Support UsLatest Company Of Heroes 3 News
Posted by John_RE on 24/Jul/2024
A.I. Changes
- A.I. will now prefer contesting capture points when making initial contact with the enemy. They will avoid immediately taking cover.
- A.I. team weapons will prefer the backline in combat more often.
- Bugs with team weapons positioned at the frontline have been addressed. Now refacing happens more frequently to prevent team weapons from looking the wrong way.
- Team weapon positioning adjusted. A.I. will no longer reposition mid combat, just reface.
- Battlegroup ability casting improved. Targets are more likely to be in-combat.
- Recrewing can be triggered during combat now. A.I. will be more likely to acquire team weapons.
- Infantry will not pick a second cover spot if it moves them further from combat.
- A.I. team weapons will retreat more often in combat.
- Alternate build order for US Forces. The Engineers-first build order is now removed.
- A.I. build order adjusted across all factions. Tier 4 units acquired faster.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the Mechanized Battlegroup's Raid Package incorrectly granted a bonus to infantry and team weapons.
- Fixed an issue where the enemy’s turn in the Italian Campaign would sometimes freeze or not complete, preventing the player from progressing.
- Fixed cases where Match History would not load when viewing Player Profiles.
- Fixed an issue where camouflaged units would not fire on enemies in their weapon range even when hold-fire was disabled.
- Fixed an issue with the standard cooldown on Vote to Surrender. Calling a Vote to Surrender can no longer be done in rapid succession by a single player.
- Fixed an issue where the British Forces Foot Guards and US Forces Bazooka Team would have floating weapons after being hit with artillery.
- Fixed a visual error in the post-match screen where ELO values were not displayed correctly.
- Fixed an issue where certain autocannon shells were not properly aligned, and their trails would not appear on specific occasions.
- Resized the 2cm autocannon shells which were too large.
- Fixed a visual issue with the arrows connecting Battlegroup abilities and units in their tech tree. Selected abilities should differ from purchased abilities and display a yellow highlighted border.
- Some physics pieces/rubble/debris were not rotating around their center, causing parts to swing around wildly looking unnatural.
- Fixed an issue where status decorators and veterancy stars tooltips were triggered after a delay. In addition, they should no longer disappear after just a few seconds while continually hovering over the tooltip.
- Pips (red indicators) no longer appear in the Loadout incorrectly.
Posted by John_RE on 16/Jul/2024
The 1.7.0 Onyx Shark PC update is releasing today at 10am PDT.
Review the full patch notes here.
Find our Known Issues list here. Get a summary of what's coming in this update in our Mission Briefing.Posted by John_RE on 15/Jul/2024
Overview
Onyx Shark, the latest PC update for Company of Heroes 3, will be available to download on Tuesday, July 16th. The 1.7.0 update includes several new features, improvements and quality of life changes that will greatly enhance the Company of Heroes action that you know and love. Unleash carnage on the all-new 4-versus-4 map Black Gold, feel the impact of battle with new visual and audio FX improvements, and seize the moment with deadlier early game units. Find the full patch notes here.Audio & FX
We know players have wanted to see more improvements to audio and visual effects, and we’re excited to bundle these changes in this update. Working in tandem, these changes aim to make CoH3 a more engaging and visceral experience.Audio
Audio improvements in Onyx Shark have targeted small arms weapon firing, vehicles, and specific voice over moments. Rifles, sub-machine guns, light machine guns, and heavy machine guns were all streamlined to optimize their overall playback. Additionally, the team has done an attenuation pass to these weapons. Our goal was to clean up the CoH3 soundscape and create a more focused game experience. Players should have an easier time hearing what is happening and determining where sounds are coming from on the map. A similar pass was done for vehicles with a focus on optimizing sound playback and attenuation tuning. This should put a stronger focus on vehicles during gameplay, with new optimizations allowing important sounds to come through reliably. On the speech side, we've addressed missing squad voice over on weapon pickups, death exertions, and we have polished medium armored vehicle responses from mine damage. Additionally, we did some minor tuning on the Intel voice over to reduce repetition when announcing victory points. These changes may seem subtle, and we were measured in our approach so as not to introduce any additional issues with the game’s audio. The audio work in Onyx Shark focused on updating the foundation of the audio experience, which was necessary for any further audio improvements in the future.Visuals
Our visual effects improvements are focused on muzzle FX, projectile impacts, explosions and blood FX to create more engaging moment-to-moment action. As an example, vehicles will respond to hits more frequently, with more lurching and believable reactions. Similarly, we have also improved ragdoll and gibbing effects, so parts are affected by explosions in a more natural way. There’s more to discover with our FX improvements, but we won’t spoil the surprise of discovering them yourself.Maps
Black Gold
