CieZ's State of CoH 2 - November 1, 2015

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long post.

Please read at least the majority of the post before posting a response. I do encourage everyone to respond, but please stay constructive.

None of this post is meant to come off as “salty” although I am sure there will be those out there that try to claim that is what this is about. However, my goal is to express my reasons behind not enjoying CoH 2 recently and what I hope Relic can do to improve the current state of the game.

While the past few patches have had good content on a shallow level, I think they have done much to expose fundamental flaws in the underlying mechanics of the game as well as (in some cases) hurt the game on a tactical level. These past two patches are the first time in awhile that I do not look forward to logging into COH 2. In fact I have been seeking other games to occupy my time.

Grab some popcorn, go to the bathroom… let’s begin.

1) Flame weapon changes:

One of the more recent mechanic changes to the game, flame damage gain an active bonus against units in garrisons and green cover. There are a number of problems with this approach. First, not every faction has equal access to flame weapons. OKW for example only has flamethrowers in a single DLC doctrine, while UKF’s only early access to flame damage is in the form of an extremely underwhelming light vehicle. I am a fan of asymmetric balance, but I believe that each faction needs to have near equal access to a couple of things - one of which is a flamethrower… but let’s assume that I am wrong in that belief and that not every faction needs early flame-based damage. There are still things fundamentally wrong with the way flame damage is handled in these most recent patches.

First off, punishing players for placing their squads in cover seems to fly in the face of everything that the CoH franchise is about. If I get my squads into good green cover positions then, usually, I have outplayed you tactically on some level - thus you should have to actively dislodge me. Prior to these changes this could involve using indirect fire to soften my position, a sniper to whittle down my squad, brute force in the form of multiple squads, or even forcing me to fight on other areas of the map. All of these options present both players with numerous choices, and the player trying to push into green cover is properly punished for allowing their opponent to gain that advantageous position. The ways in which players then utilize cover, and counter cover by making tactical choices on how best to counter that cover given the current situation lent a lot towards differentiating player skill. Under the current changes, should you have access to a flamethrower you just run at the green cover. There are no intricate decisions to be made about how to best dislodge that advantageous position. The flamethrower does all the work for you. Doubly problematic is the rampant availability of flame damage in Rifle Company, the new OKW commander, and the Soviet faction in general. (Although I think molotovs are fine, and potentially underperforming). I also feel that this mechanic does not make sense within the context of the game. Why should I be directly punished for placing my troops in an advantageous position?

My solution: Remove the damage bonus that flame weapons have against cover. Leave them as garrison counters. Give each “engineer” unit access to a 60 munitions flamethrower. Remove all doctrinal access to flamethrowers. Prevent flamethrowers from firing while a unit is garrisoned in a vehicle of any sort.

Now let’s talk about the flame DoT left on the ground by vehicle with flamethrowers. In my opinion this mechanic punishes infantry based AT too harshly. It also creates awkward battlefield scenarios that serve to only limit and frustrate players. The balance of this mechanic is significantly better than it was last patch but the design is, in my opinion, poor. There are plenty of counters to infantry based AT weapons, tanks that happen to have flamethrowers should not hard-counter AT guns by driving straight at them and roasting the crew alive. Properly faced AT guns should punish tanks that drive towards them while improperly faced AT should be punished by being flanked. Driving at an AT gun and winning with fire does not promote this dynamic.

2) Indirect Fire Units

The ISG, Pack Howi, (and historically the Ost mortar/120mm Soviet mortar) have been extremely problematic. These units have never required any degree of skill to use properly, nor have they encouraged much, if any, real counterplay. Formerly, vehicle-based indirect fire (Werfer, Katy, Stuka) has been able to handle these “mortar” units upon finally hitting the field in the late game. Let’s take a look at what has changed:

For the record I think the non-doctrinal Soviet mortar is balanced now that the precision strike is gone. The 120mm still one shots squads a bit too often and it does not make sense in my opinion to give it (even a doctrinal unit) every advantage imaginable over other mortars. Suppression on the ISG and Pack Howi... I wrote another thread on how the recent changes to these two units was not going to resolve the root of the problem. Putting one of the most powerful mechanics in the game (suppression) on long-ranged and highly accurate units breaks any concept of tactically outplaying your opponent. The suppression on these units allows for normally unwinnable fights to be won. Not because of any skill on either player's part, but because the ISG/Pack Howi shell suppressed your squad. These units are essentially extremely long ranged HMGs with the potential to one-shot squads.

