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My 2 cents:
No one particularly enjoys the artillery meta really but it's there because it takes a conscious effort and coordination to counter, basically just make sure you're the one that can blow them up (take IL2 bombing run, time on target, air supremacy, railway etc) and it becomes much less of an issue.
As soon as you see one fire, destroy it as soon as possible using recon and a call in and it will probably deter them from building another one.
If you don't like artillery meta, blob less and stay mobile, it makes artillery far less effective against you and chances are will force them to pick a different doctrine to deal with you so you won't have to deal with artillery in the first place.
I think the thing with win button counters is that although annoying, they're kind of essential, good players will cover their flanks and mine everywhere meaning attacking enemy artillery can cost you more than it's worth. Most of them are expensive call ins anyway and they still require LoS. |
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MG34 would be much better, whilst it might make them more potent at range and scale down more poorly when they lose models, it makes them more vulnerable to their counters as they should be. They are meant to be chaff line infantry after all, not assault infantry. Ostruppen get MG42s and they're 6 man squads not 5 so I don't think they'd become even more powerful with an MG34.
Volks having STG44s has always bugged me, every other line infantry in the game is vulnerable to being engaged in CQC by assault infantry, apart from volksgrenadiers. That's the point of having assault infantry. And with the power of STG44s combined with the price, or lack-there-of, of volksgrenadiers it results in a fairly poor trade even when using expensive units to deal with them, even if you win, something that counters all of their peers.
I don't think STG44s themselves are badly designed or function badly in game, STG44s don't function badly on Sturms or Panzergrens as they are both expensive units and sturmpioneers have pretty terrible received accuracy and neither have great utility. With Volksgrenadiers however there is virtually no penalty for using these units with STG44s badly, (they are essentially power weapons like BARs, Brens and light MG42s) they cannot be dropped, cost nothing to reinforce and are cheap to rearm fresh squads with. It makes them 'Idiot-proof' and makes it a lot harder to punish your opponents for bad plays or be rewarded for good play.
The CQC ambush counter for line infantry is more or less there for a reason and that is allowing you to counter and/or wipe the veterancy of line infantry in rock-paper-scissors style. Increasing their CQC effectiveness substantially with STG44s makes them inherently less vulnerable to this allowing their veterancy to doom spiral until you are facing 4 squads of vet 5 volksgrenadiers which not even assault infantry can save you from.
It also again presents the problem of OKW having all the tools available for you to just right click the capture point and win as everything in their roster is just there to be outrightly the best for that, I said in another thread, whilst that doesn't really make them OP, it just makes them easy mode, which in my opinion is bad for gameplay. It's not so bad on their vehicles but I don't like it on their infantry
It's partially why artillery meta is so prevalent right now in team games, which, again in my opinion, is also bad for gameplay. |
At least rifles have snares and can make sandbags or sprint when using docs... IS on the other hand is a tickle against light armor xD
Volks arent really OP here IMO... its just that IS and rifles were simply overnerfed... and cons lack the appropriate buffs... only the penal batallion beats them simply due to their innate strength
I suppose that's a good point actually, I play with Soviet players a lot so don't play a lot of them myself but I never really had an issue with volksgrenadiers until this patch, Sections have definitely been overnerfed, and rifles require such an investment to compete. Or rather the nerfs have stacked and overlapped inadvertently making them worse than I think they were planned to be, with the cover bonus and bren nerf for example. I think now with the bren nerfed, infantry cover bonus could be buffed again as one of the main problems with the original cover bonus is that they were totally broken when wielding anything other than their rifles, but the bren was still good so even without the cover bonus the bren still over performed, but now without either infantry sections struggle.
Also the centaur, UKFs only blob control got nerfed a bit and also they changed the price of OST's medium armour building to make it cheaper. I might be wrong, (I can't remember if they adjusted it somewhere else too to balance it) but this would allow OST to get medium armour out a little earlier, decreasing the viability in rushing a centaur due to the inevitability of facing a P4 or StuG before getting other medium armour yourself. Which indirectly increases the effectiveness of blobbing against UKF.
Infantry sections only solace right now is trenches imo, sitting them on a capture point in a trench is a nightmare for OST especially and force an incendiary nade from OKW. |
You see, for them to be combat effective they need a doctrine and that's the problem.
"They have utility" is a meme. Other mainline inf can also throw nades and AT nades, merge keeps exactly the same amount of squads and models on fiel, you just retreat different squad, its very situational and oorah was made expensive enough to again, make it situational. They have no other utility that wouldn't match somehow that of other factions if we take doctrines into account.
Hmmm... yeah comparing them to axis infantry is probably a better comparison tbh, hadn't thought of that. I was comparing them to USF and UKF infantry which have zero utility other than pretty good nades. XD.
Compared to volksgrenadiers most stock infantry pale imo, they have great utility, great vet, a great upgrade and are cheap as hell. |
Wait let me get this straight, you think bazookas are bad because they cut down on the AI damage output of riflemen?
Do you understand the phrase "having your cake and eating it too?
Also volks don't have better vet and don't do more far dps ( stg vs 1 bar ) than riflemen
No, Cutting down the AI damage of rifleman makes bazookas unusable, not bad, USF need as much AI as they can get to control axis infantry. I'm obviously not suggesting that bazookas become anti-infantry. I think they're bad because they never hit anything and if they do, they bounce off anything with armour made out of anything more than cardboard. It doesn't really matter in the end, because the jackson is pretty much good enough to replace that anyway imo.
