Regardless the demo changes, I'm curious what the envisioned usage of them is with this patch. Basically, how do you see Soviet/USF players laying them and activating them over the course of a given average match? Clearly, they retain the ability to destroy garrisons preemptively, as well as their usage against OKW buildings as the like, but it seems like it's now nigh impossible to kill squads with them unless you place the demo along a retreat path or something (or, again, the opposing player sends their unit somewhere without paying attention, but this is significantly less effective if they can't be placed on capture points). The timer version felt like it had a clearer design purpose and synergized better with the other changes as a means of punishing garrisoning without being too harsh on infantry, whereas this one leaves the impression that the intent of this change is simply to lower their usability tremendously.
We want to completely avoid the no-brainer effect that occurs in 1v1 late-game, where demo planted on a flag = free wipe.
We wanted to make demos only possible to hide in certain locations (e.g., heavy cover). However, when we tried implementing the feature, it didn't work. In order not to delay the release of the update on account of demos, we chose the implementation that you currently see.