Profile of Cabreza

For the record the MG34 only does 3 less DPS than the Maxim. If it did 4 damage instead of 2 it would have 6 more DPS than the Maxim, a much larger cone of fire, better suppression, and would cost 30mp less than the Maxim.

The Maxim is in a good place now. It's excellent at suppression and very durable thanks to the 6 man squad. The 240mp price also means that soviet players can always have a couple on the field to help make up for the smaller cone of fire. Same goes for the MG42 thanks to its incredible suppression and cone of fire.

USF and OKW need some love however. The .50 at a minimum needs a 5th man to make it survivable enough to deal with lmg blobs. The fact that a USF player has to choose between a MG and AT gun is a major problem as well. OKW meanwhile just needs a non-doc suppression team since the kubel, while very strong early game, is ultimately overwhelmed by large blobs of infantry. The Kubel and MG34 need to be swapped so OKW has a reliable infantry based suppression team.

The discussion on the sturmtiger got me thinking about piercing and shot blockers so I have a question for you Cruzz:

Is it possible to design a unit that is capable of shooting through small environmental objects (fences) and/or terrain but that cannot shoot through large shot blockers such as houses?

Those things can't be distinguished from each other. You either shoot through shot blockers or you don't. The unit itself won't work without shooting through shotblockers because it's shell is so huge it detonates on even the tinniest little world objects.

Now I'm not 100% certain but I believe that ignoring shot-blocking and the ability to pierce world objects are two separate abilities.

From the September 2014 patch:

The Sturmtiger previously suffered from a number of usability issues related to its ability to hit its target. The shell tended to collide prematurely with world objects resulting in an unintended ignition of the ammunition. By modifying the shell to ignore shot blocking and pierce, these occurrences will no longer occur. However, this has resulted in an improvement to the unit’s efficiency and utility, as it can now be used to fire through anything within the world.
Now ignores shot blocking
Now pierces through world objects
Barrage can no longer be used on a specific target; it will only take a position within the world. This prevents it from homing in on a selected unit.
Barrage range from 45 to 40

The way the abilities are listed it seems they are separate variables relic can tweek. It would be great if our stats lord and savior Cruzz could confirm whether this is the case or not.

The aim time on the Sturmtiger is like 5-6 seconds.

The aim time of the sturmtiger is 0.25 seconds although that doesn't take into account the time it takes for the sturmtiger to rotate in order to get on target.

Im in favor of picking 2 builings before you allowed to build T4.

I think that would actually be perfect.

I've always thought that would be the best solution but the timing kind of gets screwed up if a player opts to go T1+T2 -> T4. T3 costs 80MP and 30-40FU more than T1 or T2 and has an extended build time associated with it. Allowing T1+T2 alone would cause T4 to arrive 2-3 minutes earlier. I'm not sure how to get around this fact without implementing variable costs or build times based on what buildings a player has built and frankly having context sensitive prices/buildtimes would just make everything far too complicated.

Of course there is always the argument that Soviet T4 isn't exactly that strong. T34s are horrid vs infantry unless crushing and SU85s would have nothing but scout cars and pumas to shoot at when arriving earlier. The only unit that might be a bit OP if it arrived earlier is the Kat.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the current T3 system however. It ensures Soviet players always have access to the M5 for on field reinforcement and AA and always have some form of early AT thanks to the SU76. Instead of committing so much effort to design a system where soviet players have to choose between T3 and T4 again or pick two buildings before building T4 I would rather see the choice between T1 and T2 be made more interesting. Right now T2 is the "safe" pick with all its support weapons while T1 is focused around M3 and sniper cheese. It would be a much more interesting choice if T1 offered truly reliable semi-elite infantry (280-320MP) instead of penals because then it would be a choice between a strong infantry force backed by snipers and M3s or a multitude of support weapons. Such a choice could dramatically alter the infantry composition of a soviet army and potentially make commanders without shocks or guards viable.