Profile of achpawel

Just because something is oft quoted does not make it wrong, and the argument or implication here that the issue is people are biased toward their main faction assumes that anyone or most who disagree here are only doing so because of bias and not because they have good arguments. It also assumes the OP isnt bias and hasnt skewed the data just to support a biased viewpoint.

I do agree there are some asshats on the forums who quickly resort to ad hominem, name calling and insults. I do not think those are the majority of the people who have disagreed here.

Agreed. Not much to add really. Spot on.

Now the issue seems to stem from the OPs assumption that damage dealing is the primary or close secondary role of the MG. This fundamentally goes against one of the most basic concepts in the game, that of combined arms. The key to using MGs properly has always been a hammer and anvil approach, the anvil of the machine gun and the hammer of the infantry(or mortar).
The machine guns job is to hold the enemy infantry in place to make them easier targets for your other units. The better it does that job, the easier it is for your other troops, the better the MG is. The damage does not need to come from your MG, though it doesnt hurt to have it. But even so, the damage output of an MG should not be testex by shooting its contemporaries. The majority of the time, MGs will be shooting at standard infantry and if any damage tests at all should be done, it should be comparing damage against THOSE units and not against other mgs.

All true. Agreed again. These were/are fundamental concepts. I'd add another fundamental concept - allies were supposed to have better infantry and dominate early and axis were supposed to struggle early and dominate later.

These concepts, however, eroded a lot and some of them were simply impossible to balance. So now we have armour that is more or less similar (especially after the arrival of UK) and infantry that is not. Also allies are balanced around the concept of fighting OKW (sturpmios, for example, changed the fundamental concept too much, but also volks that were supposed to be self-suffiecient retained all toys for that plus got an mg to support them). OKW was a big buff for axis and allies got buffed to fight them. Ost is lagging behind, especially with grens imo.

Mgs don't have to deal damage - but if ostheer infantry gets constantly more damaged by alled mgs sth could be done to make those 4 men squads get pinned more instantly or simply damaged less, so that they can sit in the arc of allied mgs longer without sacrificing manpower that much. Or allied infantry should bleed similarly when under mg fire. The point is that it should be similar allowing similar amount of time for flanking with similar manpower loses. Now we have allied players complaining abut the power of mg42 who get only retreated after relatively long time (especially when caught at the end of mg range) and forgetting that they have a more effective tool to deal with those 4 men squads by both pinning them effectively enough and creating higher manpower bleed at the same time. They are also forced to retreat earlier from allied mgs arc. It is a tactical and economic advantage to allies.

The problem is that if you feel that you need to react specifically to a certain faction, i'm sorry but then you have a bias towards that faction...

...The problem is lying to yourself about not been biased.

I'm loving every word here - a psychological approch to balance

But to the point - I would react to a lot more of balance threads, but on this forum there is not much need to sort of "defend" USF/SOV/UK/OKW. They have their crutch units and the answer to posts reducing their crutch role usually ends up in stuff like: adapt, it has to be like, you have combined arms (as if aothers didn't), then come more philosophical arguments: it is the game design, this unit is not supposed to to that, etc. And although there are solid, logical, unbiased arguments that some units overperform the person posting them is just treated badly by some forum members. A good example would be the scott or pack howie. They have been 2 shooting those poor 4 men squads for a very long time until people finally admitted the obvious and done sth about it. Funnily enough, a few weeks later we get better vanilla rifles, which, to a large extend, hamper the use of assault grens for ost (the only early units that could mop up the pinned squads early on providing some breathing room for ost at that stage of the game). And again forum members don't seem to even see that (apart from 1 member I think), but are only concentrating on the fact that they were smashing regular grens anyway at medium-close so if they are even stronger now it is not a problem (It's so ridiculous that even difficult to comment). Don't you see the damage to the overall balance? Allies who play against 2 factions only anyway, will play again against 1 in 1v1 if the opponent is of similiar skill. To top it all, some people allegedly watch replays by Dane/tightrope etc and don't even seem to notice that a lot of players try not to use grens at all. If they do they respond that this is how U adapt - by not using yuour mainline infantry (incredible).

