Ostheer concept by Ext3rmin4tor

[Ext3rmin4tor]

I wrote my own concept for Ostheer. First of all I apologize if there are similar ideas already told by someone else but I didn't have time to read all the concepts to see if I "stole" someone else's ideas. I tried to be as much clear as I could, but if you don't understand something or you have suggestions feel free to tell me. I hope you like the concept and the doctrines I inveted.

I've attached a .pdf file containing the concept.

[vietlord]

huge work !! i agree to most ideas like the beginning
-the taking t-34 is quite balanced but would need some cost, and have something different
-the AT team shouldn t one-kill a puma, so lower the hit price and effect
"ss" must be renamed for political-neutral reasons
50 manp per prisonner seems too unbalance / 10 ok, of course sov'guard can't surrender, nor the major (nor some elite allies)
- finns miss me
- what's the T0-1-2-3... supervisor price ?
-develop the effect of XP

but really great great stuff

[Newbie.]

hmm, very good, just some units will cause political issues, mostly stuff like 'Death Squad' As People will say their Einstatzgruppen, i'd replace SS with the Military Police xD.

[Ext3rmin4tor]

huge work !! i agree to most ideas like the beginning
-the taking t-34 is quite balanced but would need some cost, and have something different
-the AT team shouldn t one-kill a puma, so lower the hit price and effect
"ss" must be renamed for political-neutral reasons
50 manp per prisonner seems too unbalance / 10 ok, of course sov'guard can't surrender, nor the major (nor some elite allies)
- finns miss me
- what's the T0-1-2-3... supervisor price ?
-develop the effect of XP

but really great great stuff

- AT Team Aimed Shot: It costs a total of 175 ammo for the first shot, which is a huge ammount (almost the cost of a Henschel strafing run for the Panzer Elite) and they can target only light vehicles (T-34 and heavier tanks are immune to such ability, since an AT rifle can penetrate at most 20 mm of steel). Besides you need that upgrade for every AT rifle team you have to use that ability. To balance it, it might be added a starting cooldown time, so the rifleman will require the target to be visible for some time before shooting (more or less like the Elefant ability without the extended range of fire).

- I think the T-34 ability is quite balanced too, I had also thought about a recovering cost, but then I thought about the PE Bergetiger, which recovers all kinds of vehicles. This ability warks on T-34 ONLY, you must destroy one first, and you have to risk a tank supervisor unit during the recovery process (of course the mechanics can be covered by infantry while doing that, but for example the Bergetiger is a heavy armored vehicle, while the Mechanic Team is just infantry). But I might add a symbolic ammo cost, like 25 ammo for the recovery. I just proposed the ability as it is thinking about the Bergetiger and its more versatile use.

- PRISONERS: Yes, 50 mp are a lot, wat about a 25 mp, and 50 with the upgrade of forced labor? Remember that allies can build hospital and with 6 injured man they restore a squad for free. I invented the concept of the prisoner camp to be a different kind of "hospital", which instead of healing your wounded soldiers, it recovers the enemy soldiers and convert them into manpower, so with 6 prisoners or so you should be able to obtain a rifle squad (25 x 6 = 150 mp, which is not enough). Besides remember that collecting wounded enemy soldiers is more difficult that collecting your own soldiers because they usually are farther and in enemy territory (and you have to kill them, while having your men killed requires no skill  ). But tell me your opinion about the new 25//50 manpower bonus. And you are right about elite units, they must not surrender. We can say that called in infantry, officers and Soviet Guards cannot surrender or you risk to "steal" an officer to a CW player, or an expensive Airborne//Ranger team, or Soviet Guards.

SS NAMES: Yeah, I know it can cause some political problems, at least there wouldn't be any problems in UK, USA or Italy (I'm Italian and I know that for sure) and in the most of the EU, but in Germany there could be some problems since Nazi Germany references are forbidden except in books and movies. But it's up to the developers to decide the unit final names, I just put them with their original name to make you understand who they are. Besides in Blitzkrieg mod (another CoH mod), which is made by a German developer, there are Waffen-SS Stosstruppen and they have their original name, so I think it's not a problem to just quote a name, of course you can't include Svastika as SS-Oberkommando flag or stuff like that, but I think the name is ok.

Finally, about the T0,... supervisors, maybe you didn't understand how the tech tree works: the T0,T1,T2,T3 prefix is refered to units, not to supervisors. The number following the "T" letter, is the number of supervisors you have to deploy on the field to unlock that kind of unit. For example, let's say you want to start with a Tank Depot, and you want to deploy a Panzer IV Ausf. E (which is a T1 Tank Depot unit, the unit in the table are listed in order of "T-requirements", so the second one in the list is the T-1 unit, maybe I should have explained that, but if you watch the requirement it says that you need 1 supervisor on the field) as soon as possible, you have to build the Tank Depot, build one supervisor unit (which in the case of the Tank Depot is the Mechanic Team) and then you unlock the Panzer IV Ausf. E. It's all about the number of supervisors, not the kind of supervisor: the supervisors are always the same for every structure of the base.

They are Oberfeldwebel for the infantry, Gun Commander for the artillery, Untersturmfuhrer for the SS, Mechanic Team for the Tank Depot. Their stats are listed in the unit table among the standard units, in the document I uploaded.

