Profile of donofsandiego

Oh. Shock Troops were one of those units that would become available to you, but seemed to be unintentional. They were 360 manpower, where I heard they were supposed to be 450. And this version had Fire Superiority.

EDIT: They were also f@#king b@#%sh%t because you could put them in the clown car and wipe everything until LVs came out. If they had cost 450 manpower, I think this would be like 20% more acceptable.

So, me and my friends played quite a few matches together with the "COH2013" mod. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a mod that claims to revert the multiplayer balance to how it was in 2013, to the best of the mod author's ability. Sadly, it was abandoned somewhat late into development, so it's not completely finished.

This post is pretty much just going to be an open letter about my thoughts and not-so-rhetorical questions that I would be happy to hear the thoughts of those who were there at the time when the shit was in the process of hitting the fan, so to speak. So... here goes.

First off... honestly? I kind of liked it. Obviously it's a complete shit show, but in a fun way. If everyone is playing for the first time, there's a kind of whimsical feeling where everything is new and silly and just a good time. It's a nice change of pace.

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The balance design... I'll just start with the vanilla units and talk about veterancy later. I think it's quite interesting how Relic decided to make support weapons cheaper than the mainlines. And in a way, it theoretically worked. The support weapons are actually SUPPORT weapons. You can't spam MG42s because they suck ass at pinning, but when used in conjunction with the grenadiers, they become a formidable team. The conscripts, wanting to slither over to the MG42 and throw a god molotov, get ripped apart on the approach by the LMG42. If you want something to pin troops all alone, that's what the bunkers are for (AT guns don't outrange bunkers in this, so you are forced to HE barrage if you want to kill it, so mortars are the more economical option). Also, everything infantry wise is 6 pop, so you can afford to have a lot of support weapons and infantry together.

For the soviets, I finally understand what was said about them having to use "unconventional tactics". You can't build T2 at the start, so you're stuck with snipers and scout cars or guards if you go guard motor (I thought there were penals in 2013, but it's not in the mod. Probably because it is unfinished), or just conscripts and engineers if you skip tech (which is inadvisable because the MG42 and grenadiers are pretty good at countering even mass numbers if there is no flanking route. This obviously leads to silly things like the sniper car, or assumedly flame penal/ guards car (i never tried guards car, but I can imagine it being quite good against OST T2.

But you can't talk balance without mentioning the artillery. Yeah. We noticed very quickly how the mortars are kind of nutty. Honestly though, maybe I'm just bad at the game but since MGs can't really pin infantry, OST mortar didn't seem too insanely OP as long as soviets were playing offensively. Yes, they were VERY good, but it was manageable because of how mobile the soviets are in general compared to OST.

Now, SOVIET mortars on the other hand... dear god. These things you will see from when they build T2 until they are ended in a blaze of glory from a werfer strike. It doesn't matter if its the 82mm or the 120mm, both will absolutely ruin your day. In fact, the 82mm was better because it was much faster to rotate, and the PRECISION STRIKE... the best ability in the game... say goodbye to your squad. It was just as much of a spectacle in game as I had read it was in my dives into the archives on this site. I loved it. The iWipe button is real. Sometimes, I would have to retreat my mortar after I fired a few shots as soon as I heard the 120mm fire, because I knew exactly what was coming for my ass. You could leave the mortars on autofire, but soviets will gib you to hell. They, on the other hand, do not suffer from this weakness until the werfer.

Or... if they're ballsy enough to skimp on conscripts, you could just drive all over them with the flame HT. But I digress. The light vehicle phase seemed to pretty much be 222 or Flamer Halftrack. I never saw a T70. Probably because when the T34-76 is staring you right in the eyes, taunting you with its 60 fuel cost, the T70 could never measure up to it.

Speaking of; on the topic of soviet tanks, and epiphanies had while playing, I finally understood the tooltip during the loading screen which says "For the soviets, combined arms tactics are quite effective, though very expensive" or something to that effect. With the complete and total absence of snares (and apparently AT mines for OST!?! Was this the case in 2013 or is this simply an unfinished mod issue?), only Soviets could protect themselves from dives. Therefore, it was completely viable (and actually economical) to forgo infantry to start building only tanks. Since the T34 cost 480mp and 60fu, it was quite cost prohibitive to be using infantry at the same time, and T34s were absolutely required to be used en masse to be effective(and on top of it all, the ability to capture points, while seldom used nowadays, turned the T34 onto basically your complete package for replacement of infantry when all other factors were considered).

Also, the tank matchups were very very interesting. The Panzer 4 seemed to lose to a T34, despite costing around 500mp and 80fu. Even considering this, though, it was still very good against infantry, and could deal damage to a T34 if it had flanked it. So it was very much not useless.

