Profile of drChengele

The idea behind mine revamp is rock solid - slow down flanks, reward placement of units near mines to exploit the suppression, prevent wipes.

What I am baffled about is that Relic didn't remember to use the already powerful tool they have at their disposal: crits.

If a mine reduces a model below 25%, it should have a 30% chance to kill said model via a crit. With these numbers, there is a rather substantial chance that at least one model of a 4 man squad would die, and sometimes two (provided all 4 are in the blast radius). However, the chance to fully wipe a four man squad even if they are fully clumped up is negligible - 2 times in a 1000 mines hit. And the numbers look even better for larger squads.

WTF were they thinking... Sturmpios have mines, detector, flamenweffer (commander specific), second best close range infrantry, and now they want to give them shecks??

And you need like 6 squads to be able to do all the things you listed, which is 54 popcap (and the corresponding manpower drain). So yes please.

Let's remove even the slightest counter to blobs for brits.

Out of curiosity, why do you think replacing a static mortar pit with a mobile mortar be any less of a blob deterrent?

any points OP mentioned aside, i believe that removing schrecks from volks is, for instance, a classic example of homogenizing factions. the same applies to the mg34 change.

why cant okw have schrecks, why do they have to function the same as ostheer AT wise, why do they need a stock mg all of a sudden??

some may argue that schrecks on volks are BS or mg's should be standard, but all you really do is aligning a faction, okw in this example, to your ostheer faction ideal.

relic has already removed the resource penalty, they really dont need to get rid of unique flavour even more.

As someone who was always fascinated by OKW unique design I was VEHEMENTLY against the removal of penalties and keeping that special flavour feel (hell, I was even sad to see the beta truck placement crap go away). Even so, I applaud the Schreck removal, because the utter domination of Schreck spam in team games and the frustration / meta lockdowns it causes outweighs all other concerns in my mind, including faction homogenization.

But your point stands. CoH2 armies always start off extremely well designed but then they get balanced into neutrality. There was a way to balance OKW even with resource penalty. There was a way to balance Schreck without removing it altogether (put it on Sturmpios, for whom it was originally designed before AA HT spam in the WFA alpha made them move it to Volks. This was back when Puppschens were completely different and entire US tech structure was different as well.)

I am not sure how I feel regarding the nondoctrinal MG. On the one hand, every faction should be able to have reliable antiblob counters. On the other, there's no other heavy HMG a German faction could have.

Teching is different enough for the 2 German factions to be distinct, but man, OKW as originally designed was SO MUCH COOLER than it is now.

This means both tanks get better in combined forces and worse on their own, I personally appreciate changes that encourage combined play.

+1

Jackson is an open-topped vehicle and it makes sense for it, thematically, to have a larger sight radius than tanks. Balance-wise, maybe a self spotting turreted TD at vet2 would be a bit too much in the hands of any other faction. But considering that the US have no equivalent of Panthers or Kingtigers, no heavy tanks whatsoever (lol Pershing), no equivalent of Schrecks, and a rather inferior AT gun, maybe it's okay to cut their premiere tank destroyer unit some slack. I mean, the JP4 gets fucking CLOAK and huge sight, and and that is perfectly fine. But Jackson? Oh, no, see, it would be unbalanced because... turret. Really?

Incidentally, I expect this change to have less impact on AT work and more on increasing survivability against Schrecks (spotting Schreck squads from a larger distance) which is sorely needed.