Black Gold is the newest 4-vs-4 map coming to Company of Heroes 3. This map, available in all modes, is based on a Libyan oil refinery surrounded by salt flats and oil fields. Combined arms will be key on this map, being longer and narrower than the likes of Monte Cavo and with sparse cover, fighting in the oil fields will be demanding! Learn more in our latest Deep Dive here. Though the oil fields of Libya wouldn’t be exploited until after the war, some early extraction was underway during Rommel’s war in North Africa and helped fuel his advances in the region. This oil became a noose once the Afrikakorps initiated their retreat, however – with the Royal Navy monitoring export routes, and the oil fields soon to be overrun, whatever was not used or burned would quickly fall to the enemy and be used to chase them back to Tunisia.Blinder Alley
Blinder Alley, exclusive to solo Skirmish or Custom Game modes, is a 1-vs-1 variant of Torrente, intended to guide new players through the exciting urban combat of CoH3. This map has been reformed into a narrow, long map to provide players with a limited frontline, and with plentiful garrisons and heavy cover to protect their troops. “Blinder” – An excellent performance, particularly in sport. “To pull a blinder” – To achieve the unfathomable For infantry on the ground of Italy’s ruined cities, to even cross the road was to take your life in your own hands. Snipers, machine gun nests and boobytraps dominated plaza, street and alley alike; no amount of intuition, experience, bravado or stubbornness could save the average soldier from sheer bad luck.Skirmish Maps
The Italian Dynamic Campaign will now include three new Skirmish maps to improve the diversity of skirmishes. We have also added three new mission types to skirmishes and made several changes to improve the skirmish mission difficulty curve. This will give each skirmish a more cinematic and bespoke experience.Map Improvements
We recently asked for feedback on all Company of Heroes 3 maps, and we’re starting to roll out changes to address that input. Additionally, the introduction of Map Preference voting has given us terrific data to validate which maps need more elbow grease than others. The full Onyx Shark patch notes will detail the changes for each map. Some changes will be minor, such as adjusting a fence post, while others will be more impactful, such as overhauling an entire engagement space. Almost every single multiplayer map has had a design pass. Any map that does not see an update in Onyx Shark will get improvements or changes in a subsequent update this year. Additionally, though we paused our work on integrating community made maps during our recent transition to being an independent studio, we are thrilled to be starting this work once again. We have been collaborating with mapmakers on a few new maps that we hope to include in future updates.New Features
Random Faction Selection
Players will now be able to matchmake in Quick Match multiplayer for all factions at the same time. Selecting this option will queue a player for all four factions, both Axis and Allies. Battlegroup loadouts will be based on your previous Battlegroup selection for that faction. If you are in a party, and the party leader selects the Random Faction matchmaking option, then all players will matchmake with Random Faction search enabled. We’re excited to bring this CoH1 matchmaking option back to the franchise and we hope to improve upon it in the future.Match History
Match History is a brand-new section of the Player Profile. This will display a player’s recently played matches and will allow anyone to find them through the in-game social functions. This also means when looking at a player’s Match History, you can watch replays directly, or save them locally to your hard drive with a simple click.Inactivity Detection
It’s never fun to play a multiplayer match when someone on your team is inactive or away from the keyboard, so we have added a system to help identify these players and give teammates more options on how they wish to proceed. New to the franchise, Company of Heroes 3 will now auto-detect when a player has been inactive for a set time. Should this system detect a player is inactive for 60-seconds, that player will receive a chat message warning to notify them. If the player remains inactive for another 60-seconds (120-seconds total), the system will initiate an automatic vote-to-kick for that player’s team. Our goal with this system is to ensure players have an option should they feel an inactive player is disruptive, and they can continue the match with an A.I. replacement if they so choose. We will be monitoring this system in the coming weeks to determine if any changes or improvements are necessary, as we want to hear your feedback on this.Gameplay & Campaign
Italian Dynamic Campaign
Our team has made several changes to the Dynamic Campaign Map experience, as we saw players wanted it to be more challenging. These changes hope to address that feedback while incentivizing players to make more tactical decisions and make use of the strategic tools available throughout their experience. We have more improvements planned for future updates. In Onyx Shark, players will now see several UI changes, including a new End Turn button, redesigned Campaign Company cards, and new indicators for movement points. One of the biggest changes to the Campaign affects the damage that emplacements can now deal, meaning players will need to be more tactical when approaching enemy territory. Additionally, players will see a slight increase to the number of enemy Companies and units coming their way. All this means you will need a more diverse army to deal with the challenge! We have removed the population cost for air units, giving players more options to deal with these stronger enemy defenses. Along with these changes, many resource costs across the Campaign Map have been rebalanced to enhance strategic decision making. Extra shields have been added to certain locations, making them more challenging to capture, and additionally, healing will now require you to be in friendly territory, meaning you cannot Leeroy Jenkins your way to victory. Learn more about these changes and their impact on the campaign by reviewing the full patch notes when the update is released.A.I.
