[COH 3] The DOCTRINES/COMMANDERS issue.

I think it is clear to everyone that in CoH 2 the awesome mechanics of doctrines from CoH 1 has been watered down.
Multiple commanders, only few of them viable, with low to no flavour.
Since relic seems to be looking for opinions for a possible future CoH 3 i'm a bit worried about a possible "CoH 2 like" implementation of such mechanic.

How should commanders/doctrine mechanic be implemented ?

Edit: in option three i wrote: ...but keeps company flavour (aka no tiger in airborne doctrine)

System in Coho Company of heroes online was great. The Coh game which I had most fun with. The Option to build your own doctrine with different abilities with a certain amount of points was ideal. Also liked all the hero units a lot! True it had some balance issues.

awesome mechanics of doctrines from CoH 1

"awesome mechanics of doctrines"

was usually for the fatherland spam with Heavy bunkers

vs

howitzer tree from infantry company to counter bunkers

"awesome mechanics of doctrines"

was usually for the fatherland spam with Heavy bunkers

vs

howitzer tree from infantry company to counter bunkers

Mechanics /=/ balance
The mechanic was good and gave the game its own personality.

"awesome mechanics of doctrines"

was usually for the fatherland spam with Heavy bunkers

vs

howitzer tree from infantry company to counter bunkers

Infantry company was certainly used more often than armor and especially airborne versus wehrmacht, but it's not like Terror wasn't used quite often.

Armor v blitz or terror is/was pretty common as well.

I say let there be a commander-like system that allows you to customize your roster and you have access to all three commanders at once. The catch is, it would used the CoH 1 system of CPs where you spend them to get access to certain items. This would leave whether you want to spend on smaller items first or go for bigger abilities ASAP.

Of course one could also make it a tree system where you need X amount of level 1s or 2s before getting level 3s.

I say let there be a commander-like system that allows you to customize your roster and you have access to all three commanders at once. The catch is, it would used the CoH 1 system of CPs where you spend them to get access to certain items. This would leave whether you want to spend on smaller items first or go for bigger abilities ASAP.

Of course one could also make it a tree system where you need X amount of level 1s or 2s before getting level 3s.

Yeah i get your point.
I also thought about "customizable" doctrines, but it will just create doctrines meta where someone just create the god combination.

The point of, like i called them, "specialization" is to add diversity
Maybe some abilities/units of the commanders would be shared between sub trees, but there would also be a radical cut, so you need to actually decide the shape of your strategy.
You can customize your doctrine by choosing a specific path.

For example (just to give an idea, not necessarily balanced stuff what i'm saying), armored company commander would have among several sub trees
1) m10/bulldozer and 240mm
2) pershing, and smoke barrage

Both subtrees will share assault engies and other abilities, like a distinct feature of the armored company commander.

Luftwaffe doctrine will have fallschirmjager, ftfatherland ability, ostwind etc among other stuff for all subtrees, but than you need to decide if you want to specialize into cas (with strafe, at strafe and recon) or ground defense (with flak 88 etc...).

You expect airborne company to "spam" rocket loiter, but you can avoid "close air support" specialization and get the "airborne assault" specialization where instead if getting recon plane, strafe, rocket loiter you get a droppable weapon password locked weapon cache for para, a flare ability, the ability to drop at guns, but ALL sub trees belong to airborne doctrine, and will share some features like paratrooper mentioned above.

5 ability/call ins/passive would be shared, 5 would be specific of a specialization.

What about using Commanders as templates for skill choice? So mix a couple pre-set defining skills and a bunch of slots with a typing that you can throw appropriate skills into. Eg, say I pick a German Blitz doc, I have Command P4 and JU87 Loiter as my presets, but I also have an Infantry Slot, an Intel Slot and a Logistics Slot that all have specific pools of abilities they can choose from. So Infantry, for example, might include G43s, Ostruppen, etc, intel could include Spotting Scopes, 221, and Recon Run and so on.

What about using Commanders as templates for skill choice? So mix a couple pre-set defining skills and a bunch of slots with a typing that you can throw appropriate skills into. Eg, say I pick a German Blitz doc, I have Command P4 and JU87 Loiter as my presets, but I also have an Infantry Slot, an Intel Slot and a Logistics Slot that all have specific pools of abilities they can choose from. So Infantry, for example, might include G43s, Ostruppen, etc, intel could include Spotting Scopes, 221, and Recon Run and so on.

Specialization would be a customization of your doctrine, but instead if choosing every single ability, we would get to choose pre determined "packages"

Ex.
Elite troops doctrine will have panzerfus, infiltration nade and some other stuff REGARDLESS of sub tree, but if you choose the "ambush" specialization you get increased sight for panzerfus, hetzer with cloak call in and etc...
The "advanced tactics" specialization gives you cloak ability for atg, flare for your mainline, etc...

