Farewell & Hello - Breaking Brad

Good point about sighting - I agree a result of this change will be that (against OKW) sending an allied tank to scout the FoW may no longer lead to instant death.

Admittedly I Haven't seen AT rushing with grenadiers but I have seen it with Osttruppen blobs. Cheap replaceable infantry that can faust-spam a light tank to death if one has enough munitions.

Here's where the comparison falls down though - shrecks only require the unit to be stationary, don't require munitions & selecting to fire each time, have a faster firing animation, and do far more damage and have higher pen. Therefore on a risk/reward scale I still think we would see this bumrushing behaviour a lot and to me a downgrade on the type of AT volks get seems a better solution.

But hey, I'd be up for testing it in a balance preview mod and letting the results speak for themselves!

it costs manpower to replace volks that get killed while trying to get close to a tank. recklessly charging at a tank will just get you shot up and take a lot of unnecessary losses. it costs nothing to repair vehicles other than time.

The suggested OKW truck upgrade costs are trivial really.

Assuming the ability to reinforce isn't affected, the medic truck still provides a strong forward reinforce point relatively early in the game, and if the truck has been placed outside of the base the upgrade is already an inevitability anyway. At best it provides a very slight speed bump.

The repair upgrade I've never seen as critical, but I'll leave that to more experienced OKW players. Either way 50 muni seems quite low.

Most importantly there's no cost suggested for the flak HQ which probably needs it more than the others.

There is always a lead.

If lead doesn't approve or is too stubborn with his own vision, you can do nothing about it, but give your feedback and pray for it to be considered.

I can 100% relate to that as I've had recently a literal disaster happen, because my feedback was disregarded

Question is now why the lead screwed his Feedback then, I guess we will never know but that would be really interesting..

Uh where are you getting that gren/lmg42 is going to be the best? Literally 1 rifleman with a bar will beat a gren with a lmg in close /mid range and all lmgs relatively have the same stats. I would say the one unit that benefits the most are obers but they are costed relatively high already.

Edit: also on the lmg issue stats might need to get adjusted perhaps? But it makes it ridiculously easier to to balance because your only accounting for 1 LMG at a time in your calculation.


Not solving any issues? the fact that you guarantee to win with a tank against a shreck blob directly seems pretty good to me? This literally preserves all necessary relationships. You don't have to agree wit my suggestion though I personally just feel that would be the best option without gimping the faction.

To reach mid / close range with BARs you need to go out of cover and take damage and loss. There is always a good amount of chance to lose a model in the move. In fact from experience I'll say the match is decided by cover bonus available and if you lose a model while closing the range. Also to mention that vet2-3 gren reliably kill a RM model per burst if out of cover.
So yes, doing that would probably require to also nerf LMG42 performance which would also impact all infantry fights vs all allied factions.
You also mention yourself the buff to Obers it procures but we can go further in OKW infantry impact. Volks being suddenly more powerful late game, but also Falls/pzfuss/jaegers/Obers. You need 2 BARs to stay on the run vs them when they reach vet3+

I'm not saying the idea is wrong, but requires a lot of changes to make it balance. And without Trolling you, you've been part of Relic so you know how it works when big changes are done = 0 impact analysis (at least from a customer/player point of view).

On shreck let's say we need to test it and see the real impact. If you're right, I'll be happy to apologize.

EDIT: if someone wants to fix my formatting for me thanks lol I have no idea why its all shifted.

Goodbye to Dev Brad Hello To Community Brad.
Braden Chan // Breaking Brad

Finally we can shittalk you hard without fearing consequences

I think you did pretty good work on balance. Yeah, there was some fails in the past, but right now game is ALMOST balanced (except cancer emplacements commander, few useless soviet units and lack of sidegrades (only FRP) for OKW).

If it is really you, Brad, i have only one question which you can probably anwser - Does other devs from COH2 team have list of unimplemented changes for future patch (your work before departure)?

And why Commissar and Red Banner T-34-85 didn't make their way to multiplayer?

