Does anyone know if they've touched up the campaign at all since release? I'm not really a multiplayer guy, and I remember the campaign reviews being less that glowing at release.
they have done quite a bit.. i cant recount it all because i havent beaten the campaign but here's some things I can personally attest to...
- All the random map unit encounters no longer result in actual battles, its all auto-resolve only, this reduces some of the tedium of the campaign map
- The AI actually attacks you now and you stand a real chance of losing your units to the AI using map tactics if you're not paying attention
- A lot of bug fixes
I still think its not a strong game mode but compared to launch its playable now and some of the scenarios are good
Oh, maybe I should give the campaign another go. Aside from the bugs and lack of explanation of... anything useful, the constant grind of battles was just boring.
Seems like a bad game design decision to ask every 2 minutes 'Would you like to play this skirmish for 20m? Or would you like to auto resolve and miss out on rewards?'. So, waste 20 minutes or get handicapped... great choice. It's not like losing those skirmish battles was remotely possible either since the AI was a dunce.
Ah weird, is that what it was like. So now what happens is that if you encounter an enemy company on the field it just autoresolves. All the fighting happens when you attack towns. Some towns are skirmishes, pretty short battles that pull from a pool of gametypes, some towns are bespoke missions, and some towns you don't fight at all, they just get captured when you blow up their defence on the overmap.
+1
Options
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I’ve got it installed to give the campaign another go but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. So many games to play.
Having tried to get into the Italy campaign I just don't think its very good.
Given the amount of Italy I owned I felt like I should have more everything available. It really seems like the best choice early on is to pick one direction to attack. I never felt like I had enough companies for the front, or enough support elements. I really enjoyed having a battleship I could use every three turns, and bomber every 2. Looking at the enemies strenght its clear if they attacked they would wipe me off the map but they don't, probably because the game devs realized that the player wouldn't have enough companies to defend everything they captured.
I also got tired of the auto resolve system for company meetings. I get people complained at having to fight every one as a skirmish, and yeah that would be annoying, but give me the option at least.
0
Options
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited March 27
Yeah that's what is putting me off.
Grand campaign maps are only good if you put in the effort or you have a good hook. This was going for Total Wars hook with the real time battles and just like Total War if you just auto resolve those all the time you're just playing a mediocre grand campaign game because the effort wasn't put in on that layer.
they bit off more than they could chew. my team game partner played the closed alpha of CoH3 over a year before it released and he said the campaign shipped exactly how it was in the alpha
otoh even though it was short I enjoyed the dak campaign, felt like a normal good RTS single player effort
0
Options
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I just don't know why they felt the need for the grand campaign.
Just to a linear set of story missions like every other CoH and the DAK campaign.
Relic just did a big stream for the April patch. New BG tech trees:
The new DAK group is all about improbable amounts of stealth and will either be very good or very bad depending on the player, the new UKF one is pretty much leftovers from the Nazi campaign, but still very welcome.
Also coming in the patch: three new maps, map veto, surrender vote, various pathfinding improvements.
E: Should be noted that these two BGS will be completely free, at least on launch.
Looks like the CoH2 brits are back in full! Although it does seem like most of the BG is scraps from SP. How viable it is depends on the timing of some of the units like the 2pdr, and how survivable the emplacements are. In CoH2 they were trivial to counter after all. Also need to see what the arc of fire and turn rate on the 17pdr emplacement are like. The supply truck is a weird idea that seems more likely to give the enemy resources to me. Will also be highly map dependent.
The DAK battlegroup I'm somewhat concerned about. It doubles down on areas that DAK/axis are already very strong in - namely stealth and intel/sight. Stealth on Panzerjaegers is already questionable but now they're applying it to basically everything (including, somewhat ludicrously, tanks). It's incredibly frustrating trying to fight an enemy you can't see after all. Typically, stealth had been limited to elite or very fragile units (e.g. commandos, snipers) but it seems to be creeping out into more and more units in CoH3.
I just don't know why they felt the need for the grand campaign.
Just to a linear set of story missions like every other CoH and the DAK campaign.
I am the person who wants a Rise of Nations/Dark Crusade style campaign for every RTS.