Additionally, countering these units has become significantly more difficult now that the gun won’t break while crewed. This results in Stuka/Sturmtiger shots only decrewing the weapon whereas previously the weapon would break for good.

My solution:
Remove the suppression and change all “mortar” units to never autofire. Give them a low cooldown, accurate and highly damaging barrage - basically make them baby howitzers (without the tremendous damage/shot that howitzers have). Properly using these units would then require skill and more planning, plus playing around them would be more realistic because you would have a chance to get your units out of the barrage. Also, these weapons should break even while crewed. Only HMGs and AT guns should not break while crewed.

3) Weapon Upgrades in General

The first problem is that nearly every weapon upgrade is a strict upgrade. What do I mean by this? Purchasing the upgrade does not hinder your squad at any range. I never have to take a step back to think “Should I purchase this LMG on my Grenadier squad?” because the answer is always “Yes.” There is no real overt drawback to buying the LMG. The only thing I can think of is not being able to shoot on the move, but Grenadiers want to be standing still to shoot even without an LMG so I don’t think the purchase of the upgrade hampers them in that regard. This is generally the case with every upgrade in the game (except Con PPSh, that just sucks). In my opinion purchasing a weapon upgrade should provide you with a large advantage at one particular range but punish you at other ranges - or they should be rare (perhaps limited to “elite” units).

Another issue with weapon upgrades as they are currently implemented is the “caveman” sort of gameplay that they produce. Any unit with a LMG can just be attack moved with almost as good of an effect as a skilled player positioning these units. On the other hand any unit with a powerful SMG (Shocks, Rangers, Commandos primarily) just run at stuff and win. These sorts of one-dimensional units do not encourage players to make strategic choices regarding weapon upgrades and they do not promote beating your opponent on a tactical level because there is only one way to use these squads. I find SMG squads to be less problematic than LMG squads because at least they have to get close to win fights - and generally their upgrades only provide a performance increase at close range.

It is my belief that each player should be rewarded or punished based on their use of cover, or how they approach a squad in cover. To this end I think that weapon profiles should have a more linear curve. I don’t necessarily think an SMG squad in green cover should beat an LMG squad at max range, but I don’t think the fight should be as one sided as it currently is given that the SMG squad does have the cover advantage.

My solution: Smooth out weapon profile curves so that units are still advantaged at specific ranges without being completely dominated at all ranges other than their one “good” range - even while having a cover advantage. Change weapon upgrades to significantly increase performance at one range, while reducing performance at at least one other range. For example the LMG upgrade on Grenadiers could greatly improve long-distance damage output while throttling short-range damage output. Perhaps the entire squad could change from KAR98s to LMGs to better illustrate this change in the squad. Of course each LMG would not do the full damage of a current LMG.

4) Loiters (aka Skillplanes)

This post is already getting longer than I wanted it to be, and I think this one is more obvious than the others so I will try to keep it short.

The loiter based plane strafes are too strong for their cost given unequal access to anti-aircraft platforms. Of course it is easy to say “L2P #Adapt and build AA units” but the fact that neither player can directly control what the planes target is awkward at best. Furthermore things like the Ju87 AT strafe frequently target infantry to devastating effect even if you have already moved all of your tanks out of the AoE. These abilities generally provide little counterplay other than “make an ATunit and park it somewhere” at which point the ability is useless. While I do not agree with the way the Close Air Support commander has been implemented I do generally prefer the CAS “skillshot” strafes to loiters.

My solution: Make strafes skill-shots rather than loiters. This provides an increased potential for players to outplay each other. Reduce the cost of loiters to compensate.

5) Abandons/Out of control

Been a stupid mechanic since day one. Nothing more to say. Just get rid of it already.

My solution: Tanks die when they reach zero hp. No bullshit. They just die.

I want to end by saying that I think the core idea behind CoH 2 and the CoH franchise in general is stellar. It provides a level of gameplay that no other RTS can touch. These are just areas in which I think the game can (and should) be improved. Many of these issues have been long-standing. I have expressed my opinion on them in the past verbally, but wanted to finally put them out there in a more concrete fashion. It pains me to say that CoH 2 has just not been fun these past two patches, for the reasons listed above.

Too lazy to edit this at the moment. Hopefully I didn’t make any glaring grammar errors.

