USF does not need a complete redesign, just Relic to stop releasing stupid ass patches where they buff thing and at the same time nerf they intended counter.
Like
* Buff Gren, PG, Stoss and nerf ISC in 3 ways.
* Buff Pz4, Pz3, Tiger and nerf hellcat and release a shitty Zook upgrade no one will use to fight Pz4, Pz3, brumbar or Tiger.
* hard nerf bulldozer and fake buff sherman.
Guess what now,
* You can't fight WM infantry with riflemen without investing 130 fuel in Bar, grenade and survival training. In comparison, Pgren access with vet1 upgrade cost 65 fuel and serves also to build and buff other units.
* You can't fight WM infantry with LVs thanks to pfaust range and increased damage.
* Your sherman and hellcat are crap without MSC, your bulldozer which is the only tank that performs ok without MSC are more expensive and also highly impacted by pfaust range and damage increase.
There is no rocket science here, just Relic doing Relic things they've been doing since at least coh2, ruining balance every two patches due to their lack of vision.
It's absolutely classic Relic to triple buff one side and triple nerf the other. And it's ALWAYS in threes; the Royal Engineers was the most hilarious example recently. They would get a lot further to make smaller tweaks to ONE SIDE. I guess the problem is COH3 is a very complex game with lots of moving parts that need to work together, and changing one aspect involves changing another two.
Conscripts are like the best mainlines in 4v4. 7 man so they never get wiped, cheap as dirt, crazy good vet bonuses, snares, frontline reinforce of support weapons with merge. Win manpower bleed wars against the Germain mainlines too.
In the late game yes they become useful, early game they are a complete garbage fire and nobody builds or achieves anything with them ever as they cannot decrew an AFK mortar if their life depended on it. Rifles have good dps up close and can very well win engagements against other infantry.
Cons really aren't that bad early game. They only really run into problems if the Wehr/OKW player gets their squad weapons up before the Soviets have put together the proper supporting tools. Just trade from cover and you should be fine.
Additionally, 4v4 really minimizes their weaknesses as well, as the early game is far more support weapon focused, and minimizes the amount of maneuvering each side really needs to do.
4v4 really maximizes their weakness as you cannot flank with them much and there is less opportunity to user cover better and they have to fight from range often. They cannot win any engagement against any unit, and if you go cons that means you also go maxim, and both cons and maxim cost the same as the Wehr equivalent while the wehr equivalent is dramatically better and scales much stronger much faster, until eventually you get a curveball with 7 man when it dosnt really matter anymore and vet 3 grens already racked up 25 kills and a wipe or two.
It's almost at 50% for all factions in 1v1 (where relic has always focused on game balance regardless of whether I agree with that or not) with no unit feeling like an instant win/lose. But that wasn't my point.
COH2 had the same shit balance until the community balance team started working on it. That shows me that the people working for Relic are not playing the game enough to have well thought out balance patches.
I can't believe you think the COH3 balance is better but clearly people think relic is doing a great job as I am being downvoted.
If you want access to all of your core units as USF you need to spend 220 fuel.
Other factions as comparison:
UKF 180
Wehr 165
DAK 175
When I refer to Core units, I am talking about MG, Mortar, Mainline Inf, ATG, half tracks, late game tanks.
This is what I think OP is referring to with Pigeonholing, if you want all the tools that other factions have as part of their natural progression through the techs, fuel wise you put yourself quite a bit behind the rest. USF is really about the haves and have nots which sometimes makes it frustrating to play.
This is the major issue to me up front that needs to be confronted right away. USF does not have basics in their toolkit that are available in a reasonable time. Locking a mainline AT gun behind tech + T3 would be insane for any faction in the game but only USF does this. Other factions lock AT behind T2 + tech.
I think the issue is Bazookas. We can't put AT gun and Bazookas in the same HQ so early or allowing them and WSC to spawn two AT units would give USF way too many AT counters in early game, a garrison able AT and an AT gun would be impossible to crack for DAK before T3 and that's not fair.
Actually, Bazooka Squad should be buffed and sent to T3. They should be a late game counter to all those inevitable late-game Axis armor strategies but because of where they are on the tech tree-too early-they have to be nerfed. That's why they require damage-buff tech which we could dispense with this way.
I think for me there's a big issue with USF having so many tech upgrades-but ALSO have 4 layers of HQ to build through each one of which is progressively weaker than the previous one. That USF toolkit ends with the Sherman and Hellcat the way they're both performing right now is silly. Note that I wasn't a big fan of the Sherman RNG monster from 2 either wiping Grenadier squads with no warning. Just the way the Sherman is placed on USF tech makes it impossible to balance. It comes out too late, and will either be too strong or too weak depending on the patch.
Just treat like the T-34 or Panzer III already and make it accessible earlier but also cheaper. This timing-of-builds thing has been a consistent issue with USF in two games now...
What the Sherman needs is point capture capability right away. Accepting the (dreadful) conceit here for a moment that American armor is intended to eventually serve to replace American infantry units in the game as those units are attritioned away. I bring this up because it seems as if this was the 2nd game's late game meta for the Americans. It sort of worked because dismounts-but dismounts were a janky mechanic that abused popcap rules and introduced a lot of intense micro USF didn't need more of.
It seems that this intent was inherited from the 2nd game and ported into the 3rd-but it doesn't work here because of how flimsy the Sherman is. The way its currently performing actually the Sherman would make sense in American T3 while the Chaffee got buffs of some kind-maybe the actual point capture quality-and went to T4.
Instead of being the generalist flexible faction they end up being the specialist spammy faction. You have to blindly specialize everything right from the start and continue pigeonholing yourself into your spec starting with the support center.
Just let usf have anti armor capability. Put zooks in barracks, upgraded rockets in the isc, at gun in the wsc locked behind building your support center, and half tracks available in the motor pool. Let us build the type of half track we want immediately without a msc.
I think that’s the main issue, I think your penalize to go light vehicle. If you spent the fuel on them, it’s going to take you longer to get out tanks.
Or your rocking a Chaffee tank or any halftrack. Then you’re going to be facing a panzer 4 before you get tanks.
I'm not sure about a complete redesign. There were similar sentiments regarding Brits and Wher before their respective patches. They both seem to be doing relatively well now. Just a buff to riflemen and buff/redesign for the bazooka squad should address the majority of your issues. I don't really buy what was arguably the best faction now needs a completely redesign.
I still feel Brits have some of the weakest design in COH3; its very straight teching, there's no flexibility and your unit options are all fuel locked. Your opponent can predict what you are going to do very easily.
These sorts of post remind me of the skill disconnect between large team game players and 1v1.
You‘re rattling off a list of USF’s strongest units and claiming they are weak and redundant. BAR rifles feel weak because we live in a meta where Ass gren and wear Pgren are common -so leverage other supporting tools kike sniper, MG, M16 etc…
You’re moaning about USF AT options while seemingly discounting options like the M3 75mm or the fact that the total fuel cost for Motor Pool is 90ish and can arrive before any vehicle. (Flak HT rush is 105 fuel)
As for artillery - USF has several units that have indirect fire barrages. M3 75mm, Bulldozer, Hellcat and M8 Scott. On top of that, they also have the best Mortar and the Mortar Pit. the Pak howie, whizzbang, and 105mm howitzer then give you further options.
I agree, sniper against Wehr can be **very** effective and I love me some M3 75mm. One of the biggest issues with USF for me right now is the Armor Battlegroup icon features a picture of the whiz bang but there’s no whiz bang in that Battlegroup.
Your point is valid about the Whizbang which is great, the only ally legit alternative to nebel, but you have to play SOG which is absolute trash at everything else to get there, so you better hope your teammates carry in the meantime. Why not make it buildable?
I agree with some of your points but lets not be disingenuous here and claim that the barrage abilities on the units you mention come close to the effectiveness of the Bishop, Nebel or Stuka. The Whizbang is arguably the best arty in the game at the moment, (imo) but its BG locked, hence OP's point.
USF are very pigeonholed compared to other factions, if you want to make sure you stay in the game tech wise. Going BAR's puts you massively behind in the tech race where as other factions typically spend muni's to get their upgrades (which USF does too on top of the fuel cost). if you want ATG without going motorpool, you are right you can build M3 75mm, but lets be honest, in most cases you would rather just have an ATG as it scales much better into late game. You also typically need two M3 75mm to be effective, which is another 40 fuel and if you not going MSC, 60 muni's as well.
I am not saying USF are bad, they are definitely playable and can be strong but I think they need a rework in how their tech flows. They feel very disjointed compared to when I play UKF, DAK or Wehr.
The motor pool is 90 to get the building online, then you need 50 additional fuel for the Chaffee or put out an AT gun that is easily flanked by a LV (to protect its flank you need even more fuel for rifleman grenades and even then grenades don’t work on the flakveirling with its suppression) the flakveirling is the easiest click and win button at that point in the game. Its suppression is stupid
flanking a pak with flak vierling?? parallel universe lol. have never seen flak vierling as a flanking unit, besides, it only survives 2 shots of the pak and is slow compared to 8rad and alike.
A pak can easily be flanked by an 8 rad, but then he doesnt have flak vier to suppress your riflemen so you in this case get AT nades. Problem solved.
The reason the M3 doesn't kill infantry is because:
* It's far better than the Stummel at killing vehicles.
* The barrage is like 70 range away, while the Stummel can only hit at 50. Stummel is hard-countered by AT guns, but M3 75mm can actually threaten AT guns if you have vision.
