Profile of JackDickolson

• Keep Penals OP, as they are (so that a T1 investment is worth it)
  
• Give T1 access to some AT options, so that they can hold off until T3
  
• Make T1 free/ultra-cheap (that way, a T1 will be less of a costly detour)
  
  Which one would you choose?

That's not the way to balance things. Penals need nerfs, they are over performing. But not to the point that they become useless against even grens.

T1 is already viable specially against OKW, and Wehrmacht too since the 222 costs 2 times more now, and has lost its late game utility.

How many Maxim/Conscript squads would you be able to build without making that diversion. Are 2 Penal squads going to be that much stronger?

That is a problem with the maxim overperforming (mobility/durability).

Just as an example, people don't bother investing on Sturmpioneers/STGObers for AI purposes, because volk do the job while having more utility and less MP-bleed. That doesn't mean we must buff SP/Obers.

"The Soviet guy can always pick a commander with Guards, if things go sour"

If Penals & Guards is the prescribed solution, how can PTRS Penals ever cause an issue? (in other words, what are you even complaining about?)

Guards+Penals meta is one of the most complained about issues, the solution is not making penals to perform both roles.

I understand that you guys might be under stress, and this occasional discouraging backlashes don't help either, but remember that time is too short, and let's just appreciate this opportunity that relic is allowing the community to tackle core issues and most complained about problems. Dedicating so much time to buffing/revamping a single squad is just wrong. People have spoken, this penal obsession thing, the sooner we move on the better.

'Sensible' tweaks and QoL changes. Aside from messing with OKW's already messed up teching. I still don't get the "soviets are already great, we know, but let's make them even better" agenda. There are certainly other stuff with much higher priority.

The 222 is useful against infantry now, you aren't flushing 30 fuel down the toilet this time.

Eventually though, I want CoH3. And listen, it should not be too different. Just fine tune and fix stuff up. Keep most/all units and factions and commanders and maps and work on what needs work for that ultimate perfection. Immersion is key.

-optimization for the game to run great while looking great.
-even if it does require ultimate high end graphics card: make artillery smoke and hits shine again with the awesome spray of dirt and impact like it did once upon a time.
-bring more sound files back
-fixing all the bugs and glitches known.
-hero units like COHO had
-a cooler ingame chat with more stuff so you can stay in the game and socialice some between games
-bring back cold tech in auto-match, Rostov and winter maps with water/ice

The resources, time and ideas required to improve coh2 could be spend on creating a polished sequel instead. Sometimes it's best to start from scratch and save yourself lots of headaches.


But, some of the current issues and dilemmas can be solved without huge amount of work and investment.

From our point of expert view. But a newcomer needs to learn the whole game before they can realise something insightful about balance, they will need to bank a hundered hours of gameplay first. Unknowing of balance, they are more likely to be drawn in by how beasty the Tiger they just called in looks (I was once upon a time, and still am ). So they might as well play now.

And when they drive their beasty Tiger forward to crush everything and lose it faster than they can say "wtf-this-is-not-realistic-at-all-it-was-indeed-a-beast-in-WW2-oh-the-O.P.ness-of-the-enemy" we might get to hear from them on the forum, or they leave, or... OR in some shining rare cases we get a new tough recruit that won't give up so easily.

You actually just reminded me of myself when I started playing this game some 2/5 years ago.Thanks for the nostalgia.

Because It's one thing to get shot in a random shooter. It's quite another get slowly grinded down and humiliated while having a tormenting feeling of powerlessness (I don't think that's a word) and insulted by scrubs in a game that requires tremendous knowlege and practice to get good at.

F2P does not change that.

Very convincing. That's a thing with most RTS games.


So what is your idea for preserving the playerbase and 'preventing' them from leaving and losing interest (aside from chaining them down)?

But opposite to Penals, M-42 provides combined arms instead of pure spam of 1 type of unit.

It creates a broken synergy instead.


Negating axis light vehicle play for 200MP is not desired. Powerful T1 AI specialists don't need such an early, inexpensive AT support in the same tier either.

Not to mention that people won't be building T2 ever again. M42 into Dshk and HM38 (which might not be even necessary) will be the new soviet cheese.