Profile of Mr.Smith

i.e. the Tommy change
"We find that the fact that Tommies have to endure extremes during the early game, makes play and counterplay options vs the British faction too narrow. A major reason for this are the relatively-high strength of cover bonuses in the early game, as well as the poor moving performance of the unit."

I don't get this argument at all. When Tommies are cover when you approach during early game, you dont touch the damn Tommies with 50m pole. You try to catch them in motion by engaging smartly like rushing head on with first sturmpio to catch the first Tommies offguard or by using hmg42 etc etc. I do not see what is limiting at all.

I actually want to know how many people that matter (constructive posters, top players) complained about Tommies to bring about this change.

With all due respect, almost every changes except the four I mentioned are not really redesigning in terms of what "re-designing" means in this forum. Yes, technically everything you guys are doing is re-designing but in terms of CoH, it is really just re-balancing. 90% changes are not affecting the tech or a gameplay feature, they are just series of nerfs and buffs to make the infantry engagement slightly different than they are now.

Normally we would have held back with British changes for a few weeks. However, circumstances meant we had to rush things out of the gates.

The kind of feedback we had received from Cruzz back then was "remove RA from cover to make Tommies killable" and "give Tommies some moving accuracy, so that they aren't completely worthless". The rest of the changes are working around the fact that only certain Tommy upgrades are researched, Tommies are too unreliable for an AI-only unit, and that they break infantry scaling for our mod.

Thus, there's a mix-match of reasons why Tommies turned out to be this way:
- Mills Bombs being completely useless on the live version of the unit (and even if you made them cheap, they would never be researched (moving accuracy)
- Tommies being too strong at Vet0 out of the gates, making them dominate over other infantry (removing cover RA from Vet0)
- Tommies being completely helpless when fighting anything other than infantry (moving accuracy)
- Enfield slot items making them the RNG gods of CoH2 (scoped enfields removal)
- Dual Bren guns making Tommies too strong in the late-game for other infantry to match. That's on a faction that already has good tanks (dual Bren)
- Bren guns being too RNG with the occasional 12 second reload time, making an AI-mostly squad completely unreliable (Bren reload time normalization)
- The fact that nobody ever techs guns in the early game making 5-man upgrade dominate (Bren cost-efficiency changes, Vet0 RA-in-cover changes)
- The fact that the 5-man upgrade, which should reward people that tech it early makes British infantry too cheap on the late-game, even when Brits have access to good tanks (5-man changes)
- The fact that every single gun in the game has a fire-cone of at least 5 to aid target acquisition (fire-cone changes is essentially a bugfix)
- Unupgraded Tommies being able to duke it out with enemy upgraded infantry in the late-game (5-man changes, commuting RA to accuracy in the cover bonus, Scoped Enfields)

Finally, the reason why you have more changes per capita on OKW/UKF infantry compared to other factions is that the other factions have had their infantry scaling kinda adjusted during WBP; Tommies and OKW were beyond our grasp.

If this was right after SNF5, I would completely back this project of micromanagement. I mean 5 cons v. 5 grens all the time was disgusting. But I saw diversity of playstyle among the top players in GCS and during my own games.

If you guys were experimenting with global upgrades to change the dynamics to add depth and more dynamics instead of just dynamics by nerfing and buffing, I would support fully because even though it would be harder to balance and cause more upheaval, I think it would be a worth while experiment.

I might be cynical. However, for 4 factions (anybody but OKW), I only saw one commander dominating over the rest; lend-lease, armour, lightning war and special weapons. So, yeah; it's not a disgusting infantry spam over infantry spam, but something needs to be done to shake up the meta.

I am more than happy to continue helping out with this. Though it will be a couple more days before I do more in depth testing. My job is keeping me from the game at the moment.

I can answer questions 4 & 5 immediately though. It indeed currently takes a long time to repair emplacements now. However, it's only really a big problem due to the fragility of emplacements right now. I think we should only tackle the repair times after we have fine tuned the emplacements first.

As for number 5, There is one ability that I absolutely loath to face as one who builds emplacements and that is "Zeroing Artillery" from the OKW. The ability that speeds up arty drops while your emplacements are revealed to the enemy.

Even before the Brace nerf, this ability scares me when used on my defensive line since it could still pound away beyond the 30 Second Brace in the live version. With the brace nerf, this ability mercilessly destroys emplacements and leaves nothing left.

Balancing this could be tricky since 30 Second Brace is unpopular with the opposition. I'd personally like to see brace going up to 15 Seconds (Considered "Too Short" back in the first days of the game) and maybe the duration of Zeroing Artillery shortened yet accelerate the rate at which it starts bombing at full steam. But I feel we would need to hear more input from more unbiased OKW players regarding this.

That's all I have time for the now. I promise I'll be right back on my tests as soon as I can.

If you suspect an OKW zeroing artillery nuke (e.g., if you see LeFH's and the enemy hoarding munitions) consider packing up and selling for scraps. Nobody will ever use zeroing artillery vs singular mortar pits. On the other hand, the armagedon effect will, hopefully, continue to incentivise people not to do sim city.

You gain nothing by blobbing your emplacements anymore (e.g., FRP aura removed); except maybe for reducing the amount of territory you need to protect.

