Guide on Impact of Bulletins

so it seems to me, that only snipers and flamers and explosives do criticals to suqads, but normal bullets dont. would mean, that this guide is still correct

Adjusting range accuracies may be one feasible way to affect small arms fire.

I would agree with this if there wasn't an armor factor involved, as well as equal HP on units. The introduction of armor into the game means that even when your gun accurately hits, it won't roll for damage unless it penetrates. Most small arms fire has around 66% chances to penetrate if I recall correctly (not exactly a coin toss, but somewhat close).

Its just an added filter of protection for your troops, which adds up in the long run, and once you consider it as a whole, its as though your gun didn't hit after all. I suspect this is part of the reason why cover in CoH2 is much less effective: I can stand around in negative cover if I want, and your bullets will hit me more often, sure. I still have a 34% chance to ignore your accurate shots (this is also why the 2% accuracy bulletin isn't that useful after all, compared to the damage one).

Close combat troops (PGrens and Shock troops) have amazing armor. They can theoretically charge in no cover against a green cover enemy, and while they'll sustain some damage, it doesn't have the dramatic effective it did back in vCoH. I want to assume increased accuracy in close range is much better than their semi automatic counterpart, but I'd still prefer increased damage(since close range makes you very accurate anyways, and you have burst fire).

What I think they need, simply and plain, is to increase small arms damage by about 10%-12% (so bulletins don't go crazy powerful). Shots will still miss, shots will still deflect from armor, but the ones that DO go in, will pack a punch. Green cover and above not only makes your enemy miss more, it also reduces weapon damage by half.

Once small arms fire damage is increased, fights will be slightly deadlier, and as such, any bit of cover will be welcome and much more important.

A lot of good info in this thread, thanks!

qduffy answered me:

As far as I know it tracks literal damage values. I don't think it's rounding. And yes, every weapon does criticals - or more appropriately, every unit requires some kind of death critical by a weapon critical. Soldiers have a death critical caused by small_arms in their low health bracket.

The buff is a modifier of 1.02 so 25.5%. Over a single engagement it doesn't matter much. Over time, it probably accumulates a bit. But this is a recruit level bonus, so it's available basically right off the bat.

The conscript weapon does it's maximum accuracy at 10m distance from the target basically (near). If a weapon has no value in near, it'll use the min value as the near range.

Range basically interpolates over distance;

In the case of the conscript rifle, it goes from .25 accuracy at 35m, increases linearly until .5 accuracy at 10m, and then maintains .50 accuracy until the min range of 0.

Hope this helps.

As far as I know it tracks literal damage values. I don't think it's rounding. And yes, every weapon does criticals - or more appropriately, every unit requires some kind of death critical by a weapon critical. Soldiers have a death critical caused by small_arms in their low health bracket.

the gamefiles show, that soldiers die with different intensities, which is caused by different weapons. so i think, the guide is basically still true

@Combatmuffin: More accuracy=More hits=More chances at penetration=More damage.

I was simply offering an alternative to a flat dmg increase, which would net the same result.

Ideally some way to increase small arms fire thst does not negate, but rather promotes cover, is best.

Ideally some way to increase small arms fire thst does not negate, but rather promotes cover, is best.

that would be much easier! you have accuracy-penalties for cover, modify them and you are fine!

Modifying accuracy penalties would not be fine.

Imcreasing the penalty would make small arms fire even more insignificant.
Reducing them would make cover even less useful than it already is.

Ideally some way to increase small arms fire thst does not negate, but rather promotes cover, is best.

if you want to better wepaon damage AND cover, you cant just change one value! you would have to change damage and the covertables, because a damageincrease of for example 5% means 5% more damage against heavy cover aswell!

but you are right with small arms fire and cover being insignificant. lets hope, that the devs will change that

Modifying accuracy penalties would not be fine.

Imcreasing the penalty would make small arms fire even more insignificant.
Reducing them would make cover even less useful than it already is.

This depends on how you approach it. Remember game programs are an abstract representation of reality, simulations reducing that abstraction as much as possible.

With this in mind, analyze how it is in real life: Soldiers miss, A LOT. In fact, more than 90% of the ammunition spent in combat is off target. However, damage is such, that a single hit on the enemy will most likely take him out of combat.

Now, I am not saying CoH should be modeled on that. The "semi real" but arcade feel of company of heroes stems from the fact that shots can miss (unlike most other RTS games), but units don't die from a single shot.

On to the point: If soldiers miss a lot, then damage must be used to compensate or else, like you mentioned, combat will be long and tedious. Right now, small arms combat is a little longer than we like, because of the three factors we have been discussing: accuracy, armor and damage. Three different filters just to register a kill, which will not kill the enemy squad outright.

There's several ways the devs can approach this, and each one has its traits and flaws:

-Decrease accuracy, increase damage: This would promote close distance encounters, and cover would have to help more against damage, than to accuracy penalties (since units already miss more). Armor can remain the same.

