Profile of MarkedRaptor

So you're just going to ignore the fact that a piv can be countered by REs with zooks

Old argument: AT on okw inf is bad!
Hypocritical argument: it is ok on all allied mainline inf.

That's disgusting hypocrisy.

It's not hypocritical when the inf AT are drastically different and are against different factions all together. If Volks had say, bazookas instead of shreks back in the day it wouldn't of been the worst thing in the world, because bazookas can plink off medium armor and deal less damage. Shreks don't, shreks rarely ever plink on medium armor and do more damage.

Then, when even heavier armor hits the field you'd be hard pressed to find bazookas even penetrating a brumbar or panther unless in high quantities. If they are in high quantities then your opponent clearly has no anti-infantry capabilities. A Panzer 4 can be "deterred" with say, 4 bazookas, not countered. Just as an AT gun deters a tank, but technically doesn't counter it. It only counters it if you lose your tank to said anti-tank weapons. Cuz when it comes to Inf-AT, they have an 8 secondish reload time, that's a long time. The reason panzershreks were so ridiculous were that shreks not only have higher damage, but higher pen leading to alpha strikes. Let's do some math

(medium tanks have 640 health, typically 180 armor)
Bazookas do 80 per, so per bazooka: 80, 160, 240, 300, 380, 460, 540, 620, 700

Shreks do 120 per, so per shrek 120, 240, 360, 480, 600, 720

So even if you had 4 bazookas it would take at least 9 shots ASSUMING none of the shots miss or plink. Add on the 8 second reload time (Where you can shoot the crap out of them). When you say spammed volks, you could easily hit 5-6 volks. Which is just enough to either almost alpha strike or straight up alpha strike a tank.

I agree that guards/penals do pose a certain problem in which they are good against both Infantry and tanks. The upside is they lose to dedicated platforms. Like Guards/penals can't beat true elite infantry, like obers. They also can't do massive damage to heavier tanks.

USF can just build more REs and equip them with zooks and leave the AI to riflemen, so they don't really lack anything

So how many rears are we talking? two? three? How many Riflemen?

Basically the more Echelons you build, the less riflemen you'd have. It was quite common back in the day to have 1 echelon + captain for 4 bazookas to fend off vehicles. It was kind of effective but they didn't do much against a supported tank. We talking like, 6 bazookas? So 2 Rears and a captain? So you'll see less riflemen and rears with zooks are utter trash against anything infantry wise. Hell riflemen at least do damage if they have bazookas.

If he somehow has like 4-5 riflemen, 2 rears and a captain with zooks how has he not been bleeding that whole game? USF hemorrhages manpower after 3 riflemen. How many bazookas did he buy? they are 50 munitions per. Where are your weapon upgrades so you can easily win engagements?

Once long ago, volksgrenadiers could be upgraded to a single panzershrek. The pure amount of cancer that caused ruined team games. You can tell they wanted to avoid that when they moved them to sturmpio's.

Though this was back in the day when flame grenades were instant, and you could toss them super far while suppressed. It might not really be all that bad anymore now that suppression counters those blobs better. Still it nullified vehicle play in team games from allies.

To be honest I kind of miss the game from its original beta. The game felt like a giant "screw you" which fit the eastern front really well. Taking ground and fighting in the horrible snow with incredibly OP stuff on both sides was quite the slugfest and I still have fond memories of it. I played mostly Ostheer in beta and I loved how despite having the best of everything back then soviets just had raw numbers. It was fun.

I remember having to fallback 3-4 gren squads the minute a squad of shock troopers got close (because they were literally bulletproof). Or how a panzer 4 was incredible, up until it got rammed by a dirt cheap tank. Good times.

It needs to be decided what role Grens play in the Ostheer faction. Are they meant to hold the line while their support weapons do most of the work? Are they meant to be able to go toe to toe with other factions mainline infantry? Are they meant for recrewing weapons if shit hits the fan?

Problem as it stands is they are in a very strange place. They cost a lot to reinforce, yet are the most likely to take the brunt of an assault. They are actually pretty exceptional early game at fighting allied infantry, then just get outscaled super hard. They have a hard time recrewing weapons because of their squad size.

It's why people like ostruppen. Can soak frontline damage and reinforce crew weapons. They have a role. Before any choices are made Grens need to have their role defined. Then you fine tune them to that role. Honestly? 5th man is kind of a poor idea. Probably be best to retool pioneer dps and make them 5 man to emphasize recrewing weapons. Then making grens hardier by adjusting their received accuracy veterancy (or starting RA).