MG42's compared to the Maxim have a wide arc which in itself prevents flanking. What you are purposing would reduce the effectiveness of a good flank, which is hard to achieve with a wide arc.
I wish people cleared MG42s with clean flanking, most people just rush straight at it knowing that the unit can't actually deal with two units in the cone even with full vision.
While MG42s setting up slightly faster does raise the ceiling for a "succesful" flank, I don't think that ceiling is anywhere near high enough right now as it is. Before vet2 I'd pretty much always be better off with a much more well rounded grenadier that is not at risk of getting cleared by a barrage and getting capped by the soviets, it's only those veterancy bonuses that finally give the MG42 some actually scary control capability.
The terminator squads were over performing. Relic stated they used science/stats behind this call and frankly I agree. Less armor encourages the player to seek cover and discourages blobbing.
Where were these terminator squads? I can tell you right now that in the 25th patch I was jumping from joy whenever I saw a PG squad instead of more grens, because it meant I had a juicy manpower target that was actually vulnerable to a single conscript squad, unlike upgunned grens. And they had 1.2 armor then with weaker conscripts...
As for less armor reducing blobbing, it has mostly had the opposite effect on me. I never have my PGs alone now, the more units surrounding them and taking fire away from them the better.
Um, shouldn't be be over showered by the 222? Without Guards the Flamer halftrack is a poor man's KV8 and very difficult to counter.
People made halftracks primarily for the combat performance, not the reinforcement. Now with the 222 being absolutely better at combat as well as cheaper, there's no reason to have the 251 except the reinforcement. And you're competing with the cheaper command bunker for that. The current price point is also exactly the same as the much much more powerful Soviet M5.
Mines and atnades and atguns still work on halftracks last I checked, and to be honest it's not like the flamer upgrade shows up on the field more than 1-2 minutes before a T3/T4 vehicles so I don't really buy the "hard to counter" argument with the current battle phase 2 requirement on it.
ISU's lack a turret. Flanking and baiting with armor is a proper counter. Anything infantry based is going to have a bad time. I believe a reduction to anti-infantry damage is all that is required.
How do you bait a 100 range unit? For that matter with what and how exactly do you flank a 100 range unit sitting in the middle of the map with several ATguns behind it? There's no incentive to chase after anything with the isu152, you can just sit in the safest little bunker you can think of and bleed your opponent to death.
Completely neutering it's ability to kill infantry to the level of the Elefant might remove balance issues in 1vs1 (by stopping anyone from building one again because they'd be useless), but it would still leave it as the "go to" unit in team games that every single remotely organized team is bound to use every single game because it offers such a huge advantage over anything else with the range advantage.
Heat seeking artillery is just silly.
So is 200 munition artillery that never hits. I've seen this ability used a handful of times and gotten hit maybe once when I've failed to notice the sector color in the minimap. The only thing this ability does to anyone who notices that it has been triggered, is force them to move their units in that sector. For 200 munitions and 11cps I'd expect a bit more.
Btw. mortars "heat seek" as you put it, they predict movement.