Profile of Mr.Smith

How exactly are you going to spam a unit with that cost in manpower and pop? Not to mention that you will be completely wrecked if you don't get enough volks.

You are going to save that manpower by cutting down on unnecessary units (Volks etc), and crutching heavily on MG34s (230MP) to win you infantry-heavy engagements, until your SPs gain vet. This will hopefully lure your enemy into fielding an early vehicle (and thus feed you vet). Instead of 5 Volks - 1 SP, you will get 3/4 SPs - 1 Volks.

With the received accuracy bonuses SPs get from vet, they are actually going to bleed you less than Volksgrenadiers in infantry-heavy engagements.
- It takes 120MP to reinforce 4 SP models
- It takes 125MP to reinforce 5 Volks
- 4 SP models are 35% tankier than 5 Volks models

If it is possible to spam Panzergrenadiers (which it is, on certain modes), it is far more doable to spam sturmpios.

Give them 2 sherck change vet from accuracy to cooldown (40% at least)

I actually rethought the cooldown thing; it might fix the 100% accuracy vs tanks. However, it might completely break the flamer package upgrade

I thought the stun grenade bugs were fixed. I guess not.

What -might- have been fixed is the part that bugs weapon teams. Retreat-derping is still there, and happens 100% of the time.

just make a new AT unit and put it into battlegroup. Sturmpios vet could go up but it would change how the base ones perform. Maybe reduce the damage they do or give the double ones like pgrens while removing the stun nade.

That would be an idea definitely worth trying. The fact that the AT squad does not come out of T0 means that a blob-inclined OKW player will still have to invest some MP on filler units until the schrecks can start rolling.

However, Sturmpios are not necessarily a bad choice for a carrier. It's the implementation that has to change (give them double schrecks, and tweak their veterancy).

What happens if we universally change "Stun grenades" to make them cause aoe supression instead of the stupidly bugged stun effect? We already have mines suppressing now, so it should be possible and it would prevent most of what you're talking about. The exact suppression value would need to be tweaked and played with to work out what's fair but you would be able to retreat from it, or stay there and tank the suppression if you have support units ready to relieve you.

The reason I propose this instead of the OBVIOUS solution (i.e. "fix the fact that it's buggy as balls and cancels retreats") is because this solution would not require changes that you couldn't do in a mod of some kind, to my knowledge. The modest CoH2 team isn't making engine changes at this point in the game.

The thing with suppression is that a suppressed squad that is under fire (from any source) will probably never become unsuppressed. I don't -think- you can have timed suppression, but I might be wrong.

Thus, if you have 1 sturmpio squad vs 3 riflemen squads clumped up, and the grenade manages to suppress all of the squads, the sturmpio can keep all of them suppressed by switching targets. This will almost always force a retreat, which might be rather OP. At the same time, a retreat will always be possible (unlike the guaranteed derp-wipes you can get in the may preview mod).

Conversely, suppression grenades will lose the entirety of their potency vs garrisons (you can't suppress them).

And in particular, the Stun grenade they get at Vet3.

The addition of the schreck upgrade on Sturpioneers will have the following effects:
- It will be able to spam Sturmpioneers; now with near impunity, as they get access to anti-vehicle
- Schrecks will allow SPs to reach Vet5 at astronomical speeds, simply by breathing (I had 3 Vet5 Sturmsquads by the minute 28 on Rails and Metal, even though my opponents fielded no light vehicles).

This immediately becomes a major issue when somebody takes a look at the Veterancy achieved by Sturmpioneers. I am breaking that Vet down into pieces.

I know that this is a test patch, and the whole point is to actually try out things. However, I feel that there is no reason to squander testers' time like this, when the problem is so immediately obvious:
- If Sturmpioneers are supposed to get the schreck, their Veterancy has to be significantly slashed.

Stun Grenade

- Achievable at Vet3

When that grenade hits any member of an enemy squad, the entire squad gets stunned for 5 seconds

First of all, this grenade is bugged as hell:
- Retreat becomes unavailable during those 5 seconds
- If you were retreating, retreat becomes cancelled (and you get stunned)
- The nade also occasionally derps and causes issues with weapon teams and the like.

This easily becomes a terminator grenade, the moment you realise you can use it to chainstun any collection of enemy squads. Already with 3 squads chainstunning you, this amounts to 15 seconds of non-breakable stun. This will cause your infantry to bleed a lot, when you are supposed to be fighting -- what should have been -- a dedicated AT squad.

EDIT:
Actually, I wasn't aware of this, but in Miragefla's competitive edition mod, stun/concussion grenades have been changed to have the following effect:

Concussion and Stun Grenades
No longer stops units from retreating but will still slow the target momentarily when hit.

-Stun grenades now reduce speed rather than forcing units to the ground where they are unable to act.

That should address the (bug-borne) broken-ness of stun nades. However, it will also make them near-useless vs weapon teams/garrisons.

