Explaining manpower income and upkeep

Here's how it looks like
max pop cap = 100
0-25 pop cap = free upkeep
26-75 = 4 upkeep per pop cap
76-100 = free upkeep

so overall it's very unbalanced upkeep cost, i think that i something failed in this description because minimum possible income is 99 (non numbers increased by 4 will give you 201) but that's how it works

kk, thx, bye

It's awful IMO. It punishes a player for good squad preservation. A winning player can get +99 income while a losing player that is playing poorly and losing all his mens can get +250 to +300? That's quite ridiculous, and a cop-out version of a "comeback mechanic."

It's awful IMO. It punishes a player for good squad preservation. A winning player can get +99 income while a losing player that is playing poorly and losing all his mens can get +250 to +300? That's quite ridiculous, and a cop-out version of a "comeback mechanic."

Couple that with vet that is gained through damage dealt and taken, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Relic has to focus on glaring issues like this, rather than releasing balance overhauls before a meta-game has even evolved...

agreed its just a bad system , imo it has been implemented to even out the differences between good players (vcoh veterans ) and bad players (novices ) for the first few months, lets hope that as the majority of the playerbase gets better at the game poeple will want a fix . Just a suggestion for it will be supply yard upgrades , germans will upgrade them from hq much like the 2 sy uprades , while soviets will have them at each building and they will affect only the units produced by the building . their effectivenss will be a 30% reduction of upkeep . It should be coupled with an added mp bonus from sectors lets say 16mp for strat points and 8 for ammo/fuel points .

That's correct, I guess that because of rounding you end up at +99.

It's horrible to be sure. It's the most blatant and easiest to fix issue, yet Relic hasn't touched it yet...that makes me very very worried.

I guess to avoid the +1 syndrome (which should be incoming) I'll ask why we need any free upkeep at all. What's the point in having 0-25 or 0-15 (in vCoH) untaxed? In this case it's the behind player that's actually penalized.

The simplest way to fix this would be 0-25 and 75-100 are now taxed and Upkeep is 1 MP/Population. There's too much Manpower in the early game which is partly why there isn't an early game.

Can you say that again in English, Kolaris?

A player with 0 units whatsoever gets +300 Manpower. A player with 25 Population worth of units also gets +300 Manpower. Your first 25 Population points are "free", or untaxed by upkeep.

I've never understood it, since the general idea behind upkeep is to prevent snowballing, yet this mechanic actually harms a player that's behind very early on.

Let me just play devil's advocate here. How does it harm a player that's behind early on?

Thanks for info

Losing a squad very early on in the game doesn't give you the same reprieve in Upkeep that it would normally.

If you were to say "well if you lose a squad that early you deserve to be punished" I would completely agree with you, but for a system that's supposedly in place to help slow down the snowball effect it doesn't make much sense.

And even later in the game, having untaxed Population doesn't help the player that's behind. Let's take a CoH2 example - you're behind with a Population of 25 against your opponent with 50 Population. You're earning 300 Manpower and he's earning 200. But if those first 25 Population were taxed, you'd be earning 200 Manpower and he'd be earning 100. The second scenario is actually better for the behind player. It's completely unreasonable because of the massive CoH2 upkeep, but still better for the behind player.

Thank you for the detailed explanation! So what do you propose as a solution?

Can't Trollic make upkeep like in vCoH? and same thing for popcap?

It's awful IMO. It punishes a player for good squad preservation. A winning player can get +99 income while a losing player that is playing poorly and losing all his mens can get +250 to +300? That's quite ridiculous, and a cop-out version of a "comeback mechanic."

y heard somewhere that they used this mechanic to make more cumbacks in games but i don't know if it's true

Thank you for the detailed explanation! So what do you propose as a solution?

Well the bad news is Relic obviously feels there was an issue with the vCoH Pop Cap/Upkeep system since they aren't addressing this one. They must want games to be faster so they inject a ton of Manpower into the early game, and they want to close the skill gap between players so they add this rubber-banding upkeep system to encourage "comebacks", which are really just out-matched players staying alive far longer than they should.

It's so easy to adjust it to more reasonable values that I'm afraid this is exactly how Relic wants it to be.

