UKF Emplacements Redesign

I really don't like the way British emplacements are designed. In real life, the whole point of emplacements was that they were very resilient against artillery. A defensive emplacement that was weak to artillery wasn't an emplacement at all.

Emplacements SHOULD be weak to flame based weapons, but not in the way portrayed. I would like to see:

Emplacements gain more resilience to all artillery. It makes no sense for a mortar emplacement to lose to 2 leigs. The emplacement should win hands down due to its inability to move.

Emplacements can now be decrewed by flame based weapons. Flame based weapons have a chance of decrewing, but it will be a good chance. Flame based weapons will do less damage against emplacements than they currently do (looking at you MHT). Grenades will also work for decrewing if you can get close enough (rnade probably wouldn't be able to). Brace does not help against flame based weapons and grenades anymore.

All other weapons will stay just as effective, so a good strategy would be to decrew an emplacement, then use direct fire to destroy it when it can no longer be braced.

This way, the Brits force the enemies to come to them, rather than being forced to take the initiative and attack themselves (which is something Brits are terrible at, due to their cover requirements). It is simply bad design to force the player that invested in a static build (also known as the British faction) to attack an enemy in order to make his army work in any way.

If you make Brits be the faction that people are forced to attack, and not the other way around, it will fix Brits in 1s and make emplacements a more dynamic and easily countered option.

The reason why Emplacements take so much damage is they have like a million incoming damage modifiers, for instance all artillery has modifiers that do more damage to them AND the emplacement has an incoming damage modifier that increases the damage it takes. In the case of flame weapons you can end up with damage bonus's stacking like 5-6 times because emplacements fulfill so many categories of unit.

Basically they need to clean up their code and stop adding so many modifiers to everything.

Quoting myself from the other thread.

Emplacements wouldn't be as buggy as they are no if Relic hadn't messed around with so many damn modifiers.

Quoting myself from the other thread.

Emplacements wouldn't be as buggy as they are no if Relic hadn't messed around with so many damn modifiers.

That doesn't change the fact that they are still oddly implemented. Emplacements should be passively very powerful against indirect fire and more easily dealt with by common ground troops.

That doesn't change the fact that they are still oddly implemented. Emplacements should be passively very powerful against indirect fire and more easily dealt with by common ground troops.

This would be map dependent as hell tho but I get what your trying to say. Basically if you make them to indirect fire proof it would be a really huge issue on some maps because you wouldn't be able to dislodge mortar pits behind shot blockers and or Bofors that are covered on several sides.

Just reducing the cost + cleaning up the modifiers so things aren't getting like 2-3 damage bonus's against them would go a long way towards making them hardier, but right now all of them have very good offensive capabilities.

I am pretty much arguing the same thing in this thread: http://www.coh2.org/topic/40076/balancing-british-emplacements/page/1#post_id392734

Raise emplacement HP, but increase the chance to de-crew them so they are a MP bleed(like all squads and weapon teams in the game), rather than having to reinvest full cost into another emplacement.

I really like the notion of decrewing emplacements to reset veterancy and allowing for counter-play without major commitments to destroying the emplacement. I think it'd add a nice in-between instead of emplacements being either completely shut down or nearly indestructible.

interesting and think it would be an improvement

+1.

Right now, Emplacements are either Epic Fails, or iWin buttons. In smaller maps, and specially in 2v2s they can wreck you with SimCity, unless you call in 2 MHTs or 2 LeIGs which will counter them. Very repetitive.

What OP suggests makes sense. People should be encouraged to attack an emplacement and get close to it then finish them off with flamers and grenades, specially Bale Charges. There is no reward in engaging the emplacement with infantry. This way they can buff them against indirect fire.

Making heavy artillery useless again the would be bad design, as right now Brace is a good counter to heavy artillery and reducing the damage further would kind take already situational units like the Stuka Fu Fuss and LefH and but them back at being very niche. What's needed is mortar and ISG's to not do bonus damage since their rapid fire nature means brace doesn't really matter all that much because they have no cooldown.

Making heavy artillery useless again the would be bad design, as right now Brace is a good counter to heavy artillery and reducing the damage further would kind take already situational units like the Stuka Fu Fuss and LefH and but them back at being very niche. What's needed is mortar and ISG's to not do bonus damage since their rapid fire nature means brace doesn't really matter all that much because they have no cooldown.

Heavy arty pieces should counter them yes, but not mortars, MHT and LeIG.

Heavy arty pieces should counter them yes, but not mortars, MHT and LeIG.

That's my point. Light artillery shouldn't be getting increased damage, but heavy artillery should.

That's my point. Light artillery shouldn't be getting increased damage, but heavy artillery should.

Forcing an emplacement to brace is the counterplay to artillery. Since they can't move, you are basically "retreating" it. Emplacements should take less damage from light artillery so that bracing is not required against them, while still being required against heavy artillery, tanks, and AT guns.

To do this, the light artillery should have a negative damage modifier, and the heavy should have no modifier (since they already deal good damage).

That doesn't change the fact that they are still oddly implemented. Emplacements should be passively very powerful against indirect fire and more easily dealt with by common ground troops.

So the counter to the Bofors should be Infantry? Wouldn't that make the Bofors walk a fine line either useless, or indestructible?

So the counter to the Bofors should be Infantry? Wouldn't that make the Bofors walk a fine line either useless, or indestructible?

If you smoke the emplacement, then walk up and flame it or use a grenade, you can kill it. If you use an AT gun at long range first to force it to brace, then you can just walk up and flame to decrew, then at gun it.