Give it to meeeee. Disappointing to see that the implementation here wasn't great. But I love the way the world map ties everything together -- gives a nice bit of context to the battles beyond skirmishes, but sandboxey enough to keep it fun over time.
the british one looks cool and i think will replace indian artillery in my lineup... archer solves a problem, supply truck looks really fun and unique
no strong feelings on the emplacements, most of the other faction emplacements hardly get made anymore
the dak one.. hard for me to say... they're saying recon dumps on it... but what all can be recon... does a dingo count as recon? if its that easy to blow up the stealth then it might be bad... im not familiar enough with camo mechanics to conceptualize what its going to be like
0
Options
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
It's an interesting and unexpected turn of events. I'm probably more worried about Relic's future as a result. Sega seemed like a decent publisher and I'm not sure how well Relic can stand on their own - their recent run of games hasn't been great after all. CoH3 launched way before it was ready, had too large a scope including a console launch, lacked basic features (e.g. replays) until recently and has a haphazard at best monetization scheme thrown on. AoE IV seems to be regarded better, but was published by Microsoft. Before that you only have DoW3 (the less said, the better) and CoH2. I think they would have struggled to surivive without the backing of a publisher in that time.
Generally speaking, Relic are a studio specialising in a niche genre that's difficult to monetize. They rely on a proprietary engine (Essence) to make their games which further increases the cost of development. I'd very much like to see them succeed independently but the odds are stacked against them.
+2
Options
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I’m expecting a Bungie situation. ‘Woooo we broke free of the evil overlord publisher! Were free! Ooohhh hey Sony, got a fat stack of cash?’
Except Relic will get a smaller envelope of cash. My guess is from Team17 or Paradox.
brits mostly left alone
dak cheese nerfed but tier 3 buffed
american ISC nerfed almost everything else buffed
wehr buffs across the board but probably deserved...
The new BGs are not free unfortuantely, they require 10000 'merit' each to be unlocked. Saw that one coming a mile off. It is the 'free' currency but it's slow to earn.
Edit: Turns out they were just slow to apply a 100% discount to them.
Pretty disappointed with more thoughtless nerfs to the brits, both direct and indirect. Some of them just baffle me.
The CWT truck upgrade nerf is hilarious - rushing it early was just about the only time the AA upgrade ever got used. I can't think of any scenario where I'd want to specifically build the AA truck at that stage of the game. It also begs the question as to why the call in still costs fuel when the major benefits of the truck have been removed.
Can't have the Humber getting any veterancy before being rendered irrelevant I guess. Classic "bug fix + extra nerf" double whammy. In my experience the fragility of the Humber already greatly limits its impact.
Matilda armour nerf is an "axis had trouble with this" nerf. The tank is lumbered with low speed and a weak gun for the sake of its armour, but have to remove that too I guess. It's not like axis were particularly short on counters either. Add on the buffs to the StuG, Panther, PzIV and Tiger... The Matilda was already a losing play in an armour fight and this change just pushes brits further towards skipping everything right up to Grants. Perhaps look at why Crusaders have stopped being used?
The Churchill change simply confuses me. On the one hand, it probably meams that standard Churchills will turn up earlier. On the other, the whole battlegroup was built around tech skipping and call ins? Go down the left tree with the Crusader AA for mid game tempo and the Churchill for late game, with the 1 cp vehicle recall/refund ability to swap any of the light vehicles used while stalling for Churchills. The right side of the tree is just a mish mash of random, largely underwhelming, support abilities. The Churchill itself was mostly underwhelming. With the tech skipping gone the BG loses a lot of its identity.
More generally speaking, US seems to have got hit hard in a few areas. Somewhat baffled by the change to the Hellcat. It's too good at trading up into armour apparently? Isn't that literally the point of an endgame tank destroyer? They also locked its flanking speed ability behind the Mechanised Support Centre. Still can't understand why the flakvierling remains untouched.
bear in mind with the new free battlegroup the matilda can now be overrepaired substantially and its by far the beefiest standard tank in the game (it was even before the patch)
too glass half empty view of this
glass half full: grant is the most busted thing they ever put in this game and it went unnerfed
a lot of times you'd see the matilda built right after tier 3 to stabilize the battlefield and buy more time for grants, and then force augment the grants
I think this is a really good Patch. I'm not sure losing 20 armor on the front and sides is the end of the Matilda. I really liked that unit, it was really good at punishing Axis players who did not invest into T4. The Grant did get a small nerf in that the cost of the upgrade to call them in was increased.
