Profile of Svanh

Mate, pls

It's a fair point. Both are defensive factions with good team weapons/emplacements, long-ranged mainline infantry that are weak up close, and a reliance on stock late-game armour to be aggressive. The differences mainly come down to when they were designed (teching structure, repair speeds, veterancy) and faction fluff differences.

Honestly, I'd say UKF are the second-best designed faction in the game (Ostheer being the best).

the bofor suppression barrage need its range lowered to 60 meters from 80 meter. The suppression barrage basically allow the emplacement to counter its own counter, the mortar. As the ostheer you're basically locked into the mortar HT in order to counter the emplacement.

the mortar emplacement should have its auto fire range lowered to 80 meters. 115 meter is far too much coverage. maybe lower cost to 360 mp to compensate. the emplacement can still use its 115 meter barrage range to attack distance enemy.


the tommies' artillery flare should get a range buff back to 35 meters. It's a ridiculously easy to dodge artillery due to the obvious red smoke and long delay. The only thing that can't reasonably dodge it is the immobile okw truck or ost bunker.

Great suggestions. The Mortar Pit's barrage should probably have its cooldown lowered (to prevent ISGs hard-countering it by moving slightly every so often) and the AOE on the second barrage weapon fixed.

-1.
You deserve getting everything you get if you are going to play sim city. removing a leig from the battlefield only requires you push forward.

Pardon me, but are you aware that the Mortar Pit is currently the only stock indirect fire option (and early-mid game indirect fire counter) for UKF?

The way that Planet Smasher has explained to me, it is impossible to add a mobile version of the Brit mortar in the game:
https://www.coh2.org/topic/52470/mod-request-garrisonable-mortar-pits

This is something that only Relic can do; however I don't think it matters much (just use a different model). I posit that if the emplacement revamp idea catches on Relic might be willing to code in some animations for the mobile 3-inch mortar.

However, we (i.e., Planet Smasher; I have 0 skill in this) have been working on adapting UKF emplacements to feel more natural, and removing the need for brace (e.g., Pit -> garrisonable Trench, 17pdr -> pak43).

Planet Smasher has been very busy with RL stuff, thus our progress has halted. If you want to help me, I would really really really appreciate your help, since I have absolutely 0 experience with modding.

When I made the 60mm copy, I just switched the weapon crew models from USF weapon crew to Vickers weapon crew. The stats and text for captured weapons did the rest. The only problems with my current implementation are that I haven't changed the name and flavour text and that it uses a USF icon in the building menu.

I'd certainly be willing to mod some things for you but I couldn't promise constant, immediate updates. I'm looking at a fairly busy period myself and I'm not the greatest modder. Send me a PM with what you need and I'll tell you if I can do it.

I actually rethought this. We might be having the same idea about how to modify Tommies, but we present this in a different way.

Both our ideas boil down to making Tommies more hard-hitting than Sappers (and, if necessary, squishier, so that there is a trade-off). In both the current implementation and (your) proposed implementation, there will still remain a gap between Tommies in-cover and Tommies out-of-cover.

In my idea, I explained one way to achieve this is to trade off some received accuracy for (offsensive) accuracy. If Tommies receive enough accuracy, their Brens will already become more hard-hitting than Sappers when both squads reach Vet3.

Another possible trade-off is to give away some received accuracy at Vet0 for accuracy (or cooldown, or reload etc) for Brens, Piats, Enfields. This is identical to your idea about turning the cover penalty into a cover bonus.

However, I feel it will be easier on the maintaining team to keep track of this, as they won't have to check whether they should apply the bonus to the weapons or not. (what will happen if Relic decides to add purchasable <insert weapon name> as an upgrade to Tommies in the future?). In my mind, easier to maintain = simpler = better

Accuracy veterancy would certainly be a good way to go about it. I'd prefer to keep their initial target size constant and reduce their vet 2 received accuracy bonus as a trade-off (increasing the multiplier from 0.76 to 0.85?).

The accuracy gain would also need to be fairly gradual. Having a 40% accuracy increase spread across all three vet levels (i.e., 12% vet 1, 12% vet 2, 12% vet 3) would be a good starting point. Reload bonuses would also help with their PIAT performance, although I'd need to have a look at the numbers for that.

Actually, if you think about it, Tommies are the absolute worst mainline for picking up capturable weapons (and not just because of the Vet3 bug). This is because slot weapons benefit from offensive veterancy, of which Tommies get very little. A grenadier squad with an LMG34 is a death god (+40% accuracy). That's even worse if you give it to a Sturmpioneer, or a Penal squad squad (+70% accuracy).

Tommies get the short end of the stick here, which makes them inferior for picking up weapons ("only" +20% accuracy, cover penalty). The only reason you would consider giving weapons to Tommies though, is because none of the UKF squads receive any offensive bonuses whatsoever (Sappers get 0 in that regard).

Hence, turning some received accuracy into (offensive) accuracy will probably wipe off the need to turn the cover penalty into a cover bonus.

Fair points. I've been coming at it from a position of "buffing IS without buffing IS" simply because balance problems are blamed on the faction in its entirety, not the individual units (Bofors!).

- The idea behind Recon Sections is that you sacrifice firepower (Brens/Piats etc) for mobility.

Recon sections can still remain pretty terrible at close range, but at least you will be able to relocate them. More importantly, you will be able to chase units down with Recon sections (which is something that Tommies are terrible at)
e.g., chasing an MG/sniper while it relocates at mid range.

I don't want to make Recon Sections the new-new Penals. (they don't deserve to!)

...

- Regarding smoke; I wasn't thinking of giving Tommies access to smoke directly. More like giving the faction some way to deploy smoke.

