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

On the topic of riflemen flamers I've been thinking of making it a 3 man riflesquad call in with a flamethrower. This way you'd get the benefits of the flamethrower (and maybe let them keep their grenades) without having the extreme added firepower and survivability of a full 5 man squad. Just my two cents.

On the topic of riflemen flamers I've been thinking of making it a 3 man riflesquad call in with a flamethrower. This way you'd get the benefits of the flamethrower (and maybe let them keep their grenades) without having the extreme added firepower and survivability of a full 5 man squad. Just my two cents.

I like this, since Lelic won't change the voiceover and give flamers to echelons.

The funny thing about this whole vehicle flamers do too much damage to AT is that it points out obvious axis bias. i remember back in the day prior to western fronts soviets would frequently get their zis decrewed from tanks by German tigers ostwinds etc. zis guns had(have) inconsistent penetration and were very poor at doing their job yet the line was that Germans have better tanks late game so deal with it.

Now that German AT gets hard countered by flame vehicles, the tears flow. Maybe, just maybe, pak spam and rakketen spam should be punished. maybe you should have tanks or handheld at to support your at guns instead of building 3 paks and waiting out for tigers/ heavies.

USF have a free unit when they tech up, lt is brutal with thompson and bar, paying 15 fuel and 150 mp is kinda acceptable to be able to equip EVERY unit ( hello cheap RE ).

As Ostheer is forced to go T2 kinda fast cause light vehicule ( and the need of lmg 42 ), USF is forced to equip rifleman to be able to continue crushing grens ( or just rifle flamers like 90% of usf player and no need to pay 15 fuel and 150 mp )

I don't understand where you want to go, I didn't say the problem came from T2 free upgrade lmg, I pointed out that this is meta because it has been designed like that (reference to original coh2 matchup sov vs ost). SMGs (or better SMGs) should have been the first unlock for any factions, BARS included, they could have design a 1st upgrade Nothing>Thompson and a second upgrade Thompson>BAR or simply put Thompson upgrade available T1 and BARs only T3 and something similar for Ostheer.
but like I said, Sov/Ost original design was around Sov dominating short range from the beginning vs Ostheer dominating Long range from T2 so they clearly fucked up the topic from the early phase of design.

Seems like their is lots of broad agreement on a number of topics which is good to see. Hopefully this can get seen by relic. It all boils down to counter play that is available. The problem with rifle company as others have stated is the flames can be spammed on super durable infantry and if you are in cover you get decimated by flames and if you are out of cover you are decimated by BAR and M1 Fire. Simply making the rifle flamethrower into a special RET call in or something like that would go a long way to fixing that company. As some have said about flame tank countering ATG. I think it's ok for a flame tank to 1v1 a single ATG.
Flame tanks are highly specialized and crap vs armor (unless crocodile) so they need to be great at clearing team weapons/garrisons and infantry. It is a question of how good. The right point IMO is 2 ATG facing in same
Direction should be able to kill a flame tank before it wipes the second one. ATG spam is one thing I like using flame tanks against but you should at least have to flank or use smoke/dive in wipe 1 gun then reverse out, repair and go again.

+1 on everything, really excellent post.

I especially agree on the flamer & mortar mechanics (a world without clowncars and LeiG/Pack Howie nonsense!). These changes would surely improve gameplay.

Whatever you do, decide and advise Relic to do, remember that a top player is not automatically a good and knowledgeable game designer.

Many seem to think otherwise, which can deal a lot of damage. And it's also Relics fault for being so receptive of such things.


The removal of auto-fire on all mortal units, for example, would put a lot of people off from ever using these units again. And before someone mentions skill-related arguments in that context, I just want to say that such micro-tax related changes (as suggested here) could be damaging to the game's appeal.

And that is only 1 example.

No they are not, having flamers on mainline infantry is downright worst thing of this commander.
Not only do they deny cover and garrisons, the flamers themselves are straight up better then a BAR upgrade ( since flames hit multiple models and the dps is very good too).
Open cover has no negative penalties for flames, thus you get the entire DPS load of the rifles+flames at your sqaud.

In cover? you die.
In the open? you die.
Got teamweapons? White Phosper barrage, and thats useless too.
Killed a rifle squad? get instant vet 1 rifle replacement, slap a flamer on it and you are good to go.