Enemy and friendly A.I. have undergone several changes over recent updates that will result in a noticeable improvement in their overall behavior and effectiveness with Onyx Shark. The A.I. will be more vigilant with repairing and preserving vehicles, ensuring they are not low health when entering new engagements, while also being smarter about when to use recon and smoke runs. Infantry will now group up more, so they maintain their strength in numbers and will also be less focused on back-capping points. Additionally, we have made the Easy A.I. easier with changes to how it produces units so newer players can experience a slower paced game as they learn and explore.General Gameplay
The team has made a concerted effort to make the moment-to-moment action of CoH3 more immersive and engaging. To that end, we’ve made several gameplay changes outlined below. These changes will all work in tandem to elevate the CoH3 experience for both new players and longtime fans alike. Some changes include:- Vehicles have had their suspension reworked to make them react more to terrain and projectile impacts. Players should notice the difference between a vehicle being hit by a Panzer IV over an 88. Additionally, artillery will now apply force on vehicles if they are in proximity to an explosion. Finally, we have also added and adjusted the weapon recoil on several vehicles.
- Demo charges and mines have undergone several bug fixes and improvements to make them more reliable and better to use. When detected, they will now also be easier to spot for removal.
- The towing system has had a full pass to ensure it is more reliable. Towed items should now be more responsive and easier to interact with, meaning you’ll be able to respond quickly to any deadly threats on the battlefield.
- A minor update to vehicle pathfinding should result in vehicles needing to pivot less around tight spaces, allowing for easier navigation.
- Additionally, we have done a pass of the units using bolt action weapons to ensure they are immersive and using the correct animations.
UI Improvements
Several improvements to UI elements have been included in this update. As previously mentioned, the Campaign Map will see notable changes, and so will the Command Points and Battlegroup HUD while in-game. Many legacy-styled icons have been updated to align with CoH3’s theming, and passive unit abilities will now be displayed in the unit command card with a detailed tooltip describing each effect.Camera Improvements
The in-game camera logic has been improved in various instances where previously it was not working optimally, or not at all. Selecting multiple units that are far from each other and centering the camera on them should no longer result in the camera going to the center between the selected units, but it will always focus on at least one of the squads. New options have been added to the Controls setting for you to customize the camera behavior in the following instances:- Control groups focus camera behavior
- Multiple squad selection subselect camera behavior
- Tactical map closing after double clicking on a unit
Multiplayer Balance Changes
One of our most impactful multiplayer changes coming in Onyx Shark will be the changes to early game infantry time-to-kill. These changes will noticeably speed up combat, with our main goal being to make positioning and tactics matter more in the early game phase. Finding and utilizing cover will be a bigger factor to winning engagements and staying in the open too long will be punished if players do not react or plan accordingly. Following the time-to-kill changes, our next major shift will be the unit distinction work. Two units per faction will have their abilities enhanced and redesigned to create greater distinction and uniqueness of units and their role on the battlefield. You can review all the other multiplayer balance changes in the patch notes and learn more about the team’s goals in our Balance Discussion livestream debuting just before the patch is released. The Onyx Shark update is out for PC on Steam on Tuesday, July 16th at 10am PDT! Be sure to jump into our official Discord to discuss the update, find others to play with, and to leave us your thoughts.Posted by John_RE on 25/Jun/2024
- Added additional debug logging in the Italian Campaign to resolve blockers and soft locks on the enemy turn.
- Added support for fortnightly events and challenges. Setup Handle With Care event.
- New store sales, increased rotational sales to 20%.
Posted by John_RE on 10/Jun/2024
- Enhanced and redesigned abilities on two units per Faction
- A new 4v4 map for all modes
- Italian Campaign Map improvements
- Towing & Vehicle improvements
- Audio Improvements for Small Arms, Vehicles & Bespoke Moments
- VFX Improvements targeting immersion
- Random Faction Selection
- Infantry Time-To-Kill adjustments to make early game combat more impactful (more details on this in the future!)