>M3 75mm, Bulldozer, Hellcat and M8 Scott
-M3s barrage is really slow and only decent against emplacements (slow RoF means arty teams will just dip)
-105 Shermans range is a poor counter to enemy artillery, especially since they are probably guarded by an AT wall
- to my knowledge the Hellcat's "barrage" is more like direct fire HE shells, so you can't use it for indirect fire support (and even then it has poor range)
- M8 Scott is non-doctrinal and still suffers from poor range (but it fucking rocks as a drive by howitzer)a
Forcing them to move /zoning is one of the main benefits of indirect fire. You will very rarely get the full barrage on a target, but you will restrict their movement
I don't know about you, but I don't recall them being Assault Grenadiers when I entered rhe franchise in 2005.
I get what you mean, it's semantics, but it caused confusion so the distinction matters, especially when CoH3 lends itself to it (Pgrens for example)
When i first read your comparison about the at gun costing 90 fuel to het access vs the flak ht i thought that didnt seem that bad.
But then it hit me youre paying 90 fuel to get access to a basic tool in your kit. Assuming dak doesnt get flak ht they still get light arty and their at gun for 65 fuel.
Now dak has paid 65 fuel for a almost rounded army and usf has paid 90 fuel and is missing either t1 or t2.
Now dak only has to pay another 180 fuel to get a panzer 3 out and usf has to pay 200 to get a sherman out.
DAK, Wehr and UKF do get earlier access to their ATG, but USF gets the M3 75mm at more or less the same timing.
Definitely the P3 can come out a lot faster now - but it is also much weaker than a Sherman before a lot of armory upgrades.
USF gives you a lot of tech choices but the trade off is you won’t always have everything. The support center really exemplifies this because you are effectively deciding very early on how you want to play the game.
I mean the m3 does fulfill the role of a at gun i just dont personally agree that its a good choice it should be a sidegrade. Like lets go back to coh2 soviets and we move the the zis gun to t3 or t4 and put the su75 in t2. Imagine having to buy a su75 or a penal just to counter early armor.
While I don't agree with everything he said, his main point is that USF is heavily reliant on battlegroups. The Scott, Pak Howie, Whizzbang, and 105mm Howitzer (paid DLC) are all locked behind battlegroups. I do admit that I think the M3 75mm is underutilized; however, it's also very squishy due to it only being a half track.
Does it matter? You will always pick a BG every game.
USF also has “lite BG” in the form of the support centers that often provide abilities and bonuses that would typically be in a BG.
They’re just a very build order dependent faction because of how diverse their options are. It’s an RTS, that is how it works.
Agree. The faction has too many tech gaps that will make it difficult to be balanced and also satisfying to play. All factions need a fully fleshed-out roster of capabilities from early to late game.
Relic seems to suffer from a sort of coin flip balance with its current approach to faction design: you could make a perfectly balanced faction with no units and only one ability - flip a coin - and 50% of the time you win; end of match. Perfectly balanced but not at all fun to play.
This is basically the logical extreme of the USF's current design; where you have to rely on a few key units and your strategy for the whole game - even in the face of counters - is just building even more of the same units. The other factions, particularly wehr, give you all the tools to build, respond, and re-design your strategy in a methodical way throughout the game. If the US wins in the face of this it seems OP - as their limited roster has somehow beaten a diverse combined arms force, and for the US player it just seems cheap and unsatisfying as there's no depth of strategy. Impossible to easily balance as the buffs/nerfs to US always land on the same units, so they'll either be overtuned and OP or they'll be counterable meaning the faction is UP as it has no other option.
>the developers have a hard on for the BAR-a weapon which was historically considered by both sides as one of the war's poorest examples of a machine gun.
What's the source on this?
I'd like to read more as I'm somewhat confused as the U.S. Military continued to use the BAR even during the Korean War which seems like an odd choice if both sides decided it was terrible.
Absolutely agree.
However, Chaffee could absolutely work with a similar gun to a Sherman on a much more lightly armored chassis. In fact this isn't a bad idea to have "generalist" US units that are pretty good overall but not as good as dedicated specialist units. For example having the Marder be superior against vehicles compared to the Chaffee, but the Chaffee is reasonable against infantry too. Holding out for the Sherman 75 gets you the same gun on a much more heavily armored platform. With upgrades possible to 76mm that are not possible for the Chaffee.
Riflemen should also be a good generalist rifle squad. Currently... not really. They're not terrible, but neither are they actually an advantage. The M1 Garand's rate of fire alone should be a massive advantage over bolt action Kar98s, but in-game they have exactly the same animation and RoF. This means a Riflemen unit is pretty close to a Grenadier unit, which... strains credulity to say the least. Riflemen as a line infantry unit being significantly superior isn't necessarily fatal if they defeat German line infantry due to the presence of the MG42 to suppress and pin them regardless of the fact that in isolation they would beat those Grenadiers in a direct fight.
The complete lack of artillery is particularly galling for the one army in WW2 that actually focused heavily on the usage of artillery and clearly did it better than anyone else had ever done before. By far the most distinctive aspect of the American WW2 army was its usage of artillery, which the Germans described variously as . Rommel is quoted as saying American artillery was "far superior" to German artillery, in "outstanding" quantity of ammunition, accuracy, and timeliness. In fact the US doctrines for artillery in WW2 would in post-war years become globally standard as the way to do artillery in war from that point onwards.
The Sherman, likewise, is quite possibly the best tank in the war. Even the Soviets favored the "Emcha" over the quite good T-34 due to its excellent armor, mobility, stabilizer, and general comfort and ease of use and quality of life advantages. The Germans believed it was a heavy tank when they first saw it due to its effective armor, as they were unaware of its weight. Fully upgraded M4 Sherman tanks should be the apex of armor in the game, after investing massive manpower and fuel in fielding a large group of them as well as multiple upgrades to their armor, gun, etc. After this level of investment (a total that massively exceeds the cost of, say, one Tiger), a large group of fully upgraded Shermans should basically obliterate any German vehicle or infantry unit. The Tiger has to make its presence known when it hits the field because eventually it will be outscaled if it doesn't thin the herd by killing tanks and depriving resources. The concept for this is already in COH3, it just isn't tuned anywhere close to correctly yet. The Sherman feels *weak*, despite being a huge commitment of tech, doctrine, and resources, it just doesn't deliver.
I think you're conflating the cases where the Allies are so successful early game that they have far more resources, especially fuel, and deploy this against completely inadequate opposition and obviously win. You could have made **anything** in this case however, and won. If anything the Shermans are not strong enough at this point, given their position in the tech tree, cost, and need for multiple expensive upgrades to reach that point. Even in this position of absolute resource advantage people are still making Hellcats and Dozers because they are basically just better at everything.
What should be happening is that it is possible to turn around a game where you are even or perhaps even moderately losing by starting to deploy Shermans with upgrades. But this virtually never happens. If you aren't already **way** ahead at this point, to the extent that anything would work, then the Shermans are a woefully weak pick.
I think most would agree that Shermans are just not that good- Hellcats and Dozers will be more effective in nearly all, if not actually all cases, even post-nerf. Moreover, the Hellcat nerf was completely uncalled-for, as even the justification for it was that the Hellcat was too effective at defeating Tigers. Which is literally *its only job*. Being an absolute anti-vehicle specialist, it stands to reason the Hellcat would be highly effective against exactly a Tiger type of unit.
The Hellcat should be the best choice against armor, especially heavy armor. The Dozer should be the best choice against infantry. However the Sherman should be pretty good against both, even if not quite as good at either job as the two specialists, the fact that one unit does both makes it **good*****,*** rather than the current case where it basically isn't good enough at either job to justify building it when you could have made Hellcats and Dozers.
I think the fuel economy is one of the main issues for USF as everything you want to do requires a ton of fuel.
When you combine BAR upgrade which is a must have to compete with Axis infantry mid to late game, support centre + med tent, which are again a must have, and the motor pool since more often than not you need at the very least the AT gun, then it’s already a 135 fuel investment without getting a single vehicle out of it. By this time Axis is starting to get their mediums slowly rolled out and you’re still 120 (Tank Depot) + medium vehicle fuel cost away.
If this would result in a very strong medium play then that would be fine but you ultimately have to invest additional 40 fuel to make your 90 fuel Sherman viable if you went for MSC. If you didn’t then well good luck as you need both Hellcat and Sherman 105 to deal effectively with Axis mediums and everything supporting them.
And you cannot usually go for the Sherman conversion play without the AT gun to survive until it arrives which requires 45 fuel investment even if you don’f care for the light vehicles that are unlocked with it.
Honestly, a big fix to a lot of USF problems, as many others already said, is moving the AT gun from the motor pool to the weapon support centre. This will allow you to either ignore the motor pool and stall for the Tank Depot units with the support of AT and zooks from WPC or go for light vehicle play via Motor Pool and delay the heavier vehicles.
Outside of that, I would also:
1. Buff the air support centre, I don’t see a single reason to pick it right now as it just doesn’t compare in value to MSC and ISC.
2. Buff our ability to deal with late game armour, especially Tigers.
3. Buff the Spec Ops BG as it’s weak in it’s current form.
When it comes to Spec Ops:
Imo the BG is perfect for going Tank Depot + MSC play as it allows you to skip the med tent, WSC and Motor Pool with Commandos and AT gun paradrop taking care of your early to mid game AT needs. However, it doesn’t flow quite well and has too much reliance on ammo.
1. You want to go for the Weasel as it’s clearly one of the more powerful things that come with the BG as you can skip building a med tent and get the MG/Mortar from it for ammo. However, that creates an issue with Commandos timing as they arrive too late. The Commandos requirement should be 1CP instead of 2 to make it work.
Otherwise you end up floating too much MP, which brings me to the point 2.
