[Winter Balance Update] SOV Feedback

You rebuild infantry only to cap, build sandbags and snares. Bonus points if you have special abilities or grenades.

My point with this was that, even with current design, Penals don't need an additional weapon upgrade or similar to boost their DPS. A Penal squad right out of the barracks is about as good as other mainline infantry with their weapon upgrade purchased. And no one complains about other mainlines being too weak if you rebuild them.
Conscripts on the other hand suffered a lot before Mobilized reserves, because both DPS and survivability were bad at vet0. Even cheap Conscripts were bleeding you heavily because it took them ages to get vet 2 due to low damage. All of this got adressed with Mobilized Reserves.

Saying that old Conscripts and Penals suffer the same problems and need the same treatment is in my opinion straight up wrong.

My point with this was that, even with current design, Penals don't need an additional weapon upgrade or similar to boost their DPS. A Penal squad right out of the barracks is about as good as other mainline infantry with their weapon upgrade purchased. And no one complains about other mainlines being too weak if you rebuild them.
Conscripts on the other hand suffered a lot before Mobilized reserves, because both DPS and survivability were bad at vet0. Even cheap Conscripts were bleeding you heavily because it took them ages to get vet 2 due to low damage. All of this got adressed with Mobilized Reserves.

Saying that old Conscripts and Penals suffer the same problems and need the same treatment is in my opinion straight up wrong.

Penals firepower is all they bring to the table. Their firepower alone doesn't really do anything if you bring them in fresh during the lategame. Most other infantry squads have some alternative ability that make the units usefull even when they are at low vet. Pgrens get nuke grenades, conscripts have snares etc. These abilites are good enough to justify the bleed you are going to get from them when they face vetted troops. Penals on the other hand have a short range nade with 3 second fuse which is cool for youtube clips but are easily completely dodged by anyone slightly awake. So there isn't really a reason to get them lategame as they are now.

Penals firepower is all they bring to the table. Their firepower alone doesn't really do anything if you bring them in fresh during the lategame. Most other infantry squads have some alternative ability that make the units usefull even when they are at low vet. Pgrens get nuke grenades, conscripts have snares etc. These abilites are good enough to justify the bleed you are going to get from them when they face vetted troops. Penals on the other hand have a short range nade with 3 second fuse which is cool for youtube clips but are easily completely dodged by anyone slightly awake. So there isn't really a reason to get them lategame as they are now.

The Pg "nuke grenade" argument holds little water.

If the grenade was enough the UKF officer would be used in every single game because it comes with a similar grenade and has added utility on top of that.

All unvetted infatry struggle in late game, Pg are no acceptation.

My point with this was that, even with current design, Penals don't need an additional weapon upgrade or similar to boost their DPS. A Penal squad right out of the barracks is about as good as other mainline infantry with their weapon upgrade purchased. And no one complains about other mainlines being too weak if you rebuild them.
Conscripts on the other hand suffered a lot before Mobilized reserves, because both DPS and survivability were bad at vet0. Even cheap Conscripts were bleeding you heavily because it took them ages to get vet 2 due to low damage. All of this got adressed with Mobilized Reserves.

Saying that old Conscripts and Penals suffer the same problems and need the same treatment is in my opinion straight up wrong.

That's true, they suffer DIFFERENT PROBLEMS (at similar stage in the game) but they are been treated as it can be SOLVED in the same way.

Vanilla conscripts were fine till the moment they nerf all the alternative ways for the faction to wipe and do dmg (mines, flare, demos, T70, maxims, free barrages, power of doctrinal units) Which is totally a valid design choice but it took mobilize reserves in order to fix the problem.

I have issues with the line of thought that throwing vet will simple fix problems.


There are several units which are getting nerfed on this patch and there are a couple more than SHOULD be tweak as well, but i think a proper compensation/rework is due in other areas.

Penals firepower is all they bring to the table. Their firepower alone doesn't really do anything if you bring them in fresh during the lategame. Most other infantry squads have some alternative ability that make the units usefull even when they are at low vet. Pgrens get nuke grenades, conscripts have snares etc. These abilites are good enough to justify the bleed you are going to get from them when they face vetted troops. Penals on the other hand have a short range nade with 3 second fuse which is cool for youtube clips but are easily completely dodged by anyone slightly awake. So there isn't really a reason to get them lategame as they are now.

