Diversifing the DPS roles of Penals and Cons

I thought this thread involved making Penals flexible in attempt to fill the gaps that every other faction has filled.

Milkacow made an extremely good post earlier in the thread about why Penals aren't meant to be flexible (at least in terms of AT roles).

And conscripts dont scale at all. Ill keep my maxim spam with a helping ZiS than changing red to magenta.

They scale well in ways you might not think they would do. Hmm. That sounds cryptic. Let me clarify:
-Conscripts are a bigger squad with a greater HP pool and more men than a standard axis squad. This makes them much harder to kill in the late game with Tanks where AOE damage is king when it comes to countering infantry.
-They have AT nades; although this isn't special among main-line infantry classes, it gives them a distinct advantage in the late game over Penals and Shocktroopers.

Fuck Soviet faction, right? ...

There needs to be incentive to play the Soviet faction, dealing with incapabilities isnt very fun...

I absolutely love the Soviets. Probably one of the favourite 1v1 factions to play and also fairly fun in 2v2s.

I've never understood why people think they're so weak. They have amazing doctrinal tanks and squads and although their non-doctrinal units are pretty bad in comparison to the other faction's non-doctrinal units (Which limits the doctrines you can use in an equal skill engagement), I feel like doctrinal support more than makes up for it.

I dont like doing the same thing over and over again in order to win... when i have units available to me that are too terrible to use at any point and are tiered badly...

Its still dealing with weapons Soviets dont have, yet every other faction has them.

Anyways, this is a thread IMPROVING Penals and cons in some way where they are VERY different, not two sides of the same coin. Cons OR Penals. T3 OR T4. :/

Never simply "get by" and settle for less...

Making penals cheaper and keeping their stats will make then very alike to conscripts. Precisely the thing no one wants.

Conscripts and penals are early-game infantry, so they can't be buffed because that would cause a great imbalance afterwards.

The solution should be playing with their roles, making one a CQC unit (conscripts) and the other a support mid-long range unit (penals). The issue there is that in that case penal's background goes to the trash, as they should be a powerful suicide unit being always in the frontline.

Inverting roles (cons = mid range, penals = short range) would destroy grens/conscripts balance.

The worst solution is keeping both units effective only at short range, as they are now.

I personally prefer having penals like they were before. A mid range unit, but with flamethrowers for CQC and satchels to go rambo against enemy emplacements to keep their suicide-mission-squad flavour. Also, they should have their price increased at 300 mp or such, to avoid them to replace conscripts as regular infantry.

Cons will keep being shit, but having penals doing damage from afar will balance the early infantry engagements.

Making penals cheaper and keeping their stats will make then very alike to conscripts. Precisely the thing no one wants.

Conscripts and penals are early-game infantry, so they can't be buffed because that would cause a great imbalance afterwards.

The solution should be playing with their roles, making one a CQC unit (conscripts) and the other a support mid-long range unit (penals). The issue there is that in that case penal's background goes to the trash, as they should be a powerful suicide unit being always in the frontline.

Inverting roles (cons = mid range, penals = short range) would destroy grens/conscripts balance.

The worst solution is keeping both units effective only at short range, as they are now.

I personally prefer having penals like they were before. A mid range unit, but with flamethrowers for CQC and satchels to go rambo against enemy emplacements to keep their suicide-missions flavour. They should have their price increased at 300 mp or such.

Cons will keep being shit, but having penals doing damage from afar will balance the early infantry engagements.

But penals should not be suicide units, penal battalions were not suicide battalions IRL, they were simple soldiers that were given the hardests tasks. (Relic as usual went with the stupid stereotypical cliches, instead of historical research). The maximum duration for staying in a penal battalion was 3 months, and if you survived, you were given all your ranks back, and possibly even new awards.


Penal troops were armed with normal weapons, mosins, ppsh, DP-28s and stuff alike. Altho i believe they had a higher allocation of flamethrowers (Not sure about this one). (And as usual relic went with the usual stereotypical cliche that conscripts had no weapons)


In my eyes, conscripts should be long range, and penals should be mid-short range.


tl;dr - Relic likes to stereotype and cliche things

I would like penal squad to be a short-midrange "suicide unit". By suicide unit, I don't mean they literally just threw themselves into machine guns; IIRC, penal squads were given very dangerous tasks such as storming emplacements or leading attacks. That is what people mean by "suicide" squads. These missions were very dangerous and it probably meant high chances of casualties.

