Profile of TheMachine

Not only is rear armour not rewarding enough in terms of minimal extra penetration and damage, but also just that when the talk is moving it has much less accuracy while moving. So whilst a tank is trying to flank it means that it will miss many of its shots, whilst the stationary tank will have much higher accuracy.

Also the fact that flanking a tank means that your tank might get caught by a Panzerfaust or AT grenade that will damage the ensure and absolutely ensures that it will die with no escape.

Rear armour should give guaranteed penetration or offer more damage. That will reward micro and creative play, which just really is discouraged more than anything.

Ice is great because it opens up more flanks for more harassment and aggressive options. Deep Snow and Blizzards are just dumb and reward defensive campy play which is really not beneficial to the game.

Fantastic game.

Build G43's. They will melt Snipers. Heavy Grenadier play with G-43's with a unupgraded Half Track to reinforce is the best way to deal with Soviet Sniper. Their insanely long range that prettymuch rivals the sniper and their very high accuracy at range makes it very easy to get the squad wipe, let alone just bleeding 90 munitions by counter sniping one of the crew. Considering you can't really get anything fantastic until 3CP, there's no reason to have picked a doctrine by the time the Sniper shows up and G43's are available. If it's a late game sniper you've got the Ostwind and PanzerWerfer to snipe it.

Other than that on a lot of maps you can really abuse the early game infantry deficit that the Soviet will have by going for a sniper by focusing on avoiding engagements and just being hyper aggressive with decapping and capping points. In the exact same style of indirectly dealing with a German Sniper as Soviets by abusing the impact it has on the infantry count. If I see a fast sniper on Langres I go 5-6 Grens into Half track and just be hyper aggressive. You should be 2 squads ahead of Grenadiers compared to Conscripts because of the sniper you can usually have much better capping power and map presence to the Soviet. Then if need be, if you have 3 Grens squads in a blob and just walk in the direction of the sniper you should lose 2 Grens and then force the retreat further capitalising on the decapping. So many Germans do not know how to adapt and cope and stay on a standard Gren Gren MG, Mortar, PGren and getting MG42 upgrade or something similar style of play.

Just like Soviets,playing as per normal with a standard unit composition ensure a loss against a good Sniper on Langres, Crossing in the Woods or perhaps even Semois. It's absoutely laughable when Germans build Panzer Grenadiers against a sniper and lose 45manpower per shot. 5-6 Gren play should be fine. A lot of people may be thinking going that heavy on Grens leaves you to vulnerable to Shocks. Yes it would, but no Soviet is going to go Sniper AND Shocks because then that would leave them completely open to getting absolutely rolled by a fast Flame Half Track or Scout cars. If that happens, get fast Minesweepers because mines would be their only form of preventing them from just outright losing the game to a Flame Half Track.

Bear in my mind my perspective is coming entirely from a 1v1 perspective. The issue with the Soviet sniper is it's power is so map dependant. On Crossing in the Woods or Langres for example they are rediculous strong (Unless you have G43's.) because of how open the maps are. Whereas on a map such as Kholodny or Road to Kharkov they are just simply not viable because of how many hedges, garrisons and shotblockers their are in the way of everything.

Keep in mind the Soviet Sniper costs 360mp + 200mp for Tier1 and having the engineer back to base for a while to build the Tier1. Where as the German sniper just costs 360mp from the barracks and then still gets every tech. The Soviet Sniper is a huge investment not only cost and map prescense/capping power, but also in opportunity cost.

Having Tier1 means that you don't have AT guns, don't have Mortars and don't have Maxim's. A huge blow that limits your options and counters. For example you can't counter a P4 with T-34 + AT gun. You need 2xT-34 unless the German is silly enough to drive over a mine somewhere unsupported. Since the Soviet will almost always go Tier1 into Tier 4 because without AT guns from Tier2 T-34's are just not effective against either P4's or Stugs, it means that the German could even skip Tier2 and a half track entirely and rush a Super fast ostwind before the SU-85 is near completion, and then backtech into Tier2 get 2 AT guns to ward off the SU-85 and then save up for a Panther or Tiger.

The Soviet Sniper is indirectly much stronger than German Sniper because of squad sizes and manpower bleed, but it's balanced by it being also such a huge investment to get both in the short term and then the long term because of the lack of units. It's like comparing Shocks to Panzer Grenadiers. Sure Shocks are better but they're more expensive, are Commander specific and now you can't get Guards as a result. If the Soviet Sniper was on Tier2 instead of either the Mortar or Maxim, then that would cause serious balance issues.

That being said, the sprint ability is just absurd and needs to be removed. It prevents a well executed flank from getting the squad wipe that it deserves to get. I'm fine with say the scout car having a super speedy boost, but a sniper team is silly and does not fit at all. Nerfing the sniper is a delicate situation because if it's balanced out to a level where it's balanced on the 2-3 maps that are causing issues at the moment, then the sniper alongside the rest of tech path would be even more useless and completely unviable on the majority of the other maps. As for team games... well teams games are never going to be balanced with how blobby and spammy they are.

But at the end of the day I think Germans really need to adapt their play style and not just do the same predetermined strategy and unit composition regardless of what they see. Something that is absolutely fundamental to playing Soviets because of the limitations and specialisation of the tiers and commanders.

Bump. Can people please post some replays so we can cast them. We're stuck with the broken replay system.