December Patch British

I've never really understood why people say that "British sniper counters its own counter". The aim time on critical shot is rather substantial AND it costs Muni. The Critical shot also doesn't 1 shot 222 or anything (sure it makes it easy pickings for 6 Pounder but combined arms should be rewarded). At most it just prevents someone from diving a 222 to go after a sniper which is fair counterplay IMO. I agree that eliminating engine critical on penetrating regular shots makes sense but Vet 1 Critical shot is a bit much.

I've never really understood why people say that "British sniper counters its own counter". The aim time on critical shot is rather substantial AND it costs Muni. The Critical shot also doesn't 1 shot 222 or anything (sure it makes it easy pickings for 6 Pounder but combined arms should be rewarded). At most it just prevents someone from diving a 222 to go after a sniper which is fair counterplay IMO. I agree that eliminating engine critical on penetrating regular shots makes sense but Vet 1 Critical shot is a bit much.

the problem i have with the current state is: i can catch out a vastly overextened sniper with my 222 and still not be able to kill it( more likely ill lose the 222 in the process). if im overextending a single sniper with every other nation = dead sniper.

and btw, doenst everry sniper has their abilitys on vet 1? why should brits be an exception again?

I'm afraid I can't agree with that because getting any unit out of an important garrison can be trouble, it's not a problem exclusive to the British. But I find that the standard Ost mortar, not the halftrack variety, is a great investment to deal with this issue. Or if you're really having trouble, your standard builder unit can equip a flamethrower which is a very nice way to clear any cover position. As for the OKW, they have the rather potent incendiary grenade which will be even easier to access now that they have full income.

I'm also going to say this is not a problem exclusive to Axis - if the British lose an important garrison, how are they meant to clear it? They don't have access to a base mortar, flamethrower, and their sniper has added artificial difficulty since it cannot target a building without just attacking the building itself, meaning you have to A move. You only have the WASP which is...lol.

One well placed mortar pit behind a shotblocker will rape any mg42 in a garrison. Ostheer mortar isn't really that great for getting rid of vickers in a garrison to be honest. Pios with flamer will lose a model or even two due to the mg always being supported by at least a tommie or sapper squad, before they even get into range.

Sure there is a problem for UKF as well, yet Axis units don't get over the top bonusses when in green cover or a garison. Neither does their vet have the insane proportion that the UKF tommies and vickers get, thus making them harder to get out of a garrison. Neither do Axis factions get terminator heavy engineers for 'free' with 2.0 armor.

The problem with Tommies come from their OP vet rather than their normal cover bonus. It is more like Tommy has a out of cover debuff than in cover bonus because out of cover Tommy is crap, they can't even beat Volk, without vet in a shooting match 4man tommy lose to Osttruppen so Relic should fix their vet, not nerf their combat capabilities. Brit is all about late game but Relic seems determined to not let them survive more than 15min in game.

funny how miniscule changes to brits are supposedly going to completely gimp them, but taking 10+% dmg/acc/range from OKWs vet4/5 bonuses is considered to be completely fine. The IS changes are huge, yes, but UKF early game was never meant to be as strong as it was, being that they have some of the strongest late game units and some of the best vet bonuses.
Certainly you should have seen this after playing like 4 games or whatever, right? Kappa

Shotblockers shouldn't be a requirement for the mortar pit to be viable, and you can always just smoke the vickers/garrison if you want to walk a flamer up to it.

As for "every sniper has ability on vet 1" - I'd point out that every sniper has its own particular niche. The soviet sniper has 2 men, making it better in sniping duels, the ost sniper is just plain better at anti inf due to a high rate of fire and the british sniper's niche was supposed to be anti-vehicle capability. In practice though, the damage from the sniper isn't overly impressive (off hand it will take 4 long reload shots to kill a kubel), so the niche was basically being the brits only reliable vehicle snare. Even then only on light vehicles since anything with armour gets a temporary stun/turret lock instead.

So, with that locked behind a vet wall, what do you get instead? A one man sniper team that's worse than the ost sniper against inf who can do slight damage to vehicles.

