1. Fight Wehrmacht infantry without a lieutenant and see how effective your British infantry are. You will get out attritioned far faster than they will, even if your units did cost the same. Or fight FJ which have a similar cost, in fact I can't be bothered looking atm but I think they're 40mu more than rifle nades and 10mp or so cheaper. And if you think they aren't used mainline there are a lot of companies that use them in that way.
The problem here, Mannfred, is that there's only four of them. Four does not really constitute a "line infantry" role. Elite infantry costs more and gives you more - British line infantry just happen to be the closest to elite infantry with perhaps exception of grenadiers.
And, for the record, I have fought Wehrmacht infantry without LTs before - in fact they often get capped first if they aren't hidden somewhere. At range with some cover rifle grenades (usually, luck can be a problem) ensure a win and up close they make meat even harder. A bren squad is basically an LMG42 (single) squad with a bit more reliability due to damage being spread out and a vehicle disabling attack... Plus, British infantry squads get a pretty good amount of HP Equivalency against most weaponry. Wehrmacht invests in tanks and support, British invests in infantry - the win is almost assured against anything short of masses of KCH/stormtroopers, and even then some judicious use of buildings gives the Brit infantry the win.
3. RANGERS to MAINLINE infantry. It was an analysis which showed how much power others could get into the same population. Rangers are hardly doctrinal now, everyone can get at least two squads and indeed many do. Fact is, it's not about doctrines or not, it's about who can get what, at what pop. British get less.
But not the same cost by a long shot, and not the same total pop. If you use the ranger's built-in cap limit I'd take the British infantry every time for a fight between the two - Rangers win for pop cap density, but again, it's elite infantry against line infantry. I mean, it'd be like saying "oh yeah? Well commandos beat PGs with G43s" - sure they beat a damn lot of PGs with G43s for the pop cost, but it's not really an apt comparing point because they're used differently. As for "who can get what at what pop", if you ignore elite infantry (which I am because we're talking about Tommies here, not commandos), the British easily have the highest damage to popcap density of any infantry-killing infantry. The only thing that compares are MP44 PGrens or LMG grens, and even those are iffy at times due to the nature of British infantry (the closer you are the deader you are, but at standoff range you can't damage them worth a damn).
4. I used 3 squads as this is the more common number used that I have seen in opponents and allies British armies, the benefits of the lieutenant grow with squad number, the more you have the greater the benefit. Considering many british starts are pure infantry I'm sure i'm not far off of the mark here.
Well, you're 100% right: the returns from an LT grow as the size of his command blob grows... but again, it forces you into a blobbed situation. Flanking becomes a harder choice as you want to keep getting more out of the LT. I've picked two squads and an LT as effective because it is roughly half my initial popcap to devote to infantry, and the other half can be devoted to supporting elements. Getting three squads and an LT is like a four gren call - it's kind of excessive in most situations, in my opinion.
5. I would like to see you play PE. If you bring a marder at the start you're toast. Enough AT to defeat tanks (without reinforcements) will cost you at least 12 pop and that AT could very easily lose to a sherman. Perhaps you get a single shreck and an ATHT, I would like to see that kill a sherman of a competent player. So you'll be going for two TB squads and an ATHT for a total of 11-13 pop. Either way inefficient pop-usage. Your ATHT can snipe infantyr, but BAR's rape it, Bazookas slaughter it etc etc etc. It's useful in a supplementary role, but that's it.
11 pop with an AT-HT and a Marder seems to do the trick just fine. Engine damaged sherman isn't exactly circle strafing you, and it loses pretty badly to a locked down marder. Throw in a ketten, 12 pop of effective AT with scouting ability, 13 pop remaining for infantry. Then again, I'm sure it'd take me some tweaking to come up with something more effective than that. I have no real inclination to play PE (I've always disliked the concept and been poor at it since they were released as a faction in CoH: OF, no need to play to my disadvantages because that's not particularly fun for me and I DO play for fun after all - there's no EiR:R ladder :p) at any rate, so I'm afraid that's the best I've got for now.
6. The Marder hardly avoids the disadvantages of traditional AT guns, even if it does it receives a bunch of disadvantages that are far worse.
The front of an ATG/Pak is very difficult to damage the crew from. You have to go behind it, i.e. close range. You can snipe a marder from 60 range with an ATG and rape it. You can kill Marders with bazookas, tanks (yes the thing its sposed to hunt), piats, BARs from behind etc etc etc. Exchanging one set of weaknesses of weaknesses which are more detrimental to its performance is hardly advantageous. The +5 sight range of the marder is completely worthless and non eventful, made a crappy unit even more crap, it used to be +20 which had its uses, 5 sight is pointless. May as well give Klaus a teddy bear.
