No Tech Call-in Tanks

In my opinion they are ruining the game. By skipping tech you save large amounts of manpower and most importantly FUEL allowing you to get a tank in situations when players are far behind. It is completely ruining the pace of the game and discouraging teching.

Often these call-in units are equal or even much better than what you can make from tech too. How are you supposed to make proper balance when you can have over 100 fuel lead on your opponent but they have no disadvantage and in fact could have a manpower advantage and better units?

Evidence of this is that almost every commander that is popular in the meta has call ins:

Ost: Puma, Stug E, Tiger, Command P4
Soviet: IS-2, Sherman
USF: M10, Pershing, Calliope
OKW: Flakpanzer, command panther
Brit: Croc

It could be argued that a large reason why OKW is having a hard time is because they have to tech whilst their opponents simply use light vehicles then go straight for a call in. This light vehicle stall to call in is robbing the game of medium tanks as they simply don't have a large enough window to be effective. Also it is why we never see strategies like skipping a light vehicle to go for a fast medium through tech unless a player has a MASSIVE lead.

Can we get these tanks integrated into tech like the t34/85 and Easy Eight are? Or even if they still have no build time but require tech to call in (similar to the King Tiger)

Or perhaps Miragefla's system where call-in tanks are significantly more expensive without the tech.

Yea... good luck for you to survuve until CP levels of call-ins without tiering. All heavies have high CP cost, you getting enough points only in late, very rarely in middle. And sometime ago, CP requirements were increased for call-ins, so... I see nothing problematic here.

About medium and light vechilces call-ins. All those call-ins (except Ostheer Puma maybe, never used) are usualy WEAKER than their analogs in stock. M10 < M36, 105mm Sherman... what for that thing exists, Flakpanzer is trash, Flammenpanzer is trash, KV-1 is trash, KV-8... my personal opinion - trash, Stug E trash, Valentine is trash... You got it, right? So, if they are weaker and their getting will be bounded with teching - who will need them at all? Who will need M10, if it will be bounded with teching to USF T4, for example (which costs ALOT), when in same T4 I will be able to get proper AT tank, instead of that toy?

+ Don't forget, that USSR is HARDLY dependable on call-ins in their doctrines. USSR at all is highly doctrine-dependable (and it's bad), so - making call-ins integrated in tech for them will be really deadly blow to USSR. Making T-34-85 tech integrated, in my understanding, had only 1 purpouse - make new shitty T4 at least somehow attractive for people. And adding E8 in tech... who knows why it happend.

In any case, your idea is deadly for current game design, balance of some factions. I suggest you to think more about it, evaluate it's affection on game in general. Im seriously sure - it will cause more problems than benefits, just like last big patch.

P.S. In vCoH call-in tanks wasn't just binded to teching - they even didn't cost any fuel!!! I still remember, how powerful was mindfuly done "early-churchill rush" And I don't remember, that someone had problems with that.

Sure there are bad call in tanks like hetzer and 105 sherman but if you have to tech to get them then they can be improved without worrying about ruining balance. Rather than now if you want to improve them you have to consider if this improvement will lead to it completely over running people who try to tech and invalidating what should be the core of the game.

Stug E will still be used (cheap and ruins inf), so will the m10 due to its better durability and much lower fuel cost + crush.

There are going to be teething pains but I feel it is worth it in the long run.

Most of these aren't a problem.

Only wher's mechanized, sov's landlease, and usf's armor are even good enough to attempt to not tech eventually. All the others aren't really call-ins that you can go all game without and are limiting your potential by not being able to support with other tanks.

Also you are missing a couple like 105 sherman and kv-1.

Only thing i would suggest is nerfing stugs vet ability, locking soviet sherman and 105 behind tech, hopefully adding some bufs for the 105 too.

+1 for tightropes idea!
I'd like to see an massvie price increase (fuel) for getting call in tanks without teching! Light vehicles are ok the way it is right now... just think about a mortar halftruck. its currently 50 fuel which is already a bit high imo...

About medium and light vechilces call-ins. All those call-ins (except Ostheer Puma maybe, never used) are usualy WEAKER than their analogs in stock. M10 < M36, 105mm Sherman... what for that thing exists, Flakpanzer is trash, Flammenpanzer is trash, KV-1 is trash, KV-8... my personal opinion - trash, Stug E trash, Valentine is trash... You got it, right? So, if they are weaker and their getting will be bounded with teching - who will need them at all?

M10 is cheaper than M36... it shuts down Ostheer T3 if you dont tech to major because of the insane amount of fuel you can save up! its at that time of the game when osthee should start to get some initiative back and counterattack the us rifleblob...but the M10 is just too good for its fuel cost + its crushing is still godlike Kappa

Who will need M10, if it will be bounded with teching to USF T4, for example (which costs ALOT), when in same T4 I will be able to get proper AT tank, instead of that toy?

thats why it should have something like 1.5 times higher fuel price without T4 and normal price when you already teched to T4

Soviet Sherman is a pain in the ass for every OKW player because (without tech) one can easily get 2 or ever 3 and rush the raketenwerfer(s)...

