Unofficial Revamp mod (EFA & WFA & Brits)

Building a mod with just those features is, quite simply, a complete waste of time. That's because, even if the changes are reasonable, there's nothing interesting to test.

FRPs and Call-ins, sure; everybody knows those need a nerf.

Repair speeds? The only way to test this is playing a game and counting the seconds until your tanks are back online.

Emplacements? To test them, you need to find somebody that builds emplacements, and somebody that loves playing against emplacements. I don't know of anybody like that.

I understand. And to be absolutely clear, I am inquiring and trying to discuss, not trying to make the community patch maker into somekind of new nemesis like how Relic was treated by vast majority for 3 years. Now to many of those same people, Relic became the good guy LOL!

We've all watched the KoTH tournament and cringed together as some of the top players were misusing units and abilities. None of us saw a single game where Penals and DSHK were fielded in that series. This is, even though, nothing has changed between then and now (live version). During the tournament, Penals were considered a "dead" unit. That's because people didn't invest the time required to figure out the meta.

When people need time to figure out units and meta is good. I do not know when M8 HMC got buffed to 400hp but I used to and still go double scott 2v2+ for last six months because I realised how much of a wipe machine it was. And from my personal experience, I see more and more USF players getting Scott in team games past six months. Not all potentials are seen at first, second or sixth glance.

At the same time, even relatively minor changes require a lot of scrutiny. You can't have scrutiny without a lot of playing, and you can't have a lot of playing if the mod isn't engaging enough.

When we were forced to rush Maxim changes through the gate, we only had a week of preparation time, during that time we received a lot of feedback. However, during the remaining month people simply got bored of the GCS preview mod, we stopped receiving feedback altogether, and the result is the potato-level Maxim you can now experience in the live version.

So, there's no point in building a mod, if it is only ever going to be launched once and never replayed; We could have just stuck with the patchnotes instead and save ourselves months' worth of effort.

Also, I'm never going to make a bugfix-only mod ever again. There's no point in that, ever. There's simply too much effort involved in fixing the bug, wasting 100's hours of effort playtesting them, documenting them, asking for approval for Relic about which parts of the bug we're allowed to fix, then reimplementing the bugfixes, retesting them, re-porting the bugfix when it's time for the live version, re-playtesting it, etc. No; when I fix a bug, I want to play a game that's worth playing without having to encounter that bug again.

Yes, small changes need a lot of scrutiny to find out if they are needed. And a lot of scrutiny is needed to see if the changes was beneficial. And an astronomical amount of scrutiny is needed if you have million small changes. I think that is my main case: touch as little and broadly as possible. You can still significantly change to game in a way that it is worth it. Just like how only bug fixing might not be worth it, I'd argue that micro management of individual units like you guys are doing with most infantry units are not worth it because it is and will be impossible to gauge how successful the changes are or even needed!

i.e. the Tommy change
"We find that the fact that Tommies have to endure extremes during the early game, makes play and counterplay options vs the British faction too narrow. A major reason for this are the relatively-high strength of cover bonuses in the early game, as well as the poor moving performance of the unit."

I don't get this argument at all. When Tommies are cover when you approach during early game, you dont touch the damn Tommies with 50m pole. You try to catch them in motion by engaging smartly like rushing head on with first sturmpio to catch the first Tommies offguard or by using hmg42 etc etc. I do not see what is limiting at all.

I actually want to know how many people that matter (constructive posters, top players) complained about Tommies to bring about this change.

Instead, the point of this mod is:
- to have changes prepared that are on a good enough level. E.g., if Relic wants us to redesign e.g., Soviet infantry, OKW scaling, indirect fire this is the template we would start from.
- Provide a glimpse as to how those changes would play out in the end. Do the factions end up being interesting and fun, or do you end up with Infantry & TD spam?
- Be fun and engaging enough to play, so that the forementioned points can be playtested sufficiently

If you want a starting point into the mod, focus on a particular matchup, and build up your knowledge from there. Pick 1-2 of the factions that received the least amount of invasive changes (e.g., Soviets, OST, USF) and stick with Vanilla commanders. Then, as you begin to feel more comfortable, fork out from there.

