0 CP call-ins - design principals

NOTICE: This thread is exclusively for discussion of the design and balance of the new 0 CP call-in units; there are several threads already for discussion of the DLC model or 'P2W' elements.

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The new DLC commanders have introduced a new element to COH-2 in the form of 0 CP call-ins. This is more or less unique in the series (the only other 0 cp ability I can think of are the PE ketten abilities but those seem almost accidental).

I have a few concerns with this

1) it unlocks all commanders at 0CP, encouraging people to select their commander before the game starts rather than organically as the game progresses. Indeed, to use these abilities, you're more or less obliged to select them at 0cp.

2) By introducing call-in units to the game so early, these new call-ins are forced to strike a really fine balance between early game effectiveness and mid-game cost-effectiveness.

Hence, assault grens, which would be reasonably priced at 280mp a few minutes in, were blatantly too good against early game conscripts. The solution was to stick on a muni cost, which is OK as a delaying method, but that messes with another design principle and kind of makes them too expensive for someone calling them in in the mid to late game.

Similarly, being able to make 6 Ostruppen with your first 720 mp gives insane amounts of capping power, and allows the Ostheer player to occupy a huge number of key buildings on a map like Semois very quickly while also capping all over the place. Ostruppen for 120 mp might actually be reasonable after the first few minutes, providing you with a lot of quick capping power, building blockers, very cheap reinforcement and recrewing units, but if they come in right off the bat, they just need to be more expensive to be balanced on a map like Semois.

3) it seems to mess up the design principles of the early game Soviets vs early game Ostheer. The Soviets having a T0 combat unit that can be made more flexible by doctrines and upgrades as opposed to the Ostheer having to put up T1 (or skip it, as is actually viable even in high level play) to field a wider range of units more quickly, and slightly better-scaling units.

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So, that's my issue with them. I kind of think that the Ostruppen and Assault Grenadier doctrines would both be easier to balance and a better fit with the rest of the game if they were 1cp call-ins rather than 0cp.

I like the new 0Cp call ins as long as they are balanced (the 280 MP AGs were definitely not)

Yeah not sure how I feel about them yet and will give a better opinion in the future. Still need more time to test it out a range of viable counters but Semois/Ostruppen is doing definitely my head in a bit in how to counter effectively.

I think the 0CP call-ins should be retained and the munition cost removed. An alternate way to balance it would be to significantly increase the recharge time on the call-in ability itself, possibly removing this penalty once 1cp hits to allow these units to scale into the game. Ie. first AG has 2 min recharge time, which reverts to the current 20-30s? once 1cp arrives.

My vision is that these units would remain t0 to allow these commanders to open up new aggressive builds for the german, but require reliance on regular t1 units or engineers to fill in the rest of the army early game.

AG's and ostheer should be supplements, not replacements for the rest of the german infantry units.

Moving these units to CP 1 takes away most the point of the new commanders, which is to allow aggressive early game play. Why should the soviets have a monopoly on early game capping power/aggression?

Agreed. Good suggestion on having a massive call in recharge time. Would defintiely be a decent approach and possibly might make those faster build time bulletins plausible.

I think the 0CP call-ins should be retained and the munition cost removed. An alternate way to balance it would be to significantly increase the recharge time on the call-in ability itself, possibly removing this penalty once 1cp hits to allow these units to scale into the game. Ie. first AG has 2 min recharge time, which reverts to the current 20-30s? once 1cp arrives.

My vision is that these units would remain t0 to allow these commanders to open up new aggressive builds for the german, but require reliance on regular t1 units or engineers to fill in the rest of the army early game.

AG's and ostheer should be supplements, not replacements for the rest of the german infantry units.

Moving these units to CP 1 takes away most the point of the new commanders, which is to allow aggressive early game play. Why should the soviets have a monopoly on early game capping power/aggression?