Yes I agree with this.
My original post was only to make clear to Katitof why I disagree with his claim that pre-MR Conscripts and current Penals were in a similar situation and should therefore get the same treatment. And secondly that I also disagreed with his conclusion that Penals are imbalanced because they lack a weapon upgrade.
But since this topic seems to reach a little further:
As you also say, Penals do not lack in combat power, they lack utility/a feature apart from raw damage. Maybe just more efficient trading could do the trick. Once they don't bleed so hard, Soviets are able to better back tech to T2 which already solved a lot of their late game issues.

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The Raketenwerfer M-42 is having its target size increased to match other anti-tank guns. This should have no impact when the gun is crewed, but will make abandoned Raketenwerfers M-42 easier to destroy.

Gun target size from 10 16 to 20"


Raketenwerfer of 10 target size reflects well its size.

There's no reason for it. The Raketenwerfer is a viable anti-tank gun, it can punch a hole in a medium tank just as well as it's counterparts or better. The M-42 is an anti-light-vehicle gun and a small one at that. There is no reason it has to match the Raketenwerfer in target size unless you also intend for it to match the Raketenwerfer in performance.

DPS ranges 10/20/35

Penal squad vet 3
41.3/33.6/20.6

LMG Grenadier squad vet 3
23.9/27.1/23.7

ST44 VG sqaud vet 3
33.2/24.4/11.7


1bar vet3 Rifleman have 37,4/24/15 dmg at range 10/20/35.
2bar vet3 Rifleman have 41,4/28,3/18,21 dmg at range 10/20/35.
(number provided by Geblobt)

Note that Penal have superior DPS that double bar riflemen at ranges above 10.

As for people who claim that some others unit should also be included, I advice them to the provide the stat themselves instead of coming up with conspiracy theories.

Is this before or after the nerf to Penal DPS?

All decrewed weapons should be equally easily destroyed no matter how it scales.

All decrewed weapons should be equally easily destroyed no matter how it scales.

Yeah, how easily it can be destroyed after decrewing isnt a "Combat stat", there's little reason for its combat performance to dictate how easily it may be destroyed if the crew is killed.

Is this before or after the nerf to Penal DPS?

The DPS are from live.

I think what penals really need is to be made cheaper maybe drop thier cost from 300 to 280.

I think what penals really need is to be made cheaper maybe drop thier cost from 300 to 280.

I agree with this. Penals are just too expensive and build too slow to be viable in terms of map coverage and timing. They start too strong and come in too few numbers too slowly, and they scale terribly.

I too would like to see penals made cheaper and with a munitions upgrade. It helps smooth out the power spike of penals that's only acceptable because they cost 460mp to get one out AND delay your capping by needing the CE to build it.
Could then have mobilize reserves reduce the muni cost - the late game timing would help offset rebuying them if you lose one without making them too cheap early on and snowball.

I too would like to see penals made cheaper and with a munitions upgrade. It helps smooth out the power spike of penals that's only acceptable because they cost 460mp to get one out AND delay your capping by needing the CE to build it.
Could then have mobilize reserves reduce the muni cost - the late game timing would help offset rebuying them if you lose one without making them too cheap early on and snowball.

Penal rework idea

cost reduced from 300 to 280
squad size decreased from 6 to 5
New upgrade available "Commissar" (60 munitions requires mobilized reserves )

Penals gain:
squad size increased from 5 to 6 (commissar model armed with penal SVT)
squad gains +20% increased vet gain, +10% weapon cooldown, and -15% received damage

DPS ranges 10/20/35

Penal squad vet 3
41.3/33.6/20.6

LMG Grenadier squad vet 3
23.9/27.1/23.7

ST44 VG sqaud vet 3
33.2/24.4/11.7


1bar vet3 Rifleman have 37,4/24/15 dmg at range 10/20/35.
2bar vet3 Rifleman have 41,4/28,3/18,21 dmg at range 10/20/35.
(number provided by Geblobt)

Note that Penal have superior DPS that double bar riflemen at ranges above 10.

As for people who claim that some others unit should also be included, I advice them to the provide the stat themselves instead of coming up with conspiracy theories.

Taking your numbers Riflemen seems to be closest. So I tested Vet 3 Rifles with double Bar in green cover versus Vet3 Penals in green cover at mid range in vanilla version of the game (since this stats are taken out of vanilla).

3 of 4 times the Rifles won. Why is that so inspite of Penals having more damage output and beeing one man more + having the ability "To the last man"?

