semi-automatic rifles should be outperforming bolt actions

I'm just looking it as someone who played quite a bit of Red Orchestra 2 and is a firearms enthusiast, at the onset of WWII, except perhaps for the US Army, most armies were equipped with bolt actions for standard issue firearms. In Red Orchestra 2, a semi-automatic rifle like a SVT-40 or a Gewehr-43 is a highly prized possession over a standard issue Mosin-Nagant or Kar98k

I'm thinking that an SVT-40 equipped Penal Squad even with minimal military training, or a Garand equipped US Rifle squad should be kicking some major Grenadier/VolksGrenadier butt. Perhaps it's due to Balance issues, of course when balance is absent you can always up the cost for the better performing unit and lower the popcap for the lesser performing unit. I kinda wish Relic had added this into the game when they made coh2.

It really doesnt make too much sense that a grenadier squad with 2 g43's and 2 kar98k's does as well as it does against a 6man SVT-40 Penal Battalion or 5 man US Rifle Squad, Garand was the Rifle that WOn the War after all.

Knowing what I know about Germany Infantry Combat in WWII, German doctrine of the time centered and revolved around the HMG's and LMG's (I theorize this is in part due to them having the best MG's of the entire war out of all the armies), the frontline infantry did a lot of carrying of ammo for the MG's as opposed to front line fighting whereas American doctrine of the time used MG's as a weapon to support the infantry. Due to this difference in battlefield doctrine, the Germans were capable of tying up large amounts of allied troops with significantly inferior numbers due to the sheer firepower of their machine guns and their battlefield doctrine revolving around the MG. This is part of how the Germans took only 20,000 casualties to the Allies 55,000 in the Battle of Mt. Cassino

(Off topic, for all the WWII enthusiasts, my Grandpa fought in Monte Cassino, I just visited him 2 weeks ago, he's still alive at the ripe age of 96, his wife too at 93)

Always keep in mind that realism is not the main purpose of CoH2. It's more like an arcade RTS that plays in a scenario that really happened.

Rifles are already stronger than Grenadiers. With more realism this would be even worse. On the other hand with more realism, every grenadier group would be equipped with a MG42 from the start.

Btw my grandfather also fought in WWII. Just... on the other side (France, Russia, Western Front)

There are many things in this game that don’t make sense historically but are in here for gameplay purposes. Hence the Ostwinds when only about 100 were produced. Or the KV-8 when there was only about 140. Also, the scaling is ridiculous if you look at the 222 scout car. I do think if Relic tried harder, they could find a good balance between historic and gameplay, but that’s not on their minds right now.

While SVTs underperform in comparison to any other semi auto, it was never about real life "balance".

Realism ends the moment balance starts.

Otherwise you'll end up with an imbalanced mess like MoW series.