With all due respect, almost every changes except the four I mentioned are not really redesigning in terms of what "re-designing" means in this forum. Yes, technically everything you guys are doing is re-designing but in terms of CoH, it is really just re-balancing. 90% changes are not affecting the tech or a gameplay feature, they are just series of nerfs and buffs to make the infantry engagement slightly different than they are now.

If this was right after SNF5, I would completely back this project of micromanagement. I mean 5 cons v. 5 grens all the time was disgusting. But I saw diversity of playstyle among the top players in GCS and during my own games.

If you guys were experimenting with global upgrades to change the dynamics to add depth and more dynamics instead of just dynamics by nerfing and buffing, I would support fully because even though it would be harder to balance and cause more upheaval, I think it would be a worth while experiment.

Instead, the point of this mod is:
- to have changes prepared that are on a good enough level. E.g., if Relic wants us to redesign e.g., Soviet infantry, OKW scaling, indirect fire this is the template we would start from.

Ok, so to be clear moving forward, has Relic entrusted you with the "balance" of this game or is this an assumption you're making because they let some of your changes in the WBP go live? Because as far as I know the intentions of Relic do not match what you imply here.

That being said, wtf are you doing to this game?

MedHQ Forward Retreat Point
-Now gives a 33% resource penalty when active.
-Upgrade cost from 300MP to 100MP.
-60 second cooldown upon toggle.

I've only played against AI and the resource between the MP and Fuel feels absolute finicky, and it's making me really hard to hold the ground against any units on the front and trying to tech up to the late game units, even when i use British also have this issue.

Is it the idea to use the forward retreat point as a temporary uses while penalize front line resources?

The lying time of the sturmpioneers barbed wire needs to be fixed too, the time that they take to lay the barbed wire is ridicolous compared to other factions

Ok, so to be clear moving forward, has Relic entrusted you with the "balance" of this game or is this an assumption you're making because they let some of your changes in the WBP go live? Because as far as I know the intentions of Relic do not match what you imply here.

That being said, wtf are you doing to this game?

These are the exact wordings of Kyle on official forums-

Posts: 346 admin

Currently any balance mods that Mr. Smith, Miragefla or GGTheMachine are working on are not part of a planned or future balance patch for COH2. They are currently working on community balance mods out of their own interest and the changes in said mods are not intended for the live game (automatch).

When the time comes to work with the community on curated balance changes once again, there will be a clear distinction and communication coming from Relic around the initiative (i.e. the Winter Balance Preview).

Also on Stormless chat he said there are no future patch release plans as of now. They are not working on CoH 2.

So believe what you want to.

The way the balance team go is... not correct from beginning.

For example, about maxim, while OKW has big trouble with it, OST has none. You should question why? It's because OST have sniper, mortar and rifle grenade. Then you will realize that OKW need a similar unit or ability to counter soviet HMG, no need to nerf maxim.
Immediately after you nerf maxim, what's happen? DHSK become the problem. And then you try to nerf DHSK again. It's like you are trying to patch things by displaying stuffs and let people choose what best instead of thinking for BEST CONCRETE PLAN.

If you rely on community to give you a good idea, then that just proves your incompetence in balancing.

try to patch without proper testing and feedback ? that sound familiar that really remind me of something ,like when COH2 got a unit that wipe withtin 2-5 second

-Patisan
-molotov instance wipe Ostheer bunker , OKW incendiary nade (dont ask how pain this one was)
-SU AA halftrack instance pinned
-Ostheer instance lose to early game riflemen
-Scott force squad to clumbing and wipe with 1 shell
-sherman HE round 1 shot 4 men squad
-packhowie 1 shot 4 men squad
-lone M10 always win against lone KT (i wish my PC can handle replay funtion back then ,got plenty of it for trending and what funny is my brother dont really good at COH2 and thing like this happen)
-Falls with FG42 (old one you knew it)
-Flak HT
-Flak emplacement
-LMG-34 act as high DPS sniper (if RE pick it and fight with non LMG-34 ober RE will wipe them within 5 second) back then you can test it by drop paratroop on Ober head and i'll bet you none of them alive after touching the ground
-MG-34 (after buff)
-luch
-Vicker range
-UC warp
-AEC with better sherman turret
-Bofor (enter garrison while under bofor fire is instance lose)
-brit AA tank (same nightmare as bofor back then)
-sten with surpresser
-AVRE ignore shot blocker

