Profile of Kasarov

Hi.

I've had it with tanks in COH2! They're total #$%&! So... The idea is as follows. Just a sketch. If you are the modder and you find this idea interesting, do it any way you like, of course. It's just an idea. But it's a good one! Because it's simple.

So. We build a panther in COH2, pay a "#$% ton of fuel and MP for it, and.... it can't kill infantry.... Really? A 50 ton tank with 2 machineguns and a very long barrel can't kill bloody infantry? Just like in real life, rihgt? Wrong. Have you seen the movie Fury? Yeah, tanks could shoot smoke shells, AT shells, HE shells. All of the tanks that had sufficiently large barrels!

So... Make it real! Just tanks. Nothing else. Just tweak tanks a bit!

How? Give all mediums and heavies smoke shells, AT shells, HE shells. Make the ability toggle, or three buttons, be creative. Make tanks more expensive then, I guess.... Be creative again! Just make tanks tanks!

Tanks prolly more expensive, maybe one shell=1 ammo, maybe supply HT.... But just make tanks tanks ffs! Not some limp biscuit!

If there's a modder among you who feels this would be a great idea, please -- do it! It's a good idea...

K, thnx, bye!

Well, for one, Fury isn't a realistic movie, and nobody should compare hollywood to real life.

Two, yes, all tanks could fire HE or AP, however, the longer the gun, the worse the HE performance. The higher velocity the shell is expected to travel at (fired from long barrels, for example), the thicker the shell walls have to be, and therefore the less room for explosives. The Panther was not known for it's anti-infantry capabilities -- it's high velocity main gun was much better suited for engaging hard targets. Additionally, Sherman crews preferred the stubby guns compared to the longer guns because of the better HE performance. It should be noted that a tank's primary role was not necessarily only to fight other tanks, however tanks like the Panther were specialists, specifically designed to counter the Russian heavy armor on the Eastern front.

Another thing is that tanks have notoriously poor visibility, and even though they technically have multiple machine guns, they are nowhere near as effective as dedicated machine gun teams due to the very limited arcs of fire, difficulty in target acquisition, and tunnel vision when using the tank's optical sights. That's assuming the hull gunner and coaxial. The pintle mount is pretty good against infantry.

Not all factions regularly used smoke shells. Americans and British used smoke shells, Germans and Russians didn't really. Russians seemed to almost not care about armored smoke defenses at all until very late into the war or after the war, while the Germans relied on smoke dischargers.

While I'm not disagreeing with you that tanks should be able to decrew and change ammo, it would be a very large balance change and the folks at Relic won't be too keen on taking a DLC faction-exclusive characteristic and giving it to all factions because it would alienate people who did pay for the DLC as well as (more importantly) less people willing to buy the DLC ($$$), so it would practically never make it into automatch. Plenty of mods already give USF-like crews and ammo switch abilities to all tanks, although they also change a lot of the other aspects of the game in which it almost doesn't feel like CoH anymore.

A final note to end on is, if you were looking for historical accuracy (which, btw, you would need to first learn about some more ), CoH2 is not the game for you. It's an arcadish game more focused on balance and fun value more than authenticity (just look at the god-awful inaccurate Soviet campaign). Try Men of War Assault Squad 2, although be warned, it's got a much steeper learning curve and a lot more fatal bugs. Basically CoH2 = World of Tanks, and MoWAS2 = War Thunder + bugs.

I understand that this faction is designed to have an early advantage. You want to dominate me early game, OK, I get it. But why does it have to be at this scale? Please answer the following questions;

• Why does the kubelwagon cost no fuel?
  
• Why is it able to both cap and kill? Why is it mounted with a free LMG34? Isn't %15 faster cap rate alone good enough?
  
• Why do sturmpioneers are the starting unit?
  
• Why does the best AI light tank in game had it cost reduced? LMFAO, Is this how you nerf the LV rush meta?
  
• Why is the Mowing Stuka, the most devastating mobile arty in game, available after 10 minutes? And it costs less than a Calli?
  
  
  

Discuss this like a civilized human, without raging or intolerant behavior.

1) I'd say that kubels are pretty bad in combat unless you have two or more, which by the way will never scale into mid or late game at all. They are a harassing unit at best in combat, and will get dumpstered by any infantry squad in green cover, including RE.

2) Not all MG-34s are equal. Within the attribs, the accuracy, damage, and what have you all fluctuate wildly even between weapons that are supposed to be the same.

