For bomber squads, relative to engineer squads
For sniper squads, relative to radio squads
From a meta perspective, what purpose does a sniper and bomber squad have over their respective same-number counterparts?
For the bomber squad:
-
Is there any merit to having an additional bomber? Standard 7-man squads already have the ability to take a bomber as an option. There is redundancy, but the squad itself is only a 6-men strong, and having multiple tank hunters just weighs them down (Especially in Moscow, where they need to lug around AT rifles)
-
The arguably comparable squad to a bomber squad is the engineer squad. They’re both 6-man and can take multiple bombers. It’s 3 handheld AT weapons vs 2 handheld AT weapons, and the ability to make an emplaced AT weapon and more.
-
The bomber squad can technically be equipped with up to 3 automatic weapons, but it lacks the firepower of conventional 7-man squads, and the utility of an engineer squad. So, as a squad, its performance is somewhere in between, all for the sake of carrying around additional tank hunters.
-
Considering the limited squad slots an average player has, and the fact that 7-man squads can already introduce bombers into their own squad, bomber squads are unpopular, as people often cycle between trooper, assaulter, gunner and engineer squads. This also means that the Bomber II squads are ignored. Both due to their very late unlock time, and the grind needed to make them comparable to the I variant, which is already unpopular.
-
Well, they do get different, sometimes cooler uniforms, though. But that’s just an aesthetic issue.
For the sniper squad:
-
Why need more snipers? The average 7-man squad can already be supplemented by 1 marksman. Redundancy? Bots with sniper rifles don’t actively spot and kill enemies at long distances. So in most cases, it’s just the player firing at long-range targets.
-
For redundancy, it would imply that you have an entire squad outside the battlefield. It would mean that, to offset your lack of battlefield presence, it would require your squad to kill or suppress enough enemies to pull your own weight.
-
That leads to the next issue. A radio squad with a sniper attached can call artillery barrages every minute, as well as pick off stragglers. To prevent being detection, the sniper can simply be treated like a pair of scoped eyes, and opportunistically pick off enemies that avoid or aren’t worth a barrage.
-
One can say “Well, a sniper squad can also get a radioman”, the issue is, that radioman doesn’t call artillery frequently enough to make a difference, and comes at the choice of replacing the engineer, your prime source of ammo.
-
From a firepower perspective, it’s effectively 3 scoped rifles, 1 rifle and 1 more rifle, or an SMG vs 1 scoped rifle, 2 rifles, and either 2 more rifles, or 2 automatics.
-
From a progression perspective, you can phase out sniper squads, and move the soldiers you leveled up into squads with a sniper slot, with the radio squad completely taking over the sniper squad’s role.
-
For the most part, it means that Sniper II and Sniper III squads are largely pointless to have unless the player has dedicated their entire playstyle to being passive- Which doesn’t exactly win games.
My proposals:
-
Introduce a fixed trooper slot to bomber squads to make them on-par with 7-man squads. This will be similar to how a gunner squad has a fixed trooper slot. Increasing the bomber squad to 7 men. This also distinguishes them from engineer squads, who usually take over their role as a utility squad, and promotes their use as a standard combat squad that trades automatic firepower for tank-hunting ability.
-
I can’t think up of something exclusive to the sniper squad itself to make them competent, given how most other squads can have a marksman of their own.
-
Perhaps the sniper squad can have a special perk that automatically marks individual soldiers for your team automatically if you hover over them with your scope? Painting them as targets for planes and arty.
-
Perhaps kills from snipers in the sniper squad have no killcam and have less pronounced tracers? I’m all up for ideas.