But i wont blame relic much for not having community to help them but they really bad for release those thing even after alpha test

And these guy already answer that they just want to try this that those to see if what cause balanced to be so bad and this shit does cost a lot of time and man resource ,so if that day come the day that they will need to handle community balanced patch again they can went back and analyse from their own work (if that ever happen).

I always believe this is another GG balanced mod except there is an anouncement from relic

These are the exact wordings of Kyle on official forums-

Posts: 346 admin



Also on Stormless chat he said there are no future patch release plans as of now. They are not working on CoH 2.

So believe what you want to.

Right, I get that. But a few statements from Smith, specifically that one I quoted, lead me to think that he believes otherwise. I simply want to know if this is the case and if so, why? Is there something he knows that we don't regarding Relic's stance on the unofficial balance mod?

I've seen him on the currently viewing list right after I've asked this question (I've asked it a couple times now) so I know he's likely seen it. Hoping to get a clear answer from him this time.

Right, I get that. But a few statements from Smith, specifically that one I quoted, lead me to think that he believes otherwise. I simply want to know if this is the case and if so, why? Is there something he knows that we don't regarding Relic's stance on the unofficial balance mod?

I've see him on the currently viewing list right after I've asked this question (I've asked it a couple times now) so I know he's likely seen it. Hoping to get a clear answer from him this time.

Relic is busy doing other shit, so they aren't focusing on coh2 right now. When a new patch comes it will still use the same community balance testing (probably). The mod team is preemptively preparing for that. Relic still plans on releasing more patches to finish out the five year plan. It's naive to assume they will go back to the old way, they haven't released a real relic patch in over a year and a half.

yup they got their new game dying out there

COH2 are alive for 4 year Feelsgoodman and perhaps Feelsbadman

Currently any balance mods that Mr. Smith, Miragefla or GGTheMachine are working on are not part of a planned or future balance patch for COH2. They are currently working on community balance mods out of their own interest and the changes in said mods are not intended for the live game (automatch).

When the time comes to work with the community on curated balance changes once again, there will be a clear distinction and communication coming from Relic around the initiative (i.e. the Winter Balance Preview).

top kek

try to patch without proper testing and feedback ? that sound familiar that really remind me of something ,like when COH2 got a unit that wipe withtin 2-5 second

What you said is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I never said that patch with no testing, I only said the fault of current balance team is that they are bad at beginning phase: planning. Bad beginning lead to bad end, just like what Relic did before.

Just look at recently work:
- After first so-called community patch, US Mortar(why USF need this one?, they need the WC51!) became disaster.
- After second patch, they force SU player to go for Lend Lease.

I'm not against the current team. I just want them to change. If they don't, there will be no good outcome.

FYI, at that Relic already has closed community team (mainly top players) that gives them opinion. You would catch many stream they try testing with those players. The reason of failure? They(to be exact, there was only one particular person) simply didn't listen to them.

First of all; thanks for taking the time to run the tests for us. There are a lot of units and threats that the emplacements have to come up against that it's impossible to have just the same 3-4 people playtesting emplacements with us (and there's only that many Trois Ponts matches we can survive without turning insane x_X).

One thing about Mortar Pits and the 17 pounder is that their hitbox is insanely large. Like any shots (AT gun or whatever) that lands on the net will deal full damage to the emplacement. That may also affect small arms fire, but I'm not sure.

We've found a way to reduce the hitbox size of those emplacements, which we may trial in the next version, to see if that also affects small arms fire.

Secondly, according to your guestimate, the mortar pit should be roughly 2-5 times more durable vs small arms fire than it currently lis.

My questions to you are...

