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The range nerf is a bit harsh, 80 for ISU-152 and Elefant, 90 for Pak43 would have been more reasonable. Also, I think the Jagdtiger also has 70 range (No changelog for OKW), if it has 85 range then it's unfair.
I guess it's better to go for su-85s and panthers now, for 10 range less you won't even feel the difference, it just means that ISU or Elefant will get the first shot. Range was their only strength due their slow rate of fire, lack of turrets and terrible mobility
Still haven't used any of them yet. We shall see if the meta ditches them completely or if they are still viable. |
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The French Foreign legion was created in the 1830s as a way to put troublemakers to good use. Composed of failed revolutionaries from all over Europe, brigands, disbanded Swiss and Germanic mercenaries and the like, who would fight for France but forbidden to fight in France's Metropolitan territory (Only exemption was the retaking of Orleans by the FFL in 1871 due to the Germanic invasion).
Even if some legionnaires have a murky background, they're not former criminals and murderers, since the legion conducts extensive background checks via Interpol nowadays. They wear a French uniform (thus protected by the Geneva Convention), are commanded by French officers, fight for France, and France only. The French Foreign Legion deploys and fights as an organized unit of the French Army. This means that as members of the armed forces France these soldiers are not mercenary soldiers per APGC77 Art 47.e and APGC77 Art 47.f.
They certainly don't make a lot of money and after serving in the Foreign Legion for three years, a legionnaire may apply for French citizenship. He must be serving under his real name (FFL lets you enlist with a pseudonym), must no longer have problems with the authorities, and must have served with "honour and fidelity". Furthermore, a soldier who becomes injured during a battle for France can immediately apply for French citizenship under a provision known as "Français par le sang versé"
Historically, The bulk of the French foreign legion is made up of Germans (The number of former Wehrmacht/Waffen SS soldiers seeking redemption was staggering), Belgians, Italians and Spaniards.
Even today, most legionnaires come from these countries I just mentioned.
Those countries have armed forces but some individuals don't join their national armed forces because they want to fight, they're warriors and joining the Bundeswehr or Belgian armed forces mainly consists of staying in Germany, Belgium etc… with the thumb up your ass, drilling all day and never engaging in combat (Aka 90% of what soldiering actually is), same goes for Italy or Spain. They rarely engage in armed interventions overseas and even when deployed overseas their units are not offensive, mostly deal in patrol and guard duty of relatively safe zones. And if they see combat its exceptional such as getting ambushed while on patrol.
The French are always intervening somewhere around the world. So these aspiring thrill seekers/warriors get to see action in the field of battle.
In contrast there are very few citizens from the UK or USA in the French Foreign Legion, because if their citizens are warriors they can just join their own armed forces and fight as those countries are also fighting all over the world.
Legionnaires are not mercenaries, there reasons for joining vary on an individual basis but material and financial remuneration is not one of them; the pay is shit.
Hell I would say that the FFL is the only alternative for these guys not resorting to mercenarism.
Lastly,
The Protocol Additional GC 1977 (APGC77) provides the most widely accepted international definition of a mercenary, though not endorsed by some countries, including the United States. The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, (Protocol I), 8 June 1977 states:
Art 47. Mercenaries
1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.
In that sense, PMCs and international security firms such as Halliburton, Academi (once know as Blackwater USA), Defion, Executive Outcomes do mercenary work, just as do tuareg rebels in the Sahel and smaller local mercenary groups or freelance mercenaries in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan.
The only difference is that the bread and butter of international security firms is to do risk and threat assessment, security training and management (Around 60% of their activities), but they still provide armed personnel to either corporations, individuals, NGO's or governments (Whereas more than 60% local security firms activities consist of providing armed/unarmed personnel).
PMCs and security firms behave as privateers in current conflicts, USA/UK are just exploiting a legal loophole by not signing the United Nations Mercenary Convention which forbids mercenaries, so the government just renamed them security contractors in order to sign a contract with them without too much legal backlash, still they're not fooling anyone.
