Warhawks97 wrote:
And Jumbo Sherman as backbone, main assault unit and game saver in the infantry doctrine for the americans.. idk how else thinks that the US design still has some flaws. Perhaps we add churchills to RAF doc as well in future. Or King Tiger to SE or whatever.
The second flaw for US: There are just three single time options for US shared over three doctrines to actually kill a KT in normal combat situations (every other death cause is lack of users brain or simply a game that was lost long long long bevor the KT came or super bad luck; eg. 76 oneshot KT just like that)... Bomber planes, Long Tom, KT.
Infantry play in the late game is very unrewarding across all factions. Whether it be Inf, RAF, Luftwaffe, or AB(these guys being the best because they have a godlike patrol ability that kills everything). Simply because BK does not reward you for actually using infantry against tanks and 75% of the time the vehicle out-attritions your infantry before you manage to kill it(so it basically pays itself off).
I mean what's the plan here? You can't reliably use handheld AT against these late game tanks because they take forever to reload. A King Tiger can actually fire off 4 shells(reload speed of 5.5-4.5) while a bazooka takes 18 seconds to reload. What makes this worse is that you are not even rewarded for getting close to these tanks as panzershrecks/bazookas reload EVEN SLOWER when they are closer to the target(with the reload duration modifier going up by 25% in the case of bazooka at short range!). I checked corsix again, and found out that the bazooka actually takes 5 seconds longer to reload than a panzershreck(13s reload) as well...
Not only that, but most of these late game tanks get ridiculous view range. Where in the case of the Hetzer; if it has spotting scope + tank commander + it is hiding in ambush; It has almost the same view range as a hidden observing kettenkrad. So even if you do try to flank these tanks they will most likely see it coming so you need something that goes very fast and manages to get off multiple shots into the target. Rather than these AT squads which get a one-off strike and have to retreat because they will never reload in time for the next one before they are dead.
Which means using infantry against a Panther, Tiger, King Tiger is actually a worse option than spamming artillery or tanks at it. Which means infantry company, a doc which is supposedly focused on infantry is... stuck spamming AT emplacements, artillery strikes, and M10s with jumbos/M4s late game.
I have seen games of a King Tiger simply charging an inf doc player not caring about any AT capabilities he had at all. Even when the inf doc player managed to outflank the King Tiger and have a clear shot at its rear armor with 4 HEAT bazookas his reward was... 3 bounces and 1 miss.
So putting all this together:
- Have all handheld AT have close to the reload rates of PIATs(5-4 seconds); make it around 7-8(reload time of most medium tanks) seconds so the PIAT doesn't lose its advantage over other AT weapons and it isn't shooting too fast.
- Remove this reload penalty for vehicles that are close to your AT squads; maybe even reverse it so handheld AT shoots faster when it is closer to the target.
- Equalize the reload rates of the axis/american AT, there is no reason a bazooka should take 5 seconds longer to reload than a panzershreck.
- Give back AB squads their second recoiless. This weapon isn't that great; so stacking it on a single AB squad doesn't make that much of a difference in the late game at all.
- Let infantry doctrine get more bazookas somehow, they are the most limited when it comes to infantry AT when they really shouldn't be(maybe increase the maximum cap of AT squads they can build from 2 to 4).
- Give Wehrmacht and USA vehicle buttoning. USA will find this to be a crucial ability in the late game against these heavy tanks and it will actually differentiate Rangers from just being better riflemen with a single zooka upgrade.
Funnily enough, PIATs are actually the best AT weapon in the game. Not only because they reload the fastest and can shoot over obstacles; But it also feels like they have the best chances of immobilizing vehicles on penetrating hits.
Also off-topic from this post but the Staghound's main gun does deflection damage on bounces so hopefully that can be fixed too.