It's insane, plain and simple.

It's not any worse than penal batts with flamers.

Now having easy vet and an easy 8 to fall back on if they get vehicles to counter your riflemen? That's the real thing that makes it a strong doctrine. If it didn't have the easy 8 it'd be much much weaker. If they didn't get free vet 1/ early vet 2 it'd be way weaker.

It's not any worse than penal batts with flamers.

And penals have the same damage profile as rifle's, come in t0 and have an at nade?
But they don't, so they aren't even in the same league of performance.
(And when was the last time you saw 3-4 penals with flamers running around the map in a 1vs1?).

Im telling you, it is far, far worse then everything else in that commander.

Relic will never implement these changes. Realize that most of these ideas were in COH1. They abandoned them for COH2 for no other reason than to be different. Deep Snow, a squashed and small UI, new huge rng elements to the game. All of this were clear design decisions that they put into the game to be different from COH1 to the detriment of gameplay.

I've just given up on relic really when an absolute classic like COH1 gets destroyed by pointless ill-thought game design changes.

raketenwerfer should get supression instead of isg

The funny thing about this whole vehicle flamers do too much damage to AT is that it points out obvious axis bias. i remember back in the day prior to western fronts soviets would frequently get their zis decrewed from tanks by German tigers ostwinds etc. zis guns had(have) inconsistent penetration and were very poor at doing their job yet the line was that Germans have better tanks late game so deal with it.

Now that German AT gets hard countered by flame vehicles, the tears flow. Maybe, just maybe, pak spam and rakketen spam should be punished. maybe you should have tanks or handheld at to support your at guns instead of building 3 paks and waiting out for tigers/ heavies.

Your first paragraph reflects a troubling attitude; vengeful and bias. The imbalances of the past do not justify balance issue of today. I would think as someone that experienced how unfair a panzer de-crewing a ZiS in a very short period of time was, that you would be more empathetic to the similar situation.

Flame tanks and AT is a tricky balancing issue. Both are hard counters to the other. I think that both should counter the other and the winner should be the player that deploys better tactics. Right now the flame tank doesn't need to do anything other than drive right up and somehow that's just not right.

@ Ciez - Good post

And penals have the same damage profile as rifle's, come in t0 and have an at nade?
But they don't, so they aren't even in the same league of performance.
(And when was the last time you saw 3-4 penals with flamers running around the map in a 1vs1?).

Im telling you, it is far, far worse then everything else in that commander.

Do riflemen have satchel charges, come from the same building as a clown car and get Oorah at vet 2?

It's a fucking comparison, they are very similar (Good damage, not squishy) units with flamers. I'm not claiming they're exactly the fucking same.

If penals are okay and riflemen aren't and I'm assuming since you don't agree with me on early vet bonuses they aren't a factor so why don't you crunch penal batt DPS w/flamer and riflemen dps w/flamer, keeping in mind penals are cheaper reinforce and have am extra 80hp. Whatever the difference is must be the balance threshold, eh?

I agree and disagree with some of the things posted here but overall this was very well thought out and doesn't sound like someone asking for everything to get nerfed/buffed

Flames
Like everyone is saying flames on mainline infantry makes it too out of hand, they are AoE weapons and having so many of them causes them to scale massively in huge infantry fights. On a 1v1 scenario though they seem to be fine on infantry it is not like we are seeing Piospam from CoH1 so leaving them on engineer units is fine to me. When it comes to tanks I think throwing ALL of the flame tanks into commanders kind of ruins the flow of the game, instead throw them into the tech buildings like the Sherman Croc. Since all of the flame tanks require no tech to get it does not make much sense to have them clear AT guns (something else that requires little tech) like no tomorrow, if you throw them in a T3 or T4 building then it would make more sense because you are teching up to break through the AT gun wall instead of turtling out.

Indirect Fire
I actually like this change to all the light artillery, the only issue I see with a very accurate and already fast barrage is it can cause similar issues to squads getting one shotted in that your squad got 3-4 shotted in a few second. This may be a little off topic but I think shells in general, tank and artillery, should be more accurate but come with less AOE so we do not have cases of miss, miss, miss, squad wipe and make it more 1 model kill, miss, 1 model kill, 1 model kill.