Brits also need their units balanced around the fact that you can call them off the field. The Humber is real good IMO, and you can refund it once the real scary at shows up.
IDK about increasing the cost of ISC upgrades, the main reason I went it was the cheaper BARs so I guess it doesn't effect me.
Flakvierling now has to exist in an environment where the USF can get better Bazookas and the Brits can go Aussies to get a 2pdr out quickly.
The new British battlegroup is really fun, haven't gotten to try the DAK one.
I just don't really see why the nerf was needed. After all, the whole story of the Matilda II is that it was so heavily armoured that the germans had to rely on 88's to knock it out at long range. Stuff like this irks me a bit because they really wasted the chance to have a game based on something other than the "german engineering" myths. Hell, I'm still somewhat annoyed that they can't get their Churchills right (they call it a Mk4, clearly modeled as a Mk3, no idea what gun the stats are trying to match).
I did play about with the aussies a bit and found them interesting. The Aussie Light infantry is what sections wish they were early game. Being able to build defenses themselves is huge. They aren't cheap at 300 though and have obvious weaknesses later. I tried the defenses but I don't think they'll be that viable, or at least the bofors won't be due to timing. The 17pdr emplacement fares better on that front.
I maintain the flakvierling is the most broken thing in the game.
i played some AI games then i went online and did a couple of wehr 1v1s... first game got stomped by someone much higher than me who was playing standard brit, second game had a really long win against aussies
i dont really "get" the new british battlegroup... im not sure i like it... i think archer is great but the CP cost is pretty extreme... tiger damage but stewart armor for 7CP burried in the less desirable tree
the supply truck is hilariously slow and if your opponent kills it even 3 seconds after it starts its return voyage they get crazy resources... ridiculous risk for 200mp.. feels like a joke ability
the aussies were underwhelming to me... for 300mp they're kind of potatoes... i guess it just depends on how you value their wall... the activation ability is pretty nifty though
ukf is rich in strong infantry options and im not sure aussies stand out.. i was able to hyperdunk on them pretty much all the time, the sappers were way scarier
the 2 pounder seems really good but i'd have to see the stat breakdown to understand how and why they're a better choice than 6ps... maybe purely economy? which is fine. they did very well against my panzer 4's which kind of surprised me
got my tiger out.. easily handles everything except the archer... but my god that archer PUMPS
I do think the Archer needs a CP reduction, or just stick it in the Company Command Post.
Edit: Aussies are find. Against humans I probably wouldn't call in more than 1 but faster capture, building defenses and the ability to call them in right from the start without even T1 is nice.
JusticeforPluto on
0
Options
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
They added Australians? I gotta try skirmish at some point.
I do think the Archer needs a CP reduction, or just stick it in the Company Command Post.
Edit: Aussies are find. Against humans I probably wouldn't call in more than 1 but faster capture, building defenses and the ability to call them in right from the start without even T1 is nice.
In my still limited experience, they seem to do real well after getting the global upgrade and getting some vet in them. Mostly because it upgrades their sharpshooter ability to slow and insta-kill a model, but the various buffs seem good too. They're really lacking in combat utility though, despite getting scoped rifles they can't shoot flares like IS can, and of course don't have grenades, AT, and can't repair.
E: I haven't had a chance to use it on DAK light vehicle spam, but the 2 pounder is much weaker that the 6 (which...makes sense) but you can get it out early without teching, and they fire very rapidly. Their vet ability sounds good, but they seem pretty slow to level without the research.
I revised my opinion of the Aussies downwards after using them a bit more. They're good for tempo but ultimately cost too much. Normally, sections come so slowly that DAK will always be able to field more panzergrens faster than you can sections. This was originally balanced by panzergrens requiring vehicle adjacency to really work, but Relic decided to throw that out for the most part and never adjusted the earlygame to account for it. Aussies arriving early and coming with a capture speed boost can make a big difference. Unfortunately they're also incredibly vulnerable to the flamer 250. The Aussie upgrade is also too expensive and their ability is also a munitions sink.
I agree that the Archer needs a CP reduction, 5 would be closer to the mark.
The DAK cloak truck is as broken as you'd expect. The first strike bonus from stealth means they can spam panzerjaegers and use them as an anti-everything unit to great effect. It'll only get worse as players figure out what works best with stealth, and the cloaking vehicle costs so little that losing it now and again hardly matters. Breaking core mechanics, like being able to see your opponent, rarely works out well. The core concept also stretches the believability of the setting beyond breaking point. It's pure science fiction. In one game I had a bloody Tiger stealth capping a VP. A Tiger!
