I think at this stage, given the lack of throughput witnessed over the last 6 months, its highly unlikely we'll see any new factions added to the game. Having said that, I've had fun creating ideas for factions, its creative and problem solving, particularly for left field factions like this one. So here is my Hungarian faction design: 

In T0 we have the standard infantry, the Honveds, the Engineer squad and the Solothurn S 18-100 AT Rifle Team. For the latter, I imagine this working more like a weapon team than a AT Rifle squad in the traditional sense, it would be a squad of 4, the weapon would have an arc, set up and tear down times. Perhaps it would be best compared to a Raketen, being able to retreat and garrison buildings, but it wouldn't be of equivalent performance, something really only sufficient until the mid game. Engineers wouldn't have a flamethrower but instead can upgrade with med kits giving them the ability to heal nearby units. 

In T1 we have the MG M.07/31, the standard MG, the 1915/35M Mountain Gun, which would function like an ISG, the Krupp Protze and the 35M Ansaldo. The Krupp Protze I could see working like the Dodge truck in Coh2, being able to cap and can clown car squads, as well as being able to upgrade with an MG. It also has a Pak 36 upgrade, which requires Phase A. 

Teching for the Hungarians is basically how Ostheer in Coh2 tech, ie linearly. This setup separates a majority of the tech costs from the structures themselves and incentivises tech skipping. The 3 tech levels are labeled as A, B and C here. Also in T1 is the 35M Ansaldo, which requires Phase A. This unit would be somewhere of a power level between the 250/9 and the 221 scout car, in terms of harassment potential. 

T2 has the Flamethrower team; a dedicated anti garrison unit, equipped with a flamethrower, 3 Danuvia 43Ms and the breach ability. The you have the 38M Botond, which is your reinforcement and tow vehicle. It would probably have an Ambulance upgrade and a Munitions supply upgrade. Next is the 47mm M1931 AT Gun, which is your standard AT gun, closer to a Pak 38 standard. And finally the 39m Csaba, which is your first mid game light vehicle, mostly good against other light vehicles like the quad, humber and flak truck, but also can chip infantry. This requires Phase B. 

T3, which requires Phase B, has the LMG Team, which is your long range DPS squad. It would be interesting is it had a suppression firing mode which it could toggle, making them immobile and requiring a delay to switch on and off, somewhat like Guard fire positions. The Toldi IIa B/40 would be your main light vehicle, being generally good against both infantry and vehicles, can tango with Stuarts and Chaffees. Also in T3 is the Bofors 40 mm L/60 gun, which would be towed around and provide area denial. Lastly, we have the 40M Nimród, which requires Phase C and is roughly equivalent to the Ostwind. 

The final tier, T4, has the 41m Turan II, which is your medium tank, definitely on the weaker end of the medium tank spectrum. Its somewhat made up for by the 43M Zrínyi II, which is your heavy anti infantry tank, not unlike the Brummbär.  The 105mm 31 Ms Howitzer, would be your lategame indirect fire solution and finally there's the Towed 8-cm 29M, which would have the same role as the Flak 36 and be your solution to heavy tanks. 

Comments on the Design

The design, while being linear, essentially focuses on tech skipping to broaden out strategies. With Honveds in T0, there's nothing compelling you to build T1, if you don't need MGs or indirect. Likewise, with the S 18-100 AT Rifle Team in base tech, you can get away with skipping T2 and potentially tech straight to T3, while still having an AT solution ready if your opponent tries to punish you with a light vehicle. Whenever you tech a Phase, you're always placed in the dilemma of building the new vehicle that became available to you in your existing tech, or moving directly on to a higher level. 

The one thing the Hungarians lack is a tank destroyers, this can be made up for in the battlegroups. 

Battlegroups

Axis War Machine could replace Hungarian Vehicles with German ones.

My thinking with the M.14/39 Barrage Triple Creeping Barrage is that its a sort of 'skill shot', where each creeping barrage can be directed in a different direction, but all start from the same point. To illustrate this:

Considering diagram A, let's say your first click is point X, point Y could be how you could control which angle these barrages come in on. The further away you click point Y from point Z will dictate where the barrage lines will go. Obviously having a cursor appear showing the 3 lines of bombing would make it easier to target. You might want to have limit of say 10 degrees from the X axis (diagram D), although having it limited by the X axis would be fine as well. The fun thing about this is not only that its a skill shot, how good it is depends on how you target it, but you could make it so that point X is marked with a smoke, but the lines of the barrage are not, so your opponent has to guess where it will land. This makes this kind of barrage really interesting as an area denial tool, because it could land anywhere within a large cone, but there are also large gaps in the barrage, as show in C and D, which units can escape to. The hitch is, you don't know where those safe zones are until the bombs start falling.

