Profile of Tobis

Here's something I wrote up for another thread, because I'm too lazy to write it up again.

For squad weapons I think the real fault lies in the lack of diversity you get in them. It's pretty much lmgs or bust for every faction. If you are playing USF and you pick a commander with lmgs, are you ever going to tech bars and use both? No, you are going to kit all your troops with identical lmgs and all your units become the same. That's the big problem, units become too similar and all share the same role. With different weapon options given to mainline infantry it is much less beneficial to keep them all together at the same optimal range, it forces you to spread out to be effective.

If there are more options that are balanced for each faction, like g43s vs lmg 42s on grens, the tactics required become much deeper. They would need to add alternatives to the brens and the bars/m1919s, and make it possible and necessary to use them all. They also need to be possible regardless of commander.

What I would like to see is g43s made non doctrinal on grens, (weaker) thompsons added in a weapon rack to USF, non doctrinal m1919s, and once weapons are teched they all become available. These would need to be balanced around each other to favor short, medium, and long range respectively much more. Brits also need something besides brens as an optoin as well, but I see the USF tweaks as the simplest without adding new stuff to the game. If these get balanced well you will see much more diverse infantry combat, even though they are all technically the same units. Their roles should vary much more between squads.

Think about the PE, where it was viable to get g43s, stgs, or schrecks, and one wasn't clearly superior to the others, and you would use them in conjunction. Hopefully without the other crappy PE blobbing mechanics this time.

Abridged version using USF as an example:


- Add a new (weaker) thompson weapon rack
- There are now 4 types, AT(bazookas) Short range(thompsons) Mid range(bars) Long range(m1919s)
- Readjust the weapon balance so the entire squad becomes only effective at that specific range, and mediocre at others.
- Weapon racks no longer give out single weapons, they fully upgrade the squad (double the price, get 2 weapons instead of one)
- Remove the doctrinal requirement for the m1919, allow the weapon upgrade to unlock all 4 weapon types
- Adjust the doctrinal lmg ability to do something else

What this does is promote diversity in the weapon usage. There are good reasons to have different squads to have different weapon upgrades, and with good balance no upgrade would be better than the other. This will break up the monotony of rifle builds, where in the late game every squad becomes the same and identically kitted out. When was the last time you ever saw somebody use both bars and m1919s at the same time? This would also drastically reduce the efficiency of blobbing, as your units will have more variance in range they are effective at.

I would like to see these changes applied in different ways to the other factions too, but I think USF is the one that needs it most due to their limited infantry options.

Also I don't see this as a way to balance the game per se, but as to improve gameplay.

Well if people say that they don't build more than 2-3 why not put a limit at 2-3 it would change nothing right ?

So why would you add this limit? It just makes the game needlessly more complicated and adds arbitrary rules for no reason.

Squad spread mirrored to tommies, LMGs limit to 1, there, infantry engagements fixed and balanced without crippling any faction in the process with silly suggestions that don't have a chance to appear outside of mods.

The limit is called pop-cap. Don't add arbitrary mechanics for single units.

If Panzer III, I agree. If non doc Puma I disagree. If you claim that 444 is fine and can fill that hole pretty nicely, I disagree with you and tell you that you are losing it.

I was thinking about Hotchkiss