So penal is underpowered? or others are overpowered?

i dont understand this fear of buffing penals. they need a long range buff and a rec acc vet buff for staying power.

they are awkwardly placed in a crappy unusable tier that has no way to snare or kill armor, no light indirect fire or machine guns.

penals themselves are easily negated by suppression, no frag or AT nades or smoke nades, why are people so strangely fearful of a penal buff?

a long range buff only make penals somewhat not useless at ranged firefights when advancing towards grens/volks is not possible because of mg42s,mg34s, sturmpios, etc.

this buff dont make penals into super soldiers capable of conquering the old world and beating chaos gods into submission. penals still dont have the mid to late game dps, easily stopped by machine guns and tanks, close to 0 utility unless against garrison and overrunning okw truck positions

it gives soviet forces a good infantry capable of preventing a complete steamroll on soviet lines when maxims are killed and conscripts just being completely useless against a volks blob.

i can imagine conscripts ptrs doctrine/armored assault being immensely useful when penals are an effective AI option.

what we can do however, is to make penals and elite infantry somewhat mutually exclusive. it will be far too much of a mp drain to bring in guards/shocks and penals together, maybe a small increase in their reinforcement cost.

i dont understand this fear of buffing penals. ...

I did not see allot of people objecting to a buff to Penals. I haves seen even less to be fear one...

Because...

Glad to see that you actually agree with my point that Riflemen are not an average unit but one of the most cost efficient and versatile mainline infatry.

Even with no vet or weapon upgrades riflemen are more cost effective and versatility then I.S., Volks, Gren, Conscripts.

But lets actually see the numbers of trying to clone Penals stat after Riflemen and changing only their DPS as suggested by Glotka:
Penal cost 4% less than riflemen thus there DPS should be 0.96 of the M1
Riflemen have 0.86 less EHP than Penals so DPS should further be reduced by 0.86
Finally Penals have riflemen have 0.83 number of rifles (5/6) so the DPS of the M1 should be reduced
M1DPS*0.96*0.86*0.83 =
4.65 (0) 4.02(5) 2.98(10) 2.34(15) 1.93(20) 1.61(25) 1.36(30) 1.15(35)

those number are not anywhere close to what you have originally suggested (doubling the far DPS) that would look like this:
6.00 (0) 3.94(10) 1.97 (20) 1.66 (30) 1.56 (35)

Your number are up by:
29% (0) 32% (10) 2%(20) 22%(30) 1.35%(35)

Now If you actually have a new suggestion to make pls make it clear explaining all changes you propose and give DPS at each range, because I find rather difficult to debate with someone who contradicts himself.

Penal cost 4% less than riflemen thus there DPS should be 0.96 of the M1
Riflemen have 0.86 less EHP than Penals so DPS should further be reduced by 0.86
Finally Penals have riflemen have 0.83 number of rifles (5/6) so the DPS of the M1 should be reduced

Your missing the x 1.xx because penals are a pure ai unit in a pure ai teir and rifles are a t0 generalist with far more abilities and upgrades.

Your missing the x 1.xx because penals are a pure ai unit in a pure ai teir and rifles are a t0 generalist with far more abilities and upgrades.

So in your opinion Penal should have more DPS than the most cost effective mainline infatry because they have less utility?
If they have less utility you should be increasing their utility and not their DPS.

Further more who says they have less utility at the starting phase of the game? Penal come with no tech weapon upgrade and no tech satchel, riflemen come with nothing at all.

Do riflemen have more as the game progress? they certainly do but that just no justify Penal starting better earlier because timing is key factor.

In one patch Relic (think accidentally) moved shocks and Guard to CP 1 from 2 and Soviet dominated they field. That is an indicator of the impact of timing, a simple change of 1 CP completely altered balance.

Compensating the luck of utility with increment in DPS is simply bad design, especially compared to the most cost efficient mainline infatry.

In the opening phase of the game, T1 or T2 is not an AI or AT option. Is mobile game play option vs Static game play option (support weapons).

They are fine. althrough i dont play this game anymore...

thank you.

They are fine. althrough i dont play this game anymore...

thank you.

"sex is bad although I'm a virgin" arguments are the best.

ummm..yap,but its not sex,it is an onanism

ummmm, thank you.

Penals themselves aren't bad it's just that they don't have a defined role that isn't occupied by something overshadows them.

Demos are very situational, flame throwers come on other, cheaper, more readily available squads. If I need heavy anti-infantry then there's not much better than shocks which tend to be in good docs anyway.

Even if they did have the damage output of a 6man rifle squad their vet means they're still squishy as all getout, they have no grenades, they have no smoke, they have no way to avoid/negate suppression. As soon as they encounter an MG42 Penals are normally screwed so you're going to be going T2 anyway for Maxims and smoke so it's not like they're a do-all tool.

It's like saying the SU85 is bad. The SU85 is great..but 2 su76's are better in most cases since they have more health, do more damage, less vulnerable to flanks and don't cost you an entire tier.


The dynamic between the Penals and conscripts also plays a big role : cons are better in nearly every way past the 15 minute mark. Far more utility, cheaper, molos/at nades/ oohrah at vet 0.

I would think the role penals would need to fill would be a batch of cheapo horde infantry, like a 6man squad of RE's. Keep their vet, keep their skills, keep their flame thrower but drop the price and individual rifle damage by a small bit. I'd just drop their actual "per bullet" damage to 7 and call it a day.

They do all the bullshit that conscripts now do that are usually only fit for a wandering band of thieves/rapists/thought criminals;such as looking for land-mines with your feet, suicide rushing buildings to apply fire damage, picking up wepons and reinforcing them etc. They would be meant to trade effectively and put the hurt on more expensive units then run off. Also has the handy bonus of keeping the spotting up for your sniper.

So what would stop you from just spamming Penals all game? Well they aren't getting any more durable with vet and they are going to start trading inefficiently with other units who are better than them. Something like a target size of 1.125 (like cons) would be acceptable or just a straight up health nerf (from 80 to 70 lets say) to keep them from being overly effective in prolonged engagements.

What stops them from out-shining conscripts? Well you don't have any AT nades, ability to merge with more useful squads (lookin at you, Guards) and their molotov is more likely to hit something than the penals ridiculously telegraphed demo charge. Add in things like PPSH upgrades and you're still going to choose cons for most things. The Penals are there as a swarm of bodies you can equip flame throwers on to generally be a bully.

They do all the bullshit that conscripts now do that are usually only fit for a wandering band of thieves/rapists/thought criminals;such as looking for land-mines with your feet, suicide rushing buildings to apply fire damage, picking up wepons and reinforcing them etc. They would be meant to trade effectively and put the hurt on more expensive units then run off. Also has the handy bonus of keeping the spotting up for your sniper.

Gotta say though, the bolded part is arguably a pretty problematic theme to begin with in both history accuracy and gameplay.

Gotta say though, the bolded part is arguably a pretty problematic theme to begin with in both history accuracy and gameplay.

Historically most men are able to take a single bullet to the face and or body region.

That's another issue. The devs have already said (I'm fairly sure anyway) that they don't anticipate changing anything as far as unit titles/voice work/etc in that regard. Just pretend it's the RTS version of Enemy at the Gates and try not to think too hard about it.