Currently, the only options are Vet1 Mortar emplacements (static) and AEC (90 second cooldown). If Tommies could choose between calling down howitzer barrage or a smoke barrage, Artillery flares (and Tommies) would immediately become more useful (without having to buff their AI to infantry-melting levels).

How is that mobile mortar you and PlanetSmasher were working on going? An easy way to buff the UKF early game without introducing new upgrades would be to move Sappers to T0 (with emplacements restricted to their current tiers) and fill their spot in T1 with a mobile mortar.

You can then go for long-range Tommy DPS or the less powerful but better at chasing Sappers. As a bonus, you also don't have to rely on the Mortar Pit.

EDIT: I've implemented this into the mod I posted earlier. Sappers are now in T0 and UKF has a copy of the USF 60mm mortar in T1.

- About Artillery. I almost always use the Sniper version of the Artillery, which (I could swear!) calls down 3 shells per howitzer + 4 airburst shells (if you went anvil). There are basically 4 ways to use the 25pounders:
- The Royal Arty barrage
- Sniper flares
- Tommy flares
- Forward Assembly flares

Is it easy to verify whether some of these abilities behave differently than others? (otherwise I have to check this tonight and I'll edit this post with the answer)

I usually use the Sniper version as well (better range and don't have to give up healing).

The Tommy, Forward HQ and Sniper call-ins all fire six shells per Howitzer. The Royal Arty barrage fires three per howitzer.

I've already mentioned something similar in another thread. Relic would probably want to balance Brens according to how they behave on Tommies, because if Brens=strong and Brens-on-Tommies=Ober-strong, faces will melt. Thus, in order to retain the vision of giving Tommies better Brens than Sappers (cover bonus included), the Sapper version will have to be pushed down, to make room for the (upgraded) Tommy version.

If we really must absolutely give Tommies an actual cover bonus, we could do the following:
- Retain cover penalty (on a similar-ish level)
- Implement a tiny cover bonus, that will also work for picked-up weapons. (I don't know if the bonus would have to be 1%, 5% or 10%; I am not good with DPS numbers). However, it would have to be small to retain a relative level of balance.
- The actual bonus (for captured weapons etc) would be justifiable for Tommies because: they don't get decent accuracy veterancy, they have smaller utility than other mainline infantry (if we keep them as is), and they are static.
- However, I would still be _very_ concerned about the A-moving effect.

I'm probably not being clear enough or misunderstanding you, but the issue I'm trying to solve with that change is that weapon upgrades (the major scaling mechanic for infantry) are better on Sappers than on Tommies.

This is because Sappers currently get a better Bren (fixed by giving them the Tommy Bren) and don't suffer the out-of-cover penalty (fixed by moving the penalty to the weapons and giving Tommies a bonus in cover to return them to their previous in-cover performance).

The practical effect of this is that Tommy performance stays the same but Sapper performance (with Brens, Vickers and PIATs) is reduced to an out-of-cover Tommy level. You could easily adjust how this works with the Sapper cover bonus (i.e., keeping the current cover bonus for their Stens but giving them the Tommy cover bonus with other weapons) to ensure they weren't nerfed into the ground.

From the thread in which I first suggested changing the cover penalty, captured weapons make up a percentage of the reasons against it completely disproportionate to their effect. I'd prefer captured weapons didn't benefit from the cover bonus simply to defuse that issue before it starts.

If there is a graceful way to balance UKF early game without giving their mainline infantry snares (and also retain the mainline infantry relevant), I would go for that.

Finally, regarding PIATs. They are too spammable currently (and way too good for their current price).

I agree with the price increase (50 might be cheap still), and I also agree that giving PIATs a faster projectile will ease the micro tax (thus bringing together the low-end and high-end users, so that the price increase becomes justifiable). However, PIATs is something that can/should be settled in a thread of its own.

(off-topic: Is it moddable to give PIATs a tracking projectile, while also retaining their hedge-hopping aspect?)

Making performance more consistent between pros and newbies is exactly what I'm going for with those changes. I think 50-55 munitions is a good price. PIATs are powerful but not quite as all-round useful as Panzerschrecks.

It's simple if you don't mind losing artillery targeting and might not be possible if you want to keep it. I would prefer that PIATs stayed a slightly more skill-shot/dodgeable weapon than Panzerschrecks or Bazookas, so I won't be making that mod.

I think the crushing change is net good. It'll allow Relic to balance tanks against infantry without having to take into account their mobility and turning rate.

Let's look at the numbers of the other Cromwell nerf:

Weapon	Accuracy (N/M/F)
AT gun	0.06/0.05/0.04
Ost Panzerschreck	0.069/0.052/0.028
OKW Panzerschreck	0.05/0.0375/0.025

Weapon	Size 18	Size 23
AT gun hit chance (N/M/F)	100%/90%/72%	100%/100%/92%
Expected AT gun shots to kill (N/M/F)	4/4.44/5.56	4/4/4.35
Ost Panzerschreck hit chance (N/M/F)	100%/93.6%/50.04%	100%/100%/64.4%
Expected Ost Panzerschreck shots to kill (N/M/F)	6/6.41/11.90	6/6/9.32
OKW Panzerschreck hit chance (N/M/F)	90%/67.5%/45%	100%/86.25%/57.5%
Expected OKW Panzerschreck shots to kill (N/M/F)	6.67/8.89/13.33	6/6.96/10.43

The effect of the target size change is mostly in the Cromwell's ability to kite and make hit-and-run attacks. It does seem to be a little much given the sizes of comparable tanks (20-22) and that the Centaur is also size 18.

Looking at the stats, I think the OKW Panzerschreck might need an accuracy buff now it's on Sturmpioneers.