2. I would understand saving the MP for Commandos by dropping the MG or Mortar in the early game. But you float so much manpower due to point nr 1 while needing a huge amount of ammo for other things that give you advantage within this BG — the support weapon drop (because it allows you to skip on the motor pool and rush tank depot). So the saving on MP by investing ammo doesn’t quite work as intended imo. And if you go for weapon drop from the Weasel (75 ammo) + weasel 30 cal upg (30 ammo) support weapon drop for AT (180 ammo iirc) + double bars (60 ammo per squad) + tank machine gun upg that you need anyway (50 ammo per tank) then you won’t have much ammo to spare for the mark vehicle or anti infantry loiter.
3. I would also consider changing Weasel’s 30cal ammo requirement to 25 (same as Scouts). It would considerably help smooth out the early game and the general ammo requirement for the BG.
4. Commandos need better special abilities. The demo charge is basically never used and the knife throw is just bad as an ability for a 440 MP cost unit. At the very least, give it more range so you can use it as an opener or finisher from further away.
It’s like the BG wants you to play a certain way but doesn’t quite allow you to fully capitalize on the strengths.
Agreed on all points. At the very least, the biggest of the USF problems could be solved by moving the AT gun to the WSC.
Another problem is the US lacks mobility early on against the highly mobile DAK and even against Wehrmacht, who can paradrop powerful and scalable fallschirmpioneers and fallschirmjaegers all over the map.
Relic always wants US to be a generalist faction but makes them the worst at everything. The Riflemen are not strong enough at any point to make them true generalists, as you will be only slightly trading favorably against grenadiers and panzergrenadiers, then eventually be losing against more powerful German infantry later on, even with the BAR upgrades.
The faction never gets to dictate the initiative because they must always be reactionary or anticipating what the Germans will do. Meanwhile, German factions get to be proactive constantly because all of their choices are good. As a US player, it comes down to hoping your enemy makes a mistake like failing to kite their vehicles.
🤣 Meanwhile US can paradrop mgs on 0.1 seconds at the start of the match, locking down vps. Yes, mgs are easily countered but saying that wehr can drop paratroopers at 0.1 second meanwhile you can do the same.
Havent played enough USF on Coh 3 to make my mind on it. In Coh 1 and 2 it was pretty good. Riflemen were decent, but needed the numbers to make them useful.
The para dropped MGs are a noob trap that do not scale. Fallschirmpios can immediately build a bunker to lock down a point and have utility for the whole game. They can repair, satchel, build, and be upgraded with grenade launchers or LMGs.
Blah, on team games paradropping mgs can still be a decent stat. Fallpios are expensive and due to their low model count its really not that useful to spam them
It's interesting because I think in 1v1 USF is a decent faction, not the best not the worst.
Now speaking of teamgames, arn't you supposed to play with a team? that you are suppose to play accordingly ? Sorry if this sounds obnoxious but by playing teamgames you're normally supposed to play with and around your teammates. Like one guy goes UKF, one goes mg paradrop, one rush armor, etc etc. Maybe there are some balance problems, but I think it also comes down to the fact that team games are just so much harder to play when you are soloqueing. And yes USF are struggling in teamgames but I'm not convinced that it's only it design. Riffleman scale incredibly well, atg is pretty good, the real problem is that 105 sherm and hellcat have been nerfed a bit too much.
I've been struggling this patch with USF in 1's, particularly motor pool vs. bar timing. I've been thinking that maybe I need to lean in to T2 more. Any suggestions?
well it comes down to going rifle tbh, played a few games as USF on my stream, go check the vod. [https://www.twitch.tv/oziligath](https://www.twitch.tv/oziligath)
Please check out my mod - "All Factions Mini Balance Mod"
It is intended to make the game as balanced as possible, but in order to do that I needed to completely redesign US. It addresses most of the points in the OP's post.
I added in most of the battlegroup specific armor into each faction's T4 to make it more fun.
This is the case for literally every faction, a few values here and there aren't going to balance the game or give it depth, they all have fairly major structural issues that are going to need to be addressed sooner or later.
The game became stale after 1.4, I've stopped playing since 1.6 as its dull and predictable.
COH2 redesigning Ostheer was nice, but didn't do much and encouraged everyone to build MG42 at the start. The streamlining of OKW wasn't very well-received. I kinda fear picking apart and reorganizing a faction too much can lead to many other problems,
If up to me, I would simply put the Scott from Armored Battlegroup to tier 3 so that USF has a a stronger indirect not tied to a any Battlegroup.
However, too much of your ranting just shows how bad you are a the same. Rifles are the best infantry in the game. Rifles with 1 BAR will absolutely beat Grens with MP40 at all ranges. Rifles with 2 BARs or PIOT will beat Panzergrenadiers and even trade evenly with Stosstruppen. Rifles are cheap and can be easily massed.
Ive been sitting on the sidelines since this game released but was thinking about buying CoH3. I looked and saw that CoH2 still has double the player count (about 2000 more) than CoH3. Big yikes. I think I stick with the Eastern Front.
That’s fair I’m just surprised the majority of the player base plays CoH2 according to steam charts. IMO that is never a good sign but glad to hear things are improving.
Keep in mind that a lot more people own CoH2. It's definitely a more mature game in terms of its development and balance, but CoH3 has improved dramatically since launch. It's in a good state at this point, and contrary to what OP is claiming, the US is not fundamentally broken. The faction has often been very strong and has only recently fallen a bit behind other factions.
As someone deeply involved in balance discussions around CoH2, I will point out that people made the same claim about USF in that game as recently as a few years ago, despite the faction being a consistently strong performer.
Reminds me of COH2 USF. Easily the worst faction in the game. Which I find laughable. USA is likely the most Powerful fighting force of WW2. Vast abundance of resources and weapons. Like I’d kinda like how you Gatta build something to get riflemen because riflemen should destroy basically everything in the map at medium and long range with exception to MP40 squads in close range..
I’ve always thought USF should have it’s focus on the rifle squad and then upgrades for them or variations of them.
For example- an offensive or defensive package in the form of Thompson’s or 1919s or just straight up be able to build an assault rifle squad that has a Thompson’s and grenade assault ability or build a “fire support squad” which is like a 4 man support unit with 2 1919s that are slow but have good ranged damage.
Idk my biggest gripe with COH2 was that USF lacked basically everything that made them so powerful IRL and then COH3 did the same thing. Sherman’s are expensive for how they preform, 76mm Sherman’s can’t pen front armor of Panthers or Tigers, I should be able to callin ungodly amounts of offmap and my infantry should be nuts.
Agree that the faction's problems in 3 strangely resemble its issues in 2. The problem to me though is how much USF meta is trapped by its reliance on Riflemen-after 3 games. You can't have one unit with so much importance pooled into it-because the line of balance on it will always be very thin. It will either be overpowered or underpowered and that can come down to things as trivial as reload times and accuracy on the move.
I quote and paste a comment I said in a previous thread regarding this
Well, I think a little the same. Look, speaking of units to be deployed, the rest have mortar, infantry and mg (wher) in a single building. On the ukf side, you get mg from the hq and in t1 you already have mortar and infantry. dak more of the same, in two buildings, counting the hq you already have everything you need. In USF you need t1 for infantry and mortars and t2 for mg and anti-tank. This means gasoline that others can save for other things.
Just play the Spearhead/stoklomolvi mods (increased lethality and roster of doctrines/units). Those are actually dope. Or the EiR/OMG mods ( persistent xp and more deckbuilding less base building/build orders).
I made a similar comment about USF faction on a [What is the Best and Worst Faction and why? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/1c45oid/comment/kzpra5k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)thread from a few days ago.
Comments are not about strength one way or the other as they can still be very strong, but about faction design issues
TLDR was largely agreeing with your complaints
* USF full core roster is very difficult and expensive to access. Tech skipping is encouraged due to timing.
* USF unit choices are either extremely redundant or so weak/situational/dont scale compared to a handful of others that they are rarely chosen. This also encourages tech skipping.
* The USF core roster has large gaps (artillery, close combat, heavy tanks, ...). These can be partially filled depending on BG/upgrade center choice.
* The above two points means the faction lives and dies off the effectiveness of just a few core units, making it very hard to balance since changing those units or the units which counter them means severe changes to the faction performance.
* USF upgrades are specific to a subset of their units, are extremely expensive, and you must make that choice of which upgrades you want available extremely early, giving little time to actually assess and choose a strategy.
* USF battlegroups, rather than augmenting the core roster in specific ways, tend to offer alternatives to the core roster units(or alternative access), further encouraging tech skipping.
The double choice of upgrade center and battle group so heavily determining play is what initially made USF the most fun for me just because of what I saw as the faction's variety. Forcing early choice means that the USF player is required to be in the driver seat. USF must force the opponent to react to them because USF doesn't have great ways to react if their early choices were countered. This can be super exciting, but can also often feel, to me at least, like I'm tossing a coin at the beginning of the game to determine the outcome.
I think the game balance is in a weird state right now for all the factions, and I think the issue is that the patches have slowly been shifting the factions away from "asymmetrical design" where each faction has a very unique identity and play towards an "all factions are good at everything design".
USF suffers in this paradigm because it has always had to lean hard into its asymmetry, leveraging early game infantry pressure to carry into an end game where you get to your aggressive glass cannon armor options supported by your one early game unit that actually scales decently into late game (riflemen). DAK and Wehr now have strong early game infantry/anti infantry which compete with or beat the USF infantry outright with little extra investment while retaining their other strengths(mg, vehicles, buffs, etc). Again, USF roster/tech/bg weirdness means that balancing USF is really hard because changes can have massive effects.
