Profile of SweetrollNearTheDoor

Also a big thing that would be great is a lockdown button for HMGs like AA Half tracks.

I wonder what happened to that manual reload button on units like MG's and Ostwind. Not sure if it was used in one of the unofficial balance mods or the previews. In any case it would definitely still be a welcomed QoL change.

That question is best asked to Relic directly, even Mr Smith cant answer that for you I don't think

I think you misspelled "Soon" ™

I've noticed quite a bit of concerned people saying that the factions are starting to look too much like carbon copies. I'd argue that some mechanics have to be shared and be accessible to all factions or they will become seriously hindered in some vital gameplay areas. One of these is the access of reliable and more or less cost effective garrison clearing. (I'd say the same applies to snares at least.)

The one man sniper squads change at least should lessen the impact of sniper A-move cheese and retreat path flanks should hopefully yield better results for every faction. With the mortar changes I hope the need for snipers for every faction goes down and one can rely on other tools to displace team weapons, clear garrisons and whatnot.

Now back to the asymmetrical design. Unit diversity can still be achieved even if factions share similarities with units in the same category. For example the OKW and Ost P4s act very differently. Other has very good reliable anti inf damage on it's main gun alone and has the Hull and pintle mgs as well and armor skirts while having a higher cost associated to it. Ost one is cheaper but is also less effective and has to earn its armor skirts. T34s can dish out damage with their hull MGs but that requires smart facing and they still have a decent main gun and the ram as a utility. Shermans have the shell switch to adapt better to several situations and have a unique radio net ability.

All of these medium tanks have unique characteristics that make using them pretty different from one another and I don't think it's bad for gameplay design that every faction has access to such somewhat identical units. (Imagine if the T34 was still on its pre-anything Buff when it was in T3 and Soviet players would be stuck using SU85s as the only good non-doc medium armor while Axis would have superior medium tanks. Try that scenario on a CQC map like Trois Pont and try to have an enjoyable game.)

The maps also play a vital role in diverse build orders. Very few build orders can be applied effectively "As is" to every map and strats need to be changed on the fly depending on the map automatch gave you. Even some niche units like the vanilla Churchill can be surprisingly effective on some map specific circumstances. One example would be the city part of Lienne Forest where Churchills can pretty easily dominate the CQC armor battles from behind buildings. Also factions often excel at certain type of maps:

Vaux Farmlands favors light vehicle oriented Allies more in the early game especially but I think it is fair for Axis to have some good tools to hold such a considerably larger front even if it was not ideal. Then again Allies need some reliable tools to play on Crossing in the woods without Axis locking the entire map with few well placed bunkers and MGs. This is why I think it is so important to have some basic mechanics and units accessible to every faction to adapt to the large map variety the automatch provides. Large map pool variety can of course be a double edged sword. While it enables much bigger BO flexibility and different playstyles keeping games interesting and more unpredictable it will of course make the effort to balance factions to work on every map type a living hell.

Tl;dr It should be ok to sacrifice asymmetrical faction design on some key areas to keep factions viable on every map type and to have tools to have an enjoyable experience on them. Variety just because of variety is irrelevant unless there are objective arguments to justify the unit differences.

(P.S. does anyone know what the actual Scope tm is this time? The patch seems to tackle a wide spectrum of issues and it's not as easy to pinpoint the main focus as before.)

I'm seeing little mention of SU85. The thing is SU76 is not the end of the line Soviet TD. And yet it still seems to perform better, has more utility, mobility and lower tech tier than its bigger counterpart. If this peculiar comparison is ignored and the fact that Soviets have two non-doctrinal TDs is forgotten I fear vital facts will be intentionally/unintentionally left out of the argument.

(Feel free to check out my SU76 vs SU85 comparison automatch replays where 3 SU76s took down an Elephant head on with no mark target and easily won. If that does not count as peculiar indeed I don't know what does. Also the brutality of the massed barrages with no real reaction time can be seen demonstrated)

Every kickstarter backing and pre-order purchase has a risk but I think the transparency of the devs is really refreshing. Their current goals seem to follow the results they got from their RTS survey, like the emphasis on really great RTS campaigns. Their considerable interest in community feedback from the first steps and openness to new ideas and mechanics from the backers and the community is a huge plus for me personally.

They also mentioned they're not ashamed to stand on the shoulders of giants and will implement well working tried and tested mechanics from other games like the cover usage of CoH and Hero units from Warcraft 3. I hope this will help avoid the need to create some sort of a new niche game like a MOBA-RTS hybrid

I hope they continue to be as active in their Discord, Kickstarter comments, Facebook etc and interact with the community even on their spare time as has been the case so far. That will help create a healthy dev-community relationship and ensures good communication both ways and a friendly relaxed atmosphere.

It also seems that even from alpha stages streaming and content creating is allowed and encouraged so people have a lot of time to form their impressions of the game before final release. Also community feedback could be used to implement good new mechanics and scrap questionable ones well before release when changes are much easier to make. Once again I think such transparency about the development and the passion they have in showing their content is going to be an excellent P.R. move.