Profile of Corporal Duffy

Like seriously, how do you have fun fighting them?

Now, inb4 l2p, I know I haven't got a ton of plays with Soviets, and I'm not highly ranked or anything, but I've played quite a bit of CoH when it was still a thing, and am trying to get back into RTS proper. So I know about three way flanking, and smoke use, and mining, and so on. I just want to really know how I'm expected to win against OKW without playing my pants off and giving myself high blood pressure or something.

It's like, I never feel comfortable at any stage of the game when playing against them. Early game it's a struggle to deal with Sturms, Kubel and Volks with mere conscripts, and when one gets Maxims their less than ideal arc and suppression make them easy to flank by players who aren't brain dead. I've had some success with snipers, but I don't think they put on the MP bleed on cheapish 5 man Volksgrenadiers. A little later you can somewhat stabilise when you get Shocks out - but this means that you're forced into choosing a doctrine with shocks. I dunno if it's just me, but I find even vetted conscripts with PPSH upgrades have damage and sustainability issues against OKW infantry, especially since they don't have smoke so that they can close the distance.

Which brings me to my point about infantry. Sure, on paper 1v1 unvetted conscripts beat unvetted Volks, but only in the early game do you face unvetted Volks, and in the early game they can be screened by Sturmpioneers. Late game conscripts are useless. Shock troopers are pretty good at killing most infantry - until Obersoldaten hit the field, and Volk vet starts skyrocketing when their Schrecks start hitting armour. Then you chance it with smoke grenades and hope your opponent is an idiot who blobs into only being able to fire from one direction.

Sure, arty can beat blobs. Katyushas are nice for breaking up blobs - but that means investing in Katyushas, which die to a stiff breeze, and you have to devote inordinate amounts of resources to prevent them from being flanked. Had a volks squad run past a maxim, get suppressed, but still get their volley of FGM-148 Javelins off to kill my Katyusha. Then retreat past my entire army with impunity because dat vet makes them so damn tough.

AT options are pretty horrible too. ZiS-3 gun has subpar penetration. Sure, it can penetrate Panthers most of the time, but if your opponent isn't braindead, he's not going to let the Panther get hit more than one time, and conscript at grenades don't guarantee a damaged engine - that is, if you get conscripts who can close in time vs fast panther and supporting infantry fire to get an AT grenade off. Don't even get me started on using the ZiS-3 to reliably penetrate King Tigers.

But, but, King Tigers! By that time you would have heavy armour, wouldn't you? I don't think so. For one, if you had IS-2, you wouldn't have B-4 howitzer, which is one of the few effective weapons in fighting volks blob of doom. And IS-2 is slow - which makes it easy to get flanked by Volks, or get caught for longer in the firing arc of a pak43. Sure, it's a good tank, but it's not like OKW don't have the tools to deal with it in their stride, whereas it's such a pain to deal with a King Tiger micro'd with any degree of common sense.

I don't want it to be super easy to deal with OKW; I just wish it wasn't so hard. As it stands, vetted scripts and shocks are hard to reach and yet are easily countered by unvetted Obersoldaten. Fast Panther or Volks deathball kills Katyusha by looking at it angrily with a single flank. OKW heavy armour controlled with a modicum of common sense has no good counters. I feel like, I three way flank with conscripts early game, stagger my maxims to cover each other, get mortars and shocks to smoke assault their fixed positions, push up to the sectors right outside their base - then vetted volks and obersoldaten just roll inexorably over my forces, and it's so hard to stop them.