Ostheer: What is to be done?

At this stage, its no secret to anyone that Ostheer is no longer a competitively viable faction. This extends both to the OH vs US and the OH vs Soviet matchup. The one silver lining remains the (wildly OP) Stug E of Mech Ass. that allows OH to trade cost effectively at 6 cp. Question being, how can this be remedied? Individual unit buffs? Rework of the tech structure? Bit of both? Any suggestions welcome.

My plan is to spam Stug E till next patch

Reduce costs to get to T4, increase costs of teching for USF and OKW.

Units themselves are mostly fine, but relic slowed down teching for vanila armies for a reason and that reason certainly wasn't so we could get new armies with ultra fast teching.

Old armies need to invest a hefty amount of time, menpower and fuel on their teching, new armies do not even notice any strain on the resources when teching not to mention the time saved because of no need to retreat builder unit and use it to get the tier building up and runnig. That is the problem here.

-Working MGs
-Removed manpower cost from buildings OR tech, it's not acceptable that ost is the only faction that has to pay twice the MP for tech.
-Fuel cost of t4 tech reduced sightly.

- grenade abilities should be disabled/range reduced while squads are suppressed

- teching should be reworked: less manpower and fuel costs for battlephases but higher fuel for buildings (easier to skip tiers / less MP drain)

- maybe adding a fifth man to Grens and decreasing Kar98 damage so that squad DPS doesn't get increased (basically a health buff for Grens)

-Working MGs

I love it when people say that MGs don't work - whenever I use them they're generally fine with only occasional mishaps. I find it funny that people think the MG-42 should be able to single-handed stop 4 times it's own MP cost worth of enemies. MG-34, MG-42 and the M2HB .50 all work fine for me.

Only MG that sucks right now is the Maxim, IMO. One-shotted by LMG Grens with a rifle nade, and basically extinct vs OKW Stuka zu Fuss.

It would be good if Wehr's teching system was like Soviet. Like you could go from tier 2 to either T3 or T4. It just takes too much time, fuel and mp to get anything from T4 atm.

Pgrens are not worth their price.

Also panzerwerfer needs some changes, it's just too broken and unreliable that you barely see it in the game.

It would be good if Wehr's teching system was like Soviet. Like you could go from tier 2 to either T3 or T4. It just takes too much time, fuel and mp to get anything from T4 atm.

Also panzerwerfer needs some changes, it's just too broken and unreliable that you barely see it in the game.

Soviet T3 and T4 is called like that just to know which units we talk about.
When it comes to effective strength, both are T3 and soviets have no real T4 like OKW or ost.
Thats why they can choose on or the other.
Ost T4 got obvious power advantage over T3 therefore it makes no sense why you would get it for comparable to T3 cost.

Only MG that sucks right now is the Maxim, IMO. One-shotted by LMG Grens with a rifle nade, and basically extinct vs OKW Stuka zu Fuss.

And I find the maxim to be the only one function still obers come out, rifle nades do counter it, but they are also dodgeable with enough care.

But an MG? With the sheer size and numbers MGs do nothing, even if it's well positioned USF can smoke > rush it, even in a straight line, and sov... well sov early game is quite tard friendly honestly, you can literally hoorah! up and MG and molotov it, and with how the meta goes now you'll never have more grens/MGs than Cons, so if it doesn't receive a supression or damage buff at mid range it will still be largely useless early game.

I love it when people say that MGs don't work - whenever I use them they're generally fine with only occasional mishaps. I find it funny that people think the MG-42 should be able to single-handed stop 4 times it's own MP cost worth of enemies. MG-34, MG-42 and the M2HB .50 all work fine for me.

Only MG that sucks right now is the Maxim, IMO. One-shotted by LMG Grens with a rifle nade, and basically extinct vs OKW Stuka zu Fuss.

mg34 works fine and Maxim sucks?!!!! that's quite a saying bro! not often it gets one-shotted by a rifle nade (grens don't have to have LMG to throw rifle nade btw!!!) and all mgs can go down vs stuka's barrage it's not only Maxim.

mg34 works fine and Maxim sucks?!!!! that's quite a saying bro! not often it gets one-shotted by a rifle nade (grens don't have to have LMG to throw rifle nade btw!!!) and all mgs can go down vs stuka's barrage it's not only Maxim.

MG34 costs 210 MP, cheapest suppression platform in the game, and super replaceable.

More often than not Maxim crews will bunch up retardedly due to crappy squad pathing, so getting at least a near-fatal rifle nade is not difficult. I say LMG grens because the LMG makes finishing off a rifle-naded Maxim crew easy.

Stuka zu Fuss hard-counters Soviet T2.

Soviet T3 and T4 is called like that just to know which units we talk about.
When it comes to effective strength, both are T3 and soviets have no real T4 like OKW or ost.
Thats why they can choose on or the other.
Ost T4 got obvious power advantage over T3 therefore it makes no sense why you would get it for comparable to T3 cost.

That's true. But I mean if they could somehow make it more like soviet, and divide units into two tiers like that you could choose to go one depending on ur adaptation to the game. Like I said, it just takes so much time, fuel and mp in comparison with other factions to get to tier 4

and everything will go down vs stuka's barrage it's not only Maxim.

Fixed that for you.


On topic. Make grens a T0 unit and move PGrens to T1. Reduce the reinforce cost for Grens to 25.


