Profile of elchino7

I think when people are talking about Penals being reworked into a PF analogue, they're (Or at least I'm) not saying they should become PF (In that they start out semi-useless but outscale their counterpart massively/can be given Shrecks), but that they should be a similar type of unit to PF, a mainline infantry alternative that doesn't necessarily have to replace the "regular" mainline. In the same way that people (generally) will build PF as a supplement to Volks, rather than their entire infantry force being PF.

I think outside of 1v1 and in a lesser way 2v2, making your PFs your whole infantry army is entirely fine, specially when you are not forced to fight with sandbags as hard as in the smaller mode. Specially when you expect the game to go for long and where PF will shine.

Not sure how much space design you have for a non semi Elite/Elite oriented Penals when Conscripts exist. Soviets are the faction which starts with arguable the weakest squad and therefore has the smallest mp pool power (initial mp + starting unit value). Anyone who opens ups with a tier requires a 2nd engineer for capping purposes. Let's say you make T1 cheaper or even free. Why bother with Penals at say 260 (mod team is already considering them at 280mp and moving some of the vet 0 DPS to vet1) when you could just go conscript + sniper instead. You are already relegating capping power and you'll get a unit which can't outgun Volks or Grens in a timely fashion and you would be at number disadvantage.

When were Penals a PF analogue, exactly? Was this when they had the ability to upgrade with two Flamethrowers? I'm not disputing you, I'm just not sure to what you're referring.

First rework and it was only 1 flamethrower. They became pseudo Riflemen (weapon profile and dmg). Hell they had one of the strongest vet (and they still have) in the game in order to let them "scale". They received hoorah as well. They tried to "fix" the unit in the same way they tried with Conscripts for years, before the 7man upgrade (give them better vet and hope for the best).

I agree that Penals aren't quite "The elephant in the room", but I do think they're an unit without a real place. Turning them from this strange "Semi-elite AI that can become a semi AT infantry" squad into a viable mainline alternative to Conscripts I think would be a good move, and would leave room for their replacement with a more focused squad in tier 1.

Also, I'm not Vipper, but I'd suggested a more AT-focused Guards squad as "that AT infantry squad" One or more extra PTRS, Button, and/or some sort of anti-vehicle utility ability on top of this, but without DPs, and definitely without a real snare. Perhaps there are other options, the same concept of AT guards who instead of PTRS have Lend-lease Bazookas, or even Panzershrecks (Though Shrecks on a six man squad in a faction with merge is perhaps a bad idea). A third option might be to make the M42 nondoctrinal and put it in tier 1, but that would be rather redundant, and I don't think it's such a fantastic idea.

When they reworked Penals (3rd time) into PTRS, i didn't like the idea and would had preferred to keep them purely AI, with only AT satchel and giving T1 the 45mm AT gun. But at this point i think it's too late for that to be the case.

I don't believe the mod team is gonna try or rework the units so hard for them to flip concepts in a 180° way.

It really is surprising how decent CoH2 is today, given Lelic's rather insane balancing decisions early in its life. It's certainly not perfect, but it's far better than anyone looking at the game in 2014 could have imagined it would ever be.

Did all the "good" decisions come after handing development to the Community Balance team, or did Lelic decide to stop drinking mercury before then?

-The balance before Osstruppen/AG/Partisans/Elite/Industry was fine thought a bit too 1 dimensional in the way to play it.
-Post nerfs towards Elite/Industry was mostly fine with the exception of how boring it was to play Ele vs -ISU if you were to tryhard. Same with call ins vs call ins tanks.
Up to this point it was basically OP shit vs OP shit.
-Post nerf to Ele vs ISU, best time to play 2v2 vanilla OH vs SU. "Balance" fair state.
-WFA broke the game from mid 2014, all the way up to their reworks and UKF release and subsequent balance patches which put the game in a fair state just about first quarter of 2017.

Problem with previous balance philosophy was basically: we can't balance DLC before they are released and we later are gonna give triple nerfs and buffs and hope for the best. Oh, we are also not gonna list everything in the patch notes and you hope that Cruzz is there to make the work, make comparisons and look for the full list of changes.

As an example lets take a look at Ostheer. T1 has nice units like mortar, sniper, grens but non of them are really essential, T2 is essential always. Because it provide you with AT gun (which in my opinion is the most important unit factions can have).

In the current meta. Let me remind you not too long ago, when Ostwind was OP prior to nerfs, skipping T2 was the norm.