So coming back more to the core of the thread: In my opinion, putting all psychology behind, I really believe that grens should be somehow buffed to keep up with the buffed cons and apparently rifles. I'd go for more utility such as sandbags to surprise the opponent with positioning and make them spot more before assaults. Grens don't have close range nades anyway so after closing in allied squads could just win easily. It wouldn't be a great balance change (contrary to what you wrote) but a slight response to more powerful vanilla rifles and 7 man conscripts. In my opinion, it wouldn't change much. I like your bunker idea still, but I;m afraid that spending manpower in ored to equalize the matchup might be a move in the wrong direction. Unless what you meant was sort of sit in a bunker instead of behind sandbags. I feel it could be more difficult to balance though than those sandbags.

Mg42 underperforms only in the early game of 1v1s where you are forced to use it too aggressively to even the odds. After the early game when you have other options and you can start using it more defensively the mg42 becomes the best mg in the game due to wide arc and best supression.

Best way to "fix" mg42 would be to switch mg42s and grens place so you are not stucked with this flank magnet from the beginning if you don't want to. Just put mortar, pak and mg in t1, gren to t0 and move sniper to t2.

But then 4 men squad unable to fight on the move might lose too easily to larger squads. However, I think it would still be better than artificial mg+pio combo when capping and capturing territory is essential. Or make them all avaliable from t0 or maybe it is too much idk (Uk has it all but sappers)

You can make sandbags with your mainlines with Osttruppen or Defensive doctrine. Mixing 2 Grens with 2 Osttruppen and no early mg42 is actually a quite effective start against USF and UKF.

You get sprint with Jaeger Infantry doctrine and other doctrines.

Ostheer has its own strengths, they don't need any of these tools non-doctrinally.

Agreed with the above. Yet, saying that ost has better and more snares is a nonsense.

Still, there are more stock abilities on, for example, Soviet squads in general compared to Ostheer. They also get commander abilities and they are usually more powerful against 4 men squads or tanks. Coming back to at they include partisans or ambush conscript at nades. They also get for mother russia when it comes to sprints, etc. It is a simple fact that players trying to prove that ost has more powerful abilities/units than Soviets are simply wrong.

I always pay attention to never direct something like this towards the person itself and I criticized the argument. I also rarely use words like "stupid", but in this case the argument is pretty much objectively wrong and unreasonable. Everyone says wrong stuff from time to time, but nevertheless one should think critically about his own argument as well. If people don't do that, they must be called out on that.

I also differ from your mindset that the community is generally divided into Axis and Allies that blindly want to buff only their faction without second thought. OST got decent and well needed buffs in the last patches which where supported by the community. The faction is in a very good spot right now, both balance wise and considering the amount of different play styles that are viable. There are always some units that could need slight changes, but all in all the OST rooster has now become one of the best ones in the sense that every stock unit is usable and most of them in all game modes. We currently can't say that about any other faction in the game.

I like this post so much better

I completely agree with you on the fact that ost has been recently buffed in a good direction and is a much more ok to play with, compared to even a few weeks ago.

I also agree that all ost units are usable (I still think grens should build sandbags, though, or all all infantry shouldn't - it should be generally done by engineer units).

Still, my mindset is that many forum members just write things that are not too objective and clearly favour their own favourite faction. This is sth I can completely understand as it is sort of natural (especially if they don't really play other factions much or not at all - grass seems greener on the other side). However, I feel that sometimes you just have to respond to some really too often repeated inaccuracies. One is that mg42 is the best. It is not - it is just another mg. Not some super powerful mighty weapon. Allies have generally better mgs - especially when you realise that they shoot at 4 men ost squads. The casualties they generally inflict to them are higher compared to what mg42 does to allied larger squads. My mindset (that you believe to know) i sthat some allied players simply should devote similar amount of skill and attention to repositioning and mg babysitting as ost players to mg42. Once they do that they will achieve better results with their mgs than ost achieves with mg42. Setup/packup times, better damage and/or larger squads controlling those mgs, and the fact that they will shoot at 4 men units will give them edge. SImple and logical, yet difficult to see for some...

(I don't event want to comment how uncool was how mrgame2 was treated in this thread - he really devoted time and effort to check something and was objective)