You just named a bunch of things you can use to kill normal ATGs, though, and a lot more effectively than against a Marder. You can snipe a 57 from 60 range with a PaK and rape it, you can kill 57s with schreks, tanks (circling with a P4, or the inverse using a sherman to circle the PaK), piats (
Not really effective against either ATGs or marders... or anything, really :p), BARs rape ATG crews from any old location, not just point blank behind firing for 90 years (I don't care what you say, BARs do not "defeat" Marders unless you just sit there and let them for minutes at a time...).
Really, compare it to a 57. It's not slow, it has an invulnerable crew, it's just as able to be ATG sniped (slightly easier, but it's also more able to reposition itself), does at least as much damage... really its advantages all around outweigh its deficits. Also Cromwell Command Tank gives +5 sight and people keep singing its praises - just pretend your Marder CCTs itself when locked down, which is basically what it does.
And before anyone ever brings up small arms killing a Marder again, I will say this: a BAR does 2.75 DPS at point blank, best case scenario, to a Marder. Even if an entire rifle squad was armed with BARs, at point blank behind your Marder getting 100% rear shots, it would take a full 22 seconds to reach "crit death" levels on the Marder. If you let that many riflemen hit your marder in the ass for that long, there is something very wrong with you. By comparison a single man with a BAR kills two men in a PaK crew in about 5 seconds from the same range, to say nothing of SIX. Marders are effectively immune to small arms fire with exception of AP rounds on machine guns.
7. I did mention a mobile 17pndr. There are clearly issues, it's all over the forum, although you seem to feel inclined to scream l2p at every British player(or at least insinuate as such in your usual condescending and insulting tone), the feeling about their weakness is mutual on the forum as seen by numerous posts by both skilled and new players and also evidenced by the win/loss ratings of various factions compared to one another.
I said that Brits play differently, and a lot of people don't seem to realize it - it takes a while to get used to, and it is VERY differently from your conventional US or Wehrmacht playstyle. It is still effective, however, when done properly. Yes that is a "l2p" equivalent, but then again, so is everything on the balance forum. It's either "Nobody can l2p with this, needs fix" or "I l2p'd, you can too, leave it alone". As for "condescending tone" I did nothing of the sort, and I am e-offended in my e-honor that you suggest such a thing.
This is a nice little chart for who is awesome and who not, I did a quick estimate from what I remember seems to be average win/loss ratings for good players, it varies a bit but its roughly accurate:
Wehrmacht: 4:1
American: 2:1
Panzer Elite: 1.5:1
British: 3:2
I, uh, don't see a chart there - also 3:2 reduces to 1.5:1 if you want to use decimals (random typo fixes go go)... I mean I'd like some evidence of this and not just numbers pulled from thin air.
You'll also note that, I believe, in its current state this game is being balanced with a filled out army roster (doctrinal unlocks et c.) to be balanced against another such army, not two vanilla no-anything armies. Plus you also have to take into account the possibilities of teamstacking, the fact that players aren't necessarily used to the new faction playstyles, et c. I'd say it's been too early to come to a bona fide conclusion about win rates until now, but then we'd have to all start new accounts to see what's what.
PE AT gun is NOT immune to small arms...and it dies from 2 AT gun shots (that near never miss) and it has a smaller range...
and one marder without any other AT is NOT enough because it cannot do anything
I went over the former, and it only dies to two AT gun shots when a 57 has AP rounds on (admittedly a rare occurence given their fragility).
One marder is enough AT like one 57mm is enough AT - it works if the opponent is not determined to blitz you with vehicles. If he is, you're better off investing in more AT of course...
indeed
marder without other AT to support = toast
locked down marder = toast (AT guns are worst nightmare)
marder getting rushed by most kinds of infantry (since PE has no supression) = toast
PE without wehrmachtplayer or wehrmacht reinforcements+luck = toast
Marder can duel 57s with about a 50% success rate, so saying it dies horrifically to AT guns and while locked down isn't really true. If it isn't locked down it can't necessarily fire back, but it can retreat out of range using superior speed... and if it is locked down it can just return fire and have a decent chance at beating the 57 at its own game.
Also "most kinds of infantry" are practically unable to damage a marder significantly. In fact from the allies I can count the amount of infantry that can on one hand - Rangers, Airborne, Piats sapper/commando (the latter of which I have seen precisely one time ever), and one may consider sticky bomb riflemen as well, although their damage is pretty ehhh (but their disabling abilities are nice). Two elite, doctrinal infantry types, a squad that has to spend a good 2.5 minutes throwing bombs at you and hoping to crit you to death, and a squad that has to spend a good 2.5 minutes throwing potatos at you and hoping they hit. Real scary. It's not like I can just run away using my superior speed, eh? It's not like PGrens can use the ability called "G43 slow" as a rough suppression analog either, huh? I'm sorry but these arguments have quite a few holes that need patching or better support, I'm not sure which one.
Sorry about taking so long to get back to you on that, been busy.
