Company of Heroes III - Your expectations

My hopes is that Relic learns from the mistakes of CoH1 and CoH2 and doesn't revive them in CoH3 when they run out of ideas for new factions.

This I hope that CoH3 will not see the likes of:
- Mortar Pits / Bofors / FlakHQ / Orbital Death Canons
- Forward Trucks
- Aura units that focus on BS raw buffs (e.g., UKF officer, P4) rather than utility (e.g., OST officer)
- Powerful, cheap call-ins invalidating expensive tech
- Dirt-cheap/free recon options invalidating true sight (UKF free recon, flares, etc)
- IR-halftrack, Kubelwagen, Valentine passive see-through in particular. I mean, come on.

With respect to Tank vs Infantry combat, I think CoH1 had a perfect balance:
- Both Tanks and infantry AT suffered from elevation/obstacles (in CoH2 zooks/schrecks are homing)
- Crushing infantry meant your tank would slow down. There was a clear trade-off
- Very limited snares that were difficult to pull off
- Infantry AT had a very long aim-time which made schreck-blobbing unreliable
- (except for 222's in CoH1. Those things were messed up)

I think some of the ideas of Tank-vs-infantry combat in CoH2 are pretty decent, but it doesn't feel even:
- Schrecks/Zooks have 0 aim-time and are homing missiles with super-long-range and guaranteed good-damage.
- Tank shells will just get stopped at the first possible elevation
- Instead, tanks have to rely on BS-strong crushing, of which Cromwell/M10 are ridiculously good at
- To fight this off, you have the proliferation of easy snares, everywhere. The latter makes snares feel like "A basic tool that all mainline-infantry should have", although it should have been a rare luxury, really.
- Finally, since you have snares everywhere, Light Vehicles should be BS-strong, so that they remain useful.

Overall, I prefer CoH2 over CoH1 (even though I preferred CoH1 at the launch of CoH2), but I believe that a CoH3 that marries the best of both worlds will be the dream.

Basically, CoH3 will be a great game if and only if no CoH3 faction has features that have any passing resemblance to any of the following two factions:
- CoH1 Brits (pre- and post-Kangaroo)
- CoH2 OKW at WFA-release

Oh, I know what I want!

Flak 88
and some units/commanders showing minor players during WWII, like commanders with italian units for Germany or polish/french units for Allies etc
and desert maps!

Custom keybinds, tac map on another screen(supcom style), good optimisation. I dont mind which conflict even fictional ones.

Oh, can we have a non-violent version for our german friends. With party poppers instead of guns, grenades that explodes into a million hearts and models that just surrenders instead of dying. Thanks.

Oh, can we have a non-violent version for our german friends. With party poppers instead of guns, grenades that explodes into a million hearts and models that just surrenders instead of dying. Thanks.

There was a time in CS: Source where models honestly laid themselves down after getting killed in the German version of the game. In the German version of C&C: Red Alert, the suicide bombers also throw their bombs and then they run away.

Hitler is also censored in Hearts of Iron IV.

There was a time in CS: Source where models honestly laid themselves down after getting killed in the German version of the game. In the German version of C&C: Red Alert, the suicide bombers also throw their bombs and then they run away.

Hitler is also censored in Hearts of Iron IV.

I remember playing german version of C&C Red Alert-the old one.

Everything was cyborg, including dogs and exploded into a gray paste with terrible sound effect

Germans are stupidly sensitive regarding violence and hitler.
The latter, I would say likely to bad education on the matter.

