Heavy tanks too accessible?

[FatalTheRabbit]

I've been playing some team games lately, and I'm not really sure I like what I see. 2vs2s and 3vs3s seem to degenerate pretty quickly into armor, artillery, and AT gun swarms. Light armor and infantry go the way of the dodo pretty damn quick, because they just can't survive in an environment where there are 3 or 4 tanks on each side, and possibly for each player before 10 minutes has even passed.

I think heavy armor should be less accessible in general, so heavy tanks truly require infantry escorts instead of putting so much of the tech tree out of commission when they arrive on the scene.

I've always thought heavy armor was a bit too disposable, even in 1on1, but it's just totally out of hand in team games. Tactics just sort of disappear amidst a sea of tanks.

[MirvShag]

If allies use AT guns the game either ends with the axis being defeated by not being able to adjust their strategy to beat AT's or the game does a reverse and infantry becomes important again and the game goes another 30 min.

AT's are a must for the allies, if allies have no AT's then yes it becomes an all out heavy tank war and axis wins.

[Penitent]

Shermans count in large amounts, I've played long games where not that many AT guns were present and both sides had a good scrap. I think the "problem" arises when the players on either side realise they can just mass the majority of units in one place, although it is possible for the other team to use group tactics to split them up again.

Ranger spam is better than massing AT guns I think, they are more manouvrable and survivable despite not doing as much damage. Artillery strikes either discourage the enemy from massing their tanks together for a blitzkrieg or it inflicts heavy damage.

Light vehicles certainly need a role in team games.

[Quintal]

I aggre that tanks are too accessable.

It's not about balance, or it being hard to defeat, or anything like that, it's more of that infantry and heavy weapon teams are cool, but are overshadowed by tanks.

We've got all this cool squad movement, hiding behind cover and buildings and all.. but it gets lost admist a sea of tanks.

I think I'd like to see the fuel cost go up on tanks a lot, and manpower go down. This would make fuel points super important if you want tanks at all, and allow you to continue using infantry after getting tanks.

A tank should be freakin scary on the battlefield, and they are if it's mostly infantry. But if you have 3-4 tanks your self... not so much.

Maybe an "armor deployment" timer, that acts as a recharge on building tanks. Like a one minute cooldown after construction.

[Cias]

i havent actually built a tank in the last 20 games, probaly because every game was against a newbie when the keys went live. but if he made any armor my rangers would rape it plus rifles with stickes. then the howies took care of the rest :buddies:

[Spike]

Fatal, I totally agree.

I would like to see a much longer period where infantry and light vehicles are fighting it out. Maybe raising fuel costs or reducing the fuel depots could help. I also think a tank should be a relatively rare thing, and there should never be hordes of them rampaging around the battlefield, at the expense of infantry. It's something that will put me off playing 4v4 and 3v3's.

[lordkosc]

Maybe a higher pop cap for tanks ? Its always an option and VERY easy to mod.

[Demonic Spoon]

Infantry are never really overshadowed in my games... The only effective way to take on AT guns is with artillery or infantry.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

fuel costs for abilities like Armored Assault Force would be sufficient, IMO.

[Border Patrol]

hello cias, say hello to my mg42!:banana:

[FatalTheRabbit]

I think an increase to the fuel cost of all tanks, possibly combined with a minor manpower decrease to some, ought to be investigated as a solution. The Panther could serve as a role model for other tanks in regards to cost in my opinion.

Adding fuel costs to armor related commander tree abilities is a good idea too.

[Lfctony]

IMHO, the costs are fine and the game plays fine. There are ways to counter tank spamming, AT guns, 88s, artillery strikes, panzerschreks, stickies, etc etc. Making the cost for tanks even higher will probably ruin the game, at least for me. And just for clarification's sake, I play Allies with the Infantry Doctrine...

Tony.

