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Loads of ninjas coming with the newest version. I forgot to mention these ones;
Cromwell
- Fuel cost increased from 110 to 120
- Smoke shell ability available at vet0
UKF tank commanders
- Veterancy bonus & stealth detection completely removed
- Now only gives bonuses to accuracy (+10%) and sight range (from 35 to 45)
- Requires Vet1 to buy
Emergency Warspeed
- Can only be used on the player's own tanks (i.e., not those of their allies)
USF repair critical
- In addition to all the forementioned changes, the ability can only be used on USF tanks
- This "nerf" came early in the redesign cycle of the ability, and I think I will revert it
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The price is ridiculously low for what Sturmtiger offers. The criticals it deals to tanks are also way over the top.
However, if you simply raise the price of the Sturmtiger, you are still going to be left with a very broken mechanic in the game that will make certain map types unplayable. I am looking at you Trois Points.
There's no reason to place such restrictions on our mappers. Instead, fix what's broken, and that's all one-hit wipes.
The main problem with them is that it's one shot, and that it's guarnteed to wipe. Take the guarantee away, and we can, finally, have a healthy alpha-shot ability/unit.
This will look a bit like how the current Panzerwerfer performs:
- Not too weak
- Not wipey
- However, you still wouldn't waste its barrage to target 1 single squad.
One-hit-wipe-wonder fixes
This one is about addressing one-hit wipes (AVRE, Sturmtiger, demopacks, goliaths, etc)
I have separated the damage of these abilities vs vehicles and vs infantry.
Most of those attacks retain their damage vs vehicles as it was (exception: Sturmtiger and B4 got nerfed to 580 from 640, for obvious reasons).
The damage these attacks vs infantry now is no longer one huge, unavoidable explosion. Instead, it's a randomized explosion, that might, or might not wipe everyone standing right in the center of it. On the other hand, that same explosion may also kill models further away from the centre of the explosion.
It works a bit like:
- Take Stuka Dive Bomb
- Replace it with 50-or-so mini-infiltration nades peppered around the radius. Throw 25 of those nades within a radius of 5 or so, and the remaining 25 nades within a radius of 10 (the latter might still end up within the smaller circle).
The rationale behind this change is that:
- The blob-counter rationale behind those abilities is a myth. Those are lone-squad wiper abilities
- In the live version the attacker has full control over when to launch the attack and where the attack will hit (most of these attacks are pinpoint accurate)
- This means that an attacker is very likely to abuse those abilities to wipe individual squads
- Since the explosion is unpredictable, the attacker might now have to think twice about wasting the attack to wipe an individual squad
- At the same point, launching this attack on a blob will cause enormous amount of damage
All of those attacks now cause exactly the same amount of anti-infantry damage. Demo-packs and goliaths have now been normalized to also deal the same amount of damage to all targets.
Stuka Dive bomb causes additional damage, but over a wider radius, so that it remains scary. Don't expect too many wipes with it.
B4 is now a lot more accurate if you fire against visible territory. On the other hand, it's even more inaccurate than before if you fire in the fog-of-war. Line your shots wisely.
In the future, I might decide to add a stun critical vs infantry to those attacks.
Also nerf the AVRE because its way better than ST in every aspect...
If you truly believe this, you are either delusional or completely clueless.
The only things that the AVRE does better at than the Sturmtiger are:
- is lining it shots better so that it avoids hitting ground
- Costing less fuel (140 FU vs 160 FU) but more manpower
- Firing a bit faster
- (the Sturmtiger getting decrewed while reloading is actually an abusable bonus; not a penalty)
Building-piercing shots
- The Sturmtiger shot can go through buildings. AVRE cant
Range
35 vs 45
That doesn't seem like a lot. However, 35 also happens to be the max sight range for 90% of the units you will be facing in the game. Being able to fire from the fog of war with an one-hit-wipe wonder is a huge boon.
Imagine Soviet demopacks being able to randomly spawn beneath your troops. That's what dodging Sturmtiger rockets feels like.
Targeting
That turret thing. You would think it's an advantage. Well, guess what. it is impossible to control which way the turret is facing.
