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Armour company Thompson Upgrade is often seen as a completely useless ability. I've been playing armour company a lot and have been playing around with it trying to see if I could find a use for it, and I've come to value it a lot.
I'm using it as a way to get '2 for 1' with my vehicles. Basically whenever I get a vehicle on the field I swap out the crew as soon as possible for a cheap RE squad and keep it that way. Upgrade the crew with thompsons and you've got sturmpioneers. You can use them as assault infantry with the added bonus that they will automatically repair your vehicles if nearby, and during the middle of a fight they can repair criticals with no delay. They also cost next to nothing in terms of pop-cap.
The most effective way I've found to use them so far is to go Assault engineers at the start followed by RE. You can basically build the RE squad 2 seconds after you call in the assault engineers, so very quickly you have 2 units on the field for great early map control. Then fast tech to vehicles not spending any fuel on ambulance or weapon unlocks.
You get great map control and fast vehicles, but this leaves you without upgraded riflemen. The 2 units of REs on the field that without upgrades become useless very quickly. It's then that you swap the crews out and instead of ever teching to BAR just use thompson crews instead.
This gives a super fast force of vehicles supported by auto repairing, crit-cleaning shock infantry. |
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4v4 Strat (don't hate me)
Started playing 4v4's at the end of last patch after being bummed out with the balance, figured I'd just play scrub 4v4 matches as USF where I don't mind too much about a loss and can enjoy the show. 4v4's are very different to real competitive play, but hell, they are kinda fun when you see mega tank battles and flanks pushing or collapsing in massive style.
Since the patch I have been having a lot of success - got an 11 win streak at one point and am now in the top 10 as USF 4v4 auto (lol). A strat is a strat, so I'll share it for those interested in dipping into the filth of random large team games every now and then.
Purpose
This is an individual strategy for automatch team mode games. It is not a guide for a full team of 4 people. 4v4's work best when all the team is supporting each other, but explaining that would basically need a guide in itself. Also you will come across some truly terrible team members playing 4v4 randoms, as well as disconnects and drops within the first 2 mins. Hopefully with this strat, even as a lone wolf, you can punch forward and carve out a hold on the map with enough dominance to come to the support of your allies.
Prep Work
Veto Sittard Summer, Hill 331 and City 17.
Early Game
Instantly pick Armour Company
Build order:
Assault engineers
RE
Rifles
LT
Chuck your first RE and assaults up to the fuel/muni point on your side. Get one squad in a good building if you can. With the two units working together you should be able to take and hold the point, meanwhile back-capping with your 2nd RE squad.
On some maps - Mud, Steppes - build a fighting position as soon as possible IN the cap circle of the important point. This will help you hold out until help arrives - the enemy won't be able to de-cap with your squad garrisoning in the circle. On all other maps there should be a building there you can grab.
Get your rifle and LT up and be as aggressive as possible. Put demo's down if you can. This point you should start to see what strategy your opponent is going for. Most likely if OST they'll spam grens through to P4's, if OKW then it's volks, obers and panthers.
Use this knowledge to pick the right tech in the mid game:
Mid Game
Versus OKW go Double AA Halftrack. Keep them at range and you'll chew up their inf blob. Keep them together and they'll kill the Puma or Luchs sent to counter them pretty easily - but make sure you know when it's coming.
Versus OST it's more tricky - grenspam is the 4v4 meta with a Pak to support. This will wreck your AA Halftrack, and your infantry force will be a weird mis-match of Assault engineer, RE, RE, rifle and LT. They'll start getting LMG upgrades making your life uncomfortable and you'll be tempted to get BAR's. Don't. Hold, and fast tech to sherman.
Get your sherman out and push them back again. Beware the PIV and the Pak. The PIV will hit soon, and coupled with an aggressive Pak and gren faust snare (guaranteed) it will be in trouble soon. Use smoke - in 4v4 maps there will only be a couple of places the Pak will be, and keep it supported with your RE's and Assault engineers to quick repair.
Versus OKW the sherman is less necessary as the AA's can do the crowd control and they're less vulnerable to being immobilised. So if you feel like it skip the major and save up for an M10, and if you need a sherman late game then you've got the excellent Dozer sherman to use.
Pretty soon you'll have the points to call in an M10. Do it and keep it second line to push off an aggressive tank that comes for the sherman or your AA. Since the patch it's a very viable unit, it also squishes OKW blobs incredibly well, which is always hilarious. Don't try it against grens as they'll just faust you.
This gains early map control, gets just ahead of them tech wise and holds it mid-game with vehicles.
However; games are won by building up a good core force of infantry, and in this strat you can't spend any fuel on weapon unlocks or your vehicles are slowed too much. So how to fix this?