[Spartan452]

i agree with fatal, infrantry is needed when your first start off, but after that i only see a crapload of tanks shooting each other, with some engineers to take points, but thats all, infrantry simply goes down to tanks too fast, and sticky bombs arent as effective as having a sherman up there. I think it could be balanced by the cost, a sherman cost a less than 2 squads of rifleman in manpower, and with stickybombs they cost 40 munitions? so 2 rifle and 2 stickybomb cost 540 manpower and 50 munitions, but a sherman cost 420 manpower and 90 fuel, but the sherman can go toe to toe with axis armour with out having it destroyed, but with the 2 rifles even with micro you'll be losing more than half of the rifles if not all of them and you'll be using more than 2 stickybombs to take out the tank, so you'll be losing 540+ manpower to reinforce your squad or to rebuild and 25+ munitions to take out the tank if u can actually pull it off, so in the cost efficency a sherman would do better, than 2 rifle squads. So if you pull up the cost of tanks it would be better balanced. So if like you HAVE to have 3 rifles to take out a tank like a panzer than the cost of the panzer should equal 3 rifles, to take out a sherman would take 2 squads of rifles than the sherman should cost up to 2 rifles, that way u can decide if its worth getting a sherman thats equal to 2 rifle squads or have 2 rifle squads to take out a tank

[FatalTheRabbit]

Well Lfctony, I can say with complete confidence that I will not play anything bigger than a 2vs2 when I get the game, and those will probably be few are far between.

'Combined arms' doesn't hold any water at all in 3vs3, and in 2vs2 it's very short lived. Why bother with infantry beyond the first moments when allies mass calliopes, shermans, and howitzers, while axis players mass produce stugs, flak panzers, and tigers? There's so much AOE in that equation that infantry don't stand a chance in hell, so all you see is engineers/pioneers for capping and repairing. Tanks ought to be heavy support platforms, not the meat of your forces, and they should not completely overshadow any and all light armor.

Why on earth would you make light armor when there are tanks EVERYWHERE?

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Agreed on that fatal, if you can buy a tank for a little more money then infantry why bother to buy the infantry at all in large games.

[Demonic Spoon]

They're fine. Infantry do not go down fast at all AS LONG AS YOU USE COVER.

[FatalTheRabbit]

... Yeah, those stone walls do wonders against tank rounds and artillery barrages.

[bioxx]

Actually Infantry can be very effective with all of those tanks. When I play allies I use my tanks as a distraction while I get either my infantry or rangers behind their other tanks. If I go airborne I drop AT all over the place around them while I sticky or RR them. I've had 1 sherman go head to head with a tiger and and hold of 6+ tiger attacks. just 1 tiger at a time but infantry can inflict that extra bit of damage. They are also effective at taking out those mortar squads that pound your AT defenses.

[FatalTheRabbit]

1 tiger at a time is a very different situation to the one I see in 3vs3s, and the latter portion of 2vs2s. It's not uncommon for 2 or possibly all 3 axis players to go blitz/terror, and field as many as 4-6 tigers, relying probably on vet stugs until that point, with the capacity to replace them pretty easily using manpower blitz. A force like that doesn't need infantry support, especially with a flak panzer or two, and will make the infantry you've fielded pretty useless in a direct fight, and you certainly aren't going to maintain an army of expensive infantry in order to harass points, so you get what I've described. Armor masses(calliopes/shermans for allies. Tigers, flaks, occaisonal panthers if defensive for axis) backed by AT guns and artillery with pioneers/engineers off capping points. Tactics become negligible and the game devolves into an armor slugfest.

The actual details obviously vary game to game, but that's the gist of it according to my team game experiences. It's also not just about infantry, it's about light armor.

