My Ideal Fix for Bolster

The UKF was my most anticipated faction in this game but I think we can all agree that their launch design was far from ideal. While some considerable work has gone into fixing these errors, one glaring flaw still stands out to me as being the cause of a lot of balance issues with the faction. This is, of course, Bolster. It's an upgrade both unprecedented and unwarranted that causes numerous balancing and teching headaches.

The UKF starts with by far the most inconsistent infantry. 4-man Sections are highly situationally effective, and you can kiss an engagement goodbye if ever they are caught out of cover. Bolster, however, provides a highly effective boost, giving more health and effective damage on a unit which already has one of the best base rifles in the game. Without Commandos or other supporting infantry, Bolster is an essential upgrade to maintain field control as the Brits. This makes it problematic, especially given its place in the tech tree.

My suggestion is this - replace the current T1 tech choice between the AEC or the Bofors with one something along the lines of Hammer or Anvil. In this case, "Hammer" would keep your infantry at 4 men but give them additional combat bonuses (ideally removing out-of-cover penalties and increasing on-the-move accuracy), while "Anvil" would give you the current Bolster upgrade but make Sections more dependent on cover to be effective in combat.

I realize this might not be a realistic suggestion given the intricacies of coding with Relic's groundwork and the limited resources available, but this, I feel, would be very beneficial. The rolling Bren blob is boring both to play and to play against, and the current Bolster only draws players into that strategy. This would give the UKF an actual meaningful tech choice at T1 instead of the no-brainer AEC pick, and would diversify infantry play.

Thoughts?

Interesting suggestion, sounds like it could also fix the issue of UKF's lacking offensive options and increase build diversity a bit. I hope it will be able to make it into the game. Maybe it could even give sappers combat bonuses/a weapon upgrade for some extra offensive power.

EDIT: I think a simular change was suggested by someone else a long time ago, something along the lines of making bolster an upgrade to individual squads and being exclusive with medkits and pyro flares. I can't quite remember who proposed it though. It didn't go through because the balance team doesn't really want to do anything with the bolster upgrade, because it has the potential to quickly become broken or useless, and they would rather leave bolster as is.

... In this case, "Hammer" would keep your infantry at 4 men but give them additional combat bonuses (ideally removing out-of-cover penalties and increasing on-the-move accuracy), while "Anvil" would give you the current Bolster upgrade but make Sections more dependent on cover to be effective in combat.
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Thoughts?

Actually it should be the other way round. 4 men for static design similar to grenadier and 5 men for a more mobile designed. I have made this suggestions year ago.

But there is simpler way to improve bolster. Instead of making squad spawn with the extra member it work similar to Ostheer and the unit could spawn 4 entities. Then they could see a cost reduction.

Either this idea, or if Relic doesn’t want something so drastic simply reduce the cost of bolster to 150mp 20 fuel and balance for 5 man Tommies only.

I agree. To me having a mid-game tech be just w joice between Bofors or AEC always felt incomplete to me. Mini-Anvil and Mini-Hammer would be a nice change.

Consolidating grenade side-tech into one of those would be interesting too, but perhaps the timing would be a bit too late.

Nice idea