Profile of wongtp

i'd skip usa, they are effectively handicapped at most phases of the game, unless someone goes all out grens/volks on rifles.

they have no counters to the current meta of kubels, insta pin mg34s, heavy tanks, lmg spam, snipers, except smoking the hell out of everything. nor do they have good non doctirnal building counters and grenades dont cut it.

soviets have a better fighting chance but not that much different since they suffer from inferior support teams, inferior infantry and inferior tanks.

only real way to beat axis now is to fight people who spam volks/sp without support teams/kubels and troll them around with m3 scout cars and flamers. against the mass majority of averagely decent people, you need to play better to match them in team games.

so apart from okw/ost having a much easier time in team games, what exactly do you want to say?

I liked how in CoH1 the Grens were good static with LMG but they were also very strong used aggressively on the move. CoH2 they are really good with the LMG and pretty lack luster on the move with Kar98s which makes spamming the LMGs a no-brainer. Making the rifles deadlier at CQB is the solution.

sadly, running into range against all these lmg is still suicidal. but rifles better at close quarters will help somewhat.

wehr in coh1 also did not have vehicle snare, which made schreck *THE* AT support weapon of the army. considering that, having schrecks was far more valuable than an lmg upgrade. schrecks also took up a single weapon slot which gave a choice to the player, boost to anti infantry or AT capabilities.

now, there's no alternative to lmg upgrade which makes it a no brainer upgrade.

I wouldn't really consider 4 of a basic, non-weapon team squad to be spam.

Anyway, I feel that you are not really accounting for the fact that most of the things you describe are intentional. Grenadiers w/ LMGs are intended to be able to shred Cons at medium long-range - without this, Grens would be near-useless and not worth building at all. Just think about how much of a nerf to Ostheer your suggestions would be. Is it really true that LMG DPS is breaking the game? It was tuned down about 3 weeks ago in a major patch, and I would argue that reducing this any more would severely damage faction balance. As it stands, LMG Grens are strong 1v1 against other infantry squads at medium-long range, but there are many counters and many other situations in which they do not perform as effectively. Same goes for Rifles.

You also need to consider the fact that 4 x LMG upgrade = a huge 240 munitions. This represents a very significant trade-off against grenades, mines, Panzerschrecks, arty and a lot of other things.

breaking the game? no, but there's too much of an unfair advantage over rifles and smg infantry. lmg is still, the mother of all infantry weapons, the king of A move tactics and needs some toning down.

what i ask for is a toning down to manageable levels, not at its current levels where lmgs provide such a huge upgrade to a point where they match elite infantry. most elite infantry are also more expensive than grenadiers by a relatively huge margin, about 90mp/75munitions more for guards, 150mp more for shocks. that 60muni investment actually more cost effective than elite infantry. for 240mp and 60munitions to match elites, it is relatively cheap. so cost wise, there isnt really much to compare, the lmg upgrade is just so much more effective.

a common scenario of 2 cons + 2 guards (1140mp/150munitions) vs 4 upgraded grens (960mp/240munitions). in a straight up fight, the grens will mow down everything in sight before taking any serious casualties. if grens were to a move towards 2 cons and 2 guards, rifle nades will make short work of guards who have to stand still to fire and should the guards leave cover to throw a nade, they will be shot to bits.

another scenario of 2 cons + 2 shocks(1260mp) vs 4 upgraded grens (960mp/240munitions). this could be even more one sided as long as grens maintain long range, nothing can scratch them. however, should shocks get close, focus fire and soft retreating the gren squad in danger should force a retreat. so for soviet infantry here to do real damage, it is very situational and extremely risky.

design should never interfere with balance or overperformance. as long as grens has an advantage over cons, it meets the design. grens match cons without lmg and if you mean cons are currently useless, you should then know that grens have too much an unfair advantage over cons.

with lmgs, cons, penals are invalidated (read free exp), guards struggle and shocks become situational. in order to match 4x grens and prevent them from rolling over infantry, you need to lock them down with enough dps or pin them down. considering they have access to rifle nades and that huge ranged dps, maxims will have trouble suppressing them before the gunner gets killed.

also, this problem was faced when browning lmgs were spammed. grenadiers, volks, fusiliers, obers or falls had issues standing in the sheer firepower of lmgs and the amount of crying was immense.

what im saying is, the long range lmg nerf is not good enough, more has to be done.

about faction balance, okw far outperforms ost and ost is still at a very good spot. since wfa, sov and US received mainly nerfs, so i dont see a balance problem. usf still have no counter to sniper, sov have no hard counters to gren spam except by taking a huge mp bleed mid to late game. the reason for okw popularity is not because ost suck, okw is just far better.

insta pin mg34? check
almost insta pin mg34 on wheels? check
non doctrinal heavy tank? check
base infantry with good scaling? check
counter to isu152? check
cheaper teching progression? check
noob friendly? check

okw whether op or not, is rather subjective.

but allied AT is truly lacking, especially in the anti heavy tank department. US only real AT platform is the jackson, while AT guns are either a hit or miss with AP rounds and is a huge munition sink. bazookas are ineffective against anything heavier than puma and does only 80 damage for 60munitions which translate to crappy and expensive. once heavies pop by, they are as deadweight as ptrs.

as for soviets, AT guns are horrendously slow to fire, bad AT dps while cost the same as the superior pak while only having barrage @ 60munitions per use. while the barrage can be somewhat useful early on, its pretty useless once any sort of tanks hit the field, you need the AT gun to be ready to fire on tanks rather than hit infantry. against heavy tanks, king tiger/tiger ace have no issues trading shots with the AT gun, they can decrew and/or destroy the gun faster than the ZiS can shoot twice or thrice and in that 2-3 shots, more often than not, only 1 shot will penetrate.

compared to the pak vs the is2, the pak can reliably shoot 2 times upon contact and another 1 or 2 while the is2 is backing away, given that the 1st is2 shot will miss because the is2 fires before it gets into position. by then at least 2-3 shots would have penetrated and the is2 would have lost at least 320hp which is about a 3rd of its HP. that is very effective defensive counter.

1 way to do it is to use CPs to give direct boosts to non-doctrinal units. the vanilla support team versions are comparably inferior to paks and useless once heavies are fielded. CPs are usually a good indicator of the game timeframe. this will give all soviet AT crews a boost to their capabilities like increased fire rate.

i would argue vet will not be a good way to scale, especially when things are AT guns usually do not have escape plans and are easily decrewed/1 shotted by artillery or by infantry rushes/tank fire.

i suggest relic to start considering giving allied AT competitive advantages when they have already, BY DESIGN, lost out substantially in the heavy tank department. THIS is asymmetrical balance.