Profile of Strummingbird

With the recent buffs to BARs and Riflemen vet, USF is now in a pretty healthy state. One issue that has resurfaced is the dominance of Rifle Company over every other USF commander, and the strength of the commander as a whole. While every single ability in the doctrine is now very potent, I would say that the most significant contributer to this commander's overperformance is the M2 flamethrower upgrade for riflemen. What does this upgrade do?

Grant complete control of garrisons
Apart from a select few (Langres, Minsk), nearly all 1v1 maps revolve around the control of key garrisons- Ferma Summer and Winter, Semois Summer and Winter, and Faymonville, for example. I have not yet played Sturzdorf, but I think it would be safe to assume to it is a garrison-dominated map.

What the flamethrower upgrade does is award total garrison control to the USF player for a one-time cost (60 muni per rifleman). Smoke grenades, mortar smoke, grenades, are all largely unnecessary, and allows for very little counterplay on the part of the opposing player. There can be no dodging of grenades or juking houses, because when a flamer rifle walks up to a house, there's very little to do except get out and cede control.

Be superior to alternative upgrades and other flamethrower wielding units
This one is obvious- all flamethrowers right now do very large amounts of damage to units in cover and garrisons. On other factions, this is partially negated by the vulnerability of specialist flamethrower units- other than penals, flamer units are fragile, vulnerable to vehicles, and receive little combat vet to augment their performance. Flamethrower riflemen throw this right out the window, being all-round superior to BAR rifles (not needing tech cost nor loss of map control to return to base and equip), much better than assault engineers, and superior to flamers of other factions.

This makes flamers a no-brainer upgrade- so much better than any alternative in almost all situations that it removes options and variety from gameplay. There's little reason to go for BARs as a Rifle Company player simply because the flamethrower is so strong. You'd be a fool to do anything other than go 3/4 rifles with flamers every game, and I suspect that OCF tourney games will bear my claim out.

My suggestion- Make M2 flamer rifles a separate unit instead of an upgrade for regular riflemen.

What I suggest would be to retain flamer riflemen, but as a separate unit rather than an upgrade for the baseline rifleman unit. Such a unit would be physically identical to a rifleman squad in model and animation and arrive on the field when purchased with the M2 flamethrower. This flamer squad would not be able to use smoke grenades and AT rifle grenades. Exact CP timing and cost doesn't matter from a conceptual level, but just to throw out ballpark figures I'd suggest 320MP and 2CP.

Theoretical result-

Promoting unit mixing
Flame riflemen would still be as lethal and potent damagewise, but would require the support of regular rifles to cover them from vehicles, to smoke MGs, etc. Overinvestment in flame rifles would be a choice- giving the USF player more earlygame raw power in exchange for utility that becomes increasingly important in the lategame.

Counterplay
Opponents can punish USF players with multiple flamer rifles at the expense of regular rifles with vehicles (222 for example) and machineguns (no smoke from flamer rifles). This means flame rifles are no longer Riflemen+, but instead have pros and cons like every other unit.

Thoughts?

what about 3v3 and 4v4?

Oh, didn't realize you meant 3v3/4v4- I don't have much experience with that

I wouldn't mind seeing it under a commander, much like Infantry Company.

It's already available in a commander- Community Defensive Doctrine. In other words, it isn't available in any commander you might even consider bringing along, let alone using

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Giving sandbags to pioneers would probably be fine, because in the earlygame pioneers spend their time wiring and past the midgame are pretty much always busy sweeping mines, repairing, mining, and capping.

It also means that you can't walk up to the enemy fuel or cutoff- with one squad- and just sandbag + sit in cover and deny, like conscripts can, because staying at range with any regular squad, even in the open, will still always beat pioneers in green cover.

Grenadiers being able to build green cover would be crazy OP though. Maybe if it were locked behind an alternative upgrade (like section Medic vs Pyrotechnics), except with LMG42 vs Cover construction... anything to reduce the no-brainer mandatory LMG42.

Apparently the 6pdr has 1.5X accuracy against vehicles, if I understand Cruzz's post over in The More You Know correctly, which gives it another leg up over all the other AT guns. It's definitely a very effective unit.