The alternate route would be make the rest of the Major good . And probably reduce the Ambulance's pop because 4 pop is actually a kinda really painful cost just to get healing - manpower, munitions and fuel for everyone else's can be recovered later in the game, but 4 pop for Ambulance will always be a noticeable drain.
Still, I'm a bit iffy on the concept of the free officers in general, but it's definitely not breaking Ostheer over its knee anymore.
I occasionally would very much prefer not having a Major with only his forward retreat point being much use as I play 1v1 while on a map too small to really take advantage of said forward retreat point.
Sry to ask, but what do you actually mean by "free" officer squad?
When 'Muricans buy a tier, they get an infantry unit of an officer corresponding to that tier after the tier is built, with all of the unit's advantages and the disadvantage of having the unit's pop immediately forced onto you for getting the tier.
If they just reduced the vet requirements for it a ton, I'd be fine with that too. I've never expected HMG34s to kill anything, but I did used to expect them to be able to vet.
The problem with riflemen is that they have the vet of a 240 mp infantry squad. People keep justifying riflemen veterancy because it is similar to grenadier veterancy (which it is worse than but whatever), but riflemen should be getting much more out of their vet than 240mp squads. Look at penals, they get very good veterancy despite costing 10 mp less.
To be fair, Penals still kinda suck with that, so logically Rifles which aren't crap when bought would need less effective vet.
Compare Rifle vet to Conscript/Gren vet. They don't scale as well with vet.
Originally they were designed to be versatile, with access to all kinds of equipment (bars, zooks, frag & smoke nades, AT nade). Their vet lets them use nades better and more often.
Add a reduction to their abilities' munition cost at vet 3
You are better been on the open if no green cover available.
Indeed. If an HMG's flank can't be covered and you won't be microing it literally all the time, avoid placing it into light cover which will 90% of the time let a flanking squad just one-shot it with a grenade. Sure, that might let flankers shoot at it out in the open, but escaping with some losses is preferable to a grenade squad wipe.