As an reminder about VCOH history; the original Calliope did have a working main gun, but it also cost 125 muni per volley. The later Calliope had free arty but no working gun and no smoke.
Also the calliope, while long ranged, was not actually very effective at range. So to do some real damage you had to get in closer. In that sense a Hummel and Priest were much more effective. Farther firing yet still mobile.
Vaulting went right, except for the fact that it can't be done on retreat, only as a direct player controlled action. Also the way squads turn into the human centipede when vaulting can be silly and usually an invitation for squads to get wiped.
TruSight went right, except for the fact that it's actually kind of glitchy with how it affects the AI. LOS blockers act as invisible shot blockers, which leaves things like tanks rotating their turret because a tank drove past a tree or the smoke from a wreck causing things like ATGs to decide their only choice is to rush forward to melee range. Not to mention most maps have LOS blockers in seemingly random/unintentional positions. The way a single tree can cut off the vision of an entire army advancing can be pretty silly. Having units walk 'into' an LOS blocker and disappearing/becoming blind is also kind of silly. For smoke, sure, but on corners of buildings and hedges it's silly.
Snow and mud worked well, except for the fact that infantry squads can't figure out how to avoid them while pathing, and they effective act as molasses for squads when one entity gets mired in it. The (arbitrary) placement of deep snow and mud on maps probably ruins these mechanics more than anything.
Ice works well, except that there's no deep v shallow distinction for ice, which leads to tanks being swallowed by the earth because their front end was on 2 inches of ice.
Blizzards, well, never worked well. They were a sort of cool feature, but for multiplayer gameplay it never played out to be, well, fun. I feel that if blizzards were ever to happen, maps should just start in a blizzard for the first minute or two, and then never occur again, or happen at like the one hour mark. They occur too often and for too long for any game that utilizes Victory Points, such as all of automatch.
A lot of Band of Brothers is cool and great, but it felt too sanitised, not enough swearing, not enough talking about girls at madame so and so, etc. They're young men, with other young men, yet they act perfectly.
Plus there's this feeling the E Company was the finest company in the ETO... which is okay for the esprit de corps of the unit, but you don't see other units being lauded for being able to do XYZ.
Overall it left me with a not particularly nice taste in my mouth, despite the combat being great.
I think you are projecting a bit too much of our own times on that period. People certainly swore less then than they do today. People swore less 30 years ago than they do today. It just wasn't acceptable behaviour. As to "girls" the army tried hard to keep this from happening. And frontline units would have found little time to try it.
As to Easy Company, chalk some of it up to Esprit de corps and to their officers. They really did have some very good ones who survived with them through combat. Richard Winters was by all accounts a gentlman and a gifted leader of men. The unit was hard trained by Capt. Sobel. And it contained leaders like Sgt. Lipton who would go on to become a successful corporate executive after the war. Were they the best? How do you even measure that? But they certainly felt they were.
Band of Brothers is a story of a remarkable unit. I am sure others could be told. And I would guess some of it was sanitized, but if so it was more likely by the men as they recounted the stories than by the producers.
I'm not entierly sure, it didn't really made much sense why X infantry was bullet proof but snipers could hit it even on retreat while another while still resilient to bullets seemed to be wet from gas and popping like matches when flamer was near.
Removal of damage tables improved infantry combat a lot. Target priority was a bigger concern.
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PE G43s and BARs could suppress on the move with the ability.
You can keep damage tables and not use them. But removing them means you don't have the tool around when there might be a situation where a tweak to damage tables is what is needed for balance.
And G43s were worse that suppression. They were a pure snare ability. Units would slow even on retreat.
You forgot the trusight system, which adds a lot of strategic options that didn't exist prior in COH1.
But I think that shows some of the weak points. They changed too much. There were all the new tech (vision, vaulting, reverse, winter/blizzard, abandoned vehicles) coupled with the improvements in the UI (seeing all the units and their status). All of this was cool.
Then they changed the commander/call-in function, the way the resource points worked, and the upkeep costs and popcap limitations. That isn't cool or not, it is different and may or may not work better strategically. And the game progresses much faster through the early and mid game stage, which I think is a negative.
If you had plopped the COH1 Wehr and US factions into the new tech, the game would have still played like it was COH2. Plop them into the new strats and it would look like a mod of COH1. Together it is COH2 but even more different.
But then I am not sure they needed to change the factions so much. Too much of it is difference for difference's sake. Why do factions need different tech AND different focus of units? And added to all the strategic and technical changes? It plays so differently from COH1 that their similarity is more one of scale and unit choices. (Switching to Latka Gravas' voice: "you have your tank, your support weapon teams, your squads.")
It didn't have to be so different and I think it would have been better had there been less difference.
Best way to deal with Jackson is same way as Snipers, use shot blockers to prevent it from kiting.
And they could just fix USA pop cap abuse by giving the vehicle crews themselves the same pop cap as their tank, so when they exit, nothing would change..
I am not sure how the current meta truly stacks up... but prior to this patch it was certainly the case that a full 100 pop US late game army was not going to stand up to a 100 pop axis army with much more survivable heavies. harden the cap and you probably have to lower the pop cost and upkeep of US units.
Because medium donks with massive HE couldn't do shit against inf. Sherman, t34, PIV were quite garbage against inf and a waste of resources. Now they are actually useful, thanks to this smart change. And I think it's here to stay.
Tip: Don't rely on your anti-everything doom blobs too much, they might be wiped out in the blink of an eye.
Think of it like this... The models within a squad are programmed to look for cover when they are in an area but also to be a certain distance from each other. The old spread out method was better for advancing over open ground but when a squad tried to hid behind cover, those retards Sasha and Ivan always stood out in the open because they didn't want to get closer to the other guys behind the wall. Now they would get pinned as if they were in the open and not in green cover, causing the rest of the squad to get pinned (and to hate Relic and ask for better cover-seeking). BTW, other factions also suffered from this.
Better cover seeking was granted (along with 4 man weapon crews to Ost) and all was great and happy in the world of COH2 for about a day when everyone figured out they were now getting squad wipes.
But it seems you can't code for both in different situations, only for one or the other.
I would realy like COH1 had a future. The absence of it and the cheaters are the reason for which I don't try it again. But it was a good game.
It is ironic that now that there is no future there are also far far fewer cheaters.
One of the coders of a common maphack stopped updating it prior to the last Steam patch, so there is no readily available source of maphacks.
What is left is a bunch of barcounters. people who are on voice together and when matches start they make sure their start bars are the same and if not they "cancel". In effect they are playing AT teams vs. randoms. One top 10 random 2v2 guy was actually streaming as he did this. (They are cheaters, not rocket scientists.)
It is all too bad because the tools that limit cheating in COH2 are just as available now to COH1.
I should add that I do hope COH2 gets better. 8 years later and building off the base of COH1 there is no reason it shouldn't have been. I am looking ofrward to the next patch and maybe I will start playing it again. But I have been saying that for a bunch of patches already.
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