How to fix: OKW

Curious on what changes people think would be good for the OKW faction.

Last time I stated my opinion I did it stupidly and made everyone angry, so I thought I'd do that again.

My current list:
Show Spoiler

Suggested by others (with currently uncontested explanation):
-Pen of P4 to 120 or 130 (credits to Iron Emperor) (He didn't give a reason, but this was ninja nerfed for no reason at all and should be brought back to at least 120)
-Flak HT survivability buff (credits to Iron Emperor)
-SOME form of smoke (credits to Smith)


Contested explanations:

Unbacked statements:
-smoke on ISG (backed by CartoonVillain, Iron Emperor, ullumulu, William Christensen, wouren)
-cost adjustment to tier 3 vehicles (Backed by Cloth-That-Is-Known-To-Be-Unsafe, wouren)
-Move MG34 to tier 0 (Backed by A. Soldier)
-Long cooldown sturm smoke nades (backed by Smith)
-All of these from ullumulu: Show Spoiler

I'd love to add to the list if anyone has any opinions of their own. I'm going to try to give everyone a relatively even playing field, but I will always have natural biases to trust people who have demonstrated credibility in the past.

le.IG smoke is all I want.

Smoke for LeIG, I agree on
Pz4 +10/20 penetration.

Raketten I'd say to leave it with cloak, since you can wipe that thing so freaking fast.

spacing is always a good thing to fix and the slot for volks is important.

Perhaps some faster set up time for the AAHT

Rest is fine.

Pz4 +10/20 penetration.

Good catch, forgot about that one.

Perhaps some faster set up time for the AAHT

I love AAHT buffs but I can't really advocate it since I use this unit so often (conflict of interest)

Raketten I'd say to leave it with cloak, since you can wipe that thing so freaking fast.

My personal opinion is that the raketen (with cloak) in its balanced form completely negates the idea of screening inf, since its invisible. I don't like that. If you do other things to bring the raketen into its proper role as (IMO at least) temporary shitty AT to make room for the good stuff, you can balance it without throwing out a game mechanic..

Smoke for LeIG, I agree on

This could make OKW better vs maxims.

Good catch, forgot about that one.

I love AAHT buffs but I can't really advocate it since I use this unit so often (conflict of interest)

My personal opinion is that the raketen (with cloak) in its balanced form completely negates the idea of screening inf, since its invisible. I don't like that. If you do other things to bring the raketen into its proper role as (IMO at least) temporary shitty AT to make room for the good stuff, you can balance it without throwing out a game mechanic..



This could make OKW better vs maxims.

I also love to use the AAHT, but with it's current price tag and it's delicat treatment it's just hard as fuck to keep it alive. Perhaps a vet 0 smoke to counter direct kills. Run on it with a (spreaded) blob, and you can easily flank it.

Perhaps if the raketten gets a range increase and survivability buff then I'd say that they can have 'no cloak'

My three biggest gripes when playing OKW are:
- Lack of smoke
- Lack of healing, unless MedHQ or Vet1 Sturmpioneers
- Lack of tools to dislodge a Maxim spammer (especially in teamgames), except for artillery piece spam (which I find boring)

When facing maxim spam, it is next to impossible to get Sturmpioneers to vet1. Thus, you either bite the bullet and go MechHQ (while bleeding to death), or you go MedHQ and spam ISGs (while getting bored to death). And, god forbid if the map is dominated by a garrison that the Maxim occupies.

My solution to this would be:
- Give Sturmpioneers a high-cooldown (say 60 seconds) short-range smoke grenade ability, and take it from there.

- Give OKW a new Call in Unit with Anti Tank rifles/ give volks their schreck back..maybe with a nerf
- make flak halftrack and flak emplacement great
- give panther a better IA and a faster shooting with main gun
- give a smoke abilty to isg
- reowrk raketens...it can sit in buildings and have camo..but it cant do its main job: destroy armor (shoot in ground, long aim time, fragile like a fly, low range, etc)
- give OKW a commander with emplacment upgrades like the british emplacments and commander
- improve sturmtiger and flame hetzer

KT in t0 after build first two tiers .