Higher recharge times would help somewhat with the power balance and be a big improvement. Doesn't really address the getting a commander right off the bat thing but that's more preference than anything else. The bit I've bolded is more or less completely what I feel about playing against these commanders as is. I agree making them 1 cp might reduce the uniqueness of the commanders.

Surely COH 1 had more or less a system where the US normally had a monopoly on very early game aggression if they invested in it. I feel right now the extent of the Soviet early game advantage in aggression is very dependent on builds - the currently fairly popular 4-5 scripts with molotovs does and obviously should have a better mix of early game aggressive potential/capping power than any Ostheer answer to it (because it's pure T0 investment). By contrast, a slightly more passive Soviet build like 3 scripts -> sniper + AT nades allows for a lot of Ostheer aggression.

The Ostheer do still have a lot of aggressive options, depending on the map, mostly revolving around cut-off plays. Particularly, on a map like Langres, dealing with Ostheer aggression is extremely tough. So, I don't really buy that the Ostheer *need* more early game aggression as an option and I think that having some T0 call-ins for the Ostheer kind of messes up the faction design.

AG's and ostheer should be supplements, not replacements for the rest of the german infantry units.

im going to have to disagree with this, atleast for assault grens (osttruppen really do need support). i was under the impression that this doctrine is meant to allow germans to skip t1 without relying solely on pios. the linear german teching can get quite boring, so i am really hoping they make this viable again.

soviets have quite a few options in the early game. they can build t1/t2 early or they can stay t0 and spam cons, build t1 just to tech, and rush t3 or t4 is another option. germans on the other hand have only two real options. build t1, or build 2-3 pios and hope you dont lose the map waiting on t2.

i think allowing for more variation in starting builds is good for this game. this makes the game less repetitive for the player and his opponent. more variation also makes the early game less predictable.

So, I think that while related, this topic could definitely be split into two separate parts: 1) The core design of 0cp units and 2) The balance of those units. I'm not really sure if the units themselves are balanced at this point (stat and timing wise) but I think that the 0cp concept actually fits in CoH2.

CoH1 and CoH2 seem to be fundamentally different in the way each approaches commanders/doctrines. In CoH1 there was a very cool chess match that would take place that revolved around both fuel and commander choice. It often made sense to hold back your commander choice and make the decision only after you had a good idea of how much fuel was available to you and also what your opponent was doing. If you just went left side Armor Company right off the bat, and then got nailed with the Langre pin while your opponent went defensive with grens, paks and shreks, your doctrine choice was poor and you had basically nothing from the doctrine to help you. Or, you may have intended to go for a defensive med bunker strat but quickly noticed that you were controlling fuel very well and your opponent went rangers so you instead choose terror to ramp up the pressure a bit. All in all, the system was quite fun the more in depth you got with it but it's main weakness was that if one strat became too popular in the meta (defensive med bunker camping) and it only had a couple of solid counters (infantry arty for example), then over time the meta became very stale and people were loath to use out side of the box doctrine choices to try and combat the go to strats.

In CoH2, I find that your doctrine choice relies much less on what your opponent is doing, much less on your map control (as you can still get fuel/munitions from strat points or just build caches) and much more on the execution of an original plan and adaptation of your chosen doctrine to your opponents unit/commander choice. There are some exceptions to this of course, namely needing guards as a stop gap as Soviets, but even then, if your original plan is: I want to shocks, get shocks, make sure t2 is up in time for fast half track... Then it's pretty easy to avoid being hit with a suprise unit that you need a doctrine choice for. This system, and the way most commanders are built, means that use and timing of the abilities is more important than the specific doctrine you've chosen. For instance, if your game plan is to rush a p4 and a commander with panzer tactician is the best compliment to what you want to do, even if you get cut off from fuel and your opponent goes t2 with guards, you can still have chosen panzer tactician from the get go, get a scout car or half track, and still make use of the ability despite being "countered" by your circumstance. This makes commanders in CoH2 all in all more flexible and the meta less likely to become stale imo.