OST is only hopeless in 1vs1, specially against penal/con spam and that's it. My suggestion will solve that disadvantage.

Reduce costs to get to T4, increase costs of teching for USF and OKW.

Units themselves are mostly fine, but relic slowed down teching for vanila armies for a reason and that reason certainly wasn't so we could get new armies with ultra fast teching.

Old armies need to invest a hefty amount of time, menpower and fuel on their teching, new armies do not even notice any strain on the resources when teching not to mention the time saved because of no need to retreat builder unit and use it to get the tier building up and runnig. That is the problem here.

Well put, I think synchronizing teching speed might be the first solution here.

1.Teching costs adjustment -manpower reduction.
2.mg42 - cruzz kappatch formation with gunner in back,(for all mgs)gren range reduced for suppressed squads(for all mgs),remove 25% recieved accuracy penalty(for all mgs save maxim spammer).15% better traverse so it can actually use that arc.
3.More survivable armored car that can actually compete with enemy light vehicles and give some mobility to this static faction,price increase along with it.
4.Panzerwerfer buff,lefh buff.
5.panzergrenadier back to .80 recieved accuracy instead of current .87 which it was before inexplicapable renerf.

MG34 costs 210 MP, cheapest suppression platform in the game, and super replaceable.

More often than not Maxim crews will bunch up retardedly due to crappy squad pathing, so getting at least a near-fatal rifle nade is not difficult. I say LMG grens because the LMG makes finishing off a rifle-naded Maxim crew easy.

Stuka zu Fuss hard-counters Soviet T2.

Mg34 is 30 mp cheaper but it hardly suppresses anything. and btw Mg34 is a different weapon to Maxim and you use them differently.

Maxim is prob my fav mg in the game, it has a great suppression and sets up so quickly and has a very good damage.

Stuka counters Soviet T2 sometimes depends on the game but Tier 4 with obers counters it better, IMO. Stuka has 90 s recharge time. and it delays your teching eventually to T4 a lot, which can be a big deal in many games.

Mg34 is 30 mp cheaper but it hardly suppresses anything.

I stopped reading there.

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I love it when people say that MGs don't work - whenever I use them they're generally fine with only occasional mishaps. I find it funny that people think the MG-42 should be able to single-handed stop 4 times it's own MP cost worth of enemies. MG-34, MG-42 and the M2HB .50 all work fine for me.

Only MG that sucks right now is the Maxim, IMO. One-shotted by LMG Grens with a rifle nade, and basically extinct vs OKW Stuka zu Fuss.

I think the Maxim is great for Soviets due to its 6 men squad and instant suppression kicking in with the first burst. I always laugh when maxim spamming because Ostheer have to retreat immediately or really have to have an overwhelming force. Smart players will find better solutions anyway, but suppression wise it seems more effective.

The MG42 is actually only good with vet and vs USF it is in fact useless due to the riflemen's smoke grenades. No idea what Relic's designers where smoking when they decided to give such an early game inf unit this magic "anti mg button" right from start. USF has free reign vs. Ostheer because of this and it also encourages the blobbing mechanic of USF.

My humble opinion what needs to be improved to make Ostheer viable again:

- slightly increase suppression of MG42 or decrease USF / Soviet grenade throwing range when under mg fire
- buff Scout Car slighty by increasing either its armour or damage output but also increase its price in return
- slightly reduce price for Pzgrens
- reduce tech costs for Ostheer or increase tech costs for all other factions
- buff Panzerwerfer because compared to Katyusha or Stuka this thing is a fucking joke, having in mind its teching and unit cost


And last but not least - and this applies to most Soviet commanders, too:

- rework their old doctrines: leFH, Relief Infantry, Camouflage and some other abilities are under-performing or too expensive to use / build and there are too many overlapping commanders anyway

Generally speaking I find Ostheer to be most fun to play with. Combined arms are more thrilling to use and on paper the units and abilities all seem cool. I do not see any overpowered Ostheer unit and Relic should really try to bring all other factions closer to Ostheer units' performance.

I stopped reading there.

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Well, I didn't even mention that Maxim is 6-men squad, and mg34 is 4-men squad, so good on ya to stop there.

-Buff to Ostheer indirect fire, currently all Ostheer has that can compete with Soviets is the Mortar and Mortar HT which even fall off in usefulness late in the game when the caliber of artillery ramps up significantly. Make it so the leFH 105 Howitzer either does far more damage or has a better ROF and fires more shells, make the Panzerwerfer have longer range and tighter scatter.

-Make mainline infantry units 5 men squads, in the current high DPS and indirect fire meta the Ostheer 4 man squads mean that a player must focus much more than any other faction on keeping units alive. And despite their focus can still lose a gren squad to a single 82mm mortar shell.

-Reduction in MP cost to teching, goes with out saying

-Buff T3, currently it's useless due to the power of the Jackson, a increase in range and pen for the StuG 3, and an increase in armor for the Ostwind and PIV would be nice. Along with a health increase for all 3. That or a sharp reduction in fuel cost.

-Reduction in fuel cost for the Sturmpanzer, we hardly see this cool unit used

-Slight buff to Tigers frontal armor to allow it to better deal with the IS2.

-Increase in range or ROF for the elefant.

-Make railway artillery do more damage over a wider area, it's a joke it's outclassed in every way by the B4.

-survival buff to Assgrens

-reduction in fuel cost for the Command PIV

That's just the top off my head, will think of more tweaks later.