- Player Profile Match History
- Battlegroup UI Overhaul
- Plus, several more quality of life and gameplay improvements
Posted by John_RE on 29/May/2024
- Fixed an issue where some matches would not be recorded correctly or would display incorrect ELO changes as a result of a surrender vote.
- Fixed an issue where the Italian Campaign would sometimes soft lock when a Partisan Objective failed.
- Fixed an issue where the Italian Campaign would soft lock when multiple ships finished production on the same turn.
- Fixed an Italian Campaign soft lock that would occur after capturing two ports with the Capture Target Partisan ability.
- Improved logging to track GPU crashes.
- Improved soft lock identification and logging in the Italian Campaign. This new system will identify when you encounter a soft lock and will send us your save file so we can quickly identify and fix these issues.
Posted by John_RE on 23/May/2024
Overview
As many of you will know, Relic has become an independent studio! While we're incredibly excited about our future, the transition was (and continues to be) a huge adjustment for us. That said, the dust is certainly settling, and we can now update all of you on some of our plans for Company of Heroes 3 in the months ahead. First up, we want to thank everyone that took part in our first Steam Free Weekend. The response from everyone was tremendous, and we’re happy to see new players and longtime franchise fans jumping into CoH3 for the first time. The feedback from the Free Weekend helped us validate not just the work that we’ve done over the last year, but also several key items that we’re already planning to improve.Console Edition
Going independent is incredibly exciting for us. It presents us with new challenges and opportunities that the team is eager to tackle in the coming years. However, being independent also means we no longer have access to certain resources that we had in the past, which leaves us with some difficult decisions. One of those decisions is that moving forward, we will no longer be releasing further updates for the Company of Heroes 3 Console Edition. The team will still conduct regular server maintenance and, if need be, make any critical game fixes should an issue arise in the future. This was an incredibly difficult decision to make, but one we felt was necessary for our future success given the new reality we find ourselves in. The CoH3 Console Edition will remain available for any players that wish to play it on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X or S. We will be targeting a hot fix for the Console Edition as soon as possible to remove the erroneous Havok license warning pop-up.PC Edition
The first half of 2024 was a roller coaster for the studio as we transitioned to independent status. We know players have wanted to see a Company of Heroes 3 roadmap for 2024, but due to these changes at the studio, we haven't been able to commit to and communicate content plans with a high degree of confidence. With key plans and items now in place and our transition now well underway, we can start calling some shots. Though we can’t provide a full roadmap, we want to let you know what we’re working on for the rest of 2024. Our team hopes to deliver the following three PC updates before the year’s end:- 1.7.0 in late June
- 1.8.0 targeting the Fall
- 1.9.0 targeting early Winter
- Enhanced and redesigned abilities on two units per Faction
- A new 4v4 map for all modes
- Italian Campaign Map improvements
- Towing & Vehicle improvements
- And much more
Posted by John_RE on 16/May/2024
- Fixed a high frequency crash affecting many players.
- Reduced performance issues such as hitching or stuttering when playing with multiple A.I. team mates or opponents.
- Fixed invisible unit decorators on campaign map entities.
Posted by John_RE on 09/May/2024
Posted by John_RE on 09/May/2024
- Fixed an issue that could lead to a crash after turn 6 of the Italian Campaign.
Posted by John_RE on 08/May/2024
- Fixed an issue where Flamethrowers were causing performance and framerate issues. This was more notable when playing with other players.
- The enemy A.I. was using an incorrect artillery option in defense missions causing unintended difficulty spikes.
- Fixed the Night Fighters Kettenkrad cosmetic so it appears correctly.
- Fixed a black screen that was appearing after missions in the North African Operation.
- Additional crash fixes.
Posted by John_RE on 07/May/2024
Day 1
Players started the first day of Drawing the Victory strong! 16,500 matches played so far on player-made maps. But we'll need to recruit some friends to kick it up a notch!
Day 2
Players made great progress in Drawing the Victory overnight! With the CoH3 Free Weekend, let's make short work of this goal!
Day 3
With the Free Weekend now in full swing, let's kick things into high gear and crush this goal!
Day 6
Looks like our Free Weekend players all earned their stripes! We saw a staggering number of matches on community maps and in custom games helping us Draw the Victory. One day left to hit our goal!
Day 7
Drawing the Victory has come to a close and players knocked the goal out of the park! All players will unlock the exclusive Banner, Badge and Title for their profiles later this week. Thanks to everyone for participating during the Free Weekend!
Posted by John_RE on 02/May/2024
OVERVIEW
This hot fix focuses on resolving GPU related crashes and introduces additional logging so we can get our crash rate down even further. We have also fixed the matchmaking queue estimations being stuck at 50/50. We are still investigating a few outstanding issues. You can find our Known Issues thread here and the previous 1.6.5 patch notes here.GENERAL
- Fixed matchmaking queue estimations. Not all players were receiving accurate information based on which match type they were queueing for.