I do not think that comparison with situation before the July patch is an indication of anything since the soviet faction had completely different design.


MP cost could easily be lower. This design allows earlier access to m3 and sniper compared to
your suggestions after T2.

or one could simply add a pure AT infatry in T1.

1- What you have in mind is a full rework of not only T1 but Conscripts as well as spreading different type of upgrades and grenades. If the whole plan is gonna be making Penals to be analog to PF, i'm saying that that design is not gonna work cause it was already implemented before. Yes, a full rework on many more units is gonna open more possibilities and might make this concept work, but i don't think a Conscript is open up for realistic debate.

2- It doesn't matter when you field the M3A1. You need 60 munition + been on your territory + the time to upgrade. You hit around 3:30, faster if you rush exclusively munitions but going T1 and building an M3 means lower territory capture.

How long till a 222 arrives? This is expecting the best scenario of facing Assault Grens, cause Gren/Ostruppen openings nullifies it. Worst if you play team games.

OKW can open or react with PF or plainly go for Flak HT. If you fail to wipe things up, you basically lost the game.

Which opens the only alternative of playing risky with snipers and your only realistic option is getting a commander with the 45mm AT gun. But snipers don't accomplish much against all the meta units we have atm which are mobile in nature or have an increased number of models.

3- Be precise and realistic. What AT infantry, with which weapon upgrade.



At the end of the day, this whole discussion and exchange of ideas just shows that Penals is not the Elephant in the room.

I do not "always try to reduce everything to a 1on1 comparison" and I certainly did not in this case.

The only think I have pointed out is that, contrary to claims T-34/76, does not suck a point you agree (at least in small modes)

Why in your opinion T-34/76 any different than Cromwell or Sherman when a Ele/ISU/JT exist?

The faction behind the unit, the accessibility and the tools they have to deal with those vehicles.

Worst case scenario as USF: you might be able to yolo with your surviving Stuart using skills, smoke with Shermans, smoke with Scott, push with Jacksons using AP shells or use infantry with zooks.

Worst case scenario UKF: with vet (IIRC free) the AT guns are mobile, AEC stills have the stun, FF with turrets and tulips exist, Cromwell can smoke and unlock turbo, they can get access to Comet, they have PIATs.

SU: PTRS are piss poor AT on late and more so as assault leaving you with short range satchel, you can't flank with SU76/85s and that leaves you with the T3476. You don't have mobile, fast, on demand smoke.


Swap the T3476 with any medium from other faction and the unit is completely fine as they have other tools to complement it with.

I suspect you mean 3vs3, 4vs4

I you opinion is it less cost efficient in those mods then the Cromwell, Sherman, PzIV?

Teamgames include 2v2.

The worth of fuel/muni is inversely proportional to the amount of players been added, while manpower is a variable which becomes constant regardless of mode.

If the nerfs to ram goes through, i think all 3 of those tanks brings way more to the table, vanilla or doctrinaly, even if they cost more. At least in what matters and how team games are been played.


Not sure why you always try to reduce everything to a 1on1 comparison of units when the units which supports them around are completely different.

In a world where the ELE/ISU/JT doesn't exist, the Su85 is more than enough to deal with everything else and the T34-76 change is perfectly fine.

I disagree. These units are very interesting to play with and fight against. The more static battles that they encourage is a welcome break from the "run and gun" of 1v1.

Which is fine as long as everyone has enough tools non doctrinaly to deal with those.

USF: AT infantry, mobile smoke with Sherman, turreted TD with AP shells to boost it's performance. As well as utility light vehicle which if they survive mid game can blind/temp immobilise vehicles.

UKF: AT infantry, mobile smoke with tanks, late game tank speedboost, turreted TD with rockets. Same regards in terms of utility stun with light vehicle.

SU: the way they have always dealt with heavy TDs is ram + offmap. or ram + Mark vehicle + mass Su85 and hoping for the best. Before they nerf them: Guards button + offmap or for a short period of time FMT (sprint) + mass Penal satchel.


The ISU152 is getting nerfed and i wouldn't mind even reducing the range of the AT shell to 60 as well. If this means that say both the ELE and JT get their range reduced to 60 and have them need to be "deployed" with heavily reduced speed and only retaining some rotation to gain back that extra range.

IF this is the case, it would still keep your mantra of "static" battles.

And that irrelevant to T-34/76 performance. It has been argued that T-34/76 is useless without ram. My point is that this in not the case and the unit cost efficient with or without ram.

It's not as far as team games performance we are talking off.