Fortress Europe

I do agree that it isn't necessary and may not even add to the strategy. Just wondering

Hello again

Once again I have a few more questions to barf up.

1. Will we see any changes to Aircraft and AA making more of an impact on gameplay? I would love to see B-17 carpet bombings on USF, as well as massive airdrop operations similar to Market Garden. Is it going to be possible?

2. Will there be any changes to doctrines/commanders? Personally, I absolutely hate the system in vanilla COH2. Most of them feel useless or have things that completely suck or have no synergy at all. (Such as fortress divisions having static defense abilities)

3. How is the kill rate going to be designed in this mod? Is it going to be troops dying and flung around like trash (blitzkrieg mod lol) or a bit slower / normal paced like vanilla?

As usual, feel free to not answer them as I get these are design questions and may still be in development. Great job on the work you guys have done so far.

And my god that UI.... That UI alone looks like it can slay a thousand haters.

1. Carpet bombing was strategic, which is outside of the scope of the mod. I can say, however, that the way in which aircraft and anti-aircraft are represented will be quite different. Aircraft, much like artillery, will not always be available to provide support. It might show up when you need it, or it might show up when you no longer need it. Anti-aircraft will be available in much larger numbers. For example, the Americans get access to M15A1 CGMCs and M16 MGMCs at the Corps level, so many battlegroups would have access to them.

2. We are not using Commanders or Intel Bulletins at all. If Relic adds support for custom Commanders and Intel Bulletins, we will look into ways to incorporate them. We actually had some great ideas during the Beta, but have not been able to pursue them since full modding was disabled.

3. There are a lot of mods that make infantry somewhat meaningless in their pursuit of total realism. We will probably be somewhere in between, where an almost entirely infantry force can still take on an almost entirely armored force.

Contrivance might have more to say or even correct some of the things I've said.

We have been hard at work on the UI, going through various revisions. Hopefully we will have more to share on that soon. Functionally, it has come a long way, but there is still a lot left to do. There are a few issues we have run into and reached out to Relic about, so hopefully those get fixed before any kind of release.

While it's realistic that a well-placed bullet can instantly kill a soldier, it's unrealistic to expect soldiers to be capable of firing well-placed bullets when they're in a stressful situation. Firefights at anything other than grenade-throwing range often involved lots of ammunition wasted and not a lot of casualties. This is the kind of realism we're aiming for.

Small arms fire at medium range and up will eventually inflict casualties, but mostly they'll suppress enemies. Only at short range will you actually see soldiers dying quickly. Cover - or lack of it - makes a big difference too, but generally soldiers shouldn't drop like flies until you get up close.

So we're not going the ultra-lethal approach of mods like Blitzkrieg, we're instead trying to emulate the 'fire and maneuver' approach of WWII infantry tactics, where you'd pin an enemy down with long-range fire while another element flanks for an assault at close range.

Mmmmmmmm, delicious responses. My thirst has been sated for the time being.



Haha, also, I find Contrivance's response on infantry a lot like how people play orks in Dawn of War 2.

Aimin, wat's dat?
SUPPRESS AND CHOP EM UP BOYZ!!!



Anyways, when I have more questions, I shall return. =D

Sounds Fantastic.

Any news on release date?

When it's done™.

Progress was slower than we wanted over the past couple of months, but progress was made nonetheless. Getting it done by the end of summer was what we were hoping to achieve, but that's not likely.

The good news is that things have come along quite a bit since that video Eliwood posted showing off the menu working in-game. It's much more informative now, with full details and description of the selected unit and what can be deployed. The tabs are no longer needed, so at a glance you can see your entire force, so less hassle.

Gotta be completely honest here:

This is more exciting than the upcoming UKF release

So when will you need a translator?

Still great to hear guys - especially plans to make infantry combat go toward the true realism of "No one hits shit at max range", really haven't seen many games do that.

Still great to hear guys - especially plans to make infantry combat go toward the true realism of "No one hits shit at max range", really haven't seen many games do that.