This is because the turret has the stupid habit to chase after just about any squad that pops up.
Damage vs Vehicles
AVRE deals 440 damage or 220 damage vs vehicles depending on whether it manages to penetrate or not.
Sturmtiger deals 640 damage and always penetrates.
640 is an important threshold, since it's just enough to one-shot medium tanks.
In addition to that, the Sturmtiger shot also bestows stupid-strong criticals on the target:
- Permanent immobilization
- Main gun destroy
- Engine damage
- Stun (this is the only one with a limited duration; 4 seconds)
Damage vs infantry
The raw damage of the sturmtiger is enough to wipe everything in within 8-radius. This includes garrisoned troops.
For AVRE, I need to check the damage criticals again. If there's no infantry-killing criticals, the one-hit-kill radius is about 5. The killing radius of the AVRE is also further diminished by cover/garrisons.
Manoeuverability
The AVRE, for a vehicle that needs to run up close has one of the slowest speeds for a in the game.
King tiger max speed: 3.8
AVRE max speed: 3.9
Sturmtiger max speed: 4.7
Note that with the insane range of the sturmtiger, and the ability to shoot through obstacles, it need never expose itself to danger to fire.
Durability
AVRE has 1400 HP 240 Armour (all vet levels)
Vet0 Sturmtiger: 1280 HP, 220 armour
Vet2 Sturmtiger: 1440 HP, 242 armour
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v0.106 changes:
A big portion of the effort gone in this patch went to:
- UKF base howitzers QoL
- Vehicle Crews & decheesing USF popcap abuse
Next patch is probably going to touch the OKW truck system.
USF popcap changes
Everybody knows that USF can go over the top with their effective popcap by decrewing their vehicles. At the same time, the faction suffers from an insane overhead forced on them by their "free" units.
To fix this:
- Vehicle crews cost 12 popcap*
- Penalties given to non-crew units using vehicles (to force people to use vehicle crews)
- Certain USF units were reduced to 0-popcap
- USF officers have been upgraded to make it worth fielding them
- Elite Vehicle Crews given viable stats \o/
* although this sounds excessive, other factions have to take popcap equal to their tank & the pioneer fixing it
Vehicle Crew rework
It is possible to buy additional weapon crews at T0, after unlocking either the Captain or the Lieutenant. Price/Reinforcement cost equal to rear echelons.
Veterancy requirements
Vehicle crew veterancy requirements went up from 200/400/800 to 650/1300/2600
However, as you are about to see, their Vet is now really worth it.
Repair critical (also affects Assault Engineers)
The ability has been nerfed quite a bit. However, now it scales with veterancy:
- Vet1: It takes 4 seconds to repair a critical, 40 second cooldown
- Vet2: 4 seconds delay, 20 second cooldown
- Vet3: 2.5 seconds delay, 20 second cooldown
- Cost: 25 Munitions
Decrewing vehicles
Previously, and for all crews (medics/infantry/crews), it would take:
- 0 seconds to decrew a tank out-of-combat
- 2 seconds to decrew a tank in-combat
The in-combat delay has been changed as follows:
- Medics: 2.5 seconds
- Non-vehicle crews: 2.5 seconds
- Vet0/Vet1 vehicle crews: 2 seconds
- Vet2+ vehicle crews: 1.25 seconds
The idea here is that since most units get their vet2 bonus that increases survivability, so do vehicle crews.
doctrinal Elite Crews
The ability has been changed as follows:
- Costs 70 munitions
- It still gives the weapon crew access to Thompsons.
- While the crew is driving a vehicle, both the vehicle and the crew gain veterancy 15% faster
- The crew gains access to the Vet2 faster disembark time at all vet levels (the delay reduction bonuses do not stack, though)
XP penalties/bonuses
Non-vehicle crew squads (e.g., Rear echelons) have a -60% received experiency penalty while driving a vehicle:
- The penalty affects the rate that the vehicle will gain veterancy
- This penalty does not stack with equipped AT weaponry
Vehicle crews do not receive any penalties when driving vehicles. Regardless of whether they are carrying bazookas or not
As mentioned earlier, Elite Crews awards a +15% XP gain bonus while on the tank
Equipped weapons
Vehicle crews can only carry 1 weapon max (or 4 thrompsons)
- M20 crews no longer carry a free bazooka. Like the captain, you can upgrade it.
