Profile of JPA32

I don't know how to help the Brits as a whole immediately. They have severe problems across the board in both directions when it comes to power levels, units, teching, etc so any Brit fix is going to take multiple iterations to establish since every small ecosystem change has a cascade of other balance issues it would cause.

I think the first step to fixing the brits is nerfing and buffing them to a baseline level thus making them a little more bland, and fundamentally adapting them from there to create strengths and weaknesses so that they can function as both a unique, yet non-cheesy faction since their current implementation just leads to weird scaling issues, and useless units to account for Tommies being too strong.

This would be incredibly complicated and are probably a slap in the face to the balance team's Relic overseer so the odds of this actually occurring are essentially none, but the concept intrigues me enough to post a snippet of my idea. In the interest of not writing a novel (because I would) I'll keep it to just Tommies for now. As for other units mentioned in here (The AEC and the Bofors would also be adjusted to account for these changes)

4 Man Tommies would need to be buffed/nerfed to not be terrible/unkillable in their own right as they are your early game expected mainline infantry now rather than the rush for 5 man Tommies. They should adhere to function at a baseline similar level as other mainline infantry early on apart from minor things such as engagement distance preference and #fielded, etc, and the 5 Man Tommy upgrade (Which presumably is unremovable at this point) would need to operate differently. I would say that once Platoon Command Post is tech'd (This would also presumably come later with the changes to fuel expenditure and unit performance), your current tech tree splits into Bofors vs AEC.

Instead of that rename them to "Hunker Down" and "Bolster Forces" which would not be mutually exclusive (only in practicality early in the game) would respectively provide Bofors + Scoped Enfield/Artillery Flare upgrades (packaged together, 1 weapon slot, locks out medics, rebalanced weapon stats as necessary.) which would give your Tommies 2 long ranged scoped enfields and the ability to throw an artillery flare. and AEC + Bolster Infantry Squads, the latter which would change to an upgradable ability on each of your Tommies and Sappers that allows you to requisition a 5th man. (1 Weapon Slot, replace the 5th man's weapon as necessary to balance him vs Bren and Scoped Enfield).

The idea with this is to tie together all of the loose upgrades the Brits have lying around into their tech structure to provide a better UI (Mainly for new players), and provide some sort of baseline scaling for Brit infantry that doesn't require them to immediately go 5 men or lose. Additionally, since most of the problems of the Brit faction come from the forced balance around Tommies, if you can create a functional baseline mainline infantry for the Brits that doesn't break the faction, balancing everything around them in terms of team weapons and vehicles would be significantly easier.

Thx for the detailed answer. I still think the 85 needs to be more expensive (at least 140 fuel) but I enjoy the discussion and you made some really good points.

Also I didn't mention this at first, but it being a doctrinal unit means that you have an opportunity cost of selecting a doctrine with this in it, so it's average power level should be slightly higher than that of the norm to give players justification in building and using them. I suppose that is what the 5 fuel difference and consistency increase is between this and the P4J.

My 2 cent about Overwatch:
I would prefer to move the tweaked version of "Defense of the fatherland" to "Fortress" and seperate "Overwatch flares" and "Goliath" again. Overwatch would have 1 ability less then in the live version but that could be compensated with the old "Overwatch flares" - the flares are automatically set up on capping points.

Old overwatch flares were the worst since they were just free frontline vision and information for the OKW player at no cost or thought.

Right now they're jank because you have to expend both micro tax and time to plant the flares and since you can't shift queue them up you have to babysit your units to plant the flares. I'd just say allow the flares to be planted on neutral/enemy points, increase the build time but only detonate them if a point you own is being captured. This keeps the micro flow alive, has a risk reward element to planting them on frontline points if you're attacked and provides a time tax so that you only plant them on relevant points (similar to how mainline sandbags have been changed but not as drastic time-wise.)

That's assuming that's even possible. You might not be able to interact with neutral/enemy points I don't know.

Doesn't microsoft sell this kind of edition in MStore?

Nah, they sell the complete edition which is something else I think? Maybe it's functionally the same thing I don't know since the Microsoft store page has 0 information on what their version actually gives you.

This is the thing I'm talking about. From the CoH2.org post here

But there is absolutely 0 information and the only people selling this are random shady key websites that give Steam Keys for a game version that's not actually on Steam apparently?

The whole thing is a confusing mess from my perspective.

Amilly Fields and Ploiesti Outskirts lack player number indicators i.e (2) Crossroads

Nexus is still (1) Nexus which is the incorrect notation. Should be (2) Nexus

Mill Road and Bocage literally aren't even in the game.

Player rank icon badges don't exist anymore.

Loading into Automatch or Custom Games menu freezes you for several seconds.