What indirect fire? Pack Howitzer?, Mortar Halftrack?, Greyhound?(both doctrinal) also what makes you think you'll always have indirect setup and ready to fire once he retreats?
Precisely. This "Indirect fire" thing is being parroted around by the standing members of the Axis Anti Nerf Committee, when they really mean to say is howitzers. The 120mm mortar also does wonders.
But this only applies to Soviets and 1/6th of US commanders. By the time I have significant indirect fire (howitzers or powerful offmaps), I will also have tanks, call-ins, AT guns. I don't need help at this phase. I want to know what to do about the Schwerer in minute 8 of the game.
And even so, let's say people use howitzers, AT guns, offmaps etc - so now we have used ammo, manpower, teching, fuel, all to remove a structure from the battlefield. What about opportunity costs? While you are investing resources and time, I assume the OKW enemy is kind enough to have units of comparable manpower cost simply idle around and do nothing? When I build a T4 as Soviet, it does not present an inconvenience on the map and OKW doesn't have to allocate resources just to remove it or lose access to a portion of the map.
I will remind you that Sov tier buildings are more expensive, offer about the same in terms of unlocked units, but none of the advantages. Trying to pass a forward HQ, a fortification and a repair center as a weakness instead of an immense strength of the faction is asinine.
Nothing prevents you from putting all your buildings at the base just as every other faction has to, and still have a more useful, cheaper base, with inbuilt repair and medic functions. Literally anything you do beyond that is a bonus, an OPTION, a glorious possibility that you have that no other faction has. If you choose to use this option, you enter the realm of risk/reward mechanic. Except the risk is relatively small, and the rewards immense. Worst case scenario - the building goes down. So? you lost roughly a Puma's worth of resources to occupy a significant portion of opponent's firepower for a prolonged period of time.
Now, I personally like the different flavours of each faction, and it's nice to have OKW differ in this aspect. But you can't really complain about forward positions being exposed to artillery. Yes, we know they are. It's because you choose to put them there even though you could have put them in the base and still be no worse than all other factions.