Ostruppen

I actually own and use the Ostruppen commander quite regularly, simply for the challenge and the lulz. I've noticed a few things about my beloved bullet sponges.

1: With the Officer and his buff Ostruppen can provide an extremely nasty surprise to an allied player who has become used to their generally weak performance. I've regularly wiped allied blobs from a stationary position while the officer's buff was active.

2: 200mp is not an overpriced initial cost for what they are, however, the reinforce cost is absurdly overpriced. Reduce them back down to 10 for reinforce, and keep the initial cost of 200. They die FAST, it should be easy to replace them once you've requisitioned them, while the higher initial cost is balanced since it reflects their normalized capture speed and helps prevent mass blobs too early.

3: The panzerfaust needs to come at vet 1 or battle phase 1; not the tier 1 building. I've found they do decent work as a stall unit in order to fast tech the Mechanized Kompanie (tier 2), at which point a squad or two of pgrens with shrecks can hide out in their blob while supported with a fast scout car/fht, but in doing this, not having the faust only reinforces the general uselessness and failure to scale into late game they currently suffer from.

Overall, I think they are better than most think if given a vastly cheaper reinforce cost. A price reduction or a stat buff will probably cause problems that aren't apparent since no one really uses them. I'm telling you, that officer's buff makes them nasty as fuck while it's up and a blob of em supported by a scout car and/or a squad or two of pgrens hiding in their ranks can make them really hard to remove from objectives in the earlier critical stages.

In short, reduce their reinforce costs as it's too high and they make you bleed manpower at the current cost to reinforce, but keep the 200mp initial cost to reflect their buffed capture rate and to prevent early spam. Then give them a way to get their panzerfausts without having to build the T1 building as they fit well in a "skip t1" strategy from my experience so they have some sort of scaling. An mp40 upgrade, or other weapon options, wouldn't be a terrible idea either, especially since the doctrine does not provide a call-in vehicle and the fuel to muni float would have an extra use in purchasing weapon upgrades.

As for the Mobile Defense Doctrine call in most of what I've already said applies here as well and I agree with everyone here that they need to be less random and come a little earlier (1cp or 2 cp). Perhaps guarantee both units always come the upgraded weapon, keeping the vet random; considering the officer is not available with this doctrine they lose a lot of potential and can afford more direct buffs in the way of free vet and free upgrades. Beyond that, apply my other above suggestions, such as the easier to obtain pfaust and the vastly reduced reinforce cost and I think they would perform well enough for what they are.

I can see that doctrine and unit filling a great support role such as building fortifications, temporarily holding points, being annoying, etc.

My friend I were using a very ostruppen-centric strat last week. It basically boils down to using the ostruppen in heavy cover and a forward battlegroup headquarters to make a hardpoint that is nigh unbreachable early game. 3-4 ostruppen squads supported by an officer and 1-2 mg42s make a very defensive position.

My ally, on the other hand would use the enemies' focus on defeating the ostruppen to flank around and generally harass the enemies' other resource points, and we would generally win the early game quite handily, with at least 1 fuel point permanent andd 1 fuel point off-and-on.

The glory of the ostruppen are that they are great vehicle snaress, they have a panzerfaust that has great penetration, as well as a 6 man squad, allowing them to survive more punishment than gren squads. 3 ostruppens, 2 mgs or bunkers, and a pair of paks can handily crush any allied offensive. Late game, I never teched up past t2, and I convert all my fuel to munition, giving my team access to nonstop railway artillery t force retreats. All in all, I believe that ostruppen are very effective as they are now when well used (never attack with them) and that their doctrine comes with very useful abilities.

I wouldn't make them cheaper. When they were so cheap people used to abuse that fact to recrew support weapons. Since the Osttruppen penalties do not carry over, that meant you had normal support weapons at part of it's popcap / reinforce cost. AFAIK making them more expensive was done to prevent them to be used in such a role, as it was against the desired role.

There is a ton more I'd love to say but NDA -.-

Make their cover accuracy modifier into their default accuracy.

That alone would go a long way to the squads usability and would possibly fix the squad.

