My suggestion for fixing this issue so that camouflaged tank destroyers aren't such an overwhelming pain in the ass to deal with is that infantry AT rocket launchers should be buffed across the board to be significantly more accurate and have much greater pen (possibly with decreased range if deemed necessary), making axis armored tank destroyers actually vulnerable to these units even frontally. Additionally, the m18 and achilles should lose their HE shell, as it limits counterplay options by axis players. I acknowledge that the first of these 2 paired suggestions is a dramatic one, but it would solve the issue and realistically wouldn't have much of an impact on the game outside of solving said issue.
Think about it for a second before you type a response saying this is a bad idea, what would actually be negatively affected by this change? Normal non-AT specialist tanks (basically anything other than TD's) would still easily be able to blast AT inf with HE before they can close the distance, either killing most of the squad so only one rocket is left to fire, which isn't enough to kill most tanks aside from maybe with the 5% instakill crit roll they already have (i know tanks cannons have it, not sure if AT launchers do). Panzer 4 F2 and sherman 76's are good examples of this concept in action, as neither of these tanks have enough armor to effectively bounce rockets frontally yet they have no trouble dealing with AT inf because they can kill said inf before it even gets a chance to shoot.
Heavy tanks may be adversely affected in the sense that throwing a horde of AT inf at them would be more effective than it is currently, but to combat this, heavy tank MG's and roof gunners could be buffed so that attacking a heavy from the front with AT would be a more risky endeavor than it is currently, as right now there isn't much stopping you from walking up to a tiger from the front with 3 squads (double recoilless 101st and 2 AT squads for example) and just blasting it with a massive volley of rockets anyways. Sure, you might lose a squad to HE in the current setup, but you have the potential damage there to instakill the tank if you get lucky and all the shots pen. The AT launcher change would effectively be the same as if people got lucky every time with this tactic, so it would be fitting to give heavies stronger anti-inf capabilities to compensate. The buff to the machine guns doesn't have to be something as dramatic as an actual damage increase, just a strong suppression ability with a wide are of effect in the targeted area would be enough to make full frontal assaults with AT inf a dumb idea. Flanking would still be as viable as it is currently, and possibly more rewarding since you wont get anymore unlucky bounces off the ass of a tiger.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To summarize this suggestion and its effects:
CHANGES
1. Make infantry AT launchers hit and pen more consistently, they're already squishy units so they should be rewarding if you manage to get in range. Range could even be decreased a bit so that this risk vs reward tradeoff is even more apparent.
2. Remove HE from M18 and achilless. Coming from someone who personally loves to use HE on these tanks since it hits hard and the other player wont see it coming, there are other units in the game that are better suited to ambushing infantry. These TD's should be approachable by AT inf when stationary without risk of getting blown to bits by said tanks. The only TD's that should have decent anti-inf are marders, as those tanks are slow, unarmored, and turretless (meaning they are almost exclusively used in stationary positions).
3. Give heavy armor better options for dealing with AT inf frontally to compensate for their armor becoming less effective against infantry AT weapons. A suppression ability that suppresses every inf unit within a circular are of 3-4 times the model length of the tank using it and a minimum targeting range for the center of the circle at 2 tank lengths away from the tank to keep the ability from just being used to suppress in every direction. The ability should either be cheap or free, as it would be similar in effectiveness to the tank shock ability which is also free, and it should have a relatively short cooldown as well as a short time of effectiveness (maybe literally just an instant burst of supression every time it is activated, again similar to tank shock). I will include a diagram below of what I mean for this ability in case my description was unclear.
4. Changes to axis TD prices may be needed if they are deemed too overpriced relative to their durability by the majority of the community after these changes, but I doubt it'll be significant enough to warrant this. These TD's will still do their job, they'll just be a bit less of a headache to kill since you will have a consistent option for killing them if you can manage to get AT inf in range to fire one or 2 volleys, rather than the status quo of having to fire 3 or even 4 volleys because you can't manage to hit/pen these TD's for whatever reason despite being in range. If you feel you were already getting consistent 1-2 volley performance, then the change might not really be noticeable for you.
EFFECTS
1. TD's become more easily counterable with infantry, so the camo changes go from an urgently needed change to a small detail that can be fine tuned at a later date if still deemed necessary.
2. Infantry will be rewarded more for closing the distance on a tank, but tanks that have good anti inf don't need to worry about this since they have the mean to prevent inf from closing. Effectively, this just means TD's will be more easy to kill with inf if they manage to find them.
3. Heavies will become less vulnerable to standard means of killing armor since they will have an effective tool for preventing said means from being used on them, thus solidifying their role as an aggro sink / damage absorber / fear weapon. This essentially means that players will be forced to deal with heavies differently than how they would other tanks, as just throwing a blob of AT inf at them would no longer have any reasonable chance of working if the heavy tank user is paying attention and uses the suppression ability. Flanking, ambush, and use of indirect fire would be far more encouraged, as only the larger cannons of any given faction would be able to reliably deal with heavies from the front because inf would just get suppressed unless spread out.
4. Not really something prioritized, but as a possible side effect of the suppression ability, heavies would become a much more attractive option relative to heavy TD's, justifying their higher price. This would also make the heavy tank line more equally attractive to the heavy TD line in the newest version of the new Panzer Support doctrine on beta. The ability could be used in both an offensive and defensive manner. Max range the ability's center can be called on would determine how effective it would be offensively, but theoretically you could use this on an area before attacking as well as using it in a more defensive role. If implemented properly, it wouldn't be OP because this is exactly what these tanks are meant to do.
POSSIBLE ISSUES
1. Obviously all tanks globally will become a bit easier to kill with infantry AT, potentially throwing balance off slightly in that regard. The shots to kill would be the same but there would just be less misses and bounces. I mentioned having a possible range reduction to infantry AT as a means of counterbalancing this so that it becomes more risky/difficult to try and kill tanks that have HE, even if said HE is single shot, as those tanks could also more easily kite AT inf, thus solidifying their roles as well (Anti-inf specialists and multi-role tanks would benefit from this).
2. The suppression ability I talked about would require fine tuning to get right (if the ranges are too big it can easily become OP), but that's what betas are for. Additionally, suppression should have less of an effect AT guns if that's possible (assuming it has any effect at all currently).
3. This is a pretty big change, we should finish getting the beta out to live before work begins on this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Below is diagram of proposed suppression ability for heavy armor. It wouldn't be dependent on the MG's actually shooting at something, it'd just apply temporary suppression to a radius around a targeted point. Said point would have a minimum and maximum distance at which it can be placed. It would apply one burst of suppression to any inf within a radius of said point. More details in diagram and above post.
