As part of my redesign series, I’ve been look at how I feel the various factions should be redesigned. However, when it comes to the US, I would pretty much change nothing as they seem the most well fleshed out and well thought out faction of the bunch. However, there are some small tweaks I would make:

Motor Pool Side Tech

Currently Greyhound comes quite late relative to all other light vehicles (90 fuel). Other light vehicle offerings include the 8 Rad at 85 fuel, the Stug D at 85 fuel, the Humber at 60 Fuel, the various AA halftracks at 55 Fuel. Even in the Vanilla version, the quad comes at 45 fuel and its really effective, so why would you go through the hassle of the Greyhound tech? Also the AT gun is relatively hard to access, with DAK you can access it at 50 Fuel (or through the deployment system at 15 fuel), the Brits have their AT Gun at 20 fuel, the Wehr have their AT gun at 25 fuel. All of the above values are in my Mod, slightly different from the regular build.  

So what I would do is I would bring down the cost of the motor pool to 25 fuel but then also add a side tech upgrade which unlocks the Chaffee for 20 fuel, to maintain its timing. This allows the Greyhound to come at 70 fuel and makes it easier to access AT guns. I feel an argument could be made to add anotehr side tech to for the Greyhound to bring the cost of the Motor pool down further, to make AT guns yet more accessible, but I didn’t go that far in my Mod. 

Splitting off the Support Centre Teching From Main Tech

It’s a minor annoyance that its impossible to tech up all the way without having locked into a Support Center choice. I think forcing players tp do this takes away more from the game than it adds, its like forcing a player to lock into battlegroup, they might want to hold off and see how things go. So I would make the choice of Support center separate from standard tech and have a generic upgrade to handle the tech up costing, to keep the timings the same. See my mod.

Adding an Additional Tech Requirement for Halftracks

Basically, the haltracks come far too early. They hit the field at 45 fuel, which is questionable given that basically no Wehr light vehicle in Vanilla arrives before 65 fuel, no Dak light vehicle (excluding the 250s and L640s), arrives before 80 fuel and no Brit light vehicle before 70 fuel. Might have been an oversight. 

In my ood I made them require not only the Support Center upgrade (now a separate side upgrade), but also any other tech structure aside from the Weapons Support Centre. This basically nudges their timing back by 15 fuel if you get the Barracks (although you could get the Motor Pool at 25 fuel) and brings them to a 60 fuel straight tech, which is more in line with the other light vehicle timings in my Mod such as Dak AA Halftrack (55 fuel), Wehr 251 Stummel (65 fuel), Humber (60 fuel), Brit AA truck (50 fuel) and 221 (50 fuel). Seems a bit more logical and fair to me.

Removal of Free Abilities

There are a lot of abilities that cost nothing, where if this was Coh2, they would cost something. This is fairly obvious, so in my mod, I added munitions costs to these abilities.

Tied Call-ins to Tech

This is another obvious one. I tied the Easy 8, Whizbang and Scott to tech.

Conclusion 

Basically, these small tweaks are partly necessary in the vanilla version, partly in reaction to changes made to other factions. Some obvious balance culprits that should be called out is whatever that manpower plane in airborne is called and pathfinders. I didn’t touch them in my mod though. 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947341907

It's a shame you can't (or haven't) re-designed the Scott while you're at it. It's absolutely useless right now, which is why you never see it used. I'm pretty sure it was originally part of the Spec Ops BG but they did a relatively last-minute switch with the Whizzbang because it made the Armored BG seem too good - that would also explain the icon mismatch for the BG.

I don't agree with all of these changes, although I do agree with you about free abilities being a terrible design change.

Toljus wrote:

It's a shame you can't (or haven't) re-designed the Scott while you're at it. It's absolutely useless right now, which is why you never see it used. I'm pretty sure it was originally part of the Spec Ops BG but they did a relatively last-minute switch with the Whizzbang because it made the Armored BG seem too good - that would also explain the icon mismatch for the BG.

I don't agree with all of these changes, although I do agree with you about free abilities being a terrible design change.

Oh yeah? What don't you like? It would be good to hear other perspectives.

It's mostly subjective stuff, and I haven't really played the US enough to draw conclusive opinions on what I'd change about their design yet. I don't think it's useful to rush into these things.

I do disagree with tying doctrinal stuff to tech, though. I disliked it in CoH2 and I dislike it here. There were a number of things I thought worked well in CoH2 that were later changed for what I felt were pretty arbitrary reasons, and I really don't see an issue with the current system in terms of its core design. I'm sure a lot of people will agree with you on this, I'm just not one of them.

I kept a number of original (and beta) aspects of CoH2 in my mod, and should the CoH3 mod tools ever be properly unlocked - and honestly, I don't hold out much hope for that - then I'll present my own faction redesigns/tweaks, but with the current limitations I don't see any point.

Since I initially made this post, I've been thinking some more and I could make some more suggestions.

US lack late game indirect in the base faction. They also lack a dedicated hard counter to Heavy tanks, having to rely on soft counters such as Hellcats and Easy 8s, or mass 57mm AT Guns. 

My suggestion would be adding a towed 105mm Howitzer M2A1 to T3:

And a towed 3-inch gun M5 to T4:

So then like Wehr with the Nebelwerfer, Brits with the Bishop and DAK with the Walking Stuka; the US would have a dedicated indirect fire solution without crutching on Battlegroups. Similarly, like Brits with the 17 pounder and the DAK with the 88, US would also have a dedicated counter to heavy tanks. I feel 'tweaking numbers' of existing units wouldn't really fix this underlying problem so elegantly. This also makes the tow mechanic more important, which from a diversity perspective is a plus.