Late Game
Here's where it gets more fun. Jump the crew out of the sherman and the M10 or the AA Halftracks, and swap the RE squads in. Upgrade the crews with Thompsons, and you've got two mini shock troops who will either already be on Vet 3 or will be so very quickly. Now your force is looking healthy - 2x Thompson Crews, Rifle, LT, and assault engineers - a great anti-infantry hammer force. Super cheap in terms of Pop-cap.
As the game calls for it you can now use your fuel to spam M10's and get an ambulance out. M10's are beasts since the patch and are incredibly cheap - throwing one away to kill a P4 is a trade in your favour. Build up an unstoppable force of M10's and shock them off the field like you're playing vCoH.
Bonus of throughout the game knowing you're a coh hipster using vehicle crews with thompson upgrades in a useful way.
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You have to look at it from both sides. If you had your infantry spaced out about the map and the M10 was going from point to point crushing your squads one after the other then yes, it'd be broken as hell.
In your screens you've mass retreated pretty much your entire army, your army that is 80% infantry. That's *terrible* play on both a tactical and strategic level, and you've been punished for it. Not even unfairly punished. The focus of this patch has been to discourage blobbing and encourage combined arms - adapt. Any tank could have done this as the conditions are so good, and M10 doesn't come early, it has no armour, and to get there it has had to cross the entire map.
Also be glad you're not in vCoH, as your opponent would have popped an ability that replaced it for free on its death. My top tip for vehicle crushing - fire sherman smoke on top of the blob, then charge into it. They won't fire any shreks at you and you can put your tank on attack ground whilst crushing in the smoke with impunity. |
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Agree 100% with the OP, I play 4v4s for casual fun when I've burnt out attempting to be a tryhard in 1v1/2v2. Pretty much exclusively play USF and got into the top 100 in 4v4s barely even trying with only about 30 games. Figured at top 100 level I'd get better teammates but without fail there's 1-2 people on the team who are utterly useless. I personally think allies aren't even UP in 4v4's (so long as its not 4 okw on steppes), just that the team imbalance is often stacked against you. |
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I'm about as big a US fanboy as it gets but I don't think okw needs that much work. I'd say all you'd need to change is stopping the schwerhq/flak truck from being able to be built until the first two trucks have been made. This would stop the quick volks to obers to panthers route. Okw players would have to rely on more diverse units to counter infantry instead of rushing to obers which would in turn require fuel delaying the panther even more. Plus the super flak gun wouldn't come so early that its a problem
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Had a thought about adding a bit more depth to the commander system by making the bulletin system tied to your chosen commanders.
Currently you have 3 commanders and pick one per game during the match, and 3 pre-chosen bulletins. My idea would take away those 3 bulletins and instead give 3 bulletin slots to each commander slot.
You could then have a more varied selection to choose from - Got 3 of the same commander that you like? Use it for all 3 slots, one slot with all inf bulletins, one slot with all vehicle bulletins, one with a mix and see which one looks best as the game starts.
Let me know if the way I've explained this makes sense
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Just a quick idea about vehicles being abandoned on death. I like the idea behind it, but it is very RNG dependant and is never something you can play tactically to take advantage of. More often than not it ends up causing you more grief as a tank that should have died gets recrewed and limps away.
I'd like a way to reliably control when I can make an enemy vehicle get abandoned that has a historical flavour. How about vehicles only, but always, get abandoned when they have the engine destroyed crit on them when they reach 0hp. Not damaged - destroyed.
This would mean that you could engineer situations when you can take a take a tank off the enemy using combined arms -using TDs/tanks to damage whilst inf swarm in for the immobilise. Or if you catch an unsupported tank with a good mine in your own territory.
I feel this would reward good play and make unsupported tank pushes (looking at you tiger ace) much more risky. What do you think? |
Agreed with the MG, it is neither good at suppression or damage. Early game a unit of riflemen is better at countering infantry, and late game a scott or (my favourite) AA ht is far better at dealing with blobs. It doesn't even get AP rounds to help against light armour. Not sure if there are any tips that can be given for it personally.
The arty thing also is a bit rubbish for what its cost is and the fact that it can't be called in on a base sector. It does however deny a big area for a fair time. It's most useful for calling in on OKW truck groups, rarely hits and destroys the truck but it will seriously wreck anything trying to defend them. Never had it seem to not fire all it's shells though.
Here's a replay where OKW had the perfect little sim-city to use it on, 2nd barrage gets some nice hits.
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AA spam + 240mm |
You had really good map control, which is probably nessesary if you want to go for two halftracks.
That's the thing I need to play a bit more to figure out - did the map control come from the 2 half tracks, or did the half tracks come from the map control and if I'd played more conventionally I'd have fared better.
At the moment I'm enthusiastic about this as a strategy, but I need to play a few more games with it. |
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Relic Entertainment
