There is a game called planetside 2, I like to compare it to enlisted a lot as they are almost polar opposites. Want to do well as an individual in planetside 2? Then you have to be really really good at flying and aiming, otherwise you get stuck performing support roles and scavenging kill assists. That and team cohesion is very important. Everything in planetside 2 is balanced to the point of there being no reason to use anything other than the default weapons and most simple tasks like shooting down an aircraft requires a team effort, not a single actor. This over balancing in planetside 2’s case is nice when you are playing infantry, but greatly hinders the incentive for average players to try out flying and tanking. That, and a lot of over balancing issues have risen because only the good players are left using aircraft/weapon as they spent the time to get good. Thus the question of nerfing everyone, buffing a counter, doing nothing, reducing incentives or increasing counters incentives remains.
In the case of enlisted, I believe that historic and realistic performance is most important so balance is mostly left to shuffling around incentives (and BR when or if that gets implemented). This is simply because the expectations of how a weapon functioned in real life is representative of how effective it is in game. <–Ya know, the main reason most play this game? How lame would it be if a tank HE shell was as effective as a wet fart all because some chad who aim trains 8 hours a day with a kurtz gold order rifle didn’t like his kill streak getting ended prematurely? Infantry are the potatoes and explosions are the potato farmers.
An aside if score based balancing is the case.
In the very least, I would recommend not balancing based off the points a vehicle such as a plane gets during a match, as the score could be heavily inflated by shooting down beginners and bombers, which is a skill and primary armament issue, not a ground ordinance issue. Now, in the likely case that there is an outlier that is super strong no matter where you put it, the longest route to balancing it and arguably the only way, would be simply asking the community. Removing or reducing I’d argue kills a game just as over increasing and including.
Just for practice, lets say the developer makes an oopsie and gives the Americans a free Abrahams tank. Realistically speaking, removing it would be the best and easiest option for balance sake, yet there would still be some backlash because obviously, most want to receive as opposed to give. Then the next best solution would be to add a modern conflict tier and allow other nations to have modern equipment so as to save the pz IIC’s from the blunder of giving everyone an Abrahams. Although, this would require the most amount of the developers precious time. So long story short, think twice before giving everyone a free Abrahams, the pz IIC will thank you.
Thank you for attending my deluge of splooge.