1. does the Mortar Pit also need to be made more durable vs indirect fire than it currently, is, or did we already hit the right spot? (note that the mortar pit can barrage at longer ranges than the adversary)

2. Do Flame Nades/Flame barrages deal too much damage to emplacements currently? If they do too much damage, by how much should we reduce their damage? Half? 1-third? etc

3. Note that emplacements require squads garrisoned inside to operate at their full potential. Do garrisoned squads take too much damage from indirect fire?

4. (Due to repair speed normalization/HP), do emplacements take too long to repair?

5. Did we miss any offmap that deals too much damage to emplacemnets that brace cannot account for?

I am more than happy to continue helping out with this. Though it will be a couple more days before I do more in depth testing. My job is keeping me from the game at the moment.

I can answer questions 4 & 5 immediately though. It indeed currently takes a long time to repair emplacements now. However, it's only really a big problem due to the fragility of emplacements right now. I think we should only tackle the repair times after we have fine tuned the emplacements first.

As for number 5, There is one ability that I absolutely loath to face as one who builds emplacements and that is "Zeroing Artillery" from the OKW. The ability that speeds up arty drops while your emplacements are revealed to the enemy.

Even before the Brace nerf, this ability scares me when used on my defensive line since it could still pound away beyond the 30 Second Brace in the live version. With the brace nerf, this ability mercilessly destroys emplacements and leaves nothing left.

Balancing this could be tricky since 30 Second Brace is unpopular with the opposition. I'd personally like to see brace going up to 15 Seconds (Considered "Too Short" back in the first days of the game) and maybe the duration of Zeroing Artillery shortened yet accelerate the rate at which it starts bombing at full steam. But I feel we would need to hear more input from more unbiased OKW players regarding this.

That's all I have time for the now. I promise I'll be right back on my tests as soon as I can.

It's pitiful the impulsive and hateful reaction of some people toward the balance team, just because they are nerfing/reworking all the cancer feature that you are used to use (thing like demo, DShK, emplacement, double-bren, overperforming vet 5, calioppe/walking stuka, elephant/jagdtiger/firefly, FRP, call-in abuse)

This patch is the best thing that could happen to CoH2, and it is also for me the hope to find again a bit of pleasure and fun in the game both in 1v1 and teamgame.

What you said is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I never said that patch with no testing, I only said the fault of current balance team is that they are bad at beginning phase: planning. Bad beginning lead to bad end, just like what Relic did before.

Just look at recently work:
- After first so-called community patch, US Mortar(why USF need this one?, they need the WC51!) became disaster.
- After second patch, they force SU player to go for Lend Lease.

I'm not against the current team. I just want them to change. If they don't, there will be no good outcome.

FYI, at that Relic already has closed community team (mainly top players) that gives them opinion. You would catch many stream they try testing with those players. The reason of failure? They(to be exact, there was only one particular person) simply didn't listen to them.

There are things which are valid to criticise but the mortar is not one of them.

-Mortar on beta was basically SU mortar level. The one they released was the one from the single player.
-Lend lease is basically what Guard Motor has been for the last 3 years, at least on 1v1 (teamgames there is more options tbh now). It has been untouched, therefore the last bastion of the old gods. Current state of SU is due to conscripts not entering scope and Relic asking for nerfs on maxims (old due) for the tournament IRC.

Balancing this could be tricky since 30 Second Brace is unpopular with the opposition. I'd personally like to see brace going up to 15 Seconds (Considered "Too Short" back in the first days of the game) and maybe the duration of Zeroing Artillery shortened yet accelerate the rate at which it starts bombing at full steam. But I feel we would need to hear more input from more unbiased OKW players regarding this.

Zeroing artillery is one of the only reasons to ever pick fortification doctrine in the first place, and that was largely due to emplacement cheese (at least in my personal experience with OKW). Fortifications doctrine, ironically, was OKW's best anti-turtle doctrine because it had the LeFH howitzer as well as zeroing artillery for busting those sim cities. With emplacements not being so hard to destroy in the first place I see little reason to lock in Fortifications.

