Profile of comm_ash

Smoke pots and the smoke canisters ability are great examples of bad/ good game design. At the end of the day, they both do the same thing, create smoke. However, the execution is what makes these abilities.

One one hand: smoke pots. Press a button, and your tank is immediately smoked. No casting time, no targeting. As a result, you also immediately reset enemy weapon's aim times, and even if they attack ground ASAP, you have a good chance of escape. The entire impetuous on working around the ability is on your opponent. Bad design.

Smoke Canister on the other hand, both have a cast time and are targeted. This ensures that some degree of fore-planning is required to use them effectively. Not only that, but the ability itself can be used in many ways. You can use it defensively when retreating to cover your escape. You can use it to cover another friendly tank in trouble. You can smoke enemy sight-lines before a push. You can use it to support infantry. There are almost limitless possibilities!

In terms of this poll, I disagree with the options. I say give Smoke canisters instead of smoke pots to all armor, and delete smoke pots entirely except for light vehicles (Puma, AEC, M20, etc.).

I came back from the dead just to add:

I really hope we can find some way to get withdraw and refit back into US mechanized. Used to be the best part of that doctrine. Really added a new play-style to USF.

The road to making t1 viable lies in fixing t2 and not making t1 better in every way.

CoH1 does this in part by making the at gun a t3 unit, making t2 openers harder to play due to a lack of supporting infantry for the support weapons, and also by making teching a need for both t1 and t2 players to get at.

In coh2, we have a t2 with an mg that is basically an infantry squad, plus counters to all the counters to be expected of a heavy support weapons build.

I think the 6 man russian crews need to be looked at, and one that is done, we will see a lot more t1.

I also think what t1 needs more than anything, is a clearer role. Currently, you have snipers (which should replace the atg in t2), which don't really mesh with elite, expensive infantry. The elite infantry should be the focus of the "special rifle command," and other units in the tier should exist to mesh with them, not to fill space.

Tldr., the best way to fix soviet early games is to take a hard look at the placement of units in the tiers, and the roles of the units themselves.

I think the whole "out of scope" is a big problem for this balance patch. If we are going to fix COH2's stale meta and early game, it can't be done by keeping some units out of scope. The conscript and penal designs have BOTH been factors in causing T1 to never be used, and I don't see soviet early game being fixed in any way without touching cons. Otherwise, we either get penals > cons in every way, or T1 still being shit.

Its just a side effect of cons having a lot of utility and penals being entirely AI focused.

So what if we increased the range of the Penal PTRS by 5-10? This would make it better able to deal with the faptrack, and other light vehicles, with the trade off being that the squad needs to be stationary and spend a long time aiming to actually get shots off. In this way, the penal PTRS is an actualy AT upgrade that makes the squad into a better light vehicle hunter, instead of a consolation-prize AT unit.

I know that PTRS already has 5 more range than AT rockets, but I think that PTRS should get a little more range if we are removing most of its AI efficiency.