Let me know if you have some doubts/questions.

[Blackbishop]

...

- PRISONERS: Yes, 50 mp are a lot, wat about a 25 mp, and 50 with the upgrade of forced labor? Remember that allies can build hospital and with 6 injured man they restore a squad for free. I invented the concept of the prisoner camp to be a different kind of "hospital", which instead of healing your wounded soldiers, it recovers the enemy soldiers and convert them into manpower, so with 6 prisoners or so you should be able to obtain a rifle squad (25 x 6 = 150 mp, which is not enough). Besides remember that collecting wounded enemy soldiers is more difficult that collecting your own soldiers because they usually are farther and in enemy territory (and you have to kill them, while having your men killed requires no skill  ). But tell me your opinion about the new 25//50 manpower bonus. And you are right about elite units, they must not surrender. We can say that called in infantry, officers and Soviet Guards cannot surrender or you risk to "steal" an officer to a CW player, or an expensive Airborne//Ranger team, or Soviet Guards.
...

I remember when I came out with this idea on the ability sugestion thread and no one shown interest . But I think you took a step further... For some reason I don't like the other way to took prisioners, forcing them to surrender sounds a little unfair; in either case I wonder if that could be possible .

I think devs arent going to name a unit SS, and personally I don't think that make a difference.

By the way, nice work !!!

[Ext3rmin4tor]

Well I know several soviet soldiers surrended because of the Nazi propaganda telling them they would receive medical attention, food and they would be released once the war was over (of course because of their bad condition in general). They surrended also because of the better equipment and training of the enemy troops. So the SS Death Squad coud do that because of their infamy and reputation.

Speaking about the game itself, the ability is not so unfair, since it costs ammo, it lasts 15 seconds and it MUST BE ACTIVE in order to make them surrender, so you basically have to guess when the enemy squad will get under 30% of its health and activate the ability, otherwise it has no effect (and 15 seconds are few to damage a squad under 30% of its health, so you probably can't just activate the ability at the beginning of a firefight and hope you damage the enemy so much).

The Break-in ability it is also difficult to use, since they first need to assault the building with grenades, and only after they detonate, the occupants will surrender, and in that period you can exit the building so that the ability has no effect. Besides it costs 125 ammo, which makes it very expensive.

What about the doctrines guys?

[vietlord]

_then a full shot ok but not sure ? half time ?
_ T34: a bergtiger repair it's own vehicule sure ! so gas has first to be spent ... so heavy infantry and this free-gas is dangerous ... so ok for 25-30 GAS then, ammo no same work  ... i'd ll like to see half of the guy disappear in :-) buy the way a t34 germanised and rekilled, can it be re-worked ?
_ prisonner OK but remember conscript are numerous so a sure capture effect is really GG
_ sorry i missed the price of each supervision

again, i really enjoyed your work (well some ideas were on my suggestion too lol)

[Ext3rmin4tor]

_then a full shot ok but not sure ? half time ?
_ T34: a bergtiger repair it's own vehicule sure ! so gas has first to be spent ... so heavy infantry and this free-gas is dangerous ... so ok for 25-30 GAS then, ammo no same work  ... i'd ll like to see half of the guy disappear in :-) buy the way a t34 germanised and rekilled, can it be re-worked ?
_ prisonner OK but remember conscript are numerous so a sure capture effect is really GG
_ sorry i missed the price of each supervision

again, i really enjoyed your work (well some ideas were on my suggestion too lol)

Historically speaking, the Wehrmacht recrewed several captured T-34, especially in the first years of the conflict, when the gap between the Panzer III Ausf. F-G and Panzer IV Ausf. E and the T-34 was enormous (the Panzer IV was incapable of penetrating a T-34 frontally, while a Panzer III with the long barreled 50mm tank gun had a chance at short distance), and this is where my idea comes from.

The Mechanic team does cost fuel, so it's pretty fair that they can recover a T-34 for free. Also, as I told before, their recovery ability works only with T-34's, while a Bergetiger can recover every destroyed allied vehicle (even from another faction).

The conscripts are many and weak in early game, and to build a Prisoner Camp you first need to build a SS-Oberkommando. The SS-Oberkommando does not allow to deploy infantry unless you build one Untersturmfuhrer for the Deaths Squad, so you will lack of good infantry in early game if you decide to rely on prisoner camps (it's always the same if you decide to start with artillery or with a Tank Depot: you will have tanks or artillery sooner but you will lack of good infantry to protect them, since you can only rely on Sturmpioniere until you build a Infanterie Kommandobunker, and belive me that you're gonna need some good grenadiers and sturm squads to push back the Soviet horde).

[Gerrit 'Lord Rommel' G.]

When i'm informed right then it is impossible to repair the wrack of an enemy tank and capture it after the repair.
So when T-34 should be able to use T-34 tanks Ostheer had to build this tank out of a factory or call in this unit.

About the concept:
well. Have just take a short look but for me it is absolutely clear that your Ostheer idea is too big! Too much infantry, too much tanks, too much units with nearly the same function. So i dont realy like it. Sorry.