- At the same time, this arrangement allows you to skip the bazooka if you want to go for the thompson upgrade
USF officers
- Both Captain and Lieutenant thompsons are now slot items, with stats upgraded to paratrooper-level
Lieutenant
Previously this unit had nothing special, and there was never any need to keep it around. Except maybe for the early game due to the Bar.
To address this:
- Lieutenant loses the free bar. However, he can upgrade one bar, just like the captain.
- At vet1, the squad gets: 40 sight range out-of-cover, 50 range in-cover
The idea is that you can now use the Lieutenant to spot enemy MGs, and coordinate attacks
Major
- Now costs 0 popcap (down from 5)
- Cannot capture territory
- Cannot recrew weapons/tanks
- Cannot use slot items
UKF base artillery changes
Those guys used to cost 45MU and were shooting firecrackers at the enemy. This version, shit gets real.
This ability is now a medium-availability (munitions cost/opportunity cost) high-efficiency area-denial barrage. For 60 munitions you get:
- A decent, long-ish, barrage
- Followed by a brief smoke barrage
The latter is necessary to ensure that the barrage is useful in the early game, when the faction completely lacks smoke cover.
"Coordinated" Fire Barrage
- Both howitzers now immediately face the front when the tier buildings are ready
- Between a new attack command and when the howitzers start firing, there is a 15 second delay. This is to ensure that both howitzers fire at the precise same moment.
- Projectile speed has been increased to ensure that the projectiles land as close to one-another as possible
Scatter
Having low scatter on such a high-delay ability no longer makes any sense. If anything, it makes the fire-pattern predictable, and easy to dodge.
Airburst shells have a scatter radius of 20.
Ditto for HE shells, though things get complicated with the angle scatter.
The accuracy of the barrage no longer depends on whether you retain vision of the flare or not.
In a future patch I will try to make it so that the HE shells have the same scatter regardless of the distance.
Note that the delay pattern of the 4 airburst shells is now random. It takes between 5 and 15 seconds between consecutive shells.
Damage
Now we're talking.
HE shells stats now match Sexton shells:
- Penetration from 120 to 1000
- AoE same as Sexton
Airburst shells:
- Now deal the same amount of damage as the reworked demo charges in the mod.
Smoke barrage
At about 65 seconds after you fired the flare (or 50 seconds after the first shot), the howitzers will start deploying smoke.
If you are busy microing away from the action, you may be able to identify when the smoke barrage begins by the smoke signature:
- The howitzers use an interleaved barrage pattern for the smoke barrage
Artillery Commander barrage
Having 2 of the same makes no sense. The difference between the vanilla barrage and the artillery barrage are as follows:
- There is still a 15 delay between the command and the first shot being fired
- However, in the case of the artillery commander, the flare only spawns 5 seconds before the first shot is fired.
- Airburst shells no longer require Anvil Tech
- No smoke barrage
Flare range
Flare range has been increased to 40.
If you aim the barrage close enough (say, within range 20), your tommies will fire a fairly accurate smoke marker grenade, as before. If you aim further than that, Tommies will use their flare gun, which might not be very accurate.
Don't worry though. Neither the guns will be accurate.
Availability
Hopefully, I have convinced you that shit got real. To make this fair, though:
- The ability costs 60 munitions per use
- Is no longer available to the sniper. Thus it actually requires an investment to use.
Command vehicle
Universal carrier command vehicle is super cheesy. So is free recon. Everybody knows this. At the same time, using the command vehicle for any other role is prohibitive due to the speed debuff.
