Someone clearly isn't on the know about Soviet TOE during this period. It is insanely inflexible because of how flexible it is, as ironic and dumb as that sounds.

Unlike the West which relied on flexible and organic Brigades and Battalions within their Divisions, the Soviets looked at that and though "lol lmao, watch this" and made their Divisions effectively Combined Arms from the get-go, where no matter what kind of Division it was, it would always have everything in it, just in varying quantities. For example, a Tank Division would naturally have more Tank Battalions in it, but still would have an Aviation Battalion, Infantry Battalion (Motorized or Mechanized), Artillery Battalion, and a Pioneer Battalion within it.

This makes creating Soviet Divisions excessively difficult to make truly unique, the best they can do is ones that have actually seen combat, because as Russians do tend to get creative on the battlefield when it comes to making absolutely cursed, yet somehow functional field modifications, as we can see in-game with the 56-ya.

But to answer some of your questions here:

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

Where are the Elite Squads?

That would be the 56-ya, as they are the only one in the timeline that has seen active combat long-term, much of the others are extensively trained at most, but not highly experienced in combat.

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

Where are the big batches of Last Stand reservists for Moscow?

That is the K.d.A. Though mostly East German, it serves the exact same purpose. A reservist Division equipped with heavily outdated equipment meant primarily for security duty. It should also be noted that the Soviet invested heavily into defence of Moscow, and as such, the units there aren't going to be like those we see with the British for example. Moscow will always put itself above the rest of the nation when it comes to Russia. This is for example why the vast majority of the MiG-31s that the Soviets made didn't end up in the VVS.

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

Why is this division called the best of the best and yet just looks like the next generic Motostrelki division...

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

In general, please start having more research excitement for the Pact Forces, this game isn't some sort of single player RTS with a NATO campaign only.

The answer to these questions I already gave you, but if you have some sources that showcase more unique Soviet Formations in '89, I'm sure Eugen would love to see those. Vast, and I mean just about all sources about the Soviet Capabilities in wartime, came from the US intelligence work, which is what you see in-game. The Soviet sources are dubious at best as they are infamous about inflating numbers, thus why they are often best crossreferenced with intelligence reports and whenever possible combat reports.

Having gone through a rather interesting assessment report that is a complete breakdown of the Soviet Combined Arms Doctrine that also goes through everything from recruitment, to ranks, to equipment allocations down on Squad-level, the issue is trying to get your hands on accurate information about the wartime capacity of Soviet Divisions.

I understand, that it can be difficult to plow through the giant amount of soviet disinformations, but since when is this game hyper accurate?

Just in this nemesis alone, the british shall get 3 mechanized rifle battallions from Ireland for their London Home Defence Division. Some of the current Nato divisions even got unit support/ inclusions from field units on the other half of the inland german "frontline", because they were on historical map plans "not that far away".

So when we stretch so much ToE for the Nato guys, why not also for the Pact forces?

Otherwise the next big DLC and Nemesis DLC´s will be even more boring, then the last ones.

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

I understand, that it can be difficult to plow through the giant amount of soviet disinformations, but since when is this game hyper accurate?

Just in this nemesis alone, the british shall get 3 mechanized rifle battallions from Ireland for their London Home Defence Division. Some of the current Nato divisions even got unit support/ inclusions from field units on the other half of the inland german "frontline", because they were on historical map plans "not that far away".

So when we stretch so much ToE for the Nato guys, why not also for the Pact forces?

Otherwise the next big DLC and Nemesis DLC´s will be even more boring, then the last ones.

In the scenario of WARNO, a lot of NATO, particularly west german, formations are not in combat order because they were just called up. Bundeswehr brigades were stationed somewhat in the same geographic area but the distance between single battallions could be long enough to see them engaged alongside the closest allied frontline unit instead of being moved away to join their parent unit.

Similarly, a lot of the support arms like engineers, artillery, recon, etc. were designed to not fight as a full formation but instead move from peacetime organisation into a wartime organisation and then the distributed across the frontline as required.

So the NATO approach of adding companies from battallions that belong to a brigade halfway across germany does fit the MO.

Because Eugen wants to preserve the historical accuracy of both sides. In IRL situation, Nato would operate in such a fashion, they would pull whatever is near to complement their forces to ensure they have the tools on hand.

Not so much for the Soviet Doctrine. Armies are designed to be independent, capable of doing everything on their own, which is more or less the Nato thing, but less flexible as I already pointed out. The assets needed are already inside the Division, and closer they are to the frontline and high priority sectors, more likely their equipment matches the said importance. You can see this in game how the Soviet Division equipment are rather similar across all Divisions, just with different amounts, while Nato Divisions tend to be very mixed as they have their core, with then attached Battalions from within the Army Group.

The TOE for Nato is not exactly being stretched for this reason, as the way Eugen builds the Divisions for them is how Nato doctrine functions. Same goes for Soviet Divisions. It's kinda the unfortunate result you have when you have 1 super power enforce its doctrine on everyone while you have a bunch of countries mix and match their doctrines into something a bit more functional.

