Kurobane wasn't talking about CoH2. They were using a CoH2 mortar as an example to illustrate armor types in CoH1.
Thank you for Clarifying my earlier post, you are correct with my intended example usage.
To be completely honest, I don't agree that having infantry armor types are necessarily the complicated system.
For example, to me reading through the history of these forums, it seems like a lot of weapons/vehicles/teamweapons were garbage at what they did or completely oppressive.
I think that infantry armor type did lend itself better to "Rock Paper Scissors" type gameplay where it's less effective to cheese and spam units.
Like in Kurobane's example where mortars did more damage to teamweapons instead of infantry squads. Imagine how much time could have been cut from balancing the game if instead of having to balance a unit around its damage being equal against every single other unit in the game, the damage could have been fine tuned against units.
If, for example, the 120mm mortar when it was an insane wipe machine, had its damage reduced against infantry but kept high damage against garrisoned and teamweapons out in the open, how much of an issue would it have been?
You cannot spam it as easily because it's not as effective against enemy infantry any more.
I can see the merits of infantry armor type.
Like I said, I can see the merits of infantry armor. It's just that it needs to be communicated to the player somehow.
The point of the COH 1 system was to allow subtle intricate balance tweaks that is otherwise not possible/available in the COH 2 system. Lets take British Infantry Sections for example. They have been struggling since release to get them into a good spot. Unlike other factions besides Commandos, UKF have to rely on Infantry Sections to go against literally every other infantry in the game from Pioneers to Fallschirmjäger. (Forgive the spelling on that unit if its incorrect)
There is almost an impossible task to get one Unit to be decently matched against everything. They are either too strong or too weak against certain matchups. With the COH 1 system they could go in and say
"Infantry Sections are fine vs Grenadiers but struggle with OKW, lets give them a 5% buff to Volksgrenadiers without affecting any other matchup"
This is why we have nonsense like infantry being able to walk head first directly into the cone of an MG and killing it with LMG Infantry Spam without needing to flank or use smoke. MG Covering a fuel? Why make a mortar when I can just spam 1 thing and attack it head on, no strategy needed and who needs support weapons when the solution is spam more things because the COH 2 uses a generic system where everything is good vs everything as opposed to having a Rock, Paper, Scissors approach that COH 1 had that forced you to use combined arms and diversify your army. This is exactly why in the case of Infantry Sections they were nerfed into the ground (and Rifleman on WFA launch) since they had no viable team weapons and the answer wasn't to get a support weapon but to spam more.
Current State of COH 2 due to generic damage profiles.
Would love to see COH 3 return to the COH 1 system but tweaked to be easier to understand. They had Infantry, Soldier, Heroic and other stuff which I can't remember at the moment since its been so long and it doesn't make sense.
They should do a system like Conscript -> Infantry -> Support Weapon and Elite.
Ostruppen and Combat Engineers and the like would be Conscript
All Main Line Infantry would fall under Infantry
Support Weapons would have their own type
Elite for call in infantry like say Paratroopers, Shock Troops and so on.
Granted this is just an example but its a clearer system than Soldier/Elite/Infantry/Heroic which you look at and think WTF right off the bat.