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

I would also add that rather than making upgrades make you worse at certain ranges every time and better at others you should just give players more choices so they actually can specialize more. G43 could be non doctrinal and same with LMG Browning. Add MP 40 to OKW and DP28 for SU.

Lastly. Give all units with rifle and LMG weapons a penalty for firing out of cover. It will penalize attack move blobs and anyone who has fired a rifle knows how much harder it is to aim when standing straight up alone vs resting on a tree, stand, lying prone, etc. this simple change would promote maneuvering to cover as soon as meeting with the enemy rather than standing in open blasting away with a blob. You could also slightly increase received accuracy from being in open ground/no cover and exposed/red cover.

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, and I think there are even more reasons for it than the ones listed here.

You are so wrong about Flamers for USF. Give them to Rear Echelons. Why? because they are squishy and to make them better than rifles you need to give them 2 BARs and you can only give them 1 BAR if they get a flamethrower which discourages spamming of Rear Echelon flamers which means we will not run into the same problem rifle flamers pose. Its like saying Sturmpios with a flamerthrower are as crazy as rifles.

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.

1. Thing is, even if you're in green cover, most units can knock out the specialists who are carrying the flamethrower as these are on, as I say again, and should be, on very squishy specialist units. I even pointed that out in my argument as engineers squads who are assigned these weapon don't have the DPS, staying power, or ability to fight to charge head-on in most cases. Riflemen flames blobs are a completely separate thing as they get two hits of received accuracy vet: pioneers, assault engineers, and combat engineers don't.

2. I never had an issue with multiple mortars and Mortar half-tacks set you back but for Leigs and Pack Howitzers the solutions in my mind are:

-Remove their suppression
-Revert their scatter to pre-Brits so they don't home in on squads. Check the files the Pack Howitzer currently has a scatter value of 6, much lower than it was pre-Brits. This is the reason its so easy for them to suppress squads as they can easily hit things.

3.I would prefer if more depth was added to the AA and aircraft call-in play.

Loiters should give player more time to counterplay and make having AA units a viable solution against loiter strikes, but with more control for the player using the loiter to attack a select target rather than RNG being the factor of what gets shot at. If you stay in the area without AA after the plane makes a warning pass or two(7-12 seconds), your tank/unit deserves to get hit.

5. Hmm, different experiences then. I wouldn't mind if abandon was removed, just giving a solution if it has to stay in by either making the vehicle completely crippled or a certain set of requirements need to be met to force abandon. As for out of control, I've never really had that happen to me so I can't really comment if it needs to be removed or not. It be easy to fix probably, though. Just make the out of control crit make the main weapon become disabled, it's a simple addition.

For the same reason game Relic game developers decided to give flamers to sturmpios instead of volks, it was so wrong of them to give flamers to riflemen and then make flames so effective in this game.

#RelicBalanceTeamFailFish

I see momo has ignored my posts for undisclosed reasons. Now this thread has become uncivil now that others points are being ignored and people rubbing their own ideas before considering to look at the other ones. Just because I have a Kappa face as my avatar doesn't mean I can't be serious.

I agree with most of the criticisms except one. I think the modifiers to flame vs cover are fine; the problems arise with the flamethrower platform.

Basically, I don't think engi/pio flamers, the WASP, flamer cars (although thats more debatable) and molotovs/incediary nades have ever really been a problem.

In those situations, a player has to risk losing a valuable unit/investment in trying to clear out a garrisoned position and these units can be focused down. These approaches are comparable to other methods such as indirect fire, snipers, brute force, etc.

The real problem has come from units that are very durable like rifleman/penals, crocs, and the KV8 have been the problem.

In these situations, it's unlikely that rifles or the tanks will die. There's never a realistic choice that needs to be made here because there's really very little risk with these units.

I think that a more optimal solution is that either these stronger platforms shouldn't have access to flame (unlikely), there should be a constant munitions drain in the same way that manpower is drained per unit, flamethrower units should carry higher risks (explosions or higher chances of gun/engine crits), or flamethrowers should be nerfed (not optimal).