And as the other guys said, they have very similar damage, price for price they do better, only with the second BAR can rifleman win... until you take vet into account and then they lose again. |
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Um... are conscripts bad? with ppshs they melt stuff and they deal so much damage when they hit. The whole point of them is for meat and their utility, and maxim spam is rare as penals, snipers and guards are so good that maxims are kinda irrelevant.
Free flares would be awesome, a cost decrease is kinda essential. It wouldn't be that spammable, it has a cooldown afterall. If it's being spammed, increase the cooldown. |
Maxim is 6 men and can get merged by conscripts, IMO it’s more or less fine as it is. It still does its job and has a great vet1 ability that everyone forgets about that lets it belt feed directly from the Red Army armory or something.
@ A.soldier: yeah I’m not saying it’s an exclusively bad thing or anything, just pointing out that it went from “fix brits” to “maxim discussion #16373928479302” lol.
^^^^ +1 for Stalin's bottomless Magazine. XD |
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Also buff bazookas, they are garbage. Although even with buffs, using them is difficult because nowadays you need BARs or 1919s in order to not just get blended by volksgrenadiers or cut down by grens. Volksgrenadiers just basically do american infantry's job better now that they get STG44s, they're better CQC and better at range, have better vet, snares after 1st HQ and must be literally molded out of dirt they are so cheap. US infantry just trade out worse in most scenarios if you ask me. |
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I basically agree with everything everyone has said so far. The whole american faction is designed around brawling and trading out better than the enemy do. But that falls flat once the enemy can kill you for free.
I think in team games USF is kind of getting the rough end of the stick from artillery meta, they have powerful infantry but they're all expensive and axis artillery means they can just kill them for free at no cost to themselves which USF have a tendency to just curl up and die once they get wiped. They also have powerful team weapons but they can just get deleted by an early stuka, which usf can't really respond to.
It's easy to see the flaws in UKF as half it's roster is useless or just missing. USF has a weird problem of that every single unit in the faction performs very well (other than the Utility car), nothing is useless and they are still losing. Which means yeah, the problems lie somewhere else, either cost adjustments to units to help USF fit the meta or, more likely, probably their Bull**** teching which makes you chose between the 2 most essential units in any roster, the machine gun and the AT gun and if you choose to take both you don't get armour out on time and get screwed by no retreat point. I think USF probably needs the OKW treatment of reorganising all of the units to make USF a linear progression like UKF and decreasing the price of each stage to fit. I propose:
-Lieutenant reduced to 30-40 fuel, unlocks MGs AT guns and Utility car. Lieutenant becomes an AT squad, (upgrades to bazooka rather than having a BAR and thompson). Maybe allow utility car to fire the crew's bazooka whilst inside the vehicle to stop it just getting squashed by it's counterparts (222, P2)? Without the bazooka the utility car is basically an expensive Universal carrier but worse, alternatively just make it cost like 5-10 fuel, 20 is ridiculous. Having an extra crewman poking his head out to fire a bazooka from the top of the vehicle would be cool.
-Captain reduced to 20 fuel (similar to OST medium armour building) and must have Lieutenant unlocked, has Thompson and BAR, unlocks Pack Howitzer, AA halftrack and Stuart. Perhaps decrease price of stuart to make it worth taking rather than rushing for a major.
-Major, requires lieutenant and captain.
I'd also like to see the WC51 truck able to drop BARs and Bazookas, similar to the British halftrack allowing you to arm your team with spare munitions.
Personally I think the sherman is amazing, especially if you have 2 of them with radio net. It's probably my favourite tank in the game, an HP buff would make it probably one of the best in my opinion, but seeing it able to take an extra hit would make it much more usable in the late game. The Sherman already has really good Vet though if you ask me, I'd rather see USF get an upgrade similar to Hammer/anvil from the major for 50 fuel to give shermans access to an "additional protection package" or something which either just buffs all your tanks right then or allows you to upgrade shermans with "extra armour" which grants an increase in HP and armour for, say, 10 fuel per tank.
(not munitions, seeing as this upgrade will be basically mandatory and USF already require far too many munitions for their infantry and still need to call in artillery every now and then)
I'd love to see shermans covered with tracks and sandbags from this upgrade, even if Patton hated it that way XD. Historically the Sherman only had 0.4 of an inch less effective armour than a tiger 1, it totally doesn't act like that in game. |
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The maxim I don't really think needs a buff, sure it takes ages to pin but it redeploys fast and all other soviet infantry perform exceedingly well, penals and guards are probably the best infantry in the game right now, (seriously, hit the dirt and sticky satchels are goddamn awesome) The soviets don't rely on the maxim to support their infantry, UKF require the vickers in order to compete at all early game and to lock down areas to prevent just being rolled back to base.
Conscripts are cheap, but really powerful if you ask me, not only do they have access to inceniary nades and snares, they trade out very well against volksgrenadiers and wipe the floor with most things except dedicated assault infantry with ppshs, but yeah I think they're probably relegated to a support role with the current strength of penals and guards, but I don't think that's because conscripts are bad, I think it's just guards and penals are too good not to use. |
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