With respect to emplacements in the mod, we've found a few bugs; namely that the extra HP on the second mortar doesn't apply etc. In the next version, we will also be trialing reduced hitboxes for mortar pit/17 pounder and see if that addresses some of their main durability issues.

I've only played against AI and the resource between the MP and Fuel feels absolute finicky, and it's making me really hard to hold the ground against any units on the front and trying to tech up to the late game units, even when i use British also have this issue.

Is it the idea to use the forward retreat point as a temporary uses while penalize front line resources?

You are supposed to use the FRP very judiciously, and only when necessary. FRPs allow you to retain your territory gains (and thus your resource income) and fall back in times of danger (e.g., to protect your forward base). Therefore, you have to give up something, to get something.

If you only use FRP up to 2 times during the game, then the new FRP is cheaper than the old FRP; anything more, and it's more expensive.

The FRP is really supposed to be a last-resort solution.

The way to prevent buffs stacking is to use the "exclusive" flag on the apply_modifier_action AND (this is very important) set a unique modifier_id for your accuracy modifier*.


Say, you have 2 auras that give accuracy modifiers. Aura A is supposed to give +20% accuracy, whereas Aura B is supposed to give +50% accuracy

What you want is:
- If the unit is not under either aura, it shouldn't receive extra accuracy
- If the unit is under Aura A but not Aura B, it should get +20% accuracy
- If the unit is under Aura B but not Aura A, it should get +50% accuracy
- If the unit us under both auras at the same time, it should get +50% accuracy (i.e., the auras shouldn't stack).


The way to implement this is...

For Aura A:
- Set accuracy multiplier to 1.2
- Set modifier_id to "my_mod_aura_a_modifier" (the name just has to be unique)
- Set exclusive to True

For Aura B:

We break the modifier into two parts; one that gives "Aura A" stuff (i.e., 1.2 accuracy), and one that gives the "remainder" (i.e., 1.5/1.2 = 1.25)

Therefore:
- Set accuracy modifier to 1.2 with id "my_mod_aura_a_modifier" and exclusive to True
- Set an additional accuracy modifier to 1.25 with id "my_mod_aura_b_modifier" and exclusive also set to True

Live version has a similar way of applying modifiers like this, e.g., for heavy engine damage when the vehicle gets abandoned (look for the critical). Before we fixed the bug, heavy engine damage would not always apply the correct speed debuff.

* If you set exclusive to "True" but do not set a modifier_id, then the accuracy modifier will overwrite all other modifiers (e.g.., veterancy values); this is not what you want.

PS: I've no experience with posture crouch modifier; maybe you need to change_target_action -> entities?

I do agree that it does need a certain weakness and a small arms weakness makes sense but it's a bit too vulnerable under the current stats. I did a test of this and it's quite shocking. I placed two UNUPGRADED Vet 0 Ostheer Pioneers (A realistic assault group size for most players) next to the upgraded British Mortar Pit. It went down in three bursts. Then tried with Sturmpioneers to see it go down in two.

Next with two Vet 0 Panzergrenadiers and then finally two Vet 0 Assault Grenadiers afterwards. It went down in a mere 1.5 bursts from each. That's horrifyingly fast. It makes the USF Fighting Position look like a hardened bunker.

There are light vehicles with more armour and they can still be considered counterable with Small Arms like the Soviet M3. YES, they have less Health but you can still do noticeable damage without it vaporizing.

Combine the fact they have seemingly high health and the now slow repair rate of Sappers and they are just a liability to try and keep alive. I am willing to accept Small Arms as a counter for Mortar Pits but certainly not to this extent.

They don't need the armour of the live version (Which is 5 Armour) but they need to have at least some resistance to show their Sandbags aren't just filled with air. Hell, I'd go no higher than 3 Armour (4 Armour with the Emplacement Regiment).

I'm sure you guys would have agreed if you were able to do more testing before this version was released early. Good thing is, we can keep tweaking it until it feels right since this isn't an official Relic release.

If you've managed to pull off a flank with 2 squads at point blank vs the Mortar Pit, how fast should the mortar pit die?

Also, btw, was this a single-mortar pit, or a double-mortar pit? Double-mortar pits receive an HP buff.

Really short brace duration won't really work for anything but the Bofors, imo. That's because every time you hit brace, the mortars/17 pounder will have to re-setup, and potentially pivot.

Unless you have 2-3 other Mortar Pits attacking at the same time, those 3 seconds you wasted from the enemy won't count for anything. We want to make Mortar Pits work for 1 mortar; not sim city.

At the same time, it's fine if the Bofors is vulnerable to indirect fire; that's basically the intended counter.

Commando Lee Enfields accuracy it 0.817/0.851/0.886 small lower than Ober Kar98
not upgrade to sten this is intesting way to play
I think set Light Gammon bomb to start cooldown like partisan
is ok ?

The slot items we gave to Commandos use Tommy Lee Enfield stats.

The Lee Enfields are not meant to be an alternative to Stens; they are simply meant to be something that delays the arrival of Stens, like we did for all other infiltration squads. Maybe Commandos could get Colt pistols instead?