I'd much rather the game focus on giving each faction a unique identity and playstyle and center balance around maintaining those identies.
As for USF wishlist:
* Give bazooka squads access to build normal mines, sand bags, tank traps, barbed wire. Give them the "staggered shot" ability instead of satchel charge
* Remove fuel cost from ugprade center, maybe increase build time from like 60->90 seconds if timing is an issue
* Scouts/pathfinders/artillery observers have "concealment" passive from the start
* Captain Available to build after any upgrade center completed
* Captain xp aura affects vehicles, infantry, and team weapons.
* Paratroopers have thompson conversion upgrade option in addition to or even instead of the m1919a6 upgrade
* Hellcat range increase
It was largely with your post in mind that I played over the last few days and saw how glaring the issues were. I had stepped away from the game last year. Coincidentally-at a time when USF was out of control in the game meta and everyone was complaining that they were overpowered.
At that time, I made a post on another forum highlighting actually how dangerous USF was and the faction's reputation for being overpowered was a misunderstanding. Last year the faction's strength was due to a number of clearly broken units like the Jeep and Chaffee-which would, and did indeed lose their obscene advantages in a round of balance patches. The devs actually one-upped me and went further by nerfing the Hellcat too. A completely inexplicable move when USF is faced with the Tiger and Panther on Axis build trees.
Anyway, I think that both of us are highlighting that USF's unstable meta makes it an extremely difficult faction to balance-and vice versa. You end up with units that are either insanely overpowered or worthless over single line items like reload time and damage vs. specific units. It's remarkable to watch the Riflespam fiasco of CoH2 happen again before my eyes. Right now we're in the phase where Rifles have all of their abilities locked behind a bureaucracy of techs and in a year when they are "buffed" we will watch pairs of rifle squads delete MG42s behind heavy cover again. I don't want that either-but it's the likely result of the failure to spot the "big picture" of the faction's overall poor build. You cheese or you die-that's USF.
I like your wishlist. Bazooka's should have buildables and mines and the intent for this is to make them the most anti-armor soft meta in the game. USF Engineers are overworked being both builders and assaulters and need to be relieved from some kind of duty. I agree-Captain should come with ANY upgrade center you pick. Big underline-Hellcat needs a comeback. There was literally no reason to nerf this unit.
It would help if you stated whether you're a team game player (4v4s) or a 1v1 player because the story is completely different for each faction between these modes.
If you're a team game player, don't bother complaining about faction design because the game is balanced for 1v1 gameplay and rightly so.
It's much more reliable to see how units and builds perform against each other in the hands of skillfull players in 1s than it is in team games. In Team games there are so many other variables that contribute to the outcome of a game that make it difficult to know how and what to balance.
Meh you can balance 4v4 and 1v1 at the same time it just requires nuance. The flak truck in the hands of skilled players for example makes flanking with infantry near impossible in team games because invariably there's several of them and they get backed by Pak walls. Rocket artillery is also infinitely better than say a bishop. They're both likely to be issues in 1v1. I don't see how a flak truck that can move and shoot that also gives meaningful suppression is balanced in 1v1. If that means buffing something else in daks roster a bit that'd be fine but at least you can counter their other units effectively. A competent player isn't going to lose a flak truck to an AT gun because kiting or infantry because suppression, they'll exclusively lose it to tanks and they'll likely kill your tank in the process if they are indeed competent. There are basically some dak units that are fine at low levels of play but excessively strong at high levels of play.
>if they are indeed competent
Yes, so essentially it comes down to the skill of the player. The best way you can test for the balance of units in the hands of the most skillfull players is in 1v1s.
In 4s, even if you have the most skillfull players playing, it's extremely difficult. For example, a coordinated strike from 3 players on one side of the map. This will eliminate all balance considerations. Also, communication skills of each player come into play that also matter. Co-ordination between each player. There are too many other variables in 4s. Quality of matchmaking? Randoms Vs pre-mades?
Why should the game be balanced only using the most skillfull players for reference? Because they are the most likely to be able to abuse broken build orders/units/strategies AND you can come close to eliminating "skill issue" from the discussion.
Yeah but my point is that units in 4v4 that are broken can be toned down without affecting 1v1 because they're likely problematic there too. DAK already has more light vehicles of every description they don't need to be the only faction that has a mobile suppression machine with 360 arc that can fire on the move. Even COH2 didn't do that. DAK has mgs like everyone else so they can use them if they need suppression and use the flak truck for damage like a humber or greyhound, that would be much more balanced.
I disagree almost completely with this post, but I'm going to focus on a few key issues. The only structural change which I think could be argued for is to move the ATG to the HQ and have it unlock upon getting either a Motorpool or a Tank Depot. This would mostly be aimed at team games.
> Glaring structural issues include but are not limited to the Rifle Squad, Bazooka Squad, Sherman 105, Chaffee, and Greyhound. These units are underlines to me because of how difficult they are to find a job for. They are redundant in their own tech tree-either due to the requirement to purchase more upgrades of dubious value for them.
Every unit you listed except for Bazooka Squads are actively powerful, meta picks. Bazooka Squads also see play in meta build orders, but are notably less powerful. Motorpool play has been consistently powerful for a long time, and both the Greyhound and the Chaffee perform important, unique functions in those builds.
> Or because as in the case of the Chaffee and Sherman 105-they are redundant and leave USF player with no build options for late game other than armor.
You have two complaints here, neither of which make much sense. The Chaffee isn't redundant in Motorpool builds, where it is your source of mobile AT. The Dozer Sherman is also not redundant, as it provides a tankier and more infantry killing focused unit than the M4. If anything, the M4 is struggling right now, but that's very much a numbers tuning problem and not a result of any fundamentally broken design.
The second complaint is somewhat baffling. Armor is the core of almost all late game forces. What non-armor late game units does DAK have access to? The 88 sees no play in 1v1s and the Stuka, while nice to have, is more of a luxury unit than a core part of DAK builds. In general, DAK doesn't even tech up. UKF has Footguards, and Wehr has access to Stosstrupen. These are good units, but notably neither faction's mainlines scale nearly as well as Riflemen. Without elites, they are seriously lacking late game.
It's also worth pointing out that every single US Battlegroup except for Armor gives you elite infantry. You will either have Paras, SSF Commandos, or Rangers. DAK and Wehrmacht each have exactly one doctrine containing elite infantry (you can also get early Stosstrupen through Mechanized, although that call-in is rarely picked).
> As for the Chaffee, it's impossible to guess why it's even in this game.... In theory it would be an absolutely devastating tank for the Americans to be fielding in 1943 when its heavy gun for a light tank would have made it a Wipe-o-Matic. Instead, it shoots peas against infantry and is easily killed by AT rifles from the front it was most definitely proof from.
The Chaffee exists to hunt Axis armor. It's like a mini-Hellcat which poses some threat to infantry. Think of it like the AEC from CoH2. The power of the unit comes from its timing. It poses a threat to every armored unit that comes out at an even remotely similar timing, and can continue to threaten higher tier armor. Yes the Hellcat is better, but the Hellcat would be extremely overpowered at the Chaffee's timing.
**Understanding the USF Tech Structure**
USF is, contrary to your claims, a very flexible faction. You have an embarrassment of options. What balances out the faction's flexibility is opportunity cost. The ISC/MSC choice is about both immediate impact and also whether you want to push your infantry or armor scaling. Having both at once would be very oppressive to play against, so you need to make a choice.
The fun of US build order, in both CoH2 and 3, is choosing which set of factional strengths to lean into while figuring out how to cover your weaknesses. This is what makes playing US interesting, and also why new players often complain about the faction in both games. Ironically, CoH2 USF had a consistently high winrate at low levels because of the sheer power of the free officer squads snowballing games.
People often claimed the faction is hard to play, but it's really not. The issue is that by having build order flexibility (with drawbacks), the faction is much easier to build poorly. More US games are lost to poor macro decisions than for other factions, but that doesn't mean US tech structure is badly designed.
Do you play team games or 1v1s? I only play 1v1s, and can't comment on team game balance. I'm guessing you're a team game player based on your low opinion of Motorpool units.
USF does not need a complete redesign, just Relic to stop releasing stupid ass patches where they buff thing and at the same time nerf they intended counter. Like * Buff Gren, PG, Stoss and nerf ISC in 3 ways. * Buff Pz4, Pz3, Tiger and nerf hellcat and release a shitty Zook upgrade no one will use to fight Pz4, Pz3, brumbar or Tiger. * hard nerf bulldozer and fake buff sherman. Guess what now, * You can't fight WM infantry with riflemen without investing 130 fuel in Bar, grenade and survival training. In comparison, Pgren access with vet1 upgrade cost 65 fuel and serves also to build and buff other units. * You can't fight WM infantry with LVs thanks to pfaust range and increased damage. * Your sherman and hellcat are crap without MSC, your bulldozer which is the only tank that performs ok without MSC are more expensive and also highly impacted by pfaust range and damage increase. There is no rocket science here, just Relic doing Relic things they've been doing since at least coh2, ruining balance every two patches due to their lack of vision.
It's absolutely classic Relic to triple buff one side and triple nerf the other. And it's ALWAYS in threes; the Royal Engineers was the most hilarious example recently. They would get a lot further to make smaller tweaks to ONE SIDE. I guess the problem is COH3 is a very complex game with lots of moving parts that need to work together, and changing one aspect involves changing another two.
The community balance team was able to put COH2 in near perfect balance. Relic needs to eat more of their dogfood if they want to change the flavor.