[Cias]

hello cias, say hello to my mg42!:banana:
mg's are easy to counter : )

[Bonnet]

Actually, its just the Ostwind. The rest of the armor can be dealth with infantry and AT guns, but the Ostwind moves like a jeep and masacres AT guns. I just played a ranked game where I held everything but 3 point on the map. And had four or five at guns sitting around, nonetheless with two ostwinds he managed to roll over my three vet 3 at guns, three squads of rifles, and two of paras with recoiless. Thats just stupid. They where all stacked to provide good hitting position, and the first two times when he didn't succeed he just retreated them easily and quickly out of range. So I used two bombing runs on him and than took out two of them. But because they cost less than an AT gun, he just bough a bunch more and zerged the now revealed positions of my AT Guns. In the end I must have killed seven or eight of them. His stugs would have easily countered (and did) and armored response so I was screwed. If it weren't for the spamable ostwinds, infantry would have a role in the game. Thats about it.

He won from almost 400 points behind. Isn't that a little stupid?

[Agdune]

zbob, you sure that wasn't just bad playing? I've never lost that kind of manpower to two ostwinds, unless I was really caught with my pants down.

I'm an infantry-heavy player, so I would also like to see fewer tanks in-game. Or, at least fewer heavy tanks... Light stuff can be fun to play with :p

[FatalTheRabbit]

That was a 1on1. 1on1 is quite different. Infantry are always useful in a 1on1, and light armor has some stage time before it gets pushed out. Team games on the other hand, unless they are 500 point VP, become armor slugfests, where light armor might not show up at all. It's slower to happen in 2vs2s, but it's common enough, and in 3vs3s it's like that almost right off the bat with players solely focusing on armor, besides whichever one takes infantry. I can just imagine 4vs4.

[Bonnet]

Agdune: Yes, quite sure. I am used to loosing to better players (cough**hero**cough), that was a result of a basic inbalance. I mean I killed seven or eight of them, but they are cheap, so he obviously didn't care. Hell he is ahead for the most part if he kills one AT gun with each ostwind. He could usally kill one and wipe out half an airborne squad. Thats alot of money.

[Trizzdog]

Up the fuel cost of the problem tanks (especially the oswind!), and make the off map tanks cost fuel too. I think that would go a long way to control tank spam.

[MajorBox]

I agree, I like the tanks, but I dont like seeing a massive horde of tanks.

What if tanks had a fuel operating cost? I.e.

X Tank Cost Y Fuel Points per T (seconds/min)

So if you want to build a lot of tanks thats fine but make sure you don't exceed your fuel income other wise they wont be able to move. This would proved a inf/ab player a secondary tactic to counter the hord of tanks, just go behind his lines and cap his fuel points, thus parking all of the tanks once he runs out of fuel reserves.

[FUBAR624]

The main problem I see is that once tanks come into the picture, infantry tactics go right out.

Heres an example. At the start of a game, if player puts and MG and volks squad into a building, you have to use some tactics, (grenades, snipers, mortars) to clear him out. In late game, you just send in a tank, blow the crap out of the building and move on.

[VagabonD]

Although I dont have any *new* suggestions to resolve this, I do tend to agree.

I think 1v1s and even 2v2s are fine, but anything above that turns into tanks. No its not inbalanced tanks, infantry broken, etc. Its just that on that scale most, or at least several players focus on LOTS of tanks. When you are playing you feel robbed of the amazing infantry and light armor combat.

Also, light armor in general seems least used. At least for allies, its like why go mortal pool (I believe it is) when I could just go tank depot.... Am I missing something here?

[Dr_Funkenstein]

I agree that most tank fuel costs should be increased.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It turns into tanks because people don't use pressure tactics properly. You should never allow the enemy time to build tank masses. Harass any tank groups with off-map attacks and artillery and even by moving AT guns into range with infantry cover.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Has nothing to do with pressure, if you reach a tier where you can build tanks instead of infantry for a slight cost increase why bother with infantry at all? It's just ashame that in large teamgames you quickly see just loads of tanks slugging it out, with everything from arti to infantry fighting around that armor to protect/defeat. Ruins the whole immersion a bit, just sucks seeing 6 tigers next to each other. Doesn't feel right, I think that's what fatal means.

