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Will Blobbing be Encouraged or Discouraged?
SuperBumbleB
I'm really looking forward to the game so far. One thing that does worry me though is whether players online will be able to blob or not, with success. Because I would hate to see old school RTS gameplay of just rushing huge amounts of units in a certain direction with little to no micro to overcome the enemy.
It's why COH2, as flawed as it is (and with things I think it could learn from DOW3), is still one of my favorite (and saltiest) RTS that I play around. Among other major reasons, blobbing can be countered with a fewer force. Whether it be MGs, artillery, or just better micro with fewer units, a larger force can- not always, but CAN repel a larger force.
So i'm wondering if my fears is just from what we've seen from the players (who some I see arent that great with micro and they tend to blob, with varying results) or that it's just a single player mission. I mean, COH2's campaign also was quite forgiving and let you just grind at enemy units with endless waves of units because the enemy rarely attacked you and you often had unlimited time.
I'm presuming and hoping that in MP, you'll have to spread your forces out unless you open yourself to being flanked. And that blobs would be extremely vulnerable to artillery or some special ability like the orbital cannon
Comments
Auric
I think it's hard to answer this question as no multiplayer footage has been shown, nor have the abilities of 2 out of 3 races. From what we have seen however, the space marines have plenty of abilities that severely punish blobbing, such as the whirlwind tank missile attack, assault marines jump ability, and both of solaria's abilities.
I would be surprised if the eldar and the orks don't have similar abilities that would punish an a-moving blobber, but we have yet to see any of their abilities. It also isn't confirmed if the abilities shown in the single player are as damaging when put in to multiplayer, or if they've toned them down so units are less expendable.
Ultimately we'll have to wait and see, but I have faith relic will have kept this in mind and will punish blobbing.
WarEagle
blobbing usually end up with spamming so yea it should be discouraged
TankHunter678
Played the demo and...
Blobbing is heavily en/discouraged by the lack of the Retreat mechanic.
It is encouraged simply because due to the inability to retreat (a dev was like "Space Marines never retreat" I was compelled to tell him, and did, that Space Marines do indeed do tactical retreats instead of suffering pointless losses) the only way you are going to reliably keep your forces alive is to blob up. Superior firepower and all. This is also supported by the drop pods the SM get. You are expected to basically march across the map dropping pods to keep a reinforcement point on top of your forces adding new units all the way until the enemy is simply dead.
It is discouraged by the number of systems that exist to simply reset your army to 0. Thankfully the AI in the demo is not bright nor do they actually make really good use of the options they have available to them, it plays out like any DoW campaign fight where they send a token force against your base periodically and has units that sit around waiting for you. However any player vs player fight is going to be a case of army wipes until one side is simply unbeatable due to sheer numbers.
The cover system implemented also heavily favors blobbing, units inside the cover bubble take such dramatically reduced ranged damage and you can fit a lot of units into that small space. To the point that the only options is to send in melee units with a gap closer, or just nuke it with artillery since that ignores cover bonuses.
WarEagle
first of all thanks for the info
i have some questions that i need to ask from someone who played the demo would you be humble enough
am i correct if i say massive blobs fighting each other and wipe each other out and the winner depending on the sheer amount of units ?
is the cover pre established on the map or is it in anyway player built ?
SuperBumbleB
To be fair, I guess you can say blobbing is en/dis-couraged in COH2 too as well.
Sturmpios, Riflemen, Volks, and so on can utterly massacre other infantry (and formerly vehicles :glares at Volks blobs w/Panzershreks) when they're used en masse. Hell, sometimes MGs fail to stop blobs of infantry (i.e. 50 cal gets wiped by a direct Volks blob attack from the front because there's so many of them).
Having played OKW, I have won games by just blobbing Volks and Sturmpios with little micro as I used Attack-Move most of the time.
I wonder if some morale system would have reduced blobbing in that the closer your infantry are to 2+ other infantry squads, the more likely they are to get suppressed or retreat the more soldiers around them get killed off. Basically: "Oh gawd! People are dying all around me! I need to get out of here
"
Anyway, thanks for the info. I am fearful of blobbing in cover too. though it seems artillery like the Whirlwind and Solaria's rockets seem to break these bubbles from afar and do damage to those who are still inside. And yeah, in Multiplayer you might have to split up your forces across the map so you wont be blobbing through lanes. And if you do,I can see artillery and well placed attacks and/or better micro causing players to rethink their attacks. Then again, even in COH2 players still blob because hey, it's easy (when your units are superior to others :glares at OKW again: ) :P
EDIT: Oh, another issue with COH2's blobbing is that I find that Allies lack as much anti-blobbing units. Funny that Axis have better anti-blobbing units like the Walking Stuka, MG42 (thaaaaat arc
), Panzerwerfer, and the Sturmtiger XD
Bersercker
Thanks for the info. In previous dow's the blobbing was somewhat discouraged by retreat\movement speed increase from zero morale and the necesity to retain mapcontrol. There is no retreat and morale now though, so you'd hardly send a squad to backcap\harass if any enemy two squads will kill yours 100% of the time.
In other RTS'es like starcraft it was sometimes discouraged by the fact that your small number of units could do much more damage than they are worth while harasing (like you dont mind losing 6 zerglings if they managed to kill 5 workers), but it never was the case in dows and cohs so i doubt it'll change now.
Hope Relic will think of something good. It would be incredibly silly if the main reason you wouldn't keep your army in one big blob is to take less damage from enemy heroes spamming aoe spells.
TankHunter678
It's the combination of sheer amounts of units, having the needed counter units, proper focus fire/ability use, and if cover is involved. Simply having an Imperial Knight goes a long way towards encouraging the enemy to not blob up, or not fight you in the first place unless they can kill it asap. Cause if that Knight escapes it will just regen back without the need for servitors to fix it, though adding servitors makes it much quicker.
But yes, he who has more units will stand in the end assuming both sides are of equal skill.
Cover is pre-established on the map. Before the cover comes into effect at all you need to cap it like a resource point. Once capped it deploys the energy shield to reduce ranged damage.
Part of the Anti-Blobbing mechanism in CoH series is that MGs gain accuracy for every individual squad member near whatever it is they are targeting. So with overlapping fields of fire if a volks horde came running into the arc without fear it would get shredded, entire squads could get insta popped in addition to everything getting suppressed since suppression also benefited from there being more targets near the one being shot at.
This is what made the MG42s a thing to be feared. It did more damage then a .30 cal, it fired more bullets per burst then a .30 cal, but had reduced accuracy to counter balance. So when the enemy throws such a horde at you suddenly the MG42 becomes the historical mass killing machine it was. Part of why it was very important for the allies to snag any MG42 they managed to disable.
CoH 1 had the best balance of the series.
SuperBumbleB
I never played COH online back then and now I try to but the game keeps desyncing
In what way was it balamced? I have heard it too suffers from Arty spam like in COH2, apparently the Brits and PE weren't balanced, and you have the snowball effect where the CPs would grant higher and higher population cap
Again, I didn't play it competitively online (sadly) so why do you think it was balanced?
SuperBumbleB
Also I'll still argue that the MG42 is OP. Yes it does deploy slower than the Maxim and I suppose it did slightly less damage than the Maxim but
That flarping arc 
A) It's build able in the HQ building
C) Incemdiary Ammo :T
All for a low low price of 260 manpower