Profile of Aftermath

Feature: Build Order Visualiser

One of the aspects of Coh2 which I quite liked was the bulletin profiles feature. Match making could take time and it was features like this that were perfect for killing a few minutes between games and tinkering with interminably. So the feature I'm about to describe fits into that mould of something you do between games. I'll show the diagram first and describe after:



Basically I want a 'Build Orders Screen', where for each map and by each factions, I'm able to 'Create a build order'. The meat of this screen would be a graph of time in minutes, with a slider at the tope which I can drag. When I drag the slider, my resources tick with it in accordance with territory percentage that I can adjust. Then I have the options of adding units to my composition, or build order, and see what the earliest point I can build certain units, what my composition will look like at certain points of the game and what options I have for the next unit in my build order are.

Looking at the example above, I have the build order slider at 6 and a half minutes. I can see the units I built already and I can see the options I have for what units I can can build next and how early they can be built. I have the territory control I will have at that point, which feeds my resource income, ideally we should be able to adjust this to be either a percentage or can open up the tact map for the map in question and select the territories we will control directly. This should be smart enough to prevent us from inputting territory control that is genuinely impossible (like 90% within 1 minute).

We also should be able to add upgrades, tech, casualties etc to feed into the projections of our build order. Then ideally we can continue adding blocks to the build order unit we are fully maxed out on pop cap.

The use case for this tool is mostly around planning, as I myself always forget my build orders and record then in a rough and ready way in notepad on my machine. That's quite unsophisticated though so having a tool like this where you can calculate your build orders and see what your projected unit timings would be given a certain amount of map control would be really useful. You can then adjust the map control to see how this would effect your unit timings, useful information to have. Once I have a collection of build orders, I can come back later and be like 'yeah this build order doesn't work, let me change it'.

Some other nice features to have would be a log which you can add your own notes like 'struggles around 7 minute mark due to Greyhound' etc, for your own reference. Then also being able to compare the build order vs your actual games, getting a side by side comparison of your unit composition in the plan vs reality, your resources planned vs what actually happened and your territory control projected vs in game, so then you can do analysis on what went wrong/went better than expected. Finally, at the end of a match, along with 'record replay' options, you would have 'log build order', where the game is added to a win/loss ratio for that build order and you can watch back the replays for that build order to remind yourself how it plays/analyse how it fails.

Finally, having the tool automatically analyse your build order and composition for weaknesses and make suggestions like 'weak against vehicles' etc would be the icing on the cake.

I feel a tool like this would not only draw attention away from match making times but also allow players to have a record of their build orders so when they leave the game and come back, they don't forget them! I always play Coh2 for a day, come back 3 weeks later having completely forgotten what my build orders were, my timings etc.

Feature: Cap Order Visualiser

Similarly, it would be nice if we had a tool where we could create our own capping orders on a per map, per faction, per build order basis.



This tool is simpler, in that we would basically have be able to have a diagram for the cap orders of say our first 5 units. This would allow us to project:

- What territory we would have for a cap order within a certain time period.
- What resources this cap order would produce.
- How long it would take for all the territories in the order to be captured.

Even better would be if you could click a button where, given a faction, build order and a map, it spits out what the optimum cap order would be for fuel accumulation/munitions accumulation. Again, you would be able to save these cap orders as 'my cap orders' to remind yourself, add notes to them, log games against them, see the win/loss ratio etc. Just another analysis tool to tinker around with between games.

You can't reinforce them. Only recrew. Med trucks are plenty good without being able to steal teamweapons anyways.

My good sir, you are mistaken:



Then I looked at all the other med vehicles, they all have tow:



So to me its a bug, why would all the other med vehicles have tow but this one specifically doesn't. I agree with you, DAK med truck seems fine, its not a hill I want to die on, but it seems inconsistent to me.

A bug? I think it's probably balance related. Being able to tow an AT gun off the field, recrew it, then reinforce it? I think that the devs probably thought that was a bit too much.

You can already do this with tow trucks? The difference being healing. The reason I say bug is I think I seen it in the game files.

Bug: Unable to Assign Control Groups to Subselected Units

So let's say we have 2 squads, both of which I have selected, perhaps I used select all infantry or select all on screen:



I want to give the Pioneer one control group and the Panzergrenadier another control group without a mouse click. How would I do it?

So I tab, this way I only have the Pioneer subselected:



You would think from here I can just control + 1 and this would assign a control group to that unit specifically, but...



Coh3 says no. This is a problem in Coh2 as well and we ought to fix it this time.

Bug: Select Next/Select Idle Etc Also Focus

So within the controls there are two hotkey mappings.

The first is 'Select Next Infantry' and the second is 'Focus Next Infantry'. My expectation of what these would do is Select Next would just select the next infantry squad whereas Focus Next would not just select but also focus the camera on the unit. However this is not what select next does, it in fact focuses the camera on the unit as well. Therefore, there appears to be not functional difference between these hotkeys commands and therefore select is bugged.

Bug: Remapping Subselect Next Is Impossible

This is a fun one, you cannot remap subselect next, but you can accidentally unmap it, meaning you can't use tab in that layout anymore and have to remake it from scratch:



The same happens with orbit.

Bug: Unable to Rename Hotkey Profiles

You can only delete and redo.

Bug: Profile Templates Do Not Actually Work

The profile that gets created has nothing in common with the template you select.



Feature: Remove Unit From Control Group

You can only add or clear right now.

