Yet with in these year it M20 has received massive buff like:
-Manpower cost from 340 to 240
-M20 accuracy from 0.75/0.475/0.2 to 0.55/0.45/0.25
-Weapon accuracy increases with veterancy: +10%/+15%/+15%
-Veterancy requirements lowered from 880/1760/3520 to 500/1000/2000
-Veterancy 3 reduces mine deployment time from 12 to 7 seconds.
-Veterancy 3 increases stealth detection radius by 10; goes up to 35.
Not to mention the tech changes.
The unit was OP. Actually many USF units where OP but that was intentional because it was counter weight by the tech limitations. Once the tech limitation where removed these units had to be adjusted.
While you are at it, can you list the change to any other units in the game because that's pretty much as relevant to the topic.
Anyway it has nothing to do with the Zook nerf. If the M20 was so blatantly OP during all this time I wonder why we only see Top players using USF faction since the last patch came out.
At the end, if M20 AI performance were too good, while not nerfing them instead of removing the zook?
The M20 changed, but Lieutenant tier did.
On release, LT tier had a BAR Lieutenant, .50 cals without the vet 0 AP, the M20 and an unusable, handbrakeless AAHT. If you went M20, it was your AT.
So it had some tools to fight back so it didn't get splattered. If it didn't, one light vehicle could all but hard counter the tier.
Lieutenant tier now has a Bazooka Lieutenant, Vet 0 AP .50 cals, the M20 and the Stuart. Everything in it can kill a 222.
With that, the bazooka was overkill, so they removed it.
Hum, Luch has tools to fight back with the raketen, SPsherk and Puma around (and mines) but hey it still has enough pen to kill a m20 or even fight equally vs a M8 and defend itself vs t70 or Stuart.
222 has tools to fight back light tanks, kill M20 and fight equally a m8 while having in the same tier pak40 and dual pzshrek + mines.
On release USF was all about superRM which by the time have been nerfed to what they were before the last patch. And the m20 what perfectly fine, so much that nobody was playing USF at high level. Didn't see anyone complain about it.
Then suddenly RM are buffed and the M20 is becoming too strong. I mean we're talking about a unit you need to whoop out the squad (2sec cd if in combat) and then use the bazooka through smoke that can miss or crew be killed or you can even lost the m20 while the squad is out.
In fact what make me think the balance team is full of crap atm is that this mechanism was probably one of the best balanced and interesting in the game. One that need some game awareness, micro, skill and a bit of luck to work. The thing that make you progress on your skill.
And they removed it because of themselve overbuffing the RM and not being able to accept it and correct it.
We're back into USF SuperRM's faction with zero diversity.