Blobbing Solution?

I know I am a new name to probably everyone reading this, but I have been around for a while watching casts and reading forums. I have been playing this beautiful game since the beta was out (unfortunately I don't have as much time to play as a lot of others in this community due to college life and work). I am not an axis or allied fanboy, but a fan of balance and strategic gameplay. Like most, I am sick of the blobbing in this game. Relic is always talking about rewarding players for tactical movements and flanking, but they continue to do next to nothing to solve the blobbing problem (the area of effect weapons change was a move in the right direction, but I think most of us were looking for something more). I have been thinking about a solution for a while and here is what I have come up with.

We can all agree that when firing into a crowd you’re more likely to hit someone then if firing at an individual, so why not incorporate this into the game to reduce the effects of blobbing? I read somewhere awhile back that when small arms fire misses the targeted unit it doesn’t have any chance of causing damage to anything behind the unit being fired at (in other words if a shot misses it misses and has no chance of causing collateral damage). Obviously if this was changed it would stop blobbing instantly. However, mgs and other weapons with high rates of fire would dominate the game. There needs to be a middle ground between what we have now and collateral damage from small arms fire. I think the answer lies in the panzer elite back in coh1. The PE had an upgrade called group zeal which allowed grouped infantry to gain a bonus. I think Relic should use this kind of an idea, but in a negative way to reduce the effectiveness of blobs by giving blobbed infantry a received accuracy penalty.

Basically how I envisioned this working is each squad should have some kind of, for a lack of a better title, “blob value” that somehow relates to either the offensive effectiveness of a squad, population of a squad, or on the number of models in a squad. Say Relic chooses to base this value off of the population of a squad, so when squads get within a certain distance of another friendly squad then these values begin stacking increasing the received accuracy of the squads by some percentage with smaller squads blobbed having less of a penalty then larger squads blobbed together. There shouldn’t be any negative effects for one squad and very little effect for two squads, but beyond two large effective fighting squads, I think the value should drastically increase making it easier to punish blobbing.

This is a very rough idea and I know it’s a long shot since a change like this would change the core mechanics of the game. Obviously something like this would have a huge impact on the game and there will always be people against whatever is changed. I believe this kind of a change could add a new dimension that would need to be mastered and would make this beautiful game that much more interesting. The entertaining part of forums is to see what people think, so let the positive and negative feedback flow!

I was thinking about this last night.

A simple way would be to grant a debuff modifier to infantry units that are clumped together. I propose two parts to this - first is a small accuracy nerf, to represent infantry units not having a clear shot when they are all in a blob together. The second is a lowered suppression threshold (or higher "received suppression", if that makes sense) from AOE suppression. Individual squads don't suppress easier, but the squads that are not directly targeted by the MG will more easily get suppressed, and faster.

Other possibilities include improving the AOE suppression for the ISG and Pack Howi, but then also add the effect to mortars.

"negative zeal" is an idea that gets bandied around a lot, but sort of loses water when people start mentioning maps like Semois. if you wanted to fight in the center, you couldn't help but be punished by the system or you would never be able to bring your whole force to bear.

my opinion is: give more options to defeat it, don't limit us by systems, don't force us to play a certain way.

Oh, and welcome.

"negative zeal" is an idea that gets bandied around a lot, but sort of loses water when people start mentioning maps like Semois. if you wanted to fight in the center, you couldn't help but be punished by the system or you would never be able to bring your whole force to bear.

my opinion is: give more options to defeat it, don't limit us by systems, don't force us to play a certain way.

Oh, and welcome.

Agreed, the game engine and maps wouldn't work with a negative Zeal function. Especially hallway maps like wolfs lair, Angermunde, and Eddlebruck.

Solution is to increase the amount of counters with things like more artillery and suppression platforms.

"negative zeal" is an idea that gets bandied around a lot, but sort of loses water when people start mentioning maps like Semois. if you wanted to fight in the center, you couldn't help but be punished by the system or you would never be able to bring your whole force to bear.

my opinion is: give more options to defeat it, don't limit us by systems, don't force us to play a certain way.

Oh, and welcome.

I guess I would ask myself why there are maps in automatch rotation that force you to blob just to use your units. You could also have nuances to its implementation, such as units in buildings or in green cover don't get affected by it. It's not about making guys useless when concentrated, it's more like making them not as completely overpowering. MGs and AoE weapons are the tools the game gives us to deal with blobs, but they're not really up to snuff at the moment. We've had MG domination in past metas, and I'd like to avoid that, so the idea of a group suppression debuff to make the extra squads more likely to hit the pavement (without affecting the suppression vs the actual squad being fired at) is attractive. It punishes blobs without actually making MGs more effective in their normal operation against single or flanking squads.

