Profile of ThoseDeafMutes

IMO, HVAP ammo should be a vet 0 ability for USF AT guns and also Jacksons. That would go a long way to making them better at countering heavy armour - but still at a cost. Particularly in the long haul when attrition starts taking its toll and you have fresh units to replace some losses.

Though Soviets did have a lot of gear and designed many tanks (though many got outdated fast). But there are still many decent tanks that are worthy for the game. The current Soviet faction is rather stereotypical, and frankly, badly designed. There is always the possibility of another Soviet faction with different gear.

I proposed a "Polish Army" faction based on the late war (1944/45) Polish forces under Soviet command. But while Relic evidently doesn't mind putting in 50 flavours of Germans, I'd personally prefer to avoid doubling up on factions where possible.

OKW's design doesn't really make that much sense to me. They have reduced resource incomes but it doesn't seem to matter that much. A puma can arrive in about 6 minutes. A luchs can arrive on the field in about 10 minutes. A panther arrives in about 17. This is actually faster than Ostheer can field a panther. In fact if Ostheer attempts to field a panther they will probably lose.

After the first vehicle purchase however they have to wait a long time for a second vehicle as the resource penalty kicks in. This results in them having a zillion manpower to spend but no fuel to get more vehicles.

Since they have this surplus of manpower, a lot of units cost only manpower since it would be impossible to maintain their army otherwise. Obersoldaten are the biggest offender in that regard.

This makes holding territory considerably less important for OKW than other factions. That's why rushing straight for an enemy cutoff at the start of a game rather than back-capping is so effective.

That's where the big error is in my opinion. In a game that is almost entirely about capturing and holding territory, one faction doesn't actually need to capture and hold territory as badly as the others.

I am definitely not the first person to suggest that maybe instead OKW should have a manpower penalty instead of a fuel and munitions penalty. They will have fewer units, but the focus on map control will be restored and the focus on unit preservation will be higher than ever.

Making them such a gimmicky army in the first place was a large mistake. And actually I feel like even USF could stand to be slightly more "conventional" in its core unit structure. Lacking core units like mortars and standard MGs in the early game always felt wrong, even back with Brits and PE in CoH1.

I honestly think the best opportunity for a diverse range of German allies has passed us. The Ostheer should have had several auxiliary support commanders representing Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Romanians on the Eastern Front.

When WFA was announced I was pretty disappointed that Relic had for the second game in a row decided to make the alternative Axis faction "More Germans". I was hoping we'd get the alternate teams being a part of the war that allowed for two new nationalities. Moving into the future from here, though, it's not clear whether we'll get more factions - it's already hard to fix up the competitive balance with 2 factions per side. But whether it's for CoH3 or for the next major expansion, what would you like to see?

For me personally, I'd like a North Africa / Italian campaign, adding in the Italian army and British army. The British could get different commanders from the Commonwealth - Australian support, Indian support etc. There would be a couple of exclusively UK ones too. The Italians could be designed to get German support in the "late game" of their faction, but I'm not sure about how this would work organically really. Late-game British could include lend-lease US equipment. Maybe others will have better suggestions.

The other natural suggestion is Pacific theatre with USMC vs Japan. I'm not sure I'd be such a big fan. It seems like there's not that big of a place for armor in these battles and if Relic didn't want to split the player base, it may not work out so well trying to integrate these factions so heavily integrated with navies and island hopping with the base game. Then again if it was just "CoH3" that wouldn't matter so much.