Heavy assault guns like: SturmTiger, ISU-152, KV-2 indirect, Brumbar, Dozer AVRE, should be better at dealing with Fortification like UKF emplacements, 88s, bunkers, flaks, trucks...
All of these units work fine against emplacements, brumm and dozer are really in accurate tho, ST chips nice hp, AVRE one shots a Pak43
SturmTiger especially does very little damage even to a Bofors if it is braced (around like 20%), and due to long time before firing one has plenty of time to use brace.
That's a problem with brace, not assault guns
Lets see what Relic has to say about the subject:
In game AVRE description:
"Churchill AVRE this special designed and protected Churchill AVRE (Armored Vehicle Royal Engineers) is equipped with a massive 290 Petard mortar that fires 40 lb (Flying Dustbin) capable of levering fortification or smashing troop concentrations."
So according to Relic there are fortification in game...
In game description Brumbar
SturmPanzer Brummbar known by its nickname "brummbar", this heavy assault gun has a 15cm howitzer in an armored casemate. It brings its gun into close range and smashes the enemy with 40kg
shells.
So according to Relic heavy assault gun exist and Brumbar is one of them.
Can we move on to something more constructive now pls...
This is a "valid" argument
What does the avre text say?
"effective vs infantry and buildings"
What does AVRE do?
Wipe infantry and clears buildings.
But this isn't a valid argument? These are about the same thing, as you said "
What Relic Says", and from unit description. But AVRE one shots Pak43, Bunkers, Flak Emplacements etc, so it does what it's supposed to, as you quoted
No logic
So let me here your opinion on the prerequisite of actually debating this issue:
1)Do fortifications exist in COH2?
2)Do Assault Guns exist in COH2?
3)Is the part of design intent of assault Guns to destroy buildings and fortifications?
1)Yes
2)Yes
3)Yes, and they do it fine, the only problem is Brace (this ability is not op)
Now that we cleared things up a bit, we can move to a more interesting part, which is how to buff A.G. against structures without upsetting balance.
One could add some damage modifier similar to Avre against structures.
One could also make it veterancy related:
for instance Brumbar vet 1 ability "Bunker Busting Barrage" could have damage bonus or even bypass some of the "brace" damage reduction. For instance instead of 75% damage reduction the reduction could be lower down to 50%.
A similar change could be made to the Sturm Tiger (S.T.) also by adding similar affect in vet 1 since the vet 1 S.T. is quiet useless.
Similar change could be made to other assault guns like the Dozer, Kv-2 indirect, ISU-152 giving some anti-structure barrage abilities (where not available) or some structure damage modifiers with veterancy.
Assault guns work great against structures right now, flats houses with a few shots (depending on the material and size of the house), bunkers and flak emplacements for example also get shredded, nothing wrong there.
The thing about making these kind of units be more powerful against structures would force them to be nerfed against infantry overall, so they wouldn't just shred all the emplacements and infantry in seconds, simple balance stuff.