3) Sturmpioneers being a starting unit is actually a problem. They can match or smash any starting squad, although they fall off later as do most short-range units. As is though, they're also over-worked, since they do anti-tank, anti-infantry, minesweeping, and repairs, so they're expected to be everywhere at once. Starting off with Volks would bring OKW's early game strengths down to manageable levels, although I'd argue that they have to receive a buff somewhere else to counterbalance, such as an earlier MG34.

4) Compared to UKF, Pz.II comes around the same time as the AEC, or USF Stuart. The only reason why it feels so oppressive compared to the other units is that Allies rely a lot on their infantry (which scales much better than Axis, at least for UKF and USF). There's actually pretty low build variety when it comes to OKW. It's generally MedHQ + rush for Panther, or MechHQ + Pz.II + Puma and rely on call-ins. Prior to WBP, the latter wasn't as popular because it meant forgoing forward retreat + healing, risking more dead infantry and manpower bleed. Obviously the latter required some serious love for it to be considered worth the risk, although the player needs good vehicle micro to pull aggressive Pz.II play off.

5) Sure, it's available at 10m if you rushed it. But congrats, you have no Pz.II or Puma to fend off any light armor rushes, or if your Stuka zu Fuss missed because the Allied player spreads out and doesn't blob half your army value is sitting there unable to be used for the next minute. Rushing a Stuka is a big risk. It sets you back 100 fuel for your big cats, and you have no small cat (Puma) to fend off a dive from an AEC or Stuart.

The way I see it, OKW is a mostly fine as is when compared to USF, and somewhat lacking compared to Vickers-build UKF. As of live right now, they are on the weak side to early maxim from Soviets, although I'm aware this will be addressed next patch. Snipers still are hard to counter for OKW. Also, if OKW makes use of it's forward retreat, the player risks losing a tech building compared to a measly forward assembly. Majors can reposition. MedHQs are static and just have to take whatever sheisse is flying its way. OKW vehicles costs noticeably more than others in the same class. OKW has plenty of weakness you can learn to exploit.

Coming out of a long hiatus, I've come back to modding. There are a couple of things I either never knew enough about the tools in the first place, or that I've forgotten over the months of my inactivity. Either-or, here I will ask the community about all the challenges I can't figure out.

1) Speech codes for finishing production of a unit?

I know that all factions have a generic "Combat unit ready" sort of quote, but I'm having trouble getting this to play upon production. I'm also interested in a few of the unused lines. I'm not sure what the codes are, nor which fields within the attribs file should be changed.

2) Generic affirmative speech codes for abilities and upgrades?

I know they exist, as can be seen with all the WFA generic voice files as well as placeholders for some of the new things the balance team has been putting out. I've tried playing with speech codes to limited success, but again, not sure what the correct codes are.

Speech codes in general are just UGH. If someone would be kind enough to supply me a list of speech codes outside of what's already in speechtuning.lua (since the ones in the .lua seem different from what's in AttributeEditor) that'd be awesome.

3) Turret spotters for Soviet tanks?

Probably not possible anymore as indicated by this thread, but I'd just like to make sure if there are any known Soviet vehicles that correctly support manned opened hatches.

4) Possible to add more ability_states through .abps?

Such as giving kubelwagen suppression floating circle thingy to infantry?

5) Sticky Molotovs like satchel charges?

I was able to create a Molotov ability that mimics the satchel charge when targeting vehicles, but I'm having trouble mimicking the sticky behavior of the satchel charge when I target a position instead of the actual vehicle.

6) Negative cover for wirefields?

There's an interesting type of barbed wire that's unused in live that slows infantry by forcing prone and crawling through it through a small aura. The obj_cover already has negative_cover, although it doesn't seem to actually apply it to infantry crawling through the field. A workaround is obviously to add the same penalties of negative cover to the aura, but it's confusing visually since the player wouldn't know it's negative cover until it was too late. Is there a way to show the red shield through the aura, or even better, just apply negative cover to the area (kind of like light cover from craters)?

Recovering Casualties?

Here is an interesting video showing that medics have an animation to recover casualties from the battlefield in what seems to be the NIS editor. Curious to see how it can be implemented in-game?

That's about all I can think of for now, but if there's anything that comes to mind later, I'll ask here.

What about to make KV-2 Siege indication to green brace padlock, like handbrake was made?

I'd say take it a step further and give it to all vehicles unable to move, such as hull-down vehicles as well. (Not that anyone ever uses that ability, but still.)

No problem! I don't like tanks throwing grenades either - it allows them to decrew AT guns too quickly, in my opinion. It's also possible to add a spotter to the Churchill at the same time, in case you haven't done that already.

As in spotter AND pintle simultaneously? That's interesting. Do you know if any other tanks supports this?