Blizzards don't add strategic depth

I completely disagree. Dying from Cold is not the only way to force players into decision making.

If cold penalties are harsh enough to weaken your combat capabilities, severely, then that will be incentive enough, simply because you will lose any engagements with the enemy, because of the cold. That is incentive enough.

Sure. Severe modifiers will give incentive. But not as much as death from cold!

Then use them and you wont have a problem with models dying.

You seem to constantly contradict your point, and defeat your own arguments.

Dying from freezing forces you to make interesting decisions regarding cold.

The more Im reading from you, the more i am convinced you have not been microing your units properly in anticipation of and during blizzards. Especially at the beginning of the match there is no excuse to have any of your models even suffering significant cold modifiers, let alone dying. Buildings are plentiful, fires are common, cover exists qbsolutely everywhere. Utilise them and transports to maintain mobility and infantry field worthiness during the duration of blizzards.

Hmmm? At what point did he say that keeping warm was hard? Anyone without finger arthritis and a competent brain is capable of micro'ing their guys out of the cold to prevent death. There are a few circumstances that the reduced sight penalty comes in to play like DanielD mentioned- being able to cap a point that the enemy doesn't have LoS on anymore, or like I said getting in closer distance to flank before you are noticed. But as far as the "freezing" penalties go it is a black and white decision making process. If they can make it to destination without dying then go for it, if squad gets critically cold and is not near a fire/house then retreat.

Sure. Severe modifiers will give incentive. But not as much as death from cold!

Its not about what gives more incentive. There are thresholds and limits. Otherwise not only is the flow of the game ruined, but it also becomes frustrating or counterintuitive.

Like Basilone and Tycho have stated, right now, the decision making process is black and white. I would rather conserve my men alive, and retake the position once they are warm/blizzard is gone, rather than risk it and ni the majority of scenarios, that's the sane thing to do.

It costs more resources and time, on average, to reinforce men you've lost without dealing any damage at all, than it is to wait and recover lost territory later on.

Yes. If there is no fire, building, cover, transport or blizzard will not end in time.

Thats 5 mitigating and enabling circumstances along which you must decide whether to make the maneuver.

Seems plenty to me, especially as you essentially only need one of them to be present, at worst, and will have more present at best.

Incidentally Soviets have the advantage in this regard with Oorah, cheap clown car and deploying sandbags for cover.

@Combamuffin specifically:
Im not the one who argued on incentives, it was Tycho.
You may want to address your "its not about incentives" section to him per his previous post.

Yes. If there is no fire, building, cover, transport or blizzard will not end in time.

Thats 5 mitigating and enabling circumstances along which you must decide whether to make the maneuver.

Vehicle is the only option, the other are just common sense solutions and there is no decision making process in that because all give the same outcome, you just go to whichever is nearest.

i like the death from the cold, but maybe there is some middle ground, I.E. it takes much much longer to die, 300% longer or something, but at certain intervals your troops become weaker, so prolonged exposure will kill you off slowly, and untill then your troops are less and less effective?


oh and sidenot, get rid of the death on retreat it is just nonsensical if i am running for my life i am building up heat in my body, adrenaline pumping at thought of safety you are unlikely to die whilst on the home run.

Vehicle is the only option, the other are just common sense solutions and there is no decision making process in that because all give the same outcome, you just go to whichever is nearest.

Why would you go to cover if 5 steps away there is a fireplace, even if the cover is nearer?
All of those mitigating elements I listed above have different attributes, they dont give the "same outcome" at all.

I dont see how removing death from cold would result in anything except people overextending themselves in the cold anyways, leading to crippling modifiers which make them useless anyways.

Essentially it would lead to people going wherever they want during a blizzard, regardless of cold, to cap whatever they want. Only enemy presence at that point would prevent that actions success, due to your unit being turgidly frozen and theirs being nice and fresh by a fire and mow you down the second you approach. But you woukdnt even have to reach them. Instead you can just stand in the middle of nowhere in a winter wilderness with a unit doing nothing except wqiting for blizzard to end and them to warm up. In either case, the unit is useless.

If instead you had deployed it to consolidate your own lines or with a vehicle for deliberate action during blizzards, your unit would be "doing" something. And again, in either of those cases, death by cold is not a problem.

As Ive stated earlier, currently you can move infantry roughly one sector over in a blizzard without suffering attrition and only slight cold. I find this to be sufficient mobility coincident with cold tech.