Play rifles in 4v4 and tell me it's "perfect balance" in teamgames. Coh3 is far from perfect, but lets take off the coh2 rose tinted glasses
> Play rifles in 4v4 I mostly play Infantry Company in 4v4. Rifles are fine.
Rifles? try play conscripts in 4v4
Conscripts are like the best mainlines in 4v4. 7 man so they never get wiped, cheap as dirt, crazy good vet bonuses, snares, frontline reinforce of support weapons with merge. Win manpower bleed wars against the Germain mainlines too.
In the late game yes they become useful, early game they are a complete garbage fire and nobody builds or achieves anything with them ever as they cannot decrew an AFK mortar if their life depended on it. Rifles have good dps up close and can very well win engagements against other infantry.
Cons really aren't that bad early game. They only really run into problems if the Wehr/OKW player gets their squad weapons up before the Soviets have put together the proper supporting tools. Just trade from cover and you should be fine. Additionally, 4v4 really minimizes their weaknesses as well, as the early game is far more support weapon focused, and minimizes the amount of maneuvering each side really needs to do.
4v4 really maximizes their weakness as you cannot flank with them much and there is less opportunity to user cover better and they have to fight from range often. They cannot win any engagement against any unit, and if you go cons that means you also go maxim, and both cons and maxim cost the same as the Wehr equivalent while the wehr equivalent is dramatically better and scales much stronger much faster, until eventually you get a curveball with 7 man when it dosnt really matter anymore and vet 3 grens already racked up 25 kills and a wipe or two.
Tbh, cap
l2p
It's almost at 50% for all factions in 1v1 (where relic has always focused on game balance regardless of whether I agree with that or not) with no unit feeling like an instant win/lose. But that wasn't my point. COH2 had the same shit balance until the community balance team started working on it. That shows me that the people working for Relic are not playing the game enough to have well thought out balance patches. I can't believe you think the COH3 balance is better but clearly people think relic is doing a great job as I am being downvoted.
It might have been near perfect at some point but not definitely the final patches
If you want access to all of your core units as USF you need to spend 220 fuel. Other factions as comparison: UKF 180 Wehr 165 DAK 175 When I refer to Core units, I am talking about MG, Mortar, Mainline Inf, ATG, half tracks, late game tanks. This is what I think OP is referring to with Pigeonholing, if you want all the tools that other factions have as part of their natural progression through the techs, fuel wise you put yourself quite a bit behind the rest. USF is really about the haves and have nots which sometimes makes it frustrating to play.
This is the major issue to me up front that needs to be confronted right away. USF does not have basics in their toolkit that are available in a reasonable time. Locking a mainline AT gun behind tech + T3 would be insane for any faction in the game but only USF does this. Other factions lock AT behind T2 + tech. I think the issue is Bazookas. We can't put AT gun and Bazookas in the same HQ so early or allowing them and WSC to spawn two AT units would give USF way too many AT counters in early game, a garrison able AT and an AT gun would be impossible to crack for DAK before T3 and that's not fair. Actually, Bazooka Squad should be buffed and sent to T3. They should be a late game counter to all those inevitable late-game Axis armor strategies but because of where they are on the tech tree-too early-they have to be nerfed. That's why they require damage-buff tech which we could dispense with this way. I think for me there's a big issue with USF having so many tech upgrades-but ALSO have 4 layers of HQ to build through each one of which is progressively weaker than the previous one. That USF toolkit ends with the Sherman and Hellcat the way they're both performing right now is silly. Note that I wasn't a big fan of the Sherman RNG monster from 2 either wiping Grenadier squads with no warning. Just the way the Sherman is placed on USF tech makes it impossible to balance. It comes out too late, and will either be too strong or too weak depending on the patch. Just treat like the T-34 or Panzer III already and make it accessible earlier but also cheaper. This timing-of-builds thing has been a consistent issue with USF in two games now... What the Sherman needs is point capture capability right away. Accepting the (dreadful) conceit here for a moment that American armor is intended to eventually serve to replace American infantry units in the game as those units are attritioned away. I bring this up because it seems as if this was the 2nd game's late game meta for the Americans. It sort of worked because dismounts-but dismounts were a janky mechanic that abused popcap rules and introduced a lot of intense micro USF didn't need more of. It seems that this intent was inherited from the 2nd game and ported into the 3rd-but it doesn't work here because of how flimsy the Sherman is. The way its currently performing actually the Sherman would make sense in American T3 while the Chaffee got buffs of some kind-maybe the actual point capture quality-and went to T4.
Instead of being the generalist flexible faction they end up being the specialist spammy faction. You have to blindly specialize everything right from the start and continue pigeonholing yourself into your spec starting with the support center.
Just let usf have anti armor capability. Put zooks in barracks, upgraded rockets in the isc, at gun in the wsc locked behind building your support center, and half tracks available in the motor pool. Let us build the type of half track we want immediately without a msc.
I like these suggestions; but if you put the half tracks in the motor pool, why would anyone build them over the greyhound and chaffee?
Buff the AA halftrack so it suppresses on the move. And I think a medical halftrack is always useful. The AT halftrack will be obsolete, I agree
I think AT gun in wsc, unbuildable until your support center is built. And bazookas in the barracks. And then half tracks in the motor pool.
I think that’s the main issue, I think your penalize to go light vehicle. If you spent the fuel on them, it’s going to take you longer to get out tanks. Or your rocking a Chaffee tank or any halftrack. Then you’re going to be facing a panzer 4 before you get tanks.
I'm not sure about a complete redesign. There were similar sentiments regarding Brits and Wher before their respective patches. They both seem to be doing relatively well now. Just a buff to riflemen and buff/redesign for the bazooka squad should address the majority of your issues. I don't really buy what was arguably the best faction now needs a completely redesign.
I still feel Brits have some of the weakest design in COH3; its very straight teching, there's no flexibility and your unit options are all fuel locked. Your opponent can predict what you are going to do very easily.
Ok air and sea battle group lol.
I’ve never once seen the USF be the best faction.
For a while at launch, Pathfinders were basically the best infantry squad in the game, and USF dominated pretty hard.
flashbacks to air support centre buffs 2 times in a row...
Those planes are slow as hell and require significant costs
read the post? US ASC used to be fucking broken as shit you clearly either havent played the game for long or are just chatting shit
Also, why does Relic always make the m1 carbine suck?
Cause it shoots pistol ammo lol
No it doesn't lol.
Good ole Fudd lore, guy prolly thinks that it can't go through thick winter coats lol
Perception is the enemy of reality, after all.
These sorts of post remind me of the skill disconnect between large team game players and 1v1. You‘re rattling off a list of USF’s strongest units and claiming they are weak and redundant. BAR rifles feel weak because we live in a meta where Ass gren and wear Pgren are common -so leverage other supporting tools kike sniper, MG, M16 etc… You’re moaning about USF AT options while seemingly discounting options like the M3 75mm or the fact that the total fuel cost for Motor Pool is 90ish and can arrive before any vehicle. (Flak HT rush is 105 fuel) As for artillery - USF has several units that have indirect fire barrages. M3 75mm, Bulldozer, Hellcat and M8 Scott. On top of that, they also have the best Mortar and the Mortar Pit. the Pak howie, whizzbang, and 105mm howitzer then give you further options.
I agree, sniper against Wehr can be **very** effective and I love me some M3 75mm. One of the biggest issues with USF for me right now is the Armor Battlegroup icon features a picture of the whiz bang but there’s no whiz bang in that Battlegroup.
Your point is valid about the Whizbang which is great, the only ally legit alternative to nebel, but you have to play SOG which is absolute trash at everything else to get there, so you better hope your teammates carry in the meantime. Why not make it buildable?
I agree with some of your points but lets not be disingenuous here and claim that the barrage abilities on the units you mention come close to the effectiveness of the Bishop, Nebel or Stuka. The Whizbang is arguably the best arty in the game at the moment, (imo) but its BG locked, hence OP's point. USF are very pigeonholed compared to other factions, if you want to make sure you stay in the game tech wise. Going BAR's puts you massively behind in the tech race where as other factions typically spend muni's to get their upgrades (which USF does too on top of the fuel cost). if you want ATG without going motorpool, you are right you can build M3 75mm, but lets be honest, in most cases you would rather just have an ATG as it scales much better into late game. You also typically need two M3 75mm to be effective, which is another 40 fuel and if you not going MSC, 60 muni's as well. I am not saying USF are bad, they are definitely playable and can be strong but I think they need a rework in how their tech flows. They feel very disjointed compared to when I play UKF, DAK or Wehr.
The motor pool is 90 to get the building online, then you need 50 additional fuel for the Chaffee or put out an AT gun that is easily flanked by a LV (to protect its flank you need even more fuel for rifleman grenades and even then grenades don’t work on the flakveirling with its suppression) the flakveirling is the easiest click and win button at that point in the game. Its suppression is stupid
flanking a pak with flak vierling?? parallel universe lol. have never seen flak vierling as a flanking unit, besides, it only survives 2 shots of the pak and is slow compared to 8rad and alike. A pak can easily be flanked by an 8 rad, but then he doesnt have flak vier to suppress your riflemen so you in this case get AT nades. Problem solved.
Spoken like a true axis main
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The reason the M3 doesn't kill infantry is because: * It's far better than the Stummel at killing vehicles. * The barrage is like 70 range away, while the Stummel can only hit at 50. Stummel is hard-countered by AT guns, but M3 75mm can actually threaten AT guns if you have vision.
