Profile of Gbpirate

They haven't abandoned it. They've just utterly failed at developing it.

Just look at the Winter Balance Patch.

It's taken them TWO AND A HALF YEARS to address model positioning/bunching that's been making the Wehrmacht unplayable against anyone with any semblance of skill due to instant wipes.

And every major balance patch over the past two years has been buffing the Wehrmacht and OKW because of how utterly wrong the USF faction game design is (Riflemen: five model squad with insane durability that rewards the player for rushing directly into enemy fire and into an enemy infantry squad's face in a tactical game where all other factions have to use cover to have any chance).

As someone above said, Relic are, in fact, their own worst enemy.

They haven't had a single proper game designer on their team since DoWII.

• Instant squad wipes from AoE
  
• Broken formation mechanics
  
• Instant first model death upon engaging any threat even in cover (WM 4-man squads with no armor or health boost to compensate)
  
• ENTIRE SQUADS THAT DO NO DAMAGE (WM Pioneers, OKW Volksgrenadiers)
  
• Units that lack survivability to such a degree that certain units simply couldn't be used for ages (222 still takes bullet damage)
  
• Utterly unusable upgrade distribution (such as the Panzerschreck upgrade being on Volksgrenadiers for TWO YEARS)
  
• Anti-tank guns hard countered by tanks (this years after releasing a game where AT weapons properly snare vehicles)
  

The list goes on and on and on and on and on. All these kinds of issues have either been fixed extremely slowly in previous major balance patches, are about to be fixed in the Winter Balance Patch, or have yet to even be addressed and may never be.

Any other game developer failing this hard would've been laughed out of the gaming industry ages ago.

Wow there's a bit of bias here and a lot of hyperbole that really isn't justified.

No faction has been unplayable, really. Sure, the model positioning has been an issue and it's taken Relic way to long to address it but to say that Relic is utterly failing is a bit harsh and unwarranted.

They're certainly not failing because they've got DoW3 on the way and *hopefully* CoH 3 being planned and on the way. There's all that $$$$$ from SEGA. Not to mention the beautiful city of Vancouver. Have you seen their web page? https://www.relic.com/#pictures

Good Job, Bears!

@OP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co

In my experiences, the Panther is best used like a mobile AT gun. You keep it rather far back, with target vehicles only turned on, and wait for shit to start rolling towards it.

As many people have pointed out, the panther isn't that great at what it does and it costs a lot both for the tech getting there and the vehicle itself.

That being said, it's best to go for T3 and keep your T3 units alive.

In an ideal situation, I'll get my T3 armor out, then my call in tank - whether it be a command P4 or the Tiger - then buy the T4 tech in the HQ, then wait a few minutes, then build T4.

The reasoning behind doing this is due to multiple factors:

1) It's almost always better to spend your fuel when you can rather than waiting for something
2) The Panther is a great tank
3) You're hopefully going to win before you build T4

You have a healthy composition of vehicles that is good at tackling all targets: infantry, support weapons, vehicles. Only weakness is concentrated artillery guns, blobs of handheld AT, and bad micro on your part.

One of my favorite late game compositions is using the blitzkrieg commander and having
2x Stug III G
1x P4
1x P4 Command tank

gives you panzer smoke, stuka CAS, some other fun shit. Tac Movement, I think? Anyway, this is a super potent combo. Stugs are great at taking out tanks and will pen shit up to an IS2. That's when you need bigger guns.

The stugs aren't heavily damaged by rocket artillery.
The stugs have a good HP pool; they can take a lot of hits.
They have a good rate of fire.
They are cheap.

If you're 40 minutes into a game, however, and you've got 250 fuel in the bank and you've got the manpower and you've just lost a stug, buy a panther over a stug. The increased popcap may make you shuffle your infantry unit composition a bit but the Panther has some better traits than the Stug including

Higher armor - takes less damage
more HP - lives longer
moves faster - both 1&2
Has a higher penetration value - more likely to damage enemy armor


The Stug, however, has about reloading time that's half that of the panther's so you're firing nearly 2 shots on the Stug for each Panther shot assuming that you're stationary and the target is staying within firing range and within sight.

The panther is better, though, for its mobility. It allows you to, if necessary, flank an enemy tank, specifically one damaged by a teller mine. The Panther, however, is a luxury. You need to have vetted, upgunned infantry, whether it be LMG42s and/or a schreck squad of pgrens, probably 2 machine guns (map dependent) and at least one, possibly two, other teamweapons (mortar/AT gun). The Panther is very expensive, and wasting your fuel on teching in the 32nd minute right before you've lost a stug, p4 cmd tank, and a vetted PaK to an enemy push isn't the best time to tech up. You've got to be conservative with your fuel and stock up so if a loss occurs and you need something on the field immediately, you have that option.

The strongest wehr gets is when all of its units come together. I wouldn't recommend diving any tank into the enemy portions of the map, but if you've got to do it, the panther is a better choice than the Stug. When you've got to flank an enemy tank, or want to be super daring and hit a katyusha, the panther is your better option due to its speed and survivability if its engaged.


http://www.stat.coh2.hu/squad.php?filename=panther_squad_mp
http://www.stat.coh2.hu/squad.php?filename=stug_iii_squad_mp

I hope my rambling helped

I would just like to say that I appreciate all of the work that the community has put into this patch, and to Stormless/ A_E for hosting the King of the Hill weekly tournaments.

I'd also like to give a shoutout to the moderators for keeping this thread on topic!

and I'd also like to say that if Relic ends up not liking how this worked with the patching and ceases to update the game on a regular basis, it is my opinion that having an official coh2.org competitive mod would be a great way to keep the community alive, keep the game fresh, and keep people interested in coh2 for the next few years before coh3 comes out.

u all