Profile of US3K

For point 3 its a tough one, its a good unit but can sometimes be utterly useless - though that's true of pretty much anything. It is too easy to counter with dive bomb though. I want dive bomb to follow the rules of other arty and not be able to be called in on base sectors. Then you can choose whether to build the gun in a safe zone at the expense of not being able to reach everywhere, or unsafe but omnipotent

I've been using it loads in team games, really nice cheesy strategy is to instabuild the assault engineers and run them with your starting RE's to your opponent's cut-off, back cap with a second RE and build a fighting position in the cutoff. Enemy won't be able to decap and you've basically won the game in the first 5 mins.

I generally go major versus ost but skip him against okw

I'd like the bren carrier to return with a coupling mechanic to static emplacements - give Brits the 17 and 25 pounder but have them moveable only if coupled with a bren, and crews that can demount from the weapon the same way USF crews can demount. That way you build a gun, if you want it elsewhere you demount the crew, couple it to the bren and load the crew into it, then drive away and set up elsewhere.

From a historical/campaign point of view if we're looking at a north African campaign it reflects the way they'd capture guns from each other.

Don't think it'd be too hard to do or too gimmicky - you'd balance the guns with less range maybe and an appropriate set-up time. The Americans can demount from their vehicles so why not let the Brits demount from crewed weapons

I've experienced this before where it seemed I was able to duplicate the war spoils I'd just received by clicking back and forth as you've said, and got excited when the screen showed all the duplicates there. But when the "new" notification had cleared they didn't carry across and I'd received the correct amount. Are you sure it hadn't just bugged to look like that then righted itself? Generally best to log in and out again to confirm war spoils if they're being buggy.

But I do agree there's a bug that at least makes it look like you can duplicate spoils.

It's basically a way to offset the risks of going fast vehicle. Fast vehicle leaves you without weapon unlocks (+most likely a muni float as a result) and maybe more rear echelons at the start than are useful in the mid game.

So use thompsons to replace BARs and give you some nice close quarters infantry whilst converting unupgraded REs into something useful. If you're going heavy vehicle then there's no better force to accompany them - you don't have to spend the time hopping the crew in and out as they're already out and accompanying you.

As for veterancy and late game usefulness, I find that I very rarely get my REs to vet 2 and beyond, and rarely spend the munitions giving them weapons that I could give to riflemen. This basically relegates them to capping, repairing and supporting from mid game onwards. A unit of thompson crew can do all this better plus also be able to fight off anything close range. They're relevant mid game at any veterancy and get triple vet extremely quickly at a point where most squads are first or second level vet. Their bonuses are basically the same as Assault engineers who I never think twice about using as a frontline unit with a flame upgrade.

Further into the late game you can see it as an opportunity for an extra 160mp, 100 muni investment to have an assault repair unit every time you get another vehicle out.