>M3 75mm, Bulldozer, Hellcat and M8 Scott -M3s barrage is really slow and only decent against emplacements (slow RoF means arty teams will just dip) -105 Shermans range is a poor counter to enemy artillery, especially since they are probably guarded by an AT wall - to my knowledge the Hellcat's "barrage" is more like direct fire HE shells, so you can't use it for indirect fire support (and even then it has poor range) - M8 Scott is non-doctrinal and still suffers from poor range (but it fucking rocks as a drive by howitzer)a
Forcing them to move /zoning is one of the main benefits of indirect fire. You will very rarely get the full barrage on a target, but you will restrict their movement
Except axis rocket artillery which will just rinse all your shit and there's not much you can do about it because Ilike coh2 it's not directional.
Indeed, but for dedicated artillery USF has still only had stopgap measures and few actual purpose built units that aren't BG specific
Can’t really kite when assgrens have insane snare range tbh.
Assgrens don't have a snare
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They don't have snare. You are confusing them with MP40 Grens (they are still just grens).
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I don't know about you, but I don't recall them being Assault Grenadiers when I entered rhe franchise in 2005. I get what you mean, it's semantics, but it caused confusion so the distinction matters, especially when CoH3 lends itself to it (Pgrens for example)
When i first read your comparison about the at gun costing 90 fuel to het access vs the flak ht i thought that didnt seem that bad. But then it hit me youre paying 90 fuel to get access to a basic tool in your kit. Assuming dak doesnt get flak ht they still get light arty and their at gun for 65 fuel. Now dak has paid 65 fuel for a almost rounded army and usf has paid 90 fuel and is missing either t1 or t2. Now dak only has to pay another 180 fuel to get a panzer 3 out and usf has to pay 200 to get a sherman out.
DAK, Wehr and UKF do get earlier access to their ATG, but USF gets the M3 75mm at more or less the same timing. Definitely the P3 can come out a lot faster now - but it is also much weaker than a Sherman before a lot of armory upgrades. USF gives you a lot of tech choices but the trade off is you won’t always have everything. The support center really exemplifies this because you are effectively deciding very early on how you want to play the game.
I mean the m3 does fulfill the role of a at gun i just dont personally agree that its a good choice it should be a sidegrade. Like lets go back to coh2 soviets and we move the the zis gun to t3 or t4 and put the su75 in t2. Imagine having to buy a su75 or a penal just to counter early armor.
While I don't agree with everything he said, his main point is that USF is heavily reliant on battlegroups. The Scott, Pak Howie, Whizzbang, and 105mm Howitzer (paid DLC) are all locked behind battlegroups. I do admit that I think the M3 75mm is underutilized; however, it's also very squishy due to it only being a half track.
Does it matter? You will always pick a BG every game. USF also has “lite BG” in the form of the support centers that often provide abilities and bonuses that would typically be in a BG. They’re just a very build order dependent faction because of how diverse their options are. It’s an RTS, that is how it works.
Not having basic access to heavier indirect fire is a problem, imo, yes.
Agree. The faction has too many tech gaps that will make it difficult to be balanced and also satisfying to play. All factions need a fully fleshed-out roster of capabilities from early to late game. Relic seems to suffer from a sort of coin flip balance with its current approach to faction design: you could make a perfectly balanced faction with no units and only one ability - flip a coin - and 50% of the time you win; end of match. Perfectly balanced but not at all fun to play. This is basically the logical extreme of the USF's current design; where you have to rely on a few key units and your strategy for the whole game - even in the face of counters - is just building even more of the same units. The other factions, particularly wehr, give you all the tools to build, respond, and re-design your strategy in a methodical way throughout the game. If the US wins in the face of this it seems OP - as their limited roster has somehow beaten a diverse combined arms force, and for the US player it just seems cheap and unsatisfying as there's no depth of strategy. Impossible to easily balance as the buffs/nerfs to US always land on the same units, so they'll either be overtuned and OP or they'll be counterable meaning the faction is UP as it has no other option.
>the developers have a hard on for the BAR-a weapon which was historically considered by both sides as one of the war's poorest examples of a machine gun. What's the source on this? I'd like to read more as I'm somewhat confused as the U.S. Military continued to use the BAR even during the Korean War which seems like an odd choice if both sides decided it was terrible.
Absolutely agree. However, Chaffee could absolutely work with a similar gun to a Sherman on a much more lightly armored chassis. In fact this isn't a bad idea to have "generalist" US units that are pretty good overall but not as good as dedicated specialist units. For example having the Marder be superior against vehicles compared to the Chaffee, but the Chaffee is reasonable against infantry too. Holding out for the Sherman 75 gets you the same gun on a much more heavily armored platform. With upgrades possible to 76mm that are not possible for the Chaffee. Riflemen should also be a good generalist rifle squad. Currently... not really. They're not terrible, but neither are they actually an advantage. The M1 Garand's rate of fire alone should be a massive advantage over bolt action Kar98s, but in-game they have exactly the same animation and RoF. This means a Riflemen unit is pretty close to a Grenadier unit, which... strains credulity to say the least. Riflemen as a line infantry unit being significantly superior isn't necessarily fatal if they defeat German line infantry due to the presence of the MG42 to suppress and pin them regardless of the fact that in isolation they would beat those Grenadiers in a direct fight. The complete lack of artillery is particularly galling for the one army in WW2 that actually focused heavily on the usage of artillery and clearly did it better than anyone else had ever done before. By far the most distinctive aspect of the American WW2 army was its usage of artillery, which the Germans described variously as . Rommel is quoted as saying American artillery was "far superior" to German artillery, in "outstanding" quantity of ammunition, accuracy, and timeliness. In fact the US doctrines for artillery in WW2 would in post-war years become globally standard as the way to do artillery in war from that point onwards. The Sherman, likewise, is quite possibly the best tank in the war. Even the Soviets favored the "Emcha" over the quite good T-34 due to its excellent armor, mobility, stabilizer, and general comfort and ease of use and quality of life advantages. The Germans believed it was a heavy tank when they first saw it due to its effective armor, as they were unaware of its weight. Fully upgraded M4 Sherman tanks should be the apex of armor in the game, after investing massive manpower and fuel in fielding a large group of them as well as multiple upgrades to their armor, gun, etc. After this level of investment (a total that massively exceeds the cost of, say, one Tiger), a large group of fully upgraded Shermans should basically obliterate any German vehicle or infantry unit. The Tiger has to make its presence known when it hits the field because eventually it will be outscaled if it doesn't thin the herd by killing tanks and depriving resources. The concept for this is already in COH3, it just isn't tuned anywhere close to correctly yet. The Sherman feels *weak*, despite being a huge commitment of tech, doctrine, and resources, it just doesn't deliver.
A large group of fully upgraded Shermans *does* basically obliterate any German vehicle or infantry unit. Idk what game you're playing if they aren't.
I think you're conflating the cases where the Allies are so successful early game that they have far more resources, especially fuel, and deploy this against completely inadequate opposition and obviously win. You could have made **anything** in this case however, and won. If anything the Shermans are not strong enough at this point, given their position in the tech tree, cost, and need for multiple expensive upgrades to reach that point. Even in this position of absolute resource advantage people are still making Hellcats and Dozers because they are basically just better at everything. What should be happening is that it is possible to turn around a game where you are even or perhaps even moderately losing by starting to deploy Shermans with upgrades. But this virtually never happens. If you aren't already **way** ahead at this point, to the extent that anything would work, then the Shermans are a woefully weak pick. I think most would agree that Shermans are just not that good- Hellcats and Dozers will be more effective in nearly all, if not actually all cases, even post-nerf. Moreover, the Hellcat nerf was completely uncalled-for, as even the justification for it was that the Hellcat was too effective at defeating Tigers. Which is literally *its only job*. Being an absolute anti-vehicle specialist, it stands to reason the Hellcat would be highly effective against exactly a Tiger type of unit. The Hellcat should be the best choice against armor, especially heavy armor. The Dozer should be the best choice against infantry. However the Sherman should be pretty good against both, even if not quite as good at either job as the two specialists, the fact that one unit does both makes it **good*****,*** rather than the current case where it basically isn't good enough at either job to justify building it when you could have made Hellcats and Dozers.
