So penal is underpowered? or others are overpowered?

I mean really, the Guard/Shock/Nothing choice for Soviets has always made things awkward for Soviets to tech AND field a competent army. Penals have to get something like a grenade, a weapon upgrade that isn't a flamethower, and/or more durability with vet to make any changes worthwhile. As it stands Penals don't bring anything to the Soviet arsenal other than Satchel charges, which have been pretty much nerfed to being used only to kill Ostheer bunkers.

the flamethrower isn't the problem, the svt 40 is the problem. The flamethrower can ignore the defensive on infantry, it's the great equalizer. If the svt-40 was actually decent people will start using them more.

and satchel charge should have at snare ability. Using a satchel charge to knock out a tank's tread is one of the oldest anti-tank tactic in history.

Hmmmm... that swap penals and guards idea...

I guess commanders should be renamed to
"Penal Motor Coordination Tactics"
"Penal Rifle Combined Arms Tactics"
and so on

the flamethrower isn't the problem, the svt 40 is the problem. The flamethrower can ignore the defensive on infantry, it's the great equalizer. If the svt-40 was actually decent people will start using them more.

and satchel charge should have at snare ability. Using a satchel charge to knock out a tank's tread is one of the oldest anti-tank tactic in history.

Actually if Satchel charges could work like vCoH sticky bombs, there might be something there.

just an idea, give penals coh1 "heroic charge ability". meaning they can break suppression and run with faster speeds while taking increases damage. 1)It will give them some role to fulfill tactically
2)It fits nicely with their perceived "lore" role as a nothing to lose suicide squad.

Here is my problem. People have been asking for a recviced acc. buff in vet. This would make them very similar to the old rifle company. I was not a fan of that type of strong infantry, since it nulls your opponents cover bonus as your standard infantry force.

Here is my food for thought. Why not switch the places of guards and penals. Make the requested buff penals as a doctrine unit and make guards at the t1 and are available once you build the t2 or t3. Have available upgrades of 2 ptrs, 2 dps, or an assualt package of 3 semi-autos and 3 ppsh.

If guards are a stock unit, you may have and guards+ shocks armies, might lead to serious unpredictable consequences

2 second rof? 60 range? completely balanced nothing to see here move along.

Final tier tank destroyer that has the exact same pen as the AT gun you can build 30seconds into the match? The one that with vet completely and unfairly devastates medium armour but is nothing more than a lottery vs late gane armour (not even a guaranteed pen vs vetted/okw panzer 4s) there is a reason that the t70 provides better AT Support than a Luchs...

Hmmmm... that swap penals and guards idea...

I guess commanders should be renamed to
"Penal Motor Coordination Tactics"
"Penal Rifle Combined Arms Tactics"
and so on

Well, the Penal Rifle one would actually kinda make sense.

The Motor one wouldn't though because what kind of mechanized force would heavily lean their expectations on such worthless scum

Final tier tank destroyer that has the exact same pen as the AT gun you can build 30seconds into the match? The one that with vet completely and unfairly devastates medium armour but is nothing more than a lottery vs late gane armour (not even a guaranteed pen vs vetted/okw panzer 4s) there is a reason that the t70 provides better AT Support than a Luchs...

the su-85 is one of the fastest firing unit in the game. It's got a faster firing rate than even the pak40

maybe a slight accurate boost. The su-85 does have one of the lowest accuracy among the td. It's less accurate than the jackson, firefly, and jpz4.

So penal is underpowered? or the others are overpowered?
is there power gap between penal battalion and the others such as rifleman, tommy,gren or volk?

what's your thought?

Penals aren't bad. They suffer from being stock specialists in a role that isn't useful to their faction (OKW trucks and Bunkers aren't dangerous enough for a specialist unit), requiring teching (with a downside, unlike Grenadiers or Obersoldaten), and not being amazing on their own but also not benefiting from any doctrines.

I'd increase their cost and either add a long-range weapon upgrade or improve their current rifles.

the su-85 is one of the fastest firing unit in the game. It's got a faster firing rate than even the pak40

maybe a slight accurate boost. The su-85 does have one of the lowest accuracy among the td. It's less accurate than the jackson, firefly, and jpz4.

