Profile of LoopDloop

If only there was some way to see where s-mines where... maybe like a kind of sign or something. Something real clear that really just hammers home “giant minefield here”, like a skull and crossbones or whatever. If only, if only...

Sarcasm aside, they literally have signs on them and every allied army has no excuse to not have at least one minesweeper squad in it. S-mines are fine.

I have suggested on many occasion that infiltration units should be available in two ways.

Build able from HQ at normal price and spawning from ambient buildings with paying a premium for the instant production and on field deployment.

Think that would fix the issues with infiltration Commandos.

I like that. I think having rifles upon infiltration spawn is a better solution than a 3 man squad though. That way the infiltration spawn still takes planning and thinking ahead but doesn’t punish the British player for using it.

I believe that would also make commando weapon teams, manned by infiltration commandos, armed with their default rifles instead of STENs. Personally I like this as a change, except I would give them M1 carbines instead of Lee-Enfields as it is more suitable as a commando weapon and it is highly likely that special troops like Commandos would have access to US weapons like the M1 carbine. This way infiltration commandos get a mid range weapon that isn’t OP and can still upgrade to their really strong SMGs later. When manning a weapon team they would revert to their Carbines and thus be less dangerous to flanking squads. Additionally, and I think most importantly, it would allow 5 man infiltration commandos to be sneaky, dangerous and still survivable while not being too strong. This would encourage aggressive commando spawning because they would be survivesnle at 5 men, but not be too strong with just M1 Carbines.

Basically it’s a win-win. Axis doesn’t get clobbered by OP commandos popping out of buildings, but Allies still gets to try commando pops without being heavily punished by the risk.

Also if you want to make the infiltration commandos even more interesting, you call them SAS infiltration squads or SOE infiltration squads and make them upgrade from M1 Carbines to having three or four Thompsons plus Carbines. This would make them thematically different but still filling the same role as they currently do, while also satisfying the desire for Commandos to have tommy guns.

(Historically Commandos really favored the Thompson, although for them it was usually the earlier M1928A model, not the M1A1 in game and it was primarily because the Thompson was commercially available from the US at the time and STENs we’re still not yet in mass production. )

I like the idea of the SAS infiltration squad, but giving them M1 carbines with the same stats as paratroopers and rangers upon spawning from infiltration would still be a bit strong (keep in mind that these M1 carbines are different from the rear echelon ones and are straight up better than the riflemen’s garands). I would suggest still making them spawn with Lee Enfields, which are worse on the move and shoot slower, and then give them an upgrade that gives them 3 Thompsons and 2 M1 carbines, but that locks out brens because their brens would be OP in conjunction with Thompsons.

Since commandos have access to 2 "super brens" having M1 rifles or Thompson (with profiles similar to USF ones) will simply make them OP.

Being able to built from HQ for a normal price is a simpler solution.

Well if they were given Thompsons it should lock out both weapon slots assuming there were 3 Thompsons and 2 carbines in the squad total.

TL; DR of the various opinions in my responses:

Make commandos buildable from HQ at normal cost as vipper said, but let infiltration spawns spawn at 5 men with Lee enfields and have a free upgrade to stens.

Alternatively, and (IMO) more interetingly, as GI John 412 wrote, rename them as SAS infiltration squads and give them Lee enfields upon spawning (including from infiltration) and give them an upgrade for like 60 muni that gives them 3 Thompsons and 2 M1 carbines and locks out both weapon slots. Spawning from infiltration with 5 M1 carbines would be a bit OP though.

Technically even US marines are a form of shock troops. Heck, in game pgrens are more or less shock troops too by the same definition. The term is pretty loosely defined and should really be a more blanket term like “rifleman” as in an infantryman with a rifle as opposed to specifically mainline US infantry. The terminology of the word shouldn’t define the actual role/balance of the coh2 Soviet unit called shock troops.

You can't just expect them to come out at 3 men and expect them to take on an army. When they first jump out use it to harass support teams, after that get them to full strength and ambush camo with them. They're one of the best units for doing ambushes.

Falls are paratroopers now, not infiltration. Partisans become near useless aside from their initial shock impact. Commandos remain relevent.

I think another reason it may have been lowered to 3 is so you can't just spawn in a unit and steal a weapon team that maybe you just weren't able to recrew.

Meh I just spawn them off map to reinforce there and manually infiltrate enemy lines. If you spawn at 3 men behind their lines already, then you lose quite a bit of dps, meaning you should use nades, but nade is (completely rightfully so, mind you, for real) on cooldown, so you have to wait anyway. At that point you might as well capitalize on the element of surprise with full dps and spawn them offmap. It annoys me that they spawn offmap at 3 men (making them one of the most expensive infantry squads in the game to initially produce at 370 plus 35x2 manpower) for absolutely no reason though, especially when new stormtroopers spawn at full size even from buildings even though they do have to upgrade mp40s (for free).

T34s + mark target, or if you can get a snare close you can IL2 bomb

Even better: ram plus IL2. Takes some practice to pull off though, as the ram stun wears off before the bombs come in so you have to call them before the t34 hits the other tank. Pretty sure fire kill though. I find heavy TDs much harder to deal with as brits or especially usf unless they somehow royally absolutely fuck up and hit an m20 mine XD.