Profile of ZombiFrancis

+25% damage means little considering RE have horrible accuracy, even with veterancy unless the target is in front of you.

Then why implement it at all? The only units it really affects are the kubelwagen, 222s, and increases the RNG effect due to their said horrible accuracy. It's your mod, do what you will with it, but I think vipper does have a point with the kubel, especially if the kubel is OKW's starting unit. (I'm guessing this is a direct result of that?)

Rear Echelon can't lay mines, their flamethrowers (now that they get them) are doctrinal, and all USF vehicles except for the Calliope and Pershing have vehicle crews to repair. They can't even lay sandbags. Though they can place tank traps, those aren't necessarily the best thing to litter the map with as an army of medium tanks.

These are the reasons Rear Echelon aren't the most viable unit. Wouldn't it be worth exploring addressing those issues?

Have you considered giving Rear Echelon access to the Assault Engineer mines? Have you considered locking it behind the minesweeper upgrade? You could even make the minesweeper a sort of demolitions package that gives them a form of demo, or even that british cover destroyer despite my loathing of that ability's concept. Mines are key, and RE's inability to lay them always felt curiously crippling.

They'd be good candidates for an upgrade that increases repair/build speed and grants them the repair vehicle critical, and then scrub it from vehicle crews altogether. They could even make sandbags. Mutually exclusive from minesweepers/mines, of course. It'd give them that unique viability that you might want an RE squad nearby for.

In my opinion if the if RE carbines are to be combat viable instead of all this, they should drop down to a 3 man squad. Give them flamethrowers stock and change doctrinal flamethrowers to one of the passive rifle upgrades. Either vet 2 or 3 would be appropriate for the 4th man.

One could also consider the fact that Elefants are a big fat nothing against infantry and that infantry AT all deal deflection damage and are entirely ubiquitous in this game...

• Volksgrenadiere and IS could automatically start to build sandbags on their side of the post when capping.
  
• Pioneers could automatically start to wire cover on the opponents side when idle for more than 5 seconds.
  
• Panzer tactician could automatically engage when the tank is one shot from being destroyed.
  
• Panzerfauts could be a toggle so that the Grenadiers would automatically fire it when they find a vehicle with undamaged engine if it's health is low enough.
  

Sounds more like a list of scrapped DLC commander abilities...

Also, as far as vaulting is concerned, I think it is closer to the unique animations of infantry walking through heavy snow than true sight in terms of gameplay importance.

On one hand, we could argue that infantry should be able to just walk through hedgerows, and on the other hand we could argue that infantry should be able to attack a garrison by climbing through the windows or busting in the door. At a certain point the gameplay has to be considered.

Also, there aren't a whole lot of options for walls/fences that provide cover and prevent movement including vaulting. The few that do are all green cover and might be heavy crush. And I know at least one can be wire-cut. While mappers aren't making maps with a whole lot of non-vaultable movement blockers, there aren't a whole lot of options to work with without some really ugly and repetitive maps.

There are less assets to work with, most are winter variants, and a huge amount of objects have shot or sight blocking properties that are dubious at best. One of the best brick rubble objects is a sight blocker despite it having, like, the exact same dimensions as conscripts sandbags.

Guess what happens when you can only alter a certain aspect of a faction and your scope is limited to nerfing the cheese which makes that faction relevant.

You recognize that you can't fix the greater problem and avoid obscuring the issue with unnecessary changes? The last thing you do is take the problem out of context to try and make it fit into a new scheme of definition.

The difference is that i don't see Penal/T1 opening as problematic as the previous styles of SU play (maxim spam or even guard spam for 2v2+) which was confined to playing one or 2 commanders (right now Lend lease is strong, but viability of other commanders is there and not "auto lose").

They never were "auto-lose". Guard motor just dominated because it was the best of the Guard commanders. Not going for a guards commander was risky because the Guards timing with PTRS.

And it wasn't until the maxim was nerfed to oblivion that the DSHKa entered as the go-to choice.

And the cheese that was supposed to be fixed wasn't even Maxim spam originally, it was that Penals had too much synergy with Guards. The issue was : 6man super accurate anti-cover/garrison unit with the a 2CP panic PTRS squad for the first units not weak to anti-cover/garrison units.

That is no longer the situation now, but the actual issues, Soviet conscripts and Soviet T2, are pretty much unchanged and we're still skating around trying to define the issue through Penals.

On rails & metal in vCoH I would use a flamethrower to bust down a section of fence on the south. This allowed me on many occasions to slip forces past the garrisoned MG and pull off a flank that often would win me the fuel.

This simple dynamic has yet to be replicated in CoH2 as a strategic move. At best there's a few tall, sight blocking fences and walls you can burn down. (But hey, kubels crush everything anyway. Where the bren carrier might've been an exception, crushing cover and fences from the first minute is just an implied norm for coh2.

I've made a few maps with ambient, map object barbed wire that can be cut, but again, the dynamic of busting past a barrier with a unit that needs a munitions upgrade to get an edge in positioning didn't translate well.

I can vault an infantry squad past a fence, but not clear a path for any team weapons. I can cut wire, but that isn't really much of an obstacle.