Fortress Europe

We're still aiming for late summer if we can. Artillery is not a priority at this point, but we know we can achieve what we have planned, so it's only a matter of time before it's in. Close Air Support will also function more realistically, but is further down our list of priorities, so we'll cover it in the future.

Stop with all the good news please, my heart can't take it anymore

The amount of work put into this is staggering. Especially love the damage model and the battlegroup UI.

Just a question: I'm assuming there is no base-building in this game as it's going for a more realistic approach, right? If so, then it's not my cup of tea unfortunately.

Great respect for the work done so far!

Hey with all the hype about arty support, is there any chance to introduce railway arty and will we have smoke barrage, incidinery and counter-arty?

Railway Artillery and Counter-battery Fire is beyond the scope of what a battlegroup commander would realistically have command over.

Railway Artillery fire was a strategic or operational concern, directed at targets decided days in advance considering the time and logistics needed to fire them. Plus the impact of a railway artillery gun - done realistically - would be a ridiculously effective game-changer if it landed where you wanted it to.

Counter-battery Fire was handled by artillery headquarters for a division or higher; the commander at the front-line had no say in such things. So we plan on abstracting it a bit by occasionally having your own off-map artillery batteries come under fire. During this time they can't shoot and might have to pack up and relocate somewhere else, adding a further delay. Rocket artillery would be more prone to it due to the smoke trails that give away their position, and self-propelled artillery would be able to shorten the delay of relocating.

Smoke is definitely planned for, as it was something that a front-line commander could request, and it was used often enough. The vast majority of artillery had smoke shells available.

Incendiary usage was less commonly used and mostly limited to rocket artillery, but will probably make it in at some point. We might decide that it costs extra to outfit your battery with this ammunition.

The amount of work put into this is staggering. Especially love the damage model and the battlegroup UI.

Just a question: I'm assuming there is no base-building in this game as it's going for a more realistic approach, right? If so, then it's not my cup of tea unfortunately.

Great respect for the work done so far!

Yes and no. There's no traditional RTS base to build and maintain, not like in CoH1 or CoH2. However we plan on having Attacker vs Defender missions, which give the Defending side a short period in which they can place some of their units, defenses, emplacements, and other defenses in their own territory. These would be built instantly and paid for in the battlegroup builder beforehand. So if you spent enough points you could fortify your side of the map fairly reasonably. This would be another reason to play an infantry-focused battlegroup, since other battlegroups would few or no options for fortifications when defending.

Hello all, I've been following this mod very closely since I've discovered it and must say I am very impressed with the work you guys have done. I just have a few questions to ask:

1. How will Infantry in this mod be compared to the original tank spam fest that is COH2? Are there any plans to make Infantry only viable and fun to use instead of just being cannon fodder and support for heavy tanks?

2. Are there any plans to tweak the true sight vision system?

3. Are there any plans to have ambush / infiltration related gameplay regarding camo or any sort of that?

4. Will this mod change blizzards, heavy snow, mud, manual vaulting and the rest of the "fun" mechanics in any sort of way?

5. Any plans to change the UI? (firing arcs, tactical map, etc.)

6. Will all units fight to the death since there is no base to retreat and reinforce at? If not allowed to retreat, how will repairing be nerfed / changed? If given incentive to retreat, how will snipers be balanced? (Snipers in the Europe in Ruins mod were terribly imbalanced against axis)

7. Any tech upgrades / branches to differentiate default faction units from others? (Ex: vCOH bar upgrade, group zeal, advanced repairs)

8. Will abilities change? (combat smoke, blitz, infantry awareness lol)


If you don't feel like answering any of the questions then, ummmm... at least give it some thought! =D

Anyways, I really look forward to this mod. As a newly converted fan, I await eagerly for news!

1.a. Tanks will be support for Infantry.
1.b. Anti-tank weapons will make much more of a difference, and be more prolific. So, even if you choose an Infantry-centric Battlegroup, you will have the supporting arms such as anti-tank rifles, grenades, guns, and launchers (Bazookas, Panzerschrecks, etc).

2.a. There is not much to tweak, unfortunately. If Relic supports tweaking of it, we will for sure!
2.b. For example, we would love to give turrets their own sight hardpoint, or give each man in a squad their own sight (currently it is only one or two max).

3. Absolutely! Contrivance will have more on that.

4. That is actually a good question. I am not sure what we have planned for blizzards, but rough terrain such as heavy snow and mud will actually cause vehicles to get stuck. Vaulting will probably remain untouched, since it is hard-coded.

