Profile of Contrivance

Getting African-American face variations would be pretty simple. There's already animation state support available to make a model switch faces, rather than using randomized ones.

One technical problem is that whenever an African-American squad recaptures a gun, the portrait and speech would be reset to the default white version of that weapon crew. Since weapon recapture squads are nation based, not squad based, Relic would've had to redo that system to make the recapturing squad change portrait and speech codes accordingly.

Then there's the sensitivity issue, which was probably the most likely cause of cutting the unit.

To do the unit justice, you can't have them be an inexperienced combat ineffective builder unit. Rear Echelon African-American troops were being brought up to the front line and reorganized into Provisional Rifle Platoons to replace combat losses within the infantry battalions of armored divisions. This means they would've been organized into proper rifle squads and equipped with M1 Rifles, not carbines. Also being Rear Echelon doesn't necessarily mean they were all builders, so making them engineers wouldn't have fit; rear echelon covers a huge number of jobs, like clerks, tailors, kitchen staff, and so on.

All of them were combat trained, so at most the provisional rifle units were inexperienced. They proved to be determined and enthusiastic, since they wanted to prove their worth now that they finally had a chance to do so. But now we're left with a unit that's no different than a regular rifle squad in terms of gameplay. Changing them into weak builder units would've looked insensitive (and also historically inaccurate).


Oh, and the Osttruppen unit is not meant to represent German allies (like Romanians and Hungarians). It's a unit formed from Russian volunteers and former Soviet POWs that were given a chance to escape the slow rot of a POW camp. Most of them were also given rear echelon or rear area security duties since the German officers (correctly) doubted their morale. When Ost units began deserting and surrendering en masse in France, one German general said (from my own memory) "We're expecting a lot if we're asking Russians to fight for Germany in France against Americans".

I brought up this idea in a prior thread.

Changing the 7.5cm leIG18 to be like it actually was historically might fix this problem. It was mainly used in direct fire, since it was light enough to be pushed around into position. When firing indirectly it's shells were no better than the 8cm GrW34 mortar, aside from a little more range.

So...
Regular attack is direct fire, firing an HE shell (No suppression), with a much shorter min range, and with a max range similar to an anti-tank gun.
Reinstate the HEAT rounds as a munitions ability, so it can act as a 'soft' anti-tank gun in emergencies.
Can barrage with an ability only, salvos aren't as fast the 8cm GrW34, and the arc is more shallow so more likely to hit buildings and obstacles.
Auto face can be removed, since it's acting more like anti-tank gun now.

End result:
Still good at knocking out infantry, machine-guns, and emplacements at a distance.
More of an offensive weapon, not a defensive one to halt enemy attacks from any direction.
Can act as an emergency anti-tank gun, but it will cost you munitions, and requires more micro since it's an ability.
Can act as a mortar, but not as good at it.

tl;dr jack of all trades gun, master of none


As for the 75mm M1 Pack Howitzer, that was definitely an artillery piece that was used indirectly almost all the time. It should stay as an auto-firing indirect weapon. Keep the auto-face but remove the suppression and I think it'd be fine.

Can you show how you set up the kicker message?

If this is an historically accurate Pershing (IF. We all know CoH isn't a bastion of historical accuracy), then it would be pretty comparable to a Panther. Which, to be fair, is pretty good considering the Panther weighs and performs like a heavy tank anyways. The side armour was a bit better, and the 90mm could pack a better HE warhead, but otherwise it's not an uberdeathmachine.

If they went that route, it would make the most sense if it was built normally without a limit, and showed up in the Battalion Command building like the 'Easy Eight' does.

If they really wanted an uberdeathmachine they would've given us the T26E4 'Super Pershing'.

The Forward HQ gives a +50% damage boost to anti-tank guns, so if that stacks then it will quickly turn it into a one-shot anti-tank deathray. It's a multiply_add operation rather than multiply, so each stack adds another 50% of it's base damage (80), so 160 -> 240 -> 320 -> 400 and so on.