It gets even better when you look at vet. The ost sniper gets the explosive round, which is an amazing anti inf tool. Both the soviet and ost snipers also get rate of fire increases, making them even better against inf. The brits sniper by comparison gets increased sight (which is good) and increased penetration/damage, which continues to be mostly negligible late game.

@ Schwarzenschnitzel - Having the mortar emplacement be only viable when placed behind a shotblocker makes it a very poor counter to any of these units - that coupled with the fact that it costs 400 manpower, has a long barrage cooldown unless garrisoned, and is completely immobile means I would never consider this unit to be a reliable counter to clearing any garrisons. Also unlike all other mortars, it can't retreat and requires babysitting which means if it gets caught on its own you better pray you can get there before Volks can toss a couple flame nades on it or that Pios don't get too many flame bursts on it.

I'm sorry you're having this much trouble clearing garrisons with the Ostheer's tools. I am going to hypothesize though and assume you are doing something very wrong. Maybe you are not supporting your flame pios properly? Maybe you're not using riflenades to displace supporting British infantry and make them completely useless since they're out of cover? Maybe you have your mortar on hold fire? If you'd like please send a replay my way of you experience this issue and I would be more than happy to review it for you.

@ cr4wler - I actually have played a lot more than 4 games with this mod - conversely, I'm going to assume you yourself haven't read the patch notes fully yet, let alone played the mod - but first of all, Volks got a very nice buff to their base damage (while Tommies get a nerf to theirs) and now they completely walk all over Tommies. Their veterancy 4-5 was nerfed to compensate not only for this change but also for the fact that they full resource income now. One of the major points of OKW being allowed to have 5 levels of veterancy while other factions weren't was due to them not having full resource income, which is sort of not true anymore.

I'm repeating my first post, but the reason Tommies are supposed to be so potent in the anti infantry department is because they completely lack ANY other kind of versatility. AT snares are entirely absent. Decent grenades are absent. They can not flank at all due to the debuffs received out of cover, and they are very vulnerable to axis units which were originally designed to take on 5-6 man squads due to their small base squad size. This balanced out their impressive performance in cover, and makes them balanced with all other mainline infantry, albeit in a different way, as it should be to keep each faction unique and fun.

the problem i have with the current state is: i can catch out a vastly overextened sniper with my 222 and still not be able to kill it( more likely ill lose the 222 in the process). if im overextending a single sniper with every other nation = dead sniper.

and btw, doenst everry sniper has their abilitys on vet 1? why should brits be an exception again?

Because the British Sniper is terrible versus Infantry compared to other Snipers plus the lack of an early-game AT Snare for Brits.

Because the British Sniper is terrible versus Infantry compared to other Snipers plus the lack of an early-game AT Snare for Brits.

but he has the bonus to damage light vehicles. maybe up the damage a bit.

honstely from my experience you dont need a snare versus a 222. if your sniper is inbetween 2-3 tommies squads ( like it should be, i cant move my ost sniper yoloing into the frontline without support) the 222 will die before he kills the sniper without a snare. maybe im wrong but everytime i use the 222 i need to stay at max max max range because it takes soo much damage from small arm fire.

whats the tech timing of the 6pdr btw? does it arrive before or after a 222 realistcly hits the field?

If you really wanted to rush for the 6pdr and care little for infantry field presence you could get it out as early as 2:30, maybe 3:00, way sooner than the 222. This, however, is wholly unreasonable.

As for the British sniper... I see no problems with the concept of soft counters in the game. They dun goofed for removing engine damage. It's like whoever was at Relic read the "why sniper damages its counter OMG" thread and went "WHOOOOAH MAN that sentence makes sense execute british nerf protocol beep boop " without realizing that a) Brits have no other snares, b) Brits have no infantry held AT, c) things killing their intended counters, even hard counters, is extremely common in this game (Stuarts can kill StuGs, infantry can kill MGs, and shall we talk about tanks and AT guns?)