Squad Upgrades
I can agree with squad upgrades being a no brainer, but keep in mind that you are spending munitions on something that is permanent. If we are going to overhaul the whole upgrade system then we should allow at least expensive upgrades to be straight buff, something like 100 munitions or more for an upgrade of that sort and cheaper ones to be more focused so combined arms is more encouraged since it will be easier but having a dominating army will require you to have a dominant amount of resources or for you to forego other munitions based abilities.

Loiters
For all plane based abilities I think the power of AA just needs to be increased to the point where loiters just get shut down after a short amount of time, but to return some power we can allow the planes to arrive faster which will also create incentive to build these units. I have had a Flaktrak or the american AA truck on the field coincidentally when these planes have arrived and I felt like I didn't even notice them at work until I gave up the field for these planes.

Abandons
I have no problems with abandons being removed or made worse in any sort of way like some have said give it every single critical you can (turret destroyed and immobilized) so you really have to fight for it as opposed to someone stealing your Sherman then starts kiting your rifleman away while blowing them up. A whole free unit based on luck really can turn the game. I mean its not like we take the enemies wounded throw them into our barracks and force them to fight for us.

Overall though great discussion on this

And penals have the same damage profile as rifle's, come in t0 and have an at nade?
But they don't, so they aren't even in the same league of performance.
(And when was the last time you saw 3-4 penals with flamers running around the map in a 1vs1?).

Im telling you, it is far, far worse then everything else in that commander.

Zarok, you are wasting your breath trying to explain something ridiculously simple to pseudo intellectuals on this forum.

They have a position, they wont change it no matter how much you explain to them clearly and concisely. It really is pathetic, but unfortunately thats the case.

Anyone who doesn't see rifle flamers as the main problem in rifle company, I have no hope for you.

I Would much rather play "Ciez's" game than the current coh2. I think that 2 of the flame topics are kind of linked also here. AT guns are classed as cover??? If so, then not only the dot does damage from flame tanks but also extra damage due to cover. Remove both and At guns might actually do their job?

Also something i think should be looked at is the spacing of 4 man squads. Especially Falls. 440Mp Squad which gets wiped easier than pios. Why can't 4 man squads spread to the same size of 5 man or 6 man squads?? I think this would help the game alot!!!

Do riflemen have satchel charges, come from the same building as a clown car and get Oorah at vet 2?

It's a fucking comparison, they are very similar (Good damage, not squishy) units with flamers. I'm not claiming they're exactly the fucking same.

If penals are okay and riflemen aren't and I'm assuming since you don't agree with me on early vet bonuses they aren't a factor so why don't you crunch penal batt DPS w/flamer and riflemen dps w/flamer, keeping in mind penals are cheaper reinforce and have am extra 80hp. Whatever the difference is must be the balance threshold, eh?

I would prefer not to start a flamewar... and you're already extremely overly defensive but let's look at a few things:

Riflemen are significantly more durable than Penals. They have an addition -20% received accuracy in their vet bonuses while also starting with a better received accuracy modifier over Penals.

Their weapon profile is astronomically better. Roughly equal DPS at near while Rifles have nearly double the max range DPS output (assuming both squads are Vet0).

Rifles can AT snare, penals cannot.

Rifles have access to smoke nades and normal nades. Penals have satchels which are borderline useless.

Rifles can equip a BAR on top of their flamethrower, Penals cannot.

Rifles do not require commitment to a tech structure, Penals do.

Rifles are widely considered to be the strongest baseline infantry unit in the game, for good reason. They're amazingly powerful and flexible throughout the game. Giving them flamethrowers presents enemy squads with a "damned if you do but damned if you don't" scenario. You won't beat the flame rifles if you stand in green cover, but you also won't beat them if you stand in open ground. Unless you're highly vetted OKW elite infantry.

When was the last time you saw 3-4 squads of penals running around demolishing everything in a 1v1 tournament setting? You know, the thing Rifle Company has been doing for a while now.

Sure the Ez8 is good, but I'm way more scared of flame rifles than an Ez8.

the counter to rifle blobs is HMGs. if you suppress them they can't hit you with the flames. of course you can also soft counter the HMG with flamers and flanking or smoke.

Rifle blobs don't really exist for the majority of high level USF players. Sometimes yes, but usually there are 3-4 rifleman coming in from various flanks with nades and HMG's are more of a liability in that scenario since they get quickly wiped and stolen.