All i said is related to just giving pio's 5 men with nothing to show for it. Would be the same as just giving ce's and cons svt's stock with nothing to show for it.
Soviets are designed to do without them stock just as with nades. For ots its 4 men stock and 5 or more via doctrines only.
I gave you ample examples why pio's deserve a 200 mp price tag. And ce's 170 mp price tag. You just ignore faction traits for both and downplay everthing pio's can do and over value ce's fewer abilities and merge.
You fixate on a 30/4 mp price differene. Wich is regained in a minimal amount of time.
If you pay attention you will see when skills are simaler soviets have less mp to throw around then then the other factions in the late game mostly. You overblow the suposed problem. Ost and owk armour in general has a bigger chance to bounce but that escapes your mind because it means less damage taken wich in turn means less repair time.
Merge is not free. The mp you dont need for teching towards it goes to at nades molly's and healing. However the unit that can do it costs 240mp. You need to reinforce for 20/18 mp per model. You can easely loose the cons during merge making it cost 240 mp. You cant keep the squad that merged on the field mostly. You sacrifice its field presence. It a model swap and not healing as you claim. Its good for sure but not a no brainer as you try to make it out to be. Talking about nonsense. If it was soo good and free of cost or risk it would be used every game all game, but it isent.
And why in hell would you charge grens in vs ce's in cover? Grens quite handely have the long range advantidge.
Once pgrens hit the field pio's dont even need to be up front. Pgrens do a better job fighting at closer ranges then pio's ever will.
Ce's will melt just as pio's will late game. Axis are more long range oriented so even if the ce's can stay back a bit more they still melt the same.
Soviets wipe fine within their design but still wipe less often, cuz almost all their stock wiping power got nerfed hard or removed. To get wiping power such as others have they need doctrines. So does ost need doctrines to get durable infantry.
Just slapping a 5th man because others have it is bad design. That why i am glad cons got 7th man instead of dp28 or svt upgrade stock. It fits their design of quantity over quality and not just copying other factions.
Combat pios do not deserve their price tag, they rarely win engagements and require you to be thinking ahead, honestly i think *you're* the one overvaluing pios. Let's look at what they have
Less than mediocre cqc performance
sight range
tellers
flamer
THe 'advantages' you actually have that is usuable in a consistent manner is the sight range, tellers while good are also a big investment most of the time. Pios will rarely win against conscripts,rfiles,sections, but combat engineers?
They have
Really solid mid range damage
Scout car synergy
flamer
Democharge
tripwireflare
cost efficiency
The combat engineers can and will beat volks and grens pretty frequently if you play your cards right, set yourself behind some green cover and you now can easily force the grens to close the gap, bleed and maybe even lose the engagement. the fact that you even mention that grens specialize in long range and thus you should never engage in mid-short is nothing short of delusional.
You *have* to grab points
you *have* to get map control
You *have* to end engagements quickly more often than not lest they repostion or reinforce
When a gren squad pushes up and loses 1-2 models (frequently i might add in my postion but for the sake of the more common thing in this particular case let's say 1 model) and the engineer retreats. what happens?
He loses 30 mp
with pioneers you can't really do this because they're dedicated close range infantry which requires you to be thinking ahead, setting up ambushes *constantly* a borderline impossbile task, you can do it once or twice but thats it, and if you get a map like langres... forget it completetly.
Pioneers are worthess trash. they dont win engagements, they dont have any particularly notciable repair speed, they have sight but thats the only real tangible option in most games.