Profile of comm_ash

Well, this thread has no USF strats yet, so i'll toss in one I have been messing with a lot recently.

This is a mechanized company build that has worked very well in 2vs2.

Last Edited 3/09/2015 @ 4:41 PM PST

The idea of this build is to take advantage of the refit option in mechanized, and use it to keep constant pressure on your enemies. This build is most effective against double OKW, but has merits vs. mixed ostheer and double ostheer.

Early Game:
Rifle
Rifle
WC-51
Rifle

The idea of the early game start is to take advantage of your mobility to overwhelm your enemy, and use the WC-51's mobility on large maps to flank and cut off the enemy. If you see volks in green cover, use 2 rifles to engage from range, while your WC51 flanks to the side and drops off your third squad to deal heavy damage to the flanked position. The WC51 hardcounters the kubelwagon and gives very good supplemental damage vs. sturmpioneers. Remember that it doesn't have very good armor or HP, so you must always be paying attention to it.

If you find a lul in the action, take your WC-51 deep and try to find your opponents truck building. If you destroy it, you will have more or less won the game.

Mid game:
LT
M20 (if large map)
AA HT
BARS
Major

Next, you must take advantage of your early game fuel presence to push even deeper into enemy territory and secure your rear. Refit your Jeep as soon as you either see a raketen or as soon as your LT comes out.

On maps such as Vaux Farmland and Minsk Pocket, build and use an M20 (without skirts, they will be a waste of money) to lay 1-2 AT mines on roads and flanking positions. As soon as you are done with the mines, replace the M20 crew with your RE squad, and refit the M20 to return your MP and fuel.

Rush out the AA HT, and use it to supplement your riflemen as an effective field force. Move your riflemen out in front of your AA HT and push back the enemy with the combination of suppression from the HT and CQC damage from your rifle squads. Upgrade bars after your AA HT, and equip your rifle squads with one each, then 2 each (don't forget your LT). Build a Major.

Build Fuel caches as soon as you start floating MP from taking reduced losses.

Late Game:
Sherman
Sherman
Jackson
Sherman
Sherman
...

Typically, your late game will depend on what you prefer as your USF lategame armor composition. I prefer a sherman-heavy build with 1 jackson as support. Use the AA HT until you are about 40 fuel away from a sherman. Replace the crew inside with an RE squad, and refit it. As soon as the sherman enters the battlefield, replace the sherman crew with your AA HT crew.

Use the HE rounds on the sherman to support your infantry as they push into enemy territory. Late game should rely on your armor to win battles and wipe as many squads as possible while your Jackson punishes the tiger that will come out at 11CP.

You should have at least 1 sherman + 1 Jackson by the time the Tiger arrives. Use AP round shermans and flank the tiger if he overextends. Try baiting him over your defensive mines if you have any.

Remember, if you lose your jackson when you don't have enough fuel for another, use withdraw and refit on your most damaged sherman (with your worst crew) to quickly fund the production of another jackson. Crew the new jackson with you best sherman crew so that you have access to AP rounds.

Crews are important, if you have a highly vetted sherman crippled during an assault, get the crew out and get them away from the frontlines so that they can boost the vet of one of your other vehicles. Finish the crippled vehicle with your jackson, or just secure it and bring the crew back up after winning the battle.

One last tip, if you find yourself floating fuel late game, consider teching to a captain to use the supervise function in order to pump out as many tanks as you can. You may find it useful to take him into combat and get him to lose most of his models so that he doesnt become a drain on your popcap.

Doctrine:
The strategy I have outlined makes use of the first two abilities, and has the other 3 as supplemental options.

Use the recon overflight to sscout out enemy positions prior to your main push.

Use the mechanized arty + 2-3 rounds from a sherman to destroy the OKW base buildings.

The M3 halftrack can be useful for the ass-engie mines and demos. Remember that getting the M3 is going to slow down your teching and your building of fuel caches. If you decide to get one, you may want to refit it quickly after 1-2 pushs with it as a soft retreat point. I would recommend getting it late game, disembarking the ass engies, and refitting it immediatly. It won't be efficient, but it may be life saving.

Support

The best support for this doctrine would be a soviet player who goes for a con heavy start into t2+t3 and a t34 into callins. The T34 will be useful in supplementing your own armor (and ram will punish any overextended panthers/tigers), as well as keeping the pressure on the enemy.

You can coast on using Elite Armored if the people you play against are terrible, but as a commander it is hot flaming garbage of the highest degree.

The radio intercept is worthless because it shows every tank as being the same, so you have exactly zero idea if the unit your going to attack is an ambulance or an IS2. And it's expensive for what it does.

The crit repair is WORSE than worthless because it's bugged to all hell, use this ability if you enjoy every shot from an enemy tank decrewing your tank.

Heat Shells are honest to god the biggest insult in this entire commander: Here, shells that make you do more pen and NOTHING ELSE, it's not like all your tanks already have a fairly high penetration chance. It's just a giant waste of munitions, and the Puma is for people who don't know how to counter light armor with AT guns and the Flak Trak.

