Profile of CieZ

Another thing on the note of the Tiger Ace is that it has the potential to give you wins that you simply don't deserve. If you're severely losing a game and make it to 7 CP you have nothing to risk by calling in the tank. If you lose... oh well, you were going to lose anyways so it doesn't matter. If you win, well... you certainly don't really deserve it. And as Vindicare and others pointed out, in an even 1v1 it has such an unfair potential to "break the line" so to speak.

Also the change to each faction starting with 490 manpower is... well goofy. As I may have mentioned in this thread, or another on this site, Germans need to start with 40 more raw manpower than Soviets because Combat Engineers are worth 240 MP instead of 200 MP (pios). They're the stronger combat unit, and as long as Germans start with 40 more raw MP, then the "real" starting MP is equal. Granted 40 manpower probably won't decide the outcome of a match, the fact that starting resources are not equivalent breaks one of the core foundations of any RTS.

Its not a +240 increase. That was only in the leaked notes.

What went live is a lump to 500 increase.

Ost had 30 more MP at start iirc. So this patch gave more MP to Sov, than to Ost.
Sov still has the 30 fuel headstart.

No. The typed patch notes on the official site are wrong. Both sides got +240 exactly(at least that is what it was supposed to be). Soviet starts with 490, Ostheer start with 530. This is because Combat Engineers are valued at 240 manpower, while pioneers are valued at 200 manpower. Effectively the sides actually start with the same amount of manpower, just that Ostheer have 40 more "raw" manpower since pioneers are a worse combat unit.

That being said... this change still helped Soviet significantly more than Germans. Conscript spam is still alive and honestly just out of control, plus snipers, m3s, maxims all come so much faster now while German is still pigeonholed into Gren spam because MG42s are almost completely useless and your tier 2 tech comes only a few seconds faster.

Also the manpower cost to tech is heavily in Soviet favor. They pay significantly less for their tech structures than Germans do once you've factored in advancing your Battlephase + building the structure - not really sure why this is the case... the only argument I can see is that German tech buildings are more "generalized" but honestly Soviet tech (t1 + t4, t2 + 3) compliments itself so well that you almost never have to build more than two total buildings.

Edit: ^ actually going to correct myself on that. Once you factor in molotovs and/or AT grenades everything evens out, and is actually slightly in favor of Geraman - unless German goes t4.

Edit: after testing it looks like both sides start with exactly 490 manpower... doesn't make any sense to me. This just gives soviet a flat MP bonus over German.

Barring 0CP Commanders, the MP chage does very little for Ost meta.

You still need just as many Grens to protect each Support team purchase you make.
As everyone likes to point out ad nauseum, they need Gren protection to function.

So instead of going 3Grens + Support, you now go 4 Grens + Support, or 5xGren.
Maybe better players can swing it for 3 Grens and 2x Support but I find that quite risky and you cripple map control.

Doesnt help you tier any faster for more diversity, since those hinge on Fuel income, which is unchanged.

Also Sov now not only has the extreme early onfield CE advantage while Pio builds T1, but retains it when Sov builds reduced time T1 or T2, whereas before Ost took that time back with onfield time during BP1. So now Sov is the one with more onfield time.

TLDR:Just means more Grens or a more sustainable T1 support for Ost. Thats all well and fine, but for Sov it means they now have the onfield time advantage, can leverage the MP for an earlier Tech (especially if you hold off on Con HQ upgrades), AS WELL as spamming more Cons for their own Support. I foresee M3s becoming very big in this patch, with the unfortunate side-effect that they force Ost to build even more Grens because you absoluteky MUST have tons of Grens, everywhere, with Faust, to hold them off, which is a detractant from leveraging the extra MP into Support (which are sitting ducks for M3s).

This is a huge Sov buff.

And please, stop with the claims that a Sniper is a Maxim counter. Range and LoS are only 10 difference iirc, as well as Snipers AI tendency to move incloser than it needs to, make it function only under perfect circumstances, and even then the 6man Maxim can soak 1-2 shots and simply reposition into building or LoS with negligable MP cost.

Sov Sniper vs MG42 however, is an other matter entirely. Same range/los issues, but compunded for Sov advantage due to being only 4man and hence a bigger MP drain per model lost, quadratic loss of survival, and vulnerability during longer desetup.

Ost Sniper puts a hurt on Guard and Shocks, not on Support teams. Same is not true of Sov Sniper, which Sov can infact now quite happily and readily field earlier and more sustainably. Thereby, again, ultimately validating more Gren spam. Atleast with RNade you have a remote chance of nuking a non-microed Sniper, whereas your Support teams would be jist sitting ducks.

