Company of Heroes has always been a game that focuses on the more nuanced play and interactions between infantry squads fighting. Rather than being a game of sheer DPS and numbers, CoH has many mechanics that make it unique and interesting. Suppression, unit range and directional cover are the core of infantry combat in the game. Today, I'd like to talk about the importance of buildable cover and why I think all factions in CoH 2 and future CoH games should be able to construct the 3 basic types of entrenchments (sandbags, barbed wire and tank traps) with their core infantry units and engineer units and why I think it improves unit interactions and overall gameplay. I will also talk about what I think these three basic entrenchments should do and not do.
All core infantry should be able to build sandbags, all engineers should be able to build sandbags, barbed wire and tank traps. The first reason for this is just better immersion and realism. Digging in is the core principle of defending a position and is the fourth most important thing on a professional infantryman's list of things to do while establishing a position. In the world of CoH, it should actually be the first most important thing, because the first three don't apply to the game! SAFE-SOC is the acronym the US Marines use as a guide for setting up defensive positions starting with (S)Security, which is setting up lookouts, (A)Avenues of approach/Automatic weapons, which is where do you put the Squad Automatic Weapons (BARs or BRENs or LMG42s), and (F)Field of Fire, which is where are your limits of shooting for each man to prevent friendly fire. So going down the list you quickly realize that S, A and F don't work in CoH, but (E) for Entrenching does, making it our top priority in the game, so it is crazy that many basic infantry units cannot actually do this, while others can.
Now, let's talk about gameplay, because lots of you don't care about real tactics and just want to play the game and have fun. Sandbags laid by infantry allow you to spend time as a resource. Currently the best thing to do if you win a fight and the enemy retreats is usually to immediately push forward and try to take territory to gain points or space to fall back over. If you can build basic defenses like sandbags, you can instead choose to invest your time into building up your position so that you win the next battle in the same spot, and since heavy cover provides such a bonus to damage taken you can leave fewer units behind to defend an area that you have built up allowing you to send other units to other parts of the map. In this sense being able to build cover actually encourages the defender to do more maneuvering with their forces since they can stick one squad behind heavy cover anywhere they have time to build it allowing that lone squad to hold out against a superior force a little bit longer. It also encourages the attacking player to maneuver more because they cannot just count on brining a BAR or LMG blob forward to outshoot the enemy blob. Now players must invest in cover counters instead of just more and more LMG infantry. So while at first glance it might look like more sandbags equals more infantry with LMGs, I think that it will actually encourage more diverse builds to counter entrenched units.
But what should the three types of basic entrenchments do? They should manipulate the environment to either deny movement (tank traps and barbed wire), or provide protection (sandbags). Where CoH 2 currently gets this wrong is that some of them do both. Sandbags and barbed wire are just fine how they are, but tank traps should not provide heavy cover. Tank traps should stop the movement of all vehicular units, but still be passable by infantry, but the infantry passing through them shouldn't gain cover from it. Building tank traps should be a conscious decision to interfere with vehicular unit movement. Currently they are really only used to give cover on capture points by rear echelon squads and don't fit their intended role. Remove the heavy cover bonus from tank traps and they return to their intended role. Barbed wire is fine, it stops infantry but is crushable by vehicles. Perfect. Sandbags are also fine, they provide directional heavy cover that can be crushed, blown up, jumped over or simply flanked. Also perfect.
In closing the entrenching system in CoH needs an overhaul, but the good news is that it's an easy thing to do. Digging in is core to warfighting and it promotes better gameplay. Each type of entrenchment should only do one thing, not multiple things and every faction should be able to do it.
So give the grunts back their shovels and let's get digging men!
I personally would meld flares and m1919 as "support equipment" ability and put rifle field defenses with sprint. But melding them might just make it powercreep.
I don’t think Rifle Company should get M1919A6s. That goes against the concept of Rifle Company being about Riflemen maneuvering and shooting. It’s also just contributes to LMG blobbing that’s already very prevalent in team games and if you bundled LMGs with anything then it would also have to be bundled in the other commanders that have them.