5. It depends on how much we can change, but we already have our own custom UI in the works.

6. To the death, or to the rear (sending them back to your reserves). Repairing from 1% HP to 100% HP is not something we are going to do. It will most likely be battlefield repairs that either get your tank moving again, or put out a fire, or similar. But, a tank with a damaged or destroyed engine will continue to have it from that point on.

7. Organization and equipment of a nation's force are what will set them apart from other nations.

8. Yes, this is basically a total conversion. Very little of the vanilla game will remain.

Thanks for the questions! Contrivance will probably have more to say.

Is it possible to create manual tank turret control, like in vcoh tiger ace mission? Would be useful.

Even if we had the ability to do that (that functionality did not carry over from CoH1), I do not believe we would make use of it in FE.

EliwOOd covered most of the answers, just going to elaborate on a few.

1. How will Infantry in this mod be compared to the original tank spam fest that is COH2? Are there any plans to make Infantry only viable and fun to use instead of just being cannon fodder and support for heavy tanks?

Having tanks is useful, but not required. If you take sufficient anti-tank guns and use your infantry smartly against enemy armour, you should do fine. More on question 3 for that.

However you can take a tank, assault gun, or tank destroyer company as the core unit of your battlegroup, and then just max out your armour platoons with all your available points. So, yes, you could spam tanks, but your success will then entirely depend upon how awful your opponent is. A balanced force is superior since you'll have a solution for every problem, and that means taking infantry, reconnaissance, and other support with your tanks.

3. Are there any plans to have ambush / infiltration related gameplay regarding camo or any sort of that?

All infantry will be able to hide if they go still for a few seconds and don't do anything. Better infantry will be able to move within that cover without being spotted. Troops trained for reconnaissance, infiltration, as well as some elite troops, will actually be able to remain hidden for a second or two after leaving cover, which will allow them to dash from cover to cover steathily.

Since tanks are awful at detecting hidden units, infantry will easily be able to ambush enemy tanks at close range with anti-tank grenades, panzerfausts, bazookas, and so on. Unless they bring their own troops to spot yours, of course.

6. Will all units fight to the death since there is no base to retreat and reinforce at? If not allowed to retreat, how will repairing be nerfed / changed? If given incentive to retreat, how will snipers be balanced? (Snipers in the Europe in Ruins mod were terribly imbalanced against axis)

Infantry can retreat, they'll just head back to the starting area for your side. We are looking into alternate options for retreat, but so far haven't had much success.

As for snipers, they won't be consistent one-shot assassination machines. Sniper teams will only be able to one-shot kill an enemy soldier if they've been sitting in cover for a little while, are not suppressed, and haven't been shooting or been shot at beforehand. If they meet this criteria, the first shot they make will one-shot kill the soldier and suppress all enemies around him. Afterwards he won't benefit from that effect until he stops shooting, but his follow-up shots will continue to add suppression. This makes snipers excellent for harassment and stopping an enemy advance, but not one-man armies.

Wow, thanks for the quick responses.

I'm really excited about the sniper changes as well as the new custom UI.

As with my questions, you guys can probably tell what I'm going to be playing when this mod releases.

Fortress Europe, Infantry Commander 2016 HYPE! Let the human waves begin.

Guys this is incredible. I never thought it could get this erect(my penis, the mod is beautiful).. Good work guys.

Do you plan on making your own maps to accompany the mod? With total mechanics changes the maps may require different elements.

One more thing: how do you plan on implementing command and control? Will officers rally suppressed or broken troops, will wires have to be laid, radios implemented, etc?

*Bump


any news?

Multiquote and Reply seems to be broken, but this is in response to BeefSurge and nigo.


We don't plan on making our own maps as we wanted it to work with Relic's standard fare and your favourite community maps. However we can modify some aspects of a map once it's loaded, such as changing the resource sectors to fit our own needs, so it's not like you'll be still be gathering munitions and fuel but have no purpose for them.

As for command and control, we used to have platoon command teams and vehicles for every platoon you could field. It was a nice idea, but it cluttered up the game without any real reason. While a unit like the US Lieutenant, Captain, and Major is nice if you only have one or two of them, having platoon commanders for everything - like a machine-gun platoon or an anti-tank gun platoon - adds very little to the gameplay while just piling on more units to manage. We suspected that players would not keep these command teams near their own platoon and instead send them off as regular infantry, and while we could have given them buffing auras to encourage keeping them near their platoons it seemed like a band-aid at best.

Some command teams do exist in FE, but only because removing them would be odd. For example a Soviet medium tank platoon is 3 tanks, one of those is the command tank, and since the Lieutenant's tank fought alongside the other two it's weird to remove it. The first squad in a US Armored Rifle platoon is also the command team, so we simply kept the first squad as-is rather than weirdly chop out a whole squad from it.

We did have plans for a battlegroup command team that you could deploy, but we wanted to get the core of the game done first.

