Profile of achpawel

Grens are disadvataged in many ways:
1. Very bad on the move. Dodging granades, mortars, artillery means actually not fighting/shooting - good players will use it against grens in many ways. Any sort of moving combat and they are completely useless (you can make them "dance" with tanks for example - they stop shooting completely - if you're lucky they won't even fire a shreck/panzerfaust as they can't "find" the position; another example would be running around them with any infantry unit - sometimes it looks as if you were circlestrafing an anti tank gun - often an undecided lmg operator won't fire at all before the opponent stops).
2. Effective long range only. Generally damage output long range is low - even when some unit is relatively good at it - that means it takes forever to inflict damage and it is much better to be effective medium short range. By being fought long range players don't have to be so focused as you have more time to react and retreat the unit that is being shot at. Close range you may lose the whole squad very quickly because you were doing something on the other side of the map.
3. A stationary unit is extremely vulnerable to all sorts of mortars, grenades and artillery. The unit is also very much "predictable" on the map as it has to seek for cover (which again makes it even more susceptible to mortars). Units on the move usually dodge mortars unless you predict where they will be in a moment and attack ground. Of course they are vulnerable when they stop - but this would be the players mistake when he/she knows there is a mortar around. Grenadiers "fighting style" is perfect for mortars operators.
4. Because it's a range unit tactically it will lose in many "soft" ways - for example a capping rifle squad will usually manage to decap the point being under fire (and retreat to heal before losing models) as grens must shoot from further away, that is from outside the capping circle - it could be a game winning factor in tight battles.
5. Another "soft" tactical inferiority of grens is that they are usually unable to finish off a retreating squad - even when it's retreating "through" groups of them. Very often they won't even be able to pick off any models on a relatively weak unit (sappers, rear echolon - which very often means they will be able to finish what they were doing and retreat only then).
7. Because they are four men squads they are much more vulnerable to wipes. Additionally, they are very bad at picking abandoned weapons - very often either you recrew the weapon and loose the squad or leave the weapon abandoned (I don't understand why you can't pick weapons with 2 people for four men squads - especially if there are 3 models on the squad left). Also after picking the weapon they must retreat immediately as one man that is left is completely useless. Picking weapons under fire impossible or you lose the squad - other infantry can do that to finish off a tank, for example.
8. Connected with the above - you must retreat them more often because when they've lost one or two models. Then they become very fragile and their damage is reduced. Because of that their battlefield presence is shorter in comparison to other squad.

This is the longest post in my life Some of the thoughts I have about them.

I feel all the important problems with mg were mentioned. The problem is the solution. If it's too powerful it will destroy the game. Too weak - combied arms mechanics suffers a lot as ppl stop building it or get frustrated how useless it is sometimes in situations when logically/intuitively speaking it shoud shine. Anyway, what do you think about giving it a really significant sight range boost? It could have two functions then. After setting it up its sight would increase. The unit wouldnt need a spoter. It would mean less babysitting for it and more time to pin. It would be more self sufficient - other units wouldnt need to be engaged and could cap somewhete else while an mg would guard some region of the map better on its own. Buying an mg would also mean buing a good spotter for the rest of your units. Ideally one of the models could have binoculars. What do you guys think?

Ok - but it just happened many times - with crit on USF vehicles they run away and very often can still circle strafe AT guns.

You can't do that with ostheer tanks. Maybe the USF vehicles were just lucky but it happened so many times. The crew definitely didn't pop out. Maybe it's because of the terrain but I really believe there's a huge difference between the performance of the vehicles when it comes to their speed after engine criticals. I understand your answer and comment but maybe there's somebody out there who has similar experience. I've seen it too many times to believe it's "hogwash".

I don't use them with shrecks.It was only to confirm that they are not too good, not to say overpriced for their performance. I guess they shreck upgrade would make more sense if you could buy them separately for 60 munitions.

And such situations keep happening all the time. The reason probably is that back at the beginning of mgs in coh 1 the idea was for it to pin. Other units (mortars or inf) were supposed to kill pinned units. It was supposed to be one of the ingredients of combined arms strategy. It has always been a problem to make it work. In my opinion it's high time to make an mg a regular killing NOT pinning machine. Squads could granade wipe it exactly the way they do it now but every burst of an mg should have a huge chance of killing models in all squads within its arc. It should be some kind of a risk vs reward scenario. If you crawl up to an mg you can grande it vs. trying it you may lose many models which will bleed your mp. All squads within the arc should suffer the same. More of them in the arc - more dead models. What do you ppl think?