Penals, the Elephant in the room

I don’t really get Penals role currently. Before when they were meta they were a better scaling squad than cons that suffered a slow opening. But after the 7 man tech was added for cons this flipped. Now cons scaled better and Penals became the early game squad but they still suffered the very slow opening.

I don’t really get Penals role currently. Before when they were meta they were a better scaling squad than cons that suffered a slow opening. But after the 7 man tech was added for cons this flipped. Now cons scaled better and Penals became the early game squad but they still suffered the very slow opening.

They have no role. Their design is terrible. They are superfluous in Soviet infantry design. Space holder in T1 for Shock Troops and Guards in the original design. Penalties have always blocked another infantry unit throughout the game:
- engineers with a flamethrower
- Guard with PTRS
- and meaning the legendary overlap of the Conscripts, the constant tug of war who is the main infantry, the constant interruption of each other, the constant requirements of the buff because one infantry unit replaces the other.
The best option would be to simply remove the Penals and not try to pervert to come up with a role for them, for them there is no one anyway. The Penalties will block other infantry.

They have no role. Their design is terrible. They are superfluous in Soviet infantry design. Space holder in T1 for Shock Troops and Guards in the original design. Penalties have always blocked another infantry unit throughout the game:
- engineers with a flamethrower
- Guard with PTRS
- and meaning the legendary overlap of the Conscripts, the constant tug of war who is the main infantry, the constant interruption of each other, the constant requirements of the buff because one infantry unit replaces the other.
The best option would be to simply remove the Penals and not try to pervert to come up with a role for them, for them there is no one anyway. The Penalties will block other infantry.

Why dont pgrens or obers block grens and volks? Its because they have very different roles and until recently timing was far apart.

Penals only role is blowing up the occional bunker, provide early/soft at mostly without mg,s or atguns as support. Ow yeah and bleed you dry plus give a slow start.

It can work, but both being mid to close range doesnt help, both not having ai nades nor actual ai upgrade dont help as well. Both being minute 0 to 1 is not helping.

In the past they where the muscle where cons where glorified support and utility. Then they where nerfed and cons had to be buffed as a result.

Why dont pgrens or obers block grens and volks? Its because they have very different roles and until recently timing was far apart.

Penals only role is blowing up the occional bunker, provide early/soft at mostly without mg,s or atguns as support. Ow yeah and bleed you dry plus give a slow start.

It can work, but both being mid to close range doesnt help, both not having ai nades nor actual ai upgrade dont help as well. Both being minute 0 to 1 is not helping.

In the past they where the muscle where cons where glorified support and utility. Then they where nerfed and cons had to be buffed as a result.

Only they where not nerfed, there power creeped by conscripts and out caped by ostte.

Only they where not nerfed, there power creeped by conscripts and out caped by ostte.

Not recently, i meant from the 360mp version to the 270mp version, without flamethrower Cus those didnt pull their weight imo and cons where really lackluster back then so they got insane rec acc buffs wich was just a band aid.

Not recently, i meant from the 360mp version to the 270mp version, without flamethrower Cus those didnt pull their weight imo and cons where really lackluster back then so they got insane rec acc buffs wich was just a band aid.

Penal in 270 power level with ourah and flamer where fine, Maxim spam was simply easier to pull.
Their far DPS was overbuffed and instead of reverting some of change they tried to fix by other restriction (build time...) which did not worked very well since it does not work the same across factions. T1/Penal simply needs a redesign.

But the game at that point in was completely different and there is little point in comparison.

Point remains, Penal have not received nerf in years and conscription have received a number of buff. Penal opening went from being dominant meta to be less favored and that is power creep.

Penal in 270 power level with ourah and flamer where fine, Maxim spam was simply easier to pull.
Their far DPS was overbuffed and instead of reverting some of change they tried to fix by other restriction (build time...) which did not worked very well since it does not work the same across factions. T1/Penal simply needs a redesign.

But the game at that point in was completely different and there is little point in comparison.

Point remains, Penal have not received nerf in years and conscription have received a number of buff. Penal opening went from being dominant meta to be less favored and that is power creep.

Revert gren, volk, ober and PG buffs from last couple of years then.
This way power creep will be removed and penals will be viable again.

Revert gren, volk, ober and PG buffs from last couple of years then.
This way power creep will be removed and penals will be viable again.

Well I have been pointing out it for year, nice to see that you finally after all these year accepted it.

Funny thou that fail the see that reason why these unit had to be buffed was that Penal where OP and if one reverts back to 27 June Penal will still be OP.

I was being sarcastic.

And you are delusional if you think that'll happen.

Katitof is right though. Creating and balancing the mod is not an easy task. The mod team has already said several times that they will not do a full redesign of other units and factions just to change the power of one unit. It will only bring more problems to the game than anything else.

