Profile of drChengele

Non-doctrinal open-topped troop transports that also act as reinforcement points. Their armies lack infantry mobility in general.

Fair point. I would just like to say that using transports to ferry your troops from the base to the frontline is something I virtually never see, transporting stuff is much more often used to get behind MGs, for instance. This is probably due to micro requirements and how cumbersome loading into transports is.

Also, using halftracks to reinforce on the front requires soft retreating, which is not always possible, is micro intensive and in the end probably ends up taking the unit off the frontlines longer than actually retreating to FRP does (especially considering FRPs are usually paired with a healing option, which for EFA is more complex to achieve).

In contrast, forward retreat points usually require a smaller investment (that is, if they don't come free with teching outright as in the case of US), there is no micro involved, and they work for any number of squads. Keeping your halftrack alive and near the frontlines is also additional micro tax in itself.

Keep in mind that soft retreating not only takes longer than hard retreating and is more micro intensive, but also your troops are more vulnerable because they miss out on the retreat modifiers of speed and damage resistance, which means they will a) spend more time under enemy fire, b) this time spent will happen without protective modifiers, or c) they will have to soft retreat earlier than they would hard retreat.

So in conclusion, I do not believe these transports begin to even remotely make up for forward retreat points. It is however one of faction advantages, certainly, in the same way Conscript merge and Ostheer bunkers are. Lack of on-the-field reinforcement for WFA factions is definitely something that should be considered in the course of balancing the game.

Since OKW managed to sneakily enter the scope

It did not. Scope is what Relic sets. The OKW changes are what mod team did on their own. The fact that you feel the changes were "unwarranted" are just that, your subjective feeling.

how about we give the Brits the same treatment?

Look at you, you're already at stage 3! You will be over this in no time!

I feel the whole thing was handled very maturely given the rules of the tournament and the concrete situation at hand.

The only thing that is unfortunate is that rules are open to case by case interpretation. I think strong, concrete rules should be made ahead of time in such a way that absolves A_E or Stormless and everyone else from any potential interpretations and therefore possible witch hunts because you'll always have people unhappy, as evidenced by reactions to this. Then, if anyone complains, just point them to the rules and say "these are the rules, we can't do shit about it."

In my opinion this particular incident could not have been handled more maturely than it was by A_E and Stormless and they have my full respect, but the policy should be changed for any future tournaments.

My opinion for a future policy (and this is where you can disagree with me): this is a solved problem in esports and is not up to a discussion. Game crash = loss. I do not care if you are top ranked player with all 5 factions playing versus an AFK guy and you have 10 tanks and he has just 1 engineer and you have him cornered in his base and you have a triple cap and there are 7 VPs left on the ticker. If you bugsplat, you get a loss regardless of the situation.

You already do in automatch and noone is complaining about that.

If you want to solve it some other way please do. But have a ready solution in place that leaves nothing to any arbitrary implication. The next time a crash happens it won't be nearly as clear cut, and then what will we do?

VERY nice changes. Meta needs shaking up. Any unforeseen batshit overpoweredness that will surely result from these changes is a small price to pay to move away from the lend lease meta, and can be dealt with swiftly by the mod team.

I strongly disagree with Elefant getting any sort of HE ability, however, that might be because I am still traumatized by its old antiarmour potential. I have memories of a single Elefant (with support) holding the mid and top VPs 3v4 (after an axis player drop) on Steppes to win. I was on both sides of that particular recipe.

Overall I feel what the Elefant does now seems to get the best of both worlds: antiarmour shells normally, and targeted AT gun deletion potential on demand with minimal micro requirements. Whereas ISU, which was historically known for not really needing to bother with armour piercing shells to straight up murder German heavies, has to do the micro-intensive dance of switching ammo types and suffering the cooldowns all the time.

Panzergrenadiers and Guards vet1 changes are very interesting. Vehicle detection seems out of place on Panzergrenadiers, it basically makes them into an even more of a "Panzerschreckgrenadiers" unit.

I'd like to see more vet1 infantry bonuses revamp since they have been a placeholder since coh2 release anyway. Also there is the Soviet tank vet bonus which enables them to stop shooting for a while, which is still very useful (though an IS2 point capping did save me a game once).

There is no missing 6th faction.

There is nothing that says there needs to be an equal number of factions across both sides.

The decision to release an asymmetric third Allied faction (with powerful lategame armour) was probably made at least in part due to the fact there was a larger percentage of Axis players queued in team games after WFA released.