COH: Europe In Ruins

Thoughts?

Range was its problem, and being decrewed. Now in one game against leophone and blackpanda I was testing all the new PE changes in an attack mode against Sim City on venue ^^...(we even lost, it was amazing how sim city has made a glorious return)

A couple of nebel rockets hit square on top of it, not even taking off 30% hp including the DoT before he just rebuilt it to half health. Long distance indirect fire needs to remain a counter to emplacements. And what is PE supposed to use to take out the mortar pit? If its cw_emplacement armor type, at nades wont hurt it unless that's changed (you could throw 8 at nades at a mortar pit in retail)

You can marder it down, but against competent opponents.. and on a open map with nothing blocking how is the mortar halftrack supposed to take down the 17 pounder?

they made them uber, just uber...
the 17pdr has 80 range and costs 140 mun now
either it costs 170 or 180 with 80 range or 140 with normal range, but not both.
you always have to think about the consequences changes will bring...
PE also have lack of AT, why not give the marder 80 range?  :-\

Yeah the emplacement thing is making this game hard-counter annoying. I think it would help all the mortars if they all had identical range with the PE mortar ht just a little shorter (very little difference, not necessary.) The mortar pit should have as much health as a real mortar and the crew as much as a real crew, maybe more if there's only 2 men. in campy-support weapon wars wermacht and brit mortars always seem to win out. Especially since nobody has any arty... yet.

-offtopic-
Is it me or is the armored car have more Armor than the Marder III now?

its ok. its not as good as in vCoH in terms of damage and instant death but its pretty tough to kill now. As far as brit emplacements go the Bofors and 17 pounder are awesome now. Im sure ill buy a bofors for my brit build now. 17 maybe but the bofors really has stepped up to the plate.

The range bonus to the mortar pit is working now, eh.

It'd be nice if the mortar pit keeps its extended range, since it's well, emplaced.

But now with extra range on all the emplacements save vickers yes it's going to be hard to kill them with free repairs. Anyway to make emplacements keep their previous health after being rebuilt, then muck around with repair speeds if necessary?

Maybe give them a fake team weapon and tie the emplacement health to that? (like mg/mortar white hp bar)

We will do a lot more testing before we change them.  If you are close enough to damage the mortar then just finish it off... they take a long time to unpack and get the "free repair" everyone is talking about.

I played a match where they were easily destroyed by shreks/tanks...  Smart players will always position them and move them when threatened.

The actual unit is now useful, they will probably be balanced through availability/price.

I have a suggestion, change all emplacement armor type to bunker.

That way arty/mortar actually does decent damage to emplacements and there are no weird numbers to screw with.  I don't mind self repairing mini 88s if arty(other than the stuka) actually did damage to them.   As it stands only the stuka does decent damage and one volley is still not enough, you need two simultaneous volleys because otherwise it just picks up and rebuilds.

Nebels could stand to do more damage, but wrecking emplacements in one volley would be silly. Especially given that the nebel is the fastest firing artillery. It can get off two salvos for every shot a 25pdr or howie takes and can dodge counterfire on top of that.

 Emplacements wouldn't be worth building...just like before, when one volley decrewed them.

from playing with brit opponents pre and post change, pre-change, you wouldn't even have emplacements, they were considered useless, now people use them (this is playing with same players as well) although they are not uber, the fact is, in a way they need certain "buffs" especailly range wise because they are not as easily moved as all other mortar's, hmgs, and at guns.

as for someone's suggestion to have marder have 80 range...it's already got great range when locked down.

I find it hard to swallow when people start comparing and 'needing' things cross faction because we make something actually useful.


The re-health of emplacements will be something we hope to tackle in the future.


on topic here, was anyone able to test to see if the mortar actually had 95 range in this build, I was unable to prove it actually had a range boost.  ( was madly trying to fix that RIGHT at release )

I think most plays agree that the prevalence of skirts and the lack of a convenient AT gun made it difficult to counter early armour as brits, as you didn't have the pop for fireflies, arguably the best AT in the game.

This could be fixed by making the 17 pounder deploy faster, increasing its range so it could deploy well outside of the view of the armour it was supposed to fight, buffing the PIAT, or nerfing armoured skirts.

