USF Officers Redesign

Looking at the USF and OKW armies it's easy to tell they were balanced with each other in mind. OKW can put helpful support buildings where they want, but it can easily be punished by the USF's punishing artillery and base rape options.

Conversely speaking, OKW has the Walking Stuka, that support gun thing, and the IR half track- Jaegers and Falksjimjager can spawn in buildings. All these things are especially well suited to taking down targets of high value, like officers. It seems to me that at one point USF officers had a purpose beyond capping and eating Manpower, and then Relic decided "nah."

Now, it's clear that the USF faction is the worst ingame, largely in part due to an overpriced economy that bleeds mad MP, and also due to Rifles scaling horribly into the late game. I think that a good way of improving the USF is giving officers a deeper, more tactical role that emphasizes Relics philosophy of Risk vs Reward.

So, here goes.

LIEUTENANT

4 man squad

350 MP

Abilities:

Vet 0- thrown smoke grenade

Vet 1- Rapid fire, basically improves fire rate by 25% of all infantry around him for 30 munitions.

Vet 2-rapid fire is buffed, also Lieutenant can sprint now.

Vet 3- sticky bomb with poor range is unlocked for 60 munitions. This to me sums up risk vs reward perfectly; risk your vet 3 officer who boosts the DPS on your Rifles to destroy an unit vehicle or building. If it's a suicide mission, your Rifles will have a harder time and you just lost a big damage increaser. If he survives, congrats.

Basically, I see the Lieutenant as a way of increasing the viability of Riflemen in the mid to late game while also increasing depth. If this goes through a Flak Track price nerf may be in order.

CAPTAIN

4 men

320 men

Abilities:

Vet 0- focus production is fine.

Vet 1- remove "on me." Add " supply focus". Basically, this ability would render the Captain inert; think of HTD, or Defensive Stance. What the ability would do is decrease the munitions cost of abilities, of units, around the Captain. This would really improve the USF Munis situation while also adding risk: the enemy could kill an unprotected Captain, and bam. There goes your discount.

Vet 2- now give the Captain a "scout" ability that encourages him to be on the frontline. Let him see the enemy through walls and such, but keep the range short.

Vet 3- maybe a buff to all the Captains abilities.

What I'm trying to do with Cap here is make him extremely good at saving the USF resources, albeit with a high risk of death if not protected. Losing the Captain in the Mid game would mean you couldn't churn out tanks later; in the late game, you would have to decide on keeping him home and focusing production, or devoting him to frontline duty and saving you munitions- albeit with high risk of death.

One more thing: remove the Bazooka and BAR from the officers.

This was quite ambitious for a first post, so thanks for reading. Discuss, plox.

The only Unit that needs to be look into is the MAJOR. He has some of the less cost effective abilities in the game and most players just use him as forward rally point and reinforcement point.

55 MUN for a single pass recon plane.
120 MUN for an offmap arty (6x 75mm arty shells)

Those 2 abilities need a massive cost reduction something like 30MUN for recon plane, and 75 MUN for the offmap arty.

Also Forward rally point needs a defensive aura to infantry in the sector. gain -15% receive accuracy

Sometimes the Recon Plane doesn't even go where you click. Pointless.

I really don't get why Ostheer need to pay tech for nothing, and require a Pio to build the buildings, but USF unlock tech by giving a elite squad.

I actually think officers should be used in a secondary rear-lines role with according benefits, not a sort of lead-the-charge better super infantry which they seem to be as is. The reason why I say this is because they are right now just free versions of riflemen with rack weapons, and to which it is easy to just use them as such: much faster than retreating riflemen back to base for picking up bazookas and such, weapons that themselves aren't even great either, so the whole affair is even less worth the work.

This seems to be already the case in vision for the Captain: the squad has one vet0 ability that is used to boost production time. However seeing that they also happen to come with TWO bazookas, plus another combat ability that removes infantry suppression when activated, contradicts the supposed role the CPT squad was designed for: why stick this squad back at base to give a SLIGHT boost in production speed when he could be at the front gaining veterancy and shooting up vehicles?
The Lieutenant seems to just be a riflemen squad that comes with BAR, and nothing more. Naturally it makes sense to use him just for that. His veterancy all affect his survivability, and neither base traits nor veterancy assists the rest of your army, he is literally just another rifleman squad that you HAVE to make in order to advance the tech tree. I think there could be more to this unit to set him apart from Riflemen.

