@ErikaKalkbrenner Nice summary of the riders and some interesting ideas in the post !
I really enjoyed the motorcyclists when they came out in Tunisia, because the maps were actually designed to work with them. The biggest issue for bikes on most of the other campaign maps is generally they are cancer for vehicle maneouvre.
I think the other issue bike riders have is that they have been overtaken by events from a relevance perspective by paratroopers. Essentially every tactical advantage the rider class brings to the game is trumped by the flexibility delivered by the paratroopers, the most critical of which is a larger sized squad bringing significant firepower directly to a location at the time of your choosing. The bike has to get somewhere through shitty terrain and is still subject to the same engagement issues as other infantry, whilst the paras will generally land where you need them and are only “distracted from task” during the short move to select specialisation.
Fundamentally, I think that there is a way to create a niche for riders, but it has to be along the lines of a squad. As an example you could get an inf class squad of 9 soldiers on 3 bike/sidecar combos. You control the first bike and the AI on other bikes follows in trace. That would at least provide some size parity with a para squad, and ultimately when you got to where you’re going you had some capacity to hold ground, rather than just use them as suicide tank destroyers for grey zone tanks.
I think the maps still need a lot of cleaning and more thought needs to go into the design of defensive positions on the maps with sufficient room to allow for maneouvre of not only bikes but also the discussed recon vehicles, assuming that ppl use them for recon, and not spawn camping… But I suspect that this is an issue for all rapid maneouvre units that can get into key terrain on maps and where experienced players can effectively disrupt the enemy team for a significant amount of game time before being neutralised.