If schrecks remain on SPs, changing stun nades in that way is probably a good thing:
- It forces the player to also invest in Volks for garrison-clearing (thus, we move away from the "1 single unit that does everything" situation which was a feature of the Volksblob)
- Compared to PGrens, Sturms will have a disadvantage in that they have inferior grenades (even if PGren nades are overpriced).
- If OKW wants to invest in a schreck-heavy blob, they are making themselves extremely vulnerable to MG spam.

Combat Veterancy

If Stun grenade wasn't as big of an issue, just look at the Veterancy bonuses. Cummulatively, Sturmpioneers achieve:
- -48% received accuracy (Vet4)
- +68% accuracy (Vet5)
- (-30% cooldown)

(PS: if somebody could convert the cooldown/accuracy changes into a single + percent-DPS increase, please do so )

When we compare that veterancy to other, dedicated AI squads, we have:
Riflemen:
- -40% received accuracy (including Vet0)
- +30% accuracy
- (-20% cooldown)

Volksgrenadiers
- -29% received accuracy
- +50% accuracy
- (-20% cooldown)

Suppose you try to kill each of these squads using only small arms fire. If we factor received-accuracy-per-model AND the squad size, we have that:

A Sturmpioneer squad (4-man)
- is 35% more tanky than a Volksgrenadier squad (5-man)
- is only 7% less tanky than a (vet3) Rifleman squad (5-man)

(Tank-iness is important, when all you have to do is yolorush and spam stun grenades to get free wipes)

Not only Sturmpioneers start strong (that's supposed to be the early-game advantage of OKW), they will scale better, and also vet faster than dedicated AI squads.

When we factor the Schrecks, the tankiness and the stun-grenades, you are going to be killing that blob, how?

Utility/Construction

Veterancy aside, the newly-introduced Mech HQ repairs upgrade is going to be a slap to the face to whoever does NOT want to blob schrecks with the current OKW. It is completely unnecessary when you can have 3+ anti-everything SP squads.

Comparison to other Schreck-equiped squads

If we try to compare Sturmpioneers to Panzergrenadiers in a vacuum (just by looking at the bare stats), we have:

Sturmpioneers (300MP cost, 30 reinforce):
- Stun grenades (gained indirectly, when upgraded with Schrecks)
- Insane combat veterancy
- Repairs, mines
- (maybe minesweepers too, on top of that)

Panzergrenadiers (340MP, 34 reinforce):
- They lose a significant portion of their AI when upgraded with double Schrecks.
- Only have access to overpriced normal grenades.

However, there is more to that. If you must absolutely build a schreck blob, OKW will let you build up your critical mass immediately, the moment the game starts. With OST Pgrens, you still have to spend your initial manpower on something else to hold out. That something is probably going to be AI. Thus, by the time Pgrens become available you probably have to invest on something that's dedicated AT.

With OKW, there is no lossage. You can spam sturmpioneers as long as you manage the bleed. By the time the first enemy vehicle hits the field, it's a blessing; you can now begin vetting your blob, and steamrolling over enemy infantry.

Finally, I'll close this post with a quiz. Assume you have 3 Riflemen squads, and you see the enemy approaching with one Obers squad, one Sturms Schreck squad and you also spot one MG34 setting up in the distance to suppress you. Who do you focus fire on, first?

Recommended build order for 2v2 and up:
(initial SP) - SP - kubel - SP - Volks - (doesn't matter which truck; prolly Med for healing) - MG34 - MG34

Battle tips:
- If the enemy fields an early light vehicle vs you, try NOT to finish it off. Instead keep it alive so that you can accumulate veterancy faster.

That would be simply stupid and even worst for balance because they will simply copy assault grens and OKW will come back to being not that good against infantry (especially if Mp40s will be doctrinal) while burdening sturmpios with something that doesn't fit them.

Solutions for OKW re-balance:

1. Come back to shrecks on volks. You all will want that if these changes are here to stay;
2. Remove shrecks from SPs and keep all other changes.
3. Remove shrecks from SPs and fausts from volks and create a panzerjager unit, 4 members, in medic truck that will come by default with 1 shreck and cost 400 MP or so.

The idea is that OKW needs something to suplement its tanks / AT capabilities but fausts + shrecks + buffed raketen is to much!

Edit: for solution number 3, at vet 2 panzerjagers obtain the "specialized aim" ability. Cost: 35 amo. Duration: 30 seconds. Effects: improve accuracy by 40%.

Each and every of these solutions is by leaps and bounds more reasonable than the Sturmpocalypse.

If they do go ahead with the Sturmpioneers, they SERIOUSLY need to consider reworking their veterancy and adjusting the MP cost. Otherwise it's going to be insane; even for a balance mod.

Sturmpioneers are NOT squishy at all

They feel squishy because they don't get Vet; currently.

They start off with 87% received accuracy at Vet0, and move on to 51% received accuracy at Vet4. Vet3 "terminator" Riflemen have 59% received accuracy at Vet3.

This means that Sturmpioneer get 15% received accuracy bonus ON TOP of Vet3 Riflemen.