All of these designs seem superior.
Therefore, this post gets all of my yes!

but but ciez it looks cool man you know the feeling and personality of army !! what about that ciez...i mean fuck design,mechanics,optimization and balance...it should look awesome right guys...??

but but ciez it looks cool man you know the feeling and personality of army !! what about that ciez...i mean fuck design,mechanics,optimization and balance...it should look awesome right guys...??

Oh my goodness, it's plane crashes and tank crits all over again.
pls
Abandoning is probably the most egregious of these mechanics still in.

I think hes being sarcastic jaedrik, if not then....

As much as I'm not a fan of skillplane loiters, AA would also have to be improved immensely to continue to have a realistic purpose, since only shittons of AA can hope to shoot down a strafe at all (let alone preventing it from firing).

Think I can generally agree with rest of them, though please no squads literally full of LMG-gunners. We may have infrared scope StG-44s, but I think that would put even Hollywood portrayals of World War II to shame. Also don't really mind abandon/out-of-control too much myself, I think their potential maximum silliness is rare enough for me to find it interesting.

I think hes being sarcastic jaedrik, if not then....

I know, I was using his post as a springboard to relate it back to the arguments Quinn made for dem plane crashes and tank crit survivals.

In fact, a lot of this can relate back to my first post on .org!

Ciez has added quite a few considerations to the pile of game design.
Though I admit they're a little closer to player expectations and good design than plane crashes and tank crits were. Cheese. Nothing beats them.

Tactical / strategic depth could be added for weapon upgrades to make them more sidegrade choices disregarding their munitions opportunity cost. I believe there's an effective way to intuitively convey this to people so they don't complain when that LMG42 doesn't do as much DPS.
Oh, speaking of which, making G43s compete with LMG42s for the upgrade slot would do this handsomely even in their current state! G43s can fire on the move, LMG42s can't, that's obvious to everyone, so the sidegrade would be effectively set, and munitions opportunity cost and flexibility considerations allowed for all! More stuff like this would be nice.

Some forms of qualitatively designed asymmetric faction imbalance (flame weapons and AA) can be frustrating in their current forms, especially with how flames deal with the expectations of players that cover / positioning = good and AT gun given proper positioning > tank.

Yeah, and pls remove suppression from ISGs. D: They're super units by design. As we know, such super units by design end up either being overpowered or worthless, and generally frustrating to deal with.

+1

It's funny for every new faction, new commander, new skin, new map, battle servers, official ladder, in-game store, stream and patch we get one new smug reply to a sincere question about balance during a stream, one new sledgehammer balance change with values that seem picked out of hats, one whole year of waiting for new WFA commanders and getting slap-dash commanders with unrelated abilities and no unique voice files.

The past two months have been the first break I've, even unintentionally, taken from COH2 since pre-order Alpha and Ciez has hit the nail on the head: fundamental design flaws that no window dressing is going to affect. The amount of players who have echoed this sentiment will surely be noticed by Relic... right?

I dont think removing auto fire from motors will solve the indirect fire problem, just makeing the micro skill cap higher dosnt solve the problems
1: the problem still exists
2: game becomes unnecessarily hard for new players (which we need)
3: people will just control group their motors for the same effect has before.

My idea to rework Indirect fire for the past year has been to put in a damage threshold, like a squad cannot take more than x amount of damage in a single hit, and a an explosive cannot never bring a lone survivor squad member below x amount of hitpoints.

Suppression should only belong to MG teams, howitzers and leigs need suppression completely removed, motors are already devastating, we don't need them pinning people from a secure base.
I think Relics reason for disabling auto fire for these units is to make them more machine gun team like, Which I say USF has already has a machine gun and just give mg34 to OKW already.

I think Flame weapons are fine, the bonus damage is needed to kick people out of buildings in assaults. There is no way to allow this and not have flamethrowers be hoses of death in other situations, which is why I think the current system is fine. Rifle company needs to be reworked and Royal engines should get the flamethrower

Also, USF needs some kind of nerf. Several maps are unplayable against them for reasons I wont get into in this thread, and almost all allied players play USF on 1v1 automatch. I played for 5 hours yesterday, all USF except 1 Brit and 1 Sov.Its like OKW and USF switched places

agree on all except the part about infantry based flamer part.

why can't flamer counter green cover? except for rifleman flamers, the weapon is either on fragile unit, strong but expensive unit and fragile vehicle. it just seems to me like a very personal preference. only problem i see is with rifleman flamer. SPECIALISED WEAPONS SHOULD NOT BE ON BASE UNITS!!

