Hey guys, I've scanned this thread so sorry if i end up repeating what people have said, but there's some things I think are worth mentioning.
I think we need to focus on what's going to make british usable, not what we think would be cool or quirky.
so things like adding the scot/honey etc, we already have aec which is really good anyway and light vehicle generally affects only a 10 minute portion of the game. Not that this isn't important, panzer 2 or puma play can straight up win you the game, but british don't really struggle here, especially with how quick you can get a cromwell/centaur out if you want one. In my opinion brits struggle very badly in the late game. they struggle against LefHs, mobile mortars and panther dives due to lack of snares. As well as british infantry are all very expensive other than sappers so the late game blob fests are nearly always won by OKW as they trade out with you better.
Changing the valentine is fiddly, it's never going to be as good as the cromwell, or if you buff it, it becomes literally a cheaper cromwell. It's radar ability is really good, yes, but nerfing and changing it is pretty harsh as you cant fire anything into the fog of war anyway and remember OKW already have the infra red halftrack as stock. Although it's not quite as good as the valentine's it costs 5 fuel and comes earlier, in my opinion that is OP not the valentine. So nerfing the valentine literally is just buffing OKW.
It's very difficult changing the base 25 pdrs as at the end of the day they are basically free and unkillable. However if I go royal artillery, the only dedicated artillery commander in the game, I would expect the best artillery in the game, not the worst.
My opinion on royal artillery is it actually wont take much to make this commander useful, I would propose:
1. Early Warning: Early warning should be changed to be identical to other artillery flares where you get one flare but get to choose the location of the flare.
A small view of random sections of the map is not useful and it costs far too much anyway for something based on luck to find what you are looking for and only covers frontline sectors anyway. The valentine already gives you a view of frontline sectors for free, why would I pay for the same ability. In order to make most of the royal artillery regiment useful, this commander needs it's own PROPER recon, like the other artillery flares or a recon flyover in order to find and counter LeFHs or spot other targets further back than the frontline without relying on an american ally with a major. Someone suggested swapping this for a command vehicle which would also be good because command vehicles can call in recon.
2.Concentration barrage: This used to be the most OP ability in the game, it could be cast through FoW and all airburst shells landed on the marker meaning you could just snipe OKW trucks and LeFHs etc. They essentially double nerfed it by getting rid of the firing through FoW and dispersing the airburst shells.
That change essentially means that whilst LeFHs and ML-20s can be fired into fog of war, the british equivalent can't. In fairness the british equivalent can't be destroyed so it's not completely unfair, but with the change to early warning, this ability becomes a lot more useful as you can actually use it to counter LefHs which is what it should do. Alternatively, you could remove airburst and allow it to fire into FoW, this also seems fair to me as whilst LefHs can be fired for free, they can be destroyed, meanwhile 25 pdrs can't be destroyed but require munitions to fire.
3.Valentine: As much as people complain, the valentine is pretty good, it'll beat up a panzer 2 if need be and the recon is godly and the sexton ability is just downright funny if you get the chance to use it, it can also deploy smoke for your infantry to push mgs as well which is definitely underused.
Perhaps it could be better in combat. the issue is buffing the cannon makes it just a cheaper cromwell, I suppose you could make it fill a similar niche to the puma? like a light tank destroyer might be cool, but the easiest thing to not screw with balance is buff the MGs like the AEC, that way it won't replace the cromwell like the AEC did for a bit and will be good enough to actually fight infantry and hold off panzer 2s etc if need be. I personally like the idea of adding the valentine as a buildable unit at 0 CP from the platoon command post then at 8 CP you unlock the recon ability, seems fairer to me. Makes it actually usable in the early game as a light vehicle but then can revert to it's original use at 8 CP.
4. Sexton: It's a pretty good unit tbh, people always say it needs more range.
If they made concentration barrage to be used with an accurate artillery flare to counter LefHs it wouldn't need the range upgrade. It only feels like it has bad range because you can't counter LefHs with it in my opinion. If you give the regiment the ability to counter LeFHs, the sexton can be used for its intentional use of killing blobs to defend points and squashing mortars and infantry support guns which it does really well already.
5. Perimeter overwatch: Everyone knows it's bad. It's better than people think, but it's bad still.
Use it when the enemy has 50 points left and you have 2 capture points and you win, it's just a niche win button. Either they need a new ability or to fix this one. Best way to fix this is make it 'Sector' overwatch where the 25 pdrs (and maybe all sextons?) work like OKW sector artillery and rapid fire on everything in a chosen sector. For the price (250 muni) I would expect to be able to choose any sector, alternatively decrease the price to 120-150 muni and it could be only owned sectors making it great for defence if you increase the firerate or give it a mix of HE, Airburst and AP shells or something.
Alternatively you could just trade this ability for some other artillery strike or something, maybe railway arty/240mm whatever it's called? like special weapons reg gets?
Also if we're revamping commanders, I would be more than happy to trade the first commander abilty from every regiment for tank hunter sections. Brits need a snare desperately.