Other than that, I agree with most of the most, although I do think we need to talk about snipers at some point.

My opinion:

1) Flamers

1.1 No access to flamethrowers for some factions.

I agree that every faction should have access to flamethrowers because they are some of the most basic tools in CoH2 and as such should not be missed in any factions tech tree.

1.2 Flame damage bonus vs green cover

I think your logic is kinda flawed on that one. It's not the green cover itself that takes skill to utilize it's the way you react to certain weapon types. The necessity to react differently when seeing a flamethrower approaching (eg leaving green cover to avoid the damage bonus) adds more skill than having green cover as sort of a no brainer option. So imo the opposite to what you said is the case. The bonus damage of flamethrowers against green cover expands the thought process that has to go into tactical positioning rather than limiting it.

1.3 Flame tank Damage over Time vs AT Guns

The problem you're describing here really only applies to the Flame Tank vs AT Gun matchup. Schrecks are mobile and only need to stop for a very short moment in order to fire. And in all honesty I do kinda like the new effectiveness of flame tanks vs AT Guns. I don't see why very specialized tanks that can only be accessed through doctrines shouldn't be able to soft counter AT Guns. Especially considering that a frontal assault by a KV8 or Flame Hetzer can easily be stopped by having a snare (Grenfaust) near by. The area denial feature gives flame tanks a very specific role that differentiates them from other Anti Infantry vehicles which is great.
However the new flameweapons on tanks might need some balance tweaking to make them more viable.


2) Indirect Fire

I absolutely love the idea of designing the Pack Howie/ISG as sort of a light howitzer (which they technically both already are by definiton) that has a reasonably strong barrage and no auto fire. The barrage would have to be quite impactful and much more consistent than a SU76 barrage of course to not render them useless. I must say though that I'd limit those changes to the Pack and ISG without touching hte mortars at all. Mortars are just fine in my opinion even though they're not the most skillfull unit I have to admit that. Still keep them the way they are right now for the sake of faction asymmetry which is an extremely important part of the game that has been *** on a lot with some of the recent patch efforts.


3) Weapon upgrades

3.1 No brainer upgrades

Agreed, the ideal solution to this would be global upgrades but those won't be implemented anyways so we'll have to think of a different way.


3.2 Giving cover more importance over sole weapon range.

This sounds like a very valid point however your proposed solution would require extenive testing to make sure it doesn't screw over the entire game because it's a very vast change affecting every single infantry unit in the game.

3.3 Giving weapon upgrades disadvantages

Agreed, but isn't this already the case for some infantry units ? Rangers for example ? How do LMG Grens perform on close range compared to vanilla Grens ?


4)

I agree 100%


5)

Agreed


Overall a very interesting post my dear leader !


Edit:
I think you guys are confusing the Rifle Company balance issue with the overall situation regarding flamers. The problem is not that flamethrowers are too strong it's that they're not supposed to be equipped on main line infantry. Btw I think that flame riflemen are actually kinda overrated. On some maps LMGs are way stronger.

In addition what has been said about mortars/packs I think Priest and sexton and other artillery could maybe also benefit from a 1 shot barrage with a really short cooldown.

Most of the time after the enemy sees a priest shell miss, he just moves and my priest is stuck firing into nothing and is useless for 60 seconds, but of course sometimes it's handy like shooting at a fhq, so how about giving them an extra skill that's a single shell shot that puts everything on like 5 second cooldown or less, while still keeping the long barrage which will put everything on the regular cooldown.

-snip-

Great post CieZ.
I agree with all the issues/suggestions that you discussed except for the Flamer vs Green Cover issue; I think flamers having bonus damage vs Green Cover isn't a bad mechanic and should be there.

Everything else you mentioned though, is spot on. Most of these issues are what have made some of my games in the last few weeks un-enjoyable. I feel that ISG/Pack are still OP and game breaking (Pack especially) post-patch, mostly because the main issues with them i.e. Accuracy and Suppression weren't addressed. In a game I played on Kharkov yesterday,a single Pack Howie placed safely behind the front-line, would effectively wipe 2 models from my Gren Squads in the first hit. The so-called manual aim nerf isn't a nerf at all, especially on maps like Kharkov which are narrow; you can just aim it in one direction and have it peck away at your units from a long way off. It doesn't require skill or micro imo.

