Hello everyone, I'm really looking forward to this mod for CoH, and I'd like to throw in some of my ideas to help you guys out. And since this is my first post here, dont be too harsh with me... :)

USA:

General Stuff:
- Flash-Bang Grenades for basic and elite infantry. Flash-Bangs could be similar to smoke, but only affect the enemy.
- White Phosphorus Rounds: Allows American Mortars to "Shake and Bake" their enemies.
- Future Combat Warrior Systems: Allows American infantry to use the "Precision Fire" ability (for a small munition cost, american infantry could have extra accuracy for a small laps of time)

Doctrines:
Mechanised Command:
- 4 Call-ins... Maybe its a bit too much? Maybe instead of the Cougar Call-in you could add something more like "Humvee Upgrade Kits" allowing Humvees to upgrade to Ambulances, Avengers and TOW Rockets. I feel that the Cougar sounds quite like the Humvee (assuming the Humvee has a .50 Cal gun too), and that there is nothing the Humvee cant do but the Cougar can.
- For the Right Hand side's 2nd Ability I would suggest something like a 105mm Rifled Gun upgrade to the Stryker to give the US a mid-game AT vehicle or a 120mm Mortar.
- I feel that the M109A6 Paladin doesnt really fit the US... I would see the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System in its place though. The M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System could be able to alternate between rockets and ATACMS missiles (for a munitions cost).

Air Superiority:
- No MOAB Strike or Carpet Bombings? :(
- Maybe add the AH-64 Apache or the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior in some form (air-strike or call-in) in the Left side since it seems to focus more on close-quarter air support.

Preemptive Strike:
- For the Right-side, you could add a "Deploy Predator UAV" ability. This could call a Predator UAV to reveal an area for some time to better prepare your strikes. Or you make it a Orbital Satellite Scan or something like that.
- For the Right-hand side you could also add and ability that unlocks the M7 Bradley FiST. This would allow M3 Bradleys to upgrade to M7 FiSTs. When deployed, FiSTs could have a radar effect like the Funkwagon in the current CoH.

China:

General:
- FHJ84 Twin Rocket Launchers. Those things are awesome.
- JY-11 Surveillance Radars. Small and stealth, they act like Radio Triangulators, or then could simply provide a small LoS and stealth detection radius around it.
- Autoloader Systems for Tanks: Expensive but powerful upgrade. Augments the Rate of Fire of tanks when still but decreases RoF when moving.

Doctrines:
Airborne:
- Right Side (Aerial Units): Drop Airborne Squad -> Drop ZLC 2000 Airborne Fighting Vehicle -> Z-10 Attack Helicopter Call-in. This tree would concentrate more on bringing airborne fighting units on the field.
- Left Side (Air Support): Recon Training (extra LoS for basic infantry) -> Close-quarter Support (Allows basic infantry to call-in J-10 airstrikes) -> Air-Raid (Calls-in 2 J-10s to devastate an revealed area. Expensive but stronger than a P-47 Bombing Run but in a smaller area). This tree will be more about air-to-ground support, without becoming a call-in-the-same-plane-but-for-3-types-of-runs thing like Airborne Company in vCoH.

Heavy Vehicles:
- Right Tree (Armored Fist): Explosive Reactive Armor (Equips tanks with ERA, reducing their incoming penetration from missiles and rockets) -> Enriched Tungstene Shells (increases penetration and damage of all tanks) -> ZTZ99 Call-in. This tree focuses on the ZTZ96 and ZTZ99 Tanks mainly.
- Left Tree (Long-Ranged Support): Rocket Propelled Shells (Reduces the scatter range of all artillery, including mortars) -> Saturation Barrage (Allows Artillery to fire at a munitions cost a barrage with 1.5x or 2x more shells than a normal barrage) -> PLZ05 Self-Propelled Artillery Call-in. This tree focuses more on Shell-Based Artillery (and really ressembles Left-side of RCA if you think about it XD)...