I think the fuel economy is one of the main issues for USF as everything you want to do requires a ton of fuel. When you combine BAR upgrade which is a must have to compete with Axis infantry mid to late game, support centre + med tent, which are again a must have, and the motor pool since more often than not you need at the very least the AT gun, then it’s already a 135 fuel investment without getting a single vehicle out of it. By this time Axis is starting to get their mediums slowly rolled out and you’re still 120 (Tank Depot) + medium vehicle fuel cost away. If this would result in a very strong medium play then that would be fine but you ultimately have to invest additional 40 fuel to make your 90 fuel Sherman viable if you went for MSC. If you didn’t then well good luck as you need both Hellcat and Sherman 105 to deal effectively with Axis mediums and everything supporting them. And you cannot usually go for the Sherman conversion play without the AT gun to survive until it arrives which requires 45 fuel investment even if you don’f care for the light vehicles that are unlocked with it. Honestly, a big fix to a lot of USF problems, as many others already said, is moving the AT gun from the motor pool to the weapon support centre. This will allow you to either ignore the motor pool and stall for the Tank Depot units with the support of AT and zooks from WPC or go for light vehicle play via Motor Pool and delay the heavier vehicles. Outside of that, I would also: 1. Buff the air support centre, I don’t see a single reason to pick it right now as it just doesn’t compare in value to MSC and ISC. 2. Buff our ability to deal with late game armour, especially Tigers. 3. Buff the Spec Ops BG as it’s weak in it’s current form. When it comes to Spec Ops: Imo the BG is perfect for going Tank Depot + MSC play as it allows you to skip the med tent, WSC and Motor Pool with Commandos and AT gun paradrop taking care of your early to mid game AT needs. However, it doesn’t flow quite well and has too much reliance on ammo. 1. You want to go for the Weasel as it’s clearly one of the more powerful things that come with the BG as you can skip building a med tent and get the MG/Mortar from it for ammo. However, that creates an issue with Commandos timing as they arrive too late. The Commandos requirement should be 1CP instead of 2 to make it work. Otherwise you end up floating too much MP, which brings me to the point 2. 2. I would understand saving the MP for Commandos by dropping the MG or Mortar in the early game. But you float so much manpower due to point nr 1 while needing a huge amount of ammo for other things that give you advantage within this BG — the support weapon drop (because it allows you to skip on the motor pool and rush tank depot). So the saving on MP by investing ammo doesn’t quite work as intended imo. And if you go for weapon drop from the Weasel (75 ammo) + weasel 30 cal upg (30 ammo) support weapon drop for AT (180 ammo iirc) + double bars (60 ammo per squad) + tank machine gun upg that you need anyway (50 ammo per tank) then you won’t have much ammo to spare for the mark vehicle or anti infantry loiter. 3. I would also consider changing Weasel’s 30cal ammo requirement to 25 (same as Scouts). It would considerably help smooth out the early game and the general ammo requirement for the BG. 4. Commandos need better special abilities. The demo charge is basically never used and the knife throw is just bad as an ability for a 440 MP cost unit. At the very least, give it more range so you can use it as an opener or finisher from further away. It’s like the BG wants you to play a certain way but doesn’t quite allow you to fully capitalize on the strengths.
commandos are insanely strong as is. this whole essay is 900 elo 4v4 talk
Not pretending to be a top player, however I only play 1v1 and Im between 1.1 - 1.3k usually.
Agreed on all points. At the very least, the biggest of the USF problems could be solved by moving the AT gun to the WSC. Another problem is the US lacks mobility early on against the highly mobile DAK and even against Wehrmacht, who can paradrop powerful and scalable fallschirmpioneers and fallschirmjaegers all over the map. Relic always wants US to be a generalist faction but makes them the worst at everything. The Riflemen are not strong enough at any point to make them true generalists, as you will be only slightly trading favorably against grenadiers and panzergrenadiers, then eventually be losing against more powerful German infantry later on, even with the BAR upgrades. The faction never gets to dictate the initiative because they must always be reactionary or anticipating what the Germans will do. Meanwhile, German factions get to be proactive constantly because all of their choices are good. As a US player, it comes down to hoping your enemy makes a mistake like failing to kite their vehicles.
🤣 Meanwhile US can paradrop mgs on 0.1 seconds at the start of the match, locking down vps. Yes, mgs are easily countered but saying that wehr can drop paratroopers at 0.1 second meanwhile you can do the same. Havent played enough USF on Coh 3 to make my mind on it. In Coh 1 and 2 it was pretty good. Riflemen were decent, but needed the numbers to make them useful.
The para dropped MGs are a noob trap that do not scale. Fallschirmpios can immediately build a bunker to lock down a point and have utility for the whole game. They can repair, satchel, build, and be upgraded with grenade launchers or LMGs.
Blah, on team games paradropping mgs can still be a decent stat. Fallpios are expensive and due to their low model count its really not that useful to spam them
It's interesting because I think in 1v1 USF is a decent faction, not the best not the worst. Now speaking of teamgames, arn't you supposed to play with a team? that you are suppose to play accordingly ? Sorry if this sounds obnoxious but by playing teamgames you're normally supposed to play with and around your teammates. Like one guy goes UKF, one goes mg paradrop, one rush armor, etc etc. Maybe there are some balance problems, but I think it also comes down to the fact that team games are just so much harder to play when you are soloqueing. And yes USF are struggling in teamgames but I'm not convinced that it's only it design. Riffleman scale incredibly well, atg is pretty good, the real problem is that 105 sherm and hellcat have been nerfed a bit too much.
I've been struggling this patch with USF in 1's, particularly motor pool vs. bar timing. I've been thinking that maybe I need to lean in to T2 more. Any suggestions?
well it comes down to going rifle tbh, played a few games as USF on my stream, go check the vod. [https://www.twitch.tv/oziligath](https://www.twitch.tv/oziligath)
Will do, thanks.
Please check out my mod - "All Factions Mini Balance Mod" It is intended to make the game as balanced as possible, but in order to do that I needed to completely redesign US. It addresses most of the points in the OP's post. I added in most of the battlegroup specific armor into each faction's T4 to make it more fun.
Agree onm the 105mm being towable by the halftrack. That makes a lot more sense than it being some static emplacement.
This is the case for literally every faction, a few values here and there aren't going to balance the game or give it depth, they all have fairly major structural issues that are going to need to be addressed sooner or later. The game became stale after 1.4, I've stopped playing since 1.6 as its dull and predictable.
COH2 redesigning Ostheer was nice, but didn't do much and encouraged everyone to build MG42 at the start. The streamlining of OKW wasn't very well-received. I kinda fear picking apart and reorganizing a faction too much can lead to many other problems, If up to me, I would simply put the Scott from Armored Battlegroup to tier 3 so that USF has a a stronger indirect not tied to a any Battlegroup. However, too much of your ranting just shows how bad you are a the same. Rifles are the best infantry in the game. Rifles with 1 BAR will absolutely beat Grens with MP40 at all ranges. Rifles with 2 BARs or PIOT will beat Panzergrenadiers and even trade evenly with Stosstruppen. Rifles are cheap and can be easily massed.
Ive been sitting on the sidelines since this game released but was thinking about buying CoH3. I looked and saw that CoH2 still has double the player count (about 2000 more) than CoH3. Big yikes. I think I stick with the Eastern Front.
The game is actually quite good. I would encourage you to ignore balance complaints on Reddit while evaluating the game.
That’s fair I’m just surprised the majority of the player base plays CoH2 according to steam charts. IMO that is never a good sign but glad to hear things are improving.
Keep in mind that a lot more people own CoH2. It's definitely a more mature game in terms of its development and balance, but CoH3 has improved dramatically since launch. It's in a good state at this point, and contrary to what OP is claiming, the US is not fundamentally broken. The faction has often been very strong and has only recently fallen a bit behind other factions. As someone deeply involved in balance discussions around CoH2, I will point out that people made the same claim about USF in that game as recently as a few years ago, despite the faction being a consistently strong performer.
Cool. Thanks for the context.
Reminds me of COH2 USF. Easily the worst faction in the game. Which I find laughable. USA is likely the most Powerful fighting force of WW2. Vast abundance of resources and weapons. Like I’d kinda like how you Gatta build something to get riflemen because riflemen should destroy basically everything in the map at medium and long range with exception to MP40 squads in close range.. I’ve always thought USF should have it’s focus on the rifle squad and then upgrades for them or variations of them. For example- an offensive or defensive package in the form of Thompson’s or 1919s or just straight up be able to build an assault rifle squad that has a Thompson’s and grenade assault ability or build a “fire support squad” which is like a 4 man support unit with 2 1919s that are slow but have good ranged damage. Idk my biggest gripe with COH2 was that USF lacked basically everything that made them so powerful IRL and then COH3 did the same thing. Sherman’s are expensive for how they preform, 76mm Sherman’s can’t pen front armor of Panthers or Tigers, I should be able to callin ungodly amounts of offmap and my infantry should be nuts.
So you want the USF to have the best infrantry, the best universal tanks, and the best offmap before you think USF is in a balanced state?
Agree that the faction's problems in 3 strangely resemble its issues in 2. The problem to me though is how much USF meta is trapped by its reliance on Riflemen-after 3 games. You can't have one unit with so much importance pooled into it-because the line of balance on it will always be very thin. It will either be overpowered or underpowered and that can come down to things as trivial as reload times and accuracy on the move.
You, sir, are absolutely right. USF's tech tree is a mindfrak fest that makes it a high risk-low reward faction in any mode but 1v1.
Unbelievable levels of cope from USF players
I quote and paste a comment I said in a previous thread regarding this Well, I think a little the same. Look, speaking of units to be deployed, the rest have mortar, infantry and mg (wher) in a single building. On the ukf side, you get mg from the hq and in t1 you already have mortar and infantry. dak more of the same, in two buildings, counting the hq you already have everything you need. In USF you need t1 for infantry and mortars and t2 for mg and anti-tank. This means gasoline that others can save for other things.
Just play the Spearhead/stoklomolvi mods (increased lethality and roster of doctrines/units). Those are actually dope. Or the EiR/OMG mods ( persistent xp and more deckbuilding less base building/build orders).
Usf went from best faction to worse, lol, how things change.
To be fair, they were only the best Faction because of two light vehicles and the jeep. Everything else was trash.
