Profile of TheMachine

From the perspective of a caster, saying OberKommandoWest over and over again is getting really lame. It's long, awkward to say and it sounds way more of an English word than a German word, which kills half the bad-arsery.

I think half the reason why Ostheer caught on so well was because of the Eastern Front Armies mod for Coh1 referred to them as Ostheer.

Today's game is a 1v1 match between Vindicarex as the Soviets and SturmTigerGiap as the Germans.

Here we've got Jesulin as German versus Twister as Soviets on Semoisky Winter. This game was for an ESL Evening cup Semi Final and what an awesome game it was!

Third caster is Lifer.

Assuming they are balanced and priced accordingly, how would giving Soviets infantry based AT be any different to Germans having Panzer Shreks?

This rant was going to be included in a video project, but in order to keep it more concise I had to cut it out. *clears throat*

Due to the nature of the Soviet faction design certain units are very map dependant. This really effects and hinders the Anti tank options for the Soviets. On the base faction the only 2 hard hitting AT which are dependable against the Heavy German armour are the Ziss Anti Tank gun and the SU-85 tank destroyer. Both are quite powerful; boasting good damage, penetration and range but they are both very slow and immobile. The Ziss(though lacking compared to the Pak) has a limited firing arc and must pack up, reface and re setup before firing again. Whilst the SU-85 isn’t quite as immobile it’s still quite slow and its real weakness is not having a turret so it also has a limited firing arc and needs to rotate in order to fire. In a map such as Minsk Pocket or Langreskaya both the Ziss and the SU-85 perform rather well. Those maps are quite open so they are able to fire within their full firing arc, and with very little shotblockers or objects to hide behind they are harder to get flanked and amushed. This also means that the SU-85 is able to ruthlessly chase down enemy armour.

Let’s compare this to a map such as Stalingrad, Kholodny Ferma or Semoisky. These are urban maps, so naturally they are spawling with lots of garrisons, heavy cover, hedges and other shot blockers. This means that immobile anti-tank weaponry will not be effective. Even if a Panzer4 is taken very low but backs around a garrison, if the Ziss or SU-85 trying to chase after it around the corner to land the killing blow it, they will be too vulnerable to being flanked or circle strafe that it’s just not worth it. So it pretty much means you can’t use them effectively apart from a few specific spots on the maps, but it’s just not worth it.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, units and abilities varying on their effectiveness on certain maps is a good thing to do for a game because then it promotes and rewards better reaction, strategies and compositions. But the problem we have in Company of Heroes 2 is the Soviet has no choice, their only Anti-Tank on the base faction is so map dependant. If the Germans if they are on an Urban map then they won’t depend on slow immobile AT such as Stugs, Elefants or the Pak 40’s. Instead the Germans can have a powerful yet mobile Anti-tank weaponry in the forms of their PanzerShreks on their Panzer Grenadiers, or Panthers and even the Panzer 4. But for Soviets, nope. That’s all they’ve got. They don’t have any infantry based AT, and the only mobile AT they have is the T-34/76, but it’s simply not a very powerful tank against German armour it’s more for anti-infantry. As a result Soviets are so dependent on their Commander specific late game tank call ins. Because they just no mobile AT, a lot of times the Soviets will just sit around and defensively camp with Ziss AT guns, with no intention of actually being able to destroy the German tanks, just hold them off until they are finally able to earn enough Command Points to call in a IS-2, Sherman or the T-34/85 call ins. With those tanks finally Soviets are able to play aggressive and chase down enemy armour. It really just slows down the game much more than it should.

I think Soviets really need to get some form of infantry based AT. There are Guards, which even despite being Commander specific are absolutely dreadful as AT. They’re essentially a one trick pony with the button that is more often than not instantly negated by popping smoke. I think the dynamic would really improve if Soviets were to get a land-lease Bazooka upgrade on Penal Squads, or perhaps have an Anti-Tank Partisan Squad on. Though not ideal because Guards commander specific they could can upgrade to some bazookas or even just have all 6 members with PTRS rifles instead of DP’s and button. To balance out the Bazooka upgrade could require Tier 3 or 4. This would give Soviets not only as a means for mobile AT, but it means will Soviets have a way to counter German tank destroyers. Again it’s not Soviets lack of AT on the core faction, it’s their complete lack of versatility which they suffer from on various maps that results in their dependence on late game call ins. Either this needs to be addressed, or maps that prevent Soviets from using any form of AT on their base faction should be reworked or removed from the automatch pool. Sooner or later the availability and spam of heavy tank call spam that dominated the meta now will be nerfed and when that happens it's going to cause problems for Soviet AT on urban maps.

Waiting for the late game tank call ins instead of building them from a tech structure is also a pretty big problem that’s caused by a lot more than just the lack of mobile at for Soviets. Switching Tech structures is far too costly and not viable. Quite often the Soviet will go for their tier 3 Structure to get a T-34/76 to deal with infantry and as a soft anti-vehicle measure. From there the Soviet will then need an additional form of AT as the T-34 will scale out. Their most intuitive option would be to build the tier4 structure and go for a SU-85 tank destroyer. However this is just simply not viable. This is because instead of having an unlock for the Tier3 and Tier4 structures the Soviets just have a huge initial fuel cost to prevent really early rushes of tanks. This works rather well and is pretty much in-line with the German fuel cost. It’s also a good system because it means that both Tier3 and Tier4 are available at the same time so you can go for either one depending on your composition and play style. However but what this absolutely neglects, and entirely prevents is swapping the Techs. If you want to go from a T-34 or an Su-85 to vise versa then you’ll have to spend 120 fuel for the building, and then another 100 or 120 fuel for the tank themselves. So to get an SU-85 from a T-34 it’s going to cost you 240 Fuel. That’s a pretty huge deal just to get one very map dependant tank destroyer. You know what else costs 240 fuel? An IS-2 heavy tank call in. Or almost a T-34/85 call in. Or 2 Shermans.

There’s just no reason to bother tech swapping when the price is so high. Soviets really need to have the fuel cost lowered significantly for tech swapping. After spending 120fuel on Tier3 or 4, they other tech structure should only cost about 20 fuel or so. You’re still going to be to be paying 140 fuel for an SU-85 so there’s no reason why that would be too strong and it's still probably going to lose to a Panther. This is also a similar situation with swapping Tier1 and Tier2. It’s just far too fuel intensive making it not viable which causes Soviet play to be much more linear and one sided then what it should be. We want to encourage interesting unit mixing and compositions, not damning Soviets to their fate of spamming maxims.

TLDR: Soviet AT is too commander dependant because of how map dependant Ziss and SU-85 is, being weak on urban maps due to being immobile and inability to chase.