[BlitzForce]

although this is a propaganda film, you can how easy it is to hide from tanks in prepared and built up areas and the many ways to kill em in reality :)

part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STQHH_hJlhM&mode=related&search=panzer

part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb7SixS9PAw&search=panzer

problem is COH has borg spotting for amour, and that makes all the difference. They don't have men inside them, they feel more like robots etc :wtf:
Well no one bails out...

[Holmium]

In reality, tanks have very poor SA (Situtional Awareness) especially in a combat zone. They relied on inf to tell them where other inf/hazards were.

The only way tanks can increase their SA is by using their commander either within the cupola or partially out of the hatch (which makes them VERY vulnerable to small arms fire).

It would be cool if they changed the fog of war based upon the direction that the turret/hull is facing. For example,

If one tank was facing north, and it's turret was facing north then it could see really well to the north but to the east, south and west it would be much lower. So, he could see 200 m to the north but only 30 metres to the south/east/west. If the turret was facing east and the hull was facing north, then perhaps, he could see 200m north, 200m east, 30m south, 30m west. This way, tanks would need to be protected with other SA increasing units, like jeeps/bikes or infantry.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

in COH that is represented by poor tank accuracy.

As for why pressure forces enemies to build infantry, that is because unsupported tanks are fodder in anything less than large groups.

[Shakrith]

I agree with the OP. All the team games I've played, Axis tank battallions have rampaged across the mid-to-late game battlefield with little in the way of an Allied counter.

Are we in need of a DoW style separate tank cap?

[FatalTheRabbit]

In playing some more 2vs2s, I find I just do not like company of heroes in anything but 1on1. In a recent game of mine as allies my opponents really only tried to hold 3 fuel points, giving up nearly the entire map to us while concentrating all their forces on 3 fuel points. One of them starting spamming stugs, and basically stopped all infantry production, so I set up 3 AT guns around him and started smashing his armor. Eventually he just sat back on his fuel points, and I prepared to move forward, when I saw 3 flakpanzers speed like fucking race cars out of his allies base(who had simply skipped straight to tier 4 with only volks and mgs up till then), and head straight for ours. His ally tried to make a push too, but I had him pinned down with AT guns and so he just ended up losing a couple of stugs and falling back again. The problem is of course that the ostwinds flew right past all our defenses and raped my allies base. I had to pull back my AT to defend the base, but by the time I got there and destroyed the flak panzers my ally's structures were pretty much gone(ostwinds do HUGE damage to buildings) with another two flak panzers on the way.

My ally was new, and so he wasn't a strong player, but he still managed a tank of his own, but it wasn't good enough to stop the kamikaze ostwinds. Tanks are just ridiculous in team games. Zero tactics once tank spam begins. What a waste of time.

[raydude]

The kind of turtling you describe would be very difficult to do in a ranked game or a non-ranked game with VP win conditions. Neither side can afford to turtle and tech up while the enemy has all VP locations and the VP counter it ticking down to zero.

Besides, you said it yourself that your ally was new. He should have at least put up tank traps in front of his base covering the obvious entrances. Presto, no more ostwind attacks because they can't run over tank traps. Plus, why even fight over the last three fuel points? Why not just head straight for the enemy base and at least cripple one of them?

[Reverie]

I myself have practically given up using flaks cause they're too imba. Flakpanzer rushes are sick, yes it's viable but cheap. Especially in bigger maps where you can't control all the chokepoints, same goes for M8+raid. They can always find a way past your defenses(the AIs are the best exploiters on this)

In semois theres never enough time for you to tech up and mass tanks, but 2v2 and 3v3s are differnt stories. Bigger maps means you can't pressure the enemy so well and more resources hence ppl can turtle and spam armor. Supposedly mixing infantry with armor should work better but no, enough armor can get the job done faster AND there's less micro. So tactics degrade into who can spam tanks faster and park them in the enemy base.

