- What if you can also buy them in the Base HQ (Or Med HQ), but to do so, you need a second truck out (The first one must already been set-up while the second one doesn't have to yet). However, you can't upgrade them unless the Schwere is set-up. That way, Obers will be quite similar to Wehr's unupgraded Stormtroopers, but you can only give them better gun (lmg34/Infrared StGs) when you got the Schwere.
The not being able to upgrade them prior to schwer is a pretty good idea. The 2nd truck to construct just the Obers though would be unnecessary. People would place down their med truck then instantly build another just for obers if they were worth it. Which I believe they would be, but then that truck would just sit there draining your manpower income and take away some fuel. One of the largest problems with the Obersoldaten having a tough time vetting is that the vet system isn't linear in effectivness when a squad vets up. Vet 1 is usually some ability and then once you hit vet 2 you get these massive vet bonuses, making the vet 1 to vet 2 effectiveness a huge gap. Vet 2 Obers especially have one of the strongest vet 2 bonuses in the game. 40% accuracy bonus and a 25% weapon cooldown bonus, those are terrifying with the MG34. Obviously this could be fixed if the veterancy was more spaced out.
Personally I don't think they cost to much at all. They just come so late that when they arrive at vet 0 vs vet 2 guards they just can't trade effective enough. Especially if the manpower isn't even traded and is lost to things like indirect or tank rounds.
Squad spacing is improved while on the move and in the open yes but it's still a nightmare incover. All it takes is 1 lucky clumped mortar or pershing shot and your 400 MP squad and probably munitions upgraded from the gun are gone. Even worse if they drop the MG34.
Yes the suppression still works even when not upgraded.
IR StGs ignore 90% of the cover the unit is in if it is in cover and they have higher DPS curve the closer the unit is to the obers.
The MG34 has higher DPS than the IR StGs at long range and can fire on the move.
Deciding which to upgrade with is more or less map dependant. If you're playing on a long open map with less cover choose the MG34, if you're playing on a heavy cover map with garrisons and a lot of wreckage I'd select the IR StGs. Also do remember that you can drop the MG34 if the Ober squad dies. You cannot do this with the IR StGs.
Reasons behind Obers not being used frequently is the large investment of 400 manpower and they come quite late. It's quite hard to vet up your obers when you're fighting up against vet 3 guards with DP28s and vet 3 rifles with 2x BARs. In addition the 4 man squad is significantly easier to wipe than larger squads like fusiliers or volks because of the smaller squad size. It's simply to easy to get unlucky or make a missplay and lose those 4 men to a mortar shell or the blast radius of a pershing shell.
When fighting against Shocks/rangers/commandos its more of who drops models first lowering their DPS. MG34 Obers obviously win at long range vs all of those squads but 90% of the DPS on IR StGs obers come from the 2 models holding the IR StGs. Obers should win decisivly against shock troops, win at long vs tommy rangers and lose up close. commandos will trade effectivly with obers as long as they can get in close before they lose to much HP. Once obers get vet though commandos veterancy is pretty bad and they'll start losing even in CQC. Vet 3 rangers are the best bet to go toe to toe with vetted Obers, however once Obers begin to suppress at vet 4, if the suppression comes through you've lost the engagement most likely.
Actually, I take back what I said about "proving off-meta commanders are good". They can be good, but if everyone go meta then it's very difficult to pull it off (Consider the fact i'm not the greatest player around). So, my loadout now is Scavenge, Breakthrough and Overwatch. Is it good (meta-wise)?
The definition of OKW meta is the Special Operations commander, so if you replace Overwatch with that one, you are meta-set.
Special operations and scavenge are the 2 "must haves" for OKW at the moment. I'd say the last slot is more of your preference and what YOU personally make the most use of. Personally I use breakthrough or luftwaffe ground forces. They both carry strong infantry and certain abilities that may not be call ins but useful in some situations.
Commander loadout: That's some diversity man. While it is very much possible to win with offmeta commanders, meta is just the use of the most efficient form of ones resources and time. The USF player took full advantage of his resources and used them to the best of his capabilities with the pershing commander. You on the other hand had elite armor selected and only used the HEAT rounds. It's completely fine to use whatever you like ingame, just expect to start with a disadvantage.
Squad wipes: There were a lot of them! On both sides which is why this match was closer than it could've been. If you've lost a squad odds are you could've played better. Just focus on keeping your squads busy and use every means necessary to keep them alive and keep an eye on them. You first loss was a volks squad while capping your opponents cutoff. Could've easily been avoided as soon as you took the point and hit retreat.
