Rifles overperforming?

I completely disagree. If we compare them with volks, the Riflemans are much more expensive than 280/28 vs 260/25.

In this case, in comparison with the Volks, the Riflemans do not have:
1. Improving weapons without special technology costs (Weapon racks) A volks can get STG44 with the linear development of technologies that are not special separate costs.
2. The same goes for grenades. This is also a separate waste of man power and fuel. Volks have flame grenade from the start.
3. AT grenade tied to the vet. This is a big problem if in the middle of the game you lose your squad and it is useless even against light vehicles. Each new Riflemans comes without AT grenades, but each new volks has a faust.
4. The first vet does not give any buffs to combat characteristics. You get only At grenade. When the volks are already getting an improvement in target size.
5. Also the Riflemans do not have sand bags.
6. I don’t know for sure, but it seems that Riflemans have more vet requirements than volks. Accept or Disprove this item.

Rifles overperforming? Funny question. Yes, if you play only on the axis side.

well man, go play okw before u write such things. flame grenades needs med hq or tech hq called in FIRST.
u want rifles to have AT grenades like soviets ? lmao..... and about ur sandbags, actually u do not realize they dont
need to stand in green cover to win 1-1 situations

...

THAT SAID... we did bring up the idea of making officers optional back when we were organizing the USF tech revamp and Relic more or less shut it down. Any discussion is likely to go more in the vein of a thought experiment than an actual rework proposal, unfortunately.

This is the most recent one. IIRC something similar was said years ago.

This is the most recent one. IIRC something similar was said years ago.

The promotion to an officer does not need to be option it can be mandatory and and a prerequest for unlocking the tech. The idea would that one would not be forced to have an extra unit.

The promotion to an officer does not need to be option it can be mandatory and and a prerequest for unlocking the tech. The idea would that one would not be forced to have an extra unit.

+1 Good idea in my book

I completely disagree. If we compare them with volks, the Riflemans are much more expensive than 280/28 vs 260/25.

In this case, in comparison with the Volks, the Riflemans do not have:
1. Improving weapons without special technology costs (Weapon racks) A volks can get STG44 with the linear development of technologies that are not special separate costs.
2. The same goes for grenades. This is also a separate waste of man power and fuel. Volks have flame grenade from the start.
3. AT grenade tied to the vet. This is a big problem if in the middle of the game you lose your squad and it is useless even against light vehicles. Each new Riflemans comes without AT grenades, but each new volks has a faust.
4. The first vet does not give any buffs to combat characteristics. You get only At grenade. When the volks are already getting an improvement in target size.
5. Also the Riflemans do not have sand bags.
6. I don’t know for sure, but it seems that Riflemans have more vet requirements than volks. Accept or Disprove this item.

Rifles overperforming? Funny question. Yes, if you play only on the axis side.

1. Wow, 15 fuel. How could you ever come back from wasting so much fuel...
2. Didn’t realize okw has pak howies to clear garrisons. Flame nades are garrison clearing tools, not grenades. If you use them as grenades you’ll bleed munitions out of your ass for minimal gain. Rifles have proper grenades.
3. Vet 1 isn’t vet 3, plus you get super bazookas and the best AT gun in the game.
4. Pointless
5. They do in multiple commanders, including the super meta Heavy Cav commander, which also gives 30 muni mines that are fast to set down and very effective.

While i know this is less likely to happen compared to just adjusting a couple of values, this is my brainstorming for USF.

1- Keep the current Rifles or go a halfway through their current and previous version.

"Oh shit, here we go again", rework time. All points with multiple options are meant to be taken as different alternative options or freely take some part of them and combined them.

2- Start by making the base HQ design feel less clunky and so big. Remove the unnecessary space and extra MG bunkers. Let people actually hide the ambulance.

3- Talking about healing.
Show Spoiler

4- Officers.
Operation: less Rifles + Thompson, more unique units with not as much shocking value as they arrive.

A) Lazy one. They arrive faster, slightly cheaper but they require to reinforce as they arrive with less models.
B) Make them 4 models. Bring their performance and utility to similar levels as other doctrinal officers or what the major accomplish for USF. Ex: Combined arm effect with support weapons as an ability for the LT?
There are plenty of abilities in game with not much use through factions, mostly on doctrinal units.
C) I do like the reverse concept Vipper, but i think it's too much of a problem to implement (code, test, balance, etc.)

When talking about officers, it is really only the LT and the CPT that are problematic. Relic doesn't want officers removed or made optional, so it becomes a little harder to work with.

People have already touched upon it, but one of the big issues of USF is that at T0, there is nothing to build but RE and riflemen, leading to people wanting to build riflemen. However, at their price and performance, 2 riflemen + officer is too little, and 3 riflemen + officer is too much in many cases. I would recommend:

1) Keep the LT the same (basically a rifle-squad with smoke and an smg), but decrease his build time so he comes out and can take the place of the 3rd riflemen squad. I would also see the M20 and Stuart moved from being in the same tier, maybe by swapping stuart and pak howie.

2) Make the Captain part of a 4 man team that works like a frontline officer from the other factions. Remove access to the supervise production ability, replace with an ability that either makes riflemen harder to hit, or maybe affects vehicles in some way.

3) Major can stay the same, give him supervise production to reinforce that he is more of a backline officer.

It will be hard to fix USF, but I think this should get it close. I would also like to see a non popcap medic option, maybe allow players to buy base medics like SOV.

Haven't played for two weeks. What's the matchup like between rifle and grens now? Is it even worse for the grens? I believe the matchup between rifle and grens were in a good spot before the patch so any deviations from that would be an unnecessary nerf for grens.