To address this:
- Universal Carriers can no longer be turned to command vehicles
- Recon now costs 40 munitions
- Command vehicle given a toggle ability to disable the command vehicle bonuses, along with the speed debuff
Command vehicle toggle
Toggling out of the ability has the following effects:
- The sight of the recon airplane drops to 0
- The speed debuff is gone
- The received-accuracy debuff is gone
- All aura bonuses are gone
Note, that even if you switch out of the command vehicle mode, you will forever retain the following debuffs:
- Cooldown/Reload debuffs to your vehicle
- The ability has a 5-second delay between toggling (while toggling the tank is affected by the speed penalty)
Comet/Churchill/Pershing grenades
These now have a scatter. This means that firing those nades while moving means that they may now end up somewhere else entirely.
I also added a small delay to the grenade throw time. There was none before, after my fixes. Oops!
(Note to self: I need to apply this change the sturmtiger grenades)
Comet/Cromwell/Greyhound smoke shells
Greyhound??!
Greyhound canister shot replaced with smoke shell. Canister shot was useless and you know it.
Yes, I know that USF has too much smoke. However, Paratroopers and Pathfinders don't get access to smoke. So, why not?
Shell accuracy
Smoke/WP shells now given same scatter as Comet auto-attack. Same story as vehicle grenades: if you want an accurate shot, you stay put. If you don't care, keep moving around.
White Phosphorus changes
People have been complaining for ages that Comet WP kills people unlike other WP shells. Thus, I went ahead and modified the WP shell to have the exact precise stats of pack howitzer WP shells:
- Costs raised to 25 munitions
- Cooldown raised to 30 seconds
- Will slow infantry down
- Will prevent tanks from firing while they are situated right on top of the dot
- Will seriously maim infantry but not kill them
Personally, I think that's OP. However people have been complaining that Comet white phosphorus is "too good". Thus, I gotta give them the opportunity to try out what they have been asking for.
Anti-infantry tanks & Terrain
There's 3 kinds of anti-infantry tanks in the game:
- Those with howitzer-type of weapons that go over obstacles
- Those with an accurate flak attack that only care about the cover infantry is behind (e.g., luchs/centaur)
- Those with a scatter-based attack, that will collide with everything, including terrain contours.
As an experiment, to see what happens when we take the territory restrictions out of the last category of tanks, I have made the following projectiles able to ignore ground elevation:
- Ostwind
- Sherman HE
- ISU HE
- Centaur vet1 ability
- White Phosphorus/Smoke shell
(Note that the projectile can still collide with other obstacles, such as sandbags, etc)
Depending on how this change feels like, I might further change accuracy-based vehicles to also benefit from this feature:
- Luchs
- Centaur
- FlakHT
- FlakHQ
- Bofors
Troop transports
All troop transports can now carry just about anything on two legs.
This includes:
- Snipers
- HMGs
- Mortar teams
Don't panic! None of these units are allowed to fire from open-top vehicles.
Loading up times normalized
- Now it takes up to 2 seconds to load a squad inside, regardless of the size of the squad
B4
In the spirit of addressing one-hit-wipes, the damage of B4 (both barrage mode and direct fire) drops to 580 to match that of the new Sturmtiger.
Howitzer refacing bugs fixed. This includes all field howitzers.
Note that I changed the way the artillery calculation is done to make it avoid hitting territory too much. In certain cases, this might cause the projectile to completely avoid touching ground, and travel infinitely long towards the edge of the map (or until it collides with a tank).
I will probably fix it in the next version. However, I thought it looked funny, and I think so might you.
Some minor/unimportant bug fixes
- Stun nade bug gone for good
- Penals suppression recovery threshold fixed, so that when your MG tells them to stay down, they stay down.
-Ability that breack FoW, I've always seemed excessive like the recon 60 seconds, that breaks the essence of the game. This I think would you can take a look and decrease for instance: (to 30 seconds if allow animation and perhaps down of 80MU to 75MU).
-Okw flares are buggeds perhaps by the animation
-And perhaps rework HTinfrared / valentine
Thanks @Mr.Smith good work.
I have never ever really looked into fixing prices for recon before. I could have a look at it sometime down the road.
My plan for Valentine/infraredHT/Kubel-Vet1 depends on what I can do with the mod tools:
- Ideally I want to make their maphacking ray NOT go through walls etc. In a game with a resource-intensive true-sight system, that's beyond stupid.
