Beef's Beef: Soviet Infantry Woes

So I got bored and dinked around in Mod tools. I swapped Guards and Penal Battalions. Guards became T1 units, Penals became call-ins from commanders that would normally have Guards. I played a few matches against the AI with T1 Guards and call-in Penals and immediately made the following adjustments:

-Made Penals available at 0 CP. No reason to wait for them.
-Made the grenades on Guards available when Molotovs AND AT nades are researched. Damned things were scary straight out the bag.
-Made DP-28s available when either T2 or T3 are built. I had to put some kind of delay on that kind of firepower. I figured building a second tier building would suffice.
-And finally I made the PTRS package only available if a commander would normally have Guards. Having PTRS available without commander choice made the Guards totally eclipse conscripts until a snare was absolutely necessary.

Guards are certainly powerful units even without DP-28s, nades, and PTRS threat. Their rifles are actually really accurate. But, at 330 manpower, they can't really throw their weight around for too long without conscript support.

It's interesting to have a strong backbone unit as Soviet. T1 Guards, especially without stock PTRS access, synergize quite well with conscripts. Better than with penals by a long shot.

Thing is, they beat out Grens pretty well. They're better than rifles pretty solidly, even stripped of nades and upgrades. Adjusting their accuracy to something closer to what BeefSurge is describing would be the only thing that remains. But I am le tired and will tinker around more with it in 8-10 hours.

I could post the Tuning Pack if people are at all interested.

Thanks for the input everyone! It's great that everyone supports re-roling of Penals, or even completely changing the unit.

@Zombifrancis just because the system of commanders with guards in the title I would think that has a low chance of being patched in. It sounds amazing though.

So generally we have 4 solutions including the OP:

1: buff to make them viable in current role, buff vet/rifles/satchel

2: change them into a riflemen type unit, a la OP.

3: put Penals into weird nonmeta commanders like nkvd and terror, replace in t1 with some kind of soviet long range unit that performs like cheaper but worse Guards

4: leave Penals in current role, but give some kind of AT

as long as cons are the cheapest baseline infantry they're going to have issues. that's part of the reason i don't like IS and the recent change to volks. grens have the same issue against IS and rifles. neither grens nor cons are cheap enough to counter spam rifles/IS/volks but nor are they as strong.

yea i dont like these idiots over in syria as well

Penals really need a buff. Almost never seen T1 being built at all.

As for conscripts, maybe better vet 3 bonuses to make them at least semi-relevant in the late game?

yea i dont like these idiots over in syria as well

they get a pretty strong cover bonus but that just means they fire a couple shots instead of 0.

Thanks for the input everyone! It's great that everyone supports re-roling of Penals, or even completely changing the unit.

@Zombifrancis just because the system of commanders with guards in the title I would think that has a low chance of being patched in. It sounds amazing though.

So generally we have 4 solutions including the OP:

1: buff to make them viable in current role, buff vet/rifles/satchel

2: change them into a riflemen type unit, a la OP.

3: put Penals into weird nonmeta commanders like nkvd and terror, replace in t1 with some kind of soviet long range unit that performs like cheaper but worse Guards

4: leave Penals in current role, but give some kind of AT

The main thing I was looking at was how Soviets would function with a strong infantry from T1. What I felt like the results were a similar faction to vCoH Americans.

Stripped down Guards actually work out pretty well though. They just needed a few reductions to reflect that they aren't hitting the field at 2 CPs. With slight reductions to their costs and accuracy, they actually fall into place. Without reducing their accuracy they outpace riflemen by far, with 6 men and 16 damage rifles that are just as accurate as Garands. The lack of a snare isn't enough to counter balance this. As such, I reduced their their far accuracy to 4/6th of grenadiers (the other 16 damage rifle), so 0.398, from 0.529.

But the thing is, 0 CP Penal Battalions for doc choice doesn't make the unit worthwhile. Being able to pop one out immediately has some implications that could be good for SOV, and sure the flamethrower and satchel could be utilized, but the unit itself is still in an awkward place.

Especially if a unit like Guards are available at T1. There just becomes no need for Penals. And the exact same situation we're in with Penals exists: why make them if you have Guards or Shocks? Giving them AT nades puts conscripts in a redundant role.

Giving Penals a form of AT would somewhat undermine a doctrine choice for PTRS. The main thing about Guards troops and the doctrine choice is to get that light AT. Even if Penal Battalions were identical clones of guards, but didn't have PTRS, then the Guards commanders be variants of the conscript PTRS. Giving Penals a snare like AT nades would really start to invalidate conscripts.

So in my opinion #2 is the only real option, regardless of anything else. Even in a different context Penals aren't terribly functional. And comparing the SVT to the Carbine and it seems the SVT is better than the Carbine in every way, (especially accuracy, surprisingly), except for aim time and damage, where the Carbine has the (slight) edge. The SVT is almost exactly like the M1 Garand, but with half the long range accuracy and 2/3s the midrange accuracy.

I tested the SVT with it's midrange accuracy tweaked to more closely match rifle's garands. Directly matching rifle's midrange accuracy was too much, so I gave then 5/6s of that: .555, (from .46). I also boosted Penals' moving accuracy modifier from 0.5 to 0.6. So far so good.