- Improvements in GPU related crashes where GPUs on a hardware level report as missing, lost or hanging. These are often referred to as D.R.E.D. crashes.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Semovente's barrage to go on cooldown when using smoke launchers.
- Fixed an issue where modded maps that had the same filename as maps in the quick match pool could cause the Map Preference dialog to show duplicates.
- The names of cosmetics for the Dark Brown and Charcoal units in the store have been fixed. Localized names will be fixed in a future update.
Posted by John_RE on 01/May/2024
Read the full list of gameplay and quality-of-life changes here.
As always, we will update our Known Issues thread with any issues we are tracking.Posted by John_RE on 30/Apr/2024
Overview
The 1.6.5 PC Patch following our Coral Viper update will be available for Company of Heroes 3 this week. Here's a quick rundown of what's coming. This patch includes notable quality of life improvements as requested by our players, such as Map Preference voting and improvements to input latency. Based on player feedback, our team has also implemented several multiplayer balance adjustments, matchmaking improvements, and refreshed the in-game store with requested cosmetics and bundles, and as always, addressed many pesky bugs. Let’s get to the good stuff!New Features
Map Preference
Map Preference makes its debut in Company of Heroes 3 with a simple yet effective tool to define a list of maps you would prefer not to play on. This will be present in all Automatch modes (Quick Match and Co-op vs A.I.). Through a dedicated map selection screen, you will be able to downvote the maps you would prefer not to play on. These votes will be saved until they are changed again, and a recap of all voted on maps will be available in the Automatch Search Screen.
- The matchmaking system will first form games and match together players based on several factors related to ELO, wait time, ping, servers, and more. In this phase, Map Preference votes are not considered.
- After groups are formed, the matchmaking system will analyze each player's votes, collecting all the maps with the lowest number of (or zero) votes and then randomly pick a map between them. Therefore, it is still possible to play on downvoted maps, if they are one of the least voted on. This is more likely in larger team games, where the number of players and votes can be high enough for that to happen.
- Map Preference will also work together with the map weighting system introduced in late 2023. After the downvotes are applied and the possible map pool is generated, map weight will be factored to increase the chances of a new map being picked if it is in the generated map pool list.
Unit Responsiveness
Units will be much more responsive in 1.6.5, with input latency for both offline and online matches being reduced by approximately half. Commanding units and issuing move orders should now feel snappier and more fluid. This change may affect visual smoothness, but we will be monitoring the change for future adjustments if need be. You can find a video showcasing the before/after comparisons, along with a technical write up from our team here.Animation
Several improvements have been made to unit animations so that their gameplay affecting behaviors are less prone to breaking the immersion of our players. This includes things like infantry not aiming at their target properly and fixes for units that have their animations glitch or become stuck. These are only some of the behaviors that we have corrected, and we hope the result is a more immersive experience for all our players. We have additional fixes to known animation issues coming in subsequent patches.Matchmaking
Now, while looking for a game in Automatch modes, the game will display the percentage of players queuing as Allies versus Axis. This will help you make an informed decision about which faction to choose from, while improving the overall matchmaking experience. For example, in the image below, it would likely be faster to find a match as the Allies.
Cosmetics
The in-game store is being refreshed with new cosmetic sets. Previously, all items in a cosmetic set might not be available at once, or a player would need to acquire multiple bundles to complete the set. Based on player feedback, we have decided to release all items in a set at once instead of releasing them in smaller bundles over time. Many items can be acquired now individually, along with “Ultimate” bundles that contain everything included with a set. We have also repackaged several previous sets to match this new model. We are still planning on supporting our rotating offers as well, so stay on the lookout for those!Multiplayer Balance Changes
The multiplayer balance changes in 1.6.5 are focused on improving some of the infrequently used Battlegroup choices to create a wider variety of effective strategic paths. We previewed many of these changes two weeks ago and have made a few adjustments based on your feedback. Find all the final balance changes in the patch notes on release day.Community Event
Keep an eye out for our next community event starting next week! Once again, we will be challenging all our players to work towards a common goal to earn new exclusive items for their profiles. Get your friends together and prepare for Drawing the Victory! The 1.6.5 Patch is releasing in the next couple of days! Be sure to jump into our official forums or Discord to discuss the update, find others to play with, and to leave us your thoughts.Source: Official Relic Steam News for COH3
You can find all the articles on Steam news
You can find all the articles on Steam news