Totally right. You can't decap OP'ed points, which turns my entir epoint moot. The upkeep system could still stand though.

I am not saying this can't be balanced, but instead of balancing a turtling playstyle, why not discourage it? there's a million ways of discouraging turtling tactics...

I think the intention was for players to "shape" the resource map at will and suit their strategies to their needs, buildings to their needs. I remember the very first criticism was: then I'll just build OP's near my base.

To be honest, I am notsure I like the new resource system. Sure, I've had frustrating moments in vCoH with that resource system, too, but usually it was because the opposing team knew the map better or utilized the environment to hold a valuable point better.

the mp income system is pretty retarded , from what ive red , each population piont from 25 to 75 reduces mp income by 4 , wtf is this , like all mid game units are of the same vallue and so they should inflict the same penalty ?? rubbish !!