Fix OKW Sturm Offizier

Speaking of officers, does anyone know what the damage profiles on the various officer pistols are like? Are any of them actually combat effective or mostly for show?

That looks very nice! I understand that it's an initial draft that may not be implemented, but I would like to offer the feedback that vet 2 is way too powerful, giving the squad something like 80% more dps and 25% more health. On the other hand, vet 4 (assuming sturmpioneer stg) only provides 22% more dps for the squad at close and mid range.

So, I would replace the extra man with -20% RA, and add 25% cooldown to vet 4 (or vice versa, if vet 2 is still too good). This way, the squad would scale more smoothly and bleed less.

The STG 44 is the PG version. The extra man brings him up to the other officers and allows combat power. Weapon cooldown was pulled given the 5th man who can be adjusted in vet position.

Oh, I see- It's an intentional power spike to help them scale better, and the StG is more effective than I thought. I really appreciate the explanation!

So to explain, all of the new commander patch changes have to be recreated given how the mod and updates work. The changes for that patch have already basically been finalized, and for the past few weeks things were/are being worked on at the Relic side.

This meant that there's been a few weeks of down time for those not involved with the implementation, so in the mean time, we've been brainstorming some stuff we'd like to see in the future, conditions allowing. Not all of these changes are as much of a no brainer as this sturm officer stuff though. The list is about as far from official as it gets, and we're not even decided on what direction we would like to take some stuff to be honest. The bottom line is that at the minimum, I'd imagine we'd want to wait until the new commander patch is released, bug fixed, and rebalanced (a lot of stuff pops up when you have ~20000 people a day play testing, and not 10) before we even think about submitting this list to the community.

It's good to hear that there are still plans to release patches and support the CoH2. Personally i find the game quite balance right now. Of course there are few basic units or tech structure that could be twicked (OKW T4 etc.), but generally i would prefer next patches to focus again on revamping existing commanders. List of bad commanders is quite long sadly. Perfect example is meansioned sturmOffizier and bugged Breakthough artillery barrage.

Sturm Offizer

-Veterancy 5: Self-healing

As vet5 is quite hard to get and officer should be focus on supporting nearbly troops i would like to suggest a group healing like Commissar or UKF Tommies have rather than self-healing. It would make more sense imo.

It's good to hear that there are still plans to release patches and support the CoH2. Personally i find the game quite balance right now. Of course there are few basic units or tech structure that could be twicked (OKW T4 etc.), but generally i would prefer next patches to focus again on revamping existing commanders. List of bad commanders is quite long sadly. Perfect example is meansioned sturmOffizier and bugged Breakthough artillery barrage.

As vet5 is quite hard to get and officer should be focus on supporting nearbly troops i would like to suggest a group healing like Commissar or UKF Tommies have rather than self-healing. It would make more sense imo.

Imo it would much more effective to nerf in small way the TOP choice commanders. That can increase the meta commander allot and that would help identify more stock balance problems.

The officer should have veterancy bonuses and the bonuses should help him in his role. So imo choose to role for the officer desinged him around that role, give him the tools for that role and design the vet bonuses to improve him in that role.

Imo it would much more effective to nerf in small way the TOP choice commanders. That can increase the meta commander allot and that would help identify more stock balance problems.

That would just make the good commanders less good and the bad commanders still bad. How exactly would that be more effective at making the bad commanders better than... making the bad commanders better?

That would just make the good commanders less good and the bad commanders still bad. How exactly is that more effective?

I suppose the thinking is that in terms of overall power level, they'd be more even.

That does make the assumption that the bad commanders are all roughly equally bad though.

It also doesn't account for commanders that are conceptually bad.

As vet5 is quite hard to get and officer should be focus on supporting nearbly troops i would like to suggest a group healing like Commissar or UKF Tommies have rather than self-healing. It would make more sense imo.

That'd be very useful at Vet 0 like the Commissar, but the utility drops off as you go up veterancy levels. By Vet 5 most OKW infantry will be passively healing themselves.

I think we're overthinking things here. Nerf what feels like deserves nerfs, and buff what feels like deserves buffs. Why ONLY nerf spec ops or ONLY buff partisans when you could just... do both?

Edit: There are less top tier commanders than there are bad commanders. So nerfing top tier commanders probably helps more than buffing all of the many weak ones. Think of OKW in this (false) dichotomy: you could nerf spec ops, or you could buff firestorm, scavenge, and luftwaffe. The former achieves more with less. Again though, why not both?

I suppose the thinking is that in terms of overall power level, they'd be more even.

That does make the assumption that the bad commanders are all roughly equally bad though.

