Royal engineers equiped with worst SMG of WWII - STEN, Assault grenadeers equiped with not-worst SMG of WWII - MP-40. Do your bets, folks, who will win? Mine for Royals, lol.
I see 2 problems here:
1. While engineers of all other factions are zeros in combat, those engineers fights not worse that Sturmpios (which I still belive are OP). It's not fair and wrong. Let them be good in combat only with Anvil upgrades.
2. STEN. That SMG in CoH 2 looks like "Terminator gun". Even Thompson is not so badass, but it's pretty cool too. I know, that CoH 2 is not about history, but... Worst SMG of WWII is way better, than Best SMG of WWII - PPSH-41 (IRL it was PPS-43, but they won't add it, lol). Something should be done about it also.
2.5 BUFF MP-40!!!! Ass grens sux, ostheer engineers sux, MP-40 sux! Fix it already, nobody want's to play with assgrens because of it.
The ppsh having the highest capacity magazine doesn't make it the best, plus it's copied from a finish weapon, like anything else Soviet that's actually good.
Which SMG was the best is very arguable, for instance the best damage dealing one was the Thompson because of it's .45 caliber bullet, couple it with the 50 round drum magazine and you're holding a very dangerous SMG right there, if you wanted accuracy there was the MP40 which also had the option for dual magazines, while the Sten was perfect when silenced for covert operations behind enemy lines, which was the Commandos' job basically.
And I only compared them to the sturms because the OP compared them to the pioneers which are again, arguably the worst engineer unit in the game right now. While the RE need to be upgraded in order to be combat effective, the sturms have that right off the bat. In the end different units show different results in different situations, but yes, I would say that both the Sturms and Suppers are the more useful engineer units in the game which I enjoy using.