Comparing RM and Gren dps in a vacuum is certainly stupid. Not that showing stat doesn't make sense for the reflexion but basing all your argumentation on it shows the limitation your have at visualizing the big picture of the balance question.
The way you put far/close range stats without any once of questioning make me think you have 0 idea what you are talking about. You just add numbers happily seeing they are showing something going in your way. And how could it be different since we are talking about two units clearly different with quite a huge price gap.
This vacuum is what basically happens most of the time, though, especially now that the USF mortar basically makes MG play useless. Yeah, on this forum every single person will tell me "Use your MG.", without ever stopping to think what this means: We're constantly talking not only about different amounts of field presence due to different teching structures and different squad sizes and squad costs, some people also like to fog up the discussion by suddenly ignoring the investments their "l2p"-demand necessitates.
By that logic, we couldn't make any prediction about the game whatsoever, because there are basically hundreds of constellations to think of. By putting directly competing units in a vacuum, comparing their different performances allows us a glimpse into their effects in the game. This is basically the only chance we have to give somewhat relevant predictions about the game, without having to calculate hundreds or thousands of data points and combine them with hundreds or thousands of data points collected ingame.
TL;DR: My method of putting these units in a vacuum is a necessary oversimplification for the lack of better data management options available to us. The fact that nobody has ever provided a better one so far suggests that the work required to do so would be too immense for any single individual to do.
Yes, allowing for models to die in that calculation is an interesting point, and I will take the effort required to do so in consideration when making such lists in the future, but as I wrote above, I was making maximum-comparisons. These include the best possible scenario for both sides on the basis that these factors decide the majority of outcomes. There is of course always some uncertainty in these calculations in any case, as some of these values are random number dependant (accuracy for example), and are only assumed to reach these optimums if you compile an infinite amount of data points in the game. This would of course be an interesting job for a statistician, but I doubt that any of us here would gain anything out of that, not to mention that many people would be surprised to learn that the RNG in COH2 is probably mediocre at best...
I am not sure if your calculations also consider the fact that the following are affected by range:
- Aim time (ready and fire_aim)
- cooldown
- burst-duration
- (maybe some other stuff that I forgot)
I don't have a DPS calculator handy on the machine I am writing this post (I have one at home, though). From memory, though, the numbers for range-0 LMG riflemen and LMG-grens seem a bit wonky compared to their non-LMG versions.
[...]
If you insist on only making conclusions based on those two extreme values, you will soon find that your conclusions will contradict actual in-game experience.
The damage development of those two units over distance is extremely similar. That is the advantage of making these statements in a vacuum, because comparing becomes easier. And these number may appear wonky, but only if you don't consider that an MG upgrade
replaces on of the normal weapons (4+1 and 3+2 on Riflemen). Since not every weapon upgrade is a clear DPS upgrade at any range, these values appear less extreme as you may expect of a specific upgrade (for example, the LMG 42 on Grens deals 6.33 DPS at close range, while the Gren K98k deals 5.76 DPS - that means that the LMG 42 barely improves the close range performance, making the squad based number appear too low despite being right).
For instance, vet3 PGrens can beat vet3 fully-upgraded Tommies in equal cover for any distance up to 25. That's a very generous distance. Yet, if you only only base your conclusions on max-range data, you can completely miss that out.
As I said, I was choosing a certain "vacuum" for a reason. Of course you can say that my "vacuum" is too narrow, and you would technically be correct, but the way I selected the "vacuum" itself is fine.
I'm not arguing that vet3 riflemen are not bullshit. I'm only arguing that this is not the right way to show this.
However, I don't agree with your conclusion that CoH2 should completely throw away the slot-item system. Yes, at the current state it's overpowered. Yes, it sucks that one faction (Soviets) has no access to this mechanic. It also leads to untenable situations where some factions are allowed to outspend their opponents to a state that they makes the opponents' investment worthless (double-LMG USF vs single-LMG Ostheer).
The game has multiple aspects, some of which attract some users more than others (e.g., artillery, tank warfare, defensive play, logistics, tactical infantry play). I would argue that no-brainer infantry upgrades hurt the depth of infantry play, as much as auto-fire mortars limit the depth of artillery play.
However, to completely remove infantry customization would leave infantry play in a state that is at least as poor, if not poorer than the current one. (Think of it as removing mortars from the game, than simply nerfing their auto-attack potency).
IMO even double LMGs are ok, as long as they expose the squad to some kind of weakness that the enemy is allowed to exploit.
I never said that I wanted to entirely abandon the slot system, that would be pretty daft as it would require a major overhaul of the current game's background systems, which I am sure Relic can't and won't do.
What I want is that weapon slots and weapon racks are separated, thus allowing for example Riflemen to still pick up weaponry on the field while equipped with a BAR, but to prevent them from equipping a second BAR from the weapon racks. The numbers I used were meant to point out that the general performance of Riflemen justifies this "downgrade" while keeping their general profile as close-in infantry. That's why I also wrote, that Riflemen veterancy needed only a slight touch at best, to keep their current profile (instead of nerfing both BARs and Riflemen vet to a level where they can't perform properly in their role).
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