Good suggestion, which could be implemented regardless of what else may be done to LMGs, as it makes teching a bit more consistent.
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I think there is potential in making Merge more viable for reinforcing Sov specialist infantry in mid to lategame, therefore meaning yes, the Cons dps remains behind LMGs (G43s are so marginal atm, I think that is a Commanders adjustment, not a fundamental Cons vs Grens issue), but atleast they can cheaply reinforce and help maintain onfield presence.
In theory, at least.
Perhaps increasing Merge range, or ability speed, or granting a small temporary DPS or survival buff immediately after the Merge?
I like this approach as it's a way of asymmetrically maintaining con utility through out the game without tweaking damage (etc.) values and potentially messing up the early game. The easiest way to make merge more useful would probably be to just allow the merged con to gain the armor value of the squad it's been merged into.
I use merge regularly but it only ever feels like a mediocre gain in manpower as it's often quite situational in it's effectiveness. Merge feels most useful in topping off weapon crews before retreating a con you were going to retreat anyway (which can also be risky) or for reinforcing expensive, low armor units like penals. I opt most often not to merge with guards or scripts when reinforcing in the base as I'd rather have the armor. If merge gave the merged con the armor value of the target squad, it would be significantly more useful and feel less gimmicky. Commanders with no elite infantry would get the short end of the stick though :/ |
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This friends, is the glorious tale of how interpretive dance saved Holland from the Nazis and their impressive coordinated motorcycle attacks. |
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I find penals to be too gimmicky right now. Satchel is one of the lamest abilities in the game and is essentially a micro check. Enemy sees it in time, complete waste, if not, he loses a squad. I'd like to see satchels removed or the timer increased to make it an anti emplacement only ability and then have penal armor slightly increased or cost slightly reduced.
Overall I'd like to see the build times of soviet t1/t2 drastically reduced and the build times of t3/t4 possibly increased to encourage early game soviet unit diversity. Right now, building an early tier building is usually a huge loss of map control as it delays a conscript with cost and removes a combat engi from the field for a long time (less of an issue in team games). |
I think there's a lot of good points raised in the OP, and the subsequent comments. I just do find it a bit amusing that it seems people are remembering vCoH the way that older people talk about air travel in the 60s'.
"Oh we'd all get dressed up and wear suits / fancy dresses to fly. Flying was civilized and an occasion."
CoH had/has it's problems and a lot of them are being ignored in discussions like this.
For example the ranks. This didn't stop people from complaining when they lost a match. It didn't stop them from rage quitting and flipping out. Or running to the forums or our email and complaining that the game was unbalanced.
The difference is that right now because balance is far less refined than it was after 6 or 7 years of vCoH more people are willing to listen. Also we're doing more frequent balance updates to refine the game's balance than we were 6 years on in vCoH, so it gives people new stuff to blame for their loss on a regular basis.
Further a lot of that rage was directed into the chat channels.
Marco you may have had some great experiences in the Rome chat, but let's not kid ourselves that the chats were refined book clubs with gentlemen exchanging ideas and debating strategy like civilized people. Sure that may have happened once in awhile, or in the early days but the majority of what went on there were the same dozen or so people camping out calling each other racial slurs and just doing their best to be the trolliest troll on the internet.
The existence of multiple profiles meant that there'd be a revolving door of 1 person saying the same thing as 6+ people.
Then there was the Berlin chat which THQ kept getting threats from the German authorities about because it was often infested with neo-Nazis who spent their time talking about cleansing the country of the minorities (mostly the one that the Nazis don't like).
I do think that finding a way for people who want specific type of custom games to meet is a challenge we want to figure out. But people have already raised some issues with the lobbies. It was a hive of team killing and unfair play. Not everyone mind you, and maybe you never had that issue. But a lot of people would find themselves in 2v2 games where the 3 other people were all working together.
vCoH is a great game and those things you raised were generally great features. But they weren't without drawbacks and the community wasn't a united happy bunch who never complained or fought or accused each other of hacking or the balance of being terrible. If anything I'd say the community is better organized now, provides much better support to new players and has a lot of tools (ex Twitch) to share their passion for the game.
+1 A lot of you obviously have fond memories of coh1 lobbies but while I am in no way an elitist, I avoided them like the plague. I played a lot of auto matches and even more custom games but lobbies and chat were so often filled with trolls and such over the top racism that I just couldn't stomach it after a point. |
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I haven't played too much with the unit but my initial impression is that while cheap, it feels pretty weak. Doesn't soak damage well, doesn't do well against vehicles and its infantry damage doesn't really make up for its lack of mobility. |
its true the buff is only around the building, but i think the whole idea is a bad onoe.
i think the cost should be reduced drastically (possibly replace fuel with munitions) and the FHQ should only heal and reinforce. this is still extremely useful and would be equivalent to 2 german bunkers. healing and reinforcing still gives a huge advantage to units that are near the FHQ.
i think buffing damage is a terrible choice. it makes no sense for weapons to deal double damage just because theyre near a FHQ. AT nades are able to 1 shot scout cars, vet mortars practically 1 shot hts, and the 45mm AT gun does as much damage as the ZiS, but with a faster rate of fire. if relic insists on improving units dps near the FHQ, the better choice is to increase their accuracy. this makes avoids problems with 1 shotting but could still double a units dps.
i dont like the armor buff either, but it doesnt result in as many stupid situations as the damage buff. i managed to steal a pak, get it to vet 3 and place it near 2 FHQs. i then 1 shotted a full hp panther. theres no way you can justify that kind of a buff.