That being said, live version Zeroing Artillery is definitely overkill for the revamp if it gets all of its shots off -- that is, if it ever gets all of its shots off. It's actually not too easy maintaining visuals on sim city if the Brit player has any kind of presence around it in a 1v1. It's team games that's the problem. I'd argue in favor for reducing the total number of shells fired in exchange for a faster rate of fire, although I'd say we should try putting brace to 10s instead of 15 first, and only then make the jump to 15 if it really needs it. This way Brits get a more intuitive but not busted brace, and the OKW zeroing artillery is more effective for a wider variety of targets while also not being as reliant on teammate flares or recon abuse in teamgames.

Why is my post to dopeWhore invisi'd while he's able to continue trolling the mod makers?

Get real.

Something about Zeroing Artillery

Also keep in mind, that Zeroing Artillery at 300 mun is one of the most expensive abilities in the game. Yes, it can destroy an emplacement in one go, but it needs preparation, line of sight etc. In the same time, Zeroing arty is useless than not facing emplacement spam. It that way I would say its balanced.
But not fun, neither for the player on the receiving end or the player who activates it. One click counters shouldn't exist in my opinion, they create frustration and force players into certain counters. I would certainly favour a cheaper, faster and easier to pull of Zeroing Artillery in exchange for a reduction in emplacement damage, so what it can't kill them in one go anymore.
But when again we have to look at the baseline for this mod the EFA and all the Howitzers which can get one shot for much less effort and ammunition. Additionally, they are situational, cost more, are doctrinal and come out much later (closer to the time of their one click counters). As long as this is the case, Zeroing Artillery is fine.
From a design perspective, both abilities are bad. In my opinion, the modding team should rework the howitzers and remove the one click counters. Then the same should apply to Zeroing Artillery.

i.e. the Tommy change
"We find that the fact that Tommies have to endure extremes during the early game, makes play and counterplay options vs the British faction too narrow. A major reason for this are the relatively-high strength of cover bonuses in the early game, as well as the poor moving performance of the unit."

I don't get this argument at all. When Tommies are cover when you approach during early game, you dont touch the damn Tommies with 50m pole. You try to catch them in motion by engaging smartly like rushing head on with first sturmpio to catch the first Tommies offguard or by using hmg42 etc etc. I do not see what is limiting at all.

I actually want to know how many people that matter (constructive posters, top players) complained about Tommies to bring about this change.

With all due respect, almost every changes except the four I mentioned are not really redesigning in terms of what "re-designing" means in this forum. Yes, technically everything you guys are doing is re-designing but in terms of CoH, it is really just re-balancing. 90% changes are not affecting the tech or a gameplay feature, they are just series of nerfs and buffs to make the infantry engagement slightly different than they are now.

Normally we would have held back with British changes for a few weeks. However, circumstances meant we had to rush things out of the gates.

The kind of feedback we had received from Cruzz back then was "remove RA from cover to make Tommies killable" and "give Tommies some moving accuracy, so that they aren't completely worthless". The rest of the changes are working around the fact that only certain Tommy upgrades are researched, Tommies are too unreliable for an AI-only unit, and that they break infantry scaling for our mod.

Thus, there's a mix-match of reasons why Tommies turned out to be this way:
- Mills Bombs being completely useless on the live version of the unit (and even if you made them cheap, they would never be researched (moving accuracy)
- Tommies being too strong at Vet0 out of the gates, making them dominate over other infantry (removing cover RA from Vet0)
- Tommies being completely helpless when fighting anything other than infantry (moving accuracy)
- Enfield slot items making them the RNG gods of CoH2 (scoped enfields removal)
- Dual Bren guns making Tommies too strong in the late-game for other infantry to match. That's on a faction that already has good tanks (dual Bren)
- Bren guns being too RNG with the occasional 12 second reload time, making an AI-mostly squad completely unreliable (Bren reload time normalization)
- The fact that nobody ever techs guns in the early game making 5-man upgrade dominate (Bren cost-efficiency changes, Vet0 RA-in-cover changes)
- The fact that the 5-man upgrade, which should reward people that tech it early makes British infantry too cheap on the late-game, even when Brits have access to good tanks (5-man changes)
- The fact that every single gun in the game has a fire-cone of at least 5 to aid target acquisition (fire-cone changes is essentially a bugfix)
- Unupgraded Tommies being able to duke it out with enemy upgraded infantry in the late-game (5-man changes, commuting RA to accuracy in the cover bonus, Scoped Enfields)

Finally, the reason why you have more changes per capita on OKW/UKF infantry compared to other factions is that the other factions have had their infantry scaling kinda adjusted during WBP; Tommies and OKW were beyond our grasp.

