OKW 221 suggestion

The OKW has serious trouble dealing with the soviet M3. Going 2 engineers into penal and M3 is the meta against OKW. The M3 in capable hands provides a value almost too great for its price against OKW. Only viable option is to seriously outplay your opponent with infantry as getting raketten this early just means you will be run over by the penals.
The 221 could be made a useful tool against this. The issue is that in its current state the timings on 221 are way too late for being useful. Lets look at some timings for builds including the M3 and 221:

SOV:
2engineers, penal, M3 2:00
2engineers, penal, M3, Penal 3:10

sturm, 2volks, sWS, 221 2:40
Sturm, 3volks, sWS, 221 3:40

Unupgraded 221 barely wins the M3 on a good day. M3 with a penal inside wipes the floor with unupgraded 221. Both of these require investment into teching, with the added cost of required tech the cost for these light vehicles is 290Mp 30F for 221 and 350MP 25F for M3. While the soviet rifle company is being used to produce penals, the sWS in itself does not provide anything for the OKW player and is dead MP until it can be established. Also in order to get rush the 221 out in 2:40 one most float roughly 100MP in 1v1s before having enough fuel.

The upgraded version of 221 can beat the M3 with SVT penals in it leaving the 221 at half health. Only problem is, that it can take up until 5:30 to get this upgrade, which costs 100Mp and 15 fuel done. Not to mention that again in order to unlock this upgrade you are forced to burn 200MP and 25F on the T1 losing your tempo even further. So now in order to get this upgraded 221 you have invested already a whopping 590MP and 70F. That's 2 volks and few models on top that you could have been fielding for a while. For reference accumulated costs for getting luchs are 535MP and 120Fuel.

The 221 could be an effective M3 counter, without making it OP with the following changes:
-Remove the sWS construction requirement
-300MP 30fuel cost
-Deploys upgraded

With this the 221 could hit the battlefield roughly around the 2:45 mark. Completely fine for a doctrinal vehicle with a cost of 300MP and 30F that has mg34 as its main weapon. The M3 would still get almost a good minute of time to run around before bumping into 221 at worst. The new high MP cost would make sure that getting more than one of these would quickly make sure that getting something would be more worthwhile investment. After 3 minute mark every allied faction would be able to field effective countermeasures against 221: LT has the zook, penals have the PTRS and UKF can get AT or engineers. Unupgraded M20 also wins 221 without mentioning the AEC.

This would be an easy and non broken way to provide OKW with an efficient doctrinal counter to Clowncar and UC on higher levels. Please give it some thought.

The OKW has serious trouble dealing with the soviet M3.

Not since new pfussies with T0 AT nade.

Not since new pfussies with T0 AT nade.

Also, one thing missing from the OP's analysis is that the 221 doesn't need to kill the M3 to render it ineffective; dealing enough damage to force it back for repairs or preventing it from diving after your retreating units is enough to put a stop to its power in the early game, and help stall for the tech going up to get Fausts and the 223 to finally kill it.


Furthermore, one more thing to keep in mind here is that the reason the tech restrictions and 223 upgrade are in place is because especially USF has absolutely no form of AT until the late early game, and Brits also need quite a lot of time to get snares or an ATG. As opposed to Ostheer and OKW who respectively have access to Fausts and T0 Raketen to deal with rampaging light vehicles in the early game (both do have drawbacks, but at least they're there).

A 30 fuel 223 deploying ~2-3 minutes into the game would completely overrun USF and UKF because they have nothing to effectively fight back a 320hp and 9 armor vehicle at that point.

Also, one thing missing from the OP's analysis is that the 221 doesn't need to kill the M3 to render it ineffective; dealing enough damage to force it back for repairs or preventing it from diving after your retreating units is enough to put a stop to its power in the early game, and help stall for the tech going up to get Fausts and the 223 to finally kill it.

^ This, so much this.

One thing that's completely incomprehensible to me is why people think that infantry should be able to outrun and survive literal nuclear blast on 1 man left, but vehicle being countered is only acceptable, when its a smoking wreck.

If a vehicle doesn't have a room to do its job and is still alife, congrats, you've countered it and now it indirectly "bleeds" opponent by being there, useless.

M3 has extremely short window of opportunity where it needs to do its job and it doesn't even do that job directly, its reliant on another unit too, so you're looking at countering 2 units and expect to do it with one, much cheaper in comparison.

The M3 vs okw is problematic and 221 one could provide a solution.

The unit is currently overpriced.

Change could include the following:
M3 price down to 5 fuel
M3 passenger can not shoot until upgraded upgrade cost 30 MU.

221 become a separate unit from the 223 and cost for both units is adjusted. DPS of the unit goes down to kubel or bellow levels but the weapon get more penetration so it can fight m3 easier. Unit is redesign as sniper/m3/UC/WC51 soft counter.

223 is design as separate unit with a different role and cost.