I think the issue lies with how the USF T4 is built. Ostheer and Soviet has light and heavier tank destroyers (su76, su85; stugIII and panther) wherefore no1 complains that if there is a heavy tank like pershing or IS-2 stugs aren't good enough vs them. Simply get a panther.
As USF it's way harder becouse you have only 1 basic tank destroyer which has to counter p4, panther and KingTiger in the same time. Jackson currently is way to cost effective for what i does but if you reduce it's combat performance then USA will be outclassed by axis armour. Safe choice would be increasing the cost for extra +/- 10 fuel or reduce it's penetration but not both. Radical change: additionally add M10 into the tech.
I meant healing other squads as a vet 0 ability, which was what you and/or Stark were suggesting.
I was only correcting that in the case of such a vet 0 healing ability, its utility wouldn't drop off over time because it's likely that after the patch with Breakthrough the majority of the infantry composition is going to be Panzerfusiliers, who do not get passive healing with veterancy.
I think it's definitely interesting to look into fitting it in somewhere, so the unit gets a more strategic role (skip fuel on medics to rush tanks faster, or skip med crates for more munitions for weapon upgrades) on top of a pure combat role. It'd synergize well with Panzerfusiliers, which would help set Breakthrough apart from the new Grand Offensive commander.
So maybe a upgradable healing like Tommies have? That could be interesting to see but it wouldn' solve the issue of vet5 bonus
That would just make the good commanders less good and the bad commanders still bad. How exactly would that be more effective at making the bad commanders better than... making the bad commanders better?
I think we're overthinking things here. Nerf what feels like deserves nerfs, and buff what feels like deserves buffs. Why ONLY nerf spec ops or ONLY buff partisans when you could just... do both?
Edit: There are less top tier commanders than there are bad commanders. So nerfing top tier commanders probably helps more than buffing all of the many weak ones. Think of OKW in this (false) dichotomy: you could nerf spec ops, or you could buff firestorm, scavenge, and luftwaffe. The former achieves more with less. Again though, why not both?
Pin all Heavy Tanks into tech would be a good start. But as i said above and i think you all agree that main changes should focus the commanders and less basic tier units.
So to explain, all of the new commander patch changes have to be recreated given how the mod and updates work. The changes for that patch have already basically been finalized, and for the past few weeks things were/are being worked on at the Relic side.
This meant that there's been a few weeks of down time for those not involved with the implementation, so in the mean time, we've been brainstorming some stuff we'd like to see in the future, conditions allowing. Not all of these changes are as much of a no brainer as this sturm officer stuff though. The list is about as far from official as it gets, and we're not even decided on what direction we would like to take some stuff to be honest. The bottom line is that at the minimum, I'd imagine we'd want to wait until the new commander patch is released, bug fixed, and rebalanced (a lot of stuff pops up when you have ~20000 people a day play testing, and not 10) before we even think about submitting this list to the community.
It's good to hear that there are still plans to release patches and support the CoH2. Personally i find the game quite balance right now. Of course there are few basic units or tech structure that could be twicked (OKW T4 etc.), but generally i would prefer next patches to focus again on revamping existing commanders. List of bad commanders is quite long sadly. Perfect example is meansioned sturmOffizier and bugged Breakthough artillery barrage.
As vet5 is quite hard to get and officer should be focus on supporting nearbly troops i would like to suggest a group healing like Commissar or UKF Tommies have rather than self-healing. It would make more sense imo.
If I recall, the initial draft, if the Sturm Offizer were to ever bee allowed to be changed is this:
Sturm Offizer
-Target size from 1 to 0.91
-Aura removed
-Retreat on Offizer model death removed.
-Veterancy 1: Reduces ability cost by 10 munitions.
-Veterancy 2: Increases squad size to 5, +40% accuracy
-Veterancy 3: -29% Received Accuracy, +10 to ability range.
-Veterancy 4: Offizer switches to an StG 44 from his pistol.
-Veterancy 5: Self-healing
His main focus is a combat officer thanks to Ober rifles versus the others who are a little more supportive or lack his initial firepower. He still has two very strong abilities.
Of course it all means nothing if he's not allowed to be changed.
I really like those. It could finally make unit more usefull.
I also think that SturmOffizer has quite high reinforce cost and time.
1. Remove the no-man's-land - that's not needed. It may look good and make sense -you can't enter on this area so why should have it BUT it confuses the player, it's hard to navigate on tactical map and minimap and figure out which point connects which.
2. There is plenty of trees on the mountains which makes a lot of screen space. It's better to replace part of them with heavy bushes. It will allow players to better see their units. There is no need for so many details (though it looks really nice).