I mostly agree with miragefla's points. I think weapon upgrades are fine as they are, though the Soviets could use non-doc PPSh.

Incendiaries:
Flamethrowers are fine, they just need to get rid of the Rifle Flamers. Make them a separate dedicated unit, Flamethrower Team, as a call-in for Rifle Company or more preferably a base unit. They could have 4 men and weaker Rifles than normal Riflemen, but of course will come with a Flamethrower. Flamethrower DoT on AT Guns is shitty I agree. Also revert the Volks Grenade and give Sturmpioneers a Vet 0 Frangible (replace useless stun grenade) for anti-building, the Frangible also won't instantly kill Fighting Positions and Emplacements.

Light Artillery:
Mortars are fine, the 120mm I'm not sure how to tweak to keep it useful but not overpowered or random. Maybe it could be barrage only, due to being stronger, but normal Mortars remain unchanged. The ISG and Pack could be direct-fire units up to 30 range, with their long-range ability being limited to a barrage. To compensate, the barrage fires more shells and is stronger than currently. Most importantly, remove their suppression, it's a terrible idea!

Aircraft:
For Loiter I'd hate to see it removed, rather give it even more depth expanding on what miragefla said, let you tell it what to target within radius and make it die to sustained AA fire rather than a random chance of death each shot. Give it a chance to retreat instead of die, which would further reduce plane crashes without removing them.

Death Criticals:
Abandon should be reworked so that it only triggers if certain criteria are met, and then it triggers consistently when they are met. Such as having two criticals or being in a base sector. For out of control, just disable the main gun and reduce the speed by 50% when it happens. Still looks cool, but no more final shots or infantry crushes.

Great post. It's good to see fundamental arguments every now and then instead of BUFF DIS NERF DAT.

1. Flamers: I'm with Pigsoup on this one. Flamers should counter both cover and garrison, provided that they are only accessible on Engineer units (Fragile, can't be spammed, not AT etc). As for vehicles, I think a speed nerf and a range nerf would do the trick. Wasp should maintain its superior range because it's underwhelming, but other heavy and medium flamers should have their range cut by half.
Side Note: Remove Auto and manual "Nade from tank" (Talking to you Churchill)

2. I agree with you. I would like to see all indirect fire weapons act like "baby howitzers" and I've stated that before. A High-Explosive barrage of 4-5 rounds, with a very short cool-down just to force units out of garrison or cover (Which is also pretty realistic). Pack Howi/ISG can have their suppression on their barrage then since they are expensive.
Or we can have Infantry reactions back. They've removed it allegedly because Volk Blobs could cause "Chain Reaction" which was practically Suppression. All explosive and ballistic weapons should have their "Infantry Reaction" back.

3. Tactical decisions like this are good for a better experience. I agree that no brainers are kinda boring but your example of 4 LMG grens in a squad made me lol( ). They can reduce the damage of LMG and move it every model in the squad (DPS buff on Kars or Lee-Enfields etc.). This might actually reduce model sniping. I would also like to see a minimum range for LMGS, in which the model would not be able to shoot if the target is too close (something like 5-10 in game meters)

4. We need actual Skill Planes, with skill involved. Unless it's Recon. I know it won't be implemented, but they can add manual target selection for AoE Skill Planes. For example, you have a maximum of 5 Bursts (or passes or salvos, whatever) on your P47. You have to manually select targets inside the AoE, and the plane will target them with every pass. Both more tactical and balanced, great micro tax for great ability. We won't see that in game of course, just a thought.

5. These specials and crits should be restricted to custom games only, unless you have control over it which would create more problems.

Thanks for your great post.