-Increase accuracy, leave damage the same: More hits will register against the enemy, so perhaps armor would have to be raised slightly to balance it and allow a saving grace so soldiers don't drop like flies. Cover becomes extremely important then, because anything that will help your units get shot less, no matter how big or small, is elemental.

-Accuracy remains the same, armor remains the same, damage increased: Combat becomes more lethal, shots already hit relatively often and you have armor to save you in case they do. If shots pass armor, your men can only take about 2-4 shots each. Cover can become important only if the accuracy penalties are increased, or if they provide substantial damage reduction.

This is relevant to the bulletins topic since, whatever changes they choose to make (if they make them at all) will affect how bulletins interact with the game. In some cases for good, in others not so good (for instance, if damage is increased, the 4% health buff becomes less useful).

Something that has not even been considered, is changing how cover interacts with the game. Perhaps heavy cover could, instead of reducing damage, could improve armor instead. This has a synergy with the flamethrower theory: it works against cover since it ignores armor.

Some hard bulletings to get are some of the tank ones.

P4 bulletins give extra armor and dmg for example. I also have the Elephant one that gives extra armor penetration.

Lets see a tank guide to see if they make much difference, thanks.

I do agree on the 10% speed increase...I'd rather have more health and firepower myself. I also wish there was more slots for the bulletins.

Say 2 for inf and 2 for tanks. 4 would give you more incentive to get the really hard bulletins.

Some hard bulletings to get are some of the tank ones.

Lets see a tank guide to see if they make much difference, thanks.

i think the hardest one to get is actually the damageincrease for you grenadiers, because you have to kill 5 IS2s or ISU152s with grenadeirs, so panzerfausts. i got that one in a custom agem with a friend only to achieve this bulletin.

after finishing this guide im planning on a tankguide!

You sure the troops dies at less than 0 health instead of less then 10% like vcoh?
Anyway, I'll try to test this

This could use some updating. Would be interesting to know how the DPS gain for infantry if you put all the following bulletins: 5% dec. weapon cooldown, 3% accuracy and 2% dec. cooldown + 2% dec. reload.

what a necro, congrats

well, 2 years ago, bulletins had a high impact, today its just "buff your infantry with the training bulletins and hope for the best" or "make mines cheaper" or "panzershrecks cheaper". everything else is really not viable

what a necro, congrats

well, 2 years ago, bulletins had a high impact, today its just "buff your infantry with the training bulletins and hope for the best" or "make mines cheaper" or "panzershrecks cheaper". everything else is really not viable

Thanks

But yeah, most of the bulletins are borderline useless. Can't believe there actually was increased health bulletins back then though. If you could get duplicate 3% accuracy or 5% cooldown bulletins for infantry, it would be another story. Never got those via warspoils drops so I guess it's impossible?

This could use some updating. Would be interesting to know how the DPS gain for infantry if you put all the following bulletins: 5% dec. weapon cooldown, 3% accuracy and 2% dec. cooldown + 2% dec. reload.

Copypasta from old post

While this might change from squad to squad, range and weapons, it gives a general panorama on how bulletins work.
-I made the calculations based on the Gren Kar at mid range. Cooldown modifiers are better at longer range than at close range

+3 Accuracy: increases damage by 3%
5% cooldown: increases damage by 1.21%
3% Reload: ... by 0.27%
2% Reload + 2% Cooldown: ... by 0.66%

Thx!

I've been wondering what you guys would say.



My personal doctrine so far for the UKF is:

I) Early game boni are more important than mid or late game boni as your success in early game will result in a larger mapcontrol where the additional resources will have a direct impact on your mid and lategame anyway.

II) Taking this into consideration I chose the Tommy Infantry Squad (equipped with Brens asap) as the backbone of my army that helps me from early to late game.

III) Thus I focus all my 3 available bulletins on the Tommy Infantry Squad.


Now my questions to you guys are:

Do you agree with my situational estimation or do you see some major or minor strategical flaws?


White: Infantry Section Squads have 3% increased accuracy.


Green: Infantry Section Squads will reload 3% faster.


Blue: Infantry Section rifles cool down 2% faster between shots and reload 2% faster.

Considering that I'd have 3 of each available (which I don't have so far) which combination would be the best?

I'm not aware about how the calculations of the various factors are dealing with the total DPS but using 3x the blue rare bulletin doesn't appear on first sight to have the best effect to me as it only affects the rifles of the section which to my understanding would include the normal Enfields & hopefully the Vet 3 Scoped Enfields but exclude the 2 Bren Gunners. So only 2 of 4 / 3 of 5 would benefit from this bulletin of 6% faster cool down and 6% faster time between shots if used with all 3 bulletins.

Now the question to me is if 9% faster reload or 9% increased accuracy is better where I would side with the accuracy, as 1 out of 10 hits more into the target, especially for the Bren, might do a better job at killing the enemy as quickly as possible (including the occassional fleeing last man). This would ironically make the common white bulletin the best out of the three.



Edit: Just read Elchino's post. Guess that already answers my questions in advance. How boring that the bulletin system ain't any more complex.