Profile of Doomlord52

I wonder though. What could people want for ost anyway??? any buff even a small one would make em super OP.

It's mostly late-game scaling stuff as well as making T4 more viable (somehow).

OST simply doesn't scale well into late-game right now. Early/mid game grens are pretty good, but once late games units/vet start showing up, their high reinforcement cost makes them incredibly hard to use.

Units like the pak-howie and the scott are essentially tailor-made counters, since their main "weakness" is against moving units, but Grens with their most common upgrade (LMG42) need to stay still to be effective. Similarly, OST relies more heavily on team weapons than any other faction, which again, need to stay still to be useful. Since there seems to be an extreme resistance to nerfing those indirect-fire units, buffing OST's survivability to them (or lowering reinforce costs) would be good changes.

As for OST T4, it simply isn't viable outside of one-sided 4v4 games. There just aren't many situations where the cheaper and earlier T3 units or waiting slightly longer for call-ins aren't better choices than T4.

Need AT? Get a STUG, Pak, Schreks, P4, Ele or Tiger instead of a Panther.
Need armored AI? Get an Ostwind, P4 or Tiger instead of a brummbar.
Need arty? Get an LeFH, mortars or mortar HT instead of a PWerfer. Or use off-map.

The trouble is, i'm not sure how T4 could be 'fixed'. Buffing the panther isn't a choice, since when it does show up, it's quite powerful. Buffing the brummbar is possible, but the micro-tax (attack ground) makes it a very tedious unit to use, and the buffs required for it not to be tedious would make it OP. The Pwerfer, meanwhile, is incredibly situational; and I don't think buffs would change that.

Maybe remove BP3, and have BP2 unlock both T3 and T4 buildings? Or, as it's been suggested before, put a "bolster" clone into BP3+T4, meaning that two problems are fixed at the same time.

/edit

In my "impossible dream world", I'd rather just keep OST as it is now, and nerf everything else down to their level. The initial design (years ago) had OST as "The Benchmark", but with WFA and UKF, that 'benchmark' seems to have moved to either OKW or USF. Unfortunately, the amount of work required to make OST the benchmark again is far too high for the current level of support CoH2 is getting. It would take months of full-time work by the balance team to get it working.

By your logic, a Panther is there to counter heavies.
So it ought to 100% lose vs a Stuart? As a Panther's purpose is not to counter scout vehicles

It's a bit of a stretch the equate LVs to Mediums.

Mediums should have a decent chance against "Heavy TDs", but LVs just don't have the HP, Armor, Pen or damage to really deal with them.

As for the Panther being a counter to heavies and mediums; it's the only choice for OST. They don't have access to 60 range, high-pen TDs (excluding the Ele), so the 220-pen (at 45 range) panther is the best they have. The STuGs 170pen at 50-range just isn't going to work against the IS2's 375 (or 340 in the winter test patch) front armor.

The panther is supposed to be a medium counter, but its being forced to counter heavies as well. If we gave OST a JP4 (or similar), the panther could be nerfed a lot, since it wouldn't need to fill every roll at the same time.

I wonder how he explains Elefant

"Jackson is op, but Elefant isn't ?" they have almost the same pop.

There's more to consider than just pop, or even cost. The ele does have incredible range, front armor, HP, and even LOS (when using scopes), but it's also a slow, case-mate TD with a low rate of fire and nearly zero cannon traversal. Just about anything on tracks/wheels can flank the ele, since its turn rate is so slow, and two of just about anything can charge it head on, since the RoF is incredibly low (you might lose one tank, but the other will get behind it).

The only way to get the most out of the ele is by essentially having half of your units dedicated to defending it, which means your offense is going to be pretty weak.

If we copy+pasted the Ele's movement stats (ac/de-celleration, speed, rotation) onto the M36, it would be an awful unit; going from almost certainly over-powered (current) to probably the worst unit in the game.

