mortar? tsar?m5?

and maybe re add barbed wire it is NEEDED BADLY

Definitely wasn't mortar, those are quite irritating but I wouldn't say they're unbalanced

Thank you for the detailed feedback this is greatly appreciated. First can I ask what kind of settings/map/amount of players you were playing at as these factors greatly affect the outcome of a game.

As my game knowledge is rather limited cover bonuses were overlooked. I'll re-add sandbags into the mod with the caveat that they do not block pathing.

Sandbags and barbed wire were removed for two reasons. They could be easily exploited as only the zombies with a high enough crush value would attempt to cross them. This had the potential of blocking off an entire map with only a few snipers needed behind a barbed wire fence. The other reason was because of lag. AI units being unable to path to their destinations would cause an absurd amount of lag.

The way barricades work is similar to how vehicles do in regards to pathing. They block units but do not affect the pathing of units. I can increase the health of barricades so they can provide more time in defending. In short, barbed wire is all-or-nothing whilst barricades allow for gradation.

Watchtowers, campfires, and shortcuts will be looked into.

Played some 1v1s and 2v2s. Not sure what your concept of the experience should be for the game, but my experience basically ended up with aggressively expanding to curtail the zombie's unit output. A slow creep securing your way forward didn't work for me, and this is more apparent the bigger the map and the more players there are. I've been able to win every time by rushing forward, seizing points that would let me choke the enemy to death with attrition, and going from there, and I can do this even if I'm doing a 1v1 on a 2v2+ map.

Personally I don't think having to rely on snipers to pick off particular targets is a fun mechanic, but that's a subjective opinion. Having to manually pick a target and making sure I have a sniper with each group is annoying, especially with how evasive the enemy are with this current iteration. (to the point that they sometimes ignore your troops to back cap) You can't just hold one point, so trying to bounce around and micro manage multiple snipers on different fronts is a hassle. Maybe give basic infantry a "snipe" ability with a long cooldown and high cost?

I feel like barricades are useless, especially with their massive cost. I'd rather buy more units or build more bofors/flak 43s and increase my output than drop manpower and munitions per barricade. They don't really stop zombies so much as make them trip for a second, especially later in the game. I feel like using barbed wire in the previous version was more interesting since it played more like a tower defense by funneling enemies into a kill zone.

This is still fun, but I enjoyed 1.3 more (I think that was the last version I played before 1.6) because it felt more like a zombie defense scenario. One aspect of this is zombies feel like they're too beefy now and are quantitatively better unit vs unit. Unless I'm using Sturmpios I can't have a squad deal with one group of zombies, and Sturmpios can only somewhat reliably do it depending on how the engagement starts. British infantry sections in particular need to outnumber zombies. This is also a contributing factor to why I just choke the enemy out, because I have to keep their numbers down or I will get overwhelmed. I think bolt action rifles suffer due to the increased zombie speeds and chunkiness.

Right now my strategy is to basically roll out engineers and build a maginot line of bofors near the enemy base and encircle them as early as possible. I generally try to win within 20-30 minutes since Katyusha are butt to deal with. (even with snipers) Vehicles in general don't seem particularly effective until I'm trying to destroy their base. The only exception appear to be flame vehicles in chokes and SPGs. Maybe I'm not using it right but tanks seem useless in general. Kubels at least can back cap. US and brits should get an equivalent vehicle to Kubels, since their light vehicles can't cap. Unless you're trying to maintain asymmetry.

Don't really have too much in the way of suggestions since I don't really know what your concept is and what you're trying to go for.

My goals for the mod are to have intense large-scale macro-oriented battles whilst the vanilla game focuses more on micro. I haven't designed the gameplay around micro at all so it may be jarring if you like to play that way. Unfortunately the engine itself has a performance bottleneck that has affected some decisions regarding development which will be discussed below.

Zombie spawns are fixed and are not affected by resources or nodes. Perhaps the reason why its easier to rush nodes in the beginning is the increased income you receive.