I did actually win that game to be fair, overturning a 300 point deficit to win by 11vp in the end. First off, it was on the new 2v2 map (eindhoven), which is again much too small and poorly designed for CoH3. My ally landed a few good Bishop barrages on the stealth blob, and they were very predictable in that I saw the Tiger call in coming a mile off - and had prepared a 17pdr before the Tiger could do anything. Ended up with two of them, one vet 3 and another vet 2, opening up on the Tiger any time it turned up. With such a small margin of victory though, the axis could have won it if they'd played even slightly better - like actually taking and holding the side VP I barely had any defence on, or building indirect fire, or following through on any attack to clear off the 17pdrs.
its hard to really encapsulate what aussies do well even on coh3 stats but I think I understand now that the aussies standout attribute versus sections is that when upgraded they perform better in cover to cover engagements, especially at long range
you can simulate the scoped enfields on cohstats but not the cover accuracy bonus
now, tommies get the recce package also, but I think theirs is weaker. in this apples to apples comparison, aussies are about 20% stronger while costing about 12% more. add in the marksman ability and their long range killing power is considerable, especially if blobbed
they cant hold a candle to bren section at all, but bren gets no anti-cover bonus
so on maps with a lot of cover I think aussies could be seen as a strong choice
I see Aussies not as a replacement for the Tommies but as a support option. Against DAK I wouldn't go to heavy on Aussies because not only are you missing the Boys AT Rifle but also any type of snare ability.
handful more online games as wehr. one i really hate team games now. i feel dumb for playing it. 1v1 is the way now, or maybe 2v2 with friends
wehr breakthrough bg is pretty fun but i was trying to do it with T2 and I didn't understand why so many people were going t3... but I do now.. the timing for T2 wirb is just bad... the luft one is the one that you always see, which is faster and cheaper
lost all my t2 games, tried going t3 and won pretty solidly. the stug comes out at a pivotal moment
I've more or less given up on the Aussie BG. It just doesn't offer that much.
The bofors is especially bad to the point where I doubt it was ever tested. Takes an eternity to build (40s), turns up too late due to the tech requirement, fires slowly with an incredibly long reload, is outranged by the flakvierling, doesn't seem to suppress and ultimately doesn't actually kill anything that well. Two panzerjaeger squads kill it with minimal losses. It's genuinely useless.
The rest of the kit isn't all bad, it just doesn't really offer anything over the existing BG's. The Aussies aren't that impressive and the Archer comes late. Emplacements are mostly rubbish. It's a hard sell against Commandos, Centaurs, Ghurkas, Heavy Mortars, Churchills/Black Prince etc.
The nerfs to the ISC seem to have cratered USF pick rate and win rate in team games. Right now it seems the average is Axis wining 60% of the time to the Allies 40%.
Although this is based off a very small selection of games since the patch.
usf is very complex and i think that a new meta will be found
i am watching a stream vod right now of dumais who is one of the top 25 or so players.. and at the start of this 9 hour stream he is convinced that usf is the worst faction in the game, hopeless in every respect, and by the end of the stream he thinks its good
there's a ton of tech and timing choices that usf can make and the play has been ISC oriented for so long that there's shit that people haven't reconsidered in literally a year...
im probably gonna work on them tonight, usf is my worst faction and its time to learn
USF's biggest problem right now is that they have no comfortable solution to the Tiger and unfortunately the Tiger is very common now
i did one game as us and then my brain broke and i could not continue.. i dont know what it is about that faction but i just dont click with it at all. did ukf 1v1s all night...
i am prepared to say that the australian bg is worst in the game. if i have to sniff around cohstats and get out a protractor to figure out if my unit is good... then its not good. the only games i lost tonight were the ones where I tried to aussie it up.
one of the problems i have with this battlegroup is that one of the feature elements of the battlegroup (2 pounder) exists primarily to offset the very weakness the bg imbues you with: an infantry unit that is helpless against any vehicle
meanwhile other battlegroups just plain make you better... the ukf air and sea battlegroup.. *sublime*... last game mowed down a whole field of infantry with commandos
i played against a lot of dak who were struggling to make the funkwagon work... it seems like a lot of effort.. and I think once people get over aussies that matchup will stabilize
the real problem is wehr breakthrough.. good fucking lord.. being on the receiving end is not fun. its too much. you just drown the whole game and you know the clock is ticking to tiger at which point the game ends. i think if they change anything, its going to be that.
