Profile of Kasarov

That's not even completely true. It was partially directed at officers, but who do you think was doing the retreating? The soldiers. So, using a commissar to halt a retreat all the way back to base does in fact fit with the spirit of Not One Step Back. Which, again, nobody had implied that the commissar would be shooting the troops, just that they would halt them from retreating further. And that, again, fits wholly within the verbage of the order.

Watch the video again. Mass disorderly retreats are the officer's responsibility, which is what 227 covers. Individual retreats is classified as desertion. If it's down to the individual, then it falls under desertion, which is court-martialing and potential execution, just like any other army. In CoH2, the officer (you) is ordering the retreat. It's not desertion or disorderly mass retreat.

No other faction requires any misunderstood historical precedents to justify an FRP. Why should the Soviets need one?

I think everyone can agree Hollywood films are very inaccurate, and a good chunk of them are mostly propaganda. Nor do I think that is a very good film, but Russians shooting other Russians? That happened. Russia suffered the biggest military losses in history during WW2. A lot of which had to do with their suicidal tactics

Of course it happened. Russians shooting Russians did happen, as did Americans shooting Americans or Germans shooting Germans for desertion. If you watch the video, it highlights just how small a fraction the executions were in comparison to the total Soviet military. While I won't deny that the number sentenced was far higher than other nations, execution was far from a unique phenomenon. The higher numbers of executions owe in large part to the size of the army involved as the scale of ground combat on the Eastern front was far, far larger than the Western front.

You should educate yourself some more about these supposed suicidal tactics. That's just as much propaganda as the rest of it. If you don't like TIK, Military History Visualized has a decent video about all these silly Red Army myths that amateurs keep throwing around. The portion about Red Army's 'human wave tactics' immediately follows his own take on Order 227.

The reason (my guess) is that it is because Sturm Officer has to reach vet 5 to get the Stg44 as opposed to vet 3

I'd argue that the StG is far more valuable a weapon than the PPSh. I get the rest of the squad has SVTs, but honestly I just want the PPSh for visual change and variety.

Commissar does not need a rec accuracy buff and it is not really intended to be a pure combat unit with how strong its abilities are. Thematically the only thing the Commissar really needs is a Forward Retreat Point like Ability like the Major as it would make sense due to "Not one Step Back" being a thing.

Just going to leave this here...

I don't disagree with FRP, but this whole 227 stereotype needs to die.

Aside from FRP, having the revolver change into a PPSh at vet 3 akin to Sturm Officer's StG44 would be awesome since the Commissar literally has a PPSh ammo pouch on his model.

The 'required_active_weapon' requirement has a field 'hardpoint_name'. The 32 bit version of the game automatically uses hardpoint_01 when this field is empty. However, 64 bit requires the specific hardpoint name: 'hardpoint_01'

This is news to me, too!

I was wondering why my required_active_weapon stopped working...

I have also noticed in the updated art, the commander is wearing 1943 uniform so maybe it could get M-42 AT guns instead. Opinions?

We on the UI team specifically intended to visually separate commanders who were themed around early war equipment (such as the obsolete M-42) with the earlier 1939 uniform, with commanders who utilized late war equipment (such as IS-2 Mod. 1944 and T-34/85) with the more modern 1943 uniform.

I don't necessarily agree with the term historical accuracy, as it carries the connotation that everything needs to be exact. However, I do agree that the game is less and less historically authentic. I think many balance changes, while good, are done in a way that gradually moves away from historical authenticity.

I am not necessarily upset at the balance team because they're still doing their best to keep the game alive, but I do wish some of the changes were a bit more nuanced and giving more attention to historical backing.

I really really dislike, for example, the addition of the Soviet M2HB in the next patch as it feels like a change for the sake of change, fulfilling basically the same role as DShK with a token buff to its arc. However, my biggest issue is that this also ignores the fact that the M2 .50cals the Soviets received were not infantry variants, but rather vehicle mounted varieties on tanks and halftracks. Instead, the Lend-Lease doctrine could have gotten something far more unique, interesting, and authentic, such as a DShK-armed Universal Carrier. If the balance team insists on sticking to the arbitrary requirement of 'no cross-faction vehicles,' (which IMO is a terrible precedent to set for any potential future updates) I'd rather have the doctrine's DShK remain as-is instead of swapping it out for a 'Lend-Lease .50' that isn't actually faithful to history.

"Balance comes before history" should never be an argument for ahistorical changes because there are always alternative methods that can satisfy BOTH historical authenticity AND gameplay balance.