Flakpanzer is the comebackunit for OKW and handles Inf pretty well if you rely on raketenwerfers against enemy tanks (which is a gamble because of the units performance)

Flammpanzer and KV1 are bad thats true but KV8 can be brutal if your enemy has no armor to defend against it... once the paks are disttacted the KV8 just kills everything...

In any case, your idea is deadly for current game design, balance of some factions. I suggest you to think more about it, evaluate it's affection on game in general. Im seriously sure - it will cause more problems than benefits, just like last big patch.

Last big patch was overall a good one! Mines,Snipers,Volksblob...
The current Meta is not totaly reliant on call ins which is a great improvement to some years ago! But its still frustrating to lose a game where you dominated your opponent all game until he spams call in tanks (not the heavy tanks) with his saved fuel! why should an Osteheer player with barely any mapcontroll be able to field a command P4 to buff all of hist teamweapons?

This sort of game design encourages campy playstile instead of aggresive pushing (for which teching is needed). There is always the option to come back via call in tanks... Remove that and games also wouldn't take as long as they do now...

I like call-in tanks for some reasons.

First one, it adds a bit strategy. If you feel, you are winning, you will usualy go for another tech. But if you are losing, and you can't afford teching, you are forced to fall back, defend and try to survive without teching.

How many amazing comebacks we saw thanks to IS2 or Tiger or any other call in? Many. I feel, like 80% cases call-ins are choosen cause of losing, not becasue they don't need teching.

Secondly, it's a problem with doctrines, not call ins. I have on my mind two of them. Shock and Mechanized. 2 call ins in 1 doctrines is a bad solution. You can just stick with ZiS + KV8 + IS2, just like Pak40 + Stug E + Tiger. 2 call ins are problem, not call ins in general.

Thirdly, if we tie call in to teching, we won't see Tigers or Elephants.

So to summarize, this is the beauty of call ins. They can change the whole battle once they get into battlefield and I love it. Game would be way more boring if we changed current call in system (with exception of KV8 nad Stug E)

+1 for tightropes idea!


M10 is cheaper than M36... it shuts down Ostheer T3 if you dont tech to major because of the insane amount of fuel you can save up! its at that time of the game when osthee should start to get some initiative back and counterattack the us rifleblob...but the M10 is just too good for its fuel cost + its crushing is still godlike Kappa

thats why it should have something like 1.5 times higher fuel price without T4 and normal price when you already teched to T4

Soviet Sherman is a pain in the ass for every OKW player because (without tech) one can easily get 2 or ever 3 and rush the raketenwerfer(s)...

Flakpanzer is the comebackunit for OKW and handles Inf pretty well if you rely on raketenwerfers against enemy tanks (which is a gamble because of the units performance)

Flammpanzer and KV1 are bad thats true but KV8 can be brutal if your enemy has no armor to defend against it... once the paks are disttacted the KV8 just kills everything...

Last big patch was overall a good one! Mines,Snipers,Volksblob...
The current Meta is not totaly reliant on call ins which is a great improvement to some years ago! But its still frustrating to lose a game where you dominated your opponent all game until he spams call in tanks (not the heavy tanks) with his saved fuel! why should an Osteheer player with barely any mapcontroll be able to field a command P4 to buff all of hist teamweapons?

This sort of game design encourages campy playstile instead of aggresive pushing (for which teching is needed). There is always the option to come back via call in tanks... Remove that and games also wouldn't take as long as they do now...

1. M10 is cheaper, but If I remember right, they increased it's price with buff, so it costs almost like Ostheer StuG G. Playing ONLY with call-in M10s, specially in late may end for you pretty bad - Elephants, KTs, Panthers and such beasts will just stump them, covered with other Axis AT. And Im not sure, that M10 is able to shut Ostheer T3. StuG G is pretty powerful and cheap AT too, so it's not unstopable... In any case, my point was - you just can't play ONLY with call-in tanks, their quality is not good enough. That's why you are able to call them without teching.

2. Increasing price for Call-ins if you haven't teched enough. Gonna enable "Farseer mode" - nobody will just use them. Seriously, overpaying for low quality units, instead of saving resourses on tech, which with you getting normal units? All call-ins will become just useless, you can instantly remove them from game after that. Anyone, who understand, how resourse management in CoH works will say the same.