Requesting a change to every faction is not the right approach. That request is a bit far fetched from reality, a massive load of balance work, and it takes a lot of time. Relic did change the core gameplay and main unit line-up a few times already too when the game was at its most popular. It was massive task. And you expecting that from a volunteering missing team is ridiculous. It is a bit disilusional to cling on that idea. You have to accept that a full redesign of the game and factions to 'look at' Penals will not happen. Coh2 is pretty much at the end of its life cycle. The 64 bit Coh2 is probably some test by-product of in-house development. (source: game coder here, and we create loads of by products which often never see public eyes)

Vipper, you might think that it is easy to turn a few knobs to change the units and factions values and power, but alas there's more to an official mod. If you still hang on to your obsession to request the mod team to change other four factions to change one unit, it is normal that nobody can take you seriously and they they become sarcastic every time you ask for that.

Katitof is right though. Creating and balancing the mod is not an easy task. The mod team has already said several times that they will not do a full redesign of other units and factions just to change the power of one unit. It will only bring more problems to the game than anything else.

Requesting a change to every faction is not the right approach. That request is a bit far fetched from reality, a massive load of balance work, and it takes a lot of time. Relic did change the core gameplay and main unit line-up a few times already too when the game was at its most popular. It was massive task. And you expecting that from a volunteering missing team is ridiculous. It is a bit disilusional to cling on that idea. You have to accept that a full redesign of the game and factions to 'look at' Penals will not happen. Coh2 is pretty much at the end of its life cycle. The 64 bit Coh2 is probably some test by-product of in-house development. (source: game coder here, and we create loads of by products which often never see public eyes)

Vipper, you might think that it is easy to turn a few knobs to change the units and factions values and power, but alas there's more to an official mod. If you still hang on to your obsession to request the mod team to change other four factions to change one unit, it is normal that nobody can take you seriously and they they become sarcastic every time you ask for that.

This does not mean that this is correct, there was no place for Penals with the Soviet infantry system from the very beginning, this design is terrible. And the absolutely most logical move is to simply delete them. But most likely, Relic will not allow changing the game so much, which means we will continue to observe all sorts of ideas, so that at least how to change them, and most likely these attempts will be fruitless, because these are two staged infantry units in which you have to make choosing either T1 or T2, either will overlap the other unit. It is not consistent as in the Wehrmacht. If they cannot be removed, I tend to just leave them as they are, as reworking them will most likely simply be unsuccessful.

This does not mean that this is correct, there was no place for Penals with the Soviet infantry system from the very beginning

There was actually and it was painfully obvious place.

Elite infantry supplement to conscripts.

Back in the day you could not even get Guards or Shocks without T1 and picking a doctrine with them replaced Penals with them, which directly means that intention of penals was always to be elite infantry supplement.

Penals where designed to work with cons from the very beginning, or is merge only for ce's or zis and maxim? And sandbags repel penals or something?

Penals where designed to be the muscle in firepower, the aggresive unit/tier. Cons where designed as a utility unit for both t1 and t2, their dps wasent rng crazy without reason.

Still when penals where nerfed way back, the faction suffered. Cons where made mainline instead of being utility/supllement unit.

Penals where designed to work with cons from the very beginning, or is merge only for ce's or zis and maxim? And sandbags repel penals or something?

Penals where designed to be the muscle in firepower, the aggresive unit/tier. Cons where designed as a utility unit for both t1 and t2, their dps wasent rng crazy without reason.

Still when penals where nerfed way back, the faction suffered. Cons where made mainline instead of being utility/supllement unit.

If you are talking about their original designed on release they where the Pg counterparts. Stock "semi elite" infatry that arrived allot later with different tech tree, so they where not "mainline infatry".
(pre release Penal where Shock/guards troops equivalent and they 3 types of commanders (armies) Shock/Guard/NKV if I remember correctly)

But the game at the time was completely different game. Pre June patch is simply history and has little relevance to current game.

If you are talking about their original designed on release they where the Pg counterparts. Stock "semi elite" infatry that arrived allot later with different tech tree, so they where not "mainline infatry".
(pre release Penal where Shock/guards troops equivalent and they 3 types of commanders (armies) Shock/Guard/NKV if I remember correctly)

But the game at the time was completely different game. Pre June patch is simply history and has little relevance to current game.

I was replying to penals dont fit or have a role in soviet faction since day one. Wich crearly isent the case.

Redisigning them is not likely to happen. But giving them if possible fussie style upgrade would be ideal. Weaker start with price drop, expensive ai or at upgrade.

I was replying to penals dont fit or have a role in soviet faction since day one. Wich crearly isent the case.

depend what counts as day one but you are correct they did fit a role in soviet faction and it was not mainline infantry.

Redisigning them is not likely to happen. But giving them if possible fussie style upgrade would be ideal. Weaker start with price drop, expensive ai or at upgrade.

That would be an improvement in their design but it would probably not be enough to make T1 popular and that is part of the problem. T1 is badly designed and Penal simply can not work a solution to design issues of T1.

For penals to be meta they have to be horrendously op or Cons have to be so awful that they make up for the insane amounts of utility you lose by going T1.

Frankly Im not sure you can fix that unless the tech gets reworked.