Not sure how it would work balance wise, but penals should kinda be an assault unit armed with basic weaponry, flamethrowers, and satchel units. This would have great synergy with conscripts, who should be mid-range or long-range units. Penals could be early game shock troops.

Conscripts scale wonderfully into the late game. Panthers can drive happily about untouched against any number of shock troopers, can absorb a ridiculous amount of Guards PTRS fire, and only the most absent minded will allow penal satchels to hurt them. Except for guards usually, more with threat of button than outright damage, you can just parade all over their faces.

Conscripts however, mean at nades. Instant engine damage if you get anywhere close. Nothing is more critically damaging to the axis than damaged engines which ATnades are 100% guaranteed to score.

Vet 0 or vet 3, doesn't matter, conscripts with AT nades are probably the most reliable infantry threat to Axis armor. To act like they don't scale well is ridiculous.

Also, molotovs pretty much ensure a cleared weapon crew, mortar, MG, or Pak unless it is packing up to reposition during the windup animation. Sure conscripts shoot their bullets poorly, but if you're relying on bullets to win games you're not playing CoH2 right.

Now, I have always loved Penal battalions, and have been sad that they've been rendered worthless. Even when they were the price of a sniper, I used them extensively on the virtue of the merge ability. They share(d?) the same armor as conscripts, making merge completely worthwhile. I used to save a ton of manpower while simultaneously having a fully reinforced squad on the front at all times by utilizing conscript merge with penals. However, merge has been an extremely micro intensive and clunky feature from the beginning, and the 10mp per entity saved with merge instead of base reinforcing rarely, if ever paid off.

That said, good use of satchel charges can eliminate mg bunkers and garrisons like crazy, which can completely alter the course of a game. I would often just satchel empty houses that I knew would be typical garrison points just to deny the enemy the strat. It's a great ability at the disposal of the Soviets.

But, because Penals lacked AT nades and molotovs, (and flamethrowers were their antithesis of being competent at long range) they always needed conscript support after minute ten. Even so, with their long range competency, the second a grenadier with an lmg42 hit, penals became worthless, as their ability to fight at range was completely overpowered.

A lot of the weakness of penals (and conscripts) has to do with grenadiers more than soviet infantry. The most effective way to kill grenadiers (with lmg42s) is at close range. The closer the better. Even though lmg42s are devastating at close range, when you're on top of the grens, the lmg42 rarely if ever can get any shots off because the AI can't aim and shoot without moving the lmg42s (which has to be stationary.)

This makes duking it out at range with grens a perpetual failure, and even with the slowest and weakest rifles being smack dab on top of the grens is the best manner of fighting them. (Hugging the enemy, as it was termed. But that was to deter/complicate CAS and indirect fire.) Any kind of fire fight that isn't shock trooper style overrunning of mg positions is just not worth it.

This makes total sense for tackling MG42 positions, but for grenadiers and their main upgrade lmg, there's really only one feasible way to fight axis infantry as soviets: runnin' and gunnin'.

Cons and penals allready have quite a different weapon profile

Penals perform best in close quarters and cons are pretty decent at medium and ok on long range. Penals however, they do not perform very well on medium nor long range without vet, but what i can tell penals are fucking amazing with vet they scale insanly well check out the replay. They are some decent support units. Overwhelm your oponent and go close. http://www.coh2.org/replay/23101/top-30-okw-vs-soviet-1v1



Penals are ambush units similar to assgrens in their performance, but with better performance late. They do not rampage early. Try to get as close as possible without eating dmg and they can compete with sturmpios and with vet and a flamethrower they are sick.

I wouldn't call Cons good at long range and penals bad when there is a 0.5 DPS difference between them.

Both of them are utter garbage at long range. Cons squad, squad equipped with bolt action rifles, rifles supposed to be good at long range shooting are being out damaged by StG44, assault rifles.

keep in mind that they are more expensive less versatile and a tech choice I think they are not good long range units.