3. About Shermans, KVs and such stuff... Soviet shermans costs like T-34-85, but perform like T-34-76 with a bit better stats, KVs are poor, even KV-2, Ostwind is poor (played in vCoH sometime ago - how deadly it was there...), Flammenpanzer is poor... I don't know who builds their game around those units. I may understand, that soviets build their game arounds those units, but only becasue stock is way worse than call-ins, such designed it is. But USF has in stock more powerful units, than in doctrines, so... Making it tech binded doesn't look good for their attractiveness.

4. Last big patch was and is just pyle of sh*t. It was devastating blow to factions design (specially OKW) and it didn't really made anything better. But, that's another discussion.

5. And I think, existance of such call-ins rewards more agressive gameplay, cos without tech-binding you can get them faster, so it makes game "faster" and more agressive. Tech binding will slow gameplay, tanks will come later, cos again - is there anyone sane who will pay x1.5 (or x any number >1) price for unit, instead of saving those res for tech and getting units from tech? And besides - if you dominated over the field, then you had more resourses, then you got more powerful units. I think, that same M10 spam in late can be really tasty food for your JT or Elephant, if you really dominated over the field you should be able to afford those beasts.

6. There is nothing wrong in campy playstyle, though... You can't always play in rush, it's just impossible. And there are people, which actually like campy playstyle (artillerists, emplacementers...). Im sure, that our... their gamestyle is not worse, than gamestyle of those, who prefer to play agressive. It makes in game tactical and strategic rich. So, let's not say, that campy playstyle should be punished, and agressive - rewarded. It is biased position, I don't think, we should approve it, right?

1. M10 is cheaper, but If I remember right, they increased it's price with buff, so it costs almost like Ostheer StuG G. Playing ONLY with call-in M10s, specially in late may end for you pretty bad - Elephants, KTs, Panthers and such beasts will just stump them, covered with other Axis AT. And Im not sure, that M10 is able to shut Ostheer T3. StuG G is pretty powerful and cheap AT too, so it's not unstopable... In any case, my point was - you just can't play ONLY with call-in tanks, their quality is not good enough. That's why you are able to call them without teching.

2. Increasing price for Call-ins if you haven't teched enough. Gonna enable "Farseer mode" - nobody will just use them. Seriously, overpaying for low quality units, instead of saving resourses on tech, which with you getting normal units? All call-ins will become just useless, you can instantly remove them from game after that. Anyone, who understand, how resourse management in CoH works will say the same.

3. About Shermans, KVs and such stuff... Soviet shermans costs like T-34-85, but perform like T-34-76 with a bit better stats, KVs are poor, even KV-2, Ostwind is poor (played in vCoH sometime ago - how deadly it was there...), Flammenpanzer is poor... I don't know who builds their game around those units. I may understand, that soviets build their game arounds those units, but only becasue stock is way worse than call-ins, such designed it is. But USF has in stock more powerful units, than in doctrines, so... Making it tech binded doesn't look good for their attractiveness.

4. Last big patch was and is just pyle of sh*t. It was devastating blow to factions design (specially OKW) and it didn't really made anything better. But, that's another discussion.

5. And I think, existance of such call-ins rewards more agressive gameplay, cos without tech-binding you can get them faster, so it makes game "faster" and more agressive. Tech binding will slow gameplay, tanks will come later, cos again - is there anyone sane who will pay x1.5 (or x any number >1) price for unit, instead of saving those res for tech and getting units from tech? And besides - if you dominated over the field, then you had more resourses, then you got more powerful units. I think, that same M10 spam in late can be really tasty food for your JT or Elephant, if you really dominated over the field you should be able to afford those beasts.

6. There is nothing wrong in campy playstyle, though... You can't always play in rush, it's just impossible. And there are people, which actually like campy playstyle (artillerists, emplacementers...). Im sure, that our... their gamestyle is not worse, than gamestyle of those, who prefer to play agressive. It makes in game tactical and strategic rich. So, let's not say, that campy playstyle should be punished, and agressive - rewarded. It is biased position, I don't think, we should approve it, right?

Just to make this clear! Elephant and Tiger is much higher CP than the spammable allies call in tanks...Of course the M10 is countered hard in the super late game which it should be. What this unit does is to end the game before the axis player can get a super heavy tank...(if it doesnt the game is lost anyways because usf lategame cant compete with ostheer)
and btw 1 stug g (with the effort of teching) has to face at least 2 M10 ... you can imagine how that will end...

increasing the fuel price of call in tanks without teching would simply allow for 1 call in tank rather than to spam them. If people feel they are behind and need the M10 so be it! but they souldnt be able to call in 3 of them and simply yolo rush

for #5 you mentioned: that is true for some call in tanks but not for all of them. for example land lease sherman is 10 CP. by normal teching you could have a T34/76 a lot faster. difference is you can get the same amount of land lease shermans at 10 CP and they are a lot better!