Besides, there is already problems with the logic of 'just break the Soviet TOE', as that has already happened. The MiG-31 in the game was primarily designated for homeland defence, and what little VVS was given were still used for Bomber Interception in the rearlines, while the MiG-25 was the extensive frontline interceptor that was stationed on-mass within East Germany. Yet, in game, they elected to do the opposite for the sake of 'flavour'. And we have seen how well the community received this one.

I obviously agree that Soviets could use more interesting Divisions in general, though funnily enough most people won't agree with my definition of an interesting Division. I will get mine when the Czechs drop, most likely. I was already spoiled by Eugen on both sides though with the release of the latest DLC, and one of the updates prior, in the form of the 35th Infantry for Nato, and the Polish Divisions.

Where Eugen CAN get creative however is with their narrative and putting certain units into combat like they did with the 56-ya, which historically fought. The way to do it would be to start making more improvised (cursed) vehicles and unconventional units. We saw this from all the way from WW2 to the Ukraine War, Russians get EXTREMELY creative on the battlefield when it comes to modifications. They could just go over the general themes the Soviets did, compare them to the Russian constructs we see in Ukraine, and that will get them a solid idea of what to do. 56-ya was a great example of this, but we both know they can go even deeper with the Motor Rifle Divisions and the like, the ones that tend to face the brunt of the frontline fighting.

So that is personally how they should be doing it to preserve historical accuracy. Where Nato gets the 'This unit was nearby' argument, Pact should be getting away with ever increasingly unhinged battlefield modifications to spice up their lineup.

Some "one year in" divisions would be nice IMO. See NATO having to dip deeper into the "standardize down" playbook while the PACT see the battles shape formations deployed in different locations into different units.

Originally posted by Nelson:

Some "one year in" divisions would be nice IMO. See NATO having to dip deeper into the "standardize down" playbook while the PACT see the battles shape formations deployed in different locations into different units.

+1

They could also add ad hoc formation like the one in SDII.

Think a sov victory of Highway 66.

If the SOV's actually manage to push to the gates of Frankfurt(M) or even behind it, i dont think it would be far fetched to think that the command of some the battered down divisions would pick up other damaged units and from a new divisions sized formations.

In the south you got the 12. Panzer Division, the 3rd. Infantry an 1st. Armoured division.
They are all not in the game yet, but could form a combat group after getting beat.

At Least i would think that would make more interesting divisions, instead the more or less made up pre war variants they try to pitch us now.

Originally posted by Ahriman:

So that is personally how they should be doing it to preserve historical accuracy. Where Nato gets the 'This unit was nearby' argument, Pact should be getting away with ever increasingly unhinged battlefield modifications to spice up their lineup.

But this game isn´t only about vehicles. It´s already pretty boring how Motostrelki and Sapery in Warno is the main infantry of 70% of all Soviet divisions. If i have to build another full Motostrelki and Sapery infantry tab + ATGM´s. because there is nothing else, I probably quit Warno instantly when Broken Arrow drops.

Right now even Red Dragon has more infantry and vehicle variety in every faction (except australia), then a faction in Warno (if you don´t number all those copypaste troops with a different mg loadout or AT launcher, but having the same skins)

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

But this game isn´t only about vehicles. It´s already pretty boring how Motostrelki and Sapery in Warno is the main infantry of 70% of all Soviet divisions. If i have to build another full Motostrelki and Sapery infantry tab + ATGM´s. because there is nothing else, I probably quit Warno instantly when Broken Arrow drops.

Right now even Red Dragon has more infantry and vehicle variety in every faction (except australia), then a faction in Warno (if you don´t number all those copypaste troops with a different mg loadout or AT launcher, but having the same skins)

What would be the solution here? Come up with 10 different names for "Mounted Infantry" and "Combat Engineer" in russian?

If you strip away the fancy national naming conventions, the unit variety in NATO boils down to "which vehicle do I ride in an which AT-weapon and MG's do I use".

The exceptions are a handful of spec ops-style units, security units and other things I file under "weird ♥♥♥♥" which the PACT has too.

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

But this game isn´t only about vehicles. It´s already pretty boring how Motostrelki and Sapery in Warno is the main infantry of 70% of all Soviet divisions. If i have to build another full Motostrelki and Sapery infantry tab + ATGM´s. because there is nothing else, I probably quit Warno instantly when Broken Arrow drops.

Right now even Red Dragon has more infantry and vehicle variety in every faction (except australia), then a faction in Warno (if you don´t number all those copypaste troops with a different mg loadout or AT launcher, but having the same skins)

Don't recall RD having any more 'spiced up' Infantry than WARNO, but it has been a while. All I remember is 6 different variants of the same Infantry per nation based on which era you were going for with the oddball Special Force unit in there which is how WARNO also does it. Same thing with the vehicles, as you had the variants that had been replaced by 1989 still available to the player. In terms of sheer numbers, WARNO does have more unique models and units if memory serves however, since vast, vast, vast majority of RDs units are simply era-specific variants and reskins of their units, which artificially bloats the number in RD.