Flamer change also favored Sov. A Sov flamer hits a 4man Ost unit as if it was 4 Cons, whereas Ost Flamer hits Sov units as if they are 6 Cons. I think the flamers should be made asymmetric with Sov staying as it is, but Ost changed to a wider template with less DPS.

Altogether, this patch has been HUGE for Sov, with many indirect consequences such as reversing the onfield advantage due to build times, making Sov Garrisons even more effective vs RNade as compared to Molotovs, mqking Sov teching faster AND more diverse and less onfield time detrimental, improving Sov flamer more than Ost, whereas for Ost, all it means is 1-2 more Grens or +1 Support team.

I look forward to SNF this week very much to see how the pros handle this with vanilla commanders.
Idgaf about Commanders tbh, its a lost issue.. Id rather focus on mainline balance.
Makes me doubly angry that as many have pointed out, this change seems to be almost deliberately leveraged for 0CP commanders which can make enormous use of the earlier MP, and which ofc are DLC. See the hidden hook?

I dont mean to be Ost biased in all of this though reading back on it it does seem like QQ.
I just seriously have concerns about what this does for vanilla earlygame balance.
I see very little advantage from this for Ost, whereas plenty for Sov.
Many may perceive that Sov was so severly underperforming, that these changes "equalise" that, but I dont share that perspective.
Others get sidetracked into how these can be problemaric with 0CP Commanders, but on that point too, as I said, its a forgone issue. To my mind, the MP/buildtime change is a deliberate change to sell more DLC 0CP Commanders. I dont think that is a coincidence, that 0CP Commanders benefit feom this the most, and that magically the most prominent CP0 Commanders just happen to be DLC.

Beer and popcorn for sure for SNF. Twill be the judging and ultimate testing ground for what these MP/buildtimes do to the actual baseline game.

+1 I completely agree with everything in this post. gonna be a really rough patch for Germans. Sad because before these changes it looked like the game was going to be more balanced than ever with the vet changes. then this stuff had to come in and throw everything out of whack. really sucks that the mg42 is so useless. it being strong would really help with the increased Soviet presence on the field

Your post didn't mention anything about actual gameplay... you pretty much said "yeah, in my opinion vCoH has cooler graphixxxxxxxxxx and explosionsssssss so it iz better ya!"

I mean... okay... cool? I'm glad you have your opinion and I'm happy for you that you like vCoH but this post really has nothing to do with "selling" out or why, from a gameplay mechanics standpoint, you think vCoH is a superior game.

Sort of ironic that you say you don't care about graphics, but then go on to write an essay about vCoH > CoH2 BCUZ GRAPHIX...

Overall I'm very happy with CoH2. Sure the balance has been thrown off by this patch and the DLC model that nearly every modern game is going to these days can be annoying but fun fact! The devs, especially the balance devs, probably have ZERO control over the fact that they are forced to put out commanders as DLC instead of free content. Game studios, generally, have very little control over how their product is marketed/sold/etc but this is a discussion for a different post.

The MP increase might also translate to an earlier Pak and Pgrens for Ost, since both are very MP heavy. I do agree that the uneven increase (+250 ger, +210 sov) seems out of place, considering soviets already start with a hefty fuel bonus.

A "quicker" Pgren squad or PaK comes at an opportunity cost though. Without getting into too much of the actual math since it would be too complicated based on upkeep and all that let's put it this way:

A soviet player was already able to get out a 5-6 minute T-70 WITHOUT the increased manpower bonus. These T-70s will either come more quickly (pick doctrine right away for extra fuel) OR they will come at the same time, but with an extra conscript squad on the field. If, as the German player, you are holding your new "extra" manpower back to save for Pgrens or a PaK it means you're having to fight that 4th conscript squad with the same exact number of grens you had during this patch (3 or 4). If you do not save that "extra" manpower for a PaK or Pgrens and instead invest it on... well... grens since they're the only tier 1 unit that isn't completely useless against Soviet Industry you now have higher upkeep AND a 5th gren squad which frankly... probably won't help you much. So basically, this allows the Soviet Industry player to capture, retain, and pressure more of the map while keep the same T-70 timing OR pushing that timing to what is literally uncounterable. If you're completely unable to tech to tier 2 AND get schrecks out before the T-70 hits, you're pretty royally screwed (and let's face it 1 PaK without schrecks around isn't going to do jack to a T-70).

Either way it feels like a lose/lose for Germans, specifically when it comes to fighting against Soviet Industry. And this didn't even get into how much more difficult it will potentially be to even identify the fact that you're playing against Sov Industry, which is a very crucial part of countering it.