It also doesn't account for commanders that are conceptually bad.

Nerfing the top meta commanders would be good to make all the decent-to-good but non/less meta commanders a more popular choice, like how the revamped OKW Elite Armor is currently a good commander but is ultimately outshined by the more effective Special Operations (in top 1v1 meta at least). If you'd nerf Spec Ops, Elite Armor would become more popular. There's no denying that nerfing the top meta commanders to make the decent-to-good commanders more popular would be good for the game.

However that wouldn't solve anything for the straight up bad commanders, which would still be bad if the top meta commanders were to take a hit. There's no going around the fact that they'd need to get a revamp.

That'd be very useful at Vet 0 like the Commissar, but the utility drops off as you go up veterancy levels. By Vet 5 most OKW infantry will be passively healing themselves.

True, but the Sturm Offizier is in Breakthrough so with the upcoming Panzerfussiliers change you'd be likely to have a lot of Pfussies who do not get passive healing with vet. Therefor it could be interesting to let the Offizier heal other squads. The unit could have an additional role - besides combat - by serving as a more cost effective alternative to medics or med crates. Although that might be a bit too much.

Nerfing the top meta commanders would be good to make all the good-but-non-meta commanders a more popular choice, like how OKW Elite Armor is currently a very good commander but ultimately outshined by Special Operations (in top 1v1 meta at least). If you'd nerf Spec Ops, Elite Armor will become more popular. There's no denying that nerfing the top meta commanders to make the decent-to-good commanders more popular would be good for the game.

However that wouldn't solve anything for the straight up bad commanders, which would still be bad if the top meta commanders were to take a hit. There's no going around the fact that they'd need to get some revamps.


True, but the Sturm Offizier is in Breakthrough so with the upcoming Panzerfussiliers change you'd be likely to have a lot of Pfussies which do not get passive healing with vet. Therefor it could be interesting to let the Offizier heal other squads. The unit could have an additional role - besides combat - by serving as a more cost effective alternative to medics or med crates. Although that might be a bit too much.

Increasing the number of meta commander actually helps identifying balance issues and that help improve the game and thus it might help all commanders. It also make the game more interesting and fun.

For instance lets take a fictitious example.

OKW tanks and obers are UP but is the majority can win when playing OKW using the Special OP that does not require T4 so the win rates of OKW are balance when using the specific commander. That would make difficult to identify the issue with OKW tanks and Obers.

The objectives of commander revamp should be to increase the number of commander used and not simply replace special ops with a another commanders. That would also help establish a base line of what the power level of commander for each faction should be.

So far revamps seem to have targeted the commanders least used imo it is time to also target the commanders mostly used.

I think we're overthinking things here. Nerf what feels like deserves nerfs, and buff what feels like deserves buffs. Why ONLY nerf spec ops or ONLY buff partisans when you could just... do both?

Edit: There are less top tier commanders than there are bad commanders. So nerfing top tier commanders probably helps more than buffing all of the many weak ones. Think of OKW in this (false) dichotomy: you could nerf spec ops, or you could buff firestorm, scavenge, and luftwaffe. The former achieves more with less. Again though, why not both?

Doing both is better on the other hand the limited resources and scope seem to limit what can be changed so one probably has to prioritize.

I would say there are two very different approaches about commanders and metagame. One hooks the player into a semi addictive game style, where only one commander is meta and one faction is OP at turns, this way you are forced to learn all the game mechanics, one turn at a time. Some players will still play up factions but they will be minority and the difficulty will propose a challenge that people like.
On the other side, when there is a wide variety of meta options, people will refine their playstyle and challenge themselves when they face a Better player, some will play less factions than others but that depends in the Mount of time and investment each one want to put into the game. As a game of chess not all the moves leads to a win, but each turn is fun if both players have similar skill
Options add diversity and new scenarios to learn and solve. It's harder to lean a game that diverse but its plentiful of challenges and non linear fights.
Community could be really engaged to share their POV and strategies if the game is equally balanced, meta game stable and diverse

Increasing the number of meta commander actually helps identifying balance issues and that help improve the game and thus it might help all commanders. It also make the game more interesting and fun.

Yes that is what I said.


However, that would still do nothing for bad commanders such as USF's Tactical Support Co or Rifle Co which aren't picked purely because they do not offer enough and have some bad abilities or units.

If
top meta commanders are performing at 110%,
decent-good commanders are performing at 90-100% and
bad commanders are performing at 70-80%,

and you'd nerf the top meta commanders down to 100% to establish the average power level, then you'd still need to revamp the bad commanders towards 90-100% in order for them to be able to compete with the other 90-100% commanders.

