CoH: Modern Combat

While I've been told that flamers in Modern Combat have the same stats as flamers in vCoH, I think they are perhaps too powerful. The issue is twofold. First, shotguns are entirely inferior to flamers but cost more, leaving the U.S without any effective mobile AoE or crowd control in the early game, since U.S. mines are currently bugged. Second, PLA engineers seem far more durable than vCoH engineers and pioneers. This was the primary balancing factor for flamers in vCoH I think, that they were attached to relatively fragile delivery systems and could be focused down relatively easily if without support.

As it stands, a PLA flamer squad in yellow cover can easily win against an M4-SD green beret squad, as seen in this replay: http://www.gamereplays.org/companyofheroes/replays.php?game=25&show=details&id=283142. It happens closer to the end of the game, to the right of the LHS munitions cut-off. The analogous situation in vCoH would be somewhere between an MP40 volks squad or a 4-man MP44 Panzer Grenadier (or Stormtrooper) squad vs. a U.S. engineer squad probably, an engagement that the flamer engineer squad is very, very likely to lose.

My other replays as PLA always see triple engineer -> triple flamer usage, so there's quite a lot of viewing material available for getting a sense of how powerful flamers are in this current set-up.

Flamers are only powerful if you have low health squads since flamers score most of their crits on low health squads. The best counter to flamers are SAWs and stryker FSV or MGS, or a Bradley if its that late in the game. I don't see an issue with flamers they are pretty much the same as vCoH. If there is a massive blob then just use HMG or grenades

Shotguns were much more powerful in previous versions and had to be toned down since they together with an early Stryker were too powerful.
They are a buildingcleaner now while still having some effectiveness against infantry.

Everything can't be locally balanced all the time either. It would make things boring :/

The Green Berets can throw grenades. If you otherwise get swarmed by flamers, an MG or Mortar Carrier with good aim would do great damage and possibly destroy an entire squad in one hit.

I have played a fair few games with Bananaphone and his flame squads do prove to be devasting especially when playing as the marines. Checkout the replay, a full health SEAL team with MP7s gets owned by a flame squad 1v1, perhaps some individual units (such as SEALs) need a received damage modifier vs flame throwers.

An engineer squad, flame throwers or not, shouldn't be taking down SF units. I saw on one replay, a HMMWV destroyed by a squad of 3 engineers without any upgrade, just rifles. Balance or not, that's ridiculous to see.

SnowBlaZeR2 wrote:An engineer squad, flame throwers or not, shouldn't be taking down SF units. I saw on one replay, a HMMWV destroyed by a squad of 3 engineers without any upgrade, just rifles. Balance or not, that's ridiculous to see.

In original CoHToV, US Engineer with M2 flamethrower can easily takes down a group of Knight's Cross Holders - Knight's Cross Holders have elite armor which strong vs everything except flamethrower, this is a part of balanceing.

South wrote:In original CoHToV, US Engineer with M2 flamethrower can easily takes down a group of Knight's Cross Holders - Knight's Cross Holders have elite armor which strong vs everything except flamethrower, this is a part of balanceing.

Balancing needs to take other things into account. Engineers aren't a fighting unit, so they shouldn't be able to hold their own against, or in this case destroy, units like the SEALs, GBs and MARSOC. If you don't want your engineers beat down, don't put them up against those units. I understand balancing concerns, but some things are too ridiculous to chalk up to balancing. This is one of them. There are other ways to balance things and maintain a somewhat realistic approach to game play.

For what it's worth, I've never noticed the flame throwers being a problem in HC, and that's really all I play anymore. The HMMWV is another story.