I guess the USA's motive to use extensively MPCs in Iraq/Afghanistan was to artificially reduce casualty numbers, because dead mercs don't count as US casualties and don't make it to the statistics, thus nobody cares if they die and the USA's public opinion is super sensible to casualties, 10 dead soldiers is a national tragedy...
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And you're immediately wrong. Riflemen jumping out of cover was one of the chief complaints about the American faction, and I'm not sure if it was ever even fixed.
True , a couple of models would occasionally reposition themselves a bit away from cover by walking not jumping during firefights. But It never happened systemically that I would consider it an issue. Also the fact that both factions could deploy sandbags helped with cover a lot and it only took a couple of secs compared to the super slow Russian sandbag wall.
haven't played VCoh in months (So I don't remember the animations that much), but It happens a lot more often on CoH 2 especially if any mortar rounds, explosive rounds, MG incendiary rounds land near them as they go nuts and start crawling, kneeling, jumping etc. If I remember correctly rifles only crawled if suppressed by either MGs, hitting a mine, and jump around when fired by flakpanzer rounds.
Still I don't think the issue is 6 man squads vs 4, it's the animations and model positioning which seems more finicky in coh 2, maybe it's because there are more animations or because that are more things that force a reaction from units thus triggering an animation. All this also applies to 4 man squads, there's always a model that breaks formation eventually. |
Everything CoH2player said is very informative, and after reading it it just confirms that the core design of the Ostheer and Red Army is authentic.
Soviet divisional artillery guns were mostly light (76mm) while German divisional artillery were mostly medium and heavy (105mm/150mm). German artillery performance was also more effective.
Zis-3 76 barrages and SU-76 barrages make the bulk of soviet artillery in coh2. The only artillery gun the ostheer has in coh2 is the 105 mm LeFH 18 and it's arguably the most effective and performant howitzer compared the 152mm soviet ML-20, as it fires more than twice as many shells thus actually hitting more often, and has longer range. I feel the ML-20 underperforms and rarely hits, thus no one uses it that often.
The key combat difference between the standard rifle formations of the two sides was in ammunition.
Ostheer is much more ammunition hungry in-game, every german unit has some sort of ammunition based ability that can be used regularly in each engagement, be it armour piercing rounds, panzerfausts, target weak point, rifles grenades and so on. Soviets only use molotovs and AT grenades regularly, Zis Barrages if they go T2. So the Ostheer player is consistently using it's abundant/superior ammunition, whereas russians usually float until they unlock artillery barrages or air support.
The big killers were mortars and artillery (inflicted most of the casualties). Under German infantry doctrine, they were to pin/fix enemy troops in place, and then do the real damage with mortars and tactical artillery fire. The Germans took this doctrine very seriously and used more MG ammunition belts than anybody else in the war.
Pinning a squad with an MG42 squad in game and then targeting it with a mortar is a good tactic, even recommended by the loading screen tips.
Soviets generally outnumbered the Germans in tanks but were badly outnumbered themselves (often by a factor of 2 or 3 or more) in motorized and mechanized infantry (a key disadvantage).
Indeed, i think they could add Tank Desant (Tank riding) for the Soviet faction as the lack of halftracks and mechanized infantry forced the Red army to improvise with specially trained tank riders that accompanied/supported tank offensives, they took a lot of casualties as they were very exposed. Maybe in game, tank riding infantry should have an increased accuracy received penalty? Tank riders are confirmed for the USA on Western fronts they could easily implement it to the Soviets.
Still I think the Soviet faction is more mobile in CoH 2 with all the M3 and M5 usage compared to SDKFZ 250 or 251 usage. 251 Mechanized groups call-in is just not worth the price atm and the 250 halftrack is only used as a mobile reinforcement point unlike the M5s used to transport flammers, guards, or shocks offensively. So, it's not very authentic when it comes the portraying the mechanized capabilities of real life WW2 armies.
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