2 caveats however:
-Retreat death by cold is counterintuitive to the game mechanic of retreat. Should be removed.
-Veterancy should add increased cold resistance.

I'll give this one more try:

Nullist, cold doesn't really matter right now. Nobody ever needs to really lose units to the cold. It's very easy to keep them warm. The decision procedure in terms of "do I let my men freeze to death" is basically "no." That's not an interesting decision.

I guess you disagree - this means you sometimes lose units when they freeze to death, right? I think you're just bad at the game or making very bad decisions. It rarely, if ever, makes sense to let a unit die from the cold in a blizzard. If you make decisions that let your men die from the cold, you're probably making obviously incorrect decisions.

That's what we want to change. Getting rid of dying in cold would make it sensible to let your units freeze. It would also allow Relic to remove sources of heat/protection from the cold (they could make it so that cover doesn't stop heat loss for instance). This would make it harder to avoid the cold (right now it's super easy to keep anyone from freezing to death) and it would make it more sensible to sometimes allow your units to freeze (right now the penalty is too high to make freezing ever worth it).

oh and sidenot, get rid of the death on retreat it is just nonsensical if i am running for my life i am building up heat in my body, adrenaline pumping at thought of safety you are unlikely to die whilst on the home run.

You will actually die a lot faster. The heat generated by your body will not be enough to warm you up, you will be wasting precious energy that can be used to focus on survival and, the best part: you will sweat. Sweat will freeze, and you will actually get colder and die faster.

As for Nullist's comment, I still disagree, and this time, because you simply are not seeing the tactical possibilities.

A unit wouldn't get negative modifiers so that it is useless. Like I said, there are thresholds. But if you reduce their combat effectiveness by a good 15-25%, then it is harsh enough so that fighting against an optimal unit will most likely have you losing. There's still criticals, there's still combnied arms, and there's still positioning and cover.

Evne if a unit was hampered by freezing temperatures, you can still use it: it can scout. It can cap. It can occupy a building, so that the enemy doesn't use it against your other troops (regardless if it heats you or not), you can recrew weapons that will help your push, heal other ostheer units or merge conscripts. You can still use special abilities: such as molotovs and At grenades, which get no penalties.

So no. They are not standing around being useless unless you can't figure what to do with them. They are temporarily weakened, but in the right circumstances, still very useful.

Besides, in the latest build, you can build bonfires during blizzards, making Tycho's point even stronger: there is no excuse for a player to lose men to the cold, its not really a useful mechanic.

From your perspectives, you want to be able to use infantry in blizzards without risk of death from cold. Yet you have agreed that there are more than enough warmth sources to prevent death. This is in and of itself contradictory, since you agree that nobody should be losing models to cold both for the ease of warmth from a micro perspective, and because it is not economically viable to so so. Ergo: Death from cold is not a problem, in and of itself, in the current system, since it is easily mitigated and economically it is a "direct" choice that maneuvering so that you cause them to die is an economic failure.

This leads to the question, why so you want death from cold removed?

The only logical conclusion is because you want to be able to continue moving infantry in blizzards with impunity, regardless of cold, without the economic and tactical penalty of losing models.

You support this, by stating that being able to move them without dying in cold would open more strategic options. Yet simultaneously you agree there are sufficient mitigations existing to prevent dying from cold. Ignoring the internal contradiction there for the moment, your second supporting argument is that removing death would make it a viable choice to deliberately freeze units for some purpose, thereby making freezing a sustainable limitation on a unit as weighed against what you try to achieve with the now significantly impaired unit.

Is that correct?

You perceive that the hard limit on infantry action from dying from exposure limits strategic use of the unit. I can agree on this point. It does limit it. You perceive that this limitation reduces strategy because it limits options, and again, that is indeed objectively true and I agree. We both agree though that there are sufficient warmth options to mitigate this currently, and that except in extreme circumstances, it is better to conserve the unit near warmth than lose models on an action that gives some other advantage.

But where we disagree is that:
-You think the dying limits strategic choices during blizzards
-I think the dying forces forces alternative strategic choices suring blizzards.

Its a cup half full/half empty dilemma.

You say that dying from cold "doesnt matter", but at the same time you want it removed.
I say that dying from cold DOES matter, and that is exacly why it does not need removing.