What if, instead of 6-man rifles, you could get a 6-man LT or Captain? They're already special riflemen limited to 1 each, so they could gain abilities that would be too strong on mainline units.
Like this idea:
So, replace rifleman flares with "Forward Observers". 3CP upgrade for LT/Captain, but only 1 at a time. Adds a (cheaper) flare ability, a Pathfinder, and an artillery ability (I&R Pathfinders, Major? Not sure). Takes up a weapon slot.
Just do that, buff Fire Up (lower cost or no exhaustion), and the commander is good, I think.
Interesting idea, but I don’t think it fits the theme of Rifle Company.
The Veteran Sergeant is intended to be a single doctrine only upgrade for your basic infantry, much like the Veteran Squad Leader upgrade that is available to German Infantry Doctrine only. Like the VSL, the Veteran Sergeant is intended to add durability to the squad and a little bit of firepower, but not as much firepower as other upgrades. So if you want more durable Riflemen, go Rifle Company for the Sergeant. If you want more firepower, go infantry or tactical support and get the M1919A6 on your Riflemen, or if you want moving firepower, you get double BARs.
The Sergeant idea is not just to give out 6 man rifle squads for the sake of having bigger squads, it’s intent is to provide USF players with a choice to invest munitions into your core infantry in three distinct ways for different purposes and play styles.
Grenadier LMG42 or Riflemen M1919A6: long range, stationary firepower.
Grenadier G43s or Riflemen BARs: mid range, mobile firepower.
Grenadier VSL or Riflemen Veteran Sergeant: added man and added durability, but less added firepower compared to G43s/BARs/MG42/M1919A6
Your forward observer idea sounds really cool, but I think it fits better with Tactical Support, or Recon Support or maybe a future Commander.
The ability for either one to shoot through obstacles is silly in my opinion. Even if the rounds could physically penetrate a building while retaining enough energy to be effective on target, not explode early and not get deflected off target that still leaves the important question of HOW DO YOU AIM!? Lol
if u fell it's too good why not lock the special ammo behind the dozer upgrade ?
+1
You could also make upgrading to the bulldozer blade/ WP shell package lock out regular HE shells. This would kinda make sense if the crews had to unload all of their HE shells to make room for the WP shells.
This could be done a few ways. You either leave the ability as a pay to shoot like it is now, and HE shells are simply locked out, or you make the load WP shells replace the HE shells in the toggle ability. You could reduce the rate of fire but give it high accuracy to the WP shells if you make them replace the HE shells so you don’t just spray WP everywhere. I like the idea of the WP being a slow but accurate auto fire that replaces HE shells. It would be hectic and confusing in tank fights too if you left it on WP so your Sherman is randomly putting WP shells into a charging Panther, doing no damage but messing up everyone’s visibility, friend and foe alike! Lol
Either way, by preventing the Sherman from shooting WP and then following up with HE shells you reduce its ability to wipe AT guns by itself, but it would still be very powerful when used in conjunction with infantry, mortars or another Sherman that doesn’t have the bulldozer upgrade.
I would've also rather seen the addition of the EZ8 instead of the bulldozer stuff. EZ8 is already fantastic, just not accessible. Kinda like how rangers were.... but then they got buffed... cause they weren't good... Kappa
Powercreep of most new doctrines has been very prevalent though. OKW overwatch is a prime example.
+1
Agree on a whole lot of that.
Easy Eight is a cool unit that could use more love instead of silly bulldozers. So I’d be happy to see that in more doctrines, but probably not in Urban Assault.
On the subject of power creep, I agree that it is in fact happening with the new doctrines, but how to deal with it is up for debate.
The important thing about balancing the game is to end up with, you guessed it, balance. Lol So you have two options. You either buff all of the commanders to the new power level or you nerf all the commanders down to the old level.
