Profile of socom62

Literally the only thing wrong with falls is the first strike bonus and their relatively flat damage profile at range. It is by far the most important thing that makes their DPS higher than say double bren commandos or paras with LMGs. Of secondary concern is faust access and finally deployment and upgrade costs.

I did probably 10 tests and found out that without the first strike bonus upgraded vet 0 falls are basically panzergrenadiers at sub 20m and double bren tommies at beyond 20m. Strong? Sure, but also not crazy OP given their cost. Vet 5 falls are reasonably stronger than vet 3 tommies. Then I did like 20 more tests trying to see how strong the first strike bonus was compared to these units (and double-bren commandos).

Basically with the (vet 0) first strike bonus they literally melt 1-2 models in the first 5 seconds at any range. Health damage was about 40% at 20m. Tommies and pgrens averaged about 25% at 20m. So it was consistently about 60% more damage compared to what pgrens or tommies could do in the first 5 seconds. This is a weird result on it's own because falls are only supposed to get 25% boost. I welcome anyone to try and duplicate this.

However the most concerning thing is that the first strike works over any range because of the damage profile of the FG42. It would be like if commandos had first strike on their brens (which they don't it only applies to stens). So overall I'd nerf the first strike bonus and maybe take a look at the faust (probably not needed).

I personally think the comet could relatively easily be fixed by adjusting two parameters: reducing the cost of the hammer tech and giving the Comet more moving accuracy.

It's almost trivial that if hammer-tech cost no manpower or fuel that the comet would be a good tank (I know call-ins would be affected). It would come out 2-3 minutes earlier and it basically acts as a slightly weaker call-in. This would give it time to vet up before a panther appeared.

Similarly moving accuracy would increase the likelihood that it could win any engagement since it would have the DPS advantage on a chase both while running away or diving in for the kill. At 1.0 moving accuracy it would be a death machine running around the field at full speed killing until it got low, then war-speeding away.

Obviously those are the two extremes but it shouldn't be difficult to find a happy medium between the two. Even if call-ins are available slightly earlier due to the reduced fuel cost of hammer, the trade off is ... well you're using hammer lol. No Heavy REs, no airburst shells, no extra sight.

Personally I would just reduce hammer cost by half to 100/25 and boost the moving accuracy of the comet to 0.75 and test from there. This makes the first comet effectively 580/210 which is similar to what call-ins are now. However since the Comet is effectively half-way between a heavy like the Pershing and a medium like the Cromwell this seems to fit the bill perfectly timing wise. For reference a Churchill is 690/215 and a crocodile w/ hammer would be 740/255.

Even if this is too fast, worse timing mistakes have been made *cough* most call-ins in CoH2's history *cough*. Also even if these changes somewhat revert past changes made by relic there is no reason not to consider them as the game has changed significantly since UKF launch. For those who don't remember the Comet used to have 0.75 moving accuracy and hammer and anvil both used to cost 200/25. However the comet at the time also used to have 180 rear armour, 50 range, lethal white phosphorous, and cost only 16 pop.

There's a couple of things I think need to be properly explained about the emplacement changes (bofors + ability to deconstruct with no refund) because I think in the course of answering these question it will become obvious that these changes need the be re-examined.

First is the elephant in the room: A bofor's anti-infantry capability is destroyed by smoke even in its pre-patch state. Moving infantry are simply too hard to hit with attack ground. Similarly it's anti-vehicle ability is reduced by about half based on some tests I've done in the past. It's not like a t70 or even a flak-track that can move out of the smoke to stay relevant.

So here is the first question: Was there any consideration given to non-indirect-fire strategies at countering the bofors without smoke and, if so, why? Smoke is cheap, readily available to both axis armies via mortars, present on several commanders, and lasts a reasonably long time which makes it not very micro intensive. I personally don't think its unreasonable to effectively require axis players to use smoke when considering balance changes on the bofors.

Second question: Why was the choice made to not provide any refund on the emplacements? Emplacements that see a good number of engagements are basically the same as any other vehicle: they don't bleed manpower and can kill enemy units. However a vehicle can always be moved for free. Not refunding anything is implicitly making the relocation cost equal to 100% of the build cost. Granted a destroyed emplacement can be replaced with something different (like a tank) so the refund cost should be less than 100%, probably closer to 50%.

Third question: Has the balance team ever heard of the "Gambler's ruin theorem"? In essence company of heroes can be thought of as a front-line taking a pseudo-random-walk between the players bases. The gamblers ruin theorem can be applied here stating that in a long enough game an axis player will force the allied player into a full rout at least once (and vice verse). This means that unlike a movable unit a static object is statistically guaranteed to be either useless for parts of the game (due to forcing the front line too far away) or destroyed (due to being routed). The implication of this is that players will not build emplacements unless they can prevent the random walk from traversing over (or too far away from) their emplacements, usually in the form of a sim-city. This statistical result is what generates the all-or-nothing type of emplacement play seen in game.

The solution to this problem is to allow a "retreat" namely a 2nd version of brace which has no cooldown but has a cost. This allows emplacements to "retreat" in the same way vehicles and infantry do: You remove them from play but in exchange for not being wiped it costs resources to reinforce or engineer-time to repair. Since brace allows damage to be done to the emplacement it is still possible to kill it, just less likely (again very much like retreat). Best guess about the cost is 50mp for every 20 seconds. This means it costs 150mp to brace a structure for 80 seconds (first 20 seconds free). Given reinforcements take longer to get back to the front on larger maps this also sorts out the team game vs 1v1 problems.