But one thing I didn't expect is that by having Penal Battalions as a doctrinal call-in, their situational nature really gets highlighted. Being able to pop out a Penal when I see bunkers being thrown down while also being able to go T2 first is a nice concept.

I'll polish and publish this little experiment in a bit if anyone would like to see for themselves.

Here we are:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616064538

I didn't really give it a real title.

Nerf the maxim? Are you joking?

It's already the slowest firing MG and does the least damage except the MG34, you want to NERF it?

Are you joking?

Nerf the maxim? Are you joking?

It's already the slowest firing MG and does the least damage except the MG34, you want to NERF it?

Are you joking?

lol

@Francis, it feels really, really good even if it might be OP because Soviet T2 and t70 power. Overall though it's pretty dope

Interesting changes but dont think they are really needed.

All that is needed is a penal buff.


Cons could use some kind of utility buff like capping 15% faster maybe?

basically agree with this but cons feeling more unique i would not mind.

+1
Penal buff is necessary.

I think Conscripts are fine as they are. They're more of a support unit for your elite infantry and weapons teams with merge and their abilities. (Unless you get a doctrine with PPSH, in which case they become really, really good.)

I'd like to see Combat Engineers get a buff instead because right now they're rear echelon tier without the benefit of weapon racks.

Penals need to be reworked to be a core "elite infantry" option. Should go back to their old 360mp/godlike SVT rifles form.

Both Shock and guard rifles seem fine to me.

Yeah, Guards and Shocks are easily among the best balanced infantry in the game. Good, but not too much.

I still think conscripts should do more DPS as they vet up. Having to rely on doctrines to provide your high damage infantry severely limits doctrine choice. Every single doc that doesn't give you Guards or Shocks (or PPSH at the very least) is utterly unused by Soviet players, save from Lend-Lease to cheese in 1v1.

Penals are just hopeless at the moment. Even on urban maps tailored for them they still don't bring enough to the table to justify going T1 and their severe lack of utility means you're really just better off getting the far more flexible conscripts. I'm trying to make them work but always end up having to fall back to T2/doctrines to get actually useful units.

Cons actually do get more DPS as they vet up, it's just that they don't scale like the other core infantry because they lack the firepower of upgraded units.
Penals... dual flamer for 90 Muni?

Nerf the maxim? Are you joking?

It's already the slowest firing MG and does the least damage except the MG34, you want to NERF it?

Are you joking?

Holy Fuck Yes The Maxim is so fucking shit man just look at all those videos of pros and everyone else using them. So shit. Relic needs to buff their suppression ASAP.

what about instead of the MASSIVE recc acc buff cons get at vet 3 give them like... 2 extra models and a cheaper reinforcement (slightly cheaper). they get the whole "you cant kill us" thing they have now without becoming bulletproof, merge becomes even more useful AND they get a DPS buff, or like... and extra model at vet 2 and another at vet 3

what about instead of the MASSIVE recc acc buff cons get at vet 3 give them like... 2 extra models and a cheaper reinforcement (slightly cheaper). they get the whole "you cant kill us" thing they have now without becoming bulletproof, merge becomes even more useful AND they get a DPS buff, or like... and extra model at vet 2 and another at vet 3

2 extra models is most terrible idea here. 6 men squad is only good in 1v1 firefights. But then it comes to the CoH2 it's all about AOE. So more models you have them more will you mp bleed in late game.

How about nerfing grenadiers and their OberAccuracy instead of buffing penals? Grens are are vastly overperforming for their cost(Highly accurate, stock LMGs etc), that's the issue.

what about instead of the MASSIVE recc acc buff cons get at vet 3 give them like... 2 extra models and a cheaper reinforcement (slightly cheaper)

2 extra models is most terrible idea here.

Also no forgot pathfidings problems.

Holy Fuck Yes The Maxim is so fucking shit man just look at all those videos of pros and everyone else using them. So shit. Relic needs to buff their suppression ASAP.

this has to be a troll post. No one is this stupid.

Beef's Beef: Soviet Infantry Woes

@ZombiFrancis Nice solution so SU get both (originaly doctrinal call-in) elite infantry Guards (for soft AT + long range) from T1 + Shocks (for hard AI) from doctrine sound fair and balanced. But can you explain to me how this change the situation with Penals, who will use them?

@BeefSurge

1: buff to make them viable in current role, buff vet/rifles/satchel

2: change them into a riflemen type unit, a la OP.

3: put Penals into weird nonmeta commanders like nkvd and terror, replace in t1 with some kind of soviet long range unit that performs like cheaper but worse Guards

4: leave Penals in current role, but give some kind of AT

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Option 1 + 2 = same = OP rifles + flamethrover + 1 extra model
Option 3 = OST now fight at close range against Cons + at long range against something like "soft" Pfuss = till LMG upgrade Grens get ass kick at all ranges
Option 4 = no change at all, if sniper team is consideret weak + M3 is consideret weak + AT already on Cons why to back tech?