Everyone agreed that to solve the rifle vs volk problem, volks would receive a REAL nerf and rifles wouldn't be touched. But the balance team thought they were better.....

I would also see the M20 and Stuart moved from being in the same tier, maybe by swapping stuart and pak howie.

It would probably be best to give USF an early game AT option that isn't REs with bazookas. The stuart moving to lieutenant was the decision to give lieutenant AT while keeping the AT gun on captain, as no one would choose captain if the lieutenant had both the MG and the AT gun. I think all that needs to happen is adjusted timing. luchs + puma seems to shut down m20+stuart combo, but I don't know where the sweet spot for bringing them out is. As the m20 is countered by almost any other light vehicle I think it would still make sense to let it hit the field a tad early. I've seen the m20+stuart strat countered by OKW pretty hard in a few recent replays as well so maybe some of the issue is some players not adjusting yet?

One could also do another approach where one would have the option to promote officer.

For instance one could get a MP discount for promoting LT to captain or captain to Major.

One could might need to remove the units from the map with mechanism similar to refit.

When talking about officers, it is really only the LT and the CPT that are problematic. Relic doesn't want officers removed or made optional, so it becomes a little harder to work with.

People have already touched upon it, but one of the big issues of USF is that at T0, there is nothing to build but RE and riflemen, leading to people wanting to build riflemen. However, at their price and performance, 2 riflemen + officer is too little, and 3 riflemen + officer is too much in many cases. I would recommend:

1) Keep the LT the same (basically a rifle-squad with smoke and an smg), but decrease his build time so he comes out and can take the place of the 3rd riflemen squad. I would also see the M20 and Stuart moved from being in the same tier, maybe by swapping stuart and pak howie.

2) Make the Captain part of a 4 man team that works like a frontline officer from the other factions. Remove access to the supervise production ability, replace with an ability that either makes riflemen harder to hit, or maybe affects vehicles in some way.

3) Major can stay the same, give him supervise production to reinforce that he is more of a backline officer.

It will be hard to fix USF, but I think this should get it close. I would also like to see a non popcap medic option, maybe allow players to buy base medics like SOV.

Good ideas but...
Captain should stay at 5 men, in my opinion.
Love the Major suggestions, he really should have supervise when he isn't using his abilities in the field.
No need to swap the units yet again and leave Captain with only an ATG to offer, as I doubt we will see both Halftrack and Stuart in the same build.
Also give the LT a Snare by default, please.

You mean making every usf unit better than their counterparts AND giving them free squads makes them overperform?

Woah

I predict the moment Officers become "not free" people will complain about 4 Rifle into M20.

I like this idea of Major getting Supervise that Comm_Ash suggested. If it were me, I'd let Ambulance "lockdown" inside the abomination that is the Pizza Base somehow since USF infantry all retreats to one teeny tiny point on the crust so Ambulance ends up in the most obvious and vulnerable position physically possible for USF inviting all forms of rocket artillery and EASY snipes form Pumas and tanks. This NEEDS to get fixed somehow.

How about this?

Make all Officers 3 man squads.

Give them a 25 MP upgrade that expands their squad size back to 5.

When you throw in the reinforcement cost, that's 283 MP.

No more power spike, and you have the option to not upgrade the officers if you don't want more mainline infantry.

How about this?

Make all Officers 3 man squads.

Give them a 25 MP upgrade that expands their squad size back to 5.

When you throw in the reinforcement cost, that's 283 MP.

No more power spike, and you have the option to not upgrade the officers if you don't want more mainline infantry.

And what do you do with this squad of 3?

And what do you do with this squad of 3?

Bleed Manpower.
Feed Veterancy to the Germans.
Hope to be able to recrew a team weapon and get rid of it.

And what do you do with this squad of 3?

reinforce it or back cap

Haven't played for two weeks. What's the matchup like between rifle and grens now? Is it even worse for the grens? I believe the matchup between rifle and grens were in a good spot before the patch so any deviations from that would be an unnecessary nerf for grens.

Everyone agreed that to solve the rifle vs volk problem, volks would receive a REAL nerf and rifles wouldn't be touched. But the balance team thought they were better.....

I feel like it affected OKW a lot more than OST. Reason being Rifles already shit on grens at mid-close pretty handily before. So basically this change just makes it more of the same. Atleast that was my experience in a couple games I played recently.

I'd welcome any of the ideas below suggested by You guys above to make usf more varied and less infantry crowded at certain game stages (I added a few of my own )

1. Upgrade an exsisting rifle squad to an officer.
2. Small squad size(with reduced manpower cost) of the officers unlocking the tier with the possibility to be upgraded to full squads.
3. Unlocking the whole tier with the already existing button (manpower and fuel cost) without the officer and just buying the officers if you want to later with some attractive manpower cost to, sort of, promote buying them.
4. Make some general possibility to withdraw usf infantry units with some manpower refunded to avoid having too many rifle units on the field.

Ups - and on the topic; I'm generally against buffing one unit and nerfing its opponent at the same time in one patch. Generally, however, my feeling is that new racketen makes up for the nerf to volks and and buff to rifles. Also earlier obersoldaten seem to make up for the new rifle/volks dynamics.

And what do you do with this squad of 3?

Cap. Crew vehicles. Stick some bazookas on them for an extra AT squad. Crew a team weapon to ditch the squad entirely if you don't actually want it.

You could also use the Captain specifically to supervise production without tying up a hefty chunk of pop sitting in your base doing nothing.

Or spend 83 MP on making them 5 man. I see no reason you couldn't offer that upgrade to the Major too.

You guys complaining about Riflemen know they're way, WAY more expensive than Volks or Grens right?