The recent patch has not been kind to what was the standard Brit meta, which I feel was entirely justified. That being said, I feel that there is a lot of room for improvement, much of it focused around the Infantry Section. It's a weird unit that every Brit player is forced to use, and sits on a knife edge between extremely effective and absolute crap depending on the combat situation.
I think most can agree that the original design for the unit, centred around a very necessary Bolster upgrade and the cover bonus, is not tenable or even particularly fun to play against. As such, I had a few suggestions regarding how to change the unit with its current performance in mind, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on them. This is not an exhaustive list of all changes I think should be implemented at once, but rather some of the ones I've been spitballing.
Hammer Gammon Bombs Become Sticky
I'm not sure why the Hammer Gammon Bomb has remained the way it has. It's effective at taking down garrisons if your opponent isn't paying attention at all, and for destroying ambient buildings, but is utterly useless at its stated anti-tank role. It's a massive munitions investment for one explosive which doesn't even have the utility of the Penals' anti-tank satchel.
I feel it deserves the same treatment as the original satchel. This would fix the glaring hole of infantry snares that the faction still suffers from, while also giving tanks enough of a standoff range to engage the Infantry Sections. They're still the least effective mainline infantry unit while on the move, so leaving cover to throw a Gammon Bomb would be a risky move.
Lock Combat Penalties Behind Bolster
I'm not even certain if this is possible, but instead of Bolster being a straight upgrade to the Infantry Sections, what I'm proposing instead is this - 4-man Tommies don't have the received accuracy penalties out-of-cover they currently possess, and possess the current cover bonus permanently (and therefore get nothing extra from being in cover). When they are upgraded to 5-man Tommies, their accuracy is reduced and the necessity of the cover bonus is reinstated.
I personally enjoy playing with 4-man squads, and I almost never go for the Bolster upgrade, but it's obvious that the faction was designed around it. Therefore, I want to change this. Make 4-man squads combat effective enough without Bolster, and make Bolster inflict penalties on the squad in exchange for the extra man.
This is probably the riskiest proposal, and it would require looking at the economics of the Infantry Section again, but I really want to see Bolster as a choice instead of a requirement. I'd ideally like to see a tradeoff between larger, tankier 5-man squads versus more mobile but riskier 4-man squads.
Reintroduce a Recon Section
This has been suggested before, but I like the idea of an Infantry Section upgrade that gives Scoped Enfields. Ideally, these would fill a similar role as Pathfinders and Jaeger Light Infantry, and it would possibly be locked behind 4-man squads exclusively. As Brits lack for indirect fire, another unit capable of picking off squads in cover would be nice. Admittedly I've probably thought about this proposal the least.
What do you think? |
Difference being of course that no Allied faction actually crutches on support weapons and has much less fragile squads in general.
The Soviets don't crutch on support weapons? Really? |
Here's what would be better - "Forward Gear" and "Reverse Gear" as toggleables that switch between the two movement behaviours we've had thus far. |
SU is just a messy victim of power/feature creep. Cheap and underperforming units. Severe commander dependence.
That's not them being victims of power creep, it's literally how they've been the whole time. Sometimes worse. Thing is, now that there are Allied factions with good (or in the case of the Brits, salvageable) basic designs, they just look that much worse for it. And good thing, too. When I say the Soviets need a redesign, I don't mean just shuffle around a few units. Ideally, Relic needs to step back and change the entire faction's progression around completely in order to bring them in line without overbuffing them. Of course, that will never happen. |
We have actually identified multiple issues (aka forcing Soviet faction redesign) and found numerous bugs, and yes, occasionally gotten it wrong, but the good the community does far outweighs the bad.
Actually I consider the Soviet redesign in its current state to be a major failure. Nothing has really changed, the Soviets are still heavily reliant on call-ins, it's just now they have a somewhat-useful assault gun in T3 and nobody builds T-34/76s ever, as opposed to occasionally like it was before. Oh and you can't hold out for T-34/85s anymore, so you can instead hold out for an IS-2. Wheeee. |
I don't know what you're smoking but indirect fire is pretty generally part of most successful army makeups (incidentally why the Brits have to rely on a 400 MP static emplacement in the first place), so if you have none and your opponent has blown 400 MP on an emplacement, you should either consider maybe either attacking it and keeping the pressure up, or just stop playing 4v4s for a while and reevaluate what you're doing with your life. |
It's better this way, the last thing necessary for this game is to reduce the effort required to blob. |
I love how you people identify yourselves by avatars as well for those who are too lazy to read your posts and get the obvious subtext. |
I think everyone can agree that the return of the Volkschreck blob does not bode well for any game mode, from 1v1 upwards. But I think most will also agree that the OKW was not in a great spot prior to this patch. There are some things that need minor tweaks, true, but I don't think that the current combat performance of Volks needs to be returned to pre-patch levels (the combat performance of Tommies is another story entirely). So instead of some radical changes that pound the faction into the dust (which we all know will probably happen anyways), I propose a small fix that should solve many of the current problems with the OKW.
Lock the Schreck upgrade behind two buildings. Maybe a 10 MU cost increase as well, but I'd rather not get into pricing discussions since that's material for another thread. The result of this change is twofold - one, it means that there's a guaranteed window of opportunity for light vehicle play against the OKW, who still have potent counters to such in the Rakentenwerfer, Puma and, to a lesser extent, the Luchs. Two, it means that a large, early Schreck blob and heavy armor are now largely mutually exclusive. The player who wants to rush a Schreck blob will build the Battlegroup HQ and Mechanized Regiment HQ, and thus delay the Schwerer Panzer HQ, while the player who rushes the Schwerer HQ will lack one of the tiers in the time it takes them to set it up, and give more opportunity for counter play and exploitation from their opponent.
Thoughts? |
Boys as a non-doctrinal upgrade would be lovely but Relic seems to dislike giving us AT rifles as non-doctrinal weapons on mainline infantry. I'm hesitant about revamping the PIAT, though. I think a snare is the best option for the UKF, you can even give them the ridiculously shitty Riflemen rifle grenade animation for it and I wouldn't care. |