Update 1.8.0 for Company of Heroes 3 introduces three new maps for all modes, several feature improvements, and new adjustments to multiplayer to shake up the meta. Today's patch notes do not fit in a Steam post, so please find the full list of changes and fixes here:
Our team is aware that several players have had difficulty connecting to Company of Heroes 3 and we wanted to provide an update on our investigation, along with some troubleshooting steps in the meantime as we work on a solution. On September 10th, Relic’s service SSL certificate was renewed using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). ACM recently changed the trust anchor for its certificates, transitioning from the “Starfield Class 2 Certification Authority” (GoDaddy) to the Amazon-owned “Starfield Services Root Certificate Authority - G2.”
Players may be experiencing connection issues because “Starfield Services Root Certificate Authority - G2” is not installed on their systems, which is causing the SSL certificate validation to fail.
We expected this root certificate to be available on up-to-date Windows systems or to be installed automatically via Windows’ Auto-Root Certificate Retrieval feature. However, some players are experiencing connection issues due to this certificate not being present.
Possible reasons include:
Outdated Windows systems that haven’t received recent root certificate updates.
Auto-root certificate retrieval is disabled in system settings or group policies.
Network restrictions prevent Windows from fetching the missing root certificate.
It is possible to check if the "Starfield Services Root Certificate Authority - G2" is installed on your Windows system by doing the following:
Press the Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog.
Type certmgr.msc and press Enter.
In the left panel, navigate to Trusted Root Certification Authorities → Certificates.
Look for Starfield Services Root Certificate Authority - G2 in the list as shown in this image.
Players still not able to connect to Company of Heroes 3 can try the troubleshooting steps below while our team finalizes a fix we hope to include in Tuesday’s 1.8.0 update. We will keep you updated on our progress.
Please follow these troubleshooting steps in order:
[MOST RELIABLE FIX] Open the command line (Command Prompt) and run the command
If you have Windows updates pending, in progress or available, please complete their installation and restart your PC.
If that still does not resolve the issue, please open your browser and go to https://leaderboards.companyofheroes.com/. After that, try launching CoH3 again.
If these options do not work, please open Windows Edge and navigate to https://coh3-api.reliclink.com/game/version/checkStatus. It should give the response ["ok"]. If it does, run the game again and it should be able to connect fine. If it does not give the ["ok"] response, ensure that Windows is up to date.
You may need to perform these steps, and restart your PC a few times. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this as quickly as possible.
-The Relic Programmer Team
EDIT: You wrought havoc on the battlefield over the last week and deployed over 3-million satchels, demolition charges and flamethrowers! The Breaking Point profile items will be unlocked for everyone this week. Thanks for your hard work BLOWING STUFF UP!
Join forces to hit... The Breaking Point! As a community, use satchel charges, demolition charges and upgrade your units with flamethrowers 3-million times to unlock these epic profile rewards. You can take part in both singleplayer and multiplayer, just make sure things go boom!
For a limited time, earn bonus Merit with three unique event Challenges:
Burning Passion
In Singleplayer, equip 25 units with Flamethrowers.
High-Priority Target
Destroy 5 Train Stations or Churches.
Explosive Personality
In Missions, Skirmishes or Multiplayer, construct 25 Demolition Charges.
DAY 1: After one day of the Breaking Point event, you've made things go BOOM 320,000 times! To hit 3-million, we'll need to throw more satchel charges and use those flamethrowers! We can do it.
DAY 3:1 million down, 2 million to go. Spend the weekend blowing things up with friends!
Today's hot fix prepares rewards and challenges for next week's community event - Breaking Point. We will share more details about this event soon! We have also added several fixes to soft locks in the Campaigns, along with improved data logging to help us identify any outstanding stability issues or progression blockers.
This patch fixes a large percentage of all reported campaign progression blockers which should provide a much more stable and enjoyable experience for everyone. Thank you for reporting these issues to us and for your continued support.
Improved BugSplat's logging to help identify correlations between submitted reports.
Improved soft lock detection and logging during campaigns.
Fixed an issue where the Italian Campaign sometimes soft locks when the Foggia Intel objective starts while the Devil's Brigade Company was dead.
Fixed an issue where the Italian Campaign sometimes soft locks soon after the Break the Volturno Line objective started.
Fixed ships sometimes getting stuck during movement causing a soft lock in the Italian Campaign.
Fixed a few instances where the A.I. was not ending its turn in the Italian Campaign.
Please note that these changes will invalidate replay files, however, we felt it was necessary to improve the overall experience for a large portion of our players.
The Company of Heroes 3 team is excited to share our latest development roadmap outlining our plans for the rest of 2024 and early 2025. We know our players are always eager to hear what’s coming next for CoH3, so we hope this highlights our intent, and gives you something to look forward to. It’s important to keep in mind that we can’t predict the future, and our plans may need to change.