Telephone wires won't factor in, and we're not sure how to even implement them even if we wanted to. Radios are assumed to be carried by some units in order to perform their duties, such as artillery observers.


As for news, working on the customization and deployment UI is taking longer than anticipated, mainly because we're not professional UI designers and so what worked perfectly in our minds didn't come together as cleanly as we'd hoped in game. But we've had a few eureka moments and progress is back on track.

I have an idea, would it be possible to sniper or marksmen units (like Jaegers now or some elite infantry in your mod) to kill vehicle gunners? It's stupid that gunner of AA MG on tank just sits there completely exposed and nobody can shoot him. I know it wouldn't be easy with suppression but someone would kill him eventually.
It would be good to make this thing kinda random, like there's 50% to actually hit the gunner, with different value for every vehicle. It's much easier to hit tank MG gunner than for example SdKfz251 gunner who is behind armored shield.
Other way would be just make MG gunners shoot at planes only.

Multiquote and Reply seems to be broken, but this is in response to BeefSurge and nigo.


We don't plan on making our own maps as we wanted it to work with Relic's standard fare and your favourite community maps. However we can modify some aspects of a map once it's loaded, such as changing the resource sectors to fit our own needs, so it's not like you'll be still be gathering munitions and fuel but have no purpose for them.

As for command and control, we used to have platoon command teams and vehicles for every platoon you could field. It was a nice idea, but it cluttered up the game without any real reason. While a unit like the US Lieutenant, Captain, and Major is nice if you only have one or two of them, having platoon commanders for everything - like a machine-gun platoon or an anti-tank gun platoon - adds very little to the gameplay while just piling on more units to manage. We suspected that players would not keep these command teams near their own platoon and instead send them off as regular infantry, and while we could have given them buffing auras to encourage keeping them near their platoons it seemed like a band-aid at best.

Some command teams do exist in FE, but only because removing them would be odd. For example a Soviet medium tank platoon is 3 tanks, one of those is the command tank, and since the Lieutenant's tank fought alongside the other two it's weird to remove it. The first squad in a US Armored Rifle platoon is also the command team, so we simply kept the first squad as-is rather than weirdly chop out a whole squad from it.

We did have plans for a battlegroup command team that you could deploy, but we wanted to get the core of the game done first.

Telephone wires won't factor in, and we're not sure how to even implement them even if we wanted to. Radios are assumed to be carried by some units in order to perform their duties, such as artillery observers.


As for news, working on the customization and deployment UI is taking longer than anticipated, mainly because we're not professional UI designers and so what worked perfectly in our minds didn't come together as cleanly as we'd hoped in game. But we've had a few eureka moments and progress is back on track.

Amazing! Ty for responding.

I have an idea, would it be possible to sniper or marksmen units (like Jaegers now or some elite infantry in your mod) to kill vehicle gunners? It's stupid that gunner of AA MG on tank just sits there completely exposed and nobody can shoot him. I know it wouldn't be easy with suppression but someone would kill him eventually.
It would be good to make this thing kinda random, like there's 50% to actually hit the gunner, with different value for every vehicle. It's much easier to hit tank MG gunner than for example SdKfz251 gunner who is behind armored shield.
Other way would be just make MG gunners shoot at planes only.

The good news is that turret-mounted machine-guns won't be as prevalent. In almost all cases they were strictly for anti-aircraft defense, with the only exceptions being the StuG and infantry half-tracks. In order for a tank to use it's anti-aircraft machine-gun a crewman has to stop doing their normal job to operate it, forcing someone else to cover for them. So if the loader is now operating the AA MG, the gunner is now doing the loading himself, greatly increasing the time it takes to load and possibly affecting accuracy as well from the lack of focus. So manning the AA MG is a toggle ability.

In fact, the mounted MG for German tanks didn't actually exist as a separate weapon. There was a mount for a machine-gun, but no gun; the crew had to remove the hull-mounted machine-gun and place it on top when on long marches, but would re-install it back in the hull before going into combat. So presently the only tanks with AA MGs in Fortress Europe are Shermans and IS-2's (as far as I recall, might be missing one).

Hi guys! Glad to see that Fortress Europe is still being worked on! As a close combat fan, this is my most anticipated mod ever.

Are you still planning on keeping track of troop ammunition or was that lost with the switch from coh1 to coh2?

We dropped it when we switched over since we no longer had UI support for it at the time. Now that we do have UI support it's something we're considering, but it's a future item at best.

We originally dropped the feature from the CoH1 version due to issues encountered with Corsix's Overlay DLL. We have had ideas on how we might approach it with CoH2, even before the UI support was added, but decided it was best to work on other core features first.