Removing it would only result in overextended infantry action during the blizzard, because there is no longer a hard limit to what you can and cannot do during blizzards. It is exactly this limitation which forces alternwtive strategies during blizzards. Removing the death would reduce the impetus for having to utilise alternative blizzqrd specific tactics.

Im struck that maybe at the root here is a desire that CoH2 was more like vCoH and people are struggling to adapt to the blizzards effects on the flow of the game. They want to be able to largely continue playing during blizzards with as little actuakneffect on the usual vanilla flow of the game as possible. This is understansable, but if you alternatively considered the blizzard periods as a sort of minigame, a temporary shift in the games mechanics which allows for alternstive strategies from the vanilla state, for the duration, you would see the cup as half full, and instead focus on developing strategies to use the blizzard period to its fullest, rather than trying to play through it as younwould the through the vanilla phases of the game.

I really like the idea that instead of dying the squad gets some hard accuracy, slower movment, lesser damage output maybe. So during a blizzard if you don't make sure to keep your dudes warm they will end up, not dead, but very combat ineffective.

I will not just reapet what you guys have said, I'll just say that I agree that cold right now is not a problem if you have decent apm. And the decision making is quite straight forward. 15 sec left for blizzard? make sure all your squads are in cover (which isn't bad even if there is no blizzard^^) Or you can play agressive during the blizzard and just calculate the time they will spend in the cold, how many men you will approximately lose and just make sure that is it worth it.

Cold units already do receive negative modifiers other than death, but I havent seen specific figures of what they are anywhere.

You are not understanding at all, to the point that you are overanalyzing it.

Death from cold does matter, but anyone with decent apm, and I mean extremely decent, will almost never see it. Because if he doesn't find one of the several ways to counteract cold, he can simply retreat the unit. Units will die, now and again, in a moment of carelessness perhaps, but it will be so rare that having the mechanic there is downright pointless.

Now yes, having death from cold obviously affects the game, and the thinking approach, but it is so straightforward: I heat or I start dying, that it is not even binary. It is singular: I heat, period. If that means you need to stop and build a fire, you do it. If that means I stop in cover, too.

It is not opening up strategic options, it is only opening risky options with little to no reward. You heat. If you attack, no matter what you do, you must heat. If you perform an elaborate flank, you need to heat. Period. If you don't, you die.

Halftracks don't matter at all: your elaborate halftrack pushes are done by the 10-12 minute mark, when AT starts rolling up in medium quantities.

The only real thing death from cold can do for me, is allow me to kill troops to reduce my horrible upkeep. But I'd rather send them to the enemy to kill.

From your perspectives, you want to be able to use infantry in blizzards without risk of death from cold. Yet you have agreed that there are more than enough warmth sources to prevent death. This is in and of itself contradictory, since you agree that nobody should be losing models to cold both for the ease of warmth from a micro perspective, and because it is not economically viable to so so. Ergo: Death from cold is not a problem, in and of itself, in the current system, since it is easily mitigated and economically it is a "direct" choice that maneuvering so that you cause them to die is an economic failure.

Correct. 100%.

This leads to the question, why so you want death from cold removed?

The only logical conclusion is because you want to be able to continue moving infantry in blizzards with impunity, regardless of cold, without the economic and tactical penalty of losing models.

No, I can still move in blizzards with impunity. Have you ever played this game? It's almost impossible to let someone freeze to death unless you try. If you APM is halfway decent you can get them to a fire or a building or cover before they die. What I want is for me to have a reason not to keep them from freezing.

You support this, by stating that being able to move them without dying in cold would open more strategic options. Yet simultaneously you agree there are sufficient mitigations existing to prevent dying from cold. Ignoring the internal contradiction there for the moment,

There is no contradiction. I'm saying that dying is so bad that I always make the "do not let them die" choice.

your second supporting argument is that removing death would make it a viable choice to deliberately freeze units for some purpose, thereby making freezing a sustainable limitation on a unit as weighed against what you try to achieve with the now significantly impaired unit.

Is that correct?

Yes, I think that's what I'm saying, assuming I understand you correctly.

You perceive that the hard limit on infantry action from dying from exposure limits strategic use of the unit. I can agree on this point. It does limit it. You perceive that this limitation reduces strategy because it limits options, and again, that is indeed objectively true and I agree. We both agree though that there are sufficient warmth options to mitigate this currently, and that except in extreme circumstances, it is better to conserve the unit near warmth than lose models on an action that gives some other advantage.

Right.