Im not saying campy playstyle should be punished but look at the current state of the game. almost every OP unit introduced in the last months was indirect fire (calliope, matress, usf mortar) the amount of arty spam is sad imo
for me COH was always a game vased on flanking and clever manouvering... sadly that is changing into arty fest. In vCoh the players enjoying that went to play Scheldt and that was it. In Coh2 they play brit emplacements or camp with axis pak wall until calling in some kind of tank... its just sad

It really depends on the vehicle though, which was probably why Relic wasn't consistent with the changes made to '85 and Easy Eight. High CP cost for heavies pretty much make them late-game and hardly possible to skip teching; the biggest culprits are the light vehicles with low CP.

increasing the fuel price of call in tanks without teching would simply allow for 1 call in tank rather than to spam them. If people feel they are behind and need the M10 so be it! but they souldnt be able to call in 3 of them and simply yolo rush

But... there is nothing wrong in spamming such tanks like M10, you know... They are deisgned to be "weak by themself, but powerful in numbers". Make them less spammable - will make them less effective. Such as there is nothing wrong in T-34-76 spam or StuG G spam... or any cheap, shitty but spam-effective tank.

And be sure - yolo rush with such tanks will be ended very fast and easy. All of those tanks (not-heavy call-ins) dying pretty fast, and it's not that hard to counter it. AT guns, AT infantry, mines...

And one more - constant investment in call-in tank spam will leave your opponent without late game, it's part of resourse managment, I said you before. While you invest in teching = more powerful units, he just throws his resourses on tanks, which maybe will be effective now (but not unstopabble, all factions getting AT guns in early part of midgame), but will be veeeery ineffective in late. So, if you will do everything right - you gonna beat such spammer without any problems later.

I think their price, performance and timing are not game breaker factors at the moment. So they can stay. The tanks which were so reliable to worth skipping tiers for them and spam them in numbers were either locked to building or limited to 1..

I voted 'Some should' because i think the super heavies like the ISU-152, Ele, etc and the tiger ace should be techless. Otherwise i agree balancing the game around teching would give a more defined structure to the pacing of the game and allow the devs to time when things should come out a better.

At the same time tho one of the few things keeping axis alive is no tech callins...

I think that what adds insult to injury is that many of these call-ins are extremely attractively-priced. 200 MP, 70 FU for a Stug-E? Really?

In a world where light tanks are dirt-cheap for what they do, having dirt-cheap call-ins on top of that makes the game feel like an one-way.

I'm all in for Tightrope's idea. This should have been addressed back then when the E8/T-34 were fixed. There's no reason for it to be in the game.

PS: You forgot the Puma.

I like the idea to require tech, for the call-in (similar to the OKW KT)or maybe increase the CP even more?

i like the mechanic in mitagefla`s mod method. if i recall correctly, command p5 was like 340 fuel? thats too much but i think the cost difference should be like 20-30 fuel?

Wasn't call-in meta stomped out a long time ago? I feel like the only issue here is the call-in commander aka Mech Assault, but in its case, it's meta because it's one of the very few Ostheer commanders that are actually competitively useful. And if you try stalling for heavies like the olden days 9/10 you'll get owned before you even reach 13 cp, AND if you do survive, heavies are going to get swarmed easily since y'know - you can only get one. And the spammable mediums that still exist (like M4Cs) are not as OP as the old spammable mediums of the past.

I really don't think call-ins are an issue anymore...

edit: also, Why are people not allowed to skip last tiers anymore? Some people might just want to use M10s because they feel like going armor company, some people just want to use con spam into M4C tactics, etc. This change, instead of "fixing broken mechanics", may just potentially close off more viable strategies...

Not a fan of the call-ins. It means people get stuck in the loop of spending fuel on more call-ins and never teching, which makes for an incredibly boring game to watch because the same units keep coming out. It's just poor game design.

Tigers and Pershings are very much meta, surprisingly common to stall to (especially since the USF mortar started massive manpower drain on Axis if they ever stop moving), and suddenly turn losing games way too often.

Imagine if heavy tanks weren't guaranteed to appear as soon as possible. That would make for much more varied and interesting games.

You can play Soviets or USF without call ins just fine and the faction remains competitive. This does not apply to OH or OKW, so you have an overall balancing concern complicating the matter.

Evidence of this is that almost every commander that is popular in the meta has call ins:

Ost: Puma, Stug E, Tiger, Command P4
Soviet: IS-2, Sherman
USF: M10, Pershing, Calliope
OKW: Flakpanzer, command panther
Brit: Croc

Call-in could use some unlock requirement like:

Ostheer
Puma requires T2 built
Stug-E BP2
Command tank BP2
Tiger BP3 + reduced fuel price

Soviet
IS-2 all buildings + reduced fuel price
Sherman T1+T2+T3
KV8 T1+T2+T3

USF
M10 2 tiers built
Pershing all buildings + reduced fuel price
Calliope 2 tiers built

etc...