The Panzer Commander just reduces your tanks DPS, nothing else. The Artillery is so bloody slow that unless what your calling it in on can't move, it won't do anything. And for static emplacements, why not for far cheaper just shoot it with the tank you currently have your Panzer Commander in?



Yeah, instead of you know. Just getting a KT which is just 50 fuel more expensive, I'll get two tanks that are literally useless if there is a single USF player on the enemy team.



People will never take that commander, because people will just go t3 and spam T34/85s while using a commander that gives them actual things they are missing.

The T34/76 doesn't fill a hole, it's just a poor investment of resources that could have gone into something else. Being a call in doesn't justify a unit being garbage compared to what you could possibly make with out the commander.

People will always get the best unit, people will never not do this. The solution to fixing Soviets is changing the teching system and making the units in it better while keeping the limited call ins better, not making call in's shit and making the stock units better.



If the opponent is letting you anywhere near their B4 they are probably going to be able to be beat with any commander in the game. Or you are going to get hilariously owned when that B4 1 shots your tank lol.

Why would I intentionally gimp myself when in Spec Ops I can get a tank that gives ALL my tanks better vision than the Panzer Commander while keeping their DPS. Elite Armored is the worst OKW doctrine in the game by miles, sorry, it's a fact.

Oh and lmao at the "If you don't like the finale ultimate call in of the commander why not just use it?" Why not just not bloody use this useless commander.

Obviously you didn't read my meticulously written post on all the abilities in this, so let me try this again.

You can use the tacmap to see what unit is being shown on you map. merely put your cursor over the unit in question and a tooltip will popup to explain what unit is being shown.

Don't use crit repair in combat. Use it on a tank that has heavy engine damage after a battle, so that you can pull it back to get real repairs. There is no reason for your tank to be alone, asking to be hit by enemy armor. There are these units called volksgrenadiers which will be able to deal with just about any enemy armor that shows up.

HEAT shells give you more penetration AND more range. Range is undeniably a good increase for any tank, especially when most people who play nothing but OKW seem to show how great the jackson is because of its range advantage over axis armor.

The panzer commander increases your tanks vision marginally, and more importantly, it lets you one shot field artillery. It is not hard at all to sneak into an enemy base with a tank if you use radio intercept when the enemy is looking the other way. Not to mention, that you can use the kubel/sturmpioneers to sweep for mines ahead of you. This works on just about any 2v2 map with the possible exception of minsk pocket and semoisky.

The p4s are 100 fuel less than a KT (assuming you haven't built your last tier yet), and have FAR greater AI firepower than a panther would. Not to mention that a jackson that shoots your P4s (which should be behind your supported armor) means that your panther/jp4 has free reign on the jackson. The jackson requires 3 penning hits to kill a p4 (and it has a chance to bounce) while a panther/jp4 only requires 3 hits to kill the jackson. Both the panther and the jp4 have a faster ROF than a jackson.

Great way to shrug off my comments on the t34/76. "people will just go t3..." That is claiming that t4 will never be built and offers no advantages over t3, since no one ever builds the katyusha which is one of your favorite soviet units.

Your point about the command panther is true, however, that doctrine fulfills a different niche. Spec ops is for infantry heavy play, Elite armor is for armor micro heavy play.

Also, this is a question to the mods. Should we move all this balance discussion to another thread, or is this fine?

Nobody would ever use doctrines that call in the T34/76 ever again. People don't use elite armored for a reason.

The t34/76 would still be a choice though. You could build it for 310 mp 100 fuel, but wouldn't have to pay tech costs. This would give you a viable target if you decide to go for doctrinal armor, giving you a cheap, spammable medium tank to supplement t4 builds, that will not scale into late game at all.

IMO, this should be the way doctrinal armor works. It shouldn't be a straight upgrade over existing units, it should give you access to a unit to supplement you forces (ISU), or give you access to a weaker, but viable replacement to your basic units (t34/76).

Also, talking about elite armored, the reason we don't see it used as often is due to the fact that most of OKW's doctrines provide players with game changers like Pak43s and Jagdtigers. Elite armored is not currently one of the best doctrines because it doesnt bring anything new to the battle, it just increases the micro tax on armor, making them more powerful (This is my favorite doctrine for that reason). If the pz4 battlegroup was a choice for ostheer, I can assure you that it would be used more often.

Pepperidge farm remembers.

This is a great doctrine that I love, especially if paired with an okw player who can get pak43s and mg34s, which you can recrew for cheap. I like to get 2 ost, 1 mg42, 1 ost, 1 mg42, then tech for pak40 -> t4 panther. Ostruppen are all about slowing down the enemy, so I like to put them ahead of my mgs, and put bunkers behind them to reinforce from and support with suppression. Spamming weapon teams in trenches is one of the best ways to use this doctrine, at least for me.