- If this isn't possible, I will simply tie this ability to a munitions cost (and drop the MP price of the IRHT significantly)
My dream for InfraredHT is to modify its performance so that it is as viable to use in 1v1 as it is in higher game-modes. This means nerfing its ability but, at the same time, give it a very generous cost discount.
I think this is one of the better mods, but at this point I think the changes are starting to become more than bug fixes to be actual balance changes. I have no problem with that, honestly.
2 things:
-Are you reducing the reinforcement cost of the partisans? Increasing their front-end cost would do away with the need to make them extremely expensive to replenish.
-Can you reduce the CP requirement of the valentine pls (plus what capiqua said)?
I'm looking forward to trying out v0.105
Too late, son. Now it's v0.106.
Now. As a blatant sign of favouritism, and even though I hadn't planned on doing anything about the Valentine until the call-in meta fix (which should come after a half-assed light-vehicle fix (which should come after maphax rework (which should come after OKW truck system rework))):
Valentine
- CP requirements reduced to 4
- Popcap reduced to 9
- Can no longer crush humans
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WHAT HAVE I DONE?!
Why not just add a "set facing" ability that calls a victor target for the 25-pounders, forcing a barrage ability that doesn't do anything? It might be the simplest solution and can add a lot of value to the howitzers because barrages will come faster with some additional micro.
I don't want to spoil too much about the QF25 barrage, yet (I will release the next QoL version sometime this weekend :megusta 
However, from testing, I've seen that it's more important for the shells to land at almost precisely the same moment, rather than having the first shell be fired as fast as possible. (apart from also looking way cooler, the first option makes shells more difficult to dodge. (Especially if you mix the freshly-reworked airburst shells I made for my mod, too)
The only way to achieve the former is add a delay so that the howitzers have the time to align. However, if the first howitzer is facing the wrong way, it takes about 15 seconds to face the right direction.
Is it possible to increase the rotation rate for the howitzers somehow, or is that hardcoded somewhere in the animations? No matter how hard I tried to fix the value at tracking, speed didn't seem to matter at all.
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You could have the ability temporarily spawn an invisible entity at the targeted position. Then add two requirement actions with near_entity requirements: If the squad is within 20 units of the entity, use the smoke grenade throw. If the squad is not within 20 units of the entity, use the flare pistol. As the squad won't be moving and the target is a static position, it's fairly unlikely that both will execute!
I hope so!
On a similar topic, I am trying to fix the initial rotation of the 2nd Brit howitzer (currently it's always facing the wrong end of the map).
I thought of a solution that works like this:
- Building_2 finishes constructing (the 2nd base building)
- Building_2 calls victor target on itself, forcing its own howitzer
- Unfortunately this also changes the vertical direction of the howitzer, forcing it to point towards the ground.
Is it possible to do something like this:
- Tell the howitzer to point not at the building itself, but to a distance of 200 from the building (same direction though). That way the howitzer would pick the right arc
Alternatively, even better, is the following even possible?
- Tell howitzer_1 to report where it is currently facing
- Use the reported location as the location that howitzer_2 to point to (again using victor target)
Thanks again. I am going to use your advice to implement the most British of Brit abilities ever conceived!
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I want to design a deploy-flare ability for an infantry squad, with an ability maximum range of 40. I want the outcome of the ability to depend on the range between the infantry squad and the target:
- If the target is within distance 20, I want the squad to deploy a (fairly accurate) grenade toss
- If the target is between distance 20 and 40, I want the squad to use their flare gun, instead
My question for this is, how do you even design this choice?
- Is it possible to link together two requirement actions so that the 2nd executes only if the first one fails (apart from inverting the requirements of the first action)
- Is it even possible to introduce a range requirement, somehow?
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All of the doctrines look good now. The main issue with most of the doctrines in the live game is that, even when the doctrine comes with unique units abilities, they lack a coherent identity. E.g., what is supposed to be the preferred playstyle of UKF Tactical Support (except free recon and artillery cover spam).