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long post.
1) Flame weapon changes:
2) Indirect Fire Units
3) Weapon Upgrades in General
4) Loiters (aka Skillplanes)
5) Abandons/Out of control

flame weapons are a bit tough. in dow2 they were all short ranged and generally limited in usefulness to garrison counters, buildings, and certain high model light infantry squads. coh2 has less mechanics then dow2, particularly relating to infantry, and so flamers are a better upgrade in general. the idea behind them is that their power against cover is the trade off for the being short ranged. in coh2 they tend to be more used as AI weapons that also preform well against garrisons rather than garrison counters. i think this is caused by a combination of upgrades generally being straight improvements and flamers often being available on either fast, or tough platforms. when these platforms also have utility functions (riflemen for example) they're pretty strong. the point of flame weapons is valid though; to allow a player to counter models in cover (ex: IS in heavy cover that can't be flanked) without having to buy and wait on artillery.

indirect fire is tough to balance, particularly at the ranges that the WFA artillery has. the OKH/USSR mortars are less of an issue because a strong push will force them to move (and they're not very accurate). reducing the accuracy of the auto fire and/or the range will make artillery require more attention without removing its usefulness against static positions. the suppression is an interesting mechanic but is pretty broken on units with as much range, accuracy, and as high a fire rate as the pack and lieg.

weapon upgrades just don't have the variety that they did in dow2 because of the simpler mechanics. you no longer have melee, stuns, heavy infantry, or fantasy abilities like teleportation. there's still the potential for interesting upgrades though (GzB 39 providing light indirect and AT for example).

planes are tough; there isn't a complete system in place for them. as a rule of thumb, each faction only has one AA unit and those units all preform roughly the same. they generally stop loiters but not always before the damage is done and the single passes they never stop. personally, i think the game would be better off without planes but if they have to stay in they should be powerful but give AA units an opportunity to shoot them down before they do a ton of damage.

i don't really see your issue with out of control but crits in general are RNG (baring snares) and RNG with something as important as a tank is not nice, especially when the abandon crit can potentially transfer resources from one player to another.

Nicely written.


We should change LMG like this:
When unit is in open they deal litle to no damage (its hard to have lmg on your hand and fire it accuratly) but when the unit is in cover then they deal normal daamge like now (because he can place it on sandbag , wooden fence etc. to increase accuracy and handling)

This should affect all LMGs in game.

Mid range weapons are fine i think.

Close range units should not get any armor / recieved accuracy / camouflage so you need to use terrain and outplay you opponent by hiding in FoW not runing like maniac. Also decrease their cost a bit to compesate their new role.


What this will change ?

You need to micro your units.
A-move blob of lmgs will be now ineffective
Maniac lolrushing units will need to be microed well.

Remove supression from leigt and pack howie , give back autofire - problem solved


I think flamers are now better than old i trow a dice and maybe i crit a model.

Only think i does not like is DoT , otherwise flame weapons are fine.

Handheld ones.
I think thier fine becuase they are on weak enginner unit and you can even defeat het engineer if you are out of cover so simply move out of cover and shot them.

If enemy use 2 units then your outplayed becuase one unit (conscirpts for example) will beat you in open terain . I think it is fine.

Only problem is handheld flamer on core units like riflemen because this makes zero skill form one player and zero counterplay form other (before if you have 2 grens vs pio and conscript , you simply move out of cover , shot pios and move in cover and defeat conscirpt)


Yes change planes like ciez mentioned.

And remove abanonement , here is nothing to say

Great post op.

1. Flame Damage

I agree with most of what you said, the main problem with flamethrower is that they should ignore cover, and not do more damage to unit in cover. It basically encourages you to not use cover, also it is not intuitive to new player. I do not agree that all faction should have flamethrowers, instead I prefer the design of giving all faction some form of cover ignoring weapon/ ability.

2. Indirect Fire Units

I agree with this, however, I feel that they should still autofire. The autofire should, however, be less effective than barraging. This should be true of any unit, all units should require micro and good tactics to be effective. There is a difference between leaving units in heavy cover, as oppose to having a mortar in the back killing model with no micro, or thought of where you place it.