3.Expend the mid south passage between hills, currently it's really narrow so light vehicules have hard time moving there. It would be fine but the top and south side aren't really open as well. Extra space for lights won't hurt.
4. I would add some green cover - trenches near the bases directed into the mid VP to allow players to easier defend their closest sectors,
5. Stumpanther 1st point - if this stays then i suggest to make vertical passages between hills to better move with infantry. I WILL ADD MORE LATER
I played on this map and want to give some feedback and my personal opinion about this map.
OPINION
1. cochosgo has right about the main streets on this map. He may not used a good arguments and he didn't add any proposition to fix it but in main meaning he is right. They are the key of this map. Side that holds it rules the map and VPs. That could work in 1v1 gamemode but it's design to be 2v2.
2. Passages are quite narrow. Narrow enough to lock the side with 1 heavy MG and 1 AT gun. There is only 2 main streets that matters. That force players to focus support weapon, artillery and long range units. That leads to artillery feast later game which isn't pleasant, don't require a lot of skill from the player and games vs technicly weaker team can last way longer. Map isn't bad at early game but with time it becomes it in the later stages of a match.
3. Visually the map looks really nice, plenty of details that many basic maps lacks but that doesn't help Białystok Market to be competition map and definitely it's not a turney map.
4. Location of ammunition points is in both corners of the map. Becouse of the position of the bases makes it really hard to take from the oposite side. Of course there is a cut off on the center of the map - that's true but again, that\s to narrow design of the map and tactics uses on it (MG build or blobing) makes it hard to decap for long. That leads to the moment that both sides has constant income of ammo and a lot of off map abilities comming from a commanders which again isn't good.
5. Corners of the map are unused. Even if players will acually go to the enemy ammo point or territory near it - the retreat point will lead straight through mid there is the biggest clusterfuck (which basicly means dead squad). Again narrow design forces players to make big tactical groups (aka. blobs).
6. Even after big changes this map will never be a turney one like Rails and Metals, Crossing in the woods or Elst. I WILL ADD MORE LATER
FEEDBACK
1. allow to move infantry between ruins (open mid VP for the infantry from north and south - currently it can be enter only from left and right),
2. move ammo point closer to the middle, center line of the map,
3. That may sound to drastical but i would also suggest change the side of the map. Make it wilder but in the same time a little shorter. There should be then enough space to move ammo points on to more competitive areas and allow players to move some forces from middle,
4. add more medium crush especially on left and right side,
5. channel on top right side - change the angle and size of it to be smaller. I WILL ADD MORE LATER
Vetted upganned (especially 2 weapon wielding) infatry are far more powerful than vet 0 infatry with no weapon.
This is an issue that is not limited to Soviets. That is part of the reason why people usually do not built grenadiers in late game but pioneers.
+1
It's simply natural that high vetted squad is better than fresh one even with additional weapon upgrade. Game promotes those who keep their units alive - that's good.
Even with upgrade you guys cannot expect from cons to win vs obers with lmg or fight equally. That's not their role.
Honestly i played few games with the 7men cons and i don't see the problem how unit performs. I would agree that upgrade comes really late but on the other hand i understand Balance Team why they did that. It's already common strategy to go heavily T3 (2x T70) and then slowly saving for IS-2, ISU-152 or KV-2 and additional upgrade for cons locked in T3 would even more "buffed" that gamestyle.
As Miraflage alraedy said it's almost impossible to make this ability global becouse it takes only weapon slot cons have. That would block PTRS and PPSH upgrade. And blob of vet3, 7 men cons ohraa across the battlefield is not what we need right now.
Why just don't change cons so, that don't make them new variant of penals? What main difference between cons and penals?
It isn't a change. It's a additional upgrade to unit that suppose to buff it late game performance. Penals are offensive infantry that are focus on agressive gameplay while conscripts are supportive and defensive infantry. It's like comparing Panzergrens and ostroopen.
As far as I am concerned the Jumbo could have been very easily added at least as a test to see if the community liked it or not, a blind eye could have been turned to it's few faults like as you said gameplay matters more than being 100% historically accurate.
I won't blame anybody but until Andy or someone else from Relic comes and says "No we can't add that" or something along those lines the Jumbo was always a possibility.
Well, Jumbo is made thanks to special skin to 76mm sherman and only can work with it. From what i see the fire animation would still start at the ending of 76 mm gun.
I would love to see Jumbo in USF but they didn't want to add Hetzer tank destroyer (becouse of the fire animation) so i don't think they will add this one. It's a shame becouse this unit could acually add some character to the commander. Currently it has good abilities (especially for teamgames) but in my opinion it's more like a mix of diffrent slots than a doctrine that has a strong theme. Again, it doesn't mean they did a dead commander.
Relic Entertainment
