This is what used to kill me about playing USF. They are a snowball faction but the snowball is intentionally stalled by Officer timing. The build time is 55 seconds for your 4th mainline which is insane when compared to every other faction. Soviets don't even need to tech molotovs because they can just swarm OST, USF on the other hand cannot unless the MG was caught out of position. It wouldn't be so bad if if Rear echelon were actually useful in combat or the Elite units came in at CP2. As it stands it gives OST a chance to dig in which is where USF bleed starts to set in and get worse as the game goes on.
While on the topic of Officer tech, I still don't understand why everything takes so long to build. Several patches ago the LT build was dropped from 70 to 55s, but the MG had 10s added to the build time. The M20 takes almost a minute to build so at best it is out around 4m~30s. That gives it almost no time to pay itself off compared to the soviet flame car which can actually wipe units starting at the 3 min mark.
I remember in 3v3s when I used to play with the mortar to smoke the MGs. Was kept in the 200-300 ranks. Then I decided, if the map is sh*t; like Rheine beach VP area, and you're spawned northeast, meaning that one MG42 can have a perfect green cover position and cover both the VP, and the fuel perfectly, and still have enough arc to cover the bushes next to the water. I'd smoke it, but the MG would reposition and I wouldn't really have enough infantry to dislodge the pioneers in green cover and 2-3 grens, which would win cover to cover fights on that map against rifles, and I'd keep bleeding hard. Can't storm pios in green cover with rifles as the pios will take out at least 3 models before retreating, and you can't just stay behind cover, fighting grens, because grens will win. You have a mortar which is negating the repositioning MG, but it's not doing damage nor barraging the grens, because it needs to keep smoking the mortar, and you're down in infantry, on a stupidly designed map where you have a much longer run to the fuel/VP (the other side, the "town" side, is much superior for the southeastern spawn, meaning it's much easier to contest the top fuel). You'll be bleeding, rifles won't fit well behind the small green cover which can fit 4 model grens perfectly, and you'll keep retreating.
Then I just decided to say f*ck it. USF fairs poorly on most 3v3 maps and you need to adjust. So I would not even contest the fuel/VP for the first 7 minutes, and I'd just help the closest teammate.
Before the major pak howi nerf, the pak howis were the mid game snowball for me, allowing me to dislodge mortars and mgs easily. Now, I use them mostly for barraging forward positions, as the AOE is nothing to write home about (gave the 6th man for the nerf (double nerf disguised as buff), which just means more bleed as the pak howi is 1.25 TargetSize and slow AF).
Now I've been playing in the 5-30 ranks for the past year or so. Just because I accepted the fact that unless you go for pathfinders (which I don't like to play all that much due to lack of snares), you just won't dislodge OST from most 3v3 maps if you're spawned poorly and against OKW you need luck and aggression.
Of course, balance team knew all of this. It's not a conspiracy or anything but you have a balance team where the most prominent members mostly play axis, The most active community balancer (sturmpanther) is German and the game is balanced around 1v1s... Add to that the fact (Sander confirmed) the balance team has not been payed for the work in any way-shape-or-form... you get why there is inherent bias in the decisions. I can completely understand that. Each person on the planet is biased towards something.
You can have 3000 OST games, 3000 OKW games, 2000 USF games, 2000 UKF games (God forbid), 2000 Soviet games, you'll still have a favourite faction/unit/ability/commander. You won't say "AXIS OP; ALLIES UP" or the other way around, but in the end, you will be happier than most if your favourite faction/unit receives buffs/changes.