Profile of coffee111

germans are more compelling to play because they provide more options and have great unit and tier synergy. Combined arms is a genuine thing with Germans. One thing to mix this up is swapping the SU76 and T70 between their respective buildings allowing for a more variable play style and true combined arms with their vehicle options.

I actually own and use the Ostruppen commander quite regularly, simply for the challenge and the lulz. I've noticed a few things about my beloved bullet sponges.

1: With the Officer and his buff Ostruppen can provide an extremely nasty surprise to an allied player who has become used to their generally weak performance. I've regularly wiped allied blobs from a stationary position while the officer's buff was active.

2: 200mp is not an overpriced initial cost for what they are, however, the reinforce cost is absurdly overpriced. Reduce them back down to 10 for reinforce, and keep the initial cost of 200. They die FAST, it should be easy to replace them once you've requisitioned them, while the higher initial cost is balanced since it reflects their normalized capture speed and helps prevent mass blobs too early.

3: The panzerfaust needs to come at vet 1 or battle phase 1; not the tier 1 building. I've found they do decent work as a stall unit in order to fast tech the Mechanized Kompanie (tier 2), at which point a squad or two of pgrens with shrecks can hide out in their blob while supported with a fast scout car/fht, but in doing this, not having the faust only reinforces the general uselessness and failure to scale into late game they currently suffer from.

Overall, I think they are better than most think if given a vastly cheaper reinforce cost. A price reduction or a stat buff will probably cause problems that aren't apparent since no one really uses them. I'm telling you, that officer's buff makes them nasty as fuck while it's up and a blob of em supported by a scout car and/or a squad or two of pgrens hiding in their ranks can make them really hard to remove from objectives in the earlier critical stages.

In short, reduce their reinforce costs as it's too high and they make you bleed manpower at the current cost to reinforce, but keep the 200mp initial cost to reflect their buffed capture rate and to prevent early spam. Then give them a way to get their panzerfausts without having to build the T1 building as they fit well in a "skip t1" strategy from my experience so they have some sort of scaling. An mp40 upgrade, or other weapon options, wouldn't be a terrible idea either, especially since the doctrine does not provide a call-in vehicle and the fuel to muni float would have an extra use in purchasing weapon upgrades.

As for the Mobile Defense Doctrine call in most of what I've already said applies here as well and I agree with everyone here that they need to be less random and come a little earlier (1cp or 2 cp). Perhaps guarantee both units always come the upgraded weapon, keeping the vet random; considering the officer is not available with this doctrine they lose a lot of potential and can afford more direct buffs in the way of free vet and free upgrades. Beyond that, apply my other above suggestions, such as the easier to obtain pfaust and the vastly reduced reinforce cost and I think they would perform well enough for what they are.

I don't think it would make any sense to switch T-34/76 and SU-76, if so no one will build T3 anymore. There's no place in the frontline late game for M5 and T-70, Su-76 obviously can't do anything on its own.

The point of SU-76 in T4 is when you need a somewhat all round unit (AI and AT) you can get one right away, it can be supported by SU-85 and vice versa. Those two are more of a defensive unit and therefore not supposed to work alone.

Actually, Relic devs have been quoted as saying they wanted to force Soviet players to make a choice between T3 and T4 and that is why the T70 and T34 are essentially the same role, as are the SU76 and SU85. Frankly, it was a stupid idea and for whatever reason they are unwilling to admit they made a mistake.

I was, for a time a fan of moving the T34 to T4 and moving the SU76 to T3. Since then I have been convinced that a stronger change could be done by simply swapping the T70 with the SU76. Soviets lack combined arms (a term many players use regularly here, but still seem to fail to understand what it means), especially so in T3 and T4. By providing T3 with a mobile gun with light AT and short ranged artillery you have two units which can work in tandem and fill in each other's weaknesses; same with T4, by putting the T70 in T4 you have a mobile vehicle to counter light vehicles and infantry and spot/sight targets, while the SU85 can sit back and kill from range. It's the perfect fix imo, and gives new purpose and value to both the T70 and SU76 beyond each being the "little brother" of the vehicle they occupy their respective building with.

As for everything else, yes, Conscripts and Penals both need a role adjustment.

T70/SU76 still suffer from being too high risk too low reward.

I agree with most of your observations, especially this one. I still believe that the SU76 and T70 should be swapped between their respective buildings. With the increased fuel costs for both vehicles, any minor improvements these units received are lost due to them still coming far too late and essentially being a weaker version of the unit's they share a building with.

I'll restate here why they will find more use in different buildings:
T70 is a weaker version of the T34/76 and in most cases a player is better off simply waiting to build the new and improved T34/76. Same applies with the SU76, it is a weaker version of the SU85 (albeit the barrage is a decent ability), and most players will simply wait for the SU85 while stalling with their ZiS.

If Relic were to swap these unit positions between buildings, you then have the SU76 providing reasonable AT from range while the T34/76 engages, while the ability to barrage gives T3 a form of light artillery it is currently lacking; you would also find great use for the T70 in T4 in the way of being able scout at range and provide sight for the SU85, while also being able to provide close range AI support to the SU85.

I know it's unlikely that Relic will adopt such a change, but the fact remains that despite their currently stronger late game potential, the Soviets remain a generally boring faction to play. It seems, currently, that the lack of combined arms in the Soviet mid to late game is only less noticeable due to a few over nerfs on the Germans. We are close to pretty good balance again, but it doesn't make the Soviets a compelling faction to play, and until the Soviets get the ability to field combined arms, Soviet late game will always suffer in any instance where the units between the factions are properly balanced due to a lack of combined arms options.

Let's not get overly dramatic Deathhead. The Panther was absolutely overnerfed in this last patch, but the overall changes of the last patch improved the balance a lot. There are tweaks and adjustments to be made, so make your case and convince relic to fix them.

I would say everything except the cost increase on the Panther were warranted. I would also argue that with the fundamental change/nerf to blitz (which was absolutely needed) meant the cost increase (on both the panther and blitz) is unnecessary.