StuGs, on the other hand, were the bane of the T34. If your soviet opponent decided to replace all his infantry with T34s, all you had to do was make StuGs, which costed 320mp and 25fu, and took AT LEAST two T34s to counter it!

Finally, this brings me to the Axis heavy tanks. Having experienced the kind of late game that can only be experienced once more in the COH2013 mod, I don't think I can ever again say that the balance team are wehraboos. Let me tell you, being able to stand in front of four ZiS-3 guns while they fire at you and finish of the T34 or SU-85 feebly limping away back to base is a kind of power trip which releases dopamine probably on the level of crack cocaine... if you're playing OST. If you're playing soviet... well, there is just so much helplessness. Yes, AT gun vet makes them much better, but when your enemy's tank has nearly one thousand HP, it makes you feel very helpless. (As opposed to the early game, where you actually are raping the everloving crap out of OST, and that is absolutely no joke).

Now, as a team that coordinates well together ("I will build T34s" "OK, I will build SU-85"), you can manage to beat the panthers back and indeed wreck them, but I can only imagine the horrors of allied random automatch in these times...

And okay. I've gotten this far, now it's late game. It's time to talk about the super heavies.

I do not know if this was the case in game actually, or if this is just the mod being W.I.P. and unfinished... but the Tiger tank... had 1.5k health... and you could build as many as you had the pop cap for. If this was the case in the live game, then I absolutely see why people called this game pay to win.

Only my teammate with IS-2, and me supporting with ISU-152 could hope to kill the Tiger. Again, I don't know if this was the actual case in game at the time, or if it's just the mod W.I.P. copy pasting the units directly from single player. Which is probably very possible.

All in all, I thought that while Axis had a major advantage late game, Soviets had the ability to fight back against it. The super heavy tanks just absolutely turned everything on its head though. The IS-2, if it could reach veterancy before the Panthers hit the field, would easily rape panthers. That's my one biggest takeaway. The gameplay was balanced (in a very weird and foreign way), but the doctrinal superheavies really destroyed it IMO.

After playing COH2013 I have a renewed respect for the game in it's current state. Doctrinal units are no longer unable to be countered by the vanilla units, infantry stays useful into the late game through being able to use snares and mortars not instantly gibbing them, support weapons also stay useful for the same reason.

But, on the flip side, there is something about COH2013 that scratches that itch that automatch doesn't. The pure spectacle of it all, the power dynamics, the give and take and tug of war with initiative that I felt where IMO, live is just a constant pressure (which I dislike, I admit, I am a scrub) the T34 horde blotting out the horizon, to be met by its equal in panthers, pz4s, and StuGs escorted by panzergrenadiers... it's grand.

I'm going to come out and say it: I enjoyed it. I did. I very much enjoyed playing COH2013. I think that I was the target audience for CoH2 in 2013. I'm not a hardcore RTS kind of guy. I'm not amazing at micromanagement or multitasking, my APM isn't high, my friends tried to get me into Starcraft 2, but it just doesn't click in my head. I do what I can, and I'm smart enough to see what the enemy is doing and attempt to counter it. At the end of the day, though, I just want to have some fun. As much as I want to win, I want to see fireworks while it happens, and if I lose, if I was able to see something cool happen in the meantime, I'm fine with that.

Well. In other words.. it was made for the lowest common denominator, scrubs, if you will. Which is me. That's me. And I'm proud to say it.
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Thanks for reading this kind of ramble-essay. If you have any insights you'd like to share, or corrections you'd like to make, I'd really love to read what you have to say.

Thanks.


EDIT: I said I was going to mention veterancy, but I forgot to... Anyways, one thing I thought was very interesting was the AT gun veterancy. The damage increases with veterancy, so if you build an M-42 instead of waiting for a ZiS gun, by the time the M-42 is vet 2, it will actually do the same damage on penetration as a vet 0 zis gun.

Honestly though, the veterancy was TOO MUCH. It's like Relic saw CoH1, and heard that veterancy was important, so they decided to make it EVERYTHING. Once your tank becomes vet 3, it is a living god walking/treading the earth. And it's a double edged sword. The fact that AT guns do more damage with vet means that they can really do some good work, until they get gibbed with a mortar and then become pea shooters again. Very very rough around the edges. But again, being that Vet3 panther or t34 is an awesome feeling.

Q: The other day I told my doctor I play 4v4 randoms in CoH2. He looked surprised at first, but then he looked relieved and said "well that explains the vestigial brain we found..."

Joke courtesy of Rosbone in the shoutbox. With minor alterations.

I have seen one single instance where Luvnest used it to finish off a 10% HP AEC

Cool.

accidental double post