Agreed |
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So, I think that while related, this topic could definitely be split into two separate parts: 1) The core design of 0cp units and 2) The balance of those units. I'm not really sure if the units themselves are balanced at this point (stat and timing wise) but I think that the 0cp concept actually fits in CoH2.
CoH1 and CoH2 seem to be fundamentally different in the way each approaches commanders/doctrines. In CoH1 there was a very cool chess match that would take place that revolved around both fuel and commander choice. It often made sense to hold back your commander choice and make the decision only after you had a good idea of how much fuel was available to you and also what your opponent was doing. If you just went left side Armor Company right off the bat, and then got nailed with the Langre pin while your opponent went defensive with grens, paks and shreks, your doctrine choice was poor and you had basically nothing from the doctrine to help you. Or, you may have intended to go for a defensive med bunker strat but quickly noticed that you were controlling fuel very well and your opponent went rangers so you instead choose terror to ramp up the pressure a bit. All in all, the system was quite fun the more in depth you got with it but it's main weakness was that if one strat became too popular in the meta (defensive med bunker camping) and it only had a couple of solid counters (infantry arty for example), then over time the meta became very stale and people were loath to use out side of the box doctrine choices to try and combat the go to strats.
In CoH2, I find that your doctrine choice relies much less on what your opponent is doing, much less on your map control (as you can still get fuel/munitions from strat points or just build caches) and much more on the execution of an original plan and adaptation of your chosen doctrine to your opponents unit/commander choice. There are some exceptions to this of course, namely needing guards as a stop gap as Soviets, but even then, if your original plan is: I want to shocks, get shocks, make sure t2 is up in time for fast half track... Then it's pretty easy to avoid being hit with a suprise unit that you need a doctrine choice for. This system, and the way most commanders are built, means that use and timing of the abilities is more important than the specific doctrine you've chosen. For instance, if your game plan is to rush a p4 and a commander with panzer tactician is the best compliment to what you want to do, even if you get cut off from fuel and your opponent goes t2 with guards, you can still have chosen panzer tactician from the get go, get a scout car or half track, and still make use of the ability despite being "countered" by your circumstance. This makes commanders in CoH2 all in all more flexible and the meta less likely to become stale imo.
This brings us to 0 CP commanders. With the CoH2 commander style and less of an emphasis on commander choice as counter or timing window choice, I actually find the idea of 0 CP commanders to fit. Choosing a commander at second 1 and playing to that style from the start isn't often that different from commanders that you pick at 1 cp and only adds flavor to the doctrine. Currently I'm truly enjoying using Osttruppen and I pretty much never feel like I chose the wrong doctrine to counter something my opponent did but rather that I just executed wrong and maybe didn't build a pak when I needed to or something to that effect. The Soviets get squeezed a little harder with this in that they rely more on doctrines to fill in gaps that are missing from their tiers and the weakness of conscripts as the game progresses, but even then, they can tailor their game plan to fit a predetermined commander choice.
Honestly, I liked the CoH1 system more for it's strategic depth, but I've also really enjoyed the flexibility that the CoH2 system provides. The balance of the new units themselves is still up in the air, but I think the concept of 0CP commanders is okay in the CoH2 format. |
According to the patch notes of the hotfix, supression of the MG42 got a slight buff.
So first game I approach this MG, horrays it as usual and am stopped short of passing it. Seems like that the change might be working, buttt...5 men get killed before I can retreat. Just as fast as you can say: 1-2-3-4-5.
Random? Or was more than supression changed?
Did anyone else see something like that?
Off to try again...
Were you by chance in negative cover? Point blank and in negative cover (on a road for instance) and cons are shredded by mg-42s. |
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I think Relic may have thought that the FHQ would replace elite infantry by just buffing the crap out of normal units in a localized spot. Soviets tend to be more dependent on doctrinal call ins and abilities than their German counter parts but with the way buildings are vulnerable to rng and with the hefty cost of the FHQ, it's way too risky to use early game and if it's only viable late game if you're floating a ton of resources, it doesn't do much good as a 0cp ability.
If I'm right, and the FHQ ability was intended to replace elite infantry in it's level of usefulness, then I think there is a way that can be achieved without exclusively relying on the FHQ building. What if, like armor company in CoH1 could reduce the production times of tanks, the 0cp FHQ ability also cut the build times of all soviet base buildings in half? Or perhaps instead, reduced the build times of all infantry or support weapons? In this way you could rely on slightly more quickly produced normal units (still need to wait on the resources to build them) in tandem with in the field reinforcement to replace elite infantry.
As I mentioned before, I'd like to see the FHQ building itself changed as well. If you changed the FHQ building into a 250 mp (0 fuel) ability that could be decapped, and only provided healing and reinforement, it would be less annoying to deal with as Germans and less susceptible to rng as soviets; if you made that change to the FHQ AND added one of the above mentioned production/build time reductions, then you would probably have a very solid replacement for elite infantry and a very viable overall doctrine that didn't feel as frustrating to play against. |
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