What I don't like in OKW

People harping about axis armour superiority always make me chuckle.

'Yeah sure the Pz III was trash and the IV was undergunned at the point in time it had to try and kill the T-34 and KV-1 but.. but.. they could LOOK at the KV-1 real hard!'

Oh boy, whoop de doo.

And then 'OMG tigerz and panthaz!'

Yeah, Tigers and Panthers existed. So did King Tigers. None of them were impervious, and more important, they were the vast minority of armoured vehicles in the war. A large part of the reason the soviet war industry focused on producing T-34's rather than trying to have all their factories churn out IS2's and their ilk is that, believe it or not, heavy tanks are an impressive sight but generally a huge waste of time, money and resources. There is a very, very good reason we don't have lumbering behemoths any more. They're hard to use, expensive, unreliable, slow, and vulnerable to absolutely every form of AT going. Including but not limited to static guns (massive target), air support (massive, slow target), handheld at (huge investment, still useless is tracked), etc. etc. etc.

Less than 2000 tiger I & 2 tanks were produced throughout the war. For a similar price, 30,000 T-34-85's were produced brand new, with the '76 hull being put to use elsewhere or retrofitted.

You cannot claim armored superiority when your 'superior' tanks are outnumbered 10 to 1 by tanks prefectly capable of ruining your day, especially considering the introduction of APCR/APHEBC/HVAP rounds that made the heavier armour increasingly obsolete.

Bluntly put, the Axis did not win the war on any front because of 'Armour Superiority', and anybody that thinks they did clearly wants to imagine a fantasy world where all the enormous problems with heavy tank design that killed them off as a concept over the years after WWII didn't exist.

And the panther didn't have 40mm of side armour.

What they did have was a generally higher production quality- but not good enough to overcome the over engineering of german designs in their bigger cats. So both germans and russians had huge losses of vehicles to mechanical failure for wholly different reasons. What they did have was a generally better trained army. What they did have was a better command chain (funny that purging all your qualified leaders means your leadership is a bit sketchy, huh, Stalin?)

What they had was a war machine that wasted huge, huge amounts of time and money on big white Elephants (/cats).

Which, to be fair, so did the soviets. But the soviets were churning out the T-34-85 as their main battle tank in the late days of the war, which frankly was just better all around then the axis equivalents- the StuG's and PzIV's.

But the soviets were churning out the T-34-85 as their main battle tank in the late days of the war, which frankly was just better all around then the axis equivalents- the StuG's and PzIV's.

On paper, but de facto the StuG and Panzer IV performed better. The StuG is probably the most underrated vehicle of the German army. The greatest amount of vehicles was actually destroyed by StuGs, often being the only armored vehicle available. That´s because of low silhouette, superior optics, crews, defensive positions, internal layout, radio communication etc. This pretty much offsets the on paper superiority of the T-34 and combined with the ruthless tactical decisions of the Red army leads to those high figured T-34 losses.

That said and to get this on topic, I would prefer the old OKW design with StuGs instead of the imo useless (or at least very situational) Sturmtiger. Even now you have the voicelines of "StuGs at your disposal" when it´s hitting the flied.

Less than 2000 tiger I & 2 tanks were produced throughout the war. For a similar price, 30,000 T-34-85's were produced brand new, with the '76 hull being put to use elsewhere or retrofitted.

Well when people talk about German armour superiority (atleast when I do) it is usually on a 1:1 basis, in theory with a T-34/76 vs say, a Panther. The Panther would probably win, granted if there were no mechanical failures. In truth however the Germans were never able to exploit their tank advantage (fortunately) as 1 Panther cannot win against 10 T-34s.

Well when people talk about German armour superiority (atleast when I do) it is usually on a 1:1 basis, in theory with a T-34/76 vs say, a Panther. The Panther would probably win, granted if there were no mechanical failures. In truth however the Germans were never able to exploit their tank advantage (fortunately) as 1 Panther cannot win against 10 T-34s.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose), the logic that makes people talk about German armour superiority on online forums is the same logic that the third reich kept pumping into their tank designs and helped cost them WWII.

But hey. Maybe the Maus would have looked cool parked on the steps of the Kremlin. Gotta be worth it, right?

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose), the logic that makes people talk about German armour superiority on online forums is the same logic that the third reich kept pumping into their tank designs and helped cost them WWII.

But hey. Maybe the Maus would have looked cool parked on the steps of the Kremlin. Gotta be worth it, right?

Yes, as the war progressed the Germansgot more and more stupid in tank design, Panther was probably the best (once they fixed its major issues). But after that, Elefants, Jagdtigers, King Tigers and the Maus etc. All too slow and too cumbersome to do much. Their logic was effectively, more armour + bigger guns = win?

In the past, I've found it a real pain to peel off an infantry unit to babysit the SU and the Jagdpanzer

I can't really see that as necessary, especially as that would probably cause Soviet T3 to be even more unused and in general those units would make the StuG G look even worse.