 :
- Zis truck (though, it would be nice with Sturmpioneer-like medkit crates)
- Commissar
- The entire tank hunter doctrine
- Opel Blitz Ambulance
RIP:
- Recon paratroopers 
- Hull down ((
- USF reinforcement HT (((((
PS:
1. Forward observers: It might be best to copy-paste the Tommy version of increased sight (vet1, under their cover bonus), than to rely on USF forward observers. The latter feels a bit wonky.
2. Elite Troops could use the King Tiger instead of Tiger I, if you want to keep it unique, without it being cheesy (I've seen the KT idea used in many mods already)
3. Unless Marksman flares also reveal camouflage, he will get picked off by the sniper quite easily
4. Is there anything special that the KV-1 can do animations-wise?
- Carrying troops?
- Throwing grenades?
- Smoke?
- Hull Down?
- Make it shot/sight-blocking?
Rather than leave the KV-1 as an ability-less block of HP, we might be able to at least impart it with some swag points. (No; auras don't count!)
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Buffing the non-meta things with raw stats can be problematic:
- Buffing some of the neglected stuff enough will make them enter the meta
- This means more variables you need to account for when balancing
- This is already a huge headache right now with non-linear teching
- Not to mention the debate about whether doctrinal stuff should be more efficient than non-doctrinal stuff (to make doctrines more attractive, and more defining), or less efficient than them (to promote an integration of doctrinal stuff into non-doctrinal stuff)
In my opinion, the easiest way to address the vast majority of out-of-meta units is to simply add side-utility to them. Sure, competitive players will continue to shun said doctrines/units/abilities. However, those might still find some use in the hands of virtuoso players (e.g., Redwings).
Or at least, some of those niche units will find use in 4v4, where discovering awkward combinations of units is the only way to remain sane (after you've grown bored of the Arty-Party meta).
Having redundant units/abilities is not bad per-se. As long as the redundant abilities at least have an edge over the more meta abilities.
For instance:
1. Greyhound
If somebody would replace Greyhound's canister shot with a Cromwell-like smoke shell, I would be eternally grateful. Sure, the greyhound would remain a crappy combat unit. USF has already so much smoke in their hands. However, now the Greyhound can maybe, be used to subtitute Riflemen smoke to provide it for the Paratroopers (which lack smoke).
2. Anvil Churchill.
Stats-wise it's solid. However, it's still useless. Reduce/remove the smoke projector moving penalty and suddenly the Churchill becomes a tank-tactician's tank. Rework its grenade so that it's less wipey, but it can fire on-the-move, and now, suddenly, you have a reason to rebuild that tank for the late-game.
3. Paratroopers.
Both doctrines revolve around the availability of team weapons in a faction that has to make a choice between the MG and the AT gun. Make it worth it: allow paratrooper-manned weapons to reinforce near beacons. Boom; fixed.
4. Recon paras (special mention)
Make them drop earlier (4 CPs; it's paras and an AT gun ffs), but without weapons. That way you can pre-plan your army composition. No need to let a dice roll determine that for you.
5. WC-51
The unit is crappy for a purpose; it's the withdraw and refit cheese. Get rid of the ability (which is only ever useful in conjunction with WC-51), and reduce the price. If it's performance becomes an issue turn the MG into a munitions upgrade. Presto.
Most of the other stuff is about adjusting the cost of those abilities to mirror other factions. That's trivial to do.
The big puzzles for me though are:
1. UKF Sextons vs base howitzers
What to do with UKF arty doctrine. In theory, UKF has non-doc base howitzers artillery. In practice it's more cost-efficient to tech Mills bombs and start throwing them blindly in cover, hoping you will kill a stealthed sniper. Even then, you will have more chance hitting something.
If the arty becomes viable (maybe hiked in price too), that will probably make Sextons even less desirable (since they cost so much popcap). Then it also becomes a question of what the Arty Doctrine is supposed to help with.
My idea for base howitzers (I've already implemented this, but I will release it as part of a bigger package in the QoL mod.
