Profile of HoverBacon

In a team game if you've got multiple people trying to counter one player's churchills, you're losing elsewhere, you need to be able to kill them yourself somewhat reliably. a 3v3 us essentially 3 1v1s.

also @ShadowlinkX37 yes at vet 3, the 6 pdr fires sabot rounds by default which are goddamn ridiculous, they go through king tigers like every time. But you need vet 3 which means it needs to stay alive.

You know it's firing sabot cos it gets a big white super velocity tracer and goes WHOOOOSH a lot.

Yo, this is gonna be a long one.

I wanted to make this post to highlight the current state of the faction and for people to concisely highlight their issues with it. More specifically it's units. Everyone seems to have complaints about the faction whether it be brit players on how the faction pales in use and versatility compared to soviets and USF. Or Axis players on how they're boring to play against or how certain units are just broken or whatever. Whilst many people claim the faction requires a complete revamp in order for any meaningful changes to occur, I do not believe this is the case and instead I wanted to:
1. Review the units in the roster and offer my opinions on potential tweaks to the entire unit roster in order to make the faction more usable online and in the competitive scene, (specifically to units as I feel this is where many of the flaws lie, especially as we've now had 2 commander revamps and an upcoming patch to fix the other aspects of the faction.)

2. Ask everyone else their opinions on what needs to be done to revive the currently dying faction as I feel a lot of people are actually happy to see the faction die as the other 4 factions are currently the best balanced we've seen them in years and UKF seem to 'get in the way' of that balance.

Currently people's opinions on this topic are scattered far and between in loads of different threads, I wanted to make it easier for other people's suggestions, (as well as my own) to be seen by the team that are patching the game.

But here are my opinions:

Infantry Section:
Since the nerf a few patches ago to their cover bonus / buff to their out of cover effectiveness + the bren gun nerf, tommies now are effectively are weaker than nearly all of their peers, especially in the late game as they are too expensive to lose and too weak alone to contest points, especially with the current prevalence of artillery. They lose to most units when out of cover as expected but now trade out too poorly with most units when in cover too. Definitely require 5 man upgrade if you plan to use them. I normally use them as medics for my sappers and commandos though.

I suggest either a reversal to the cover bonus change as the brens have been nerfed so they won't be quite so broken or a cost decrease to 250-260mp and unit reinforcement cost decrease.

Vickers MG team:
One of the best MGs in the game. Suppression is a little buggy, the vickers not suppressing when it should results in axis taking more casualties than they should due to not receiving the received accuracy buff they get when suppressed and people escaping your fire arc when they shouldn't.

Universal Carrier:
UKFs early game width, strong unit despite nerf, an edit I would suggest is allowing it to deploy smoke for infantry similar to the sherman and valentine. (maybe with less range) this would allow british to be more effective against early game machine gun spam which hurts brits a lot due to lack of a mobile mortar. (Is also historically accurate)

Royal Engineers:
Very strong, decent assault infantry when in a pinch, especially at 5 man squads due to being cheap and powerful, once with snares next patch will be very good. Salvage sappers get smoke as well which is extremely useful for dealing with MGs.

6 Pounder AT gun:
Very potent AT gun, one of the best, no complaints. Sabot rounds at vet 3 is awesome, although they rarely get there without being decrewed.

Sniper:
Decent sniper, used to be better than the rest due to better accuracy against garrisons but now all snipers are the same. Extra damage against vehicles isn't really useful though.

AEC:
Still good, but needs a lot of improvements in order to be worth taking as it delays centaur/cromwell/churchill and still worse than the puma, treadshot perhaps takes too long to target. Perhaps revamping to work like the puma might be better? Another MG buff again too maybe?

Bofors:
Powerful for early lockdown but difficult to use effectively late game due to prevalence of artillery in this meta. Quite good, quite niche. Needs to be effective anti air though, was bugged, as far as i know, it still is.

Mortar pit:
An essential unit, UKF's only early effective indirect fire and only way of deploying smoke. Issue is it either wins you the game or costs you it as being unable to keep it alive means you will be mortared all game and keeping it alive means they will as it will quite happily fight off 2 enemy mortar teams happily. I would suggest making the mortar pit buildable without mortars for 100mp and adding mortar teams to the platoon command post, although with tactical support getting a mortar through air resupply this may not be necessary after next patch.

Centaur:
UKFs only real blob control, although since the nerf I think it's lethality is a little questionable especially once the map is full of craters, until the vet 1 strafing fire ability although this has been nerfed too. Still good, although so essential to deal with enemy blobs and getting it early delays actual armour (cromwell/churchil firefly)

Cromwell:
Good, I personally prefer to use it than the centaur as my first tank as it scales better into the late game especially since it's cost was reduced.