I'm all for real LoS on tanks forcing players to bring infantry, but that would be better for a mod. For the mass RTS players there's more fun in big guns and tank spammage than the elaborate micro and tactics CoH could offer. The most they could do is postpone the armor phase like raising the thresholds, or use a system like Rise of Legend so spamming flaks and Tigers would cost a fortune. Also infantry damage for tanks needs a nerf...even StuGs can slowly blast riflemen apart:/

[babarian34]

Rabitt, I have to admitt Im a noob, but well here is my suggestion:

Did you try to build tank traps to prevent the enemy rushing trough your defences?

If your enemy, as you describe, was turtling so hard, this should have given you enough time to spam all or most roads with tank traps.
They are fast to build, effective, dont cost anything, and hard to destroy.

If an enemy is turtling, I'd suggest scouting the enemy base and with 90% propability prepare for an enemy tank spam.
However, you should have enough time to build a defense consisting of tank traps, behind them sandbags, and behind them Anit tank guns. As he propably wont build any infantry support you can concentrate on massing AT guns and fortifiyng your positions, maybe a fire MG emplacements to hold of infantry.

[FatalTheRabbit]

The game was relatively short, but for what happened I don't think tank traps would have been reasonable. It was mcgeheans war, and there are a lot of ways to get around on that map. The real point is that combined arms disapear when each player has somewhere around the neighborhood of 5 tanks. People gather it all together and you see big blobs of tanks slugging it out while some pioneers/engineers go take points. What good would some mgs and infantry, or light armor do during a battle between as much as 10 or more tanks which are probably backed by artillery and AOE commander abilities?

IMO tanks should be heavy support in addition to light armor and infantry, not replace light armor, and put all but very few infantry out of service.

[babarian34]

Well, I think it is impossible to close down the whole map for the enemy with tank traps, but it is surely possible to slow him significantly down with clever positioned tank traps on critical locations.

I think when people would start counter mass tank spams, people would stop using tank spams as this strategy would become ineffective.

Both sides would need to use combined forces again, as a pure tank player has a hard time against pretty powerful anti tank guns in fortified positions, and the anti tank gun player would need to have some supporting infantry because those guns are pretty vulnarable to enemy infantry.

I agree however, that a own cap limit for vehicles would propably solve the problem most efficiently

[FatalTheRabbit]

There are usually AT guns in there yes, but that's where artillery comes in, and driving past them works more often than I'd like.

[Souvarine]

Also in agreement with the OP. All team games, with no exception ended up with almost 0 infantry on the board. AT guns last for a single engagement at most, and often don't even win vs a tank (and that include the 88mm)

Axis are pretty obvious with their tanks (Flakpanzer+tigers). You just don't need infantry support.

Allies also have the Calliope which makes a mess of any static unit/building whenever the barrage is used.

I would dramatically reduce the field of view of the tanks to a narrow frontal cone (fire arc).

[raydude]

Also in agreement with the OP. All team games, with no exception ended up with almost 0 infantry on the board. AT guns last for a single engagement at most, and often don't even win vs a tank (and that include the 88mm)

That seems weird and unbelieveable to me. Especially team VP games where only infantry can capture the VP points (or the light vehicles if you have Allied Armor tree). In fact, I played a ranked 2v2 VP game a few days ago where my partner was Allied infantry and I was airborne.

Our opponents lost precisely because they focused more on tanks - so even if they killed all of the defenders around the VP they were still losing on the VP counter because they didn't have any infantry to immediately cap the VP.

Contrast that with our play style where my ally would bring a few tanks to the VP, I'd airdrop infantry and AT guns and immediately be able to cap the VP once we killed all the defenders.

[Souvarine]

i suppose experience will vary, i typed what i have seen so far. For capping, i mainly see engineers or pioners, which i don't really consider "infantry".