Posts
Ah weird, is that what it was like. So now what happens is that if you encounter an enemy company on the field it just autoresolves. All the fighting happens when you attack towns. Some towns are skirmishes, pretty short battles that pull from a pool of gametypes, some towns are bespoke missions, and some towns you don't fight at all, they just get captured when you blow up their defence on the overmap.
Given the amount of Italy I owned I felt like I should have more everything available. It really seems like the best choice early on is to pick one direction to attack. I never felt like I had enough companies for the front, or enough support elements. I really enjoyed having a battleship I could use every three turns, and bomber every 2. Looking at the enemies strenght its clear if they attacked they would wipe me off the map but they don't, probably because the game devs realized that the player wouldn't have enough companies to defend everything they captured.
I also got tired of the auto resolve system for company meetings. I get people complained at having to fight every one as a skirmish, and yeah that would be annoying, but give me the option at least.
Grand campaign maps are only good if you put in the effort or you have a good hook. This was going for Total Wars hook with the real time battles and just like Total War if you just auto resolve those all the time you're just playing a mediocre grand campaign game because the effort wasn't put in on that layer.
otoh even though it was short I enjoyed the dak campaign, felt like a normal good RTS single player effort
Just to a linear set of story missions like every other CoH and the DAK campaign.
The new DAK group is all about improbable amounts of stealth and will either be very good or very bad depending on the player, the new UKF one is pretty much leftovers from the Nazi campaign, but still very welcome.
Also coming in the patch: three new maps, map veto, surrender vote, various pathfinding improvements.
E: Should be noted that these two BGS will be completely free, at least on launch.
Looks like the CoH2 brits are back in full! Although it does seem like most of the BG is scraps from SP. How viable it is depends on the timing of some of the units like the 2pdr, and how survivable the emplacements are. In CoH2 they were trivial to counter after all. Also need to see what the arc of fire and turn rate on the 17pdr emplacement are like. The supply truck is a weird idea that seems more likely to give the enemy resources to me. Will also be highly map dependent.
The DAK battlegroup I'm somewhat concerned about. It doubles down on areas that DAK/axis are already very strong in - namely stealth and intel/sight. Stealth on Panzerjaegers is already questionable but now they're applying it to basically everything (including, somewhat ludicrously, tanks). It's incredibly frustrating trying to fight an enemy you can't see after all. Typically, stealth had been limited to elite or very fragile units (e.g. commandos, snipers) but it seems to be creeping out into more and more units in CoH3.
I am the person who wants a Rise of Nations/Dark Crusade style campaign for every RTS.
Give it to meeeee. Disappointing to see that the implementation here wasn't great. But I love the way the world map ties everything together -- gives a nice bit of context to the battles beyond skirmishes, but sandboxey enough to keep it fun over time.
no strong feelings on the emplacements, most of the other faction emplacements hardly get made anymore
the dak one.. hard for me to say... they're saying recon dumps on it... but what all can be recon... does a dingo count as recon? if its that easy to blow up the stealth then it might be bad... im not familiar enough with camo mechanics to conceptualize what its going to be like
My bet is 4 months until they sell to another publisher.
Maybe they'll merge with Blackbird.
Edit: Sega announced even more layoffs today so that might be why.
Generally speaking, Relic are a studio specialising in a niche genre that's difficult to monetize. They rely on a proprietary engine (Essence) to make their games which further increases the cost of development. I'd very much like to see them succeed independently but the odds are stacked against them.
Except Relic will get a smaller envelope of cash. My guess is from Team17 or Paradox.
Maybe let them do a Halo game in the vein of Space Marine (as well as an RTS.)
they had to cut the veto feature, but everything else is in. i can live with that
https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/blogs/110-pc-coral-viper-1-6-0-patch-notes
le notes
brits mostly left alone
dak cheese nerfed but tier 3 buffed
american ISC nerfed almost everything else buffed
wehr buffs across the board but probably deserved...
Edit: Turns out they were just slow to apply a 100% discount to them.
