Profile of Grumpy

People like to cry and complain about everything when most of the problems are on a personal level. Mortar Flare is fine in my opinion. First if the Soviet player has Mortars then they went with a T-2 opening and against OKW....definitely a L2P issue here. You can do the same thing with IR Halftrack or JLI cloaked to give you sight which btw does not cost ammunition or require a mortar which will not last to end game once Stuka or Panzerwerfer hits the field.

Either way this is a non issue compared to Spec OPs global flare. It requires a Support Unit which...does supporting abilities or do we want to go back to Precision Strike?

Petition to bring back Precision Strike incoming.....Guaranteed decrew a MG42 for the mere price of 30 munitions.

And slowly becomes just a "flavoured" WW2 RTS game.

....
I wonder if the magnificent balance team members have any clue or idea of the history of WW2 and the actual weapons, artilery and warfare being used.

It is interesting that people get so selective in what they want to be historically accurate. Here is a portion of what I've been thinking about putting in a rant on arty:

AoE Damage
Crewed Base Damage Range Rng(IRL) Shell Wgt ROF (IRL) Near Mid Far
ML-20 152mm Howitzer 200 250 17230 51.5 3 200 30 10
B-4 203mm Howitzer 640 250 25400 110 yes 640 96 32
leFH 18 Field Howi (Ost 160 250 10675 14.8 6 160 56 8
leFH 18 Field Howi(OKW) 160 250 10675 14.8 6 160 56 8
M7B1 Priest 200 180 11270 14.8? 6? 200 56 10
Sexton Self-Propelled 160 135 12253 11.5 6 160 80 32

The Sexton and Priest should barely outrange the LEFH. Instead, the LEFH greatly outranges them. The ML20 should do massively more damage than the LEFH. Instead, the LEFH does more than the ML20. The B4 does do more damage than the LEFH, but nothing on the order of what it should.

Disclaimers: COH2 numbers taken from Stein's sheet, I have not verified that they are correct. Ranges for the Priest and Sexton taken from the towed version of the gun, I could not find if the self-propelled version had a shorter barrel which would have decreased the range.

Spamming mines as soviet?

Always fun to find out who likes to use their tanks to sweep mines.......

I think conscript support tactics and advanced warfare are different enough to warrant no changes based on that. Just for comparison with other commanders:

Conscript Repair Tactics - Shares PPSH Cons and Infantry Repair
Different as it has a different premium tank and doesn't have radio intercept.

Armored Assault Tactics - Shares Radio Intercept and T34-85
Different because of no conscript upgrades and is much more focused towards late game.

Guard Rifle Combined Arms - Shares PPSH Cons and IL2 Strafing Run
Different as it has a different premium and no radio intercept.

Now I can't convince anyone if the niche Advanced Warfare has is a good one but I do hope that shows a little bit that Advanced Warfare has a decent reason to remain as is due to it having a unique enough combination of abilities. It's the only commander that combines radio intercept with a CQC unit on top of a T34-85. Others may different strengths but I would argue this commander has the most flexible abilities to use with the radio intercept which gives it a good niche to exist in.

I think it will be a really good commander in 1v1's with the proposed changes. My suggestions were to make it better for larger games. It's sometimes hard to guess what the balance team is thinking but maybe they're trying to create another usable commander for 1v1's.

Unit flares are fine for the most part. Maybe some could do with some tweaks towards range and linger time, but overall they are okay.

I have no strong feelings about the Soviet mortar flare though.

The balance team did a decent job with both Soviet flares. The 120mm should be locked behind vet 1 (or else it would vet too fast and be too good) and the 82mm is okay at vet 0. The 82mm often loses to the Ost mortar but flare seems to even it out. It doesn't bother me as much as the UKF entirefrontlineflare or the OKW arty flare because the mortar doesn't have the range to launch it past the front lines, so you always see the flare when microing your units and can respond to it.