You did well in the first few minutes of the game. Kept bringing out units and spending your manpower. I really liked the MG34 choice, good crowd control. A problem I did notice was as soon as you saw the Lieutenant, you DID NOT build a rakatten. The current meta is a very light vehicle dominant and a good player or someone who at least wishes to implement top players playstyles will ALWAYS go for light vehicles as an allied player. LT means M20 or the AAHT. Either of which would have put severe bleed on your forces with lack of AT. If it was soviets a t70 would have annihilated a squad and possibly more. You always need preemptive AT or you'll lose the game to light vehicles. Another point with the rakatten is that you could've destroyed his fighting position with that rakatten if he didn't get a light vehicle and you just built it preemptivly. Even when your AT doesn't have something to shoot at it still has uses. Cap points with it if it can, with rakattens you can use them as scouts. Destroy fighting positions, trenches, tank traps, sandbags anything you don't like. Destroying that fighting position would've opened up mid and his cutoff.
Could've been more active with your MG34. When he had 2 squads pressuring your retreat point your MG34 was just sitting on the other side of the mid hedge camping mid like his forces were going to come from that direction even though 2 of his units were on your retreat point. Move the MG, then suppress and repel his attack and then defend your points with the MG. Many players just make an MG and have it camp at a certain point for the entire game. This is a bad trap to fall into and leaves your forces down a squad. When you push your opponent back your frontline moves up, you don't sit back with your MG and mortars and let him come back up. Take his territory and let it fight for you, make him outplay you if he wants his territory back. Otherwise you win by just supporting your own infantry.
Your building placements were fine, I put my BG there all the time.
You saw his rangers so you knew he was going pershing. Since you knew he could plant mines you should get a sweeper or possibly lose your tanks and infantry to them. He also revealed his sherman before you got your panzer 4. To be on the safe side I would've gone double rakattens into Panther. The panther has a far larger chance against the pershing than the panzer 4 does. Your p4 this game was outrageously lucky. Multiple pens IN A ROW against forward armor of a pershing. You had like a 35%~ of penning forward armor of a pershing at close range with a p4 but did it 3 times consecutivly killing the 2nd pershing. Had I lost that game as USF not only would I be upset at myself for losing such a lead but probably a bit salty from that RNG. You had lucky pens on the 1st pershing and bounces on the sherman as well. The JP4 was a bit unnecessary as well. I know you built it out of panic that a pershing showed up and your panzer 4 was badly damaged, but once he lost his pershing which he should never have done the JP4 could have been halted in production. Yes its still effective against the sherman but ONLY that. Could've made that a anoher panzer 4 or Panther for the next pershing.
Focus on the little details of your playstyle. In coh2 you really do have to focus on every little detail. I saw squads fighting in negative cover when they could've fighting in open cover. I saw squads on the wrong side of green cover, and when you had forced retreats you captured your opponets munitions point instead of his cutoff. Deny him as much as you can in the time alloted. He denied your fuel and cutoff multiple times which ultimately made you fall far behind and lose the match. Other small things include: getting your StGs on your volks out ASAP while keeping munitions for a panzerfaust at all times. Saw some delay in StGs coming out. Against USF I'd keep 1 volks squad not upgraded so they can grab dropped BARs or zooks. When you've forced retreats you could've planted more mines, yes he kept his pressure up but you can still plant them if you have your infantry infront to either warn your sturms so you can cease planting and cancel or to complete the mine. You successfully planted 1 mine on the left VP and his LT ran directly into it, INSTANTLY forcing a retreat while under fire from a volks. That is how effective mines are. Instantly forces retreats and he loses territory for it.
Overall: Build preemptive AT EVERY game or you will lose very quickly and if he doesn't build go for light vehicles or they're forced back, if you can keep your momentum in a push use that AT to cap the points they've surpassed. If you're having trouble keeping your fuel or any point that you'd like to keep use your MG34. I'd recommend pushing that side up with that MG so you can gain ground and defend that point. Get a sweeper, USF doesn't always have mines but once you saw rangers you knew it was very possible for him. Sturmpio sweeper upgrade also makes them repair faster which is another reason to have the sweeper. Focus on small aspects of your play; staying in cover on the correct side of that cover, deny him as much territory as possible and move your entire army with your frontline. Lower the squadwipe count. This should improve with more ingame time but it'll improve much faster if you conciously think about it mid match. It'll become a habbit at that point. Commanders were offmeta and fun I suppose and you don't need to use the meta ones, but you have to outplay and outskill your opponent just that much more without them.
Hope this helped. Feel free to ask more questions if you do not understand something or have other questions in general.
Hector is correct. Retreat RA bonus is applied the moment the input reaches the server. I'd say when you hit the key but occasionally you get lag etc.
What Doth Life?! is also correct on the negative penalties being removed as soon as the stop input is received. This is testable with the Ostheer spotting scopes vision buff while "not moving". Hitting the stop key and then while the vehicle is coasting it applies the vision bonus.
Thompson paras are the highest DPS infantry unit in the game when they're ontop of an enemy. Thompson rangers scale incredibly well. Shocks are really just meh. They don't scale amazingly and their DPS is only good if you're standing on your opponet. But also don't forget that you have to buy the thompsons on the USF infantry inorder for them to get that DPS. A large problem with shocks is that they really struggle to find a use when the Axis core infantry are all long ranged based. So automatically axis players veto most CQC maps and shocks charging through open ground will just bleed 1 or 2 models then the axis will retreat without dropping any. PPSH-41 accuracy drops off considerably faster than thompsons as well. They just end up bleeding you unless you can get a good flank off with them. The unit is arguably perfectly balanced they just have to be used in only certain scenarios. Much of which the axis will just veto to avoid.