I agree for the most part. I think mortars getting destroyed and AT/MGs not is too confusing. I'm happy with the same rule being applied to all team weapons as they are currently.
Also weapon upgrades not having a downside/weak point doesn't really concern me that much either. How dare you disparage PPSh conscripts

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long post.

Please read at least the majority of the post before posting a response. I do encourage everyone to respond, but please stay constructive.

None of this post is meant to come off as “salty” although I am sure there will be those out there that try to claim that is what this is about. However, my goal is to express my reasons behind not enjoying CoH 2 recently and what I hope Relic can do to improve the current state of the game.

While the past few patches have had good content on a shallow level, I think they have done much to expose fundamental flaws in the underlying mechanics of the game as well as (in some cases) hurt the game on a tactical level. These past two patches are the first time in awhile that I do not look forward to logging into COH 2. In fact I have been seeking other games to occupy my time.

Grab some popcorn, go to the bathroom… let’s begin.

1) Flame weapon changes:

One of the more recent mechanic changes to the game, flame damage gain an active bonus against units in garrisons and green cover. There are a number of problems with this approach. First, not every faction has equal access to flame weapons. OKW for example only has flamethrowers in a single DLC doctrine, while UKF’s only early access to flame damage is in the form of an extremely underwhelming light vehicle. I am a fan of asymmetric balance, but I believe that each faction needs to have near equal access to a couple of things - one of which is a flamethrower… but let’s assume that I am wrong in that belief and that not every faction needs early flame-based damage. There are still things fundamentally wrong with the way flame damage is handled in these most recent patches.

First off, punishing players for placing their squads in cover seems to fly in the face of everything that the CoH franchise is about. If I get my squads into good green cover positions then, usually, I have outplayed you tactically on some level - thus you should have to actively dislodge me. Prior to these changes this could involve using indirect fire to soften my position, a sniper to whittle down my squad, brute force in the form of multiple squads, or even forcing me to fight on other areas of the map. All of these options present both players with numerous choices, and the player trying to push into green cover is properly punished for allowing their opponent to gain that advantageous position. The ways in which players then utilize cover, and counter cover by making tactical choices on how best to counter that cover given the current situation lent a lot towards differentiating player skill. Under the current changes, should you have access to a flamethrower you just run at the green cover. There are no intricate decisions to be made about how to best dislodge that advantageous position. The flamethrower does all the work for you. Doubly problematic is the rampant availability of flame damage in Rifle Company, the new OKW commander, and the Soviet faction in general. (Although I think molotovs are fine, and potentially underperforming). I also feel that this mechanic does not make sense within the context of the game. Why should I be directly punished for placing my troops in an advantageous position?

My solution: Remove the damage bonus that flame weapons have against cover. Leave them as garrison counters. Give each “engineer” unit access to a 60 munitions flamethrower. Remove all doctrinal access to flamethrowers. Prevent flamethrowers from firing while a unit is garrisoned in a vehicle of any sort.

Now let’s talk about the flame DoT left on the ground by vehicle with flamethrowers. In my opinion this mechanic punishes infantry based AT too harshly. It also creates awkward battlefield scenarios that serve to only limit and frustrate players. The balance of this mechanic is significantly better than it was last patch but the design is, in my opinion, poor. There are plenty of counters to infantry based AT weapons, tanks that happen to have flamethrowers should not hard-counter AT guns by driving straight at them and roasting the crew alive. Properly faced AT guns should punish tanks that drive towards them while improperly faced AT should be punished by being flanked. Driving at an AT gun and winning with fire does not promote this dynamic.

2) Indirect Fire Units

The ISG, Pack Howi, (and historically the Ost mortar/120mm Soviet mortar) have been extremely problematic. These units have never required any degree of skill to use properly, nor have they encouraged much, if any, real counterplay. Formerly, vehicle-based indirect fire (Werfer, Katy, Stuka) has been able to handle these “mortar” units upon finally hitting the field in the late game. Let’s take a look at what has changed:

For the record I think the non-doctrinal Soviet mortar is balanced now that the precision strike is gone. The 120mm still one shots squads a bit too often and it does not make sense in my opinion to give it (even a doctrinal unit) every advantage imaginable over other mortars. Suppression on the ISG and Pack Howi... I wrote another thread on how the recent changes to these two units was not going to resolve the root of the problem. Putting one of the most powerful mechanics in the game (suppression) on long-ranged and highly accurate units breaks any concept of tactically outplaying your opponent. The suppression on these units allows for normally unwinnable fights to be won. Not because of any skill on either player's part, but because the ISG/Pack Howi shell suppressed your squad. These units are essentially extremely long ranged HMGs with the potential to one-shot squads.

