We'll be doing a deep dive on the US Forces with our Gameplay team on Thursday, October 27th @ 10am PT. Tune in here https://www.twitch.tv/relicentertainment

Feel free to leave your questions and feedback here! We'll answer what we can on the livestream and can provide more details here afterward. Tune in for a look at our updated lighting and unit tinting, along with getting a better idea of how the faction will work in multiplayer!

[EDIT] Check out the recording of our deep dive here: 

TomDRV wrote:

Mastersteve wrote:

Will USF get any kind of heavy tank? Like Pershing? Will usf have any kind of “heavy” anti tank units like m36 Jackson? M18 hellcat is kinda not really good against tigers and panthers. 

Tigers and panthers will be sufficiently rare and expensive that it's not an issue.

Looks like the game will be more focused on early war units which I love, not everything devolving to panthers and fireflies again. There so much more unit variety earlier in the war they can exploit!

I have a lot of friends that play coh2. We talk also alot about coh3 and we don't like the idea to play coh3 with panzer 3's and matildas. I have the feeling most people want kingtigers, pershing, is2 etc..

BTW: That company of heroes is concentrating only in the early years of the war is IMO a MYTH. Easy 8, m24 chaffee, whizbang aand black prince   are units after 1944

Will future DLC for the USF be in the form of new support centers?

Do any USF units use shotguns or Johnson LMG? Do models exist for the Pershing or M36 Jackson?

This gameplay looks amazing! A significant improvement compared to previous seen things.

What is noticed and like:

- Better possible engagement distances of all weapons shown

- Great wisdom from people in stream about approach to future game design (eg. opening up competitive play for people who can't click that fast, me : ) )

- USA infantry absolutely cool when they run and fire like a mini rambo 

- USA halftrack cool

- Way of handling terrain and marking terrain with red lines (nicely and clear looking done, so its clear where you fight for)

- Automated decisions are also very cool as base building is nice but indeed better to focus on battle field and tactics and strategy development

- Would not worry to much about length of gameplay people who choose 3v3 or 4v4 know what they get, it's better to enhance their experience by

creating a shared resource pool (you can choose amount of contribution to low, mid, or high) where one person can be voted to be commander of and pull of strong supportive abilities - strikes

Enabling interesting plays where strat of teams can be to stall other team with minimum efford and cheap investment eg. simple low cost infantry more defensive kind of play

What is noticed and missing:

- German tanks lack camouflage colour something i think is not forgotten but will catch up

- The battle group choices should be considered like in coh 1 to be accessible from one clear button (eg. hq button) in a larger screen

Allows some more time to chose and possibly pack other customisation features in there as well as cleaning up GUI

I would consider people bringing in their commander who is customised (so you play usa and have several customised commanders to choose from) according to a set of picks. It will be hard to design and balance at first but, but you can design it in such way that if a player chooses two extrems of a certain differnt battegroup pays many points for it and has to 

leave other options.( The amount of infinite customisation options should be somewhat limited when it helps balancing) You can than by help of ai suggesting nature when player confirms his choices name the type of commander by saying: he choose heavy air support or whatever.

This in return the directions chosen could slightly change the options available in shared resource pool and ability pool. Enabling and promoting a more cooperative kind of multiplayer

and where a match is a more impactful unique event with a somekind more of traced back flow path and strategy.

So way more puzzling needs to be done here, but the approach of now is smart like not deviating to much from standard builds for usa like their backbone rifle infantry.

will be 

- Vehicle movement seems to be to fast when from full stop getting up to speed, encouraging clever usage and taking terrain deployed in consideration

- Explosions of certain weapon types look good like from small arms bazooka etc. but larger explosions look a bit to snappy and lack dust cloud as with bombardment of building.

You want it to display a bit more of a impacting experience with some more after glow depending on materials

To think about:

- German troops details should be a more disciplined appearance and on rare random ocassion more special out of control

- USA troops look well designed however when introducing soviet army, soviets are fast to but maybe in a less precise way than usa, 

the guards infantry is than a unit or guard armor who is better to usa.  

I watched through both matches, and I have to say I am very happy with the changes we have seen since the alpha and trailer releases.

Positive Feedback:

1) US vehicles look much better now, the camo looks quite nice.

2) The US tech tree looks solid. The faction seems to have all the stock tools they need.

3) The support center system seems to add very large changes to the way the core faction plays. Mechanized heavily buffs tanks and vehicles, whilst the infantry center will allow for a much more infantry focused strategy. We didn't get to see the air support center, but I would be worried of the viability of that support center, as it locks you out of buffs to your core army. It would have to be quite strong indeed to have to make up the difference.

4) The implementation of global upgrades is great, and allows for many more (and better balanced) choices to be made in parts of your faction that a player would want to strengthen. I hope other factions have similar options.

Negative Feedback:

1) It is hard to tell based off of the sample size of 2 matches we got to see in the stream, but the US appeared to have a very strong early game presence, as well as strong potential to snowball from then outwards (similar to USF in COH2). Factions shouldn't really have the capability to both be aggressive early and snowball, because it makes for a less interesting gameplay loop, where either it feels unfair to fight against them, or too stressful to play as them. Ideally, both factions should have similar power ratings at all points in the game, with certain units allowing for power spikes depending on resource investment across the extent of the match. This is more of a balance point however, and not a very certain one at that.

2) The first match looked off to me. I am not sure what it was, but the units didn't seem to fit very well in contrast to the map. In the second game I thought the game looked fine, but the first game map textures seemed poor. Sorry I cannot be more specific.

3) I was not a fan of hearing that techless unit callins would be coming back in COH3. In COH2, techless callins led to stale gameplay for years, as factions ignored their own tech buildings and core units in favor of building the same techless tanks over and over again. It lowered the amount of viable commanders, and also the variety in units you could expect to see in the course of the game. The reason techless callins are bad is due to their ability to allow players to invest resources that would otherwise be used to tech, directly into combat capable units. This punishes players who take doctrines that force them to use stock tech dependent units. I understand that the current Idea is to force bundles unit purchases to somewhat alleviate this issue, but bundles cause other problems. In lategame COH, popcap and veterancy are extremely important. Forcing a player to buy a vet0 unupgraded rifle squad every time they want an Easy8, for example, taxes them for wanting to use their doctrine, and also unfairly punishes them if they decide to go for tech buildings before using the callin. A far better solution is the one COH2 has been using for years now - tying callins to tech buildings. This way, units in battlegroups are truly supplemental choices, and not competitors to wanting to use the core army of a faction. Please think carefully about how COH3 is going to represent battlegroup units, and do not discount the lessons learned in past instalments.

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But all that said, great work on the game! I look forward to see where you are going to take the other 3 factions slated for release. If they are all as complex and well designed as the US Forces, COH3 will be a masterpiece!