Profile of Mr.Smith

Churchill's in a weird spot as a veterancy feeder that also gives no damns if its flanked since its low armour is compensated by its high health pool. It lacks proper firepower and mobility as well. It also costs quite a bit and for some reason is more population than a Panther.

I like the idea of a meatshield/shield but:

-Company of Heroes 2 AT lethality is high and in the late game double ATGs are common and will strip quickly HP from even the mightiest of tanks.

-Unless you can do something, you just eat shots. Churchill's not threatening enough with the grenade being fixed and no longer being a nuke and has a slow rate of fire.

-You can probably ignore the Churchill for the most part and shoot at the glasscannon units.

I'm wonder if giving the Churchill some sort of aura would be an idea, either passive or timed. Not to improve effectiveness of units, however. Instead, a de-buff that would hinder the enemy and weaken their effectiveness. It could maybe work on both vehicles and infantry and would force units to shoot the Churchill to get rid of the de-buff. This indirectly makes the Churchill harder to kill indirectly as well as nearby forces which it should be supporting.

I'm not sure what sort of de-buff we'd be talking about, that's my idea aside from a few suggestions of increasing armour so it can deflect, but reducing health.

I am not in favour of aura units, for many reasons. One of them is that they scale too well in larger modes. Even if you confine the bonuses to work only for the owning player:
- Standing armies in these modes are bigger, and can be more specialized
- Most players' forces are clustered around the same area

Thus, the benefits of any aura unit would be massive.

If a pure-meatshield Churchill wouldn't work, I would prefer a buff in one of the following areas:
- Increase Churchill's utility. (e.g., decrease smoke penalties; not sure about cooldowns). In order to make Churchill work, it requires a lot of support from the rest of your forces. Churchill gives no utility back in return. If Churchill had access to White Phosphorus/Smoke shells, that would be OP as fuck (also because the player will not be exposing the Churchill to danger). We could reduce/remove smoke penalty as a way for Churchill to really support advancing troops/flanks.
- Improve Churchill extreme-close-range lethality vs something. This could be as simple as one of the following:
- Reduce the cooldown of grenade toss at higher Vet levels (grenades are -really- the main gun of this tank, and they cost munitions).
- buffing sten gun's extreme-close DPS vs infantry. That way, the defending player has the choice of ignoring the Churchill for starters, but he can't ignore the Churchill forever, as it will eventually close the distance to their infantry/support guns. You could make crew-defense a pay-to-activate ability (e.g., pay X munitions for Y seconds). That way you can't spam Churchills into victory.
- An alternative idea would be to increase Churchill gun penetration to 200-ish for ranges 0-10, but that wouldn't work out as well (everything is faster than the Churchill, except for KT, and you don't want massed Churchills countering KTs. or do you?)
- If you want to go for something over-the top, you can make Churchill crew start tossing out grenades out of the side-hatches at Vet3, Comet-style. I don't recommend this though
- Shake up its Vet (engine-repair) If the engine-damage-negating perk at Vet3 would come any sooner, I would definitely see Churchills being used more aggressively to smash pak walls. Currently, it takes too long to reach that Vet level, and you don't want to be risking your vetted tanks like that after you attain that level. Thus, I don't don't see that perk being useful in a tactical sense (it's more of an oh-shit option).

320 armor (panther)
1280 hp (king tiger)
510 mp 185 fuel
16 pop (panther)

there.

That + removal/reduce moving speed when using smoke, I would already see Churchill being a high utility tank, since it can create a long lane of smoke for your forces (with removal of the speed penalty, the lane will be lengthened):
- A tank column could go through safer
- Heavy Sappers, whose speed is reduced to a crawl when attacking/being attacked would have the opportunity to reposition to better cover mid-fight
- The fact that most useful abilities (grenade, smoke) cost munitions means that the benefits will not scale that well if you spam the unit.
- Vs late-game tank destroyers, the Churchill could reverse itself into battle. However, since the gap between front and rear armour is now bigger, there is, now, actually a tradeoff to make.

The question is what is a fair price for a tank with those stats?

I would say churchill should have less HP but compinsate it with armor, rather then compinationg huge HP with bad armor. Give it like 800-1000 HP, drop fuel cost, but increase frontal armor dramaticly.

The main problem with the Churchill currently is that it doesn't pay off to keep it alive. You are better off freeing popcap for something else as the game progresses.

With that speed and the fact that the game has Elefants/JTs/Pak43/Schreck deflection damage, that would make the Churchill even worse off than it currently is. This will exacerbate Churchill's late-game relevancy issues even further. To give you a concrete example, the KV1 has better armour than the Churchill, and about 800 HP. It's just terrible.

Would you say the majority like it?

Looking back to Vanilla and US/OKW release, even with all the imbalances of both sides every game was mobile, you couldn't lock large areas of the map down (except Schwerer, which can be argued was also a design flaw but not as bad as bofors/mortar pit)


People seemed pretty happy with the dynamic playstyle. Nobody was saying "There's too much movement and strategy!" now a lot of people are complaining about the loss of the dynamic gameplay.

I'll leave you to make of that what you will.

It's not about whether the majority like-or-hate using static strategies.
It's also not about whether the majority like-or-hate playing against static strategies.

This is all about the people that are being forced into playing statically, just because their opponent happened to be using emplacement spam. Now, that has to stop.