Additionally, countering these units has become significantly more difficult now that the gun won’t break while crewed. This results in Stuka/Sturmtiger shots only decrewing the weapon whereas previously the weapon would break for good.

My solution:
Remove the suppression and change all “mortar” units to never autofire. Give them a low cooldown, accurate and highly damaging barrage - basically make them baby howitzers (without the tremendous damage/shot that howitzers have). Properly using these units would then require skill and more planning, plus playing around them would be more realistic because you would have a chance to get your units out of the barrage. Also, these weapons should break even while crewed. Only HMGs and AT guns should not break while crewed.

3) Weapon Upgrades in General

The first problem is that nearly every weapon upgrade is a strict upgrade. What do I mean by this? Purchasing the upgrade does not hinder your squad at any range. I never have to take a step back to think “Should I purchase this LMG on my Grenadier squad?” because the answer is always “Yes.” There is no real overt drawback to buying the LMG. The only thing I can think of is not being able to shoot on the move, but Grenadiers want to be standing still to shoot even without an LMG so I don’t think the purchase of the upgrade hampers them in that regard. This is generally the case with every upgrade in the game (except Con PPSh, that just sucks). In my opinion purchasing a weapon upgrade should provide you with a large advantage at one particular range but punish you at other ranges - or they should be rare (perhaps limited to “elite” units).

Another issue with weapon upgrades as they are currently implemented is the “caveman” sort of gameplay that they produce. Any unit with a LMG can just be attack moved with almost as good of an effect as a skilled player positioning these units. On the other hand any unit with a powerful SMG (Shocks, Rangers, Commandos primarily) just run at stuff and win. These sorts of one-dimensional units do not encourage players to make strategic choices regarding weapon upgrades and they do not promote beating your opponent on a tactical level because there is only one way to use these squads. I find SMG squads to be less problematic than LMG squads because at least they have to get close to win fights - and generally their upgrades only provide a performance increase at close range.

It is my belief that each player should be rewarded or punished based on their use of cover, or how they approach a squad in cover. To this end I think that weapon profiles should have a more linear curve. I don’t necessarily think an SMG squad in green cover should beat an LMG squad at max range, but I don’t think the fight should be as one sided as it currently is given that the SMG squad does have the cover advantage.

My solution: Smooth out weapon profile curves so that units are still advantaged at specific ranges without being completely dominated at all ranges other than their one “good” range - even while having a cover advantage. Change weapon upgrades to significantly increase performance at one range, while reducing performance at at least one other range. For example the LMG upgrade on Grenadiers could greatly improve long-distance damage output while throttling short-range damage output. Perhaps the entire squad could change from KAR98s to LMGs to better illustrate this change in the squad. Of course each LMG would not do the full damage of a current LMG.

4) Loiters (aka Skillplanes)

This post is already getting longer than I wanted it to be, and I think this one is more obvious than the others so I will try to keep it short.

The loiter based plane strafes are too strong for their cost given unequal access to anti-aircraft platforms. Of course it is easy to say “L2P #Adapt and build AA units” but the fact that neither player can directly control what the planes target is awkward at best. Furthermore things like the Ju87 AT strafe frequently target infantry to devastating effect even if you have already moved all of your tanks out of the AoE. These abilities generally provide little counterplay other than “make an ATunit and park it somewhere” at which point the ability is useless. While I do not agree with the way the Close Air Support commander has been implemented I do generally prefer the CAS “skillshot” strafes to loiters.

My solution: Make strafes skill-shots rather than loiters. This provides an increased potential for players to outplay each other. Reduce the cost of loiters to compensate.

5) Abandons/Out of control

Been a stupid mechanic since day one. Nothing more to say. Just get rid of it already.

My solution: Tanks die when they reach zero hp. No bullshit. They just die.

I want to end by saying that I think the core idea behind CoH 2 and the CoH franchise in general is stellar. It provides a level of gameplay that no other RTS can touch. These are just areas in which I think the game can (and should) be improved. Many of these issues have been long-standing. I have expressed my opinion on them in the past verbally, but wanted to finally put them out there in a more concrete fashion. It pains me to say that CoH 2 has just not been fun these past two patches, for the reasons listed above.

Too lazy to edit this at the moment. Hopefully I didn’t make any glaring grammar errors.