Firefly:
No issues here although needs vet 2/3 in order to be useful late game as gets overwhelmed easily on it's own. Still worse than the jackson though.

Comet:
For the love of CoH fix this tank. Costs more than a panther and performs half as well. No longer kills infantry, It's vet 3 buff is more or less useless (throwing grenades? wut?), no longer fires accurately on the move, if it doesn't miss it's shot, it bounces, mobility is good but with prevalance of Axis snares (seriously, everything has fausts now) flanking is far to dangerous for this essentially extremely overpriced sherman 76 clone. Only positive is it's extremely trolly armour against rockets, I have regularly bounced multiple panzerschreks and watched mine bounce 3 raketenwerfer shots in a row the other day. It craps all over panzer 4s but so does the firefly and churchill for 30 and 25 less fuel and both are better against panthers. If the gun can't penetrate the front of a panther or doesn't deal more damage, it may as well be a cromwell with a 6 pdr, it has a short 17 pdr (77mm), it should act like it.

I would suggest, definitely reverting it's fire on the move accuracy to what it used to be and increasing the penetration to what it used to be (perhaps adjusting fire rate if need be) and leaving it as bad against infantry OR Making it good against infantry again and leaving the penetration the same but giving the comet an ability to use discarding sabot rounds with amazing penetration at the cost of munitions, similar to the jackson's HVAP. OR decreasing the price to the same as the Sherman 76 (125/135 fuel). It is not as good as a panther, it either needs to be made as good as one, or made cheaper. I would prefer it to be buffed though otherwise I will still probably take churchills every time.

Churchill:
God tier tank, cheap, unkillable and can kill most of it's counters, definitely the crutch of the british roster right now, probably the most powerful and useable vehicle. I don't think it is OP particularly, but perhaps the ability to reverse through smoke and flee to safety at normal speed is a bit excessive. Perhaps smoke shells might be less silly if it did need a nerf.

17 pounder:
Difficult to keep alive with the prevalence of artillery this meta but the best counter to Axis Superheavies this patch, when used with commanders/allies who can kill LefHs easily, this thing is amazing. A great backstop to prevent dives. At best, it locks down a portion of the map. At worst, it's so cheap, even if it kills one panther and dies it has nearly tripled it's value. Could do with a little more health due to it's size which makes it very easy to hit with mortars and artillery.

The Doctrinal units I think all perform well, or will do after the next patch. (e.g. sexton buff)
I'd really like to hear other people's opinions on what needs to be done and pointing out stuff I've missed or got wrong.

Well the first step to fixing Brits would involve reversing every. Single. Change made to them during the Spring balance patch.

The issue with the spring balance patch changes, is it made it so, despite the buff, when british infantry are out of cover they still lose because they still aren't as good as anything else, and when they are in cover they now still lose to everything else anyway due to the nerfs.

They're not bad by any means, but for their price they can cost you games because they bleed your manpower hard if you start losing them and require so much babysitting from you and machine guns and commandos etc.

I basically use them to build trenches on capture points and sit them in there to hold the point as they're very good when garrisoned. Or I use them as medics.

I think comets need their fire on the move accuracy buffed again back to what it was because they are flanking units after all and currently I swear their penetration is awful. If they don't miss, they bounce, you can't flank with them due to the prevalence of axis snares, their vet 3 ability to throw grenades is virtually usless and they cost more than panthers and perform less than half as well. They have a very slightly worse 17 pdr gun (77mm) but it's penetration in terms of what it can penetrate reliably is virtually the same as the 6pdr.

The next patch gives me hope as british are FINALLY getting snares which will change the game soooo much, as 17 pdrs will become devastating combined with snares. Who knows, with snares, comets might finally be able to flank safely to get those side armour hits so they might become remotely useful too.

I made most of these with existing abilities and units in mind so that they could be made fast and with minimal effort. I dont like that OKW, USA and Brit have so little commander variaty while OST and SOV got a lot of commanders that are just rearanged a bit. Since this worked mostely for the original factions i pitched to do the same thing for the newer factions as well. Here is another one that i have thought of since.

Royal Lend Lease Regiment

M2 Flamethrower 0CP

M21 Mortar halftrack 3CP (fixes britains mortar problem, for a fuel price)

M5A1 Stuart 4CP (allows you to go bofors or have both AI and AT light verhicles early game)

Air Resuply Operation 4CP

Air Supremacy 12CP

That makes sense, although I think relic specified somewhere that they wanted the newer factions' commanders to be unique and the older ones to be a lot more similar. Not to say I don't like the idea of them adding a load of new similar commanders to the new factions though.