Stats:
- QF25 explosive stats mirrored to Sexton (this means both AoE and penetration)
- Delay between flare and firing increased to 15 seconds. This is to guarantee that both howitzers will perfectly synchronize their shots.
- Airburst shells reworked so that they pepper their damage around (in a random fashion) rather than either completely wipe everything, or completely miss everything (same as demo charges in my mod in the currently released version)
- On the topic of airburst shells. They now fire at irregular times (between 5 and 15 seconds) and with big scatter (20 or so), to make them unpredictable to dodge.
- Scatter reduced slightly. Moreover, scatter no longer depends on whether you retain vision of the flare (ffs!!!)
- After the barrage (which lasts 6 shots - or 45 seconds after the first shot), The hotizers will fire some smoke shells to cover an advance.
The way to launch this
- 60 munitions
- 45 range (innacurate, fired with a flare gun)
- No longer available to the sniper (can only launch it with Tommies or forward assembly)
On the topic of the 15 second delay:
- This is absolutely necessary so that both howitzers always perfectly synchronize their shots. When they do, and there's also an airburst shell dropping about the same time, it looks absolutely scary.
- Scatter is big and the barrage takes long. Now, with decent damage it will be an excellent area denial tool
- Moreover, if you expect an enemy push, you can fire the flare preemptively behind, say, a sight blocker. The howitzers will open fire long after the flare has vanished from the map. That way you can use it to surprise your enemy.
On the topic of smoke shells:
- The ability depends on the tech level of the player. There is no way 6 shells will ever be worth 60 munitions. Nor will it ever be fair that the amount of firepower given should ever cost than 60 munitions when the player is fully teched.
- Smoke is there to, primarily, make the artillery worthwhile when using it for early (pre-cromwell) infantry pushes
On the topic of 45-range:
- With huge scatter, the only way to make the ability useful in an offensive push is to fire it BEHIND the enemy's first line of defence. Thus, the buff isn't that big
- I changed the launcher to a flare gun, because a 45-range nade toss would look ludicrous 
2. Vehicle crews gimmick vs Elite Vehicle crews
Vehicle crews get all the utility they need when they hit Vet1; super-glue repairs and back in. Ironically, they vet so fast that hitting a mine will give them half the XP needed to get to Vet1.
Before we even begin thinking of making elite vehicle crews useful, we should consider how to make vehicle crew meaningful:
- Give them a higher vet-cap (same as stuart, for instance)
- Turn superglue into a 4-second cast
- Make their vet revolve around decrewing (e.g., faster jump out at vet2, more criticals repaired at vet3)
- Give non-vehicle-crew drivers (e.g., RE's) an XP penalty when driving the vehicle (to prevent powerleveling).
- Maybe give crews a high popcap (e.g., 9-10 to prevent USF decrew cheese). The latter provided officers/ambulance cost less popcap.
Then, the way for Elite Crews to be useful is as follows:
- Adjust the munitions cost to make it affordable, but not too affordable (e.g., 60 munitions)
- Ability should give XP boost to vehicle crews (carries over to vehicle vet), on the order of 10-20%, while inside the car
- While outside the car, the ability could give a very big XP gain (on the order of 100%); vehicle crews can't fight a prolonged fight anyway, and thompsons are short-range
3. KV-1
The Soviet armoured roster is extremely highly-populated as is.
Stock armour needs to perform well to keep the faction afloat. At the same time, their stock armour is already generalist enough. Thus, doctrinal armour only has room to add flavour. Thus, KV-1 really struggles for some breathing room:
- IS-2 is the best allied meat-shields atm. It's also pretty manouverable. There's no room for #2
- KV-2 is a great mobile howitzer. It needs a bit of help with its artillery calculation, and then it will become a huge menace
- ISU-152. Long range AI death machine; provided there's no elevation. Tweaking the right parameter on the projectile of HE shells will help fix that
- T-34/85: T-34/76's beefier brother. Fast, reliable, generalist. Also, underpriced.
