I would argue the firefly performs pretty poorly as a tank destroyer in it's self. It's an investment.
Most axis armour can 1v1 a firefly, the only thing the firefly is good for is backstopping your line with the at gun to make panthers think twice about diving, It's exceptionally poor against light vehicles due to it's awful firerate combined with the accuracy penalties light vehicles get, would lose to most axis armour (until vet 2) 1 on 1 other than an OST panzer 4 and if you lose your vetted fireflies late game, you'll probably get rolled because panthers are great straight out of the box whereas fireflies pretty much require vet 2 or using tulips when supported by other AT. So with what people were talking about with "It's not surprising a dedicated tank destroyer can beat a multi role medium" The panther which basically has the same role as the comet and it's pintle mount MG is pretty good can quite happily duel a firefly and win and isn't the firefly a dedicated tank destroyer with virtually no anti infantry? If the panther can do it, why is it so unthinkable the comet doing it? They both cost far more than any tank destroyer. The firefly does however scale well with vet and can fight KTs well.
Brits have a strange layout at the moment in that seemingly all of their units are either an investment in that they require veterancy in order to be useful (i.e.- centaur, firefly, tommies) or they have extremely weak veterancy (i.e.- comet) It basically results in unit losses being extremely costly to the brits and getting their replacement to that rank in the end game virtually impossible due to poor base stats. Or alternatively in the case of the comet, unable to scale into the late game so not worth getting.
This makes brits pretty poor early/mid game due to lack of vet and then pretty strong late game unless you get wiped in which case there is kind of a tendency for brits to curl up and die as UKF's units perform awfully against other units without vet, especially when the enemy has vet.
The current FF problems can be traced back to DBP which I think were the wrong call when the role is supposed to be a slow heavy hitter
These were arguably bigger changes than the old Vet 3 nerf it got, having a 10 second reload but having your accuracy nerfed so heavily can cause some obvious issues. Like a 440mp 155f TD being frontally dived by pumas and mediums and not standing a chance when it misses it's first shot. The accuracy on a Jackson or Panther for example might not be great either but these tanks have noticeably better mobility and reload.
Possibly with sapper snare this will help the FF indirectly, but I think it's probably worth a cost decrease or having the accuracy back to stop so many frustrating moments with missing shots on a medium and waiting an eternity to reload. Panzer 4's should fear a FF, not the other way around.
Your point with the FF still being good against the KT backs up my argument I think, the KT being so big and slow (also easy to hit with tulips compared to a mobile medium) makes those nerfs not felt as heavily. But unlucky for UKF we are currently in a medium tank and panther meta, not a KT one.
Those should've never been taken away. It's was reaction to everyone spamming Special Weapons and reason everyone did this because it only viable way to stop light vehicle abuse. Now that sappers have snares there is next to no reason to get dank hunters in first place, especially after nerf
Their heart was in the right place trying to diversify meta with commando regiment buff and special weapons nerfs.
But like you say the doctrine wasn't used because it was OP, it was used because brits were UP and it patched a hole. I think the vickers-k from the HT should have pre-bren gun nerf stats, then it would give you a reason to build one and get vickers after teching weapon racks. It's just an overpriced halftrack otherwise (40f is a lot when you no longer get piats or vickers without 15f rack tech, USF get doctrinal LMG for free remember. Same with soviet PPSH upgrade).
And I can whole heartedly tell you that I can make it practical and not cheesy.
you'll need a lot more than tank traps to make it interesting for me, the only way I can see it being rescued is some sort of new units (maybe a different engineer variant that can tear down emplacements and have them work as semi-mobile heavy support weapons for teamgames). But relic already said any new units or major code changes is out of scope.
Counter barrage should simply be moved to Royal arty.
A hard counter to indirect fire in a commander designed to turtle has is simply bad design.
I feel like it's just too powerful, it's a zero micro ability. Even if you swapped it into royal arty you would have to sacrifice a perfectly good unit like valentine or such.
Less health and at T0 way way less lethality than FHT because ya know it has no flamer yet. Unless you want to argue Wehr HT with MG and no flamers is OP vs inf too? I mean it has 320 health and 9 armour, IS and cons can hardly damage it
15% of MG42 shots penning was fine, because the MG42 rpm was easily enough to make up for it. Hence why it won a 1vs1 vs vanilla UC Really it's no point posting stats if you don't understand how they actually work in terms of DPS.
Hardly OP because like I said we never saw them built every game. WASP is not a T0 unit, it is fielded same time as Ost T2, might want to check the unlock requirements friend.
Basically your argument boils down to "cherry picked examples of when vanilla UC is fielded then skipping to WASP as if vanilla UC does the same damage". It upgrades a similar time to FHT so should rightly so have similar lethality, now it is trash in comparison so should have the nerfs reverted.
Just vote for it in (hopefully) the next commander rework patch.
I respectfully disagree, I don't think emplacements or defensive sim city fortifications should have any place in CoH. Certainly not enough to build a commander around.
Other brit commanders could use a rework first, especially the one with BOYS AT rifles. The halftrack could use some adjustments to make it worth the pricetag and doctrine pick.
I mean doctrines with unique units like that should have priority, advanced emplacement didn't add a single new unit apart from stat tweaks on emplacements and some code for the base howitzers ability. Not much worth salvaging there with the limited work the community balance team can do.
Volks are an example of how mainline inf should work and are probably the most well balanced inf in the game.
But I feel their grenade spam is a little bit too crazy , being able to spam inc nades and infiltration nades one after the other is a bit much. Maybe give them a shared and longer cooldown