Now for the last doctrine:

Overwhelming Numbers:
- Right Tree (Armor Reserves): Rapid Deployment (Decreases the deployment times of all vehicles) -> Mass Production (Decrease the costs of all vehicles by 15%) -> Industrial Power (Replaces all destroyed tanks with same new ones for a period of time. I.E. Allied War Machine lol). Armor Spam ftw lol
- Left Tree (Infantry Divisions): Drafting (Decreases the deployment times of Infantry) -> Wartime Privations (Reduces all Infantry Upkeep by 50%) -> Strategic Reserves (Reinforcements costs and reinforcement times are halved for 30 seconds). Infantry spam lol

Or (if you dont like people who spam stuff):

Missile Forces:
- Right Tree (Ballistic Weaponry): Satellite Scan (Reveals target area for 10 seconds) -> Missile Barrage (Calls-in a Missile Barrage on target revealed area) -> Cruise Missile Strike (Obliterates target revealed area with a DF-15 Cruise Missile Strike). This tree focuses more on powerful but expensive off-map missile barrages.
- Left Tree (Advanced Rocketry, any other name suggestions?): Enriched Rocket Propellant (Increases the speed and reduces scatter rate of all Missiles) -> LD2000 (Allows the construction of the LD2000 AA System) -> PHL03 MRLS (Calls-in a PHL03 MRLS. Limited at 1 at a time because Arty Spam sucks). This side focuses more on Rocket units.

Well I'm out of ideas, but I'll hang in these forums in case I have others. Feel free to tear apart all the ideas listed above (after all, they're just ideas...) or tweak if you find them actually interesting :)

And good lukc for this mod, im really looking forward to its release

Thanks for all the suggestions!


Just as a note, the American doctrines are already almost nothing like they were just a few days ago when we released the info on them, they are incessently evolving as we think of issues, so it no longer has 4 call ins

some very nice thought put into those suggestions

yeah we actually made some of them before

I would like to be able to camouflage any tank or vehicle, but just have the ability take longer to set in for different vehicles (or maybe depending on the environment if possible).

You mean like in Red Storm rising Newt?

Ya, that would be sweet.

Um, sure. Are you talking about in Hamburg or whatever the German town was where they used the brick piles to hide their tanks?

We will not be making everything have the capibility to go invisible for gameplay reasons.

Hm, fair enough. Will most things be able to be camouflaged, though?

probally not.

Will any tanks? I think a tank could be camouflaged pretty easily in a forest.

Also, one thing that's always annoyed me about RTS games is that vision for units is not line of sight (or if it is, there's something weird going on where it doesn't seem like it). That can ruin ambushes, when they can see your tank hiding around that corner. Is that going to be addressed with this mod or not?

I do believe that the LoS issue is an Engine problem?

With the Camouflaged tanks, possible but I wouldn't bet on it. It would end up bad most likely..

HissingNewt, theres nothing wrong with that, its a feature of the game, its one of the reallism/gameplay tradeoffs, and I dont think we could implement real LOS if we wanted to cause that is hardcoded.

Oh, thanks for the answers.

One more question, though. What role will UAV's play in the mod? Will there be any like the Darkstar drones of The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy?

They will be for recon only at this point in time, though this could change at some point in the future.

i was thinking about the marnes discussion and thought about changing or adding in a new doctrine.

Marines Doctrine - Incorporates the Marines and Navy

Left Side - naval Insertion and Support

This doctrine would be about support from a naval taskforce.

1. Helicopter Insertion - Blackhawk deploys a squad of marines to the battlefield.

2. Attack Heli Support - An Attack heli is assined an area to act as an overlord of the selected area, attacking any enemy units which enter it radius ( must be set in a non fow area)

3. Marine Infantry Support - Helicopters lands a helicopter which acts as a recuting base for marines and suport marines like hmg or motor. can also recruit M113 Armored Personnel Carriers for use.

Right Side

Marine artilery

1. call a AV-8B Harrier II for a bombing run

2. Allows Marines to build M777 howitzers on the filed which would offer amazing artillery support to the marines.

3. Tomahawk Cruise MissleStrike.
This is an expensive missle strike but the damaged caused is colosal. This missile will have a large damage radius and will have the ability to be called in fog of war areas.
(it would be very expensive and long recharge time)

Several things I'd like to notice:
- My idea was to have the Apache as an ''overlord'' of a sector.
- Marine Infantry Support is very unrealistic. What pilot would land his helicopter and put his engine off so he is a forward outpost? It sounds a bit too much like the gliders of OF.
- I had different plans with the M777. ;)
- I'm not really sure about that Tomahawk Missile. It just doesn't feels very right....

i just feel that it is a commonly used wepon by the us from offshore vessels and subs, so having it as maybe a powerful off map arty could work but have them be expensive and long to recharge

It would be hard to balance, because its such a powerful weapon. It could be op'ed or up'ed easily. Above all, it has no counter. Normal on-map artillery has a counter, and the CoH off-map artillery wouldn't be as poweful as a TH missile would be. And if you would only have one small part of the enemy base reveiled you could drop one in the base which would be pretty lame if half your base got destroyed by one missile.

well how about the idea of smart bombs instead fot this or premptive strike.