The problem with the SU-85 is not obvious when you compare it with similar units from other factions. Let's look at some stats:

Stat	SU-76M	SU-85
Damage	120	160
Damage (vet 3)	140	160
Reload Time	2.9/3.4	3.8/4.2
Reload Time (vet 3)	2.175/2.55	2.128/2.352
Penetration	180/190/200	180/190/200
Range	60	60
Health	400	640
Armour	70/35	140/70
Max Speed	6.3	5.7
Acc/Deceleration	2.3/4.4	2.1/4.3
Cost	280/75	340/120
Pop Cost	8	12
Vet 3 Required XP	3480	7160

Since you can buy three SU-76Ms for the fuel and pop cost of two SU-85s and they have the same penetration:

Expected Damage = (Penetration Chance)*(Damage)

SU-85 ED = (PC)*160 while SU-76M ED = (PC)*120

Since the penetrations are (supposedly) independent events, we can simply multiply the expected damage values by the number of units:

SU-85 ED = 2*(PC)*160 while SU-76M ED = 3*(PC)*120

As both penetration chances will be the same:

SU-85 ED = 320 while SU-76M ED = 360

This is, of course, not perfectly representative of ingame conditions. The SU-76Ms provide more reliable damage (a single shot has the same chance to bounce: 1/3 vs 1/2 damage lost) and last longer in combat (9 hits vs 8 hits) but lose units faster (3 hits to kill a unit vs four).

Either way, it is fairly clear that you should only choose SU-85s over SU-76Ms if:

- You are suffering serious manpower bleed
- You need a single AT vehicle urgently
- Your enemy is fielding mostly Luchs/Ostwind/222 Scout Car (Although a T34 is a better bet than either TD)
- You have trouble microing multiple vehicles
- You're playing on an urban map and have pathfinding concerns. (Again, a T34 would be a better choice, depending on flanking routes)
- You don't have infantry squads to spot for your TDs
- The enemy doesn't have a lot of infantry units and you have filled your pop cap with them

At the moment the SU-85 is fairly balanced. Unfortunately, it is also the biggest stock gun in the Soviet faction while performing a role already occupied by a cheaper and earlier unit, leaving the Soviets without any stock (mobile) tools for dealing with heavy armour.

Added to this, the main argument for its current position is that "it fires really fast with vet". Since this ignores that the unit it is directly competing with does that as well and that acquiring vet 3 is substantially less likely for the SU-85 (given cost, xp requirements, timing, initial maneuverability), I'm not sure how it is accepted as an explanation.

its an anti-emplacements unit, and since nobody with two working neurons spams bunkers, they look pretty lame

At the moment the SU-85 is fairly balanced. Unfortunately, it is also the biggest stock gun in the Soviet faction while performing a role already occupied by a cheaper and earlier unit, leaving the Soviets without any stock (mobile) tools for dealing with heavy armour.

it sounds like a matter of redundancy, assuming the su-76 is balance.

the flamethrower isn't the problem, the svt 40 is the problem. The flamethrower can ignore the defensive on

Just as a word of caution; if you made them so effective that they represented a clear advantage over Cons, then one would expect the meta to shift so that T1 is standard and Cons never get built. This is especially likely if they get infantry AT.

We should never be trying to make Penals so effective that they automatically overshadow Cons. At the moment the only real issue that exists with Penals is they are under-used. And that problem is not necessarily going to be solved by taking them a better unit to build in terms of effectiveness for cost.

Frex, if Penals were both buffed and priced to the equivalent of Obers, you might well see more of them. Back-teching to T1 mid-game when you can afford to start fielding elite infantry might easily be seen as worth it.

I'm not offering that as a serious suggestion, only pointing out that bufff/debuff is not really the issue at hand.

Just as a word of caution; if you made them so effective that they represented a clear advantage over Cons, then one would expect the meta to shift so that T1 is standard and Cons never get built. This is especially likely if they get infantry AT.

We should never be trying to make Penals so effective that they automatically overshadow Cons. At the moment the only real issue that exists with Penals is they are under-used. And that problem is not necessarily going to be solved by taking them a better unit to build in terms of effectiveness for cost.

Frex, if Penals were both buffed and priced to the equivalent of Obers, you might well see more of them. Back-teching to T1 mid-game when you can afford to start fielding elite infantry might easily be seen as worth it.

I'm not offering that as a serious suggestion, only pointing out that bufff/debuff is not really the issue at hand.

the conscript have their own problem with insufficient firepower. Ultimately, a unit's biggest measure of balance is against the axis units, not each other.

Being internally balance means nothing if all of them are useless against the axis. It would just end up on a curious tale of destructive inter service rivalry.

Just as a word of caution; if you made them so effective that they represented a clear advantage over Cons, then one would expect the meta to shift so that T1 is standard and Cons never get built. This is especially likely if they get infantry AT.