Easy, you just can't compare damge values only. Rifles for example have much higher received acc at Vet3. This means they drop their first soldier later. In addition a lot of the firepower of the Rifles is concentrated in the last two individuals of their squads with the Bars. So the damage of the penals drops faster by loosing men. This is the same versus any unit with an upgraded weapon. "To the last man" seems to not compensate fully for that.

Since Penals lack a lot of utility in comparison to other infantry squads (Rifles for example with nades and AT nades and some interesting doctrinal stuff), they should at least scale better into lategame.

Another interesting option would be to plant them at Vet0 and only lock the PTRS rifle upgrade behind T1. Make them a little bit cheaper and lock 6th man behind T1 too. That way you wouldn't loose map control totally if going for Penals instead of Conscripts early on.

Gawain thanks for explaining to vipper why a simple dps comparison doesn't show the whole picture.

Another way to look at your suggestion might be to make penals come out with 5 men, and then mobilise reserves gives them +2 men, making total of 7 for late game.

IMO no other tweaks would be needed then and it seems an elegant solution. Helps incentivise going for MR when it helps both penals and cons, plus with 5 man penals and ptrs changes they'll still be reasonable deterrent Vs light vehicles in early game.

The Pg "nuke grenade" argument holds little water.

If the grenade was enough the UKF officer would be used in every single game because it comes with a similar grenade and has added utility on top of that.

All unvetted infatry struggle in late game, Pg are no acceptation.

I didn't say Pgrens didn't struggle. I said they (pgrens) and others didn't struggle as hard as penals since other squads have other tools besides their raw dps to provide utility and/or damage. Penals do not.

Taking your numbers Riflemen seems to be closest. So I tested Vet 3 Rifles with double Bar in green cover versus Vet3 Penals in green cover at mid range in vanilla version of the game (since this stats are taken out of vanilla).

3 of 4 times the Rifles won. Why is that so inspite of Penals having more damage output and beeing one man more + having the ability "To the last man"?

Easy, you just can't compare damge values only. Rifles for example have much higher received acc at Vet3. This means they drop their first soldier later. In addition a lot of the firepower of the Rifles is concentrated in the last two individuals of their squads with the Bars. So the damage of the penals drops faster by loosing men. This is the same versus any unit with an upgraded weapon. "To the last man" seems to not compensate fully for that.

Since Penals lack a lot of utility in comparison to other infantry squads (Rifles for example with nades and AT nades and some interesting doctrinal stuff), they should at least scale better into lategame.

Another interesting option would be to plant them at Vet0 and only lock the PTRS rifle upgrade behind T1. Make them a little bit cheaper and lock 6th man behind T1 too. That way you wouldn't loose map control totally if going for Penals instead of Conscripts early on.

Thanks for taking the time to actually make a test and sharing the results, unlike some other people.

How many test did yo do and at what range?

But what make think that a 300 manpower unit should be able win vs a 280 manpower unit with 120 munition upgrade to begin with? Especially since USF faction was designed to carried by riflemen and the come also come with snare (and grenades as some would say).

As for weapon upgrade I have pointed out many time that Penal are badly designed and if they are an "alternative infatry" they should follow PF design and start weaker and have to upgrade with a weapon.

Finally people retreat before the squad dies from small arm fire.

I didn't say Pgrens didn't struggle. I said they (pgrens) and others didn't struggle as hard as penals since other squads have other tools besides their raw dps to provide utility and/or damage. Penals do not.

And it harder to lose a Penal squad with 6 entities and to the last ability than a 4 man squad like PG.

In order to get into grenade range or even mid range for ST44 Pg lose entities that more expensive the Penal models.

As I point the grenade is simply not enough to make a unit successful.

Gawain thanks for explaining to vipper why a simple dps comparison doesn't show the whole picture.

Only I did not paint any picture, I simply provided stat that imo people should have in mind before making suggestions.

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And it harder to lose a Penal squad with 6 entities and to the last ability than a 4 man squad like PG.

In order to get into grenade range or even mid range for ST44 Pg lose entities that more expensive the Penal models.

As I point the grenade is simply not enough to make a unit successful.

I think the point he is making is that being able to do more damage with fresh squads gets your units vetted up faster then tanking damage with fresh squads. Ai upgrades and nades such as bundle nades do more then having 6 instead of 4/5 men.