OFFICIAL POLL: Removing the original factions plus adding in retreat and vet

[nbeerbower]

huh strange I didnt think we could have political pictures at the bottom of our posts...

Of course you can, off-topic anyway.

I agree georider. If we give the Soviets some retreat and a vet system along with some other goodies form 1.05 then I think a huge crowd will come back to us including the 'hardcore' guys. Right now removal of the PE and Brits seems a bit too drastic.

[Blackbishop]

Someone said(I don't remember who ) about classifying retreating units as hostiles until reach HQ, i like the idea, i would like to ask to Dev's Team, are they planning to penalize retreating units if implemented?

Regards.

[ForceMultiplier]

I have been a huge supporter of this mod and I am organising a huge EF lan with my friends tomorrow as a testimony to that. but I will put my 2cents in on this discussion..

Firstly I must give credit to the suggestion of allowing Soviet's & Ostheer to recrew while keeping the British and PE in the game without the ability to recrew. A slight tweak to the strength of British emplacements and PE could balance this out as I don't think recrewing is as important to them. However this will go against the policy of modifying existing factions and I am sure it will cause other issues.

So I'll stick to suggestions that are definitely within the developer's power. I think retreat should be as aspect of the Soviet game, it has clearly caused too much contention and has made balancing problematic. I think elite squads such as strelky/guards should have the ability but not conscripts. Obviously costs will have to be adjusted to reflect this ability.

Veterancy is another aspect. I think the Soviet's should have it but can still have a variation. I've always liked the idea of units gaining veterancy as they lose members or take damage. The other option is to allow Soveits to slowly gain veterancy over time (on surviving units) thus reflecting WWII. This will make the game interesting as the generally it has been the axis that have been the stronger teams as time goes on.

I think we have to accept the fact that relic are not going to be on board to fix issues we would all like to see resolved. It's unfortunate, but as one person pointed out, it's merely a business decision.

I think it'll be sad to see factions taken out of the game, emphasis should be put on changing a couple of mechanics and fine tuning the balance as perfectly as possible. People will continue to play a game that balanced and fair even if it isn't ideal. I think problems such as the inability to recrew give us an opportunity to think laterally about other interesting solutions.

Other suggestions could include bigger squad sizes for AT guns/Mortars, or auto re-enforcement when such units are near command nest. etc.. there are always more than one solution

Cheers guys!

[Soviet_Justice]

So, do you plan to implement the results of this poll in patch 1.05? Is that the reason why 1.05 is so late? What are other things you plan to introduce by 1.05, maybe we can discuss it...

And one other thing. If removing of Brits doesn't go through, how do you plan to resolve the re-crewing problem? Is it possible to allow Soviets to scavange heavy weapons for resources? Or you have some other idea?

[BurroDiablo]

Retreat and Vet might, but recrew won't, it'll probably come along with the Ostheer (if people vote that way).

Someone said(I don't remember who ) about classifying retreating units as hostiles until reach HQ, i like the idea, i would like to ask to Dev's Team, are they planning to penalize retreating units if implemented?

Regards.

Not possible unfortunately. Also, seems utterly pointless. Personally, i'd just give retreating Soviet units no defensive bonuses.

huh strange I didnt think we could have political pictures at the bottom of our posts...

Every time you post in here it is completely irrelevant, please don't post in here again unless you have something to say that is on topic.

[Alexander 'ApeMen' J.]

i read that someone wrote, it would a good idea to change the places as pe and uk switch with udssr and ostheer. you only need to change that emplacements of the uk can´t be conquered any longer. only the flak88 of pe is a problem. maybe change it with ju 87 stuka? and the flak38 modify to a flak emplacement which isn´t able to be conquered.

[Zerstörer]

We're not rebalancing/changing the other factions, sorry. Plus when playing with them you won't rank up etc which of course defeats the objective. How's PE going to re crew their base defences? Not to mention the main reason you'd get luftwaffe engineers

[hgghg4]

use his suggestion... you don't need to rebalance it... just have a slight defensive buff so people just don't 57 or Zis2 snipe them into oblivion so fast... it takes 3 shots from a 57 to kill an 88 or 20 completely... you won't be changing much to begin with and if you are going to implement the Soviets and Ostheer then you will need  to make changes if you are going to add them as the Brit and PE... I  voted that you add the Sov and Osth but as additional armies... No retreat for the Ostheer could work as well seeing that in Stalingrad they where surrounded and couldn't retreat either... if you don't allow PE and Brits to retreat you kill game balance anyway because they will be starting with fresh troops all the time and then you will have to balance them as well.... seeing the strength of PE and Brits lie in their ability to vet up their Officers(Brit) and Troops(PE) Personally I rather like my Vet 3 Defensive Panthers... its a very good counter to the Russian spam of IS2s and T34/85s. Point is this


Don't swap out PE or Brits if you guys don't want to mess with the balance of the factions already stated....because you will need to do that otherwise those two factions will be severely nerfed to the point where they would be rather unplayable... at least with adding the Ostheer and Sov as additional armies you can balance them to the rest...

[Blackbishop]

use his suggestion...
...

Don't worry, recrew is the only hardcore bug, retreat and vet are just soviets features by now . In other words, the swap with OF will solve ranking and recrew only, not retreat nor veterancy. I voted for keeping relic factions and adding vet and retreat.

