Profile of Nubb3r

Regarding callins,

TLDR- If they have a comprehensive and well thought out and tested design and review process for the economy, tech and unit timings they will suceed, if not you will have nonsense and imbalanced units, tech choices or strats

This is the most important part, no matter what design choices they make. Ultimately it doesn't matter what feature/mechanic came from where, just as long as we acknowledge that it is good/bad and can say why.

I wasn't there during the time, but as far as I can tell, many design decisions during beta and also in later stages were half asses, not thought out properly, (as people said before me) copy pasted from coh1 when they shouldn't have been and some things weren't, even though they should have been.

Was this due to lack of care? I doubt that.
Lack of funding and staff? This probably contributed difficulties to the situation.
Does any of this matter any more? No.

The whole package just needs to make sense and it doesn't, in both games.

I'm gonna tell you what both games did wrong: There's a tremendously jarring line between vanilla and DLC factions. PE and Brits are as far away as USF, OKW and Brits are from their respective vanilla games. And that is due to power creepy "new/fun/interesting ways to play" which means some sort of gimmicky bullshit and new mechanics that would have been impossible to account/adjust for, concerning the vanilla factions.

Why was OST on life support™ for so long and why is the Panther in a good spot™? Because you can't have a vanilla and bread and butter faction that isn't slightly lacking, without making the gimmicky factions completely obsolete. They couldn't replicate that beautiful equilibrium in vcoh (excluding all the abuse bs), just see how Soviet meta has changed so much, so radically and so often. Hell, I'm only playing since the major OKW rework and I am very happy to not have been part of what the game was before then. It sounds like a major shitshow.

just my 2 pennies as usual.

TLDR: Who cares about coh1 vs. coh2, I just want a properly/well designed/thought out game with polish and all the quality of life goodies.

Many hard issues are being looked at during the process of the upcoming DBP and the map changes are promising as well.

However, there is one thing still flying under the radar here that is not getting a lot of much attention since it is being overshadowed by other things, especially in team games.

It is, to try to be as precise as possible: The abundance and effectiveness of light indirect fire units (mobile, stationary, heavy and light varians plus the LeIG) especially considering the low amount of attention they need, compared to the effect they have on the game, which gets even worse when they come in higher numbers (let's say 2+ units of this kind in a 2v2 for each side).

Where I perceive the problem to be:

The first thing is their safety and the higher potential due to more targets and less idle time.
The most glaring reason why these units are a larger problem in team games than in 1v1s is of course the disproportionately small maps when you account for player numbers in team games. Basically all 2v2+ maps are way too small compared to the 1v1 situation. This of course isn't necessarily a bad thing, since these games are bound to feature more action, but the issue I see is that front lines are relatively easy to saturate for prolonged periods of time and the direction of approach for flanks are more limited either. These circumstances allow the aforementioned indirect fire units to be very safe, even if you build more of them in relation to your main fighting units, when comparing to 1v1.

The second part of the problem is (in team games partly) related to the abundance of targets and their ease of (passive) use. Even if you were ever only to purchase such a unit and just put it behind your lines and never interact with it again, these units (in team games) are not that much less effective compared to actively using them as much as you can. Herein lies the main problem IMHO. Since (especially long) team games are exhaustive and very taxing on players' multitasking, players have to divert their attention and prioritize. These units are so convenient and are so effective while being so. They litter the skies with explosives and just add to the "battlefield noise", that demands you to focus a lot in order to not lose squads frequently.

Before trying to fix the situation:
What's the ideal situation to go for and what are the given constraints?
What is/are the intended roles for these units?

These units should be exclusively and actively used against weapon teams, garrisons and emplacements. Either with or without smoke and incendiary rounds, that doesn't matter too much.

Where I'd suggest looking for solutions:
Since the first part of the problems I listed is kind of unfixable given the team game character should stay the same, we can only address the second part, by encouraging active usage of mortars and discouraging passive use of them, but how?

Plain and simple: Make auto-fire basically almost useless and give all the attention to barrages.
Make barrages either short or long, have short or long cooldowns, firerates, reaction times and whatnot, plenty of levers to turn here, but nerf auto-fire.

The changes to spacing (and maybe squad AI?) might help to alleviate the symptoms, but the underlying problem is still there (as seen in the recent 2v2 Tournament where mortars and Le.IGs dominated until overshadowed by (rocket) artillery). I doubt that the squad changes would have mattered too much in the tourney, but they're still welcome.

Do you think this assessment is accurate and if not, where are gaps and "misperceptions"?
Sorry for the wall of text, but I needed to write down all my thoughts about this issue.

TL;DR
Nerf auto-fire on mortars heavily, make them all about barrages and barrages only.
They maintain their role against weapon teams, garrisons and emplacements and become less obnoxious in team games.

This was already rejected in FBP, and we would have to revert that change anyway. Having said that, I wasn't keen on re-implementing the same system for the 15th time in 12 months.

Thus, call-ins are now completely tied to tech, there are no unknown variables, everything is straightforward and everybody is happy.

Thanks for clarifying. I'm happy about the state of affairs concerning call ins and the way it was adressed right now, after reading that.

Would you care to elaborate why the price premium didn't have the desired effects? Just asking because I thought it was the best/right move.

Very mature acknowledgements and realistic/levelheaded approach you have there.
Where is the smoke problem adressed though?
As far as I understood the discussion it isn't optimal on ISG because it is an expensive indirect fire unit that doesn't do the main job as good as it should, when comparing to mortars from other factions (especially in 1v1).

Sturms have always been and are nowadays even more so doing overtime like hell. Can't give them smoke too, unless like you did afaik, make them faster to build and lower maintenance so you can afford 2 squads in normal games. Is that the way to go though?

Whats your opinion on giving the Flaktrack a targeted smoke ability like the Sherman?

This sounds very intriguing either for the Flacktrack or maybe even the IR? To give it some purpose in 1v1s? Can't make them even cheaper though because MUH TEAM GAEMZ.

I'd like to see a CoH3 that combines all the good things from both vCoH and CoH2. The classic asymmetric Wehr vs US matchup (or a smiliar one because the era etc. don't really matter to me) and good gameplay mechanics like tiered resource points, proper front, rear AND side armour etc. from vCoH and all the quality of life advances that have been made in CoH2 (like group selection reinforce, unit bar on the top left etc.).
Add to that all the good stuff from the community mod projects like slapping a premium on call in vehicles when certain levels of tech have not been reached, the cloak changes, the change of infiltration mechanics like spawning with abilities on cooldown etc.
Capping circles vs classic unit capping is a design decision just as the tiered territory points, but I favor the units capping method and tiered resources, because they add more nuance and add to the ebb and flow type of gameplay, where you need to stage well articulated attacks/defences as opposed to the more stale and more "spammy/just do stuff fast" type of gameplay that CoH2 diverted a little bit too much into.
The most important aspect would be the release of proper mod tools at a certain and hopfully rather early stage of the game's lifespan.
This would help with another problem which is polish polish polish.
I just hope for a polished, well designed game which combines the best of what the franchise can offer, coupled with better community integration in terms of mapping, balance feedback and modding (which also would help the relic team to do their job).

Just my 2 cents.