Imho, Preemptive Strike shouldn't be changed into a different doctrine. Preemptive Strike gives a lot of opportunities to turn the tide of battle. It just needs to be worked out correctly.

hi guys. this mod looks awesome

i have a suggestion for a unit type that could be a part of the spec ops command or preemptive strike maybe, australian SASR. they would be called in from off map and rock up in a bushmaster vehicle.

in real life a team of about 6 would have a sniper an LMG a javelin and the rest equipped with m4s or minimis (similar to a saw). but, i know that this would be quite overpowered should you in your infinite wisdom decide to include them, so maybe instead just a team of 4-6 with the option of either a javelin,LMG or sniper upgrade.

historically they were used as long range patrollers and for calling in air and arty support, so maybe give them good line of sight and camouflage. they are also considered to be one of the finest special forces in the world (the americans have currently got some SAS intructors over there teaching) so they should be more than capable fighters in pretty much any situation.

plus australia and america are now so close we could practically be considered one country.

I don't know. America already has enough SF. (SEAL, Delta, Green Beret's etc) So what major contribution would they have?

i reckon they should be in for a couple of reasons
1stly they are australian and australia has not really made a showing in any video game that i have ever played and its about time they did
2ndly they are excellent all round troops and come with the bushmaster aslav. historically they operated for up to 13 weeks at a time in isolation in hostile territory
3rdly some aussie accents amongst all the american ones would add some nice variety

1 and 3) That aren't gameplay reasons. So they aren't really useful.
2) Green Beret's, Delta's and SEAL's are also excellent all-round troops. They are heavily armed (M4's, M249's etc etc) They got excellent AT weapons, so tanks/ armoured vehicles shouldn't be a too big problem for them.
I don't want to be mean, and stamping your idea into the ground, but the best thing for now is to keep the Americans 'American only'.

What about changing America to the NATO? Giving more variety of units and honestly...playing all the time as Americans is becoming boring (no offense, really, but the USA is in 90% of all action and strategy games)

So you could make a multinational Side, consisting of Americans, Brits, French, German, Turkish, Italian and so on.

Just an idea :)

China could become to an Alliance (no not Russia :D) with India? Or Russia :D. Or both.

What do you think?

You'll be gray and old by the time it would come out if you want to add it.

why oO, instead of an abrams tank, you could model a .... I don´t know Leopard tank^^
Just change the models, wouldn´t that work?

I meant one faction (NATO) consisting of different units^^

we'd like to keep the other countries free, just in case we want to expand the mod if it is a succes

for now, if you don't like the americans, play the chinese :P

baaah :P:P I never said I dislike them :P. It just might be interesting playing with a multinational army ^^

I hope it will be a succes ! Can´t wait until this mod is finished :)

What about giving the Special Force Unit (whatever it will be) the ability to mark a target for a rocket attack or bomb? Instead of a Bazooka ability? It doesn´t has to be very strong, like a missile from a drone?

Abrams have been in service both for Marines and Army since the 1980s.
Its the worlds most fearsome tank yet. IMO.

BTW, Leopard tanks are German designed and used for main battles for several other European countries, Australia, Canada, Brazil and Chile.

You mean like a laser designator? UAVs and other ground attack jets do have infrared laser pick up abilities. (Honestly I'm not sure if its infrared laser or not, don't take my word for it.)

Well, I don´t know whether the most fearsome or not, as every tank has the same weakness (Helicopters, Bazooka ...) and I don´t want to discuss that, as this wouldn´t end ^^

Leopard was just an example XD. Could also be a Challenger or whatever for a NATO army ^^ Of course, the Abrams can be a part of it :P

Yes! A laser/target designator. Something like that, it doesn´t have to be very strong, so a missile from a Drone would be enough^^

the ability to add camo to vehicles is nice maybe something like Concealing some for the chineese elite infantry as ive seen lots of ideas for american infantry, but not the chineese. something like heroic charge for chineese officers, and american officers can call in for a bombing run only after it has been unlocked

idkim just thinking outload as ive been waiting for a mod liek this to come out for 2 years now and im just so excited

No, the Chinese, as far as I know, will have a _lot_ of infantry to storm with. So it makes no sense to cloak their elite infantry in my opinion. But the heroic charge thing sounds good!

The Chinese have too many troops. Simply too much.
Aha