Think of brace as a standard retreat.
Brace =/= retreat.
If you hit retreat before its too late, your squad will survive.
Brace =/= retreat.
Emplacements cannot move so its obvious they should have something to protect them.
So can we give Brace to all static structures then?
If you blob as OKW or usf, got into heavy fire and retreat to FRP, and then 30sec later blob again into heavy fire, do you have cooldown on retreat? No, you dont. You can save your troops how many times you want.
Except FRP's aren't hard to punish at all.
As for brace. Giving it cooldown like this, means insta death.
No it means you need to consider your investment. 60 seconds is still shorter than the recharge on most artillery pieces.
Attack with mortar - force to brace - wait - attack with off map, Stuka, sturmtiger, mortars, leig, anything to kill it.
It's almost like that's how it should work!?
Now imagine that your blob cannot retreat from OKW Schwerer and you can just watch how models are dying.
But the Schwer doesn't have the durability of emplacements though? It cannot move, but it cannot brace.
Make brace without cooldown, so you can use it constantly, but received damage would be around 20-30% instead of almost unkillable.
This would make mortars and support guns to good against them, decent cooldown + high reduction (which is how it will be in the upcomming patch) works well enough.