3. Weapon Upgrades in General

I feel that lmg for grenadier is the main problem, USF bazooka need a fix and so do UKF piats also need a fix. The main problem with the grenadier lmg is that they do not scale well without the lmg. I do, however, agree that all weapons should have range that they are most effective at.

Also could we have more upgrades such as that on the panzergrenadiers since getting panzerschreck reduce their AI power.(at the moment this is meaningless as pg are less effective than grens with lmg )

4. Loiters (aka Skillplanes)

I agree, the most hated aspect I have with COH2 is powerful abilities that require little skill to use to be effective. The reason I tolerate a commander like CAS is that at least you know that for the strafes you can Dodge them and it is your own fault not the game for the lost.

5. Abandon

Agree, Relic really needs to fix this mechanic.

they should remove it, however, knowing relic they will probably leave it in for two years even though people hate it.(I looking at you deep Snow and blizzards)

If Relic wants to kept it they should at least make it cost fuel to recrew a vehicle. The mechanic they currently have is similar to that for team weapons, the differences is that team weapons only cost manpower and you spent only manpower to recrew them. Tanks and vehicles cost manpower and fuel and you spent ONLY manpower to recrew them.

We should change LMG like this:
When unit is in open they deal litle to no damage (its hard to have lmg on your hand and fire it accuratly) but when the unit is in cover then they deal normal daamge like now (because he can place it on sandbag , wooden fence etc. to increase accuracy and handling)

It's actually the opposite in game, out of cover an LMG is placed on the ground with the bipod and fired from prone. In cover, they cannot prone so the LMG is fired from the hip like this:






I see several ways we can fix the Light Machine Guns without ruining them. Simplest would be to make them take up two weapon slots rather than one. This would effect every LMG except the DP, because that would break Guards. The second way is a bit more complicated, but we could make LMG's act like auto-rotating Maxims. They'll still pack a punch, but they won't be able to redirect their fire at whim. The third is to just give them flat, unchanging DPS at all ranges.

It's actually the opposite in game, out of cover an LMG is placed on the ground with the bipod and fired from prone. In cover, they cannot prone so the LMG is fired from the hip like this:






So technically you're saying it should be more accurate when held, rather than deployed.

not like some1 would have the great idea to lay the lmg on the cover to gain increased stability. bipod can be used on many covers reallife too. did you ever watch a semi realisitic war movie/documentation/fps?

not like some1 would have the great idea to lay the lmg on the cover to gain increased stability. bipod can be used on many covers reallife too. did you ever watch a semi realisitic war movie/documentation/fps?

There's no animations for that, the LMG user stands and hipfires when in cover.

1. Flamers: I'm with Pigsoup on this one. Flamers should counter both cover and garrison, provided that they are only accessible on Engineer units (Fragile, can't be spammed, not AT etc). As for vehicles, I think a speed nerf and a range nerf would do the trick. Wasp should maintain its superior range because it's underwhelming, but other heavy and medium flamers should have their range cut by half.

[...]

As far as I know before Rifleman vet was buffed there was trend to use REs with equipment (BARs or LMGs). Now imagine RE flamer blob, which wouldn't be locked behind certain commander.
- Fragile? Yes, but after vet they get 5th man.
- Can't be spammed? Hell no. In fact players chose REs instead of Rifleman because of spammability (better map control) and cheap reinforcement.
- Not AT? Absence of snare - yes, but you can always throw in some zooks.

Jeez, these suggested changes would just make this game tough for me to log back into. It's not an exports game, get over it.

1. No thanks, I don't want World War I game where player fire artillery at each other defensive line.
2. No thanks, auto barrage is fine since Dawn of War. Adjustment is required but not remove auto barrage.
3. Partly agree. I think all weapon should be like coh1: good at short and weaker at long, no matter which weapon is. Several adjustment is required.
4. No thanks, strafe is worse than loiter, since Anti-Air cannot counter strafe at all. CAS Doctrine is a great example.
5. No thanks, abandon is great feature. It's just implemented badly. Maybe increase abandon critical to 25% or require half of vehicle cost to "refuel" abandon vehicle like the mission in USF campaign.