We should never be trying to make Penals so effective that they automatically overshadow Cons. At the moment the only real issue that exists with Penals is they are under-used. And that problem is not necessarily going to be solved by taking them a better unit to build in terms of effectiveness for cost.

Frex, if Penals were both buffed and priced to the equivalent of Obers, you might well see more of them. Back-teching to T1 mid-game when you can afford to start fielding elite infantry might easily be seen as worth it.

I'm not offering that as a serious suggestion, only pointing out that bufff/debuff is not really the issue at hand.

so wait... they cant have a clear advantage over cons? then just delete them
also if you dont have cons you dont have a snare, and good luck stopping a luchs (even a 222) with penals...

also, why shouldn't a more expensive and tier locked unit overshadow the t0 utility knife in combat?

why not

make them preform like slightly worse guards that only have mosins?
guards are the elite bad asses that get all the fancy toys right? dont let the penals have upgrades
well tat in itself would be a worthwhile reason to still get guards, that and ignoring t1 wholesale

you then have a solid long range unit that can shoot a target vs needing to stab them with their bayonet
guards remain kick ass by coming with fancy guns like AT rifles and getting lmgs, or coming with fancy semi autos and smgs

the conscript have their own problem with insufficient firepower. Ultimately, a unit's biggest measure of balance is against the axis units, not each other.

Being internally balance means nothing if all of them are useless against the axis. It would just end up on a curious tale of destructive inter service rivalry.

I think you missed the point; if Penals were just better cons - which would be the case if they had AT etc. - then you could end up where Cons never get built, and you;re back to the same problem: one of the units in the roster has no function.

also, why shouldn't a more expensive and tier locked unit overshadow the t0 utility knife in combat?

Actually, I said more or less the opposite; that you might see more Penals if they were equivalent to Obers in effectiveness and price, because back-teching to get an elite infantry unit is worthwhile.

All I'm getting at is that any effort to enhance Penals to the point that they functionally *replace* Cons is just going to reproduce the same problem.

We should be looking to make Penals viable along side Cons.

I think you missed the point; if Penals were just better cons - which would be the case if they had AT etc. - then you could end up where Cons never get built, and you;re back to the same problem: one of the units in the roster has no function.

I like how you imply that cons are actually a thing.

Cons are already never build, because they don't work, unlike maxims.
This "backbone" of soviet army has no spine at all and bents like a wet noodle against anything that isn't vanila gren squad, DOCTRINAL upgrades, compared to axis upgrades(say G43) come much later and perform poorly, but they are mandatory to even consider cons a combat squad as they are just more numerous engineers for sandbag placing without them.

They are supposed to work well in numbers, but because of comparable axis infantry cost and much greater scaling and performance of it, getting any kind of numerical advantage to overcome greater firepower is not possible, because axis will always have comparable number of squads, unless the player deliberately stops building infantry.

Hell, CEs have more combat capabilities then cons. Had they 6 men, we'd never seen cons anyway for anything else then AT nades.

And no, we're not back at the same problem.
Previously we had 2 useless units, now, it would be just one.

Cons are already never build, because they don't work, unlike maxims.

Clearly untrue. Either way, you should, and probably do, know that the over-effectiveness of Maxims is to be looked at. Just as once before it was Maxims that were never built.

Rest snipped; as I've already indicated, the wipe-resistance of cons alone makes them arguably better than any other late game infantry.

Clearly untrue. Either way, you should, and probably do, know that the over-effectiveness of Maxims is to be looked at. Just as once before it was Maxims that were never built.

Well, two wrongs doesn't really make a right.
Con based strats are extinct, there are con openings, but there are not con based BOs. It always boils down to maxims or elite inf.

Rest snipped; as I've already indicated, the wipe-resistance of cons alone makes them arguably better than any other late game infantry.

Even king tiger wouldn't be useful if it had command P4 gun.
This is the state of cons atm, they can take punishment from small arms, but at the end its them who are getting attrition as they can't inflict any of their own. It gets even worse against okw call-ins and ost upgrades.

Can penal long range buff fix that? Quite possibly.
This way cons will be needed to screen and deter assaults on squishy, but accurate penals with none of them being able to work independently(well, cons can to a point with ppsh only).

None of which MATTERS because Sovs are performing well in the charts and in tourneys. So whatever issue this is, it's fundamentally AESTHETIC and not one of balance.

If it turn out that when something is done about Maxims, Soviets fall off, THEN it will be time to proposes boosts to Cons or Penals or something else. That is not the case now.