Darkbladecr wrote:Flamers are only powerful if you have low health squads since flamers score most of their crits on low health squads. The best counter to flamers are SAWs and stryker FSV or MGS, or a Bradley if its that late in the game. I don't see an issue with flamers they are pretty much the same as vCoH. If there is a massive blob then just use HMG or grenades

In the most recent 2v2 I've posted [here: http://www.gamereplays.org/companyofheroes/replays.php?game=25&show=details&id=283250] you can witness a vet 1 flamer squad in green cover (which I believe shotguns are supposed to be better against, than against open cover?) annihilating an offensive vet 1 shotgun squad in no cover (which again, I believe flamers are supposed to be worse at targets in no cover than in yellow or green?) without taking any casualties. It happens near the middle left munitions point that's adjacent to the two +10 fuel points, about halfway through the game I think. Flamers also appear to scale exponentially in terms of damage instead of linearly, because the potential for insta-kill flamer crits increases superlinearly as a function of raw damage output, number of flamers, and number of enemies in the AoE.

However, if flamers are pretty much like they are in vCoH, flamer damage output shouldn't be the problem, and the issue probably lies somewhere in the stats of the actual delivery unit. How to balance this without mucking up pre-flamer dynamics, I'm not sure, and Campaigner's point about not always being able to locally balance everything is probably highly relevant here.

As far as counters, PLA access to APCs or BMPs, or to Regular grenades and HMGs didn't keep shotguns from being nerfed in an earlier patch. Engineer squads are also small enough that two or three squads together have a much easier time dodging nades than would two or three militia or regulars squads.

SnowBlaZeR2 wrote:An engineer squad, flame throwers or not, shouldn't be taking down SF units. I saw on one replay, a HMMWV destroyed by a squad of 3 engineers without any upgrade, just rifles. Balance or not, that's ridiculous to see.

This is consistent with vCoH, well microed engineer and pioneer squads can easily take down bikes and jeeps if they're left around too long. While humvees are more expensive than jeeps, PLA engineers are much more effective than Wehr pioneers, so I would expect this relationship to hold.

South wrote:

SnowBlaZeR2 wrote:An engineer squad, flame throwers or not, shouldn't be taking down SF units. I saw on one replay, a HMMWV destroyed by a squad of 3 engineers without any upgrade, just rifles. Balance or not, that's ridiculous to see.

In original CoHToV, US Engineer with M2 flamethrower can easily takes down a group of Knight's Cross Holders - Knight's Cross Holders have elite armor which strong vs everything except flamethrower, this is a part of balanceing.

I've seen this happen if the engineer squad has support such as screening rifles or multiple engineer squads, but I've never seen an engineer squad take down a KCH squad 1v1 (KCH damage output is just too high) unless they both happen to be in green cover or other highly imbalanced situations like that.

SnowBlaZeR2 wrote:Balancing needs to take other things into account. Engineers aren't a fighting unit, so they shouldn't be able to hold their own against, or in this case destroy, units like the SEALs, GBs and MARSOC. If you don't want your engineers beat down, don't put them up against those units. I understand balancing concerns, but some things are too ridiculous to chalk up to balancing. This is one of them. There are other ways to balance things and maintain a somewhat realistic approach to game play.

We're actually stating the opposite problem, that PLA flamer engineers have been hands-down winning against SEALs and GB (and a lot of other stuff) 1v1 (MARSOC shouldn't have a problem 1v1 because of their effectiveness at range and huge damage output, I'm guessing). I don't know if Thompson Ranger squads lose to single flame pioneer squads in the open, but my guess would be that they would take a decent bit of damage but not outright lose.

It seems like something unintentionally happened to the flamer stats making them extremely powerful we are looking to fix this mistake.

HELLOBANANAPHONE wrote:We're actually stating the opposite problem, that PLA flamer engineers have been hands-down winning against SEALs and GB (and a lot of other stuff) 1v1 (MARSOC shouldn't have a problem 1v1 because of their effectiveness at range and huge damage output, I'm guessing). I don't know if Thompson Ranger squads lose to single flame pioneer squads in the open, but my guess would be that they would take a decent bit of damage but not outright lose.

I think you're mixing up who that was directed at and why.