The Mace Thrower is an interesting one, as it appears to be like the Raketen but unlike the Raketen, its actually double rocket per salvo, which would be an interesting mechanic.

Speaking of new mechanics, the Pioneer Trailer requires some explanation. My thinking with this is that its a brand new unit type, which loosely can be defined as a support weapon. How it works is that infantry squads can crew it, push it around, vehicles can tow it, etc. When in a position, it provides an aura which in this case makes nearby construction and repairs faster. However, the unit shouldn't require pop cap and moreover, you can actually manually decrew it and it will still provide you the benefits. So for example, let's say it spawns in your base and you want to get faster frontline repairs, you can crew it with a squad, wheel it over to a house near the frontline and then decrew it. Engineers repairing within its vicinity would still be benefiting from the aura. When you want to move it, recrew it again, or tow it, to a new location. The beauty of this dynamic is that your opponents can steal these units from you like an ATG, so while they don't take up popcap and would be relatively cheap (say 50 to 100 manpower), you're still incentivised to protect them. You can also attack move them with AT guns etc. I think it would make for an interesting dynamic, but would need to be coded from scratch. It also indirectly makes tow yet more useful. 

Finally, double AT Grenades should double the cost of the snare.

For the Nebelwerfer 41 Saturation Barrage, I see this working with a variable munitions cost but a fixed area, ie the more munitions you spend the more rockets land in the area. How to implement that mechanic? I would do it via click and hold, so you click the point you want it to land and then hold it to increase the amount you spend. So if the barrage initially costs 150, if you increase the price with 25 munition intervals every .5 seconds, if you hold it for 2 seconds it will cost 250 and give you an extra 100 munitions of rockets. This ticking cost should be visible on the cursor. 

For the Focke-Wulf Fw 189 Recon Loiter, I would make this so that you can actually adjust the turning circle. Consider:

For diagram A, this would be a fairly standard recon loiter, but then if you extended it out, it would cover a broader area but leave a dead zone in the centre. How would this mechanic work? Well a click and hold model might work, where you click on the point where its to centre around and hold it to increase the diameter at .5 second intervals. The diameter range should be visible on the cursor. Another option would be click and drag. This flexibility in the cursor allows you as the player to decide if you want to see a broader area more fleetingly or a smaller area more continuously.

The Me 210 CA-1 (40mm) Strafe AT Strafe would have a flexible length. So:

You would click X and drag Y to set the length and direction, as the length increases the cursor should highlight the extra munitions cost which would tick with intervals. The extra length, if used correctly, would help to get more damage onto reversing vehicles. You could do the same with the MÁVAG Héja anti infantry strafe. 

Finally, for the Caproni ca.135 Carpet Bombing, I could see this being like the US carpet bombing but with a flexible number of bombers:

So click X decides the starting point, click Y adds bombers and munitions costs and click Z decides the direction. It would also be cool that depending on the number of bombers involved, the smoke colour would change, so 1/2 bombers is an orange smoke off map, but 3 bombers is red smoke.

The Hungarians would have the benefit of being able to use wholly German battlegroups as needed, since the Germans had so much equipment variety. 

With Flettner fl 282, there are a few ways of making that distinct from the standard recon, but for me, the most fun way of doing it would be to make the unit either something you can control for a brief period, directing it to where you need it, or a straight up call in unit. It would be able to take off and land, so that you as the player can repair it, but when landed would be extremely vulnerable, 1-shot by any tank gun. It should probably be vulnerable to rifle and MG fire and would be primarily used as a scout. In that role it would be especially useful as it would be able to traverse obstacles ground based units could not and see over walls etc. If this was DLC, I could see people buying it just to play with the helicopter. 

To be more precise here, Indirect Precision Shot Ability would be an ability on mountain guns and the like, rather than an off map. The 32cm Wurfkörper SPR Flamm should probably have a short recharge on its barrage given that its just 2 rockets. What I particularly like about the unit is that it encourages active micro.

The JU-88 P-1 would be the same AT plane from Coh1 PE, but rather than being a loiter, it would be a targetable strafe. The Dornier Precision Bombing would be closer to the Il-2 bomb strike in Coh2.

The 7.3 cm Propagandawerfer 41 Team, I could see being a pretty unique unit. It would generally be like a mortar with barrage capabilities, but the effect of the barrage would be a movement speed debuff, followed by suppression and pinning with subsequent rounds on target. In Coh1, part of the reason you got a Nebel was for indirect suppression, similarly, the Propagandawerfer would be primarily used as an indirect suppression platform. This would be really useful in VP wars, as you couldn't use smoke to avoid it the way you can avoid an MG. Given that it wouldn't damage units directly, shared veterency would make a lot of sense. The other thing it would be useful for would be to suppress and pin squads behind green cover. It probably shouldn't have an autofire mode. The Gewehrblendgranate 42 would literally be a blendkörper rifle grenade.

