They talked about wanting to make an Italian Front expansion during CoH's 10th year anniversary but ultimately decided to try and make a cash grab with CoH Online since they were seeing where the winds were blowing towards "F2P" games, especially in China. Sadly I can't find the articles with the interviews anymore.
So an African/Italian expansion for either CoH or CoH2 is possible and it makes more sense because a larger part of the team is probably working on AoE4, or so I assume at least.
But then again why make such a fuss about it when none of the other expansions had the same PR for them so not sure, maybe it's a new game indeed.
I think the Sturmtiger commander actual.... needs a nerf. Either removing its ability to roll 2 heavy tanks, or just increasing ST aim time further. The ST is in every 4v4 game.
The projectile is now consistent, so it gets consistent results. This has massively improved its usability and as such... it gets used a LOT. Its like a AVRE, but with bigger boom more range and less deadly return fire. Previously, that was countered by its insanely inconsistent projectile. Less armor yes, but JESUS. I'm seeing consistent rage quits from the lower skill side of the community. its no fun losing games when your ally eats a ST round and loses his Vet 3 infantry AND the tank they were next to.
No offense but maybe clumping up units right next to each other, especially in the late game in team matches where it's basically an arty fest, is not the best of ideas?
Just saying.
I mean I also see it in other games as well like Foxhole, not just here.
I agree with many points you said and finally someone talked about the subject of this post, the thing is that they already break some of their rules and introduced new units for all factions except for OKW and USF and there was a great opportunity for that after removing artillery flare and merging heavy fortification with field defences, I don't know much about USF but I guess there was a possibility to add new units too.
What else that could have been done for OKW was merging of the Pak 43 and LefH 18 to give the goliath commander a Pak 43 as well which would have made it just a bit more useful.
I haven't really used it after they nerfed the Overwatch and then Jaegers and I wouldn't really consider the Pak 43 as something that would be overpowered considering that there are many abilities that can simply nuke it.
Then that would have made space for hull down which depending on the BaLanCe the King Tiger wouldn't have it or something like that maybe.
Anyway as far as the USF goes like I said, Calliope getting it's main gun enabled, Sherman Jumbo, Weapons carrier halftrack or some other type of vehicle, Recon squad with marksman or an upgrade for riflemen and so forth.
Lots of ideas and possibilities but sadly people are just not willing to at least try out these ideas let alone implement them anywhere officially, same with a Sturmtiger which is still a meme unit and could have been made into a self-propelled artillery piece to balance out the removal of the counter battery for the LefH.
1. Fortifications could have received the hull down which fits thematically.
Would have been interesting with the new mechanic of tanks being able to self-hull down altho people would probably complains about the King Tiger having it.
Otherwise I suggested Osttruppen for OKW to replicate the personnel manning the Atlantic Wall but sadly that would require new voices and so forth, pretty much the reason why most new units are not added.
2. As I explained above, sadly it's due to a lack of assets such as voices.
3. There are also unused voice lines for the StuG III for the OKW, could have maybe fit in a lackluster (now) commander like Special Operations probably.
4. The USF could have probably gotten a new Sherman Jumbo, Calliope with a functional gun, a Halftrack/some sort of other vehicle that could drop down weapons similar to the UKF Special Weapons carrier M3 halftrack, a marksman ability for some sort of recon upgrade or something for riflemen and so on and so forth. Also Urban Assault Panzergrenadiers for again lackluster Ostheer commanders, and yes there are ways to make them not be OP but nobody seems to want to admit that which could have meant removing 1 or 2 of the flamethrowers, the armor, etc...
Just because the unit was designed to be OP in an unreleased commander for some reason doesn't mean that a simple effort cannot be made to bring it in line with the rest of the units but again some people are acting like that's just impossible.
Basically AsYmeTricAL BaLancE > new content because reasons in the mind of some people while there was a perfectly good way to introduce new content that's not UP or OP.
Instead like always units are buffed or nerfed beyond all measure which end up in the B4/Osttruppen situation which many people are complaining about.
That's sadly impossible because the voices are in their own specific Army speech sga file.
Meaning that you would need to rip out the voices from the OKw sga and then pack them in a new Ostheer sga file in order for the game to read it.
And that's not possible because Relic in their infinite wisdom has barred us from assembling anything but tunning packs, skins and other cosmetical things but not sounds or models unfortunately.
And the game doesn't read unpacked files in folders either like in the first game so you're stuck with the SGAs.
Honestly the stupidity of their decisions are going to cost them dearly when something like Men of War is fully moddable and can be overhauled and turned into anything and everything pretty much in a rather simple and I would say easy manner.
This would be MUCH easier to balance/design around if the 17-pounder and Bofors had "moving" animations. Being able to pack up and move them around would mean they wouldnt need to be balanced around their complete immobility, and instead be balanced around having to "dig in" before being able to attack.
The Mortar Pit could already just pack up into a squad holding two mortars, but unless there's some models of infantrymen carrying around bits of bofors/17 pounders, or either can be made to be pushed around by infantrymen, this will somewhat hamper potential design.
It's my own personal opinion that emplacements should have been locked behind Anvil, which in turn should have been a choice available to the player to make at T0 which is not exclusive with Hammer.
So if you wanna go heavily defensive/static you can go Anvil which would unlock the emplacements along with other defensive options and abilities like trenches, sandbags, maybe even the 25 pounder like in the original game, burst shells and so on and so forth.
Hammer would be the AEC and the more offensive tanks like the Comet and Firefly, bolster, gammon bombs and so on.
Basically you would be provided with a choice, you have a basic tool set which might be sufficient for you but doesn't excel at anything but it doesn't lack anything either, so a jack of all trades approach somewhat.
Then you could either go Hammer or Anvil depending on your situation and what you choose to do at a cost of course but if you change your mind you can unlock the other specialization a bit later, but again, at a cost.
It's something similar of the Ostheer system in the Eastern Front mod for CoH from where I believe Relic took the idea about the Hammer/Anvil specializations in the first place since they seem very similar.
Personally I would like to see Brace removed so we can work on making emplacements actually useful for British especially since they suck away your manpower like crazy.
Agreed.
Something like the mortar emplacement basically just becoming a big ass trench that gives garrisoned mortars inside some buff or something would be nice.
Not sure on what to do with the 17 pounder and Bofors. Since the 17 pounder for example is too big to be useful in urban combat and cannot fire through shotblockers like the Pak 43, which is infinitely more useful to me at least rather than being able to take a sturmtiger shot while being relatively useless throughout a match.
While the bofors just feels like a bigger flak emplacement so I have no idea on what to suggest about it.
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