Profile of MarcoRossolini

And again, coming from the boohoo allied crowd this change seems rather insane considering it would kneecap the IS2 and KV1 which actually have fairly decent top speed.

Wow, you really are stuck in fanboy land aren't you.

The reason Blitzkrieg and Overclock are so powerful is they let you reach your max speed quickly, as opposed to waiting for acceleration.

Not since one of the more recent patches ago, Blitzkrieg was nerfed to only effect acceleration, making it useless but in line with everything else, but that change was unaccountably reverted and now blitz increases speed as well.

Lewis guns for Soviets? interesting...

The Problem - The meta today currently rewards going for either heavy or superheavy callins, in particular the Soviets but this is apparent across all the factions (apart from the US). This results in a race for the heavies and a predictable outcome to the game. What's more these heavy tanks simply out perform medium tanks in everyway. Whilst this is reasonably justified by their price, it doesn't make for interesting gameplay. This needs to change.

The Proposed Solution -
The Solution I advocate is for heavy tanks and heavy tank destroyers to have their speed drastically nerfed and abilities like blitzkrieg removed. For example, I would recommend having say the IS-2's speed of 5.0 reduced to perhaps 3.5 or even 3. For units such as the KT and Elefant however who are already very slow, the changes would be minimal perhaps only a drop of .2 or .3

The Effects -
The most obvious result would be that Heavy tanks now couldn't as effectively fight a war of manouevre against an enemy using medium tanks as effectively as they can now. The current differences in speed between medium tanks and heavies simply isn't large enough to give mediums an edge. (besides German mediums having blitzkrieg) Currently a heavy, once flanked, can simply reverse, making it difficult for the mediums to continue effectively flanking it and just shoot its away out of trouble. This shouldn't happen. The proposed changes mean that heavies that are out of position or have been effectively flanked will now really suffer the consequences of such a mistake.
As well as this, the strategic mobility of these units (game wise) will be hurt as well, as no longer will it be possible to police VPs with a heavy or multiple heavies who will be able to reach a VP under attack relatively quickly. Such a change instead will allow mediums to use their mobility to out manouevre poorly.

The results
Medium tanks have a role into the lategame, rather than simply being a stepping stone to a heavy or free veterancy for one. Their comparative speed will give them a significant advantage over heavy tanks in one particular area.
Heavy tanks can remain powerful, but will fall to skilled play and will have a clearer role which will have its own pros and cons, as opposed to what it is now where they are just pros with no real disadvantages.
Diminishing of the call in meta, as players realise medium tanks now have a particular role to play which no other unit can do, since heavy tanks are now slowed, hopefully we shall see more diverse builds.
Skilled play encouraged more, with heavy tanks now not the one way to victory and mediums given a niche, hopefully we shall see mediums used with greater skill and effectiveness in certain situations, rather than just calling a heavy tank and it being a repeat of the Villers-Bocage Tiger Ace missions in vCoH.


Interested to see what else you chaps can come up with, it mightn't be a particularly elegant solution, but I'd like to think it would do something at least.

Edit: Herpaderp, managed to put this into bugs instead of balance, mods could you move this thread please?

Me thinks you wouldn't want each army unit list to be based entirely off of 43-44, because that would necessitate a pretty big change to the unit list of Ostheer as well.

Honestly you could put 42-43 factions in the game in the form of the Africa front forces and still have it work if you balanced the units right.

Umm... there would be absolutely no change in the unit list currently.
The Soviet faction as it stands now is a dead ringer for late 1943 offensives to the Dniepr (No T-34-85s or ISs, but SU-85s and SU-76s in plenty). It's kind of something that Relic did kinda well, the units are all right year wise, its too bad they chose a time period where the Germans were getting their heavies in numbers and the Soviets were still trying to get their new hardware off the drawing board (Early version of the T-34-85 were appearing but not in any great numbers).


OH are exactly similar. It's the WFA armies that have put the time frame forward a year.

Arguably, the most balanced time period of all the Eastern Front period (gameplay wise I mean, it'd be the time where I'd set my CoH2 game) is 1942. The Germans are rolling out the PzIVs and StuGs with the long barrelled guns which can punch through T-34s handily, but at the same time the Soviets can do the same thing. The only outlier is the KV-1 but the long barreled guns were already causing problems for it at that point and KV-1S which had lighter armour was also rolling out, which further improved the German's chances. There are no Tigers or anything to really screw up the balance either.
Plus, 1942 is the do or die year for both sides.

Its a shame Relic screwed it all up so much, 1942 has way more options. Afrika and the Far East would both be balanced and effective options because the super heavies aren't there and even then they don't have monster guns or anything like that.
But instead, to please the fanboys (because Axis tanks are only cool in 1945, when their fuel is being siphoned off to run other tanks) they had to go for 1945 and make half the possible factions in the game utterly useless.