It keeps both flavour and versatility, so elite troops actually isn't a tiger shared by 40000 doctrines but it won't mean you will end up having to use the same 5 abilities/call ins/whatever.

"awesome mechanics of doctrines"

was usually for the fatherland spam with Heavy bunkers

vs

howitzer tree from infantry company to counter bunkers

Literally the same as the sniper spam aids from CoH. People forget the problems and praise everything lol.

Specialization would be a customization of your doctrine, but instead if choosing every single ability, we would get to choose pre determined "packages"

Ex.
Elite troops doctrine will have panzerfus, infiltration nade and some other stuff REGARDLESS of sub tree, but if you choose the "ambush" specialization you get increased sight for panzerfus, hetzer with cloak call in and etc...
The "advanced tactics" specialization gives you cloak ability for atg, flare for your mainline, etc...

It keeps both flavour and versatility, so elite troops actually isn't a tiger shared by 40000 doctrines but it won't mean you will end up having to use the same 5 abilities/call ins/whatever.

I could definitely live with that. Any form of customization would have been nice, it just seems like a really natural extension of the Commander system in general, especially since Relic's already programmed a custom commander system but never chose/got permission to release it.

I think that CoH 3 should either improve on CoH 1 or do a mix between the 2.

What I'm thinking of is the same as what the ToV campaigns and mods did, that is increased the doctrine abilities to 16 instead of just 6, or the second option as you mentioned, sub-specializations.

So for example, you have Infantry Company for the US, you can specialize in defense, riflemen or better logistics or production or whatever.

If you go Airborne, you can specialize in Airborne invasions which will be big scale but cost a lot of resource and have large cool downs, or specialize in making Paratroopers better, or having better Air Support if you plan on using a lot of ammunition on strafing or bombing runs.

Or Mechanized Company, you can specialize in Tanks, that is upgrades for your current tanks and unlock more, better and more Light vehicles, mechanized infantry, rapid production of vehicles and so forth.

For Germany you can have the same, defensive doctrine which can further specialize in concrete defenses, meaning better fortified defensive lines, or Quick Reaction Forces (QRF) that meaning mechanized Grenadiers with StuG support for example, Infantry, thus meaning better and more infantry units as well as experience and so forth, or cheaper light defenses and so on and so on.

You can also have Mechanized again which would re-introduce early war Blitzkrieg tactics with mechanized Panzergrenadiers supported by let's say, Panzer IIIs (counter to the QRF, better infantry, shittier tanks), again, better and more tanks and experienced tank crews, some that helps medium tanks so you can let's say field more StuGs.

And then maybe you can get into the later war stuff with the 3rd doctrine and it's later specializations like Wunderwaffe which grants you the Sturmtiger, Owl halftrack, infra-red equipped StGs for infantry, Volksgrenadiers, defensive emplacements and so forth.

The Brits could get like Canadian Support specialization through a doctrine like in Age of Empires 3 with the Asian Dynasties which can choose to either buff their already existing units or call in foreign units which could work here as well, a Doctrine that specializes more on raiding forces such as Royal Marine Commandos, Airborne Commandos (SAS basically) and glider airborne operations, then they could have a Combined Arms doctrine which could further specialize into heavier use of Infantry, Armor or Artillery, so you'd get buffed infantry with the first option and Tanks and Arty would act in more of a support role and vice versa for the other 2 options.

Basically every Army would again have a gimmick with it's doctrines, America would be using their numbers and production (economy or logistics, whatever you wanna call it), Britain would be using it's experience from past wars, while Germany will be using it's training, experience as well as eras or stances from the war, so you'd be provided with the option of enacting an early war sort of Blitzkrieg stance, a mid war sort of defensive and counter-attack stance and a later war heavier defensive and wonder weapon stance or whatever you wanna call it again.

At least that's my idea that is.

You gotta find a middle ground between coh1 and 2. I mean even custom commanders can solve this but the limited abilities or scale of some of the coh2 commanders can leave you hanging balls in the wind (especially in allied factions) due to how incorporated or important some of the commanders are how the faction preform.

I like how coh2 commanders are narrow but at the same time I hate the they are so limited I guess...

Just do not overdo it with amound of passive abilities. Because either they will have such a small impact that no one will bother (like current bulletins) or they will be strong enough to form OP combos (eg. vCoH ftF bunker zombie grens blobs )

I'd like to see three core commanders per faction, and 3-6 additional DLC/Paid/Supply Commanders per faction slowly released over a long period of time.

Each one should be unique, thematically consistent, viable, and promote fluid gameplay (e.g. no turtle doctrines like CoH1 Fortifications or CoH2 Advanced Emplacement).

This would remove the balancing issues with custom commanders (although that's a really awesome idea too).