The underused abilities

very nice post! I agree with most of the things you mentioned however I feel like there needs to be a well defined line between UNDERUSED and UNDER-PERFORMING.

Stug III E is a piece of s***t, thus you rarely see it on the field, so its underperforming, not necessarily underused.

Camouflage is actually an amazing ability. It takes time to practice and learn how to cover the MG42 (it's not that easy, not even behind big covers) but it pays off when you succeed - the MG42 does smth like 2x damage and supresses almost instantly, plus it has the hold fire ability, which can help hide and observe while you prepare a countermove. Thus, I'd say it is an UNDERUSED ability, rather than underperforming, and it's unused mainly because it comes only with 2 relatively unpopular commanders with no heavy tanks call-ins.

Similarly, you could say that mortar smoke barages are relatively unused in low-skill, medium-skill pubs for some reason whatsoever, but nobody will claim it is an underperforming ability.

Re For Mother Russia, it is a quite useful ability - shocks moving at max speed and firing even stronger is a nightmare - albeit the resting part that follows is very distrupting to your map control.

Everything else - I totally agree with you.

Had a match where i took out 4 tanks, thx to riegel mines. They are laid faster than teller mines, cost the same, deal the same damage(?) and take out the tracks, so they are actually pretty cool.

Less damage, but guaranteed immbolization

Let´s see:

-Armored vehicle detection
-Relief Infantry
-Rapid Conscription
-Riegel
-Healing german vet 1 ability

I use Armoured vehicle detection-

Relief Infantry and Rapid Conscription are too gamble-y for me. There's a chance you'll blow 120 - 160 Mun with nothing to show for it. And during the active duration, you're encouraged to take casualties, in a game based all around unit preservation. RC also gives significantly better units dispite being only 40 Mun more. For those reasons, both need to be reworked imo.

I'd consider using the Riegel more if you could build it with something other than the Half-Track, but I'm not keep on driving my Half-Tracks into Tank territory to shit out a mine. But I honestly hate Ostheer AT mines in general. Yes, more damage, but I pay twice the price and they don't stop Infantry.

The Healing Ability is underperforming imo, if I'm paying to heal one squad, I at least expect it to bring them to full health. It doesn't...

Relief Infantry and Rapid Conscription are too gamble-y for me. There's a chance you'll blow 120 - 160 Mun with nothing to show for it. And during the active duration, you're encouraged to take casualties, in a game based all around unit preservation. RC also gives significantly better units dispite being only 40 Mun more. For those reasons, both need to be reworked imo.

Relief infantry gives you max 3 ostruppen squads for 120 ammo. RC gives you max 2 conscripts for 160 ammo. I'd say both abilities are fine.

Similarly, you could say that mortar smoke barages are relatively unused in low-skill, medium-skill pubs for some reason whatsoever, but nobody will claim it is an underperforming ability.

I actually do think smoke barrage under performs but I am also a low skill scrub. It would be nice if the ROF was a bit faster than normal barrage since the smoke shells will rarely bunch up enough to even obstruct vision before they start dissipating. Maybe I am spoiled by the fantastic smoke that the Artillery Officer can use.

Riegel mines are interesting in principle, because they expand the Ost mine repertoire, but in practice are not much different from tellers. Tellers don't immobilize but often get heavy engine damage, cost the same, and can be built by pios. HT are too vulnerable and must be built to even access the Riegel. Riegel mines feel like Relic was going to make Ost have a 30 munition all purpose mine and then changed their mind at the last second, leaving two mines that overlap highly in specificity.

Med packs on Ost infantry are generally useless.

Sniper stun round still broken.

Sprint on mgs? What? Useful in very limited cases. Certainly not as useful as inc rounds.

Counter barrage makes no sense.

Relief inf does need a rework. Why would I want low health, low armor infantry when my higher armor, higher health infantry are being beaten off the field? It comes too late, it is too expensive, and does not fit the game well. If it were a passive ability that functioned more like the med station in vCOH it would make more sense (Note I am not saying make it passive, only pointing to its counterpart in vCOH). Right now I just cannot afford 120 munitions late in the game to may be get a couple of Osttruppen.

