There has been a disturbance in the balance, as if a thousand ultra light vehicles cried in agony!
I think we all know by this point, what I'm referring to.

CoH3 was fun, because the early game had 3 layers of intensity with distinct timings:
- Infantry - who dies "quickly" out of cover but can positioned
- Ultra Light vehicles - who can deal with infantry in cover, buy time, or harass by positioning around the enemy's cover or hunt other vehicles.
- Early mobile AT (Boys AT, Zooks, HMGs & snares)

The recent TTK have made a point in relying on ULVs to secure some kind of reliable backbone.
Keyword here is: reliable.
Now, with 1.8.1's very detrimental penetration buff to infantry towards ULVs, they in-turn became very vulnerable to infantry volleys.
They cannot act reliably, and be your stress-free zone of comfort when you want to play that way... and it becomes even worst when mobile AT enters the field.
Don't negate your own fixes.

The recent changes have cancelled each other's benefit: delayed light vehicles (greyhound etc) at the profit of infantry AT, which is good, but now ULVs don't have room to play anymore.
And this is not about DPS, this is about not turning the game in a stress-induced APM contest. Which it seems to become very rapidly.

And unlike CoH1, where a jeep or a bike can maneuver around infantry, pushing them around to prevent them from firing and act as a disturbance, now it gets 2 volleys and might die on the fleeing U-turn or just deal 2 burst without dealing any damage and have to retreat for repairs.
I dearly hope ULVs are balanced back to CoH1 or CoH3 1.7 at the least. CoH1 feels better as shots are missed and it takes a while, it's a "chill" interaction, with time to respond. This feels much saner than what we have right now.


There's 0 comfort unit and everything is stressful: damage are dealt too quick, infantry scales too fast, resulting in "overrun" tactics. Not even blobbing, but actual firepower creep tactics.
And thus the "new" comfort units have become a part of the original problem: infantry critical mass, namely: Rangers, Wehr Panzer Grenadiers, Upgraded Sections/Aussies sniping everything at a distance before any tactical maneuver can be made.

This is the second key problem now. Things die so quick, the player cannot outmaneuver. This will not be fixed by making Royal Engineers even more deadly (they were entirely fine before the last sten damage buff), or turning panzer grenadiers into Rangers.

Lastly, weapon crews:
- HMGs consistently die extremely fast, so fast it's almost impossible to play around with axis since it's unfortunately very frequent to just be overrun by a wave of infantry. Again, a player can be good, but the opponent has to have the time to react.
- ATGs are too good. Someone said it's the angling speed being too good. I don't know, they also rarely miss their shots on tanks or rarely bounce on mediums (at vet0 or vet1), that's fair. But the double/triple/quadruple AT-Gun since 1.8 or earlier is severely crippling mechanized play, very much shutting down entire lanes with the addition of the usual smart plays on mines & infantry AT.

Last but not least, UKF armor is completely overwhelming with overperforming Grants & Matildas, two damage sponges that just take the Churchill's job & deal with anything as they wish.
- Grant: reduce HP.
- Matilda: reduce HP or armor
- Matilda/CrusaderII 2 pounder gun penetration still slightly too effective against mediums at medium ranges (past 10meters or so).

The synergy with Aussies 'Over Repair" makes them untouchable, and the overwhelming swarm capability of those due to their accessibility compared to DaK's Panzer IV every 6 minutes accessibility renders the late game an actual dreadful chore.
I've also had 2 wehr unskirted panzer IV loosing a street fight against 2 matildas. If it had been two Churchills, I woudl've loved it. But matildas???, which is supposed to be an anti-infantry obsolete tank incentivizing going for Crusader IIIs or Churchills, or Archers (right?)?
UKF need a fine tuning of its late game tanks, with the matilda/grant couple overshadowing the roles of the actual anti-tank armor: CIII & Churchills' 6 pounders & their ATGs.
It's been an issue for a long time, and the Grants frontal DPS means a single flak36 supported cannot even stand a chance as it will get focused fired and die in a couple volleys from 2 or 3 grants.

The recent Fuel adjustments were amazing at giving us a nicer timing, in that regard. But it has been largely negated by the above ULVs/TTK changes.
In fine, CoH3 is moving towards a game pace that is both too fast, and too predictable to enjoy in PvP for certain players, but also becomes a problem for Singleplayer/skirmish vs Ai.

So I implore you Relic, to go through those few changes and stabilize the core interaction that tend to gravitate towards a frustrating experience:

- Backroll TTK changes partially, early encounters are too decisive, doesn't help comeback and puts too much pressure on getting a tight balance on all factions.

- Backroll penetration changes concerning ULVs, especially jeep, kradschutzen & 250.
- DaK Opel Blitz: reduce veterancy requirement it's almost impossible to reach even in Coop vs Ai, backroll HP nerf. The latter being the most frustrating/stressful vehicle ever, 20 fuel down the drain on a 30muni mine or a stray AT gun shot
- kradschutzen 30sec repair is overkill, cannot be canceled, it's a death trap. Add cancelation using STOP command.

- UKF armor role-fix. Crusader gun's rework was excellent, keep going in that direction please.

Cheers to all!
And I hope Relic sees this as a letter of love for what they achieved, and a decent warning from maybe the not-so-vocal part of us who want nicer timings, stress-free experience with a balance that doesn't force us to play a certain way or be overwhelmed.