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Register Time: 20 Jan 2019, 00:19 AM
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I still maintain that cons aren't worth it because they have been so bad fir so long that their alternatives had to be viable without aby conscripts at all.
Soviet players can brings guards and penals and having both totally removes the need for conscripts. All that conscripts could do now is save manpower but make your good infantry worse, and build sandbags.
That utility does not justify spending manpower and fuel to unlock their grenades. Because the alternatives stand totally on their own conscripts being 'utility support' counts for basically nothing. Soviets even without that utility from conscripts don't lack anything. At best they're a 240mp sandbag engineer.
Penals and Guards should have been spevialist squads so that consctipts can be a generalist.
If guards had no ptrs and terrible close range damage, conscripts could bring AT grenades and have a non doc pair of PTRS rifles, or a couple of nin doc PPSH for close range screening
If penals brought ppsh guns and satchels cons could have been your mid range generalist with a few SVTs as an unlock and build cover for dedicated AT penals using conscrpipt style triple SVT
But no. Consctipts are apparently supposed to have utility at everything BUT combat. Even with 7 men their cost just isn't worth it, total, compared to a guard squad.
If we could adapt conscripts with some mediocre weapon upgrades they would still be sub par but they would actually be versatile. Their utility could be plugging the gaps in your commander based lineup, even if they don't excell at anything. But apparently that's allowing them weapons and that's some sort of sin, even if it's only a couple of mediocre ones.
In the end, so long as you can build your army out of penals, guards and AT guns conscripts are still not worth the side tech.
On Conscripts versus Grenadiers in squad sizes, Grenadiers are also 30 per model while 7 men are 17 per model. 5 men Grens, if they had 0 boosts bleed to death.
Theoretically, if we put in a cover bonus, would people prefer offence over defense? And what bonus as Conscripts already get quite a bit of accuracy with veterancy.
As others have said, it seems the opposite of useful for them.
Osttruppen and Infantry Sections are long range squads with the option of buying LMGs. Cover bonuses work for them.
Cons are a close range squad with a short range molotov but oorah for mobility and now, apparently, a 7th man to soak losses on the approach.
I'd much rather they got a conscript SVT and had better moving accuracy, as well as more reliable close range DPS. Even if it wasn't a DPS upgrade, more shots at lower damage would make them more consistent and less all-or-nothing on a six shot volley.
Or a pair of PPSH for the same effect, being able to get close and having a chunk of their firepower both intact and less RNG dependant.
By the time you've paid for that late came conscript squad, 7 man upgrade, AT and Molotov package combo - you'd have been better off just buying another squad of guards.
A unit that can do damage and therefore doesn't need to pay for quicker vetting. And once it hits vet 3, beacuse Guards can do damage, the vet bonuses are more impactful.
The problem isn't that cons can't vet up (eventually). The problem is that even vet 3 cons are a pushover lategame. Reaching vet 3 faster doesn't change the fact that their combat potential, at vet 3, is insufficient. Helping them reach their end game faster doesn't fix the fact that their end game is poor.
I've stopped to think about this in more detail, now that we're finally seing somebody willing to address the fact that conscripts are so very, very bad. So bad. And I think the problem with conscripts has officially been left so long that the infection has spread to the entirity of ths soviet army.
If you want to cure conscripts, you're going to have to do some serious surgery on the Soviets, otherwise nothing you do to them is going to make them appealing. Gonna try explain.
Conscripts have been bad for a long time now. Outside some brief meme resurgence under the ppsh and hit the dirt releases, they are not good infantry. They have been so bad for so long that all the soviet alternatives have had to become viable completely on their own.
And now that builds of nothing but the alternatives are viable, you'd need to make conscripts so good that they stand alone in order for them to be appealing.
An army of penals without cons had to be viable, so penals are a solid mainline with an AT upgrade package.
An army of Guards had to be viable without conscripts, so guards are an AI force with their own snare alternative and light AT out of the door.
Now that those two units are so good, conscripts having a high target size and directly nerfing any squad they merge into is basically a necessity. Otherwise cons are just a cheap way to have better mainline elite infantry that also reinforce at 17mp.
If conscripts had been good enough years ago to justify their use on the battlefield, I think a lot of things would have developed differently. Imagine is conscripts were able to buy a non-doc 3x SVT or 2xPPSH upgrade, and their target size was normal... back when the faction overhaul was happening. They're still not going to be better than grenadiers or volks even with the upgrade unless you jump a gren squad point blank, but they have utility and their utility can be tailored for your army composition and build. No need to make their vet accuracy so good it breaks stolen weapons, so they can come with two weapon slots and buy one of their own. Flexible, sort of useful conscripts.
Penals could have been made into shock infantry, not the backbone of an army. They could be a mobile squad with a cheap, conscript-or-worse PPSH designed for demolition duties. You could keep the AT package to make them a dedicated AT squad with three or four slightly slower firing PTRS rifles. Congrats, T1 builds are now a mix of utility and mainline conscripts and the penals being assault troops or AT squad.
Guards could have been given a dedicated long range role and had their short range firepower kept low, to give the conscripts a place where they can shine. Merging into them is no longer a nerf to the guards, but it also has the trade off of removing some actually sort of useful conscript models. They could keep the button but lose the PTRS so they're not an option to almost solo kill enemy light vehicles unless they have smoke.
tl;dr: Conscripts have been so bad for so long that everything else had to become a replacement for them, rather than have a unique role. So far down the line, unless units become more specialized, the only way to make cons more appealing is to make them so good they can compete with the elites, because the elites have no drawbacks for picking them.
A tangent on grenade unlocks and why it holds back conscripts as a utility unit:
Single Obers can, 2 JLI most certainly can, 1 could probably kill half of the crew at least.
Maxim formation on the open field pretty much ensures the gunner will be killed in the first volley.
The eternal struggle.
Put my MG in cover? Rifle grenades and indirect and stukas obliterate them
Put my MG in a field? Rifle grenades kill one man, but the death loop on the gunner cripples it.
I think Vipper was promoting a slower vet with the same end result
I know at first glance it looked like proposing a 20% RA bonus but no. They want the current vet 1 passive to unlock in stages between vet 1 and 3
I am in favour of less spikes in vet, but CoH2 is all about the vet spikes, tbh. Unless we do the same to all units and smooth out the curve there's no need to punish pgrens with slower progression
The FG42 was specifically designed to be carried and dropped with the paratrooper because Falls were under armed on drops and heavier weapons in crates deemed to be unfeasible.
I was under the impression they remained in canisters, but it's not my area of expertise and I will cede to others pretty gladly. Didn't look it up
All balance opinions remain
(Including the one where I don't believe it's high priority even if it does change)