It's been something on my mind ever since the first few realism mods arrived for CoH1. Back then I'd read more than a few after action reports from both sides after company or battalion sized battles, and what struck me was that engagements that took up to an hour or more didn't result in the incredibly high casualties you'd see in your typical realism mod game. A bit more research into it showed that your average soldier generally just shot in the direction of the enemy most of the time rather than actually aiming, and it was a mix of being afraid to expose themselves and a lack of enthusiasm in actually killing someone. The former only goes away with high morale (i.e. elite volunteer unit) and/or experience. The latter went away with vilifying the enemy or indoctrination, but the average conscript or drafted soldier didn't have that most of the time (post-war militaries changed their training programs to break-down and mold new recruits more effectively).

Though once infantry combat got to within very short ranges - the kind seen in street fighting, assaulting an enemy position, or stumbling on a patrol in the dark - the fight could be over within seconds. At this distance the danger was immediate, you either acted or you were dead. This was something about vanilla CoH1 that I also wanted changed, since it seemed only SMG-armed elite troops could wipe out enemies quickly at ranges of 10m; everyone else let them walk right up without any resistance.

I am now very intrested on how you will be balancing rifles and SMGS along with other automatic weapons.

Hey question for ya - as you lot are clearly overachieving go-getting miracle workers, I'm assuming you'd be doing the work for the British Forces as you did for everyone else as well. So my question here is, outside of that assumption being true or not, how's that going? "We're several steps ahead of all of you and already have that researched like a scientific dissertation, just need to get it in code." or "Our awesomeness will be getting to that in the proper manner you would expect after necessary preparations."

I am now very intrested on how you will be balancing rifles and SMGS along with other automatic weapons.

Still being tweaked, but the intention is that a squad of 9 men with SMGs and a squad of 9 riflemen with a single LMG will be of roughly similar cost. The SMG squad will be more effective at short range, while the riflemen with the LMG have enough firepower at long range to make an enemy frontal assault over open ground too costly.

Hey question for ya - as you lot are clearly overachieving go-getting miracle workers, I'm assuming you'd be doing the work for the British Forces as you did for everyone else as well. So my question here is, outside of that assumption being true or not, how's that going? "We're several steps ahead of all of you and already have that researched like a scientific dissertation, just need to get it in code." or "Our awesomeness will be getting to that in the proper manner you would expect after necessary preparations."

We had them all researched out a while back when we were doing this as a CoH1 mod, though not sure if they'll be ready for our first release given that we're behind schedule as it is

That said, we do have plans for doing British Rifle Companies, Motor Companies, Armoured Squadrons, Armoured Recce Squadrons, Tank Squadrons, Airlanding Companies, Parachute Companies, and Commandos.
If we ever get Daimlers or Staghounds we can also do an Armoured Car Squadron.

We had them all researched out a while back when we were doing this as a CoH1 mod, though not sure if they'll be ready for our first release given that we're behind schedule as it is

That said, we do have plans for doing British Rifle Companies, Motor Companies, Armoured Squadrons, Armoured Recce Squadrons, Tank Squadrons, Airlanding Companies, Parachute Companies, and Commandos.
If we ever get Daimlers or Staghounds we can also do an Armoured Car Squadron.

Yeeeeeeeeeee

Now back to waiting with heavy breathing.

It's to make sure I don't suffocate until it's released.

While the British DLC gave us quite a few goodies we did not have in CoH1, there are a number that were either removed or Relic missed the opportunity to add. For example, we still do not have a Sherman Mk. V or an Achilles Mk. IC, or any of the common armoured and scout cars (Daimler, Humber). So, we are rather limited to the types of Companies we can support, as Contrivance pointed out.

Hopefully, we either get tools that allow the community to fill these gaps, or Relic decides to fill them in future DLC.

So when will you need a translator?

It is probably too early to translate our .ucs files to other languages, as they are still heavily WIP. However, we could always use help with Russian/Soviet nomenclature, as neither of us have much experience with the language.

For example:

Rifle Division -> Strelkovaya Diviziya
Guards Rifle Division -> Gvardeyskaya Strelkovaya Diviziya

They would have to match up with nomenclature of the period, and not just Google Translate. Also, we will not be using Cyrillic, so it would have to be using Latin characters (as above). If anyone knows a lot about this stuff, please PM either myself or Contrivance, or we can post a list here for a collaborative effort.

We do plan on having the translated name right underneath the proper name in unit descriptions.

So in game you'd see something like:
Fallschirmjäger-Zug
Parachute Infantry Platoon

So players won't have to be able to read German or Russian to understand what their units are supposed to be, but having the proper names will be a nice bit of flavour.