Why does every commander idea have to include superunits?
Makes no sense.
Trying to make up for the lack of late-game potential otherwise by giving them a more powerful Partisan themed unit. In a way it's an interesting inversion to both Partisans, who are cheap and arguably expendable, and Soviet Infantry who generally fair better at closer ranges. Using an MG 42 from Grenadiers is a pretty modest choice of weapon Machine Gun, ironically most of their firepower comes from the three Kar 98's.
I like some ideas like the irregulars and the sappers, but I think the commander is overloaded with infantry choices like this while not having any late game play.
Mark target should probably stay, sappers - as interesting as the idea might sound as a pitch - would be too much work to implement and should go. What would also fit the commander would be SVT or DsHK drops and the propaganda artillery.
EDIT: Almost forgot the ATG camo ability. Would fit in nicely as well.
Yeah that was my other main concern, it's too infantry heavy, but I didn't know what to do about that. I didn't want to part with the Sappers or the Irregulars, and getting rid of the Partisans or Tank Hunters is right out... I actually did want to add the SVT Crate Drop because the idea of dropping weapons was fitting. I also wanted the ability to produce whole weapon teams like in ToW too, but couldn't fit it in anywhere. I settled on the Rally Point being able to spawn select crew weapons instead as a compromise to both.
There was a fun idea by the mod from AE where you instead merged partisan squads into one ability, which spawned them before you chose which upgrade you wanted (similar to stormtroopers). This would free up slots for something else. I am lenient towards anti-infantry landmines, as they're congruent to the theme.
This suggestion seems like a good one, combine Partisan/Tank Hunters and have them act more like Stormtroopers. The main drawback here is you can't just pop an SMG squad out of a building. Maybe it would work if the Sappers could upgrade to the Tank Hunters instead?
The ONLY thing Partisan commander needs is vet improvement for AI partisans, like 5th man at vet2 or 3, this way they would still scale into late game and be able to contest some infantry, but would still be at disadvantage in any open fight they didn't opened with ambush.
I disagree, Partisans struggle because they're a one-trick pony. The Tank Hunters remain relevant for sure because they have a Panzerschreck and a snare, but the Partisans with SMG's simply don't carry much value once they've popped out of the house. That's why I added the ability to send them off map for a refund.
One cool idea someone posted once is to shuffle around the costs of the commander abilities to make them more realistic and unique. I.e. IRL you wouldn't employ Partisans, but rather just arm them, so deploying Partisan squads ingame could cost munitions rather than manpower. Then abilities like the Spy Network make use of employed agents so they could cost manpower rather than munitions.
Switching the costs would be an interesting concept and it would certainly give some unique flavour and strategic choices for the commander, though I wouldn't know how balanced it would be without thorough testing. And very likely impossible to implement at this stage.
About not actually employing them yourself, I had actually considered this outlandish idea that one ability could be a Partisan Resistance in which uncontrollable individual Partisans with a random array of weapons are spawned camouflaged throughout the target sector to attack enemies for the duration of the ability. Individual Partisans may also attempt to retreat off-map when their health goes low instead of dying. It was a really cool idea, but I don't know the feasibility of it, and depending on limitations it might ultimately be far too strong (let me just plop this in my opponent's fuel/cutoff) or far too weak (the opponent has a tank or two and just deletes all the partisans piecemeal). Was still a cool idea though and probably a heck of a lot more interesting than 4 call-ins, just untested and potentially unfeasible...
I would also replace radio intercept with “disrupt supply lines”
This ability would double reinforcement times for enemy infantry and half the repair rate of enemy engineers for the duration of the ability (25 - 35 seconds)
The problem with something like that is there's really no counterplay, nothing the other player can do to mitigate or avoid it, it'll just happen. It wouldn't be interesting or fun to play against.
Well then, let me share a history knowledge with you:
A whole fucking lot of soviet partisans were whole encircled battalions and armies who hid in civilian population, trained willing civilians and coordinated actions with HQ when communication was possible.
Many of them were civilians indeed, but many of them were full trained soldiers in plain clothes.
That's pretty much what I based my Irregulars on, the veteran soldiers hiding among the civilian population and waiting for the front to catch up with them once again.