Profile of nee

I personally think it is unremarkable. In my experience it was basically Pack Howitzer with even less utility and durability and comes much later. Firing AoE doesn't seem consistent. For what it's worth, I fired it onto a huge blob of AFK allied units and it didn't even inflict a single friendly casualty.

Defensive Operations (IS squads can build emplacements like REs) is reasonable- you cannot build the emplacements until you reach the tier or reserached Bofors, so it's not like some cheat. Their repair icon is unique, which is fine, but I prefer if it was the classic one, as it tends to imply it's something special when it isn't.

I have to agree with the Advanced Fortifications upgrade; despite costing 75 munitions, it seems to make no difference against attacks. If anything I'd say it performs worse when subject to artillery barrages....that or the enemy was consistently lucky. But then again the text only indicates a small amount of extra health; the real boon apparently is immunity to small arms...which is hardly the biggest concern for the vat majority of emplacements in this game (USF's pitifully weak Fighting Position excluded- if there's a buff needed, it's for that).

Advanced Assembly's doesn't seem very useful: I can imagine it's of some use once vehicles come in, but then the enemy can quite easily just target the Advanced Assembly. At least when fighting Soviet's version through their Industry Tactics unlock, that building only costs 75 munitions, no manpower required. Doubly unfavourable if the sappers spawned also consume population.
And like someone says, the sappers will repair things that are fighting...including said Forward Assembly that is taking damage from attack.
Personally I would rename the ability to "Repair Assembly" to more clearly indicate it's purpose.

Counter Barrage only works against artillery units found and firing at your men, and there is no indication of a range limit; if there is, then this clearly makes the ability useful in small maps but useless in large ones. The ability also disables build/ research capabilities when toggled (with a 110 second cooldown when untoggled). It will even pause anything currently building. If I have to make a suggestion for improvement it's that the build times are doubled rather than disabled. You cannot build new units after that, so you have to commit the resources first if you want to queue units up, and the build time penalty still gives risk reward. As for the range, that introduces limitations that the 25-pounders never originally had. I was actually thinking it was something you can toggle onto a target location, like in CoH1. That way, you can still utilize the IS's coordinated strike ability, and need to maintain constant LOS to be useful.

Precision Barrage looks powerful, but more often whenever used, it only eats away at vehicles' armour; their main use is instant offmap engine critical and stun. I even fired it onto an ally's ambulance (AI ally, don't get your knickers in a twist) and it just took a smidge of health. There's hoenstly nothing precision or even artillery about this ability; if Relic wants these sort of reslts, then they simply need to rename and edit the text to indicate it's true benefits. As-is, the ability just disables vehicles caught in the barrage. The barrage itself looks impressive, I would mistake it for I&R Pathfinders' artillery barrage. But in other factions we have more powerful, more generalist artillery abilities that do more damage that comes earlier and at a cheaper cost.

Overall commander isn't really bad, its just clearly rushed out for teh profits. Did we have some alpha or beta on it?

I'm wondering just what "historical skins" are. Basically paid mod skins? MWNL skins are the only ones specifically mentioned.

Since brits are already in there, why not release Afrika Korps ? Comprised of Italian and German forces. Would make sense to me, and also confirm what i predicted 1 year ago or so

This would make sense...if the UKF were designed around 1943. But that would mean like half of the units wouldn't exist.

The option does exist...but it doesn't necessarily always solve the problem. Two reasons:

-It disables you from the need to download them, but it can sometimes still cause trouble launching the game. There is also the problem where other players end up downloading it even if you aren't, so in such cases you are still waiting for the download...only it's not your download but others.
-Even with the above worked out, the game sometimes still borks and thinks someone (sometimes it says who, sometimes it doesn't) needs to get something and thus the game cannot start. This is no longer an "I need to DL it" issue, but it turns into a "cannot start game" issue, which is more or less a problem of identical magnitude (and frustration).

With the most recent patch, there is now an option to toggle "Historical Skins" on or off. Presumably this means, when toggled that you won't have to see or donwload modded skins; however Relic didn't say "custom skins" rather "historical skins", specifically mentioning the MWNL skins, which is more or less official skins, so I dunno.