"negative zeal" is an idea that gets bandied around a lot, but sort of loses water when people start mentioning maps like Semois. if you wanted to fight in the center, you couldn't help but be punished by the system or you would never be able to bring your whole force to bear.

my opinion is: give more options to defeat it, don't limit us by systems, don't force us to play a certain way.

Oh, and welcome.

If both teams have to blob because of a map then both would be equally hampered by this so the game would still come down to who used his units better.

Any way i know some COH1 mods that implemented this sort of thing and I think it would be great for COH2 has well.

You all have made some excellent points. I guess what I was primarily thinking about when creating this topic was the attack move blob that I mostly run into. The recent update to area of effect weapons, I feel is more for those blobbed units standing around in a defensive position. I think the solution to maps that have these tight corridors is to implement cover into the calculation process. Obviously green cover would be the best and should probably reduce the "blob value" by 80-90%. Yellow cover should probably have a much smaller affect to this blob value considering that after 30minutes of intense fighting on any map, units are gaining yellow cover from all the craters they walk through. So, a value of maybe 10-20% for yellow cover.

I also really like the point that on tight maps both players are dealing with having to figure out how not to blob so these values would cancel out on each of them in a way. If something like this were ever implemented, I think we would see smoke screen usage greatly increased across the board. Instead of charging head first into an engagement, smoke would need to be used to allow time to spread units out and then coordinate an attack.

when i see that in teamgames i usually want to make them pay for that kind of retarded blob gameplay. So as i use to play soviets i am making a katjusha. When i got it on the field i am waiting for that moment when the blob comes rushing in and moving around as a whole, to anticipate where it will be when the barrage hits (quite difficult in my opinion).
But what must i see?
Even when the barrage is perfectly on target it happens more than once that it doesnt hit anything in the first shot, the enemy is retreating and the second volley doesnt hit anything either. Really makes me sick ..

We can all agree that when firing into a crowd you’re more likely to hit someone then if firing at an individual, so why not incorporate this into the game to reduce the effects of blobbing? I read somewhere awhile back that when small arms fire misses the targeted unit it doesn’t have any chance of causing damage to anything behind the unit being fired at (in other words if a shot misses it misses and has no chance of causing collateral damage). Obviously if this was changed it would stop blobbing instantly. However, mgs and other weapons with high rates of fire would dominate the game. There needs to be a middle ground between what we have now and collateral damage from small arms fire. I think the answer lies in the panzer elite back in coh1. The PE had an upgrade called group zeal which allowed grouped infantry to gain a bonus. I think Relic should use this kind of an idea, but in a negative way to reduce the effectiveness of blobs by giving blobbed infantry a received accuracy penalty.

that would be a great thing imo.

If both teams have to blob because of a map then both would be equally hampered by this so the game would still come down to who used his units better.

Exactly! And why would you even have to blob in maps like semois? You can send one squad at a time through bottlenecks and there is plenty of cover available to help negate some minor penalties.

Goliaths, quicker off-maps.

I dont like the idea of forcibly stopping blobbing like that.

Just make the anti blobbing weapons better at dealing with it.

Well, fighting against blobs isn't fun!

So here is my solution against blobs. Think about a blob as a slow floating mass. Keyword here is slow!

Lets give 4 or more units a 20% movement reduction and another 20% for more than 6 units. A blob out of 6 Units would suffer a 40% movement reduction, that means 40% more time to suppress with Mg, more time to react or 40% more time to hit with mortar or else. Maybe you can stop it with only a few units with hit and run tactic!

Supportunits (except Pio) should not be affectet, also no units from mates, and the effect should not occur around Basebuildings.

Of course these values have to be testet and adjusted, but think about it in principle. No adjustments on balancing needed! And Relict should be able to develope it in no time, because the mechanism is already there (areal effects, movmentreduction,..).

So - what do you mean? Maybe its worth to vote for it!

Well, fighting against blobs isn't fun!

So here is my solution against blobs. Think about a blob as a slow floating mass. Keyword here is slow!

Lets give 4 or more units a 20% movement reduction and another 20% for more than 6 units. A blob out of 6 Units would suffer a 40% movement reduction, that means 40% more time to suppress with Mg, more time to react or 40% more time to hit with mortar or else. Maybe you can stop it with only a few units with hit and run tactic!

Supportunits (except Pio) should not be affectet, also no units from mates, and the effect should not occur around Basebuildings.

Of course these values have to be testet and adjusted, but think about it in principle. No adjustments on balancing needed! And Relict should be able to develope it in no time, because the mechanism is already there (areal effects, movmentreduction,..).

So - what do you mean? Maybe its worth to vote for it!

This is another great idea that would absolutely punish blobs. There are definitely different ways to approach this.

Yes a major blob fix will probably make a lot of people unhappy because this is the only way they know how to play the game. However, I think a blob change would be huge positive for this game and the community in the long run.