So with all that in mind, here's what I think would make officer squads more useful in an indirect support role:

Lieutenant: Offense-based support, still relevant to direct combat, but like other officer squads are most effective in a support role, so grenades are kept.

vet0: boost nearby infantry's attack

vet1: unlocks Flare ability and/or other benefits such as OP's Rapid Fire

vet2: Unlocks sprint/ heal when out of combat.

vet3: offense bonuses now include vehicles

The idea of retaining grenades is that, in a pinch, the LT can still utilize some direct combat support while other infantry are doing the shooting. In all other cases though, the ideal use of the LT is that he's behind the rest of the men to maximize odds of survival while still providing benefits to other units. Vet3's sprint means he is more able to keep up with vehicles once they start coming into the game, so this isn't just an infantry bonus.

Captain: Defense-based support. Production is retained, Rally ability adjusted that simply removes suppression rather than causing the infantry to cluster around the CPT squad.

vet0: boost infantry's defense/ line of sight/ resilience to suppression

vet1: the bonuses now affect the whole sector; you no longer need units within immediate proximity

vet2: unlocks sprint, can heal out of combat.

vet3: boost now affects friendly vehicles, the CPT's sprinting and healing effect now applies to friendly infantry in aura.

Here the CPT is primarily a unit that benefits troops at a more indirect level and in a defensive posture, yet can still be used offensively: the base bonus of increased defense or longer time to suppress allows infantry to advance with more confidence in the face of machine guns, the bonuses for sprint and healing would be very useful for units on the move when out of combat but still applies when the group is advancing on the enemy, and that it also affects vehicles at vet3 means at late-game, when you expect the CPT to have reached it, allied vehicles could gain the bonuses as they are attacking alongside the CPT, whether in the same sector or next to him.


Major: of all the officer squads fit the defensive support role most effectively: acts as retreat point and can call in a few abilities. It is really the abilities themselves that needs to be looked at. The Recon plane cannot be deployed in a direction you want, so you will have no idea where it flies from and therefore what can be seen. Other than that it works just right.

Anyways all of that is just several minutes of brain-storming on the concept of officer squads being supporting units that are still relevant in combat and in late-game. The idea itself could also amended to suit doctrinal roles, so rather than innate abilities, these could instead be features found in doctrinal abilities.

And example of an amended version of the above idea is that officer squads' benefits can only affect infantry, but this changes to vehicles once they occupy a vehicle. This effectively allows the squad to turn ANY vehicle into a commander variant, from Shermans to even Ambulances. That the former can fight and the latter is slow means there are vehicle-specific advantages and disadvantages and the cost is that the officer no longer affects infantry.

I like this posts because they are science fiction.

You never know

Really though the guy above Leopriest gets it.

LIEUTENANT
Vet 0- thrown smoke grenade
Vet 1- Rapid fire, basically improves fire rate by 25% of all infantry around him for 30 munitions.
Vet 2-rapid fire is buffed, also Lieutenant can sprint now.
Vet 3- sticky bomb with poor range is unlocked for 60 munitions. This to me sums up risk vs reward perfectly; risk your vet 3 officer who boosts the DPS on your Rifles to destroy an unit vehicle or building. If it's a suicide mission, your Rifles will have a harder time and you just lost a big damage increaser. If he survives, congrats.

I like the idea but I do not think it should be the LT that has this, but rather a different unit such as a new Ranger or Sergeant squad call-in. The good thing is that this makes the benefits doctrinal and creates a set of choices for the player: Rangers/Sergeants or whatever can give these benefits, but only if you choose their commander and deploy them.

CAPTAIN

Vet 0- focus production is fine.
Vet 1- remove "on me." Add " supply focus". Basically, this ability would render the Captain inert; think of HTD, or Defensive Stance. What the ability would do is decrease the munitions cost of abilities, of units, around the Captain. This would really improve the USF Munis situation while also adding risk: the enemy could kill an unprotected Captain, and bam. There goes your discount.
Vet 2- now give the Captain a "scout" ability that encourages him to be on the frontline. Let him see the enemy through walls and such, but keep the range short.
Vet 3- maybe a buff to all the Captains abilities.

Again I like the idea and concept but don't think i should be the CPT that does this. Perhaps a way to do this is in a doctrinal unit for a supply-themed commander, call him a Supply Colonel or something, which is like a new officer squad but whose focus is on supply benefits to the faction rather than a bonus to units for fighting. This basically makes time the USF equivalent to an Opel truck: stick him in a Fighting Position in an important sector like a high Fuel point in the map and your economic position in the game will be strengthened. The veterancy could be adjusted so that economic rate is increased just for being in the game, with specific increases for the sector he is in.

Complete fantasy but interesting nevertheless.