I usually only use 1 sniper per choke in a watchtower. If I'm advancing I'll have the sniper accompany my armor. I'll look into the weapon priority for snipers to have them focus on the stronger zombies first. I think I changed some of the AI settings in the current version which may be why they don't want to attack. I'll double check the changes I made.

I may reintroduce barbed wire into the game but not for the next patch. I'm not quite happy with the state of barricades either so it might be better to just allow the problems associated with barbed wire to exist for the sake of gameplay.

Zombies are purposefully stronger than other units because of lag. Ideally I'd want hundreds of zombies on the field but this isn't possible due to the limitations of the engine. So the only way to maintain balance would be the make the zombies stronger.

I have a different approach for strategy. Infantry are great but they lack the AoE to deal with large blobs. This is fine for the early half of the game but later on AoE becomes much more important. Vehicles are ideal because they can outrun the zombies and attack while doing so. I would say some tanks, especially the TDs aren't worth their cost like the normal Stug. Tanks with AoE and multiple machine guns fare much better.

In the next update commander units will be available through production buildings so hopefully this will enable a more versatile army composition.

Thank you for the feedback as without posts like yours I'm basically developing the mod blind.

Like the idea, but the fact that after certain time, there are zombie squads that can isntakill heavy tanks and survive getting shot at by whole defensive line is ridiculous. I would make all medium, heavy armor to be much more resistant, while dealing less damage. So they can atleast serve an purpose, building an expensive heavy tank, just for it to be instakilled by an zombie squad with bare hands within miliseconds is not wortht it, mainly when you (as you said) focus on macro-gameplay, not micro when making this mod.

So again, i would make medium, heavy tanks serve as an shield, damage-sponge that can survive lot of hits from basic zombies, but has less damage, could be slower and only would get damaged fast or instakilled by special type zombies: such as the flaming zombies, or any zombie that does explosive damage. I rly feel that would make them actually useful, and as an tactical option that is worth the cost they have. Otherwise right now, i see no reason why i should waste money on something, That gets overrun by one OP zombie squad when you aren't looking for few seconds and instakilled.

Currently the weapon for T4 standard zombies and above has 70 penetration. This will result in 39/77% for front/rear penetration chance for a panzer 4 or 23/50% for a normal tiger. I like the idea of having heavy tanks as actual tanks but because of how the penetration mechanic works it's all or nothing in terms of damage. Whilst I do have some ideas how to work around this it will be very time intensive. For now I'll lower the penetration a bit to make tanks more durable.

Thank you for the feedback.

Barbed wire may be reintroduced later as I have a few ideas on how to make it work.

The commander concrete bunkers by default simply have twice the HP as a standard bunker. Both have no armor. I'll increase the armor to 25 which will be the same value as a Puma. This will protect them somewhat from lower tier zombies.

I'm not sure how to work deform decals and the mortar bunker doesn't have one by default. I do want to fix whatever small visual bugs there are but it's on low priority as I'm working on some other mod stuff right now.

I also found that combined arms pushes are very effective as the tanks will thin out the ranks whilst the infantry mop up the rest. It's very satisfying watching pushes until you overextend and your whole army gets wiped lol.

I'm happy that you are enjoying the mod.

its one of the most fun mods for CoH2 7/10
i played it a few more rounds now, against and as a zombie, alone and with friends. And the zombies should be a faction with own buildings too (Maybe with some not so braindead Boss zombies as leaders that have to build in early and are powerfull fighters,with some abilitys, in end game) , cause the waves leads to a completly overrun in min 45-60 as long as you not only play maps like lyon, where you can create chocke points for deathzones. You cant produce as much as you need against zombies at this point of a match and even the special tesla troops arent that helpfull.

hope my comment is a lil helpfull to make this mod better :D

Those are some good ideas and I have explored some of them in the past. Unfortunately I'm not sure if it's possible to add complicated units as this will increase the amount of lag substantially.

Additional zombies and commander abilities for them are planned.