Relief inf does need a rework. Why would I want low health, low armor infantry when my higher armor, higher health infantry are being beaten off the field? It comes too late, it is too expensive, and does not fit the game well. If it were a passive ability that functioned more like the med station in vCOH it would make more sense (Note I am not saying make it passive, only pointing to its counterpart in vCOH). Right now I just cannot afford 120 munitions late in the game to may be get a couple of Osttruppen.

Because you can use those low health, low armor, low upkeep, cheep ostruppen to capture points on the flanks. This makes all your high armor, high health, high upkeep infantry available for actual combat duties, giving you the edge over your opponant who needs to relegate more expensive troops away from the front line to capture points.

The med kits ability on vet 1 German infantry. Too expensive, too cumbersome.

Ability's not used, however RNG's...

Magic Alien Tactics...

Put in the front of the tank's and stop the rear engine, Relic see it please!!!

Relief infantry gives you max 3 ostruppen squads for 120 ammo. RC gives you max 2 conscripts for 160 ammo. I'd say both abilities are fine.

I don't know, they just seem way too niche, you need the planets to align to get your money's worth from them. Since most of the trees including them are moderately munitions heavy, and Germans are munitions heavy without any doctrines, I just don't use them as much as I'd like to. And for 120 Mun, it's anything but a relief.

Ability's not used, however RNG's...

Magic Alien Tactics...

Put in the front of the tank's and stop the rear engine, Relic see it please!!!

Its called game balance, something that seems to be beyond your comprehension.

Because you can use those low health, low armor, low upkeep, cheep ostruppen to capture points on the flanks. This makes all your high armor, high health, high upkeep infantry available for actual combat duties, giving you the edge over your opponant who needs to relegate more expensive troops away from the front line to capture points.

Don't ostruppen receive a penalty while trying to capture points, that is they do it at half speed? On top of that a single vehicle of any type can force off a horde of ostruppen, without requiring the Soviet player to give up much capping power. If my opponent were to go for relief infantry I would just get a t70 and use it to stop them from moving to cutoffs. Stack that on top of the fact that the other player will have highly vetted infantry by the time the first Ostruppen arrive and its curtains.

Theoretically useful, practically not. There is a reason I have only seen this ability triggered once, and only when the player had already won the game.

On top of that a single vehicle of any type can force off a horde of ostruppen, without requiring the Soviet player to give up much capping power. If my opponent were to go for relief infantry I would just get a t70 and use it to stop them from moving to cutoffs.

You do realize osttruppen have the exact same faust as grenadiers? To be honest the only axis infantry more dangerous to soviet vehicles than osttruppen is PGrens with shreks, as the extra 2 men make it harder to wipe them and the super cheap reinforce lets the german player play riskier with them to get fausts off.

Forward HQ - the price is too high imo. Increase the CP cost but lower the price

You do realize osttruppen have the exact same faust as grenadiers? To be honest the only axis infantry more dangerous to soviet vehicles than osttruppen is PGrens with shreks, as the extra 2 men make it harder to wipe them and the super cheap reinforce lets the german player play riskier with them to get fausts off.

Fausts also have a short range. Not really sure how soft infantry target walking toward a tank to maybe get a crit is going to scare off my tanks. I just back up slightly and then kill more of their men. Meanwhile they walk deeper into my territory where I can crush them with infantry.

They can play risky all they want, sending them out to cap points alone, as you described is no threat to me. And once you have to send more units to support them (sounds like you want at HT at least) then you are not sending cheap units to fight expensive units. You are diverting forces, because if you send HT then you actually need some sort of AT other than fausts. They don't have a place as implemented. That is why Ostruppen got moved to their own commander, to try to get people to use them.

Also I really have no idea, do Ostruppen from relief infantry cap at half rate? Because if they do I see no point in ever using them.

Also I really have no idea, do Ostruppen from relief infantry cap at half rate? Because if they do I see no point in ever using them.

90% sure they do. I've never seen Osttruppen from Relief Infantry (even though I used it 3 times, hence my opinion that it is a worthless waste), but in Worldbuilder there are only 2 Squads for Osttruppen: "ostruppen_squad" and "ostruppen_squad_mp"*. The first squad is the SP variant, and the second is the MP variant, they're kept separate so balance changes don't break SP. If there were another variant, they'd be in the 'ostruppen' folder, but there isn't anything there.

* I did not misspell these, they're spelt that way in worldbuilder, so that's on Relic!