The idea is to give both the emplacement user and the emplacement attacker multiple options on using their units, rather than the double mortar/leig -> no more brits issues we have right now.

Makes me think sort of the Okw flack emplacement you can build... Those can be decrewed and aren't really useful at all because of it...and other reasons...

OKW have really no flame damage weapons so you can't rely on flame damage. As much as people don't like it when people say this, see COH1. Emplacements could be over-repaired which is a far better mechanic than brace since it slowly wears down a little and gave them a HP increase temporarily but not a get out of jail free card like brace.

To put it simply, emplacements are a boring facet of gameplay and generally draws in the noob players who like to just build up a giant sim city and then throw arty at each other. I'd rather see them a little on the weak side than the strong side for competition sake. Anyone who played COH1 with Royal Engineer doc know what I'm talking about, and this is far worse with brace.

The idea of wanting Brits to just sit there and wait to be attacked sounds absolutely boring. This is the last thing I want to see.

OKW have really no flame damage weapons so you can't rely on flame damage. As much as people don't like it when people say this, see COH1. Emplacements could be over-repaired which is a far better mechanic than brace since it slowly wears down a little and gave them a HP increase temporarily but not a get out of jail free card like brace.

To put it simply, emplacements are a boring facet of gameplay and generally draws in the noob players who like to just build up a giant sim city and then throw arty at each other. I'd rather see them a little on the weak side than the strong side for competition sake. Anyone who played COH1 with Royal Engineer doc know what I'm talking about, and this is far worse with brace.

The idea of wanting Brits to just sit there and wait to be attacked sounds absolutely boring. This is the last thing I want to see.

But thats just it. Brits are supposed to have the option to be mobile, but Relic forgot to give them a mobile indirect fire support option.

Without any choice other than the mortar emplacement, Brits are FORCED to build at least that on many maps. As a result, they end up defending that position, and having no choice but to attack the enemy mortar position (which is hard for such a cover oriented faction.

Mortars and LEIGs hard counter brits, due to their reliance on cover. At the very least, the mortar emplacement should have these changes so that light artillery can't just roflstomp brits.

They have a smoke nade that calls 2 howies from their base with no doctrine. Lack of non doctrine indirect fire?

I think Brits can be mobile just nobody knows wtf they're doing with them yet so they just play defensively with multiple Vickers etc. The fact that Vickers are bugged with their range could possibly have something to do with that(just maybe lol). I could see an early 5 man upgrade with LMG's and/or upgraded Bren Carrier being very mobile and powerful. It's also early in their life span, VERY early. Tommies will be tweaked, things will change. But I think it's much better to adjust tommies to scale than over-do emplacements.

Mortar pit should be pretty resilient vs other mortars but very weak vs fire and shreks and very weak during construction to small arms in general. All other emplacements should be vulnerable to mortars and indirect fire. This is how it was in vCOH and honestly I can't see a balanced alternative. This brace nonsense has got to get revamped or go.

They have a smoke nade that calls 2 howies from their base with no doctrine. Lack of non doctrine indirect fire?

They do have it, but it's a waste of munitions. The only time it is guaranteed to do any damage at all is on static positions, and we're not talking "getting slammed by 152s from last patch" level damage. I've seen the base howitzers cast on an mg that didn't even reposition and come out unscathed. The amount of time it gives them to retreat is positively huge, so they could actually increase the firepower of these barrages substantially but still have them be basically ineffective except to force people to reposition their units in response. It's not really "non-doctrinal artillery", it's more like a crappy satchel charge.

I think Brits can be mobile just nobody knows wtf they're doing with them yet so they just play defensively with multiple Vickers etc. The fact that Vickers are bugged with their range could possibly have something to do with that(just maybe lol). I could see an early 5 man upgrade with LMG's and/or upgraded Bren Carrier being very mobile and powerful. It's also early in their life span, VERY early. Tommies will be tweaked, things will change. But I think it's much better to adjust tommies to scale than over-do emplacements.

Mortar pit should be pretty resilient vs other mortars but very weak vs fire and shreks and very weak during construction to small arms in general. All other emplacements should be vulnerable to mortars and indirect fire. This is how it was in vCOH and honestly I can't see a balanced alternative. This brace nonsense has got to get revamped or go.

Brits can be played mobile, but it's broadly ineffective in the early-mid game. You can't compete in numerical terms and have no real way to dislodge enemy MG strongpoints until you get the (about to be significantly nerfed) Universal Carrier Wasp upgrade, which explodes when a stiff breeze is thrown its way. You can hold land, but then when the enemy responds to your MGs and infantry positions with indirect fire, the only two responses are try to rush their indirect, or build a mortar pit. But their indirect is itself kind of a hard counter to yours, and your own indirect is needed to counter their Mgs. Which it can't do while also getting shelled by their indirect. It's a real mess, balance wise. Sometimes you can get it to work but it's not reliable. Every game is more or less stalling for tanks, because when you get to T3 you legitimately do have what it takes to get a hard hitting fast moving army.

Totally agree with you here. But since you put it this way: "In real life, the whole point of emplacements was that they were very resilient against artillery. A defensive emplacement that was weak to artillery wasn't an emplacement at all."

Should this also mean that Ostheer Mg bunkers/trenches, USF fighting positions, OKW flak emplacements and trenches should get a buff against artillery? They were also defensive positions after all.

Still the bofors needs a nerf, that thing is just plain absurd.