On non-choke point maps it is indeed more difficult and often your units will bleed off from successive waves. I am fine with this.

Thank you for the feedback.

The Pak 43 should do more than shred, it should concuss or do something stronger, currently it's just an oversized AT gun.

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Miasma do way to much damage in DoT that can shred through anything, pair this with Ashen and your side will fall, not to particular fairness but because the Ashen make the Miasma invulnerable and the Miasma melt anything within range. Ashen shouldn't provide the reduced accuracy they currently do, and Miasma shouldn't have such oppressive DoT.

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Artillery seems to be the only feasible option late game for destroying their base, this is due to the Infantry for most factions being incapable. In most cases they'll flat out be eaten. A good idea is to send a command car with machinegun infantry, and a unit with a demo charge or satchel. In most cases on my own time, sending out tanks seems to result in the AI swarming them. It leaves infantry alone for the most case, unless they're in their way, but the zombies will actively go out of their way to attack tanks in their territory. There should be more options to blow up the zombie base, Even something like a unit that can call in point accurate artillery in a small range in their base. Options feel severely limited in that department. Also, demos seem to be the only good option, and not every unit gets demos.

And now defenses and zombies.

Currently the Machinegun Nest everyone can universally build, is extremely underpowered. Not only can I not, set up a machinegun inside of it, the machinegun inside does no damage to them. This is because it appears to be the version used inside the US spawned HQ which means it does, low damage by default. Having the ability to deploy my MG inside would be a plus but, im sure it's impossible. I just wish we had a better option for an MG nest.

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Zombies feel very lacking in certain areas, I like to set it to expert sometimes just so the AI actually thinks and moves around- then it gets incendiary artillery. Making the AI insufferble. On easy I notice though- it is recommended, that the AI will stall out. In fact, in many maps the AI just stands there. Sometimes it may stand there for a long time, then assault, othertimes it may give up on assaulting until you move out, then it will just destroy your lands. Turning into a stalemate because, sure you can bomb them indefinitely with artillery, but they wont move. This changes on Expert where the AI always, keeps the pressure up, but it quickly ends when the expert AI just bombs you with commander abilities. I just wish the zombies had more things. Even as far as an infested tank that would just be a slow, suicide unit (for example a loud king tiger slowly crawling to the players lines then exploding.)

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Bolt actions are near useless and I really wish this wasn't the case. The only good bolt action unit is a Sniper, but most the times you're going with machinegun infantry, making building anything else almost pointless. If Bolt Action units costed less (Ostruppen costing less for example) or took less popcap, who'd care! But they don't. I think Bolt Actions and Semi auto's should just receive a good buff. For example faster fire rate, more range, line of sight on units using them, that kind of stuff. Currently there's 0 reason for me to build Ostruppen out of my HQ when I get Assault Grenadiers at T0. Funny enough, I can reach 1k kills with a Panzergrenadier regiment in a watch tower, and my snipers in the towers will struggle to even remotely compete. I suppose an easier solution may just be to give everyone an automatic weapon upgrade package, or just have them spawn with automatic weapons.

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Lastly, there should be a Withdraw option from the HQ to recieve resources back. I don't know how many times me or my friends just end up sacrificing things to the horde just because we can't withdraw. It's not that we care about the resources, it's that the unit takes popcap. I think it'd make more sense just to withdraw the unit globally via the HQ.

Thank you for the detailed feedback, it's very much appreciated. I wont address all of your points right now but I do agree with many of your statements. Expect changes for these in the future.

I am hesitant to fiddle too much with the AI as testing a single iteration takes at least 30 minutes. When there are scores of iterations this adds up quickly. The AI sitting there is an issue with the map itself. On some of the maps I've tested the AI will do this even during vanilla. I'll have to look into the expert AI not stalling though.

Cyanide pills were something I've wanted to implement for some time.

I'll add some more when time allows.

I do like the idea of Cyanide pills, would seriously help stop when a side of your defense is getting destroyed from, adding to the problem.