Profile of Spinflight

It's a good idea, but there is a much more sneaky way to do it.

Instead of increasing the base price you increase the upkeep cost, possibly beyond a certain number. 2 MG42s, all is well and normal, buy a third and the upkeep of all three rises.

US Infantry being necessary would just have a higher cap before increased upkeep kicks into play.

Alternatively you could balance the roles between bayonets and support. 3MG42s is fine as long as you field 3 or more bayonets, 3 Rocket arty vehicles fine as long as balanced by three or more tanks. One tank and 3 Calliopes means you'll pay the upkeep fine.

Etc.

Do any of the top players build the AEC ( on the very rare occasions they play as Brits)?

Excellent addition Sir!

The forward retreat point part of it costs another 200MP and it seems to die rather distressingly quickly even to SMGs but yeah it unlocks the garrison bonus ( shortish ranged suppressive fire barrage from a bofors or increased rate of fire from the pit, the first being an indirect attack which doesn't need line of sight) which can be uber useful on the right maps. In fact the bofors ability seems to be the only way to suppress or pin enemy infantry other than having two Vickers firing at them.

On large maps it allows you to recycle your infantry quickly and get Piats and Brens close to the front line.

Popcap seems to be a little discussed but very important subject. Multiply the population cost ( IS and AT is 7, Eng or VMG 6, pit and AEC is 8 etc) by 1.5 and you get the total manpower that you lose per minute by fielding that unit.

You start with 300, minus 10 ( 7 * 1.5) for your starting IS. Hence some units are more efficient in manpower terms than they appear. A Universal Carrier will only cost you 6 manpower per minute for the nanoseconds that it lives whereas that bofors sited a bit too far back to do anything useful will cost you 280 + ( 30 * 15 ) = 730 over a half hour game.

Snipers seem to be the most expensive at 13.5 per minute. For their upfront cost you'll have to kill 14 Volks plus one every 2 minutes to break even purely in manpower terms. Of course there's also indirect costs to the opposition, forcing a retreat or denying an area costs time and manpower even if the casualties are light.

Hence a forward retreat point allows you to get more trigger time out of your expensive units and doesn't cost any upkeep itself. Spending munitions on Brens etc also increases their damage dealing abilities without affecting the recurring costs.

Another structure with no upkeep is caches. Fuel one increases a standard resource point by three and the munitions by 5 ( hence instead of 5MU-3FU it becomes either 10-3 or 5-6). They cost 200MP to build and also give some protection against decapping ( cutoffs!) as they take some time to destroy with small arms. I think your teammates also get the benefit if you are playing 2v2 or higher.

If the sneaky Axis are strangely quiet in the early game chances are he's building caches to get lots of tanks out or afford huge numbers of Shrecks. Despicable trick. You think you are hanging in there quite nicely then 2 Ostwinds and a PIV come around the corner after 11 minutes....

Obviously the sooner you build caches the more use you get out of them, though as you tend to be a bit starved of manpower in the early game quite when to build either a forward assembly, retreat point or caches is one of timing.

Cheaper of course is a trench at 50MP. Vickers in a trench = awesomeness though the sneaky Hun does seem to be able to just waltz through it's fire and chuck an incendiary grenade in for the loss of only a couple of men, only Commandos seem to be able to return the favour.

Couple of unrelated things I've noticed... Piats have the same range as an MG42, however they always overshoot... If that naughty blockhead MG42 is garrisoned in a key building asking your Piat team to attack ground just in front of the building results in hazard free if slowish house clearance / destruction. Also they can do this over hedges, houses or other shot blockers so you don't need a direct line of sight and you seem to get a higher rate of fire with them whilst you are in cover.

Also the Anvil upgrade gives you 3 airburst shells at the beginning of the base howitzer barrage ( 15 rounds in total). The rest of it likely won't hit the same postcode but those three shells are both timely and deadly accurate. The barrage itself lasts almost a minute so I'm finding some use in decapping a cutoff or fuel and then calling in the guns. They are very accurate at short range so if the dastardly bosche tries to nick your cutoff in force a quick barrage can give you time to bring overwhelming force to bear. Also the mortar pit can attack ground and even at max range will land most rounds within a capping circle. 24 seconds to recap seems to equal about 6 rounds on target ungarrisoned- which can be very amusing. I've had two rage quits with this one.

Because I only own the Brits?

And because no other bugger was going to vote for them.

The UC is particularly gutting to lose to small arms fire, and not much small arms fire either. The Wasp and HMG ( 50cal) or MMG versions were meant to be proof to 20mm across their frontal arc late war due to plastic armour. A 222 currently kills it so fast it is difficult to count the number of shots.

The idea that anyone would get into a Wasp that blew up as easily as ingame is insane.