What do you propose we do about the M3 if Flamers cant fire out of vehicles? Also the suppression on the ISG and Pack Howi is meant to counter blobbing. Factions like OKW don't have access to MGs unless you wanna stale up the meta and force everyone to go for fallschirmjaegar doctrine and fortifications which indirectly discourages diversity.

Mortar units not being able to autofire to be honest that is just plain stupid quoting on your post of tactical decisions you make the decision to walk into it. The reason artillery units have cooldown barrage is because someone has to send coordinates to the artillery/howitzer crew then those dudes do the math in order to make sure they don't kill the wrong people. Light artillery units don't need to do that because they are light you don't need to do much math in order to shoot a 3 inch pipe, shit man even your eyes can tell you how to shoot a mortar. We have this cause it is an attempt to reflect real life except you don't see the crew doing the math with their pencils and notebook before firing. If mortars don't autofire then they are not even mortars anymore they become heavy artillery and you're also saying the same thing about pack howis and isgs. They have 2 categories of artillery (light and heavy) because one requires actual math to fire it. Light Artillery = 1 + 1 Heavy Artillery = 3.5677 x 4.33445/ 3.34 etc

This is also a reason the air force requires excellent math skills in order to fly. The army as well no way in hell will let you fire a howitzer, maybe a mortar if you don't have any math skills.

Now onto your weapon upgrades section it is strictly an upgrade because it stands behind the real meaning of "upgrade." If suppose Relic does change the upgrades to a compensation thing then its not really an upgrade its just a conversion of the unit.

People that do A-Move their LMG Grens usually run into an mg or get hit by a pack howi/isg shell which does the trick usually. I don't ever imagine someone A-Moving a single LMG Gren unless the map strongly favors it.

agree on all except the part about infantry based flamer part.

why can't flamer counter green cover? except for rifleman flamers, the weapon is either on fragile unit, strong but expensive unit and fragile vehicle. it just seems to me like a very personal preference. only problem i see is with rifleman flamer. SPECIALISED WEAPONS SHOULD NOT BE ON BASE UNITS!!

This may be a fair middle-ground - if only engineer units have access to flamethrowers then them having a damage bonus against squads in cover is probably fine.

We've all seen what mainline infantry can do with flamethrowers being everywhere.

I can see your point regarding flamers, and I mostly agree with @pigsoup's opinion that flamers should not be on core infantry. I think moving rifle company flame upgrade to rear echelons and replacing penal battalion upgrade with a dp-28 or two would work really well.

What do you propose we do about the M3 if Flamers cant fire out of vehicles?

Buff the main gun slightly.

Buff the main gun slightly.

Edited my post up above And if Flamers cannot shoot out of vehicles Relic might implement snipers in M3s again which would lead to hell again because Relic does not balance and design strictly on what we say they are relying on us for the game but they also want some of their ideas in there.

Flamers sole purpose is to be used against cover (buildings counted as cover) but Relic has violated that purpose by putting them on mainline infantry. Only Engineers should be able to have them as they are specialized in Anti-Cover. Flamers have been Anti-Cover since the first CoH. Also you're saying that units aren't supposed to get penalties in cover in which units always clump in cover so it makes them vulnerable to dying altogether so if I shoot my flamethrower at the units in cover they should all catch on fire since they're making themselves very flammable.

Other than that I agree with your post.

Response:

1: Flamethrowers: I don't think flamethrowers are really an issue against units in cover. Of course you're saying you can just run at them, but unless you're USF whose rifle flamers should never be placed on a durable infantry unit in the first place and maybe OKW's newest doc, flamethrowers are placed on very squishy squads(engineers) that need units to screen for them to successfully reach a unit in heavy cover and if they are soloing, they rely entirely on the flamethrower to do anything if they are sent charging forth.

The damage is also not absurd to the point where green cover is a death sentence. I think it'd be best to fix things like rifle flamers or flamers being on durable infantry before adjusting them according.

As for the DOT on the ground, yes it's bad for ATGs especially but I don't think it's game breaking. The only unit that may take this to the extreme is the Churchill Croc. KV-8s aren't durable enough to charge an ATG line and any armour counters them, Hetzer doesn't even have a turret and does its job badly, FHT would get demolished on sight. They might displace/kill a gun, but unless they can get around, AT walls will smash them. Only problem I would say is OKW, but that's a rakatten problem which has no range and notoriety for crew bunching and getting wiped by anything that has AOE.

2: Indirect-Fire: Aside from suppression and the scatter of the pack howitzer and Leig I don't think we need to revamp everything to be barrage only.