The Medical Supply Trailer, would fall into that trailer category of unit I described above and provide healing in the vicinity. Finally, the Wurfgerät 41 is fairly self explanatory, the only thing I can't imagine is what the animation for rotating the weapon would look like. 

For the 21 cm Kanone 39 & 8 cm GrW 34 Co-ordination Barrage, how this would work is an inner heavy barrage and an outer lighter barrage, the circumferences of which you can control. The illustrate:

Let's say point X is your first click, then point Y is your second click and controls the circumference of the heavy barrage with a minimum diameter of 10 and a maximum of 35. Then point Z is the click which marks the diameter of the lighter barrage, with a maximum diameter of 45. Its important to note that no matter what the area of these circles equates to, the same number of shells will be fired, its just up to you as the player to decide the how many in an area. Y would get the same number of heavier shells and Z minus Y would get the same number of lighter shells. This opens up a range of ways to use it, you could have both circles as small as possible to nuke a target or both as broad as possible to perform area denial. However, the other interesting aspect of this is that while your opponent will know the outer diameter of the off map (circle Z), they won't know where within that the heavier shells will land (circle Y). So they might sit on the edges of the off map thinking they're relatively safe and then a 21cm slams the squad or they might be overly cautious, avoiding the circle entirely, when all the heavier shells are actually targeted in the centre. The off map has a lot of skill and nuance to it. 

Conclusion

Like I said, I find it unlikely that we will get new factions, even less so that we will get a Hungarian one, but this faction would be quite fresh, being a totally new faction, like the Italians and Japanese. In terms of pure novelty, this would be top. What other strategy game would do it?

I haven't thought of upgrades, if inspiration hits me later I will come back. 

My Other Designs

- DAK Redesign.

- Brit Redesign.

- US Suggestions.

- Wehr Suggestions.

- Soviet Proposal.

- Ostheer Proposal.

- Japanese Proposal.

- USMC Proposal

- Commonwealth Burma Proposal.

- Italian Proposal.

- Free French Proposal.

- Luftwaffe Field Division

My General Feedback 

- Feature Request and Bug Fixes

M3ta wrote:

LordRommel wrote:

I have a question:

How do u design your factions and BGs?

I know that CoH was never a "historical simulation" but often factions and doctrines had historical roots and idea.

Here I see (like in most your concepts) weapon drops and units drops that are out of touch with the proposed idea.

E.g. why is there so much emphesise on french equipment here when no french weapons were seen in the battle of Hungary?
Why do u mix pre-war SMGs in a BG with a "late war concept" like the helicopter? And why is the "Char B1" mixed into it?

My problem is that all the BGs feel "out of place" in concept to the proposed "faction idea" and that is a pitty when u think of the chances for more fitting BGs with Honved Boarder Guard units or Honved Panthers or german armored police forces with italian tanks or all the other elements seen in the battle of Hungary.

It seems you're not a fan of any of my ideas Rommel. I could criticise your designs on a number of points but let's agree to disagree. You're welcome to form your own design. 

Hehe ;) Dont worry. I know that mine is far from perfect - and u get me wrong. I like faction ideas and the basic stuff is solid from my point of view. But for me these proposal felt a bit like a check list of adding in weapons that werent part of the game before and units missing in the other axis concepts. Dont get me wrong. I try to understand why someone is suggesting something to find elements that seems to be "common places" and should be considered a "must have" because its often seen in concepts.

- oh and btw - u are welcome to give feedback to my stuff.

Like I said: I had the feeling that CoH factions and doctrines were always build around a historical frame. You have chosen the hungarian front here and I was already thinking of a Honved conept too (but I just finished a soviet concept and working on a french concept now). But I dont get why u have set up the BGs the way u have done it. I'm just interested in the reason for the design choices.

E.g. lets have a look at the "Blitzkrieg BG" (I'm not sure why u named it that way but that is a different topic):
The first choice for the Auir power is a pre war SMG airdrop to arm infantry OR a "Helicopter recon run". Both are ammunition sinks most likely.
But u have Honved infantry with 39.M SMGs in Tier 0 and here u have now SMG air drops for that infantry unit? So why should I drop SMGs?

Furthermore, the SMGs are a all time advantage for a battlefield unit unlike to the recon run of the Helicopter. I see why a recon is helping but why is it a Helicopter here and why is it in competition with a permanent ingame advantage?

The same story is the "Armoured spearhead" side: U can get a Marder I and/or a Panzer 35(t). What is the deal here? Why should I chose the Pz35(t) when I can get a more powerful tank killer? And why is it leading to the Char B1?
Dont get me wrong. I have the exact same problems when I design elements and for that reason I try to get behind the ideas to find help for my ideas.

