Profile of ZombiFrancis

It appears they are revamping the site and the forums. Totally new forums. (Which I'm a little sad about because they deleted all the archives apparently.) This all seems to be in preparation for the November 12th patch, so it might be an allusion to significant changes.

Just how long do you want to sit around for a match? While I agree that the automatch system needs serious tweaking (The strange tendency to always try to find at least one person wildly further across the globe than anyone else for instance.) I think the game needs some sort of game lobby so people can at least meet and greet each other long enough to become friends/form strategy/arrange teams/etc. The Basic Match and Automatch division is rather effective at providing an arena for casual and beginning players, with the official ranked world of automatch being the realm of competitive ladder gaming.

It just makes sense from a design standpoint. The whole THQ bankruptcy thing (Remember SEGA saved CoH2 from potential oblivion) and the economic nature of how game servers are maintained and operated might prove to be too great an obstacle to overcome. But because of that only someone from Relic could actually give an accurate explanation.

As long as the points on every map are essentially all identical, there are going to be extensive balance issues that will screw with every map's design and functionality. There are no low, medium, or high points, and except for one muni and one fuel point, all territory produces both munitions and fuel.

One of the crucially balanced features of Langres, Langreskaya's vCoH predecessor, was that the fuel and munitions points were distributed rather unevenly. The right side had two +10 fuels and two +10 munis, all of which were easily cut off for either team (the classic cutoff that still exists, and then southward near the haystacks point to cut off the south.) The left side? One +10 fuel and a +16 munitions. The territory battles that ensued were based on these positions as well. Each team could easily split the right side of the map territory-wise as the resources were distributed close to each player's base beyond the cutoffs. Each could grab a fuel point while the battle would mainly rage over holding the leftmost munitions and fuel point. Or the map would be split down the middle road, and a fuel point on the right side would be the target of harassment.

Essentially, one of the key aspects of Langres that made it an interesting and popular map was because there were three medium fuel points that could constantly be contested territory or in threat of cutoff, as opposed to the standard two or even one section of a map with actual strategic value. The same map could be played rather dynamically, keeping it from feeling stale and cookie cutter. (The map also downplayed the advantages and disadvantages of the British and Panzer Elite factions respectively as well, but that's a whole other bag of worms.)

In the same vein of reasoning Semois, for example, was popular because it was the only map to feature an easily accessible +10 fuel for both sides, with the majority of the contested territory being over munitions. Only two low +5 fuel points existed on the map, providing the targets for cutoff/getting the slight edge of a slim fuel advantage. It was a map where you knew you could usually only slow your opponents fuel income, not shut it down like on other maps. I mean, you could always strategically pin the other player down in their base to totally deny map control, but rarely could you deny that +10 fuel.

My point being: a lot of issues have to deal with the fact that the way map points are set up: it's less about WHAT points you hold, and more about how many of them you hold. I find it interesting that Langreskaya is one of the few maps where the resource points actually correlate with strategic points on the map (also probably due to its vCoH origins).

I found curious why they took out this "feature".

It's less that they took it out and more that they didn't build it.

Once again this thread is not about t70s as the focus. However:

This optimistic scenario presumes that the german player recovers from the triple t70 rush, when in reality thats often a game ender 10 mins in. Even if you do manage to kill the tanks, chances are at least some of your squads were killed in the process because retreating men and ostheer squads are killed very easily by t70s. It then becomes an uphill battle as your opponents simply switches to t34's for 30 fuel more, and maybe makes another t70 or two as the game goes on to continue infantry harassment. T70s ARE proper soviet armor, they just dont kill panzer 4s.

The problem with that time window is it punishes anything short of perfection on the ostheer player early on. That strategy is designed to quickly end a game, not as part of a prolonged strategy.

Plus I disagree that t70s ever become useless over the course of the game. They repair quickly and infantry never become less vulnerable to harassing tactics.

I like smart t70 harassment a lot because it rewards quick thinking and skill on the soviet player; I dont like that the unit enters the game before german hard counters or even many soft counters, are practical.

Alright, I get your point with there being a difference between these counters being practical and being available. The Germans have all of these counters available to them, they just not be practical for them to utilize against a rushed light tank. And quite frankly I think that is the exact purpose of the T70: to force the german faction to make a less-than-practical move for the first (and only) window of time in CoH2. Let's not forget that upgunned Scout cars, which are already pretty popular for most german players to begin with t70 threat or no, deals extensive damage to the t70 rear armor.

Between PAKs, tellers, scout cars, panzerfausts, and the potential for shreck investment, I think there are plenty of feasible choices available to german players. The t70 is the first unit soviets themselves can field that can hard counter german t2 units: specifically the flame HT. (Which is silly to rush if there's grens or pgrens near it because they can reinforce and faust/shreck.) The window of time the t70 shocks the field is even narrower if you consider the time it takes for either engis or the self repair to fix the damage of one panzerfaust and its guaranteed engine damage, nullifying its speed advantages.

I'm not trying to beat this into the ground at all, and I get that t70s aren't really the point of the thread. I think you've got some good points, but despite them I really cannot believe that the germans aren't well enough equipped to handle an early t70. Every option may not be the most practical, but all the options certainly shut down the shock value a t70 could have.

All that aside, I like the ideas of resource sharing in team games, a reanalysis of tech pricing and timing, as well as Nullist's idea about tweaking how flame damage works. IIRC fire damage ignores the bonuses units get on retreat which is why it is especially common for entire squads to die by fire. I've never liked that about fire. All it should do is treat cover in the opposite fashion as small arms. All in all, that's it's purpose.