What is up everyone, I have decided to write this post as an attempt to explain my view on what I read on these forums almost daily since I have played enough games of the USF faction to have an opinion on it, if you are a 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 player take this with a grain of salt since I haven't experienced team games with USF, albeit theoretically they shouldn't be bad even in them.
Let me start by adressing three main points that are often made about USF:
First, the lack of a super tank, which isn't a must for a faction to be good, I think many of the players expressing their opinion here fail to see that USF isn't supposed to be played as any other faction in the game. In CoH1 US had the pershing but it was even barely used, the US faction could completely play around the fact that they had no kind of a super strong tank. USF requires more strategical though to be effective, and that's a a point Im going to make a lot through this post.
Second, riflemen falling behind other infantry units veterancy wise, this is the point that in my opinion might have more truth to it but it's not the veterancy that is the problem (although a buff on it even if small would help) it's how useless the BARs are, In all my USF games I have purchased BARs maybe in 5% of them. They are basically a worse version of the flamer you can get in the Elite infantry commander, flamers are the equivalent of what BARs were in CoH1, they allow for agressive play with riflemen. If I were to make a big change it would be in them, make them cost more but have a much bigger impact.
Third, USF having too much MP drain, this is again revolved around what I have said before, USF is a different faction, you have to play around the riflemen losses and make your offensives as effective as possible, USF even if it doesn't appear isn't a noob faction, it's actually probably the hardest faction to handle. Mistakes in USF get punished MUCH more, but the fact that the units themselves offer so much diversity in gameplay pays off, IF you know how to use it.
Now that I have made those points I wanted to clarify what makes USF strong and what people fail to do as USF. So if you are a CoH1 player and have watched high competitive games in which a player played US then you know that flanking was a MUST, if you blobbed up you lost. If your flanking failed it could lead to big losses and snowball to a loss rapidly, HOWEVER US were always a two-edged sword, because if you master the flanking and managing how much MP you can lose on an engage in order to keep teching then you could beat opponents in 10 minutes. USF from CoH2 is a bit different though but the thinking behind it is the same, flanking is your biggest weapon, and with the addition of things like smoke grenades it makes things even easier to pull flanks off. That's the USF strength and at the same time what people fail to do with this faction, it's actually pretty annoying to see these posts saying USF is super UP just because you can't use the faction effectively since they are not the same as the others and require other levels of attention. Sometimes I feel like Im going through the endless posts ranting about champions that have no problems over on League of legends.
To conclude if I had to point problems to USF as why they are slightly weaker ( not meaning they have a super big gap as people make seem) is that BARs are pratically useless, riflemen might need a SMALL buff on the veterancy and some units like the howietzer need a slight buff. Other than that I hope that in this coming torney me and simon (aka aimstrong) can show people that USF is not weak.
Have a nice day.
EDIT: I forgot to add for those people that need results to approve a post that Im currently top 7 USF 1v1 under the name "Insane C++" with the goal of getting top 1 soon (not a game spammer).
Quality post, it's really helpful and I hope that people will read it. With my verry little experience in 1v1 with USF and more in 2v2 I would like to say though that riflemen are a verry hard unit to balance. One tiny change could make them OP or UP in a split of a sec. For instance I think that buffing bars will have that unfortunate effect, because, in my experience, riflemen are a quite good mainline infantry throughout the game and especially in start and middle game. Their problem, as you stated it corectly, is their veterancy progress which could be better. I would rather make the BAR and bazooka cheaper from amo point of view. These are my 2 cents.