But where we disagree is that:
-You think the dying limits strategic choices during blizzards
-I think the dying forces forces alternative strategic choices suring blizzards.

Its a cup half full/half empty dilemma.

You say that dying from cold "doesnt matter", but at the same time you want it removed.
I say that dying from cold DOES matter, and that is exacly why it does not need removing.

Why do you think it matters? Do you lose units to the cold? If you do, you're bad at the game. I'm sorry. That's how it is. You're making the wrong choices. Don't let anyone die in the cold. It's dumb. Put them into cover before the skull shows up on the thermometer. That's a better choice 99% of the time. Even better, micro them to the nearest fire. There's usually one close by. If you disagree with this you're probably wrong. Dying in the cold is a very bad tactic.

Removing it would only result in overextended infantry action during the blizzard, because there is no longer a hard limit to what you can and cannot do during blizzards. It is exactly this limitation which forces alternwtive strategies during blizzards. Removing the death would reduce the impetus for having to utilise alternative blizzqrd specific tactics.

Infantry would get overextended, yes, but they would pay for it with cold penalties. Right now you cannot make a strategic choice to overextend in a blizzard. It's just stupid. You'll lose too much manpower and your squad won't accomplish anything because it's half frozen.

Im struck that maybe at the root here is a desire that CoH2 was more like vCoH and people are struggling to adapt to the blizzards effects on the flow of the game. They want to be able to largely continue playing during blizzards with as little actuakneffect on the usual vanilla flow of the game as possible.

Incorrect. I want the blizzard to force interesting choices. You have forgotten all the stuff you typed in the earlier part of your post about how easy it is to not freeze to death. If you keep that in mind, you'll realize that right now, blizzards in CoH 2 barely change anything. They lower site range and impose a tiny APM tax on people. But they never lead to anyone freezing to death. Because if your units freeze to death, you've made a mistake, not an interesting choice.

This is understansable, but if you alternatively considered the blizzard periods as a sort of minigame, a temporary shift in the games mechanics which allows for alternstive strategies from the vanilla state, for the duration, you would see the cup as half full, and instead focus on developing strategies to use the blizzard period to its fullest, rather than trying to play through it as younwould the through the vanilla phases of the game.

Dying in the cold doesn't lead to alternative strategies. Putting units in a halftrack is not an alternative strategy that death enables because the slower movement speed and other penalties the blizzard brings can still make halftracks useful, and there's almost nowhere on a map you can get to in a halftrack that you can't get to without a halftrack because it's so easy not to die from the cold if you're halfway decent at the game.

Let me give you two simple questions: how often do your units freeze to death? How often do you radically alter your strategy to avoid freezing to death?

My answers are "never" and "never, because it's so easy to keep them from dying." What are your answers?

Cold units already do receive negative modifiers other than death, but I havent seen specific figures of what they are anywhere.

Ah cool! I did not know that

What I want is for me to have a reason not to keep them from freezing.

You have a reason to keep them from freezing.

Its called not dying from freezing.

Thats a pretty severe, obvious and concrete reason to keep them from freezing, if you ask me!

Which, ironically and contradictorily, is exactly the reason you want to remove.

As for a reason NOT to keep them from freezing, that is up to you.

Reasons are multitude. Maintaining your territory, repairing, consolidating forces, moving units to warmth in sectors in anticipation of post-blizzard pushes or defense.

If you, however, feel you have a reason to suicide your troops, and pay the economic cost for that, for whichever reason, then go ahead and sacrifice models if that is your inclination.

Id argue that is a pretty stupid decision, due to the economic cost, but if you want to lose models, go ahead.
There are plenty of reasons NOT to keep them from freezing. All of them strategic, tactical and ultimately economical as well, as long as you dont allow them to die (which is the limitation you are proposing to remove).

What improvement would removing death from cold provide?
Capacity to overextend infantry that is anyways combat incapable due to cold modifiers?
No benefit and no strategic use.
Capacity to leave units stranded in the middle of snow, completely combat incapable duemto cold modifiers?
No benefit or strategic use.

You asked me two questions, which I answered below.
Kindly reciprocate an answer to my single following question:

What concrete improvement to the game would removing death from cold provide?

Let me give you two simple questions: how often do your units freeze to death? How often do you radically alter your strategy to avoid freezing to death?

My answers are "never" and "never, because it's so easy to keep them from dying." What are your answers?