LordRommel wrote:

M3ta wrote:

LordRommel wrote:

I have a question:

How do u design your factions and BGs?

I know that CoH was never a "historical simulation" but often factions and doctrines had historical roots and idea.

Here I see (like in most your concepts) weapon drops and units drops that are out of touch with the proposed idea.

E.g. why is there so much emphesise on french equipment here when no french weapons were seen in the battle of Hungary?
Why do u mix pre-war SMGs in a BG with a "late war concept" like the helicopter? And why is the "Char B1" mixed into it?

My problem is that all the BGs feel "out of place" in concept to the proposed "faction idea" and that is a pitty when u think of the chances for more fitting BGs with Honved Boarder Guard units or Honved Panthers or german armored police forces with italian tanks or all the other elements seen in the battle of Hungary.

It seems you're not a fan of any of my ideas Rommel. I could criticise your designs on a number of points but let's agree to disagree. You're welcome to form your own design. 

Hehe ;) Dont worry. I know that mine is far from perfect - and u get me wrong. I like faction ideas and the basic stuff is solid from my point of view. 

But for me these proposal felt a bit like a check list of adding in weapons that werent part of the game before and units missing in the other axis concepts.
Dont get me wrong. I try to understand why someone is suggesting something to find elements that seems to be "common places" and should be considered a "must have" because its often seen in concepts.

Like I said: I had the feeling that CoH factions and doctrines were always build around a historical frame. You have chosen the hungarian front here and I was already thinking of a Honved conept too (but I just finished a soviet concept and working on a french concept now). But I dont get why u have set up the BGs the way u have done it. I'm just interested in the reason for the design choices.

E.g. lets have a look at the "Blitzkrieg BG" (I'm not sure why u named it that way but that is a different topic):
The first choice for the Auir power is a pre war SMG airdrop to arm infantry OR a "Helicopter recon run". Both are ammunition sinks most likely.
But u have Honved infantry with 39.M SMGs in Tier 0 and here u have now SMG air drops for that infantry unit? So why should I drop SMGs?

Furthermore, the SMGs are a all time advantage for a battlefield unit unlike to the recon run of the Helicopter. I see why a recon is helping but why is it a Helicopter here and why is it in competition with a permanent ingame advantage?

The same story is the "Armoured spearhead" side: U can get a Marder I and/or a Panzer 35(t). What is the deal here? Why should I chose the Pz35(t) when I can get a more powerful tank killer? And why is it leading to the Char B1?
Dont get me wrong. I have the exact same problems when I design elements and for that reason I try to get behind the ideas to find help for my ideas.

So there's a few things here. 

I always put gameplay over historical accuracy because for me, Coh always seems like it has no basis in reality and so why would I place myself under that constraint. Relic definitely doesn't, Black Prince, but I generally use stuff that was at least used somewhat as far as I can tell. 

Now for the design questions, 'SMG airdrop vs Recon Run', its all about tech choices. Honveds don't have access to SMGs until T3. Engineers literally never do. So the first utility of that ability can be derived from how early it comes. In Coh2 for example, I could see SVT Cons being a lot less popular if you the got 7 man upgrade at the same time, but since the former comes so much earlier than the latter... Then there's situations where you skip T3 entirely, which the design encourages you to do, then you still have access to SMGs regardless. However, what if your plan is to upgrade all your troops with LMGs? If its a particularly open map, this might be better. Then why bother with that side? Better to have the recon instead. 

Marder I vs Panzer 35(t). Well, I don't need to state the obvious here of the completely different roles, but why one or the other? In this design, the case for the Marder is straight forward as the base design has no tank destroyer. For Panzer 35(t), this would be comparable to the Toldi IIa B/40 in power level. With the Panzer 35(t) though, you don't need T3, so you can skip T3, go straight to Phase C, and rely on that until you can reach T4. If you don't want any of the other units in T3, this would be a lot more fuel efficient. It depends a lot on what your strategy is, a number of the BG designs I create revolve around enabling build orders. 

The Char B1 has a different role again and with the upgrades here, can fulfil other roles entirely, again, broadening build orders. The base design has no access to what is essentially the Matilda II, at least how I envisage it, so why players would want that is fairly straight forward. I can elaborate if needed though.

The specific choice of these units was not so much motivated by 'this was what was used in Hungary in 1944' but rather 'this was used on the Eastern front at some point by the Germans and we haven't seen before in Coh'. You could use Hungarian Panthers but how many Axis Factions have had Panthers so far? 5/6. That's not to say its wrong to use Panthers, its fine, I use them in my Ostheer Faction, but its a stylistic choice. I was on the fence about using a Tiger here. 

The whole design was invented yesterday morning, so I will probably change it with more research. I since discovered Hungarian Airborne units...