Why Blobbing is so Prominent in Coh2

I don't like the idea of negative zeal because it seems so artificial and visually unintuitive, but increased AoE suppression is something I'll perhaps play around with.

I think biggest problem is all the yellow cover in the mid to late game caused by all the indirect fire combined with RA bonuses with vet. Makes it impossible for hmgs to even suppress squads much less pin them. I think yellow cover shouldn't be effective if the unit is moving through it. It would allow hmgs to keep infantry at a distance instead of letting them too up to then and wipe the gunner.

I think biggest problem is all the yellow cover in the mid to late game caused by all the indirect fire combined with RA bonuses with vet. Makes it impossible for hmgs to even suppress squads much less pin them. I think yellow cover shouldn't be effective if the unit is moving through it. It would allow hmgs to keep infantry at a distance instead of letting them too up to then and wipe the gunner.

+1

The other big problem with crater yellow cover is that it causes HMGs setting up on top of these craters to clump up. Since yellow cover offers absolutely 0 protection vs explosives, the HMGs become mortar/rifle-nade/you-name it fodder.

(and since craters are everywhere, your HMG will -have- to setup on yellow cover.

All of this conspires to make HMGs even more useless by the end-game.

You missed out the biggest factor...

Received accuracy with veterancy.

Especially in the USF and UKF infantry. The received accuracy at vet 3 puts riflemen in an open road with the same cover values as a gren squad in light cover. The RA values mean that allies especially can blob and A+move with little consequences... Which (with the double LMGs) is why gren blobs are far less effective, not to mention their smaller squad size.

I wouldn't, so quickly, lay the blame on RA modifiers.

1. You have to see how lethality changes with vet

First of all, if you have 2 squads, squad A and squad B, and you want to see how their fighting capabilities scale (from vet0 to vet3), you have to compare A's offensive accuracy to B's received accuracy and vice-versa.

In particular, you need to multiply A's offensive accuracy to B's received accuracy:
- If the result is 1, nothing has changed
- If the result is bigger than 1, the fight becomes more lethal
- If the result is smaller than 1, the fight becomes less lethal

For instance, a +30% accuracy modifier perfectly cancels a -23% received accuracy modifier, and a +40% accuracy one cancels a -29% received accuracy modifier.

2. Greater or equal lethality = LMG-win

If nothing changes or the fights become more lethal, LMGs and other long-range troops net a massive advantage over short range troops.


This is because:
- LMGs, really, don't require any micro to use (just A-move to the nearest cover)
- By the end-game you can more easily mass LMGs, which will bleed you less, than short-range troops
- HMGs, everywhere (which weren't so prominent when the game started)

Think of this as Age-of-Empries kind-of-spam, where amassing longest range units would be an auto-win vs shorter-range units, even if each individual long-range unit is weaker than individual short-range units.

3. Massively smaller lethality = short-range yolorush

If the fights becomes less lethal this is a boost to short-range troops

This means that if the 1v1 odds were equal to begin with, late-game RA modifiers will prolong fights. This means that short-range squads will spend a bigger portion of the time fighting at close-range, where they have the advantage.

A bad side-effect of this is that isolated long-range troops will, usually, be destroyed by close-range troops, even if the long-range squad had superior (green) cover at the start of the engagement.

This means that, in order for long-range troops to have any effect on the game, whatsoever, the player is now forced to blob them (which leads to counter-blobbing).

Some extreme examples of such hopeless engagements (due to loss of lethality) include:
- Grens defending vs Riflemen
- (fully-upgraded) Tommies defending vs PGrens

4. Why this happens

Suppose you have (short-range) Squad A yolo-rushing squad B, which is behind cover.

- T1 represents the time it takes for A to travel from its original location, to a distance where A has an advantage over B
- T_sum represents the duration of the entire fire-fight.

You can see that A had a disadvantage T1 / T_sum percent-of-the-time and an advantage for (T_sum - T1)/T_sum percent-of the time.

If lethality changes, this affects the entire duration of the fight (T_sum). However, it doesn't affect the distance-travel time, T1 (since troops don't become faster with vet).

This means that higher lethality will mean that squad A will spend a greater portion of time at a disadvantage than at Vet0. Conversely, lower lethality means that squad A will have an easier time frontally-yolorushing squad B.

5. Conclusion

For the reasons outlined above, I believe that firefights should become less lethal the accumulation of vet; however, not to the extend we are currently witnessing.

Note that none of what I wrote makes sense if there is no range at which squad A has an advantage vs squad B (e.g., fighting vs Vet3 LMG-riflemen)

One thing: Craters are terrain level cover, not objects. Infantry only perform their clumping behavior when there's an object to be interacting with.

What happens with moonscapes is that infantry don't move anywhere once an engagement starts because cover is everywhere. An A-moving MG will likely clump up, but manually setting up the MG in a direction helps designate positions for the crew that isn't so clumpy.

A question i posted on Cruzz thread which might throw an idea regarding the present subject.

Burst small arms and focus_fire: false

HMGs and a select number of other small arms have focus_fire: false. What this option does is effectively give every bullet two chances to hit, once as normal and if that one misses then it will check the scatter area for another target and try another hit roll. This is effectively extra damage (and suppression for HMGs) spread over random targets next to whatever you're firing at. You can see this effect with the Kubel pretty easily as it often leaves squads with a lot of models but low health due to on average firing 1.8 bullets at random targets for every 1 that hits the model it's firing on.

1-How much of an impact does this have on the DPS the weapon?
By removing it from SMG/AR or adding it to Carbine/Rifles, would there be a big change on weapon balance?


Regarding HMGs:
Is incremental accuracy the only value which can utilize the mechanic of improving performance when there are several squads/models in the search area? For example: could you make it so increases base suppression values, damage or scatter.

+1

The other big problem with crater yellow cover is that it causes HMGs setting up on top of these craters to clump up. Since yellow cover offers absolutely 0 protection vs explosives, the HMGs become mortar/rifle-nade/you-name it fodder.

(and since craters are everywhere, your HMG will -have- to setup on yellow cover.

All of this conspires to make HMGs even more useless by the end-game.

Is it possible to adjust terrain modification cover assignment ?

Mortars, tanks shells, rocket artillery, infantry AT and nades, etc > generates yellow cover with no suppression modifiers

ST, Howitzers, most offmaps > current light cover

Demos (i think the only one which does this) gives green cover. Why not expand it to: Goliath, Railway artillery, Stuka, B4, 240mm Barrage (armor company). Notice that is mostly a 1 time explosion or heavily limited offmap (mostly in amount of shells).

the only promiment thing i know for sure, is our CoH2 community member shadowwada... and not blobbing