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.
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.
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