Nothing that a pair of Mortar HTs wouldn't achieve at half the price, at an earlier time in the game, only with access to WP for bonus machine gun hate.
The main gun on the scott does not outrange AT guns on autofire and the shell arc firing over obstacles gives the rounds plenty of travel time before they land. For 70 fuel invested over a Pack Howitzer (which brings considerably more hurt) it gets to be as durable as a Greyhound.
If a pair of them are laying into you thats 140fuel in the pot with zero AT potential. You should be able to work your counters appropriately.
The scott is good but it's also major tech, has a modest AoE and the barrage is only a polite request for a unit to move. Its AI falls well brlow the StuG E and Brum, it can't bounce anything, and anybody telling you to circle AT guns with it is a German trying to sabotage the allied war effort.
Sure, except the mortar HTs can't fire on the move and have a much slower projectile, meaning auto-fire will basically miss anything that has been moving recently. The problem isn't the effectiveness of the scott; the stats are fine. The problem is that it can be used to deal incredible damage with almost zero micro. Units like the STUG-E and Brumbarr require you to manually target to get any use out of them.
The only change I'm looking for is the auto-fire range being reduced; maybe not by half as I initially suggested, but by at least 1/4th to 1/3rd. That should give it the same auto-fire range as the brumbar/STUG-E's manual fire, which seems fair, considering those two have far more HP/Armor/Damage.
I don't think the scott is fine, but how do OST players at top levels even deal with 2x scotts? If you have LMG grens, they need to remain stationary to fire which is asking to get shot at, 4 men squads prone to explosive issues, and you can't rak cloak cheese.
Pretty much this. On paper, the scott is reasonably fine; but in practice it basically hard-counters OST.
If you're getting pushed by 3-4 rifle squads, you pretty much need to rely on your support weapons and LMG grens to counter them; but all of those units NEED to stay still in order to be effective... which means they're destroyed by the scotts; and if you move, the rifle squads close in and destroy your units. Sure, you can try to dive the scotts with Mediums/TDs, but that means hoping you don't get hit by bazookas/AT/M36s. It's just not a reliable counter.
All the scott needs is an increase on 'micro-tax'. Reducing the auto-fire range to half (or something like that) of what it is now, and the unit is basically fixed. It's still just as strong as before, but requires micro for it to be effective. That would also bring it in line with all the other units of that roll (STUG-E, Brumbar), which basically require manual attack-ground commands to work.
It's not really possible unless there's separate balance stats for 1v1/2v2 and 3v3/4v4 - the current factions/units just aren't designed around the amount of resources and combined arms available in larger team games.
Take the LeFH (or any arty unit); it's fine if there's 1-2 of them in a game, but 5+ just ruins it. Same goes for pretty much any powerful late-game type unit - 6+ M36 Jacksons destroy every tank instantly, a dozen JLIs remove any infantry in LoS, stacked emplacements, etc.
Only way 3s/4s will be anything more than a fun 'joke' mode will be if there's ever a way to balance them entirely separately.
Every patch doesn't need to re-work a half-dozen docs, rework a faction, change 30 units and adjust 80% of the maps while also taking 4 months to make. A smaller monthly patch that simply adjust a few units or docs would be fine.
Pretty much everything feels fine right now. There's still a few outliers, but it shouldn't be hard to bring them back in line. The game is in a really good place right now.
The only units I can really complain about are:
JLI
Pretty obvious. They're incredibly strong for the cost with that G43 upgrade. As others have said, the G43 should probably cost a bit more, since at 45 muni it's basically a "free" upgrade - and OKW usually floats a ton, anyway. Maybe make the G43 cost 60, and tone down its crit threshold? They might also work as a 3-man squad with very large spacing, which would help them further fit the role of a 'light recon' type infantry.
221/223
This thing is pretty bad right now. The armor is too weak for it to fight like the Ost 222, and the upgrade is incredibly expensive. That would be alright if the MG actually did anything, but its pen is so low it can't fight any light vehicles. I'd either lower its cost dramatically (200/10 + 100/5 upgrade), or increase the MG pen so that it can fight halftracks/UCs.
Sturmtiger
It still works, but the model-wiping AoE is just a bit too small for what it is. In yellow cover (so, late game craters), you'll often land a rocket directly on 1 model of a squad, but only wipe a few of them. Considering the obvious animation, limited range, high cost, and late-game arrival, I think landing directly on a squad should probably wipe it. And like A. Soldier said, the arc really needs to be increased so that it actually hits where it should. Late game it lands short a LOT due to craters.
Assault Engineers
Not on the voting list for some reason, but these need to be toned down. The main problem is that they show up instantly and can do a lot of damage - especially against OKW, who won't have an MG out. Any easy fix might be locking them behind 1-2 points rather than 0, so that you can't have your army made entirely of them (at least in larger team games). Alternatively, the 4-man squad + upgrade solution suggested earlier could work, too.
Right now they're just too strong early game, but also scale too well. It would be acceptable if it was one or the other, but right now, most builds are simply penals all game every game with no transition. An early game penal squad will perform well vs. any infantry (provided you use it correctly), but will also scale into late game very well, with low vet requirements - which just makes things worse, as you can easily replace wiped vetted squads.