That is to say, if you decide to spam emplacements, the game should still afford me a choice:
- Do I want to counter your emplacement spam with static play? or
- Would I like to counter your emplacement spam head on with <insert flanking maneuver here>

The game still kind of works for OKW, since their mainline infantry still has schrecks and flame nades (which can hurt emplacements). Except for the fact that they are still vulnerable to MG spam, which is present in teamgames.

However, Ostheer is completely fucked in that department. In 1v1, they have the choice of capping around sim city (which is annoying, but is still an option). In larger teammodes, you have to fight the sim city head on, or you lose.

As I mentioned in my other post, it's not the Bofors. The problem is that the system of counters for the mortar pit is completely wrong, and brace plays a big part in it.

It's not the Bofors. It's the Mortar Pit, stupid

You could make the Bofors more balanced by making it a copy-paste of the OKW T4. That means:
- Increase HP
- Remove brace
- Remove barrage
- Decrease damage
- Increase suppression
- Increase price (MP & Fuel)
- Take away attack ground

Theoretically, the earlier arrival of the Bofors (vs T4 lockdown) will balance itself since (Bofors) Brits have the most incomplete army composition in the game, and OKW has the most complete army composition in the game.

However, even if you do that, people will still come back in the forums and (rightfully) complain. That's because it all starts with the Mortar Pit.

No matter how hard you try to change the Mortar Pit, it will always remain an all-or-nothing investment. What makes things more complicated is that it is the only indirect fire option Brits have under the sun. This means that:
- (single) Mortar Pits should work (since it's Brits only indirect fire, and it can't move)
- Spamming Mortar Pits will remain as rewarding as ever (if 1 is good, 4 is better)
- Result: Emplacement spam

My personal gripes with emplacement play:
- Brace completely nullifies infantry play
- Thus, the only counter to mortar pits are tanks (too late) and indirect fire (lame, since it's mortar spam both ways)
- It's all-or-nothing. Thus, the defender will feel the need to constantly spam emplacements so that he never loses the indirect fire race.

Campy playstyle is all about who is the king of artillery. That's because it's the other guy that has to attack your artillery (and gets shredded). Currently, with Mortar-Pit Spam and doctrinal/DLC stuff (micro-free repairs, counter batter, land mattress), it's the Brits. (there is no point arguing who comes second. The game should simply not accommodate such huuuge gaps in artillery performance to avoid just that).

My favourite part about this mechanic is when my ambulance gets out of control and starts running over my own damn troops. I hope it this never goes away

Making Bofors and Mortar Pits mutually exclusive MIGHT work for 1v1s. However it doesn't change anything for 2v2 and up.

IMO, the main issues regarding emplacements are the following:

1. Emplacements can repair at normal rate while they are braced.

Suppose you are DPSing an unbraced emplacement while the enemy repairs it. If your DPS is high enough, health will start going down. If it is not, the health bar will remain stationary or will start topping up.

While an emplacement is braced it takes -75% damage. This means that you need to, somehow, muster 4x the DPS to continue DPSing the damn thing.

2. Auto-repair synergises with brace too much

Brace + repair is not necessarily a terrible thing. Theoretically, you can still DPS the enemy's engineers while they repair, inflicting MP damage and wipes.

However, this trade-off goes completely off when you factor in auto-repair abilities (Standfast, or Advanced Assembly). The defending player can pop brace and risk nothing as his emplacements start to top-up to top health.

This needs to stop.

3. Infantry is relegated to a secondary role

Unless you are OKW (with flames and Schrecks spam), your infantry can do nothing vs emplacements. Thus, flanking with infantry only puts you at a risk of getting wiped by Bofors. This is extremely frustrating to play against.

(I'm not sure how OKW will fare post-patch now that Schrecks and Flame nades are on different units).

Solution

Brace denies infantry play. Thus, it needs to go. Thus, we need to find the right tradeoffs to make brace-less emplacements work.

Bofors can be a copy-paste of the OKW FlakHQ. If people are OK with the OKW emplacement, people will also be fine with a Bofors that also takes up popcap to deploy.

However, a Bofors without indirect fire support is rubbish (OKW at least has leigs, panzerschrecks, IR HT etc). Thus, Brits need mobile mortars. These mortars have no need for brace, since they can retreat. If you abandon your Bofors, you deserve to lose it, similar to how OKW loses their T4. Bofors could lose its attack ground to make it easier to counter, but it could be given a rotate function (to aid in the AA role / punishing reckless flanks).

Since relic designed mortar pits, we need to do something with them, otherwise Relic will reject the idea. The best solution is to make them garrisonable structures. Make them give decent defense bonuses vs indirect fire and decent offensive bonuses to garrisoned mortars. I am sure we can find a price/bonus to make it work. Sim city will become unviable since it would take up too much popcap to maintain this.

Also, an artillery called down on your mortar farm needs you need to retreat all of them + cede territory.

At the same time, a successful infantry flank + grenade toss in the mortar pit will guarantee a wipe. Thus, infantry is no longer completely useless. You only have to beware of the Bofors.

Finally, for the 17 pounder, just make it a copy-paste of Pak43. An AT gun should be vulnerable to infantry rushes, and prolonged exposure to artillery, but relatively immune to tank pushes. The 17 pounder is completely the opposite of what it should be with respect to its counters.