Then we would only need to fix irregulars and AI partisans.

I liked when they were 120mp.
Now that was a good spam unit than.

My face when I faced over 10 ostruppen squads

Show Spoiler

There is a ton more I'd love to say but NDA -.-

I dont get relic's NDA for beta testing, really, I heard starcraft has open betas and anyone can see changelogs before they are released, that gives people some perspective, and everyone can see the hard work of beta testers or the testing department.

All this secrecy tends to make people think that nothing is beign done.

I wouldn't make them cheaper. When they were so cheap people used to abuse that fact to recrew support weapons. Since the Osttruppen penalties do not carry over, that meant you had normal support weapons at part of it's popcap / reinforce cost. AFAIK making them more expensive was done to prevent them to be used in such a role, as it was against the desired role.

There is a ton more I'd love to say but NDA -.-

I wouldn't make em cheaper either. They have improved/normal cap speed, so they are worth 200mp alone for capping early, however, their reinforce cost could be reduced to 10 since they are pretty much shit and die in droves. 200MP initial cost prevent/slows spam, while 10mp reinforce allows them to be used as the sacrificial unit they are meant to be without bleeding the owner as much.

I never really had a huge problem with using Osttruppen in team matches. They stand decently tough with their 6 man squads and they reinforce at low price (17) with great speed. With proper frontline reinforcement they are perfect cannon fodder.

Though I would agree with everyone that they are definitely weak against any infantry, their job is not focused on dealing damage. They are perfect for standing in front of weapon crews and soak in damage while the weapon crews do their job.

I dont get relic's NDA for beta testing, really, I heard starcraft has open betas and anyone can see changelogs before they are released, that gives people some perspective, and everyone can see the hard work of beta testers or the testing department.

All this secrecy tends to make people think that nothing is beign done.

Eh, patch notes for CoH2 on test server and actual train schedule in my home country are two most heavily government hidden secrets.

Wikileaks is your best bet, but I doubt even them have access to any of the above mentioned.

More like ostpoopen

Eh, patch notes for CoH2 on test server and actual train schedule in my home country are two most heavily government hidden secrets.

Wikileaks is your best bet, but I doubt even them have access to any of the above mentioned.

Hahaha exactly !

theres just nothing that ostruppen do better than grenadiers. I'd rather have 2 gren squads rather than 2 or even 3 ostruppen squads.

In addition to a slight buff or price decrease, I'd like to see the Panzerfaust ability cut free of T1. Osttruppen aren't even useful as part of an experimental T2 fast-tech strategy because of the Panzerfaust being disabled without T1.

if p2 was cheaper it could be tied to that. i don't know why it's tied to t1, that's where grens come from (not a stork) and the only time you'll ever have grens without a faust is if your t1 get's destroyed in your base.

i think p2's cost should come down anyway (stacked onto p3 if needed) in order to allow the AC and paks to be available sooner.

So are Ostruppen now viable?

So are Ostruppen now viable?

I think they are very good now. Far better than I could have hoped for as a player who enjoys screwing around with them far too much for my own good. Personally, I think they were fine with only a minor reinforce cost reduction having been required. But they are genuine early game infantry now. But perhaps I got so used to using them when they were considered weak that I'm thinking they are better than they are with the serious buffs they received.

For me never use Ostruppen. Because I know it is a big waste of manpower. Shocktroops come out at 2CP,and that commander gives us 2 weak RNG units at 3CP?? Never use Ostruppen.

Ostruppen are map-dependent (much better on open maps with decent cover) but definitely more viable now against USF. Against soviets they don't seem all that great.

Mobile defense doctrine now seems pretty good vs USF, allowing you to make a strong defense and then rapidly cap out the map when the Ostruppen arrive to help you catch up in mainline infantry numbers.

The lmg Ostruppen in particular seem extremely powerful, with mine racking up 28 kills last game on Langreskaya vs riflemen.

As mobile defence basically allows you to skip T3, the buff to Wehr T4 also helps make the doctrine more appealing against USF. A panther can do serious work to US tanks, while brummbars can help deal with late-game blobs and allow you to push back map control.