Notice the emphasis on "or." You guys did all of this.

The 17-pounder now deploys almost as fast as a normal AT gun, and the crew doesn't even need to pull the gun around. It also gets free health regen. The range of the 17 (80 range)is now exactly the average of  a normal ATG (60 range) and a flak 88 (100 range). Though honestly, the last 20 units don't make much of a difference when it already has double or more the range of most units. It is an 88, with less splash damage, but half the pop, better tracking, ridiculously cheap, and with free health refills.

I'm not exactly sure what the buff to the PIAT was, but apparently it is better now. That said, PIATs were already decent AT, especially with the nifty ambush and indirect fire ability, now they are better.

The biggest problem for Brits before was skirts, as their only mobile, low pop AT was either doctrinal or man-packed. The effectiveness of the skirts has been drastically reduced. The .5 damage modifier is now .75, with .75 penetration. Not as good.

Guys, one of the reason's people play EIR over CoH is because you can avoid the SimCity that vCoH is notorious for. Please don't reduce EIR to that state. At it's core, its a good game. Fucking with the stats is not the answer. Fucking with the stats and not posting the changes is even worse.

Summary: Too many changes made at once. Brits went from "lacking AT early but with strong late AT" to "Die tanks, die! Armour blows up at 80 range, Simcity ftw" One or two of these implemented at a time would have been better. Personally, I would have started with skirts, as they were over-prevalent anyway.

Brits were fun to play with commando weapon teams, emplacements were poor when they were unsupported or outnumbered.. churchill crocs were popular, artillery was used sparingly or lategame. The take EIRR had on brits was already great previous patch. The only doctrine that needed some help was the arty doctrine (25 pounder range).

I successfully used 17 pounders and vickers in many games, especially in 3v3s where a 17 pounder protecting howitzers or calliopes were VERY useful.

One the huge attractions for me in eir coming from retail was the lack of brits and when EIRR was out the conservative implementation of the stereotypic british playstyle. If WSC heavy builds + sim city becomes predominant, I'll lose interest quickly personally.

Offmaps + brits are scary. :O

hmm what if the health regen was,instead of full health, half or a quarter of what u lost? That way, as it got damaged more, it cood still get health back bypacking and un packing, just not as much.

No the damage modifiers are now 1.5-1.6 without skirts and 1.2 with skirts. They effectively do twice the damage to Panther and p4s.

Dam modifier is however only 1.0 without skirts and 0.75 on STuG/H with skirts.

P.S. the damage modifiers were always that high (http://wiki.coh-stats.com/index.php?title=Bazooka) against unskirted targets.  its just the skirt benefit that has been reduced.

perhaps skirts should be adjusted...adjusting bazookas and piats for the skirt change seems besides the point. it's still only P4s they can hurt from the front. :P

Piats arc over and hit the rear armor all the time, even while firing from the front.

sorry, i was mixed up. i was referring to just bazookas.

i agree piats need a price boost (95? 100?); they are much more effective now.  but that's not because of skirts really. before they would shoot in random-ass directions even at point blank ;)

we never touched the damage modifiers without skirts.

but in effect leaf is correct, and you are trying to make your numbers look like he is wrong.

1.6 without skirts is 1.2 with skirts with a 25% reduction in damage.
and a penetration of something like .113 for some tank with and without skirts which is now .08475

previously it would have been 1.6 without skirts and .8 with ... of course you constantly ignore the penetration bonus.

so no the bazooka's do NOT do twice the damage to teh tanks, they do half extra damage to tanks with skirts WHEN they penetrate.

Yep, the new piats are insanely accurate.  They're as good as shreks now IMO.

Bazookas...not so much.

updated the post above.. darn edit button

No Salan you are wrong. Previously damage modifiers on the P4 were 1.6 without and 0.5 with skirts. Chance of frontal penetration was 44,9%.
http://wiki.coh-stats.com/index.php?title=PIAT
http://wiki.coh-stats.com/index.php?title=Bazooka

Now the damage modifier is 1.6x0.75=1.2 and penetration = 33,7%. In other words they now do 240% damage but penetrates 20% less. That equals about twice the average damage.