Profile of OrangePest

I probably will post more later about your other points, but one quick question regarding the teching:

Why should OKW need quicker timings?
They get their LV out at about ~120 fuel gain depending on tech choice. Soviets at ~140 (without AT nade), USF at ~110 (with ambo), UKF at ~120 as well (with bolster). OKW also can generate a lot of map control/fuel advantage through aggressiveness in the early game.
T2 has not been changes for ages and it was the meta choice beforehand, and only Soviets have recently seen a slight rebalance to their T3 timing and units. But those I would not call a buff.
I don't see how all of this indicates that OKW LVs arrive too late. Some further explanation would be good.

Second, just came to my mind:
If you say OKW had problems in their infantry department (Volks too weak), why do you want to nerf Obersoldaten? They are an important supplement for OKW to trade well in the late game.

1- The tech timings is more or less related to p4 timing, the light vehicles (puma execpted) aren't very good, and making luchs come a bit later at the cost of being able to choose between a stronger early LV game (with luchs having increased cost+ performance) or an earlier medium is far more interesting than the binary of either going puma,luchs or puma but ultimatetly regardaless of having picked between either choice your medium/heavy (ie p4 or cmd panther) will still arrive extremely late.

I have nowhere indicated that obers need to be nerfed. Rather that volks need to be buffed because obers while decent enough, require a lot of investments to be worthwhile and having more than 1 is more of a detriment than a boon in my experience.

Edit: The soviet change was also an extreme buff, having t70 come out at 7 minutes consistently while retaining a very large part of its firepower makes its an auto pick no matter what and combined with certain doctrines (guards or svt cons) becomes oppressive as all hell.

Edit edit: Also just realized the rifle nade AT change for usf and decreased timing of m20 has also made it busted.

So i'm making this thread for a few particular reasons, (mainly the okw struggle in all of its matchups.) and what the main causes are, there are three main ones really.

-The poor teching
-Lack of good starting units
-The awful scaling.

So let's start with the first one, the expensive and not particularly useful teching. Currently t1 is a decent choice for timings, but will ultimatetly arrive late, this is becaus of light vehicles being a neccessity to survive. Now this wouldn't be an issue if the army scaled well, but on average in my experience the usual arriving of a p4 is around the 17~~ minute mark, if not later. Now don't get me wrong the p4 is an excellent unit, amongst the best even. But when it comes out far later and has to deal with vehicles which can outexcell it in a lot of departments, whilist having a worse supporting frontline (hence why the p4j for WEHR is probably the best medium in the axis arsenal, competing with the likes of the 76mm for best medium in the game.) Makes going for it almost redunant, why would i want to get it, when i can instead get a panther which will come a few minutes later but still atleast hold the frontline against enemy vehicles and be able to trade well enough.

But nontheless this makes your techings extremely dangerous and risky, while still being mandatory units to stay relevant in the mid game. This mainly hinges on the puma to shut down the light vehicles, of which you cannot make any mistakes, if you do such as losing it, you've lost the game. It is that much of a crutch.

Honestly i could write about how awful the teching is. But instead of prattling on about it, i'll give some suggestions to help with the teching without breaking the game.

-Decrease the tech cost of t2, by about 20 odd fuel, now this would make the luchs have absurdly strong timings, so it would of course get a fuel increase with a slight boost to performance. This allows a strong luchs+puma build, while still leaving a single puma build viable without breaking your own p4 timings.
I'm sure there are better suggestions, but its that or making p4 cheaper/making t3 cheaper which would open up alot of abuse for ostwind/flame hetzer builds which is no bueno.


Now moving on to the second point. The lack of good starting units, this might be a bit controversial, but i think sturmpios might as well not be there, they're an overly expensive unit that lacks firepower at mid to long range, now this would be fine and dandy...if they could consistently trade well. This is however something they do not do. The things a sturmpio does well is the following
Ambushes
Killing units on the retreat.
These are the two key pieces that only sturmpioneers can do, but there's a problem that you might see almost immiedatly. It's only good if you constantly pierce through your opponents lines and abuse sight blockers. What happens if you can't do that? Well you lose your engagements or trade poorly enough you won't win. And as the game goes on, this becomes less and less likely to happen. An good example of this issue is for example a map like Nexus.

It's about 1-2 minutes in, you're up against an usf player, let's say you push the southern fuel. two problems become apparent.
-If there is more than one squad covering the fuel, i will have no way to take it.
-If there is a squad behind green cover i will not be able to push the fuel and i cannot enter the line of sight without being pushed away and bleeding hp and models.

Now, Nexus is a map where okw has to gamble with the sturmpioneers. either fuel North or fuel south, if you encounter more than 1 squad that happens to be a combat one (conscripts execpt, but yuu can still lose to those due them being able to field more squads quicker early on)

Your 300 manpower squad, which costs 30 to reinforce, has a zone of engagement that is pointblank, requires 1v1s. So now your actually instead of looking for fights, are hoping to *avoid* any sort of engagements in the hope you can set up an ambush once you've taken your key territory points.

So my proposed solution for sturmpios, might be a bit controversial again. Give them a 60 munition upgrade that grants them 3 kar98s and a g43. Replacing their stg44s, this would give you the choice of keeping a semi-playable assault squad and capacitiy for wiping, whilist giving you the choice of playing at range and losing your close quarters firepower, this could also open up a more variety in strategy. Alongside this i would reduce the cost of sturmpios to 280.
So now you could play multiple openings, such as 2x sturmpios, 3x sturms, fussi+sturm rifle starts, standard volks, ect. I think it would make it alot more interesting.

Moving on to volks, the issue is quite obvious, they scale *extremely* poorly, while having a poor early game, this is matchup dependent, but to make it short.

Combat flamers will win in 1v1s against volks consistently.
Usf once they have bars or any sort of elite infantry will make them bordering on incapable of winning fights without a hefty amount of mg34s or sandbags to hide behind. Now an arguement you might hear is that obers are meant to take over the lategame. But problems pop up really quick with that line of reasoning. Obers firstly need vet 2, then an 80 muni upgrade, and then on top of that, having more than one will eat up too much of your popcap to the point where it isnt really sustainable to fight lategame with even 2x obers. Thus volks *have* to be able to carry their weight at the very minimum at the late game, even if it means suffering mid game.

Okay i just noticed i rambled on about the 2nd and 3rd point at once there so i guess there's that said.
That covers pretty much all my issues with the faction, but to counterbalance the negative i've said about them, there's a quite a few positive factors with the faction.

-Strong mediums
-Strong light vehicles (puma primarily)
-Good elite infantry (though falters due to poor mainline)
-Strong artillery.
-Extremely strong commanders (Barring fortifications i think all of them are viable and strong)

TLDRrange is a crybaby l2p noob

Imo 1919s need a look at, they make fighting at range pointless while already having a ultra strong cqc ability, basically does what grens do but better while having access to better supporting units (stuart+50cal+howie+atg). It's incredibly cancerous when combined with sandbag. Though the meta commander with it doesn't have it thankfully.

The vet ability was nerfed years ago to prevent exactly that.

Looks like you haven't used that combination in at least 2 years and with focused sight, its even less now if you try to stack.

The sheer confidence of just being wrong lmfao.

Fair enough lol and I wasnt meaning to be antagonistic, I was trying to support your point that patches are always dropping the hammer one way or another, creating more issues.

Np