Vanilla faction needs fix the most, give soviet more stock units instead of rely heavily on commanders, this is the old P2W DLC plan of Relic's which definitely sucks, re-balance many of those vannila commanders


Which all of these won't happen, since company of heroes 2 eastern front is dead

KT in t0 after build first two tiers .

KT shouldn't be a call in. It should have a build time.

OKW needs less expensive tanks. 150 fuel Panzer IV is insane lol. 200 fuel Panther, my god.

Its the same with the su85. Why get it? It is very expensive to get, you can have 2 or more cheaper su76s in an earlier tier that can do its job and have barrage ability.

Curious on what changes people think would be good for the OKW faction.

Last time I stated my opinion I did it stupidly and made everyone angry, so I thought I'd do that again.

Mycurrent list:
-Don't make STG44s take up weapon slots, -10 munis cost.
-Fix spacing on falsch + faust and grenade on delay from spawn.
-Give Firestorm some love
-Elite armored: add value to the arty ability and tweak sturmtiger (it's OP or UP depending on who you ask so IDK)
-Some player intention involved in the AA capabilities of the flak base (right now it's not optional, so it's not a strategic decision to cancel out air abilities)
-Maxim counter

Suggested by others:
-Pen of P4 to 120 or 130 (credits to Iron Emperor)
-smoke on ISG (credits to multiple)
-Flak HT survivability buff (credits to Iron Emperor)
-(controversial) Side tech for jp4 but move it to battlegruppe (+slight cost reduction).
-(controversial) Raketenwerfer can't cloak, but they are cheaper and have lower popcap (vet rework ofc).
-Long cooldown sturm smoke nades



I'd love to add to the list if anyone has any opinions of their own.

What about OKW ability against LVs rush? I mean, it's still a problem, right? Yeah, they have Raketen and faust on Volks, but Raketen just somewhat annoying, to be honest (Long aim-time, first shot hits the ground literally all the time, easy to get wipes, etc.) while Volks' faust is more expensive and shorter range than the Grens one. 

I (and Generals Gentleman) once coincidentally have the same idea of putting Obers to T2 (Med HQ), lower the price and allow them to get double Schrecks. This will give OKW player a better ground when going for T2 (They won't get crush by LVs).

The rest, I agree. Especially smoke! Like, one of many reasons for me to get back at playing as Ostheer is the lack of counter to MG spam (No smoke + ISGs is worse at taking down infantry than the Ost mortar)

P/s: by the way, nice profile picture! ‎

What about OKW ability against LVs rush?

Personally I think this is a problem with other factions. We don't want to make the OKW super duper good at countering light vehicles IMO, but we don't want OKW to get curb-stomped either. What I personally think should be implemented for stuart and t70 is a side tech. I could talk about this more if we were to make another thread about USF, I just wanted to start out with OKW because it's less emotionally charging and disputed than changes for USF and Ostheer.

Make MG34 truly Tier 0 by not making it require the stupid Med or Mech HQ.

Smoke.

Fix all of the broken shit like the Flak HT.

The OKW needs quite a few changes but others to other Armies, so it's not as easy to say "do this, change this, fix this, this and this and presto".

Please don't take this as an attack. I'm not attacking you. I just want everyone to hear your voice more clearly.

Make MG34 truly Tier 0 by not making it require the stupid Med or Mech HQ.

Making the MG34 tier 0 is a huge change. What reasons do you think this change should be set in place?

Smoke.

Fix all of the broken shit like the Flak HT.

Specificity is key here. I don't want a list of proposed changes to just say things like 'smoke' or 'fix this.' If you could elaborate on your points, that would be appreciated.

Edit: my bad if you were just agreeing with the other posts on the last two.

Please don't take this as an attack. I'm not attacking you. I just want everyone to hear your voice more clearly.


Making the MG34 tier 0 is a huge change. What reasons do you think this change should be set in place?


Specificity is key here. I don't want a list of proposed changes to just say things like 'smoke' or 'fix this.' If you could elaborate on your points, that would be appreciated.

Edit: my bad if you were just agreeing with the other posts on the last two.

Lol no, don't worry about it, even if you were attacking me this is the internet, I'd just shrug it off and either tell you to fuck off to completely ignore you.

