Profile of The_Courier

Well, to be fair, that still sounds problematic. We'd then have the dichotomy of "Sniper never dies and inflicts free MP bleed constantly" or "A light vehicle shoots at the sniper and instantly removes 360 MP from the adversary and any of its vet", which is probably a noticeable snag for "Game being fun" unless you particularly fuckin' love playing rock-paper-scissors.

It's one of those reasons why snipers are problematic design wise. In a RTS like CoH2, being able to bleed your opponent of ressources constantly without suffering damage in return is a big deal. Whereas ordinary infantry combat and vehicular clashes often involve both players sacrificing something, with the better player coming out on top.

At least it's not as ridiculous as in CoH1 where snipers are so OP that large portions of the 1v1 meta revolve entirely around them. But I still think snipers should be more fragile to small arms. It's depressing to Oooorah conscripts next to an Ostheer sniper, your opponent notices it too late, but still manages to get away even if you pursue it.

The difference is that Rifles with 2 zooks give up much of their AI abilities, and unless you back them up with expensive Airborne that means US's major advantage (superior infantry firepower) is nullified. So while on paper a zook blob can put the hurt on a KT, in effet it doesn't work very well since it has lower alpha damage than shrecks, is locked behind tech, and Volks are still able to do decent AI damage with their rifles and can be backed up by non-doctrinal elite infantry.

Sustained DPS of handheld AT is not the most useful of statistics for them too. Unless the tank was snared or badly microed, it's almost never going to take more than one volley anyway.

And of course, OKW's major advantage is not infantry, but armor. So long as they have the PIV, Luchs, Panther (especially Command) and KT, they can afford shrecked Volks. Unless a US player is very good with their squishy Shermans, relying on armor for AI is a more difficult prospect.

It's just a fact that snipers shine in the hands of pros, being a high maintenance but high reward unit by design.

I do think that, while snipers being hardier against explosives help so that they don't die to stray mortar rounds, I'm more iffy about their anti-infantry durability. I've had snipers survive being explosed by infantry several times because of their high HP and armor, or even win a semi slugfest against grenadiers, IMO this shouldn't happen. Individual squads catching snipers should kill them swiftly.

I get where you come from with USF, I personally think another big part of the problem is the terminator veterancy that allows their early success to transition into almost total infantry dominance once the rifles get their veterancy and upgrades. Problem is, that's a design flaw in USF where they only have one non-doctrinal infantry squad and nothing else to build until they spend fuel, so the faction lives and dies based on how well rifles perform.

I actually think USF needs a bit of an overhaul, a rifleman nerf while also shuffling their tech tree so they have actual early game options.

For Soviets, I'm not sure the problem is that big. Surely conscripts aren't dominant at any point of the game vs competent players. Guards + Maxims may be another matter entirely, but for many lower skill Soviets players (me amongst them) they're what keeps you alive vs the OKW blobs of doom. So any nerf to that setup would need to be very considerate if you ask me. Yes, balane should be done at high levels of play, but ignore the rest of the playerbase and you get BS like OPKW the week after their overhaul.

SU-100, doctrinal heavy tank destroyer. Slower than SU-85, but penetrates damn near anything from the front.

For Ostheer, Panzer III doctrinal light tank. Plugs that hole in their roster a little between fragile 222 and medium tanks.