Bug: Battlegroup Abilities Map to Random Hotkeys

So let's say you're playing a match and you go down the right side of a battlegroup, so your hotkeys look like this:



Now let's say the next time you play, you go down the other side of the tree, now your hotkeys look like this:



Now the abilities have mapped to the order you unlocked them. This makes absolutely no sense as the whole point of hotkeys is muscle memory selection, how are you supposed to do that if it changes every time and you have to check?

This is the solution: https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/forums/9-coh3-feedback/threads/4952-feature-request-and-bug-fix-request-compendium?page=1#post-24346

But the default should be that the hotkeys stay static relative to the position in the tree and not based on the order you unlock them.

This will ideally be my last update for a while, here are the changes I made:

Removal of Free Abilities

A lot of abilities in Coh3 that would have had a cost in Coh2, have now had a cost added to them.

Adding Tow

I gave the medical truck tow, seems to be just a bug that it didn't have it before.

Passive Bonuses from Upgrades Rework

So having more or less fixed the tech structure issues, I went into the fine grain work of the actual abilities of the units. One of the elements of DAK that I really don't like are the passive abilities that most vehicles get as upgrades become unlocked. I think having utility abilities unlock from upgrades is fine, but my issues with it are 3 fold:

The first is the smoke abilities on a variety of the light vehicles. This the same as the Panzer Tactician ability in Coh2 and really should have been one of those abilities that didn't make it into Coh3. It often amounts to a get out of jail free card, takes no skill to use 95% of the time and relative to the smoke barrage ability, its not not as skilful, versatile or interesting. I basically replaced its usage in DAK in all cases except for:

- Utility Truck
- Medical Truck
- 254 Recon Vehicle.
- 250 Mortar Variant.
- Kradschützen.

Adding it to the Kradschützen was too much to resist, its incredibly satisfying zipping across an MGs arc and dropping smoke, only to zip through the other side. It really helps with its survivability too into the late game, when it can be basically 1 shot, so I feel this is an exception to the rule.

The second the fact that most of the abilities are passive. Passive abilities basically take no thought to use and do not act as a player skill differentiator. Skilled players have the thought of mind to make use of abilities you must activate whereas less skilled players do not, but if they're passive it takes away that skill factor! You also end up with a weird situation where in the late game you basically don't need infantry anymore as your vehicles capture territory and can repair themselves, have a look at this game:

https://youtu.be/duZBCVo5yck?t=2077

Note how the DAK player has 6 vehicles and only 1 squad of infantry, but they are still fine.

The two changes I made were to make the self repair ability a timed ability that you pay munitions for and I also separated the Rapid Advance passive abilities (ie territory capture and speed buffs) into 2 separate abilities. Territory capture is still passive but requires the vehicle to be out of combat. Ideally it should function like the territory capture mode on T34s in Coh2 but I wasn't able to get that to work in. The speed buffs are moved into a Blitz ability which the player must pay munitions for and the passive elements of the upgrade are removed.

Finally, one more experimental change I made was to actually make the abilities mutually exclusive on a vehicle by vehicle basis. So once you have the tech upgrades, which give their usual health and scaling bonuses, you have to decide of all the utility abilities you want each vehicle to have:



This is not only more interesting from an opportunity cost perspective, but it also makes vehicles for the DAK less 'all singing, all dancing, do everything' units in the late game. Relative to the MG and Side armour upgrades that most vehicles in Coh have, these are significantly more interesting. I also removed all these abilities from the Italian tanks so that they scale less and discourage players from relying on call-in meta. This one I'm a bit more on the fence about.

Missing Changes

In terms of what I can't change which I would like to change, these include:

- Giving the 250 a 37mm AT upgrade. This would enable yet further build order flexibility and give you a light vehicle counter that is available from the HQ.
- Giving Panzerjägers a Schreks upgrade once you have T3.
- Swapping the Bolster ability for Bersaglieri for something a bit more interesting and merging this into the Squad Leader Upgrade as part of standard tech. The battlegroup bolster is just boring.
- Finishing the deployment system, due to mod limitations it lacks half of the call-in layers.
- Giving the Utility Truck that comes with the Flak 36/Italian 105 a medical conversion. So if you lose the weapon you can still make use of the tow truck.
- Giving the P3 E a 50mm Upgun upgrade once T3 is unlocked. This upgrade exists in the game files but doesn't have the effect you'd expect it to have. This would allow this unit to scale into the lategame and basically be the equivalent of the same tank in T3.
- Giving Panzerpios some buildable garrison. As a builder unit, they don't really have an interesting structure they can build that isn't tied to a battlegroup. I was thinking something Watchtowers:

So when I say watchtower, I’m thinking the tall wooden structures that are somewhat of a WW2 cliché. I’m thinking around 100-150 manpower. Garrisonable but also vulnerable to small arms. It would allow players to take advantage of the COH3 ‘verticality’ mechanics by allowing garrisoned squads to see over short buildings and shoot over walls etc. Upgrades you could have would be:

- Crow's Nest. This would basically increase LOS in all directions and be useful for seeing incoming attacks.
- MG Nest. This would outfit the bunker with an MG. However, unlike MG bunkers, you would be able to manually change the direction of the MG. 360 degree area denial but vulnerable to small arms.
- Sandbags. No longer vulnerable to small arms and has more health. Basically becomes a hardpoint. The ideal would be to put an MG in a watchtower with sandbags, but that would obviously be more expensive.

These are basically all the changes I would like to make but can't. If the mod tools get better I will have another go. Its in Relic's hands now!