For example Tactical Support would always be a bad pick, no matter how much you'd nerf other commanders or buff stock units, as long as the Calliope remained a bad unit.

True, but the Sturm Offizier is in Breakthrough so with the upcoming Panzerfussiliers change you'd be likely to have a lot of Pfussies who do not get passive healing with vet. Therefor it could be interesting to let the Offizier heal other squads. The unit could have an additional role - besides combat - by serving as a more cost effective alternative to medics or med crates. Although that might be a bit too much.

Not if you need a Vet 5 Officer to do it. You can't rely on vet-locked abilities as part of a strategy, especially high vet ones.

Nobody gets a 223 to lay Riegels.

Yes that is what I said.


However, that would still do nothing for bad commanders such as USF's Tactical Support Co or Rifle Co which aren't picked purely because they do not offer enough and have some bad abilities or units.

If
top meta commanders are performing at 110%,
decent-good commanders are performing at 90-100% and
bad commanders are performing at 70-80%,

and you'd nerf the top meta commanders down to 100% to establish the average power level, then you'd still need to revamp the bad commanders towards 90-100% in order for them to be able to compete with the other 90-100% commanders.

For example Tactical Support would always be a bad pick, no matter how much you'd nerf other commanders or buff stock units, as long as the Calliope remained a bad unit.

True but establishing what 100% is, it the actual difficult part. Nerfing the 110% does allot more in establishing the 100% than buffing the 80%.

In your example if one has have to chose between burring an 80% or nerfing an 110% what the more effective change?

If one buffs the 80% to 100% the commander will stop being used after the initial change because people will still have a better chance winning when using the 110% commander.

If one nerf the 110% to 100% now more commander are used and easier to establish what power the commander should be and thus it is easier to buff the 80% commander to that level.

I am afraid we drifting off topic now and we should start another thread if this debate need to continue.

Here are some suggestion from another thread:

Imo the commander approach should have the following aims:

1) Balance commander abilities while bringing similar abilities inline taking into account faction.

2) Balance commander themselves by removing abilities combination that are simply too strong.

3) Keep abilities and commanders to a "theme" as much as possible
...

Speaking of officers, does anyone know what the damage profiles on the various officer pistols are like? Are any of them actually combat effective or mostly for show?

Mostly for show. At least in the sturm offizier case. The Luger he uses has 8 damage and it's very very inaccurate outside of close range.

It would definitely make sense for him to swap it out for something better as the squad vets up

Not if you need a Vet 5 Officer to do it. You can't rely on vet-locked abilities as part of a strategy, especially high vet ones.

Nobody gets a 223 to lay Riegels.

I meant healing other squads as a vet 0 ability, which was what you and/or Stark were suggesting.

I was only correcting that in the case of such a vet 0 healing ability, its utility wouldn't drop off over time because it's likely that after the patch with Breakthrough the majority of the infantry composition is going to be Panzerfusiliers, who do not get passive healing with veterancy.


I think it's definitely interesting to look into fitting it in somewhere, so the unit gets a more strategic role (skip fuel on medics to rush tanks faster, or skip med crates for more munitions for weapon upgrades) on top of a pure combat role. It'd synergize well with Panzerfusiliers, which would help set Breakthrough apart from the new Grand Offensive commander.

I was only correcting that in the case of such a vet 0 healing ability, its utility wouldn't drop off over time because in it's likely that after the patch with Breakthrough the majority of the infantry composition is going to be Panzerfusiliers, who do not get passive healing with veterancy.

Ah. What I was saying was the utility drops off the higher level of veterancy you lock it behind.

Very useful at Vet 0. Less useful locked behind Vet 1. Practically useless locked behind Vet 5.

Mostly for show. At least in the sturm offizier case. The Luger he uses has 8 damage and it's very very inaccurate outside of close range.

It would definitely make sense for him to swap it out for something better as the squad vets up

Huh, that’s actually pretty interesting. I kind of feel like we have a pretty good representation of rifles, smgs, and squad support weapons but it’d be nice to see the officers keep their pistols for flavor.

Maybe I’m just biased because I love having lots of weapon diversity in most games I play, but I think it’d be really cool if pistol rof and accuracy were increased instead to make them into semi competent close/mid (like carbines) weapons.

Anyone else prefer better pistols to a weapon change, or am I crazy for that?

Anyone else prefer better pistols to a weapon change, or am I crazy for that?

I wouldn't hate it, is definitely more interesting than just giving him and Stg or G43. It's also annoying that he carries a close range weapon because his squadmates carry Ober Kar98ks, so your ideal range to engage at is long.