Profile of ZombiFrancis

I have written the following multiple times in the past. The following could've been written in 2013.

What you loved about COH1 that COH2 didn't quite deliver on

The original factions. Wehrmacht v Americans was (and still is) a well thought out, well designed, and well executed game matchup.

What could be improved on COH1 that COH2 did and did not deliver

Veterancy. There's a lot of debate over CoH1 wehrmacht vet. In my opinion it was a critical component of the game's design. It is what really created the 'asymmetric warfare' that is often truncated to just 'asymmetry' and taken out of context. In CoH1 there were different goals of gameplay: Americans sought to deny Wehrmacht fuel and drain VPs. Wehrmacht sought to deny VPs and obtain fuel. Americans had the VP game, Wehrmacht had the fuel game. Killing american units gained Wehrmacht nothing (except resource advantage of course), but feeding american units veterancy was a risk. Likewise, though Americans often held the resource and map control advantage by default, they had to invest those resources carefully. The impact of BARs had a great deal to do with Wehrmacht fuel income: Will the BARs be met with grens and PAKs or with Pumas? Because afterall superior american resources didn't have to always mean faster/more vehicles or tanks.

With CoH2's resource and veterancy system being homogenized across all factions, this dynamic disappears. Everyone is equally competing for the same style of vet, and the value of resources and VPs are normalized. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly a departure from something that CoH1 did very well.

Supply Yard, Kampfgruppe Center, BARs, demo unlock, sherman upgun, etc. Side upgrades, global upgrades, etc. These were more or less cut from CoH2, but they were crucial components to setting the pace and flow of the game. It is not so simple as just having upgrades for units, but more about providing players with meaningful investments that could make or break their strategy. A Wehrmacht player in CoH1 could easily overinvest in veterancy (in the wrong units even) and get overrun. An American player could dump fuel into fully upgrading their riflemen and be unable to handle a fast Puma. This is a very important aspect of gameplay that engages players beyond their level of micro.

Snipers. CoH1 had a problem with the effectiveness of multiple snipers. CoH2 managed to curtail the dominance of snipers through an entirely different approach. However, I think there could've been better routes of managing the issue. Squads hit by a sniper should be immune/missable by snipers for a few seconds. (I called the applied effect 'heads down!' in a mod once.) Multiple snipers firing on one squad would have diminishing returns of results. However, multiple snipers being microed to hit different squads would still be powerful. I think this is a better route that the popular 'reverse Zeal' of the community mods. The threat of snipers is their sight and damage output.

What you love about COH1 - Where did it excel (balance, commander design, campaign, etc.)

Faction and map design. The depth that the ORIGINAL factions had to compete with each other.
The kinds of resource points that maps were composed of were also much more flexible and dynamic in CoH1 than in CoH2. I struggle to see how maps in CoH2 can ever be improved without having at least the option for low, medium, and high resource points, strategic cutoffs with no resources, etc. Having to juggle custom maps AND mod tools to recreate CoH1 style maps is a little frustrating.

What you love about COH2 - its best features (campaign, faction design, TrueSight, commanders, etc.), whatever you feel they may be

The abandon mechanic. It was a really great idea and it may have worked well for CoH2, but in a lot of ways it just never panned out well. However, the abandon mechanic was the perfect prescription for a component of CoH1 gameplay: jeep and bike pushing. Had the abandoned critical been relegated to units like kubelwagens (or motorbikes, kettenkrads, jeeps, etc.), those light vehicles with unprotected, unarmored drivers, wouldn't be able to push units in cover around recklessly.

The vault mechanic. It's awesome and was a much needed mechanic. However its only caveat is that it was based entirely on executing an animation on an object, which requires a manual command. If there had been a way to have a 'vault-move' that automatically factors in vaults, or vaulting on retreat, it would've been perfect.

Truesight is great. However, like vaulting, there are a few things that have undermined the mechanic. It works great for objects like hedgerows and tall walls that tanks can crush. However, buildings (especially collapsed ones), certain trees, groves, and other uncrushable objects didn't quite utilize the mechanic very well. One of the first things I did when mod tools were released was to remove the sight blocking tag of a wide range of objects. It made many maps much more playable without sacrificing the truesight mechanic, which still applied wonderfully to hedgerows and tall walls. (Angoville, compared to Minsk Pocket, is the perfect case study for this.)

If you could, what you would cut from COH2

It's not that there are things from CoH2 that should be cut, it's more that there are many things that should not have been cut from CoH2. The business model that carried CoH2 through THQ's ultimate demise and SEGA's acquisition is a very real wound.

What would you wnat to carry forward from COH2

There are a few Quality of Life type features to CoH2 that are nice, such as being able to reinforce all selected infantry squads at once.

Where possibly both COH1 or COH2 fell short - where in your opinion is the untapped potential?

The untapped potential is everything...

Both games would benefit from being able to bind your own damned keys.

Bcs they deserve an Nth chance and you shouldn't stay in the past

?

Wrong, one of the best features in the game

You don't vault back over a fence to retreat

Both very true statements.

The problem with Penals has to do with Soviet T1 and conscripts. The problem with Soviet T1 has to do with Soviet T2 and conscripts.

This problem has been relatively unchanged since game launch.

I think it is hard coded that infantry squad entities don't seek cover based on combat or attack move. I have tried to reintroduce it a number of times over the years and couldn't get it to work. I haven't tried in a while though, maybe not even since brits.

I think it is similar to infantry spacing in cover.

There's a whole lot of talk about medium and heavy tanks but I don't think there's about clear consensus, let alone a definition, of what functionally delineates a tank as such.

What 'heavies' were/are panthers struggling to fight?
Were Jacksons struggling against tigers? KTs? Or is it specifically JTS and Elefants?
How about Brummbars?

What makes a heavy tank a heavy tank and what makes a medium a medium?

Are the differences between them functionally meaningful? I argue that they are not. Just like how 'elite' infantry is technically meaningless, trying to balance unit performance against mediums or heavies doesn't seem useful. The mechanics of this game, especially with armored units, are based around positioning and maneuverability. The differences between armor values, penetration, rear armor, just aren't significant enough. Su76s can and do penetrate tiger frontal armor. All infantry at weapons deal guaranteed (deflection) damage.

Also whether or not a unit has a turret does not seem to be nearly as important a factor as it should be. But I think that has to do with reasons that will never be addressed for this game at this rate.