Intelligence Bulletins

This was one of the more surprising aspects of the day as I certainly hadn’t heard anything about these before.

Intelligence Bulletins were explained to us as pamphlets that were given out to troops to explain various things, such as the weak points of enemy vehicles like the German Tiger tank. These served two purposes, firstly to allow troops to effectively engage a given vehicle but also to encourage them that the enemy was not invincible and could be beaten.

How this is being implemented as a gameplay feature is in the form of various individual power-ups that a player can unlock by various gameplay actions. The example we were given (Not necessarily a finalised in-game example) was that when a player had successfully destroyed twenty Tiger tanks with anti-tank guns they would unlock a powerup that gave their anti-tank guns a bonus against heavy armour. Other (possibly theoretical) examples I was given were giving your troops more resistance to artillery or various other damage reductions or bonuses for some or all of your army.

Though we weren’t able to use these ourselves they certainly sound interesting. I was able to confirm with a Relic developer that all of these unlockable Bulletins are achievable solely by playing the game and that none need to be paid for, though having unlock conditions do suggest that certain ones will be much harder to get hold of than others.

Why would you post this

Why would you post this

ikr

Yeah those pictures really grant credibility. Good job.

Not those images Matanza, I had to remove them.

Not those images Matanza, I had to remove them.

lol, ok, but that was my reaction to this feature. How this thing will be implemented? There will be a limit on how many "Intelligence Bulletins" a player could use per game?

Just one, please?

The PCGZine mentioned those but I figured that was just for single player. Is this in multiplayer too? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. How do you balance a game where half the players get bonus AT gun damage because they've killed 20 Tiger tanks?

#vomit face

let me guess this has something to do with alpha. otherwise i see nothing wrong here.

CoHO 2

it worked pretty weird in COHO, iirc... every army had its set of OP bonus cards that somehow canceled each other out.

Afaik you can select 3 bulletins before the game, which gives small bonuses like 10% penetration. As long as the bonuses aren't too OP, I like the idea of being able to personalise your army a bit.

There are right now 110 Intel bulletins, once you can unlock them you can select three of them to use on your profile. They do not stack so you can't have three 10% bonus penetration vs heavy tanks. And they are small bonuses.

Let's wait to see them ingame and then we can judge them

10% penetration is quite significant bonus tbh. But this is probably just an example, as well as a matter of balancing, so no big worries.

I think I do like such mechanic, but only if present on a borderline insignificant/cosmetic level of the gameplay, just to spice my army up.

Wonder if I will be able to see my opponent's bulletins before battle. As well as his chosen commander archetypes.

Most likely, Relic/THQ are doing two things at the same time;
1) Using you guys to test for bugs or unforeseen consequences.
2) Seeing how it works out in multiplayer, though it would be perfectly fine to limit bullentins to singleplayer/"battlefield" and not implement it in auto/Frontline

You guys are most likely testing mechanics for both Frontline and Battlefield gamemodes at the same time. Anything else would be a waste of resources.

No it's not a quite significant bonus tbh. 50% more damage at vet3 on rifles, airborne troops, rangers...that's a significant bonus, 25% less received accuracy is a significant bonus, but anything in the order of 1-10% is not significant in COH world.

1-10% is not significant in COH world.

Then again, it can mean the difference between needing two or three AT-gun shots to kill a vehicle (think PaK vs. M8, would make a hell of a difference). But I don't think they are going to implement this in Frontline gamemode, the pre-planning elements needs to be limited carefully or Frontline gamemode will be meaningless.

No it's not a quite significant bonus tbh. 50% more damage at vet3 on rifles, airborne troops, rangers...that's a significant bonus, 25% less received accuracy is a significant bonus, but anything in the order of 1-10% is not significant in COH world.

Well, you gain those high value bonuses by fighting (gaining vet should be that rewarding), not by just choosing pre-game perk, as well as they apply to one unit only. In CoH2 it seems that those bulletines will benefit all units or at least a kind of units (at guns, tanks etc.) so you have to multiply this bonus for each unit produced which is bestowed by this bonus. I also always had the impression that even 5% damage reduction on vet1 Wehr tanks is highly beneficial, even on a single panther

I think that those bulletins can be balanced but the bonuses have to be really really small, and I mean smaller than 10%. Because 10% increased armor penetration is the difference between unreliable being able to penetrate and always being to penetrate.

Just look at other games like LOL, which has masteries and runes, when I first started playing I found them to be pretty useless because the numbers are so small, but they actually make a pretty big difference.

Just as long as piofausts are back in play, I'm game.