Profile of Cyridius

Tbfh your rig is really low end. 4 Gigs of RAM with a GT 610 and a 2x2.4 GHz CPU, you shouldn't expect to run any game released within the past 2 years with good graphics settings - if at all - and you'll be having a shit time playing releases this year on minimum.

Bait with infantry to draw the KV-8 in. 2x StuGs can hang back. If you get the doctrine with spotting scope it's better because he'll doubtless try to fight back with SU-85s and if he pushes forward a little you can roll back and draw him in. Ally should flank at that point with his own tanks.

Then again it depends on how bad you've get it. The second you see an SU-85 on the field it should be your priority to hunt it down.

That remains the plan. We're however working on an alternate plan with someone who I think will deliver something even better, and hopefully quicker. However even once that's up we'll still have the Steam Leaderboards planned as well.

That's good to know. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.

I think it's pretty well known that Steam's slow to act when the product they're working on isn't a Valve game.

Related to this, I also think Sov Muni expenditure also could use increasing.

I don't really see how. The only reason Germans use so much Muni is because they have a shit tonne of upgrades to slap onto their squads. Otherwise they're identical. The MU float is a byproduct of a less combat effective infantry unit(When taking into account upgrades).

Huh? He never said that...

That's exactly what he said?

As it stands right now, the entire metagame is focused on spamming HMG teams. There's no need for infantry when you've got extremely durable, high damage units that totally nullify other infantry.

Almost every game I've played now for weeks has been centered around the fact my opponent is spamming the shit out of HMG teams. Whether I was playing as Germans or Soviets, I was dealing with the same thing. This last patch has exacerbated things massively now that the Maxim is no longer a straight up counter to the MG42.

This creates a tonne of issues. The primary one is that it's boring as hell. I have no problem beating this strategy. In fact, having played against it so many times I find it laughably easy to manhandle. Unless I'm against an especially good player, of course. The point I'm making however, is that facing this strategy nails me into a single form of game play. Any deviation is a loss.

This problem is a huge issue in every single game mode. It's present in 1v1, but it scales ridiculously well in 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 and it makes the games monotonous, repetitive, and generally frustrating. In the case where you overcome this strategy, it's a shitty game because it posed no challenge. In the case where you lose to this, you get pissed off because you feel you were cheated by a really shitty way of playing the game.

And that's what it is. Shitty.

The problem stems from a number of notable issues. I should note that I'm noticing MG42 spam way more than Maxim spam. But that's more than likely because I'm playing more Soviet than German lately so it's just more likely for me to face it due to higher number of games.

The teams are simply too cheap for what they do. When I play Germans my first unit out is an MG42 and I can have one out by the time my Soviet opponent has started building his second Conscript - if not earlier. This is, frankly ridiculous.

While an early MG42 should be an option, it shouldn't be immediate. The first unit I meet these days is more often than not an MG42 running to its position and setting up in some building. For how effective both HMG teams are in the game, they should have a substantially higher cost. Due to the incredible levels of durability for both squads due to the model count, the 240MP cost is a no-brainer investment.

The only barrier to entry is on the Soviet part, where you have to ignore your M3 to get your Maxims. This is why you see Maxim spam less frequently. The choice is between your Maxim spam cheese, or your counter to your opponent's MG42 spam cheese.

The other problem that's causing this is infantry damage. There is no reasonable counter to set up teams that doesn't involve you blowing a load on them every time you see them. A simple flank does not work. When my Conscripts or Grenadiers run up to a HMG team and get behind them, they should be fucking wasting them, yet they can be plinking away for a long time before my opponent is dead. In that time I can either be focused to death myself or they can just set up somewhere else. Or the oh-so-wonderful third option that is all too common, is that they have another set up team somewhere further back.

The point is, that flanking is totally unrewarded. The TTK is far too high. If we were talking about Pioneer squads or Combat Engineer squads(With no upgrades), then, yeah, I'd be more inclined to say standing there for so much time is acceptable. But that is not so. Even elite infantry like Panzer Grenadiers can be standing there for a long time waiting for those models to drop, and a Pioneer squad is literally incapable of flanking because the 5 models out DPS them.

This game's time-to-kill in infantry vs. infantry combat is what many would argue as "catering to the casuals". It's significantly higher than its predecessor where the only time you'd have such high TTKs is if both squads are behind green cover. Not so in Company of Heroes 2, it's way more forgiving of players not paying attention to their squads.

This is the root cause of the HMG proliferation issue. It takes too damn long to kill a HMG team once you flank them. Where you should be rewarded, you're horribly shit on by the game's mechanics. In CoH2, the answer they seem to give you is to use grenades to make up for it. This isn't a good solution. Not only does it force you into buying certain upgrades, it forces you to buy certain units specifically for their grenades. The only reason I buy Penal Battalions is so I can throw Satchel Charges on set up teams. While I'm all for a system where you need certain things to counter units, I shouldn't need to go up a tier and spam munitions everywhere so I can benefit from a flank the game should reward me for by default.

As you can see, this leads to a number of knock-on issues. Many units get over looked because they don't fit into this metagame. Strategies are pushed to the back because they can't be incorporated into the MG-spam/counter-MG spam games. Units that would otherwise be useful are overshadowed.

tl;dr

The current metagame of HMG spam is making the game boring and monotonous. It's not fun to play against and I don't believe it's fun to play with. HMG teams aren't costing enough and they aren't enough of a risk-reward investment. Flanking is extremely unrewarding and the damage output of infantry squads is a massive contributor to this. The product of all of this is leading to sterile, repetitive match ups that are locking out interesting strategies.

This issue needs to be acknowledged and addressed.