Reminds me of Alliance Wars from Age of Empires: Online.
You're going in right direction.
Thou I'll probably drop it right here. Enough with the tease and its boring to know something and not being able to talk about it(no, I'm not in any alpha).
Regarding 2) I believe these are connected to what was accidentally leaked couple of months ago on official forums. Seeing what it actually was, it'll probably be "next huge content patch" and multiplayer exclusively oriented stuff.
Descriptions on these 3 faceplates make most sense in this case.
Well, the only two units that have really stupid vet bonuses are, as already was mentioned, volks with better durability then shocks and obers, sharing same advantage to even greater extend.
Literally all other infantry is fine, these two units say "fuck you" to cover requirement all the time and simply break late game with their vet(volks) and base stats together with vet(obers).
You realize that I&R Pathfinders are basically a 3-man Airborne squad right? That they actually have higher DPS than Conscripts at most range despite having half the men? They just don't have the durability or sustainability, being 3 men and all...
Against axis DPS, high DPS will give you nothing if you don't have greater range and are able to keep it.
These guys are popcap heavy and melt.