Pretty disappointed with more thoughtless nerfs to the brits, both direct and indirect. Some of them just baffle me.
The CWT truck upgrade nerf is hilarious - rushing it early was just about the only time the AA upgrade ever got used. I can't think of any scenario where I'd want to specifically build the AA truck at that stage of the game. It also begs the question as to why the call in still costs fuel when the major benefits of the truck have been removed.
Can't have the Humber getting any veterancy before being rendered irrelevant I guess. Classic "bug fix + extra nerf" double whammy. In my experience the fragility of the Humber already greatly limits its impact.
Matilda armour nerf is an "axis had trouble with this" nerf. The tank is lumbered with low speed and a weak gun for the sake of its armour, but have to remove that too I guess. It's not like axis were particularly short on counters either. Add on the buffs to the StuG, Panther, PzIV and Tiger... The Matilda was already a losing play in an armour fight and this change just pushes brits further towards skipping everything right up to Grants. Perhaps look at why Crusaders have stopped being used?
The Churchill change simply confuses me. On the one hand, it probably meams that standard Churchills will turn up earlier. On the other, the whole battlegroup was built around tech skipping and call ins? Go down the left tree with the Crusader AA for mid game tempo and the Churchill for late game, with the 1 cp vehicle recall/refund ability to swap any of the light vehicles used while stalling for Churchills. The right side of the tree is just a mish mash of random, largely underwhelming, support abilities. The Churchill itself was mostly underwhelming. With the tech skipping gone the BG loses a lot of its identity.
More generally speaking, US seems to have got hit hard in a few areas. Somewhat baffled by the change to the Hellcat. It's too good at trading up into armour apparently? Isn't that literally the point of an endgame tank destroyer? They also locked its flanking speed ability behind the Mechanised Support Centre. Still can't understand why the flakvierling remains untouched.
too glass half empty view of this
glass half full: grant is the most busted thing they ever put in this game and it went unnerfed
a lot of times you'd see the matilda built right after tier 3 to stabilize the battlefield and buy more time for grants, and then force augment the grants
Brits also need their units balanced around the fact that you can call them off the field. The Humber is real good IMO, and you can refund it once the real scary at shows up.
IDK about increasing the cost of ISC upgrades, the main reason I went it was the cheaper BARs so I guess it doesn't effect me.
Flakvierling now has to exist in an environment where the USF can get better Bazookas and the Brits can go Aussies to get a 2pdr out quickly.
The new British battlegroup is really fun, haven't gotten to try the DAK one.
I did play about with the aussies a bit and found them interesting. The Aussie Light infantry is what sections wish they were early game. Being able to build defenses themselves is huge. They aren't cheap at 300 though and have obvious weaknesses later. I tried the defenses but I don't think they'll be that viable, or at least the bofors won't be due to timing. The 17pdr emplacement fares better on that front.
I maintain the flakvierling is the most broken thing in the game.
i dont really "get" the new british battlegroup... im not sure i like it... i think archer is great but the CP cost is pretty extreme... tiger damage but stewart armor for 7CP burried in the less desirable tree
the supply truck is hilariously slow and if your opponent kills it even 3 seconds after it starts its return voyage they get crazy resources... ridiculous risk for 200mp.. feels like a joke ability
the aussies were underwhelming to me... for 300mp they're kind of potatoes... i guess it just depends on how you value their wall... the activation ability is pretty nifty though
ukf is rich in strong infantry options and im not sure aussies stand out.. i was able to hyperdunk on them pretty much all the time, the sappers were way scarier
the 2 pounder seems really good but i'd have to see the stat breakdown to understand how and why they're a better choice than 6ps... maybe purely economy? which is fine. they did very well against my panzer 4's which kind of surprised me
got my tiger out.. easily handles everything except the archer... but my god that archer PUMPS
Edit: Aussies are find. Against humans I probably wouldn't call in more than 1 but faster capture, building defenses and the ability to call them in right from the start without even T1 is nice.
In my still limited experience, they seem to do real well after getting the global upgrade and getting some vet in them. Mostly because it upgrades their sharpshooter ability to slow and insta-kill a model, but the various buffs seem good too. They're really lacking in combat utility though, despite getting scoped rifles they can't shoot flares like IS can, and of course don't have grenades, AT, and can't repair.