If this was right after SNF5, I would completely back this project of micromanagement. I mean 5 cons v. 5 grens all the time was disgusting. But I saw diversity of playstyle among the top players in GCS and during my own games.

If you guys were experimenting with global upgrades to change the dynamics to add depth and more dynamics instead of just dynamics by nerfing and buffing, I would support fully because even though it would be harder to balance and cause more upheaval, I think it would be a worth while experiment.

I might be cynical. However, for 4 factions (anybody but OKW), I only saw one commander dominating over the rest; lend-lease, armour, lightning war and special weapons. So, yeah; it's not a disgusting infantry spam over infantry spam, but something needs to be done to shake up the meta.

I am more than happy to continue helping out with this. Though it will be a couple more days before I do more in depth testing. My job is keeping me from the game at the moment.

I can answer questions 4 & 5 immediately though. It indeed currently takes a long time to repair emplacements now. However, it's only really a big problem due to the fragility of emplacements right now. I think we should only tackle the repair times after we have fine tuned the emplacements first.

As for number 5, There is one ability that I absolutely loath to face as one who builds emplacements and that is "Zeroing Artillery" from the OKW. The ability that speeds up arty drops while your emplacements are revealed to the enemy.

Even before the Brace nerf, this ability scares me when used on my defensive line since it could still pound away beyond the 30 Second Brace in the live version. With the brace nerf, this ability mercilessly destroys emplacements and leaves nothing left.

Balancing this could be tricky since 30 Second Brace is unpopular with the opposition. I'd personally like to see brace going up to 15 Seconds (Considered "Too Short" back in the first days of the game) and maybe the duration of Zeroing Artillery shortened yet accelerate the rate at which it starts bombing at full steam. But I feel we would need to hear more input from more unbiased OKW players regarding this.

That's all I have time for the now. I promise I'll be right back on my tests as soon as I can.

If you suspect an OKW zeroing artillery nuke (e.g., if you see LeFH's and the enemy hoarding munitions) consider packing up and selling for scraps. Nobody will ever use zeroing artillery vs singular mortar pits. On the other hand, the armagedon effect will, hopefully, continue to incentivise people not to do sim city.

You gain nothing by blobbing your emplacements anymore (e.g., FRP aura removed); except maybe for reducing the amount of territory you need to protect.

With respect to emplacements in the mod, we've found a few bugs; namely that the extra HP on the second mortar doesn't apply etc. In the next version, we will also be trialing reduced hitboxes for mortar pit/17 pounder and see if that addresses some of their main durability issues.

I've only played against AI and the resource between the MP and Fuel feels absolute finicky, and it's making me really hard to hold the ground against any units on the front and trying to tech up to the late game units, even when i use British also have this issue.

Is it the idea to use the forward retreat point as a temporary uses while penalize front line resources?

You are supposed to use the FRP very judiciously, and only when necessary. FRPs allow you to retain your territory gains (and thus your resource income) and fall back in times of danger (e.g., to protect your forward base). Therefore, you have to give up something, to get something.

If you only use FRP up to 2 times during the game, then the new FRP is cheaper than the old FRP; anything more, and it's more expensive.

The FRP is really supposed to be a last-resort solution.

These are the exact wordings of Kyle on official forums-

Posts: 346 admin



Also on Stormless chat he said there are no future patch release plans as of now. They are not working on CoH 2.

So believe what you want to.

When he said this in stormless chat?

And yes EFA and WFA are mods from mr.smith and mira. Without Relic involved, thats true.