Penal in 270 power level with ourah and flamer where fine, Maxim spam was simply easier to pull.
Their far DPS was overbuffed and instead of reverting some of change they tried to fix by other restriction (build time...) which did not worked very well since it does not work the same across factions. T1/Penal simply needs a redesign.
But the game at that point in was completely different and there is little point in comparison.
Point remains, Penal have not received nerf in years and conscription have received a number of buff. Penal opening went from being dominant meta to be less favored and that is power creep.
Revert gren, volk, ober and PG buffs from last couple of years then.
This way power creep will be removed and penals will be viable again.
The might be balance "for cost" but they are not for timing. JLI at CP 0 where broken and where much better at CP1.
And again that simply strengths my point T1/Penal are simply badly designed.
JLI never required you to pay extra 160mp and you could call them in the second game started, much, much earlier then penals and for much lower overall cost.
You might also have memory problems, because JLI have a powerful weapon upgrade that snipes models easily while penals have nothing.
You seemed very much into split techs instead of simple linear tech paths so I don't know why you are so against the idea.
Remember, when axis gets alternative tech buffed and made more appealing and readily available, its a long overdue change.
When allied faction gets the exact same treatment, its powercreep.
As I have point out to you light gammon bomb are similar to bundle grenade and that is simply not enough to make the assault office a great unit. You are using the bundle grenade as justification for everything from zis barrage to need to buff Penal and that is simply not the case.
Now try to use a move vet 0 Pg to bundle grenade range vs late game allied units and see what happens.
Assault officer also starts as a 4 man squad, axis weapons are balanced around fighting 5 and 6 man squads and its much safer, easier and optimal to get tommies. If officer will vet up and not die by late game, he will be useful. You will still get better return on investment from PGs then officer.
Which is bad design.
Repeating it 100 times is not going to suddenly make it true.
You do not like the design.
That is what you wanted to say.
So Penal can not beat vanilla grenadier and vanilla VGs?
1v1 they sure can.
For map control and overall map presence? They can't, its not even a competition. You will ALWAYS outnumber penal build and if you can't use that to your advantage, it no longer is penals fault after all the nerfs they received.
Penal opening where overpowered and dominant for year now they have simply powercreeped from the more more powerful conscript opening. And this will continue to be the case as long as their two mainline infatry available with their current designs. One will simply be superior to other and buffing one or the other will solve nothing while it will crate more power creep.
And now penal openings are underpowered. Because Penals you have in your head and Penals we have currently in game are 2 completely different units. Everyone but you learned how to counter them and they do not have enough going for them to justify committing anymore, sorry, but no power creep here.
Con opening is not stronger, cons simply scale into the late game and do not sacrifice map control, its much safer opening.
One unit will always be meta vs another, even if both will be perfectly balanced and will scale into late game well, no surprise here, this is how its always been.
And it harder to lose a Penal squad with 6 entities and to the last ability than a 4 man squad like PG.
Neither P4 nor brummbar give a shit.
In order to get into grenade range or even mid range for ST44 Pg lose entities that more expensive the Penal models.
Let me remind you that PG nade was so overpowered "utility" that they had to lose range vet for it to keep it in check in late game specifically, when PGs are vetted.
As I point the grenade is simply not enough to make a unit successful.
No, its not.
It does help a whole fucking lot tho.
And penal can vet up by using single satchel vs a stationary target or AT satchel vs a vehicle.
And how are you going to achieve this in a game where opponent didn't went to get groceries mid game?
Point here is that all vet 0 infatry straggle to vet in late game battlefield. (Try to vet a PG when there is an ISU-152 out).
True, but having actual weapon upgrades and/or grenades do significantly speed up the process.
Will one build a Penal squad in late game to replace a lost squad? Probably not but it is hared to lose a squad the first place.
No, its not.
Its called AoE and there is plenty of it in late game, it does not give a crap if there are 2 man squads or 6 man squads, brummbar-the meta AI unit, says hi again.
I am not sure what people expect of Penals, if one makes them able to take on Obers will that actually make the game better?
People expect a 300mp unit to be something more them massive MP bleed in late game.
Half of your arguments reflect the early game. You specifically mentioned scaling, which has nothing to do with the early game.
Rifles vet like almost any other mainline infantry, Penals' feature is a 69% (eheheh) accuracy boost in exchange for less RA unlike basically ALL of the other mainlines. You even say that yourself and conclude that this makes them comparable? Also, Penal builds have fuck all snares unless you upgrade them and gimp their AI.
Yeah, scaling of one works, while other clearly not as evidenced by attempted changes.
Scaling of all other infantry somehow works and there is a common denominator here, specifically weapon upgrade.
You also seem to be under completely incorrect impression that penals are getting a vet buff.
They are not.
They are getting vet swap.
And I'm fine with them not having a snare, non upgraded ones shouldn't have it anyway, we already have cons for that, that was never a problem, no one sane complained about that and I don't know why you bring it up.
All other mainlines feature weapon upgrades. A 260 MP+60 MUN Volks squad is much closer price wise than a 280+120 Riflemen squad.
But still what is the point? Geblobt even did the maths for you for Rifles and vet3 Penals are still decent.
My point is that accuracy alone isn't everything.
Rifles more then make up for their lack of accuracy exactly through the weapon upgrades and potent defensive vet, but you aren't going to see it with just accuracy.
Veterancy is not accuracy increase exclusively, which makes vippers comparison post completely pointless and missleading(as usual).
Penals have exclusively vet and that was proven to be insufficient.
On top of that, penals are now LOSING some of that accuracy to get received accuracy that was TAKEN AWAY in the patch that introduced PTRS to them already, I consider this a token change that will achieve nothing, because being more durable in small arms firefight does not mean much, when you suddenly deal proportionally less damage too.
We are literally walking with penals the exact same road we walked with cons.
The exact same one.
Because they suffer from the exact same problems cons did and we all pretend its a completely different case now somehow because why exactly? Because they have higher base stats? Duh, they also have much higher base cost.
The sole fact people attempt to compare their performance of much cheaper squads is a testament to their insufficient through vet scaling.
And again, one last time, they are NOT getting any vet buff this patch, they are getting stat swap, less accuracy for more durability, which will achieve nothing, because its NOT a buff.
How are Riflemen the only unit directly comparable to Penals?
Weapon profile, cost, how many you can field before your economy breaks completely, scaling(weapon upgrades+incredibly strong defensive vet vs strong offensive vet and squishiness as 2 opposing approaches to scaling basically the same baseline), both are balanced with very restricted and limited access to support weapons.
Tho I'm willing to listen why and how you would compare them to volks or grens, (both of which have a plethora of supporting units behind them from the early game) from someone who does not have raging hate boner against them.
You could stretch that to PFs, but PFs still benefit from wide array of supporting units with no restrictions and they themselves trade firepower for shitload of utility.
Since you seem to just randomly quote things and not read them, allow me to remind you that puppchen had target size of TEN and there are no problems hitting that of 16, because 16 is much larger then 10.
I'm still pushing for caps on the numbers of specific units one can field. Ergo: One arty unit, a limited number of TDs, etc. This would help deal with some of the "Spam" that can happen in teamgames.
I still like the idea of team-wide caps on certain things, but this is very unlikely due to players likely being unhappy that they can't get their doctrinal IS2, for example, due to another player having a Pershing.
There are multiple and effective ways of dealing with that kind of spam already in game.
If 4v4 heroes are too passive and prefer their WW1 trench and arty warfeare, then nothing can be done about it.
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