Profile of Hannibal

Before this gets out of hand:
I am not really arguing for removing repair from pioneers.

decrewed weapon teams aswell...

You could always take them and then repair. Or just salvage. To be honest I have never seen someone repairing a decrewed gun on the field. Only an abandoned vehicle.

Opel Blitz.

I'll give you that one. Open Blitz is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

I believe the problem stems from mid game lack of scaling.
You just can not have mainline inf that is reliable and relevant across whole game without weapon upgrade.
We've strolled this road for years with conscripts, now we're going for a 2nd lap with penals and their mid and late game viability.

Lack of upgrade to keep infantry scaling through early mid game and extreme over reliance on T-70 to jump back into the game once everyone else starts rolling out infantry weapon upgrades is a direct reason why T1 feels bad on the long run as even if SU-76 might be a good option right now, as long as there is no infantry scaling to fend of the pressure, it will always be T-70 and in turn, T1 lack of AT reliability and AI scaling.

They can work without weapon upgrades, Penals did for ages (better to say a year but they were still meta). They were even so good that they had to be nerfed. However even old Conscripts were not as bad as people made them out to be. The main issue is that units without weapon upgrade are harder to replace once you loose them. Penals start out strong, don't necessarily need an upgrade. Conscripts on the other hand start quite weak like other infantry, but previously their only way to get stronger was veterancy. That is okay for the initially build Conscripts, but not for replacement units. Hence why Conscripts get their late game upgrade. Mobilized reserves did not change the first 10-12 minutes of the game at all, still Conscripts have become the new meta over Penals.

T1 is an additional strain on Penals. But I think with the fact that LVs are way more popular compared to two years ago and the SU76 being nerfed, the way to T4 has just become too long and Penal builds have become more risky.

Literally no one expects them to work independently and spamming either alone is a sure way to lose the game - they were independent exclusively when they were op and, that clearly was not intended given how they no longer are.
It was always about paying for their own cost and scaling into late game for both and both sucked hard until they started getting mandatory changes. To not see that is to be in denial about state of these units.

Penals are expected to work on their own, and at the very least independently from T2. You can throw a Con into a Penal build but it does not fix the actual issue.

Stalling for call in has been a viable strategy until it was completely removed around a year ago.

As already explained that does not mean that tone will go for their final tier without building any vehicle at all. One will simply the way that allow him to get the there the fastest.

As I already said, call in strats bring their own problems. Their removal brought more good than harm which seems to be the general concencus in this community since I can't remember a huge discussion seriously doubting this decision, quite the contrary actually.

... Even you have not provided your opinion on this question. Do you agree with Aerohank who thinks making all faction having a similar tech system in game would fine:

"I wouldn't mind if in CoH3 each faction had an Ostheer-like tech design. With Ostheer you have to make strategic choices on how you spend your resources, but you have the freedom to assign these resources wherever you see fit. "?

I have stated that the current build of the game is better than the previous ones we had, so the direction so far has been good in most cases.
Ostheer's teching system is complicated but probably the best one to time units and allow for strategic choices. It is a nightmare to balance though, plus the current design of some CoH2 factions does not allow for an Ostheer like teching (you can't strip away any more units if the faction was already designed with holes in the rooster by default), so this discussion for CoH2 is quite useless. For CoH3 it is an interesting one.

It does not. What it does it making rushing for final tier more viable since one can gain the bonus of the final tier like: MR, all out war, Anvil/Hammer bonuses, Major bonuses with sacrificing less.

Which one is it then? Because previously you said this:

That imo creates a number of problems. One of the biggest is greatly decreases build diversity since player are "given an incentive to rush towards their final tier" creating a singe optimum tech choice.

It becomes more of "braindead" decision instead of calculated the pro and cons of the options.

The main alternative to up teching were call ins. Those got removed because They allowed a player to save a shit ton of fuel by not teching at all and investing everything into the call in tanks. Players that teched instead could be absolutely devastated. In general, there is nothing bad about this system, but it does not work in CoH2: Because you cannot know if your opponent techs or not since the base sector is not accessible (I think Elchino already made that point). There is barely any counterplay to call in strats until it is already too late, therefore they got removed. The units were made viable in a different way though: As real alternatives to stock units.
Yes, "strategy" in terms of "do I tech up or not" was removed. What was not removed is your choice of units, which contributes to the strategical/tactical decision making. Instead, the changes even increased the diversity.

There many alternatives:
Keep MR in T3 now that it buffed so the player has choice when and if to unlock it.

Keep AT grenades and Molotvs separate so a player can choose when or if he want to unlock them

Make certain unit call in (not mainline tanks) so player have the option to use them instead of
having to use their final tier.

Make end tier unit more specialized that they do not make lower tier unit complete obsolete.

In the end of the day make a decision and stick with it, instead of adding bandaid on bandaid:

Either make all factions with completely linear tech like Ostheer and designed them accordingly
or
Accept that some faction will have holes in their roaster and make sure they are viable even with those holes...

Most of these alternatives won't do anything towars the point you critisize
No player will skip T4 because of MR (or AT nades/molotovs, you can see them in the current build already that you are critisizing).
Are you talking about doctrinal call in vehicles? Or making stock units default call ins? Because if it is the first then no player will skip the final tier.

And as I said above: If a faction is designed with holes already, then it is hard to strip more units. These factions need a full tech tree OR OP units to make up for these holes and the predictability of their game style.

You can throw a lot of alternative ideas out, but if you are convinced by them you must provide some reasoning why they could be better than the current implementation.

Vipper I made two lenghty posts to find out what you are talking about and I still don't know what your point is. This thread made it to 50+ posts now and keeps going in circles.

You keep repeating 'rushing final tier' and present it as bad but don't give reasoning besides e.g. 'stale build order' which in turn is just a claim without back up.

Back up your claims, otherwise this thread is pretty nonesense. Multiple people had to guess what the main underlying point of yours is and agreed that it likely is either tech timing and/or the need to tech up at all, then they pointed out the consequences of alternatives (like call ins or viable strong LV strats etc, which we already had in the game). You in turn keep repeating that these arguments were not the main point of the discussion and that it were about last tier rushes. You completely ignore the core of these arguments.

What is this?