This brings us to 0 CP commanders. With the CoH2 commander style and less of an emphasis on commander choice as counter or timing window choice, I actually find the idea of 0 CP commanders to fit. Choosing a commander at second 1 and playing to that style from the start isn't often that different from commanders that you pick at 1 cp and only adds flavor to the doctrine. Currently I'm truly enjoying using Osttruppen and I pretty much never feel like I chose the wrong doctrine to counter something my opponent did but rather that I just executed wrong and maybe didn't build a pak when I needed to or something to that effect. The Soviets get squeezed a little harder with this in that they rely more on doctrines to fill in gaps that are missing from their tiers and the weakness of conscripts as the game progresses, but even then, they can tailor their game plan to fit a predetermined commander choice.

Honestly, I liked the CoH1 system more for it's strategic depth, but I've also really enjoyed the flexibility that the CoH2 system provides. The balance of the new units themselves is still up in the air, but I think the concept of 0CP commanders is okay in the CoH2 format.

Didn't believe it until now but Ostruppen spam is becoming problematic,my opponent had 3 squads out when I managed to call in just one Conscript squad...in other words,this is f*****d up...

What about a mechanic that would decrease the cooldown of early call-in units when you collect more CP or tech up?
That way the call in units would be limited more in early game and later they'd have a short cooldown, allowing you to replace losses if needed.

im going to have to disagree with this, atleast for assault grens (osttruppen really do need support). i was under the impression that this doctrine is meant to allow germans to skip t1 without relying solely on pios. the linear german teching can get quite boring, so i am really hoping they make this viable again.

soviets have quite a few options in the early game. they can build t1/t2 early or they can stay t0 and spam cons, build t1 just to tech, and rush t3 or t4 is another option. germans on the other hand have only two real options. build t1, or build 2-3 pios and hope you dont lose the map waiting on t2.

i think allowing for more variation in starting builds is good for this game. this makes the game less repetitive for the player and his opponent. more variation also makes the early game less predictable.

if you dont build 4 conscripts ad the begining you are bound to loose. soviets have a more restricted teching than germans. the fact that you click the t2 upgrade does not mean you have to build those units, nor the building.

Didn't believe it until now but Ostruppen spam is becoming problematic,my opponent had 3 squads out when I managed to call in just one Conscript squad...in other words,this is f*****d up...

You won't even encounter them in battle at that early stage of game. You could even avoid conflict and cap elsewhere, they can't offensively attack you (only defend together as a blob).

So yeah, they cap a bit more initially, that's just one stage in the game. However when you get 2-3 scripts, you can easily win all battles if they try to stick by that 'spam' (dramatically losing map control). Ostruppen need T1 mg42 support, can't survive on its own.

@Enkidu, yeah, you're sort of right there. They do kind of fit in with how people tend to use the commanders right now. On the other hand, I can kind of imagine both of these commanders working and fitting in much better with the pre-existing commanders and game if the units were 1 CP.

I think they do sort of mess with the different tech structure of the two factions, and I have my reservations about whether they can be balanced to be not too strong for early game spammers and not too weak for people using them responsibly in the mid game.

The CP-related-reduced-cooldown is a good idea but it kind of seems to just be adding one fiddly new mechanic to deal with another.

@Moonhoplite: not really the case on Semois, where they can just sit in all the buildings. One of those strats that is far too effective for the amount of skill it takes. Also, having six or seven Ostruppen squads or whatever instead of 2 grens and an MG seems to mess up a lot of the core principles of the COH 2 early game (importance of unit preservation, having to strike a balance of capping and building camping to deny capping, because of tech structure Soviets have faster field presence but less flexibility - etc.).

As infantry call-ins for the Ostheer are realtively new (only the Field Officer until now) let's put the infantry call-ins in the HQ as a buildable unit (like the pioneers) with a reasonable buildtime instead of a instant call-in. And each Tier progression upgrade could speed up the building process of those units.