1) Never, unless I am forced into a last ditch situation where the sacrifice is necessary for winning.
2) I almost always radically alter my strategy to keep units from freezing, because, as we have already agreed, as also in my statement above, only in extreme circumstances is the economic cost worthwhile. In all other cases, I always formulate my strategy to avoid freezing, specifically, and directly, to avoid that economic cost.

Sorry, double post.

You have a reason to keep them from freezing.

Its called not dying from freezing.

Okay, but that's not what I asked for. I asked for the opposite. Here is the quote:

What I want is for me to have a reason not to keep them from freezing.

See the "not" in italics?

Thats a pretty severe, obvious and concrete reason to keep them from freezing, if you ask me!

Which, ironically and contradictorily, is exactly the reason you want to remove.

I want to replace it with a bevy of non-lethal reasons.

As for a reason NOT to keep them from freezing, that is up to you.

Reasons are multitude. Maintaining your territory, repairing, consolidating forces, moving units to warmth in sectors in anticipation of post-blizzard pushes or defense.

You can do literally all of these without freezing, and it is trivially easy to do so. In other words, none of these are reasons not to keep my units from freezing because I can do all of these without freezing.

If you, however, feel you have a reason to suicide your troops, and pay the economic cost for that, for whichever reason, then go ahead and sacrifice models if that is your inclination.

Sure, but that's basically never the right choice, so this isn't an interesting strategic tradeoff.

Id argue that is a pretty stupid decision, due to the economic cost, but if you want to lose models, go ahead.
There are plenty of reasons NOT to keep them from freezing. All of them strategic, tactical and ultimately economical as well, as long as you dont allow them to die (which is the limitation you are proposing to remove).

Sorry, I guess I was being unclear. By "freezing" I meant freezing to death. Obviously there are plenty of reasons to let them get cold but not to die. What we're talking about is whether death adds anything to the equation, though, so when I'm talking about freezing I'm of course talking about freezing to death. I have no problems with the other aspects of blizzards as currently implemented.

What improvement would removing death from cold provide?
Capacity to overextend infantry that is anyways combat incapable due to cold modifiers?
No benefit and no strategic use.

They are not "combat incapable" in the same way that death makes them combat incapable. They are at least useful enough to sometimes make it worth your while to have them fight. Removing death lets you make this choice, sometimes. Right now, with death, it's a dumb choice.

Capacity to leave units stranded in the middle of snow, completely combat incapable duemto cold modifiers?
No benefit or strategic use.

Dude they are so not "completely combat incapable." In fact they can cloak in the snow.

You asked me two questions, which I answered below.
Kindly reciprocate an answer to my single following question:

What concrete improvement to the game would removing death from cold provide?

It would allow players to use frozen units strategically and force them to make the decision as to whether to use frozen units or pay the micro tax to warm them up. This cannot happen in the current game because frozen units die, at which point they are no longer useful.

1) Never, unless I am forced into a last ditch situation where the sacrifice is necessary for winning.
2) I almost always radically alter my strategy to keep units from freezing, because, as we have already agreed, as also in my statement above, only in extreme circumstances is the economic cost worthwhile. In all other cases, I always formulate my strategy to avoid freezing, specifically, and directly, to avoid that economic cost.

Okay, this is an interesting answer, because you're altering your strategy to keep from losing units to the cold. I suspect most players don't alter their strategy. They just right click near a fire or into cover or into a building before anyone freezes to death. I think you're overreacting to the cold. You're so scared of dying that you're making strategically ridiculous decisions. Players with a modicum of micro and good sense are not scared of the cold and they do not radically alter their strategy. Right now you're making silly tradeoffs. Once you realize this and stop making those tradeoffs, you will agree with me and others in this thread that dying from the cold doesn't add much to the game.

Its stupid. If you have a decent apm, there is no sacrifice to be made, unless you messed up and somehow got your units frozen in the first place. The only specific scenario where units freeze fast enough for such a "glorious sacrifice" is during a blizzard, and you about to lose because of VP's.

In the middle of a game? Losing a man, such as a guardsman, to drop a valuable heavy weapon to the enemy? Not worth it. Ever.

This discussion has dissolved into a he said she said argument. A matter of opinions. So I for one am out of this specific argument, because both points have been made.

This discussion has dissolved into a he said she said argument. A matter of opinions. So I for one am out of this specific argument, because both points have been made.

I definitely encourage other people to chime in to say which of the two positions they find more convincing, or whether they have a third take on the issue.