From what I’ve seen, USF, OKW and UKF all have very strong commanders in general, but they have far fewer total commanders than WM and Soviets. WM and Soviet commanders are all over the place, with some being on par with the best WFA commanders, while same are quite poor.
It seems to me that the easiest way to make all commanders in balance with each other is to nerf the really outstandingly good ones down just a little, and then buff up the weaker ones to the higher power level.
Using the USF as an example, you have a bunch of commanders that are very good, a couple that are pretty good but not quite top level, and then you have Rifle Company which is pretty bad in comparison. So the easiest way to make all USF commanders in line with each other is to just buff Rifle Company a bit and now USF commanders are now all viable options and therefore balanced with each other.
Apply the same logic to the other factions and you can end up with a bunch of “OP” commanders, but since everyone is OP, no one is.
The only thing that I would change about stock Riflemen would be a very minor cost reduction from 280 purchase price and 28 reinforce price, to 270 and 27. The most minor of cost reduction.
As to how do you reduce OKW early dominance? I think Elchino hit the nail on the head. It’s all about the speed at which they can field Volksgrenadiers, while being already backed up by Sturm Pioneers.
So you either need to hurt the speed at which VolksGrenadiers can be fielded by adjusting either their starting resources or the cost of Volks squads themselves, or you nerf the effectiveness of Sturm Pioneers.
Perhaps give the starting Sturm Pioneers MP40s instead of StG44s. They then automatically upgrade to have StG44s for free once the first truck is build, and any Sturm Pioneer squads you build from HQ are unchanged and still get StG44s right away.
Edit: Also make sand-bags and wire non-doc for Osttruppen.
So we can also change the trench ability in Osttruppen commander, change it to something useful like hull-down etc.
Agree.
Actually, I think all baseline infantry units and engineer units should be able to build sandbags. Engineer units should be able to build sandbags, barbed wire and tank traps. Digging in is just a staple of real infantry tactics. Literally all soldiers (and in my case Marines) know this.
“The organization of the ground, or the construction of the defense, begins as soon as individual members of the squad have been assigned sectors of fire. It contains seven tasks. They can be remembered using the acronym SAFE SOC, S-security, A-automatic weapons/avenues of approach, F-fields of fire, E-entrench, S-supplementary and alternate positions, O-obstacles, C-camouflage/continuing actions. These are the actions that we take in order to properly conduct the defense.”
Entrenching is the fourth most important thing to do once taking a position only after security, automatic weapons/ avenues of approach and fields of fire, and in CoH, your squads do all three of these for you! (Except team weapons, who you can place manually, but even they don’t need to be emplaced as strictly as in real life, since there is no friendly fire to consider.)
In a more game oriented sense, digging in allows positional play to be more important. The cover system is what makes CoH unique, so why shouldn’t it be emphasized more? If infantry could dig in they’d be less vulnerable to LMG blobs just running up over open ground and out shooting them.
Making infantry units able to dig in with basic sandbags helps diversify infantry play by making weaker units stronger if they have time to prepare positions. It also makes players choose between pushing farther and trying to cap up more territory when the enemy retreats, or to dig in and try to fight a decisive defensive action from prepared positions.
Looking forward to some great games and great casting! Please be sure to put them up on YouTube too, a lot of us can’t watch them live but love to see all the games even if it’s not in real time.
It was this comment that triggered me: "Riflemen are symbolic of the American in WWII, the average GI Joe who would leave his home, clad in olive green uniform and shouldering his M1 Rifle, to liberate the oppressed people of Europe as just one of many citizen soldiers." .
I’m finding that a lot of people are misinterpreting what I was saying. I was speaking about the THEME of the faction, not about the actual history.
Each faction has themes that are in general very positive themes that are not political in nature. These themes strive to delineate the factions from each other so they are distinct and interesting to play.
The USF theme is basically take all of the best parts of Fury, Saving Private Ryan, and Band of Brothers and combine them. Hence Rangers and Paratroopers with Thompsons are heavily featured but US tanks are crap except Brad Pitt in his Easy Eight.
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