I also have seen some people try to mass riffleman, but seriously, it didn't have a real impact on the game as long as there was a real fight to win (i.e. the infantry starts to be effective again once the tanks are gone...which often mean the game is over anyway)

[FatalTheRabbit]

Raydude, people use pioneers/engineers with flamers. People stop maintaining an expensive force of infantry and just use those instead to capture territory. Normal combat infantry are present here and there, but usually it's just because they've survived the entire time. Eventually they'll die, and they won't be replaced.

I've seen some infantry players, most certainly newer ones, use hordes of rangers instead of tanks(it's really quite ridiculous to see actually), but usually it just ends up in a cycle of fire up and charge!>Axis selects firestorm/rocket barrage/maybe stukas>see red smoke/first stuka rounds strike>mass retreat!

I played a game yesterday where one of my opponents was using infantry the whole game, while his ally focused completely on armor. We must have racked up almost 150+ kills each, but the guy had almost no armor kills himself(like 15 which probably were mostly due to howitzers compared to our 40 give or take a few each simply from fighting his ally alone due to war machine ability). It was a long game, but he never seemed to learn that his infantry did shit when the ground was exploding over every inch due to tanks fighting, artillery launching, and commander abilities used whenever possible.

[Flatline0100]

There is another option IMO. It’s very common in FPS game to have lockouts for weapons that are over powered or over used.

Why not add a function to the multiplayer host controls that will allow you to cap the number of specific units (Tiger, Panther, Calliope, Sherman). This would allow a player to tailor their match. And at the same time not alter the game play so that other play styles loose out.

[ÜberJumper]

It'd been suggested by others, but I think the best solution is to have seperate caps for Vehicles and Infantry (as in Dawn of War).

Problem is, the whole game would have to be rebalanced. Bit of a cluster fuck to change it at this time... maybe for a major patch or for the expansion.

[FatalTheRabbit]

Increasing fuel costs is a way of limiting cap somehwat. Then each player can't cost effectively spam heavy tanks over infantry and light vehicles, and it will still allow for a good number of tanks in the really large team games like 4vs4. Making a vehicle cap is just too artificial, and too much like dawn of war. I think a player should, in a team game, be able to go armored and focus on heavily on armor, but where it's less accessible so he has fewer heavy tanks and must use them attentively and tactically to help his allies assault and defend instead of generating a massive swarm and just steam rolling the map. If you implement a hard cap, armor commanders won't really be able to be armor commanders because they hit the cap, and then are forced to go on infantry. They'll be the same as their allies except with a couple special tanks. A vehicle cap forces everyone into a middle ground, and dilutes the importance of commander trees. I don't want that. I want tanks in a heavy support role, but I still want specialization to be possible in team games, so each member can focus on commander tree related roles.

Hard cap < cost prohibition for the sake of interesting team games.

[Flatline0100]

Well thats what I get for not reading all posts in this thread.

But it was my 2 cents.

[Bridger]

If tank view was limited it would just mean people would send in 2 jeeps with their tank squads, so that's not the answer.

I believe as some have pointed out, the problem only persists on the 3v3 and to a smaller extent the 2v2 games. Why is this? Well in the 1v1 map you have X number of points and you get resources from all of them. In the 2v2 map you have more points and you still get resources from all of them. In the 3v3 map you have TONS of points and you still get points from all of them.

So maybe instead of getting full resources in the bigger maps they should scale down the resource ratesoverall? So in a 2v2 game each point you have only produces half resources for each player. They sort-of did this by including less of the medium and high resource nodes in the big map, but i don't think it was enough.

That or a fuel increase/MP decrease (slight) for tanks might be good as well. I'd like to see more emphesis put on infantry with tanks as support units. In 3v3s after 10-15 minutes all anybody makes is tanks, because it's simply the most effective thing to do. Tanks kill infantry and vehicals, infantry only kill infantry (for the most part) and are much easier to kill.

As for AT guns, they are stationary, and you build them at the expense of other offensive forces. If you build AT guns instead of tanks you'll be on the defensive the whole game and probably eventually lose. They are very vulnerable to artilery which every tree has access to in some form.