Toning down their AI power early on, as per your first option, would solve their over-performing early game issue but still allow for them to be viable late game via upgrades. I think it's also important that the late game upgrades add distinctiveness, and aren't just an over-all upgrade as the PTRS is now - they should have AI power or AT power, not both with no consequence.
Realistically, I'd prefer them to fill a similar role to Obers, but that would require a significant redesign of both Penals and Cons to make it playable.
While I don't agree with the exact points OP gave, I do agree that soviets seem to be over performing a bit, especially in larger team games.
Particularly, the self-spotting mortars thanks to flairs and penals seem to be the main issues I can think of. The former seems out of place, since indirect fire shouldn't be able to self spot, and the later seems to be entirely due to the early scaling of penals.
Once a soviet player gets two Vet 1 mortars, they are basically impossible to counter, since they can constantly self spot - it also makes getting your own mortars incredibly challenging, which means ost has basically no structure clearing abilities, save for the weaker flamer-pios.
As for penals, the main problem is that their vet 0/1 performance is far too high, meaning late-game losses aren't too much of a problem. I think their Vet 2/3 performance should stay about the same, as well as cost, but their current performance vs. vet 3 grens at medium range is just far too high at vet 0/1, trivializing late game engagements. An alternative to a direct debuff to this unit would be increasing its pop-cap, meaning that supporting 4+ squads as well as other units would become much harder.
An argument could also be made the the PTRS upgrade doesn't seem like a 'trade' in terms of AT vs. AI, but just an overall upgrade. IMO it should work more like the shrek upgrade for PGrens, where AI power is dramatically reduced for AT power.
I'm going to suggest the same two docs everyone else is: Overwatch and Elite Armour. They're both decent (overwatch being the weaker of the two) and could easily be improved.
Elite Armour
Sander93's post is pretty much spot on for what I would suggest.
Key points being:
Panzer commander sight radius buff is pretty much non-existent. I wasn't even aware it did this until a little while ago since it's not very obvious. The off-map arty is also very bad, taking about 12 seconds to hit, and a cost of 120muni for 5 shells. It's just not a good ability against anything other than static defenses.
Sturmtiger Doesn't really fit the doctrine; switch it with Spec Ops Command Panther, a doc where the ST would fit better, anyway.
Overwatch
It's an interesting commander; focusing on early unlocks and, well, overwatch. That said, the last two abilities don't really fit the idea of the doctrine.
The Goliath is pretty good, so I would keep it the way it is. It also fits since it's a defensive ambush unit.
Forward Receivers are interesting, but not that great, simply due to range. They also end up being made somewhat redundant due to the IRHT. Possibly replace it with a clone of Soviets 'Radio Intercept' ability?
Early Warning. Fits the doctrine well. I'd keep it the same.
FTFL. Doesn't fit the doctrine at all; it's a defensive infantry buff, not a recon/intelligence ability. I would replace it with spotting scopes from OST.
Sector Assault. Interesting, but again, doesn't fit too well. It's also a very late-game ability. This suggestion would fit much better.
10 - (PASSIVE) Veteran leFH 18 Artillery Sturmpioneers can construct 10.5cm field howitzer emplacements which start with veteran crews and have the ability to overwatch and counter-battery.
While this is a good article, and a lot of the points are pretty accruate, only two things matter:
1. Fundamentally good faction design
2. Frequent patching
CoH3's success, or really any MP-focused game, is based entirely on its ability to keep an active player base; and that's something you can't rebuild after a few years (unless you're incredible lucky). That means the game needs to be released in a good state, and maintained with quick, iterative patches
If/When a new game comes out, the factions need to be fundamentally well designed, so they don't require a rework (or rely entirely on gimmicks). That means all the factions need access to basic tools (snares, suppression, mobile indirect fire,etc. ) and simultaneously can't rely on units with "make-or-break" abilities that take them from being awful to insanely OP (launch 'brace' ability). A large portion of the community latches on to a single faction, so if that faction is fundamentally broken OR continuously faces broken (overpowered) factions, they'll leave. This doesn't mean the game needs to be absolutely perfect on launch, but it does mean that they need to be within 5-10% of each other in terms of 'power', across most skill levels.
The second point is equally as important, since problem areas need to be addressed quickly in order to prevent people from leaving because "the game is broken". If players encounter something overpowered, gimmicky, or frustrating, they'll generally accept it for a bit - but it can't stay like that for long; this is especially important for game breaking stuff (i.e. full-auto sherman, etc.).
Those two points are critical; miss both, and we're just back in CoH2's situation where it took years for it to be "good" and even longer to get it to the current status.
It's absolutely not the brits, and I think Ost is a bit better than OKW, so it's not them.
It might not be Sov after the recent patch, but I haven't played enough to really tell.
That just leaves Ost vs. USF, which is incredibly hard to call, imo. On the one hand, the MG42 is incredibly dominant, as is T2 and T3, but on the other, with the Mortar nerf, T1 isn't nearly as strong as it used to be. Meanwhile USF has arguably the most versatile (and possibly strongest) mainline inf that scales incredibly well across the entire game, as well as the Jackson, which is possibly the best non-doc TD in the game. They do have the problem of T1 being sort of non-viable, but T2 offers a lot, especially against players who didn't get early AT. In addition, they have mobile healing and the only non-punishing FRP, which gives them a lot of field presence.
Doomlord52
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