Development Roadmap
This new roadmap outlines the next three updates to Company of Heroes 3 spanning the next six months of development. We’ll be starting with a smaller update in September (update 1.8.0), as the bulk of the team’s efforts will be on our updates coming in November 2024 and February 2025. These two updates will be larger than 1.8.0 and deliver content and features that are highly requested by the community. Also please note that the dates listed below are target release dates and subject to change. With the recent release of Onyx Shark (update 1.7.0) now behind us, we are collecting feedback from players that will help inform our work in 1.8 and beyond.
New Heavy Tank Battlegroups – we will share more details about Battlegroups closer to February. For now, have fun wildly speculating!
Additional Gameplay Improvements
4 New Maps + Map Quality of Life Improvements v4.0
Multiplayer Balance Update
Audio Improvements
Vehicle Overhaul & Improvements
Community Event: Reinforcements on the Way
And more!
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed this preview of what’s to come for Company of Heroes 3. If you would like some additional context on our development process and decision making, you can read this detailed forum post from the team! As always, please continue leaving your feedback, Steam reviews, questions and more. We look forward to sharing additional details about these updates as we get closer to each milestone. Follow all our channels for the latest news and be sure to join our Discord to continue the conversation with our Development team. Until next time!
This hot fix aims to resolve several campaign progression issues (or soft locks) we are seeing from player logs and reports. This should fix most instances where the enemy turn hangs or fails to complete, leaving the player stuck and unable to progress further in the campaign. We will continue monitoring and working on any additional occurrences of this issue, so please let us know if you still experience this after today's hot fix.
Campaign Progression Fixes
Fixed a soft lock where aircraft sometimes failed to path properly if their target moved too far from its original position.
Fixed a soft lock where the Indian Artillery Company's barrage ability sometimes failed to fire when used on steep inclines.
Fixed an issue where interacting with a unit model not at its actual position on the Campaign Map would lead to a soft lock.
Additional Fixes
Fixed performance issues related to social widgets in the menus. Players should see improved frame rate when navigating the menus.
Added additional animations for the Command Point wheel when a new point is received.
Reduced the map weighting values of Black Gold (4v4) back to default levels now that we are past its release window. This is our standard practice with new maps.
Updated the British version of the Monte Cassino Mission, removing a pink cube that appeared in the outro.
Fixed an issue where Fast Deploy would impact the M4A1 Sherman 76mm twice, resulting in a 2-second build time.
Fixed an issue where Munition Surplus did not apply to future units after the upgrade was completed.
Fixed a low occurrence crash related to Friends list when adding or removing a friend.
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.
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
We are also introducing new camera shake effects applied to most ordinance. These new effects aim to warn players of danger while also providing a better sense of immersion and scale for engagements. Players can adjust these effects in the settings. We will monitor the reception of these new effects for any future improvements.
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.
The Company of Heroes team has decided to move our next planned update from June to a target date of July 16th. With this additional time, we’ll be able to further polish and validate the work we have planned, while also including some impactful improvements that you have been wanting to see, or rather, hear, for quite some time.
As a reminder, these are the gameplay and quality of life improvements that we have already teased coming in 1.7.0:
Enhanced and redesigned abilities on two units per Faction
A new 4v4 map for all modes
Italian Campaign Map improvements
Towing & Vehicle improvements
Moving our release date to July means we can also include:
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
Over the coming weeks, we will be sharing more information on what’s coming in July’s 1.7.0 update, so be sure to follow our social channels and join our Discord for all the latest news! As always, thank you for your continued support and patience. We can’t wait to show you more soon!
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.
This hot fix will be going live shortly after 10am PDT today.
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
Both our 1.8.0 and 1.9.0 patches are still in flux as we determine the changes, improvements, new maps, fixes, etc. we can deliver in that timeframe. Once we have a better sense of what’s coming in both 1.8.0 and 1.9.0, we will be sure to let you know.
With our 1.7.0 update coming in late June, we have a ton of gameplay and quality of life improvements that we can’t wait for you to see. As a teaser, you can expect:
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
We’ll share more details on the June 1.7.0 PC update soon, so be sure to stay tuned to our forums and social channels.
Thank you to all our players for their ongoing support! It’s what drives our team to continue making Company of Heroes 3 better and better every day.
Company of Heroes 3 is FREE to try until May 13th! Experience the Mediterranean theatre through authentic mechanics and tactical gameplay in single player, multiplayer or co-op. Now is the perfect time to download the game as we've built upon community-requested features and improvements, which are all now live. Grab your friends or join the community by participating in our Drawing the Victory Event, which runs until May 14th. Completing it will unlock exclusive profile items for all players!
If you like the game during the free weekend, you can purchase Company of Heroes 3 for a 50% discount until May 16th as part of our Franchise Sale, our biggest discount to date!
There's never been a better time to play Company of Heroes 3 and we can't wait to see you on the battlefield, Commander.
Source: Official Relic Steam News for COH3 You can find all the articles on Steam news