There's been a lot of back-and-forth in this thread, but I'll address OP's first two posts, since that's really the core of the 'complaint'. Everything after the last quote is a summary, so feel free to skip the CoH2 balance history 'wall-of-text'.
1.Let mg's the way the are now but unlock all of them into tier 1 like okw.
-This is the lamest suggestion but I would still prefer this than to play against a player who just poops up mgs(it's not fun,I don't enjoy playing with mg spam or fighting against it).
This would break the OST faction. When the game was released, and I believe until WFA, the MG42 was in T1. Up until WFA, this made sense, since grens performed roughly equally to cons; cons would win at close, they'd roughly tie and mid (really RNG dependent, iirc), and grens would win at long range. Grens also had the LMG42 upgrade to somewhat offset the cost difference once the game actually got going: cons are much cheaper reinforce cost meant that they'd eventually outnumber grens, so the grens needed the DPS increase. In general, this was pretty balanced, and a lot of people (myself included) really liked the gren vs. con matchup.
The problem is, WFA, and then UKF, completely broke this. Rifles beat grens and close and medium range, and only lose at long range. They can then upgrade to double bars and
completely destroy grens at close and medium range, or they can upgrade to M1919s and roughly tie LMG42 grens at long range (I think grens win this, but it's close). Yes, they cost +40mp more, but they also cost less to reinforce. Additionally, their vet is also MUCH stronger, since at vet 3 they gain an extra -15% RA, in exchange for a 10% less accuracy at vet 2. There's also the issue with it being a 4 model vs. 5 model comparison.
Then there's the UKF with their infantry sections; this squad is similar to grens, except can be upgraded to a five model squad (and their base cost remains the same) AND can be upgraded with double brens, which completely melt grens in even fights. And then on top of that, they have their cover bonus, which makes them even more dominant in a defensive position. Yes, they are
technically weaker out of cover, but a 5-model, double bren squad is going to beat a 4-model LMG-gren squad in a neutral-cover fight at both close and medium range.
To keep up with the WFA units, Penals were massively buffed to be a comparable 'main-line' infantry squad. This squad doesn't have any massive AI upgrades like USF/UKF, but they convincingly beat grens at close and medium range, and are surprisingly resilient due to them being a 6 model squad.
So how do you prevent grens from being destroyed from minute zero? One option is to move the MG42 to T0, to allow for proper gren support. Remember, the MG42 doesn't really do much damage; it's main job is to suppress/pin squads, to keep them from getting to medium/close range (where they can easily beat grens). The cost also makes it an interesting trade-off. While the MG42 is only 240mp (the same as a gren squad), that does mean for every MG42 on the field, the OST player is down one infantry squad. That means less capping power, less flank-defense, and less actually damage vs. infantry. It also means less LV-snares, which means a flamer-clown car, AEC, Stuart, etc. will be even more effective.
The other option is buffing grens so that they can actually stand up to these squads without MG support. This would cause a ton of other issues (return of the G43 blob), and would really hurt the design of OST, so not many are in favor of this.
Regardless, I'd strongly recommend playing an MG-less OST game against mid/high level players. While it is possible, you'll find that your level of play will need to be significantly higher than your opponent to stand a chance of winning against allied infantry blobs. The MG42 is what brings that skill gap down, imo, to a point where both players have an equal chance of winning at the same skill level. With that said, I think many would argue that Ost is still far less forgiving than other factions - but that's a different topic.
2.Reduce the suppresion alot but improve the accuracy of the mg's so he infantry are still being pinned but they shoot back at the mg they don't just sit like ducks waiting to be shot,you can also make an ability to spend ammo and make the mg's shoot as fast as they can for better suppresion for a limited time but that's all ,they don't need to be terminators which are countered by mortars and vehichles only.
- If you make players spend ammo on their mg to pindown as they are doing right now in the game you make them think twice before spamming more than 2 mgs and you also make them to choose when to use the pindown ability or not! ,It's a tactical decision and it actually makes me respect the mg players if it's implemented.
This defeats the purpose of MGs, and encourages massive infantry blobs. If the MGs dont pin quickly, then infantry can beat them head-on (they can already sort of do this, but it requires 3x double-upgrade squads). If it was a munitions based ability, muni-starved factions (OST) would again be severely hurt. Remember that Ost desperately needs to save muni for mid-game, or their non-LMG grens will get steam-rolled by rifles/IS which have upgrades.
3.Often in fights when you try to flank mg's if you're still in the big range of german mg and he shoots 2 bullets your squad will be pinned down for 3 seconds or more and the squad that's still alive and its not being shoot at,it stays pinned for 8 seconds.I FEEL LIKE THEY STAY TOO MUCH WITH THEIR FACE IN THE GROUND AND DO NOTHING ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY KNOW FROM WHERE IS MG SHOOTING AND THEY JUST SIT THERE WAITING FOR MG TO SHOOT BACK
Then you're not flanking far enough. If you click on the MG42, you can see the firing-arc; just stay out of it. As for suppression times, it's based on cover; in red cover it takes ages to recover from suppression, but the recovery speed increases a lot with better cover (red -> neutral -> yellow -> green) to the point where being suppressed in green cover is very challenging, and being pinned is essentially impossible (provided you're on the right side of the cover).
We need to tackle the player mentality who rely exclusevily on mg's without making them think twice before cliking on more than 1 mg at the start of the game.
Your 2nd post is basically a summary of the first, but regardless:
Decreasing the power of MGs increases the power of infantry blobs. This is a direct correlation for early games; if there's no risk of A-moving a giant blob of 3-5 squads with upgrades, then there's no reason not to do that, since it's objectively the strongest way of dealing damage. Five rifles/is/penals in a blob are going to destroy any single squad nearly instantaneously, and I'd rather the game not turn into blob vs. blob.
I would argue that even MG spam requires more skill than infantry blobbing, since you need to deal with cover, firing direction, and squad targeting, so I'd much rather have to deal with 3x MGs that I can flank, smoke, mortar or flame, than a giant infantry blob that's immune to all of those.
Lastly, while you said you "don't want advice on how to counter mgs", I'd strongly recommend posting some replays to the review section. MG spam isn't seen at top level play (although they all use one or two, at least for ost), such as in the current "World Champions" tournament. Since you're not competing (neither am I - I'm nowhere near that skill level), there's always room to improve/learn/etc. I've definitely gotten a lot of useful help out of the community reviews against stuff I thought was massively unfair.
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