Profile of Antilles950

Examine your own insecurities before projecting them upon others, Sido, my boy.

AS a USF player, I love Langres.

THe South player has a huge advantage early on, in that, if they execute well with mgs and infantry support, they can completely pin the Northern player in their base. This is because there's no barrier between the VP and cutoff, unlike the southern cutoff, which has a hedgerow that can be wired off to protect the south cutoff. It's possible to pin the southern player, but it's more challenginbg. As the game progresses, however, it is arguably true that the balance of power shifts to the northern player, with easier access to the VP and the rest of the map.

This kind of piqued my interest because my general strategy is a 4 rifle start into captain.

A few pieces of advice from watching your replay:

- With captain, you either need to get a stuart or rush a sherman. The fact that you did not really hurt you. Why? Throughout the game, one thing that really messed you up was your inability to counter harass. Your infantry fights mostly seemed fine early on, but you just could not hold cutoffs or important points, and your rear echelons were to weak to stop it. That meant riflemen had to do it, which prevented you from creating as much pressure as you'd like to at the cutoffs. A light vehicle like the stuart changes that. It can literally just show up and push around the engineers and panzergrenadiers with 0 damage in return. All those flank engagements that were draining resources? You can send in the stuart to force retreats, and the let the rear echelons come in and cap. Early vehicles are really powerful, especially USF early light vehicles, and are usually worth the investment.

-An early at gun almost never makes sense against ostheer. What early vehicle threats are there? The scout car. Tier 3 doesnt usually come till around 10 minutes, and the STUG E doesn't come till 7cps. You got the at gun at around 8 minutes, and 4 and a half command points. That means that the early at gun just drained manpower for no reason almost all game. The scout car, tier 3, and STUG-E can all be countered by the captain and stuart or captain and sherman, both of which also have the utility of being able to counter infantry.

- You built your major very late (8 CPsish). That means that you dropped 90 fuel RIGHT WHEN E8s UNLOCK. That delayed both your sherman and your E8. When going rifle company, I don't think it really makes sense to tech major after 6 CPs; you had the fuel to tech at around 4 and a half. You kind of miss your window of opporunity for the sherman at that point, by waiting so long.

- You need to be a little more concscious of the way you're capping. Units that should be back capping: Rear echelons and wounded infantry. Near the midgame, you sent a 2 man squad to cap a very forward munitions point. There's a huge risk of a wipe; what if a panzergrenadier squad ends up in their retreat path or hits them around a corner? Wounded squads should be backcapping. At the same time, your rear echelon squads often seem to be fighting, which they can't win. Everytime a rear echelon fights, he bleeds, and your capping gets slower. With RE, either harass, backpeddle to an undefended point, or retreat if you have to.

- If you want to play with a really large infantry army you MUST get an ambulance earlier. The manpower drain from sending wounded soliders back onto the battlefield will fuck you over in the long run.

-For some reason, you kept a high vet flamer squad in the house. Don't do that, they are very strong front line infantry. They should be fighitng forward. I would reccomend a captain or a rear echelon. The captain is versatile and can defend against all units, and a rear echelon can hold out for reinforcements, without wasting frontline power.

-Don't bring the major into fights. The major should either be back capping (worst case scenario) or part of a forward reinforcement point. They don't have the power to add anything substantial in a fight, they just end up being an expense with reinforcement costs.

- Near the end of the game, you make this maneuver, where you have 1 rifle capping left and then this odd splinter group go for their fuel. When you've had big losses and need to regroup, DO NOT STRETCH OUT. Your forces will be too weak to win fights, and you will bleed manpower and units. You need to consolidate, hold a line around your most important points, and gather some manpower for rifles and support weapons, and get some tanks. You had enough tools (a few infantry, at guns), to the point where if you held out for a few minutes in a defensive position, forced your opponent to come to you, won some manpower battles, you could've built a comeback.

I think this covers most of advice

I do a 2 rear echelon, 4 rifle, into captain and stuart with infantry company start in like 90% of my games recently. If you want any more advice, jsut ask. I uploaded a few replays so you can look at those if you want any examples.

Username: Antilles950
Link to replay*: http://www.coh2.org/replay/34277/falls-wiped
Time it happened*: 11:16 exactly. You might want to start at 11:10 to catch it.
What vehicle/weapon was used?: Greyhound wipes full fallschimjaeger squad with canister
1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4?: 1v1

Right now, I think 3 things about rifleman are too cost-effective.

1) Flamers

The cost of a flamer on each rifle squad is 60 munitions. The amount of DPS it provides feels (I don't know about exact stats) comparable to double bars or lmgs, which would cost 120/140 munis respectively. I think this is mainly because the other 4 non-flamer rifles do so much damage, it's easy to bring axis units down to a point where flame crits will destroy them.

Honestly, I think this ability should be removed. Flamethrowers are generally so strong that I think that only engineers should really have them; their lack of durability keeps the weapon from being too ridiculous. However, with that change being unrealistic, I think the cost of a flamer should be increased to 90 munitions. This brings it closer in line to other weapon costs with similar DPS.

Alternatively, I think it would be interesting for each flamer to reduce munitions income, like 3 per flamerthrower, only for rifle flamethrowers, at maybe 3 per flamethrower per minute. That way, players don't pay 90 munitions for a flame crit in 50s; it's proportional to use.

2) Infantry company LMGs and Defensive stance

I think defensive stance is too powerful at the current cost; it only costs 1 lmg to access, can be triggered anywhere at any time, and you can get out of and back into defensive stance very quickly. That means for 70 munitions, each rifle squad can virtually act as an mg, without any of the downsides like packing and unpacking or having to pick a direction.

Optimally, I'd remove this ability all together, because I think it's antithetical to allied aggressive and mobile play, but I doubt that's likely. I think a realistic fix to this is that it allows rifles to have yellow cover, but no suppression, and that it should only be usable when out of combat. It is Defesive stance after all. The whole point is to hold the line, not have a mobile suppression platform.

I think another potential solution is to make suppressing fire cost 20 munitions, the way it functions on paratroopers right now. This would force the player to have to make a choice between suppressing now or getting more lmgs in the long term.

3) Veteran rifleman

The cost of 20mp for vet or vet 2 is pretty absurd. I think it should cost 10 fuel in addition to the 300 manpower per rifleman; this is considerably cheaper than the only other similar mechanic, troop training on elite troops. It's current function, of giving a very powerful rifle early on, gives USF so much more damage at a point in the game where it's already strong.

This ability should have an early game drawback, and function mainly as a counter to attrition, with a significant cost.