My bad I forget statistics and logic don't work with illogical thinkers like zerocoh Relic. Why give one faction an MG from the start with the best suppression, high damage, highest fire rate, best vet 1 ability ingame, largest arc (excluding vickers in garrisons). Yes but using insults makes you so intellectually superior I just could absolutely never recover from this. If you'd like to make an actual arguement then please do so. But just as a compliment to your scientifically sound and factually backed evidence of "volks not getting pinned under fire while capping", every situation is case by case basis. Using your own personal experiences without hard evidence is a way to look stupid for sure though. If you had the attention span to actually look at which faction I was also playing you'd happen to notice it was OKW. If you'd like to also look at the OKW MG34 stats and prerequisites feel free to do so, but I can't expect much now can I?
Biggest issue this game was army composition. Pgrens are great against infantry at medium to close range with their StGs but they lose 50% of their overall anti infantry firepower when you upgrade them with schrecks. You did this on all of your pgren squads and it left you unable to defend and counterattack. For anti infantry you had and MG42, a mortar, a 222 p4 and a tiger at different stages. You lost your grens reletivly early and only rebuilt them early. Once you teched into Pgrens you stopped rebuilding grens. Grens arn't just long range infantry either, they carry the panzerfaust. an invaluable addition to any army composition. Essentially you just lacked anti infantry and let shock troops run up to you with little ways to stop them.
Another problem was the Pgrens diving after tanks with the panzershrecks. It ok to make risky plays as long as you can support it to lower the risk. Running pgrens through shock troopers will never end well. Shock troops are close range soviet soldiers which carry the PPSH-41 and body armor. In close quaters they'll beat most infantry in the game. The problem with shocks is getting into that close quaters, thats where the grens come in. Shocks MUST run up to you to be effective, so you just sit back and let your LMG grens pick away at them while they charge and then when they get ontop of you retreat. They'll drop 1 maybe 2 models and you'll drop 0. Repetively doing this will create a sizeable manpower gap between you and your opponet.
NO MINES!!!!!!!!!!!!! Always build mines when you have the resources. After your tanks were snared multiple times your opponet wanted to follow up. A good play by him, a bad play by him was he didn't have his sweeper with him to do so. Mines would have crushed his t34/76 dive on your snared p4. Also the zis and tiger rotated late to that engagement. You get snared, priority is to rotate units to assist that disabled unit. Also you ran over one of his mines and never built a sweeper. If you see your opponet has the mentallity to build mines, ALWAYS get a sweeper. Especially against Soveits due to demo charges. The same could be said about assault engineers from USF and commandos from UKF as they can also build demos. When I play axis I always get a sweeper just out of fear of the alpha damage from a demo or mine.
Your vehicle micro wasn't to strong this game. Watched cons run up to every vehicle you had aside from the tiger and snare it because you stopped reverse moving. Avoid AT nades at all costs.
Saw a lot of wipes early. When fighting under mortar fire always keep moving. Lost your first gren because you stopped moving and the mortar shell came right in an wiped it.
2nd gren squad wiped was in close proximity to a garrisoned maxim. You took the green cover which may have led you to believe green cover negates suppression. It does not. First, cover is negated within 10 units of the defending force when the attacking force comes into range. So a gren squad and a conscript squad fighting on the same car wreck will not have cover bonuses against each other. HOWEVER the cover remains in effect for squads shooting beyond those 10 units. What green cover does is it lowers the increase in the suppression value to a point where the natural decrease in the value is either equal to or higher than the increasing suppression value. Meaning that as long as you're a sizeable distance away from a suppression platform and in green cover, you will not be suppressed. This range varies from weapon to weapon and range to range because of the different values. But you're usually alright as long as you're not ontop of an MG. The grens in this case were much to close to the maxim to avoid the suppression even when in green cover. The maxim has the highest suppression value per bullet of any stock MG so expect to be suppressed quickly regardless. Next once you were suppressed and pinned you gained your received accuracy bonuses but because you were so close to the MG the accuracy of the MG was still high enough to hit your grens rather consistantly. Combined with occupied or lack of micro, resulted in this squad being wiped before a retreat was ever called for.
Last point, near the end of the match you called in a StuG E and a flakpanzer. Both are anti infantry vehicles. At that stage you didn't have a form of AT for his t34/76s. Could've held on for 45 seconds for another tiger OR you could've exchanged 1 of the AI tanks for a panzer 4. StuG G would've been ok but needed some strong AI as well. I think this may have been due to you believing the StuG E from the mechanized commander is AT. It can deal with lights and infantry well but isn't to reliable on the front armor of mediums. On the rear it can get the job done.
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