Also, I don't really want more squad-wipe potential in the game, let alone from two units that were almost incapable of it before (though definitely still so).

Yes, as the war progressed the Germansgot more and more stupid in tank design, Panther was probably the best (once they fixed its major issues). But after that, Elefants, Jagdtigers, King Tigers and the Maus etc. All too slow and too cumbersome to do much. Their logic was effectively, more armour + bigger guns = win?

Some of the generals like Guderian wanted Germany to concentrate on AT guns, STuG's, etc. Hitler would have none of it and started the technical superiority propaganda. The thing I find interesting about the technical superiority myth, is that you'll find claims of single battles where Germans claimed to have destroyed hundreds of Soviet vehicles, yet at the end of the day, the Germans were retreating and the Soviets owned the battlefields. The axis fanboys take their word as gospel while dismissing Soviet claims as anecdotal, yet most of the Panzer VI B's still in existence are in someone's museum.

1) All units after upgrade may retreat to FHQ. Poor design gives advatage on big maps. I don't mind about healing.
2) Schwerer panzer building still shoting at the planes. (Get AA halftrack for that as all other factions).
3) Schwerer panzer building shoots very far and secures territory for huge amount of time (untile tanks arrive).
4) Sturmpios repair vehicals very fast
5) Volksgrens has increased vision with = poor design.
6) Jagdpanzer has rotates fast sees far moves fast = poor design ( no need support)

that's it other stuff is ok for me now

1) You can't control where the units assemble, and unless you situate the FHQ in a very advantageous place (which is not always possible), the FHQ itself can become a deathtrap for the men, especially if you;re bombarding it with artillery or have an MG keeping them pinned. They DO give an advantage in larger maps, but Relic designs the game around small team and small maps.
2) They are supposed to be shooting at planes. I do however think the player should toggle between ground and air, many times I preferred one while it's doing the other and I have no control over it.
3) It is powerful but also not very durable. Once you get sight of it you can attack with AT guns and such, though it does require sacrificing a unit since it's gun will suppress infantry and most vehicles you have won't last long. USF really needs some more recon capabilities.
4) Sturms are expensive and to repair very fast you need to upgrade for the minesweeper kit. They are also very vulnerable when repairing, most games I play they can get wiped en masse if the enemy manages a shot at the general area of where they are.
5) Increased vision compared to what?
6) I don't use it enough to have a comment, I personally find it too high a fuel drain; by the time I have the resources for it I've either been given the choice of it or deploying Schwere HQ or already got the HQ set up and waiting for Panther, which costs a little more.

The entire faction blobs its first "Weak" inf unit (Common guess) because they can all be equipped with the most effective AT operation and never brother using there AT gun because it "sucks".

But its ok because its Germany.

Because their original design was, whilst a cool idea, absolutely trash when implemented into CoH2.

A faction designed with enormously powerful units and defenses that only has to hold 1/8th of the map for half an hour to win was boring and stale in 1v1, and utterly ludicrously broken in 4v4. Frankly, the latter problem still exists, largely in part thanks to the lingering faction design elements still present since the beta.
A lot of the reason it was boring was that it was the utter height of the (oddly ahistorical) 'axis win if timer goes past X' philosophy that we've been fighting with Relic to avoid since the beta of CoH2's eastern front. Either you bashed your head against a wall until it fell on you or you wiped them in the first 10 minutes. It's the FHQ gambit's frustrations only represented on an entire faction in multiplayer.

A lot of design choices that seem good for the original concept have just stuck around with no regard for how they function outside of that. And a lot of them are sorely in need of fixing.

Reinforced wire form T0 initial units, for example. When your entire livelihood requires you holding a small chain or territory with a truck in each, preventing ugly flanks is a necessity. Reinforced wire = able to lock down better, good job.

When you're now playing as a normal faction with a faux 'fuel starvation' and units out of the wazoo, it's dumb as all hell, but it remains.

The Schwerer HQ is pretty much the pinnacle of this. Every other faction has to spend to tech and that's that, if you're USF you get a squad rather than a base building. The OKW, as a faction requiring holding a chain of ground to a fuel point, needed a deterrent, an AA option, and a way to hold down their ground.

Now they're just a normal faction with a faux 'fuel limitation', they get to tech and, for free, cut off an enormous swathe of map via choke points to the enemy from their first 80 fuel generated, demanding a huge investment of time and resources to kill even when unsupported unless you have tanks at least as heavy as a T34. And it's dumb as hell.

Allowing your core, front line infantry the best handheld AT weapon in the game and fantastic vet made sense when they were never going to be getting tanks and needed to be able to hold them off their trucks. Now... you get the idea.


OKW suffer from being a faction designed to work a completely different way shoehorned at last minute into a different role without anybody thinking that, maybe, you should take away all the super special toys they were allowed to keep themselves alive with only a tiny area of the map now they can contest it all.

Great post, and deserves to be brought back to the conversation because we got way off topic.