Profile of Grumpy

i would ALWAYS be willing to spend hundreds of munitions if it meant i would kill a heavy tank. thats literally no question about that. youre spending under 400 munitions for a guaranteed tank kill. button range is just slightly shorter than tank gun range, its not like its AT grenade range either.

just because you dont see them doesnt mean theyre not good. people just favor maxims into t70s right now. when guards first got their buffs they saw a lot of play and they performed quite well. imo theyre a unit thats actually pretty well balanced ATM, and they provide good long range defensive firepower.

its not like Button is completely useless now either, i see the ability as something that buys time for your other units to get into position rather than just completely shutting down a tank with one button. It buys time for cons to get into range for an AT nade, or your AT guns to get 1 or 2 more volleys off. etc etc.

It was slightly under 300 munitions to kill an Elefant but, IIRC, it always killed the Elefant. It didn't always work against mediums but maybe I should've had another guard like Jadame. Still, it was one of the few ways to kill JT's or Elefants in larger games. The change completely screwed Allies in 4v4 if they didn't win by the 25-30 minute mark.

My opinion

Make howitzers like other team weapons that don't get destroyed while crewed.
Decrease cost to 320-360
Lower number of shells to 4 for lefh (150 damage), 3 for ml20 (200 damage), 1 B4 (600) damage
AOE small for full damage, but larger AOE for smaller damage plus suppression (at large distance from center the lefh and ml20 should only have 0.3x damage)
Make vet abilities be smoke, arty flares, and maybe reduced cooldown. Possibly precision strike but make that cost munitions

The old ML20 that shot 4-5 shells but had good AOE was fine. People didn't use it much because Relic gave everyone CAS. The buff then nerf made it lousy. The lefh would be about as bad except that the target size for sim city is large enough to make the lefh useful.

Yep, CoH is keeping the genre alive, along with SC2. I think there was Planetary Annihilation that was hyped quite a bit, but i think it is dead now. Heck, i even gave money during the kickstarter, hoping it would rival Total Annihilation

It's a little disappointing that 20 years after Total Annihilation, it is still in some ways the pinnacle of RTS's. The options for unit behavior, control grouping, etc, etc are still better than anything out today. Having the campaign narrated by James Earl Jones rocked.

My player card is 100x worse than Sully's so take this with a grain of salt. I agree with using a single, defensively placed mortar pit. When I try to go with emplacements, it normally doesn't work well. I don't like 3v3+ too much so mostly play 2v2 or 1v1. In a 2v2, when the other side decides to deconstruct sim city, you need a teammate that helps. Good luck with that when playing with randoms. It often does work when playing AT with someone on TS but not always.

Even ignoring the AT vs Random issue, the play is a bigger one. Sinking 30-50 pop cap into an army that can't move means that you're giving the other side at least 1/3 of the map long enough that they will get their counters out before losing the game. If your teammate decides to play on the other side of the map, you can't help them without risking sim city so they'll get pummeled. Ultimately, it ends up not being fun, and frequently a loss. If you haven't won by the 40 minute mark, your reward will be either a mass of stugs, Elefant, or JT, none of which are affected by counter-battery.

I think most of the complaining comes from two types of players. Ones that genuinely don't know how to beat it, and better players that are annoyed because it took them 45-60 minutes to win a game that they are convinced they could have won in 10-15 minutes without the emplacements.

Playing as "Grumpy" in this one -
Some of the problems may have been due to them being a team and us being randoms. It felt like we were wining a lot of the engagements but always struggling with map control.

Is Special Weapons a competitive commander? Is it worth using "Hold the line" or offmap arty? I was always starved for munitions so didn't try either ability.
Are the UKF grenades always as bad as they seemed to be in this match?
I lost a bunch of Cromwells. Should I have tried getting some Comets out?
I used tank hunter infantry a lot. Are they normally considered okay?

I am interested in feedback if anyone has time to look at this.