As for my points, many OKW players have been asking for a complete MG34 at Tier 0 (like the MG42 is right now for the Wehr) for a long time, why? Well, I haven't played in a while (took a break from the game, doesn't mean I don't play it tho) but I'll try to tell you what my reasons were before I took my break.

The biggest reason was that OKW was lacking and still is lacking a reliable suppression platform which, if you ask me, should come early in the game. With the removal of the mobile MG that was the kubelwagen and the broken Flak HF OKW is rendered to fight superior in quality and in numbers Allied infantry early in the game, costing them a lot of ground and man power bleed.

Following the ethnos of the Armies in the current situation all of the low number (Brits) or low quality of infantry (Wehr) have Tier 0 MGs to help support the core infantry, as it was historically, especially with the Germans, specifically during the late war (when OKW are portrayed) where Germany is almost always on the backfoot defending their ground rather than taking it as the Blitzkrieg is long gone, the Ardennes Offensive being one of the last great German assaults during the war.

As for my other points, smoke I believe is required for all Armies one way or another. The Soviets have it doctrinally with their Shocktroops. The Wehr has them with a call in airstrike plus many doctrines giving the ability to vehicles to use smoke canisters, PLUS their mortar having smoke shells, which the Soviet counterparts also do not lack. The USF now have their mortar plus previous Rifleman smoke grenades, plus I believe a smoke plane ability with the introduction of the Heavy Cav Company plus others probably like the M81 being able to fire smoke on the move even and gaining the ability to launch smoke canisters with vet. The Brits also have a plethora of smoke abilities available to them, from commando smoke to a lot of vehicle smoke, 2 of their main tanks both have smoke shells, those being the Cromwell and Comet, the Churchill also having the ability to fart smoke but if we're honest it's not as effective as the other 2. Their mortar pit also has access to smoke shells.

And then we get to the OKW, apart from SOME vehicles having smoke canisters like the Puma, the rest are left in the durt, OKW infantry doesn't have the luxury to use smoke because...? Smoke is a basic concept and gameplay mechanic of the game and should be available to all Armies, regardless which era or which side they're representing OR what playstyle they have. Either an infantry unit of the OKW should have access to some sort of Smoke grenade OR their leig should have access to smoke shells like all of the rest of the in-direct fire units in the game.

As for my third point, the Flak HT is broken like I already mentioned, I even talked about it with Mr Smith about it a few days ago and he told me last thing he was doing was trying to fix it without success.

Other OKW parts may or may not be broken but they need to be balanced accordingly as well as other parts of the other Armies.

I understand that they shouldn't function similar to each other but you got 2 options here, either balancing them, meaning each Army having some things which feel a bit copied and modified from other Armies OR having completely different Armies to one another BUT having broken balance.

For now it's obvious which path Relic has taken, and it's obvious the community isn't very happy with it, further twisting the trunk of the tree isn't going to help if you ask me.

The Armies should keep their unique weapons but similarities must also exist in order to have balance.

And by that I mean the OKW having a Tier 0 MG like the Brits and Wehr, the Brits having a mobile mortar team INSTEAD of their mortar pit like all of the rest of the Armies, the OKW having access to smoke like all of the rest of the Armies, all Armies having some kind of access to healing which needs a bit of an addressing btw on the side of the Wehr since they basically have the lowest quality of healing effctiveness right now when you look at it, OKW may or may not come second to them but unlike the Wehr, the OKW has 2 choice.

Specificity is key here. I don't want a list of proposed changes to just say things like 'smoke' or 'fix this.' If you could elaborate on your points, that would be appreciated.

I like Miragefla's proposed changes to the FlaK HT. I think they would give it some bite back while keeping it fragile. Here's the specifics:

-AOE increased to 1.3 from 1
-Initial set-up time reduced from 4 seconds to 2.75.
-Smokescreen costs 20 munitions from 0.
-Damage versus garrison cover from 0.25 to 0.375.
-Non-vet and vetted weapon have 100% increase in damage against aircraft and 50% increased penetration.
-Weapon penetration from 20 to 35.

Give smoke to ISG
Make 251/17 reliable vs LVs when set down.

Remove side tech for healing and repair,

Reduce flack base truck to 40fuel and include and 80 fuel tech to get tanks.

Make a hetzer commander

Let volk have a weapon slot when upgradeing to stgs