After fixing the issues with the light howitzers(suppression and their current scatter values) I would accept the gun breaking mechanic as these are in the rear and generally not at risk of being hit by tank guns, rockets, etc, but not a massive revamp of how even basic artillery works. They should at least be able to fire on their own once in awhile to support an attack or defense when you might be scrambling to dodge grenades, micro units to cover, capture a specific building or spamming your AT grenade key to get a snare off.

3. Weapon Profiles: For making weapons less no-brainer and emphasizing advantages/allowing certain weapons to at least cause some damage at range, I would say SMGs could get their mid-range boosted where it might be equivalent to something lower than a rifle, but their far range remains the same. LMGs should have their DPS degrade more when up close or they reach their lowest DPS sooner, say 5-10 meters rather than at 0.

As for the cover play of these weapons, even if say SMGs could be semi-effective at range when in cover, I don't think it would be enough. You want to be closing the distance ASAP with SMGs are your DPS is more distributed amongst the squad unlike an LMG which is focused on one model. The only time you might see people fighting with their changed SMGs from cover would be either stalling on points or positions for reinforcements.

For LMGs, we could make them require cover to be more effective(likeTommies) so you can't stand in the open and blast away at units in cover with ease.

But on the issue of upgrades being situational than automatic purchases, we've got the issue of most infantry who can get weapons, their base weapons aren't what you call remarkable by any manner which makes it easy for anything added on be a complete upgrade. Why would I not get LMGs for Grenadiers which also happens to be a long-range squad whose squad size and weapons pretty much cries out for the need for an LMG? We also don't have enough upgrades non-doctrinally to make decisions between "Should I buy this or not?" There's not much choice outside of that weapon upgrade and the base weapons aren't crazy/special enough to miss not having them.

4. Skill Planes: I would like to see planes be consistently hit by AA and downed when their health reaches zero rather than them being either instantly shot down or nothing works. After this, make planes selectable units which can target specific units within the radius as its priority so no strafes being wasted on the Kubel or M20 scout cars.

For the loiters, make the attack plane loiter around the area for 1-2 passes before it commences its attack run to give time for AA units to shoot them down or clear the area for better counterplay. Adjust cost accordingly as needed.

5. Abandon/Out of Control: Never had an issue of out of control really. For abandons, we can remove them, though if it had to say, make it predictable in some manner. As for recovering vehicles, make abandon criticals cause the vehicle to have a special destroyed engine and and destroyed main gun critical forcing you to fix it all the way before you can do anything with it.

Response:

1: Flamethrowers: I don't think flamethrowers are really an issue against units in cover. Of course you're saying you can just run at them, but unless you're USF whose rifle flamers should never be placed on a durable infantry unit and maybe OKW's newest doc, flamethrowers are placed on very squishy squads(engineers) that need units to screen for them to successfully reach a unit in heavy cover and if they are soloing, they rely entirely on the flamethrower to do anything if they are sent charging forth.

The damage is also not absurd to the point where green cover is a death sentence. I think it'd be best to fix things like rifle flamers or flamers being on durable infantry before adjusting them according.

As for the DOT on the ground, yes it's bad for ATGs especially but I don't think it's game breaking. The only unit that may take this to the extreme is the Churchill Croc. KV-8s aren't durable enough to charge an ATG line and any armour counters them, Hetzer doesn't even have a turret and does its job badly, FHT would get demolished on sight. They might displace/kill a gun, but unless they can get around, AT walls will smash them. Only problem I would say is OKW, but that's a rakatten problem which has no range and notoriety for crew bunching and getting wiped by anything that has AOE.

2: Indirect-Fire: Aside from suppression and the scatter of the pack howitzer and Leig I don't think we need to revamp everything to be barrage only.

After fixing the issues with the light howitzers(suppression and their current scatter values) I would accept the gun breaking mechanic as these are in the rear and generally not at risk of being hit by tank guns, rockets, etc, but not a massive revamp of how even basic artillery works. They should at least be able to fire on their own once in awhile to support an attack or defense when you might be scrambling to dodge grenades, micro units to cover, capture a specific building or spamming your AT grenade key to get a snare off.

3. Weapon Profiles: For making weapons less no-brainer and emphasizing advantages/allowing certain weapons to at least cause some damage at range, I would say SMGs could get their mid-range boosted where it might be equivalent to something lower than a rifle, but their far range remains the same. LMGs should have their DPS degrade more when up close or they reach their lowest DPS sooner, say 5-10 meters rather than at 0.