I don't think there's much space left for KV-1 as is. What's worse I can't really think of any utility KV-1 could bring to the table so that it could even, remotely, fullfill a niche role. The commander's ability roster also doesn't help:
- B4; which is meant to be an ML-20/Pak-43 hybrid (even for B4, I have some ideas how to fix)
- For Mother Russia, which is a very respectable infantry buff for a faction that now got penals
To me, KV-1 looks like a lost cause. What was this tank supposed to be good for, IRL, provided Soviets can access IS-2 at the same time?
To make the long story short, if something looks exotic people will still use it, and they will love using it. That is no matter how unviable a unit/build-order is.
Penals were still quite popular until their satchel charge bug, even though they were notoriously inefficient. Only when their charge broke (and thus, their only unique ability) did they completely begin to whither. Even before their buff, Partisans were still used, if only to get cool points.
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<min-range stats>
<max-range stats>
I am not sure if your calculations also consider the fact that the following are affected by range:
- Aim time (ready and fire_aim)
- cooldown
- burst-duration
- (maybe some other stuff that I forgot)
I don't have a DPS calculator handy on the machine I am writing this post (I have one at home, though). From memory, though, the numbers for range-0 LMG riflemen and LMG-grens seem a bit wonky compared to their non-LMG versions.
Also, Elchino already mentioned why it's a fallacy to only present min-range stats and max-range stats:
- HU only shows DPS at longest/closest range. CRUZZ shows the entire DPS graph for all ranges
- (even for the ranges displayed), the HU website uses an incorrect formula to derive the DPS values
- (even when the correct formula is correct), HU sometimes altogether displays incorrect weapons for several squads
- We have no way to contact the admins of the HU website to rectify those errors (whereas, Cruzz is a prominent patron of this website, and is always open to suggestions).
If you insist on only making conclusions based on those two extreme values, you will soon find that your conclusions will contradict actual in-game experience.
For instance, vet3 PGrens can beat vet3 fully-upgraded Tommies in equal cover for any distance up to 25. That's a very generous distance. Yet, if you only only base your conclusions on max-range data, you can completely miss that out.
I'm not arguing that vet3 riflemen are not bullshit. I'm only arguing that this is not the right way to show this.
However, I don't agree with your conclusion that CoH2 should completely throw away the slot-item system. Yes, at the current state it's overpowered. Yes, it sucks that one faction (Soviets) has no access to this mechanic. It also leads to untenable situations where some factions are allowed to outspend their opponents to a state that they makes the opponents' investment worthless (double-LMG USF vs single-LMG Ostheer).
The game has multiple aspects, some of which attract some users more than others (e.g., artillery, tank warfare, defensive play, logistics, tactical infantry play). I would argue that no-brainer infantry upgrades hurt the depth of infantry play, as much as auto-fire mortars limit the depth of artillery play.
However, to completely remove infantry customization would leave infantry play in a state that is at least as poor, if not poorer than the current one. (Think of it as removing mortars from the game, than simply nerfing their auto-attack potency).
IMO even double LMGs are ok, as long as they expose the squad to some kind of weakness that the enemy is allowed to exploit.
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I recently told you that your comparison of Schreck vs. Bazooka balance is way off (and I gave you the numbers as to why). Again, the comparison is 1,5 bazookas for every Panzerschreck.
You also forget to mention that PzGrens have a high entry and reinforcement cost, preventing a player from outright spamming them (more than three squads at any given time is impossible to uphold simply due to the cost and bleed they inflict on the player when used against infantry).
This of course doesn't mean that their StGs couldn't be adjusted, but regardless of that we won't see a new Volksgren situation with them simply due to their high manpower cost. If that weren't the case, we would see that happen with OKW and their Sturmgrenadiere, who are even more effective at working that way. That we don't see that happen should be proof enough.
Against any decently-armoured target it's 2 zooks ~ 1 schreck. With each double zook volley causing about 5-10% more damage per average (nobody will stick around for that many volleys, where the reload frequency would make a difference).
However, this comparison doesn't even take account for the number of slot items double zooks use, or the number of entities that need to carry them.
It's the carrier that causes the issues, not the zook vs schreck discrepancy.
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Romeo
Mr Smith
Luciano
Mr Smith
Relic Entertainment