Naval combat - Maybe on a separate minimap that you have to switch to. 2 Ongoing battles at once to test your micro. Should have everything, subs, destroyers, carriers, aircraft, and winning naval engagemenrts allows these ships to reach "Naval victory points" where they can interact with the land battle to send aircraft and artillery strikes or troop landings. Its obvious that they have left the Japanese Theater unexplored and its 2 axis factions vs 3 allied. I wouldnt mind if they re-hashed the old armies for COH3 as long as they included new maps, new naval/air combat, and the Japanese army. This is more interesting than afrika korps, although sand mechanics could be interesting

Naval combat - Maybe on a separate minimap that you have to switch to. 2 Ongoing battles at once to test your micro. Should have everything, subs, destroyers, carriers, aircraft, and winning naval engagemenrts allows these ships to reach "Naval victory points" where they can interact with the land battle to send aircraft and artillery strikes or troop landings. Its obvious that they have left the Japanese Theater unexplored and its 2 axis factions vs 3 allied. I wouldnt mind if they re-hashed the old armies for COH3 as long as they included new maps, new naval/air combat, and the Japanese army. This is more interesting than afrika korps, although sand mechanics could be interesting

If you want active sea or air combat, CoH is probably the wrong game for you. The game has already enough micro, a second minimap would kill it even further.

COH3 Midevil Crusade.

Relic is dead company. I was hope atleast DoW3 will be good, but meh... Looks awful. So i hope they ll never make CoH3.

Relic is dead company. I was hope atleast DoW3 will be good, but meh... Looks awful. So i hope they ll never make CoH3.

With this shit attitude why do you think we wont get a COH3? If forums are filled with whining and crying its not surprising they will abandon ungrateful playerbase of shitheads and neo nazis.

So I've put a little thought into this during a shower and here is what I landed on.


Alternative History late WW2.

Germans are pushed back, isolated and generally speaking beaten. Germany is occupied and it doesn't look like it's going to be pretty. The very last of the armed forces/those willing to fight have pulled out into the mountains and are organizing guerilla resistance. While they aren't exactly fans of the Allies most of the army is made up of extremely bitter components of the Eastern Front.


The Allies have bombed Japan into surrender and have flexed their considerable atomic might as a general warning to the Russians about what's going to go down if they don't play along. This has rankled some allies who would bear the brunt of a Russian counter-offensive if there was to be slugfest between the two powers. More importantly there is no longer the massive swell of manpower and war economy that had initially propelled them into the war. People are beginning to tire of the prolonged warfare.

The Russians are no longer an army of ill equipped, ill prepared soldiers. They are now a very experienced and veteran force with a real force of industry behind them. They rival the US army in terms of strength but have effectively the home field advantage in terms of supply chain. The nuclear option has been revealed and the Russians are extremely uneasy about it as they have yet to acquire atomic wepons of their own. To this end they have relied on not engaging in a fight with the US directly but to be more subtle, relying on propaganda, colonization and the increasingly fickle US population to simply stop backing the war. They are gambling that moving citizens into contested areas to set up towns and encampments will give them a leg up in negotiations with the West over the spoils of war.

Tensions reach a critical point after an arguement between two high level officials over territory devolves into a fist fight where an American general is paralyzed after landing on a really poorly positioned stool. Later in that evening a Russian settlement is reduced to ash along with its population.

The Americans deny taking any part in it ofcourse.


That's the basic set up. All factions can fight eachother so there is no longer a binary system. Mirror matches are still a no go.

Core concepts :

-Economy is more CoH1 - There are fuel points, ammo points, Victory points and points that connect them. You do not gain any fuel or ammo if you do not own that specific point. This makes economic harassment that much more vital knowing that you can actually choke some one off from their fuel nearly entirely if you are dominating them.

-Commanders work similarly to how Wehrmact commanders work...They are buffs and garnishes on your core forces that add some flavor. They do not introduce radically new playstyles, call ins or generally introduce game breaking bullshit. Armies are not built with specific weaknesses that have to be countered by commander choice.

-There are no bulletins. Never have been, lets forget it.

-There is no longer such a thing as an "early" or "late" game army. That entire way of thinking was awful.

-Offmaps are no longer a thing. Call ins are no longer a thing. Artillery barrages must come from on-field artillery pieces, tanks must be built from facilities, etc. HOPEFULLY this would encourage more counter play than just walking into LOS, press button, retreat and hope to snag some one with a stuka bomb.