However, it's quite easy to work around this by aiming well beyond the target:

If the intended "fix" for the ST is overshooting, can we at least increase its range, then? The current range would be fine if it actually landed where you fire it at, but overshooting that much means losing 5-10 range, and making it even more obvious as to what you're going to do.

For the Sturmtiger, could you give it worldpiercing but require vision for the rocket? that way it improves consistency, but you can't fire it through houses as easily? IDK if this would work

From my understanding, world-pierce is an on/off thing. It either always penetrates everything, or always hits the world. I don't think there's a way to make it conditional.

Another option could be to give it a 2nd rocket type; in reality, the ST had a 'shaped charge' rocket for use against fortifications, in addition to its normal HE rocket. The HE rocket could be the current one, and the new "shape charge" one could have world-piercing, but a smaller explosion and a muni-cost.

Any chance USF can get some kind of countersniping? It's really tiring facing Ostheer as USF and having to deal with 1 or 2 snipers just bleeding you dry and while you can't touch them.

Then OKW would need something as well (other than the kubel). Also, USF infantry is already very dominant, especially against OST. No need to give them even more of an advantage.

I don't think bringing back world piercing is a good idea. The game needs less cheese, not more. It'd be a poor solution that only benefits the user, while making the experience for the receiver significantly worse.

Maybe not world pen, but is there anything that can be done about this?
https://imgur.com/TkoNiRF (guess you can't embed gifs?)

It seems even a bit of yellow cover can block incredible amounts of damage. A direct hit from an ST should wipe all the models, especially of a vet0 con squad.

On the topic of the IR Halftrack, we would highly appreciate some tests or replays and proper suggestions about possible improvements. These are first iteration changes that are a proof of concept most of all. As volunteers we don't always have time to extensively test all changes ourselves and need the community to provide more data to finetune values, and this is such a case.

I've only done tests, so no replays (I can never find a game with the mod up, anyway).

The main issue right now is that the IRHT is basically a worse version OST's "Scope" upgrade, but as a dedicated unit, and with a worse version of the Kubel's vet 1 ability. On paper this doesn't seem too bad, but it just doesn't offer the same utility once you've factored in the price.

Firstly, the vision part. The OST "scope" on something like a 222, 251, or even Stug/P4 offers exactly the same distance of vision, but 3x the area (since the IRHT is only 120 degrees vs. scopes 360). Then you have price; the OST scope is a 60-muni upgrade (that doesn't lock anything out), whereas the IRHT is a 200mp/10f/5pop unit. Then there's the utility; the scope upgrade adds utility to an existing unit. A P4 with a 'scope' is still going to be a good generalist-medium tank, and a 222 can still shoot at planes, snipers, etc. The IRHT can do nothing else other than provide that 120-degree vision cone, yet its use-case (i.e. where you can put it on the map) is exactly the same.

/edit: Yes, we're comparing a non-doc unit to a doc-locked upgrade, but I can't think of any other case in the game where a 60-muni upgrade is 3x better than a 200mp/10f/5pop unit.

Next, there's the 'detection' ability. I'm not entirely sure on the range (there's nothing in the notes), but I assume it's the same as Kubel. This is just bad; getting a kubel to vet 1 isn't a massive challenge, and the kubel's detection is free and lasts indefinitely when toggled. If you happen to have a vet 1 kubel lying around, there's literally no reason to ever use this ability.



Suggestions:

1-A. Increase the vision range; the vision cone needs to be better than 1/3rd of a 60-muni upgrade. I would suggest bumping it up to 85, if not slightly more. The only risk here is that this may provide incredible synergy with the JT and Ele.

1-B. Alternatively, give the IRHT shared-vet. The vision cone could start at 70, but increase by +5 for every level of vet (or something similar).

2. Make 'detection' a vet 0 passive that's always on. At least this way, you can replace a lost vet 1 kubel. Alternatively, massively increase its' range (110+), while keeping everything else the same.

3. If possible, have the (still active) "search cone" do something. Perhaps it could give a debuff to units that are visible and within the cone, but with a very short duration (3-5 seconds).

Some of these suggestions would need to come along with a price increase.