Profile of GI John 412

I’d like to see a small damage reduction to units in yellow cover from all forms of grenades, AoE and indirect fire, just to counter the clumping problem. Yellow cover is often worse than no cover right now and is counter intuitive at times.

Rearranged LT tier.
-Lieutenant
-AT gun
-Mortar
-AA Halftrack.

Captain Tier
-Captain
-50 cal
-Pack Howitzer
-Stuart

Remove free Captain and Lieutenant units and adjust cost accordingly. Give Capt free bazookas to make him a dedicated AT support unit. Remove free BAR from LT and instead give him a total of two or three Thompson SMGs (or maybe Grease guns) in order to make him a dedicated assault unit. (Much like he is now, but less good at long range and no weapon slots) this will make the Captain and LT more specialist and less like rifle squads. LT gets frag because smoke grenade plus SMGs would be OP. Captain keeps smoke because he has zooks.

Each tier gets suppression, AT, anti infantry, indirect fire and a vehicle. Neither Tier has complete domination in one area but still has tools for all areas to fit your playstyle.

Major tech remains mostly unchanged except that he is now a four or five man squad that you have to purchase separately. Bigger size because you must buy separately, but higher cost. No free weapons but has two weapon slots. Basically a RE squad that has good abilities and one extra expensive Major model.

Another example is how (IIRC) the modern-day US army changed the M16 to be only single fire and 3 round burst mainly because they found soldiers would panic and waste ammo by spraying entire magazines uncontrollably if given full auto as they were in Vietnam. Worth pointing out that a lot of the soldiers in question were also probably green draftees (basically conscripts).

Sorry dudes, but you’re just flat out wrong on that one.

The roughly 8 pound M16A2 in burst mode firing M855 5.56mm is not comparable to a nearly ten pound PPSh firing a pistol cartridge. Shooting a real rifle and scoring a hit on a moving target is hard. That’s it. Shooting a burst from an SMG is more likely to result in a hit by a poorly trained soldier compared to a rifle.

I have shot several machine guns in my life, and I will tell you that WWII era SMGs are heavy bitches. This makes them easy to control and basically reduce aiming to a point and spray technique. Rifles are hard, you gotta aim and make it count every time and that’s just not an easy thing to teach when the invaders are outside your front door.

I could go on for days on why you’re wrong, or I can direct you to Ian at forgotten weapons in YouTube and he can show you what I am talking about. He has videos on lots of WWII SMGs that would be highly interesting and informative to anyone with an interest in WWII.

Or you can come visit me in Arizona. I’ve got a small collection of several WWII guns that we can go out and play with. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

Watch some high level game replays and you’ll see that almost everyone uses BRENs because they are excellent, while PIATs are used less. Mostly I believe this is because BRENs are so good, it is better to invest munitions in getting two on every tommy section, not because PIATs are actually bad. If you need extra AT, get PIATs. They’re pretty ok at backing up an AT gun, but shouldn’t be relied on as your only AT. Combo them with the AEC to snare and protect flanks to enable your AT gun to do work. Lots of mines are a must for Brits as well. Mines win games.

The way I see it, either the US mortar should be removed, allowing the Pack Howitzer to become the US dedicated only light artillery piece, or the Pack Howitzer needs to be reworked into a the proposed barrage only mobile on map artillery unit.

For sake of interesting gameplay I hope the spring balance patch attempts to implement the latter.

Dear God (modders), if you’re listening, please do this for us.... send us a sign. Lol