-Air support is still a thing but is more expensive and vulnerable to AA. Ideally it would be less of an emergency button (btw I want to remove that panther, fire rockets!) and more of a "this will help cover my assault" button.

-Good lord the map design. NO MORE FIGHT IN THE MIDDLE MAPS JESUS PLEASE.

-DLC is intended to be skins and single player suppliments with multiplayer elements (theater of war as an example)

-Primary design is for 1v1 and 2v2. 4v4 is in but is a "for funzies" game mode. Serious balance will not occour there.


Faction Concepts

Germany
-Generally speaking the German army is going to lack just about everything. They're a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters ala WOLVERINES.

-Because there are less bodies to go around the German army requires some finesse. Basic/Line units are skirmishers which can ALL camo. How they get this is going to vary unit to unit but the concept is that they are not going to A-move into stuff and win. Imagine having an entire army built out of sturmpios, falls, jaegers and that's the concept.

-Economically they are special in so far as they do not get caches but the tried and true opal blitz trucks which can move from spot to spot to gain resources. In this way they are harder to truly cut off than their Russian/American counterparts.

-The tech tree is mostly linear similar to how the current whermact is.

-Their basic infantry is specialized in their ambush/recon/guerilla role but some of their later elite units are quite hardy. Alot of infiltration, all squads being able to boobytrap and lay mines, passive mine detection at Vet2 for all squads, etc.

-Their armoured presence is generally quite low. A few half-tracks here and there and a couple old friends showing up later in the tech tree (Panther comes to mind) but they make up for it by being able to salvage their own wrecks back to full-health and being able to salvage enemy wrecks for fuel and ammo. By and large it's an infantry based army that is supported by mobile half track elements with a scant few tanks here and there.

-They are VERY specifically not the Ubermensch that we typically see in WW2 games. They are beaten, bloodied and just holding on for dear life.


Russian Forces

The Russian army is the default "starter" army. All of their units have a focus on durability rather than out right damage potential and are flexible. They have a very standard economy and straight forward tech tree. They build caches as per normal and are just generally "good". The general flow of the Russian game would feel very much like a traditional game of COH where you have your line infantry supported by a few mgs/support wepons and you take and secure territory.

-Tech Tree wise they function much like the current Americans where you can pick what you want for T2.


-Infantry wise they drop the whole Enemy at the Gates/Penal squad thing entirely. Their mainline infantry are now closer to grenadiers than they are conscripts. They still have larger squad sizes and a penchant for submachine guns but over all are competent at any range. Generally speaking their specialists are going to be a bit more damage oriented than their line infantry counterparts but still very focused on being durable.

-Armour wise they are still very Russian. They get tanks, Medium tanks, Heavy tanks and SUPER heavy tanks. Less options in the way of light armour but more options than anyone in the sheer variety of mediums. T34s are the closest thing to a scout car they're going to get.


I'd write more but they don't really need alot of explaintion. They're straight forward and very average. It's nothing we all haven't seen before.


The US

-In broad strokes the US army is about resource control. They have middle of the road units that require intermittent ammo/fuel investments to really get the most out of them. A smart opponent avoids fighting direct confrontations with a buffed US player.

As an example, you would pay 250/25 to unlock riflemen getting 2 BARS. The bar its self is a marginal damage boost to the squad but it gives the squad the ability to use "full auto" for 10 seconds, which simply increases the rate of fire, drops your movement speed to a crawl and costs MU. The idea being that they HEAVILY rely on having a flow of fuel and mu for abilities or they are simply not that great in a straight up fight.

- Economically speaking the US would have caches like a traditional army and maybe some airdroppy stuff with a specific commander choice ala Lend-Lease. Caches function as point-guards and are not going to be terribly durable. They can be upgraded (with MU ofcourse) to increase their durability.

