Okay I played 7 3vs3 games now with the new land matress commander, 4 yesterday before damage versus buildings was reduced and AOE was slightly lowered, 3 today. I always went heavy for them (2-3 units) to test their performance in a normal game situation.
The good:
- their damage versus blobs is very strong, squad wipes happen
- can be recrewed if not destroyed entirely
- low fuel cost
The medicore:
- their range seems to be not that huge as others stated here, for such a slow rocket launcher it is pretty medicore
- their damage vs OKW trucks is okay now, you need multiple salvos at once (otherwise the truck is repaired again)
- in teamgames where ressource income is higher walking stuka can arrive long before matress can be called
The bad:
- because of long and slow firing salvo + setup/dismount time it is very prone to counterfire from other rocket artillery like walking stuka and painwerfer and some offmap area attacks
- falls excel versus them on maps with lots of ambient buildings
- quickly mowed down by any kind of infantry/vehicle counterattack if not guarded properly, to slow to evade by itself
- slow in reaching firing position
- can be stolen and turned versus you (happend twice to me)
- manpower heavy
- doctrinal, comes with a commander without any kind of offmap attack or late game abilities/units
Conclusion:
They truly shine as a blob counter and at attacking a forward build healing truck after a mass retreat. This isn't such a bad thing, because blobbing should be punished and FRP mechanic is bs in team games anyway.
On the other side they drain your manpower even more. With brits having most expensive base infantry unit, most expensive MG and most expensive AT-Gun plus mortar pit for 400mp, Forward Assembly and the doctrinal 4 men commandos for 400mp, you truly have to make some decisions if you decide to take this commander. The land matress has a unfavorable ratio of manpower to fuel. Manpower will really limit your decisions if you take this commander, there is so many you want to afford, you seem to be always low on population unless you are really kicking ass from the beginning.
I lost three games, always to tanks, this is the real weak spot of the commander. In arranged teams it can work out, but you have to make sure that your mates will care for the construction of caches and for enough AT power. You are heavily delayed in producing Cromwell/Firefly. Again I think manpower is more of a problem than fuel. So I wouldn't rate it too high, other commanders have good abilities/units too that can decide a game and are not that manpower starved. Sure it would be a total different thing if it would be non-doctrinal like walking stuka or painwerfer.
Totally agree with you, yesterday I was playing 2 random 4v4s, since the game was and still is way to broken to play 1v1 and 2v2s competitivly. I went OKW with 1 stuka zu fuss, it took out all those nice land matresses out without that much effort. Theyŕe too slow to dodge it and gives some nice vet to my Stuka. Although 2 of them used against me was quite annoying.