Like I said above:

+300 Manpower Income
No untaxed population whatsoever
1 Pop = 1 MP/Min upkeep

This is essentially halfway between what we have now and vCoH levels.

Early game Manpower injection = halved
Maximum upkeep = halved

Well the bad news is Relic obviously feels there was an issue with the vCoH Pop Cap/Upkeep system since they aren't addressing this one. They must want games to be faster so they inject a ton of Manpower into the early game, and they want to close the skill gap between players so they add this rubber-banding upkeep system to encourage "comebacks", which are really just out-matched players staying alive far longer than they should.

That's not true. They are aware that the upkeep system is still flawed, however what worries me is that they might not have the same take on how to mend it.
Atm, the game is super frustrating, because no matter how large the disparity between to opposing teams, a game will last a minimum of 35-40min.

Well guess people shouldnt have complained about vp speed cause then the better player could still end it quick

Oh geez, so that is where the income drain is coming from? I've had the displeasure of seeing my manpower income drop to around 120 and couldn't understand why, as I was doing very well.

Hey guys. I agree with all of this, I just want to mention that now territory sectors don't give a manpower per minute boost like they used to in CoH1. I think they problem is there but I guess fixing that would be too big of a change for Relic and simply adjusting the values is a quicker potential fix.

I however strongly prefer playing with the sector values for 2 main reasons: (1) it rewards you for controlling the map and (2) makes cutting your opponent off all the more important/rewarding.

Picture it like this: You have a mid-sized army of let's say IDK, 60 population, so your upkeep leaves you at is 300-(60-25)*4=160 mp/minute. With the old system, you'd have more MP income because of the controlled sectors, which was I believe +3 MP per sector? Anyhow, you get the drift, the effect of your upkeep on MP income is lowered, leaving you with 200 MP/minute. Now you get cutoff and you fall to 160 MP/minute, now you actually have to reclaim your cutoff to be able to properly reinforce tech.

^This strategic aspect (which imo CoH partly revolved around) is now completely gone .

That's not true. They are aware that the upkeep system is still flawed, however what worries me is that they might not have the same take on how to mend it.
Atm, the game is super frustrating, because no matter how large the disparity between to opposing teams, a game will last a minimum of 35-40min.

Not sure what you mean by the minimum time for a game being 35-40 minutes. I've never had that issue if there is a skill disparity. Against a much worse player in 1v1, I'll have them pushed into their base and not allowed to take any VPs. It would take roughly 12 minutes to reduce their VPs to 0 if you hold all 3 points, so let's say 15 minutes being the minimum if you rush the VPs and hold them (gives time for construction/production). Even then, if a player has absolutely no chance, which is still the case in a game with a massive skill disparity despite upkeep, the losing player will likely surrender early.

The issue with upkeep is not separating the pros from the noobs. The issue is when player skill is relatively similar and any slight inbalance would have a great impact on the outcome.

There is one more problem that exists as well , since the current system evens out to a degree the skill difference between the players guess what makes a relatively larger impact on the outcome ? Thats right , the imbalance between the factions , what i basically mean is that the outcome of a match all things considered ( maps for example ) is decided by 2 things the better player and the better faction , if you make the skill difernce less important because you want to make comebacks frequent ( and thus mundane and not special at all which kinda defeats the purpose of having many of them in the 1st place ) the faction imbalance takes the upper hand . I do realise that in theory the two factions ought to be equally potent but i also realise that its relic we re talking about and faction balancing is not their strongest asset .

A good and easy way to address the upkeep subject might be (as suggested in other threads) to bring back sector based manpower income (+3 manpower per territory held in coh1). This will reward good play and unit preservation, since it will result in more capping power and therefore map dominance. It also alleviates the manpower income loss resulting from a higher population count due to unit preservation.

However, it might be too early to completely dismiss the new upkeep system. In 1v1 games if you are preserving your units and manage to inflict squad losses for the other team you'll still come out ahead if you balance your investment and don't over invest in lower tiers. I see it as a new strategical challenge to find the right balance between early game investment and being able to counter late tier units if my opponent, despite having lost most of the map, manages to field one. It adds another layer of strategy, which I welcome to some extend.