Profile of achpawel

I didn't follow the rest of the conversation, I thought it was only about giving Ostheer a bit better stock repairs (like on the level of giving Pioneers faster vet or whatever). Which I wouldn't mind personally.

Hi. That's exactly my point.

If you find repair speed to be a problem, you playing the faction wrong, it's that simple. Don't rely on your armour, it's just a tool that helps you tip the balance. You can't fight allied tank destroyers head on with armour (exception a well used and supported elifant).

If you play correctly, repairing isn't that big a deal with Ost.

Yeah it's a tricky faction, but it's harder to be defensive and push off wave after wave of assault.

TBH it's not that I find it personally a problem. I just believe that is one of the things that makes ost a difficult faction to play with and, more importantly, a faction that does not forgive mistakes. You really have to have an almost perfect game to win against a similarly skilled opponent.
I feel that there has been so many boosts to US and UK or even Soviets with, for example, shocks and heavy tanks that ost was left behind.
The problem I see watching replays by propagandacast, tightrope or casts from tournaments make me truly believe that the repair department for ost is the problem. If you manage to kill allied tanks everything is ok, but if you just damage them (which is often the case if allies don't overextend) they come back fighting so much more quickly. They decap victory points more efficiently thanks to more consistent tank support. So now ost needs to decap VPs attacking allies at all costs. It is the moment when ost starts playing an uphill battle facing mgs, AT guns with armour piercing rounds, infantry with bazookas and jacksons and other tanks. In such situation pios slow repair speed and the fact that you need to spend quite a lot of manpower on pios create infantry imbalance. Ost withraw pios to repair a tank/tanks (very often you need two - 400 manpower) while your opponent has this manpower on the battlefield capping/defending points. Those 400manpower worth of units don't have to repair because the crew is doing it. Additionally, US crews may cap points while repairing. On top of that they do it more quickly than pios. To sum up, it's not the unit's stats that create the problem but the repairs. And it's sometimes just funny to see two pio squads following a tiger just to repair it. In many games a lucky artillery or mortar or opack howie or offmap kills many of them. Pios need to retreat because when they are fewer than four models repaiur speed is just terrible. This is when the tiger/panther becomes a paper cat.

USF is designed for great mobility, fast repairs and not so durable tanks.

Not any more - they are much more durable now than in the past and the fast repair speeds tipped the balance too much.

Ost doesn't have any more problems with repairs then soviets.
2 repair units for ALL factions(except USF because of their faction trademark that should not be used as an excuse, because its a faction trademark, not any kind of "all faction standard" you seem to make it out to be) is pretty standard thing in late game and no faction, ost including, struggles thanks to that.

Pick the doctrine and stop complaining if its that important for you.
That is why doctrines exist in the first place for the 10th time.

I simply don't agree. I already wrote that soviets have commader abilities such as: repair station, repair conscripts and self repair on tanks for munitions. Still I think that the repair speed of their engis should probably be improved but this discussion is about ost. And, by the way, I like the game and I'm not complaining - I'm trying to refer to the topic question of this thread why ost needs more love.

Damn, its almost as factions have different tools and different strengths and weaknesses of overall faction and individual units, eh?

I agree with the above completely. Still, the difference in repair speeds is far too big. Very often US vehicles use, for example, three crews to repair one tank, which is super fast. They have, say, a light vehicle and a tank that is damaged so they will use both crews to repair a tank. Rear echelons can also help, which will makes repairs even faster. Ost at the same time has to move the pio and a tank towards each other (usually it takes time), needs to have the pio (if you've been not careful and you lost your pios you must build another which is 200 manpower and additional time), very often the pio will have to stop performing other duties (unlike rear echelon, for example), and then you finally start your repair which is still much slower than the repair speed of even one crew that hopped out. I hope this is clear. It is just wrong. I'm not even trying to suggest that pios should have faster repair speeds (which probably they should) but just the same repair speed as us crews and uk sappers. I don't really understand why you don't see that.

Only OKW gets such special treatment. Everyone else has to get it via doctrine.

Not really. Repair speeds of ost and su are slower than all other factions. It's a problem especially for ost because su has commander abilities such as self-repair, conscript repair and repair station. Ost slower repair speed makes it impossible to play their tanks effectively as they need very often two pioneer squads tied to a tank to make it battle ready in a time similar to other factions. It is a huge contrast, especially with US, where crew just hops out of a vehicle and repairs it more quckly than a dedicated pio. Remember that each pio is 200 manpower. Retreating them from a battlefield or building more of them means you have less infantry on the field as ost, which further complicates the gameplay for ost and makes it imbalanced. Again, not many people see that and concentrate on isolated units' stats, which doesn't help to balance the game.