[hgghg4]

Well it still doesnt solve the problem of Balancing out the OF factions if they keep them

[Hpt.Berger]

Replacing the British and the PE re-crewing with the Soviets and  the Ostheer is the best way to go here. One of the main problems that drove away so many players was the no re-crewing stuff, and if you get the soviets and ostheer to be able to recrew again, it might bring back people.
It's no big loss for the british to not re-crew; they have almost no mobile weapon systems that need re-crewing, being a 99% emplacement defensive battle sort of army, their emplacements usually get destroyed first rather than de-crewed, and the pe only have 2 emplacements, the flak 38 and 88, which isn't that big of a loss considering pe is more of a blitzkrieg style specialist vehicle army anyways, and pe isn't really meant to be played as a long defensive battle anyways-(that's what the wehrmacht defensive doctrine, and hopefully an ostheer doctrine will be for).

No retreat is very unique for the soviets and ostheer, both game play and historically (we all know it - both sides were forbidden from retreating on the east front, and often whole units fought it out to the last man, rather than retreat). And you've done a very good job of balancing no retreat with a command squad fire up! to break suppression and pinned.
Some would complain about how useless propaganda war ability is to that - just make the affected soviet units pinned for a minute or so without being able to fire up, if possible. (morale demoralization is also propaganda war, not just retreat).

Veterancy- in your manual it was described that the soviet units were already veterans, depending on the tier level. (hard coded already in their stats when they are built, right?) The same can be done for ostheer. I'm sure there are many people who didn't bother to read this tiny bit of info and that's why they complain. Although it might help the non-believeers if you show some kind of veterancy icon for the units (maybe some sort of red star system for the soviets, and  if possible, the old school  coh wehrmacht vet icons that are no longer used , for ostheer), for example conscripts  would be the same; no vet icon, strelky would have 1  vet icon, guards 2, and of course keep the 3 vet icon for upgraded units, so you know the affected upgrade is in effect.

Overall, keep up the good work, and good luck solving these issues.

[IEatBolsheviks]

Leave the SU as it is. I love it because of it's unique design. Reply #31 expresses my thoughts perfectly.
- Vet: not needed.
- Retreat: need sth. for prop war and officer's forced retreat to work. Maybe a shock factor making SU inf losing health or getting instapinned for an extended period.
- Recrew: not needed. Maybe implement salvaging weapons as described in Reply #51. Even better: leave that for the ostheer.
- Ranked games: nice but don't expect EF to become popular because of it.

I can understand that you look at online gaming as an indicator of EF's success and are disappointed. But why these convoluted proposals? They will only delay the ostheer. Just get players online simultanously by promoting an EF day. Or by publicly announcing yourself being online for a kick in the butt friendly game. Lots of simple solutions for a simple problem. See Reply #99, too.

Of cause things won't change instantly. I tried to set up a Sunday Night Fight and got almost no responses. So what? I'll try again. Just a bit different.

Edit: Re. ranked: even after removing relics factions EF players won't be matched against those with an unmodded CoH, right? So we'd still be stuck with the problem of having only few players = no online gaming.

[georider]

huh strange I didnt think we could have political pictures at the bottom of our posts...

This is History and I clear it with a PM.
On the other hand as I'm reading the new posts and ideas , I realize that an EF mod with 2 factions will perform better , and we will be able to add more units inside and more different skins.
So why knot , I will support whatever team and people wants, besides I'm just a painter not a player

[bavbav]

no i dont like the idea

removing 2 factions to basciyl get recrew? no tnx

balance recrew for sovs, by making axis (wm in particular) to recrew with 5 man squads, so volks would spend entire squad when remmaning, because pe cant, unless you make luftwafe. then only unit able to do so would be pios, but we all know pios recrwwing die to anything and when theyd be reinforced to 5 mans, they still cost just as much as full squad. yes now when wm can recrew sov weapons for mere 100 mp its imba, but 300 mp wouldnt be

as for vet and retreat, you sticked around this for so long, why change it now? just balance the sovs and make them have variety in build orders, because now every single game is the same. add 25 fuel to command squad, rax and possibly 50 to armory, also 25 at startup. and suddenly theres alot of possiblitys. but now its, make comands suqad and rax with conscirpts until you get 50 fuel, then wsc, then tank depot and armory which is around the time u have 200 munis anyway. see how theres 0 options?

also if ostheer cant reman too, like i said, in their case 6 man recrewing would then fix any issues, because of american 6 man squads.... so anyone recrewing sov and ostheer weapons would pay like 300 mp. you know the same price sov/ostheer would spend building another weapon.

[revoluzer]

As I and others have stated:

Sacrifice Pe's and British's recrew ability for the Soviets and Ostheer.
Make the Flakvierling and the Flak 88 as emplacements and make the British and Pe emplacements non-recrewable.
Let the two factions their VET and retreat and its nearly the same... (more or less)

Then I would redo hte Vet and ability system of the Soviets:

Every ability should cost munition...
All upgrades like now available in the last building for small amount of MP and Fuel...
Weapon upgrades of Strelky( and others except conscripts) should be purchaseable seperatly for a small amount of munitions.

Strelky need a Grenade ability