You are going to LOVE those snipes

When a SP reaches Vet5, they get a cumulative 68% accuracy bonus. Assuming a target size of 20 (most medium tanks), SP will have 100% far accuracy vs enemy tanks that happen to cross their tanks. Fun!

On top of that, you will have 3 models free dishing out that Schreck-vetted AI power and spamming stun grenades.

Sturmpioneers are just another T0 unit; what changes really?

The reason that nobody ever builds more than 2 Sturmpioneers is because they have very little combat utility the moment the first light hits the field. If you've spammed 4 Sturmpioneers, you are probably going to get destroyed by the first m20. With Screck Sturms, why would you ever open your games with anything but SPs?

The main reason why schreck blobs feel so powerful is because their host is a T0 unit. This means that you can freely spam that T0 unit (Volks) without having to worry of any consequences that follows; the game has got your back, when you need it (panzerschreck upgrade).

For those of you that don't know, Panzergrenadier blobs are also effective. However it is very difficult to achieve that critical mass. This is because by the time Panzergrenadiers become available, you already had to spend a crap-ton of manpower on anti-infantry stuff. You CAN'T afford to start spamming 340 PGrens on top of what you've spent; you need to tech up and start tapping on your fuel reserves.

What we are going to see with SPs is a meta reversal. Nobody sane is going to bother with Volks until they get T1/T2 up (Volks don't have access to nades/fausts before that) -- maybe one single squad for capping.

If OKW MUST have schrecks, they should not get it on a T0 unit. It can be Obersoldaten, or it can be a completely different unit on another tier.

Thanks for all the hard work!

If we remove Brace, Improved Fortifications and the like, literally the only thing the mortar pit has and the trench hasn't is the ability to hold two mortars. Building two mortars is often a questionable decision, putting them both into one garrison even more so. I don't know anything about game design, but keeping the mortar pit just for the sake of not making any drastic changes doesn't seem like a good idea to me. (That doesn't mean I'm not willing to help you, though.)

Let's see where that leads! The way I'm thinking of making mortar pits enticing (but not OP) is to make them give good defensive buffs, decent offensive buffs, BUT make them a bit pricey (so that you can't spam them everywhere). I would envision that a mortar pit would cost around 120MP.

Defensive buffs

Currently, if I really wanted to spam mortars is I would build some green cover all over the place (-50% received AoE damage; received accuracy doesn't matter), stick my mortars behind it and fire away. Green cover is free, and it already gives a massive boost to survivability, at the cost of clumping your models up.

I think it is fair that the mortar pit should yield even better defensive capabilities than green cover.
- One option is to create/reuse a cover type, and modify every single weapon in the game to adjust the penalty
- However, (since we are lazy), is it possible to make the mortar pit apply the green cover bonus to the garrisoned mortars twice?

I dont think that double heavy cover would be too OP, given you can already build green cover and keep your mortars spread.

Offensive buffs

Give mortar pits some passive buffs:
-20% reload time (should be significant, but not turbo-mortar-like)
+5% range (so that you can always hit back attacking mortars; but none of the insane +43% range of the current mortar pit)
-20% cooldown on abilities (the amount is arbitrary. However, the cooldown is significant, as most mortars have longer barrage range than auto-attack range).

Pricing

Let's put it at 120MP

Given the offensive buffs, I would say that the effectiveness of each garrisoned mortar increases by 25%. With two mortars garrisoned you get 50% of a mortar for free. That's 50% of the price of a mortar (240MP). Thus, 120MP should be a good bargain if you plan on blobbing your mortars like that.

It is possible with one mortar, and it should be possible with two. At the very least, you would be able to click on each mortar's symbol and then access their abilities individually.

It is possible to share ability cooldowns between units, but only globally. That means if you fire a barrage with any mortar, all of your mortars will have to wait for it to recharge, no matter if they're in the same garrison or not. It is possible to do that for explosive/smoke/special barrages separately, though.

Removing the crew should be possible, I just forgot to do it. I'll see what else I can do!

Do you think it might get messy if each mortar has different cooldown durations? (e.g., different mortar, vet bonuses, etc). If it is possible to select each mortar individually and barrage that's already awesome.

The mortar pit could -ideally- give convenience abilities to access these abilities quicker (e.g., if you want a coordinated barrage).

Once again, thanks for everything!

I really hope that the Sturmpioneer upgrade is a double-Panzerschreck upgrade.

It is true that a faction without stock handheld AT is kind of handicapped (hi Soviets). However, the sum total of changes will make OKW a faction with pretty much everything. (+snares, +suppression). Along with all the non-doc stuff that is unique to OKW (stock super-heavy tank, IR halftrack, Vet-5) + the doctrinal wunderwaffen units.

Also, I'm not too happy about the Penal battalion changes. The change appears to be a nerf, but it's actually an insane buff. The whole purpose of bunding flamers with ppsh's is to prevent the Rifle Company effect (flamer flushes enemy out, SVTs annihilate at med range).

Everything else seems reasonable, though.