well i wrote a detailed response and it got deleted when i clicked postso I just summarized it. Btw I'm not a top player by any stretch of the imagination. I primarily play and theorycraft about this game for fun and dont see it as a competitive game. Got no stakes in tourneys or anything. I'm also a USF fanboy.
I guess I'll give you a more detailed response because I know you're a competent player who understands the game so it's not pointless to argue with you as opposed to many other people. I'm gonna use numeration but I'm not specifically referencing the numeration from your post.
1. For some reason there is the unquestioned assumption that snipers have to be "killable" and that the only way to make them killable are either countersnipers or units with snipe abilities like the British recon from CoH1. Imo both these assumptions are wrong.
Let's start with the latter one: You cannot reliably countersnipe a well played sniper. Ostheer has a 10 ammo maphack on their Scout car. A smart soviet will go Radio Intercept when playing snipers. Brits are of course screwed in this regard but it's not really relevant because the Ostheer sniper comes out earlier anyways and the brit just has to expect an ostheer snipe since it's the only matchup where it's actually part of the meta.
What a countersniper does reliably isn't killing the opponents sniper but rather even out the manpower drain by starting to snipe infantry himself. A common mistake you see is people keeping their sniper hidden forever trying to get the countersnipe instead of starting to drain mp themselves. So what makes the sniper so unique in its role as an mp drain unit? It causes reliable mp damage without causing any bleed itself. It is the most efficient unit at this. This comes with the trade off of having no stopping power, meaning it can only operate in conjunction with other units. Light vehicles also cause unopposed MP drain but the drain is less intense. A well played m20 will reliably rack up 20+ kills in a close game, a well played sniper will do twice as much at least. Light vehicles also cost fuel. However they force ATGuns and give massive map pressure which makes them a much more common and at least equally oppressive MP drain unit as the sniper. They are literally part of every 1v1 and not building them is pretty much an automatic loss. It's just that for whatever reason Light vehicles are accepted as part of the game and snipers aren't.
My main point here is: There are other ways to counter a sniper than a countersniper. Any manpower efficient unit (primarily LVs but potentially also infantry that trades well and threatens the sniper so he can't operate as aggressively like JLI) will counteract the bleed caused by the sniper and come with other additional advantages.
Let's talk about snipers being unkillable: In the hands of good players almost every unit is unkillable as I said earlier. If there was a reliable way to kill a sniper the unit would be trash almost by definition.
2. About the thing you mention about the Ostheer sniper being built in the mid game: Ostheer is a broken faction against USF and UKF. Against USF they don't rely on the sniper at all and most of the time the sniper is just an unnecessary risk in a game that you are winning anyways. Against brits the sniper is probably overpowered, but brits have the easiest access to a countersniper, so the brit vs Ost imbalance doesn't really support your argument and the matchup is broken for a variety of other reasons as well. Vs soviets a mid game sniper is VERY rarely seen. It's actually most common among C-B tier players because the Ost player tends to have a bit of breathing room in those games. At top tier you almost never see it. The one exception you mentioned was on langres in a game that was strongly in favor of Ostheer. Langres is a map that is absurdly imbalanced in favor of ostheer regardless of the sniper. However once Ostheer gets into a clear winning position Sniper can be the final nail in the coffin.
3. About my ad hominem argument: What I said is objectively true even though it is not an argument in favor of either side. There is a large amount of good players who are relatively bad at using snipers or don't use them at all. And that is definitely part of the reason people hate it so much.
4. Map control is a massive advantage. Vehicle timing are absolutely game changing. Having good map control as USF is pretty much the only way to win the game vs Ost because you need to snowball. An early sniper plays into that.
5. Indirect fire will never be relevant in 1v1 because it's balanced around teamgames.
6. I can't really adress your "buring hoops" response to my argument about the asymmetrical dynamic a sniper creates because it doesn't have any substance. A sniper forces one side to be active. It forces focused attacks that punish the lack of stopping power. That to me is a very interesting shift in dynamics from the usual gameplay where 1 inf unit is mirrored by another inf unit and it just comes down to who has the more ideal positioning.
I just played 3 games in a row against this commander. Did someone recently use this strategy.
Most recent game, player doubles up on MG and Assault Grens rushes my Cutoff and attempts to wait out for PGREN call in. As the opponent you push them to stop the strat which helps them by building up their CP. Also due to not having to build T1 or tech they are able to keep pressure up until car comes in.
In the first games it was same player and they did build T1 for Gren snare, but again did not tech up save fuel for car. He did not attempt to cap map at all, parked his MG in front of cutoff was able to build reinforce bunker next to it and I had to completely loop around to get him. He didn't really play well either as I stole a MG from him but once the came it took to much to kill it which he promptly replaced again. At that point I said fuck it and GG.
In the end, the main issue is the ability to get PGREN without tech. Since they can save the Fuel and MP from tech and building it puts massive pressure on opponent to outplay them.
Assault grens themselves don't seem to be to big of an issue but combine with techless Pgren it is extremely oppresive. My suggestion would be to remove Pgren from car call in or require BP1 before car can be called in.
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