As for the cover play of these weapons, even if say SMGs could be semi-effective at range when in cover, I don't think it would be enough. You want to be closing the distance ASAP with SMGs are your DPS is more distributed amongst the squad unlike an LMG which is focused on one model. The only time you might see people fighting with their changed SMGs from cover would be either stalling on points or positions for reinforcements.

For LMGs, we could make them require cover to be more effective(likeTommies) so you can't stand in the open and blast away at units in cover with ease.

But on the issue of upgrades being situational than automatic purchases, we've got the issue of most infantry who can get weapons, their base weapons aren't what you call remarkable by any manner which makes it easy for anything added on be a complete upgrade. Why would I not get LMGs for Grenadiers which also happens to be a long-range squad whose squad size and weapons pretty much cries out for the need for an LMG? We also don't have enough upgrades non-doctrinally to make decisions between "Should I buy this or not?" There's not much choice outside of that weapon upgrade and the base weapons aren't crazy/special enough to miss not having them.

4. Skill Planes: I would like to see planes be consistently hit by AA and downed when their health reaches zero rather than them being either instantly shot down or nothing works. After this, make planes selectable units which can target specific units within the radius as its priority so no strafes being wasted on the Kubel or M20 scout cars.

For the loiters, make the attack plane loiter around the area for 1-2 passes before it commences its attack run to give time for AA units to shoot them down or clear the area for better counterplay. Adjust cost accordingly as needed.

5. Abandon/Out of Control: Never had an issue of out of control really. For abandons, we can remove them, though if it had to say, make it predictable in some manner. As for recovering vehicles, make abandon criticals cause the vehicle to have a special destroyed engine and and destroyed main gun critical forcing you to fix it all the way before you can do anything with it.

Gonna try and make this short and sweet.

1. Yes flamers are a problem vs. regular green cover. The damage output is way too high. This problem is especially highlighted vs. USF Rifle company, where you cannot use green cover against their standard mainline infantry, its actually insanity.

2. Yes, pak howie/leig/ MHT are brainless units that when spammed, reward people who can't be assed to get better at the game because they got easy and effective units like the ones mentioned before. I agree 100% with Ciez' suggested changes. Can't count how many games I've had in the past week where I play vs people who make multiple ISG's and mortars that do the work for them and then say "they have no other option". It's quite pathetic really. Let's give them another option, remove the crutch aspect of these units so that they can actually improve at the game.

4. Remove loiters sounds like great idea to me. Implement skill shots, then you actually have to use part of your brain rather than drop it in a high conflict zone and either watch it get insta shot down or rape everything.

5. Abandon has no point being in the game. Out of control is ridiculous because in many scenarios it allows your tank, that should be dead, to get one more shot off to finish off the opposing tank. This is also prevalent in the new cooking off animation, where the tank dies but is "alive" for a brief moment. This punishes calculated plays where you risk your low health tanks to finish off your opponents, only to have RNG punish you. Has happened to me many times.

Like a lot of this except I think flame and indirect are fine except for getting rid of flames on rifles and further reducing suppression on ISG/PH. I see people often post that a weapon upgrade shouldn't
Make everything better and should involve trade off. But why call it an upgrade if you are giving up damage at one range to get it elsewhere. The munitions cost means it isn't a no brained to get say an LMG for every grenadier because you have alternative uses (mines, flame half track upgrade, etc) so I have no problem with an upgrade providing very few drawbacks such as bars, LMG, Bren). Choices still have to be made because there are always things that you can use them for. Only time I like seeing a weapon upgrade have drawbacks is if it makes on range particularly strong such as PPSH on conscripts which are actually quite strong at close and mid range but pay for it with long range DPS fall off. Because it isn't a straight DPS upgrade at all levels I think 30 munitions is a good cost point.

There is no way right now to give flamers to USF and not run into the same problems we are having right now. If you make flamers available as a base upgrade for REs, then prepare for RE flamer blobs like you have never seen before.

@momo pretty salty over ISGs even though you frequently build 2 of them yourself

Overall I agree. The game has pretty much tedious to play since the release of brits due to the strength of ISG/PackHowie and the return of Sniper Meta.

Yea, snipers take skill to play with, but its pretty boring to play and absolutely loathsome to watch players micro snipers around. And if you can't kill someone's snipers then its GG.

Also,unless its been changed, the LMG42 technically reduces DPS at close range to be lower than that of a Kar98