E: I haven't had a chance to use it on DAK light vehicle spam, but the 2 pounder is much weaker that the 6 (which...makes sense) but you can get it out early without teching, and they fire very rapidly. Their vet ability sounds good, but they seem pretty slow to level without the research.
I agree that the Archer needs a CP reduction, 5 would be closer to the mark.
The DAK cloak truck is as broken as you'd expect. The first strike bonus from stealth means they can spam panzerjaegers and use them as an anti-everything unit to great effect. It'll only get worse as players figure out what works best with stealth, and the cloaking vehicle costs so little that losing it now and again hardly matters. Breaking core mechanics, like being able to see your opponent, rarely works out well. The core concept also stretches the believability of the setting beyond breaking point. It's pure science fiction. In one game I had a bloody Tiger stealth capping a VP. A Tiger!
I did actually win that game to be fair, overturning a 300 point deficit to win by 11vp in the end. First off, it was on the new 2v2 map (eindhoven), which is again much too small and poorly designed for CoH3. My ally landed a few good Bishop barrages on the stealth blob, and they were very predictable in that I saw the Tiger call in coming a mile off - and had prepared a 17pdr before the Tiger could do anything. Ended up with two of them, one vet 3 and another vet 2, opening up on the Tiger any time it turned up. With such a small margin of victory though, the axis could have won it if they'd played even slightly better - like actually taking and holding the side VP I barely had any defence on, or building indirect fire, or following through on any attack to clear off the 17pdrs.
you can simulate the scoped enfields on cohstats but not the cover accuracy bonus
now, tommies get the recce package also, but I think theirs is weaker. in this apples to apples comparison, aussies are about 20% stronger while costing about 12% more. add in the marksman ability and their long range killing power is considerable, especially if blobbed
they cant hold a candle to bren section at all, but bren gets no anti-cover bonus
so on maps with a lot of cover I think aussies could be seen as a strong choice
wehr breakthrough bg is pretty fun but i was trying to do it with T2 and I didn't understand why so many people were going t3... but I do now.. the timing for T2 wirb is just bad... the luft one is the one that you always see, which is faster and cheaper
lost all my t2 games, tried going t3 and won pretty solidly. the stug comes out at a pivotal moment
And yeah, the Stug is a solid all rounder.
The bofors is especially bad to the point where I doubt it was ever tested. Takes an eternity to build (40s), turns up too late due to the tech requirement, fires slowly with an incredibly long reload, is outranged by the flakvierling, doesn't seem to suppress and ultimately doesn't actually kill anything that well. Two panzerjaeger squads kill it with minimal losses. It's genuinely useless.
The rest of the kit isn't all bad, it just doesn't really offer anything over the existing BG's. The Aussies aren't that impressive and the Archer comes late. Emplacements are mostly rubbish. It's a hard sell against Commandos, Centaurs, Ghurkas, Heavy Mortars, Churchills/Black Prince etc.
Although this is based off a very small selection of games since the patch.
i am watching a stream vod right now of dumais who is one of the top 25 or so players.. and at the start of this 9 hour stream he is convinced that usf is the worst faction in the game, hopeless in every respect, and by the end of the stream he thinks its good
there's a ton of tech and timing choices that usf can make and the play has been ISC oriented for so long that there's shit that people haven't reconsidered in literally a year...
im probably gonna work on them tonight, usf is my worst faction and its time to learn
USF's biggest problem right now is that they have no comfortable solution to the Tiger and unfortunately the Tiger is very common now
I could see some of those being let go even without the whole going independent thing.
i am prepared to say that the australian bg is worst in the game. if i have to sniff around cohstats and get out a protractor to figure out if my unit is good... then its not good. the only games i lost tonight were the ones where I tried to aussie it up.
one of the problems i have with this battlegroup is that one of the feature elements of the battlegroup (2 pounder) exists primarily to offset the very weakness the bg imbues you with: an infantry unit that is helpless against any vehicle
meanwhile other battlegroups just plain make you better... the ukf air and sea battlegroup.. *sublime*... last game mowed down a whole field of infantry with commandos
i played against a lot of dak who were struggling to make the funkwagon work... it seems like a lot of effort.. and I think once people get over aussies that matchup will stabilize
the real problem is wehr breakthrough.. good fucking lord.. being on the receiving end is not fun. its too much. you just drown the whole game and you know the clock is ticking to tiger at which point the game ends. i think if they change anything, its going to be that.