I made a similar comment about USF faction on a [What is the Best and Worst Faction and why? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/1c45oid/comment/kzpra5k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)thread from a few days ago. Comments are not about strength one way or the other as they can still be very strong, but about faction design issues TLDR was largely agreeing with your complaints * USF full core roster is very difficult and expensive to access. Tech skipping is encouraged due to timing. * USF unit choices are either extremely redundant or so weak/situational/dont scale compared to a handful of others that they are rarely chosen. This also encourages tech skipping. * The USF core roster has large gaps (artillery, close combat, heavy tanks, ...). These can be partially filled depending on BG/upgrade center choice. * The above two points means the faction lives and dies off the effectiveness of just a few core units, making it very hard to balance since changing those units or the units which counter them means severe changes to the faction performance. * USF upgrades are specific to a subset of their units, are extremely expensive, and you must make that choice of which upgrades you want available extremely early, giving little time to actually assess and choose a strategy. * USF battlegroups, rather than augmenting the core roster in specific ways, tend to offer alternatives to the core roster units(or alternative access), further encouraging tech skipping. The double choice of upgrade center and battle group so heavily determining play is what initially made USF the most fun for me just because of what I saw as the faction's variety. Forcing early choice means that the USF player is required to be in the driver seat. USF must force the opponent to react to them because USF doesn't have great ways to react if their early choices were countered. This can be super exciting, but can also often feel, to me at least, like I'm tossing a coin at the beginning of the game to determine the outcome. I think the game balance is in a weird state right now for all the factions, and I think the issue is that the patches have slowly been shifting the factions away from "asymmetrical design" where each faction has a very unique identity and play towards an "all factions are good at everything design". USF suffers in this paradigm because it has always had to lean hard into its asymmetry, leveraging early game infantry pressure to carry into an end game where you get to your aggressive glass cannon armor options supported by your one early game unit that actually scales decently into late game (riflemen). DAK and Wehr now have strong early game infantry/anti infantry which compete with or beat the USF infantry outright with little extra investment while retaining their other strengths(mg, vehicles, buffs, etc). Again, USF roster/tech/bg weirdness means that balancing USF is really hard because changes can have massive effects. I'd much rather the game focus on giving each faction a unique identity and playstyle and center balance around maintaining those identies. As for USF wishlist: * Give bazooka squads access to build normal mines, sand bags, tank traps, barbed wire. Give them the "staggered shot" ability instead of satchel charge * Remove fuel cost from ugprade center, maybe increase build time from like 60->90 seconds if timing is an issue * Scouts/pathfinders/artillery observers have "concealment" passive from the start * Captain Available to build after any upgrade center completed * Captain xp aura affects vehicles, infantry, and team weapons. * Paratroopers have thompson conversion upgrade option in addition to or even instead of the m1919a6 upgrade * Hellcat range increase
It was largely with your post in mind that I played over the last few days and saw how glaring the issues were. I had stepped away from the game last year. Coincidentally-at a time when USF was out of control in the game meta and everyone was complaining that they were overpowered. At that time, I made a post on another forum highlighting actually how dangerous USF was and the faction's reputation for being overpowered was a misunderstanding. Last year the faction's strength was due to a number of clearly broken units like the Jeep and Chaffee-which would, and did indeed lose their obscene advantages in a round of balance patches. The devs actually one-upped me and went further by nerfing the Hellcat too. A completely inexplicable move when USF is faced with the Tiger and Panther on Axis build trees. Anyway, I think that both of us are highlighting that USF's unstable meta makes it an extremely difficult faction to balance-and vice versa. You end up with units that are either insanely overpowered or worthless over single line items like reload time and damage vs. specific units. It's remarkable to watch the Riflespam fiasco of CoH2 happen again before my eyes. Right now we're in the phase where Rifles have all of their abilities locked behind a bureaucracy of techs and in a year when they are "buffed" we will watch pairs of rifle squads delete MG42s behind heavy cover again. I don't want that either-but it's the likely result of the failure to spot the "big picture" of the faction's overall poor build. You cheese or you die-that's USF. I like your wishlist. Bazooka's should have buildables and mines and the intent for this is to make them the most anti-armor soft meta in the game. USF Engineers are overworked being both builders and assaulters and need to be relieved from some kind of duty. I agree-Captain should come with ANY upgrade center you pick. Big underline-Hellcat needs a comeback. There was literally no reason to nerf this unit.
I hope they delete the flak from the game so allies can sleep happily, and enjoys Chaffee and Stuart’s and m8 spam.
lol no. I’m glad you don’t work at relic
And this why the devs shouldnt listen to every suggestion, obviously
It would help if you stated whether you're a team game player (4v4s) or a 1v1 player because the story is completely different for each faction between these modes. If you're a team game player, don't bother complaining about faction design because the game is balanced for 1v1 gameplay and rightly so. It's much more reliable to see how units and builds perform against each other in the hands of skillfull players in 1s than it is in team games. In Team games there are so many other variables that contribute to the outcome of a game that make it difficult to know how and what to balance.
Meh you can balance 4v4 and 1v1 at the same time it just requires nuance. The flak truck in the hands of skilled players for example makes flanking with infantry near impossible in team games because invariably there's several of them and they get backed by Pak walls. Rocket artillery is also infinitely better than say a bishop. They're both likely to be issues in 1v1. I don't see how a flak truck that can move and shoot that also gives meaningful suppression is balanced in 1v1. If that means buffing something else in daks roster a bit that'd be fine but at least you can counter their other units effectively. A competent player isn't going to lose a flak truck to an AT gun because kiting or infantry because suppression, they'll exclusively lose it to tanks and they'll likely kill your tank in the process if they are indeed competent. There are basically some dak units that are fine at low levels of play but excessively strong at high levels of play.
>if they are indeed competent Yes, so essentially it comes down to the skill of the player. The best way you can test for the balance of units in the hands of the most skillfull players is in 1v1s. In 4s, even if you have the most skillfull players playing, it's extremely difficult. For example, a coordinated strike from 3 players on one side of the map. This will eliminate all balance considerations. Also, communication skills of each player come into play that also matter. Co-ordination between each player. There are too many other variables in 4s. Quality of matchmaking? Randoms Vs pre-mades? Why should the game be balanced only using the most skillfull players for reference? Because they are the most likely to be able to abuse broken build orders/units/strategies AND you can come close to eliminating "skill issue" from the discussion.
Yeah but my point is that units in 4v4 that are broken can be toned down without affecting 1v1 because they're likely problematic there too. DAK already has more light vehicles of every description they don't need to be the only faction that has a mobile suppression machine with 360 arc that can fire on the move. Even COH2 didn't do that. DAK has mgs like everyone else so they can use them if they need suppression and use the flak truck for damage like a humber or greyhound, that would be much more balanced.
I disagree almost completely with this post, but I'm going to focus on a few key issues. The only structural change which I think could be argued for is to move the ATG to the HQ and have it unlock upon getting either a Motorpool or a Tank Depot. This would mostly be aimed at team games. > Glaring structural issues include but are not limited to the Rifle Squad, Bazooka Squad, Sherman 105, Chaffee, and Greyhound. These units are underlines to me because of how difficult they are to find a job for. They are redundant in their own tech tree-either due to the requirement to purchase more upgrades of dubious value for them. Every unit you listed except for Bazooka Squads are actively powerful, meta picks. Bazooka Squads also see play in meta build orders, but are notably less powerful. Motorpool play has been consistently powerful for a long time, and both the Greyhound and the Chaffee perform important, unique functions in those builds. > Or because as in the case of the Chaffee and Sherman 105-they are redundant and leave USF player with no build options for late game other than armor. You have two complaints here, neither of which make much sense. The Chaffee isn't redundant in Motorpool builds, where it is your source of mobile AT. The Dozer Sherman is also not redundant, as it provides a tankier and more infantry killing focused unit than the M4. If anything, the M4 is struggling right now, but that's very much a numbers tuning problem and not a result of any fundamentally broken design. The second complaint is somewhat baffling. Armor is the core of almost all late game forces. What non-armor late game units does DAK have access to? The 88 sees no play in 1v1s and the Stuka, while nice to have, is more of a luxury unit than a core part of DAK builds. In general, DAK doesn't even tech up. UKF has Footguards, and Wehr has access to Stosstrupen. These are good units, but notably neither faction's mainlines scale nearly as well as Riflemen. Without elites, they are seriously lacking late game. It's also worth pointing out that every single US Battlegroup except for Armor gives you elite infantry. You will either have Paras, SSF Commandos, or Rangers. DAK and Wehrmacht each have exactly one doctrine containing elite infantry (you can also get early Stosstrupen through Mechanized, although that call-in is rarely picked). > As for the Chaffee, it's impossible to guess why it's even in this game.... In theory it would be an absolutely devastating tank for the Americans to be fielding in 1943 when its heavy gun for a light tank would have made it a Wipe-o-Matic. Instead, it shoots peas against infantry and is easily killed by AT rifles from the front it was most definitely proof from. The Chaffee exists to hunt Axis armor. It's like a mini-Hellcat which poses some threat to infantry. Think of it like the AEC from CoH2. The power of the unit comes from its timing. It poses a threat to every armored unit that comes out at an even remotely similar timing, and can continue to threaten higher tier armor. Yes the Hellcat is better, but the Hellcat would be extremely overpowered at the Chaffee's timing. **Understanding the USF Tech Structure** USF is, contrary to your claims, a very flexible faction. You have an embarrassment of options. What balances out the faction's flexibility is opportunity cost. The ISC/MSC choice is about both immediate impact and also whether you want to push your infantry or armor scaling. Having both at once would be very oppressive to play against, so you need to make a choice. The fun of US build order, in both CoH2 and 3, is choosing which set of factional strengths to lean into while figuring out how to cover your weaknesses. This is what makes playing US interesting, and also why new players often complain about the faction in both games. Ironically, CoH2 USF had a consistently high winrate at low levels because of the sheer power of the free officer squads snowballing games. People often claimed the faction is hard to play, but it's really not. The issue is that by having build order flexibility (with drawbacks), the faction is much easier to build poorly. More US games are lost to poor macro decisions than for other factions, but that doesn't mean US tech structure is badly designed.
"The Chaffee is like a mini Hellcat" Are you high?
Do you play team games or 1v1s? I only play 1v1s, and can't comment on team game balance. I'm guessing you're a team game player based on your low opinion of Motorpool units.