To reach mid / close range with BARs you need to go out of cover and take damage and loss. There is always a good amount of chance to lose a model in the move. In fact from experience I'll say the match is decided by cover bonus available and if you lose a model while closing the range. Also to mention that vet2-3 gren reliably kill a RM model per burst if out of cover.
So yes, doing that would probably require to also nerf LMG42 performance which would also impact all infantry fights vs all allied factions.
You also mention yourself the buff to Obers it procures but we can go further in OKW infantry impact. Volks being suddenly more powerful late game, but also Falls/pzfuss/jaegers/Obers. You need 2 BARs to stay on the run vs them when they reach vet3+

I'm not saying the idea is wrong, but requires a lot of changes to make it balance. And without Trolling you, you've been part of Relic so you know how it works when big changes are done = 0 impact analysis (at least from a customer/player point of view).

On shreck let's say we need to test it and see the real impact. If you're right, I'll be happy to apologize.

Rifleman in general though really do not have a problem closing distant and fighting grens there regular rifles will also catch up the dps once in range. 1 Rifleman with 1 bar actually completely destroys a volksgreandier squad objectively speaking. Also keep in mind once volks upgrade a panzershreck they will no longer have the slot size requirement to pick up an LMG or Bar. So it goes both ways. Even without any weapons volks actually struggle so hard against mass rifleman if they dont have supporting infantry or vehicles.

I agree there might be a lot of tweaking but i think in the long run it will benefit the game and we will start to see less lmg blobing / volks blobing

Thanks for taking the time to post. These seem like well thought out changes. You are definitely very passionate about what you do.

I was never really a fan of your professionalism or communication (personally speaking), but your balance thoughts have always been spot on.

i would ALWAYS be willing to spend hundreds of munitions if it meant i would kill a heavy tank. thats literally no question about that. youre spending under 400 munitions for a guaranteed tank kill. button range is just slightly shorter than tank gun range, its not like its AT grenade range either.

just because you dont see them doesnt mean theyre not good. people just favor maxims into t70s right now. when guards first got their buffs they saw a lot of play and they performed quite well. imo theyre a unit thats actually pretty well balanced ATM, and they provide good long range defensive firepower.

its not like Button is completely useless now either, i see the ability as something that buys time for your other units to get into position rather than just completely shutting down a tank with one button. It buys time for cons to get into range for an AT nade, or your AT guns to get 1 or 2 more volleys off. etc etc.

It was slightly under 300 munitions to kill an Elefant but, IIRC, it always killed the Elefant. It didn't always work against mediums but maybe I should've had another guard like Jadame. Still, it was one of the few ways to kill JT's or Elefants in larger games. The change completely screwed Allies in 4v4 if they didn't win by the 25-30 minute mark.

I do not believe you Brad. Same happened with Peter in the past. I do not think balance is a big problem while I need to deal with some features that Miragefla can fix in a mod (competitive mod)

If real brad, ive got a question:
Your changes Sounds more reasonable than 90% of the stuff relic Patched. That implies that your opinion on balance got screwed by other relic members every patch cycle? (?)

Well, he cannot reply this question though because of NDA.

I do not believe you Brad. Same happened with Peter in the past. I do not think balance is a big problem while I need to deal with some features that Miragefla can fix in a mod (competitive mod)

More like starcraft-fied mod to me. Miragefla's mod just breaks every immersions of the game. Some of the changes is good, but most of game mechanic should be preserved instead of completely remove(like airplane crash, abandon,...). If he just removes stuffs because he can't manage to keep those alive, I would give him zero for balancing.

And that's why I prefer Relic balance, at least in the end it's still Company of Heroes and not another Starcraft clone.

Great post! Looking forward to hearing more insight from Brad. Cheers~~!!!~~!

Brad

Hello Brad and welcome back.

Brad, if this is truly you, please tell me, has Relic had any plans at all, in your recent memory, to implement Urban Assault and/or Not One Step Back? or will I be stuck with this? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=658244833

Brad, if this is truly you, please tell me, has Relic had any plans at all, in your recent memory, to implement Urban Assault and/or Not One Step Back? or will I be stuck with this? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=658244833

They've confirmed multiple times that these commanders were not suitable for the game, just like command KT commander.

They've confirmed multiple times that these commanders were not suitable for the game, just like command KT commander.

And now I'm supposed to say something involving the Pershing not being added.

'Formal' welcome to the community. Thanks for all your hard work over the past seven years. You may get a ton of shit in this thread, remember all these plebs are here because they sweat coh2.

Like anyone who works in a corp environment you have to work with other people and their ideas. I'm sure plenty of staffers had their input into balance; convoluting the situation.