-Infantry wise the US is still the US we mostly have. They are a mid range group of riflemen supported by not particularly good RE's and the occassional hard-ass elite group which tend to HEAVILY favor damage over durability (think commandos. If they have a massive ammo glut to spend the US infantry should be a straight up bulldozer...but if you bait them into wasting it they are going to be behind the easy-eight ball. Smart placement of support wepons to help infantry out is paramount if you don't want to always feel like you're wasting alot of mu on engagements.

-Vehicle wise the US has access to many of their current light vehicles and mediums. I am 10000% for removing their current crew shenanigans. Vehicles, like infantry, gain a bunch of timed abilities which are tied into to either a MU OR fuel cost depending on what we're talking about. Smoke launchers for example could be MU where as "step on it" could just as easily be fuel. US Tanks could be more easily classified as infantry support while their tank-destroyers are used to engage enemy tanks. The Shermans can do it certainly but are going to need alot of extra ammo and micro to slug it out with a 34/85.



That was longer than I intended but very much what I'd like to see out of a COH3. A tigher, more condensed game focusing on three unique factions that has a much more fleshed out system than what is currently in.


While I am at it I'd like a unicorn and peace in the middle east.

So I've put a little thought into this during a shower and here is what I landed on.

...

Must have been a long shower.

Anyway that actually sounds very interesting, the setting is good as it allows all the iconic WW2 weapons to feature in the game without having to worry about realism implications.

Only significant issues I can see are the different skill requirements and resource gathering/requirements of the factions. Having one faction as a fragile finesse faction with inherent high micro requirements while the other is a durable, easy to play faction poses issues for balance. In low-skill matches the finesse faction will be UP, in high-skill matches it will either be OP or balanced but with higher skill requirement (kind of like how Ostheer is positioned currently).

As for different approaches to resource gathering that is an issue, as many CoH balance problems have stemmed from the fact that factions have interacted with resource points in such different ways, making it basically impossible to get balanced match ups across a variety of maps.

Of course both these issues will exist to some extent no matter what, but branding them into the factions' core design from day 1 seems like a recipe for trouble down the track.

I think cold war is OK . WW2 is old for another game. (sample like mod Modern combat )

4 Faction
America
Europe
Russian
China

I think cold war is OK . WW2 is old for another game. (sample like mod Modern combat )

4 Faction
America
Europe
Russian
China

I think so:
The United States and Western Europe against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

and extension:
China and North Korea against Japan and South Korea

I'm a masochist at heart so I am personally okay with having a faction that is difficult but rewarding. There's a line however between "difficult and rewarding" and "Really? This is bullshit and not in the fun Darksouls way"

The resourcing aspects would have to be VERY finely monitored and the actual dev/company responses to "I cant play X, my fine motor skills are like those of a small twitchy dog" would be a unanimous "git gud". I tend to compare it to my inability to play Zerg worth a damn in Broodwar, their playstyle doesn't lend its self to my playstyle.

I can see how both of those things would likely provide high barrier to entry. I'd REALLY like to see a tutorial for multiplayer that goes over systems that are in place and explains exactly whats happening in certain encounters. eg : "At what range do shocktroopers go from limp noodle to murdermachines? - What does it look like, how can I identify ideal range"



I think I stand with a bunch of other people on the subject and wish that CoH2 came out like it currently is on Launch day and subsequently had full dev support from a parent company with more resources rather than two really stressed out guys locked in a basement somewhere.

More cancer, thanks in advance.

I think that emplacements could have a legitimate non-cancerous place in CoH3 if done delicately. If they functioned much more like buildable ambient buildings which would have to be garrisoned by whatever support weapon you wanted to emplace. That way indirect fire attacks which did not succeed in killing the emplacement would still bleed the defender. Moreover since everything would be mobile to a certain degree, there wouldn't be any need for magic brace in order to allow a critical unit to do its job--the counter play to heavy arty would be to get your units out of the line of fire.