As for the BA comment, you'll just be replacing that with having to build your Air, Support, and Recon tab the same way every time, and effectively ignore Infantry in all forms, unless their next attempt at balancing the game will drastically improve things. Since the first beta, the game devolved into Jets and Bombers circling the spawn, trying to snipe each other and enemy units from there, with much of the actual killing done with either helicopters or Ballistic/Cruise Missiles. Then they buffed the Recon Drones so that they can spot your Infantry in the middle of a forest from 12k, so you could drop the unnecessary Recon units too.

Meanwhile Infantry continued to be abysmal in all iterations I have tried so far. Their massive inconsistency when fighting one another means that you have no predictable way to engage the enemy, aside from the same advantage you exploit in WARNO, big base squad sizes. You could do the exact same engagement with the exact same conditions 6 times and end up with 5 totally different outcomes.

That's the nature of the beast though, as Nelson mentioned. All Infantry on both ends boils down to +1/-1 model, some/none/lots of MGs, AT of some sort if any. I'm just glad the Smoke Grenades are finally being added into the game. Missed those from SD.

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

Why are all the Pact divisions in this current nemesis so lame? They look like the cornbread you buyed 3 days ago.

Especially 4.3 is almost more ashaming then 4.1. We have London Home City Force vs Moscow Home City Force and the British Division has every exciting thing you want.

New unique infantry, elite squads, reservists, unique AA, new vehicles.

The "Elite" Moscow Guards division has nothing of that. It looks like another T80 division, but with T-72´s.

Where are the big batches of Last Stand reservists for Moscow? Where are the Elite Squads?

Why is this division called the best of the best and yet just looks like the next generic Motostrelki division...

If 4.3 Nemesis should win, they really need to put more love into the Soviet Division, like they did in the end with the last nemesis VDV division.

In general, please start having more research excitement for the Pact Forces, this game isn´t some sort of single player RTS with a NATO campaign only.

Yes kommrade. PACT needs more exotics. How am I supposed to make up my mind between having more grads and napalm, a UAV which can spot all nato fobs, or advanced T80UD’s more powerful than in 119th division?

Very disappointed in these nemesis DLC’s, seems to cater more to NATO.

Originally posted by Name:

Yes kommrade. PACT needs more exotics. How am I supposed to make up my mind between having more grads and napalm, a UAV which can spot all nato fobs, or advanced T80UD’s more powerful than in 119th division?

Very disappointed in these nemesis DLC’s, seems to cater more to NATO.

This UAV you’ll see in some other division later same as the current UAV. And no, it’ll die the same as the current UAV or recon plane.
“Advanced UD” has 5km/h more speed and better (?) missile, nothing else

moscow division should have interior troops and some kind of reservist trait police force auxilleries to add some flavour tbh. Much like how we've got SEK for berlin etc.

Originally posted by Nelson:

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

But this game isn´t only about vehicles. It´s already pretty boring how Motostrelki and Sapery in Warno is the main infantry of 70% of all Soviet divisions. If i have to build another full Motostrelki and Sapery infantry tab + ATGM´s. because there is nothing else, I probably quit Warno instantly when Broken Arrow drops.

Right now even Red Dragon has more infantry and vehicle variety in every faction (except australia), then a faction in Warno (if you don´t number all those copypaste troops with a different mg loadout or AT launcher, but having the same skins)

What would be the solution here? Come up with 10 different names for "Mounted Infantry" and "Combat Engineer" in russian?

If you strip away the fancy national naming conventions, the unit variety in NATO boils down to "which vehicle do I ride in an which AT-weapon and MG's do I use".

The exceptions are a handful of spec ops-style units, security units and other things I file under "weird ♥♥♥♥" which the PACT has too.

Just look for example to RD and their mods for some interesting units. Gornostrelkis, Coastal Troops, Spetznaz, Reservists with older equipment, KGB, Kosaks, etc., there is so much you can do to build more interesting infantry tabs for the soviets then just copypaste Motostrelkis and Sapery into almost every division

Originally posted by Ahriman:

Don't recall RD having any more 'spiced up' Infantry than WARNO, but it has been a while.

When you have the dlcs and then just open up the armory of RD, you will instantly recognise, that RD still has superior unit choices and unique unit models for almost every other nation then BRD and DDR... and that game has no division restrictions.... hell i don´t even wanna start how lame Warno Divisions are compared to SD2 divisions, where this restriction originates from.

Broken Arrow will probably have a completly new meta on launch day, like it had from one beta to the next beta. In the secound beta AA was viable, infantry was waaaay more viable then in the first beta and actually killed enemy vehicles and tanks, tanks and helicopters weren´t moving fortresses anymore.

Originally posted by Kaiser der goldenen Sonne:

Just look for example to RD and their mods for some interesting units. Gornostrelkis, Coastal Troops, Spetznaz, Reservists with older equipment, KGB, Kosaks, etc., there is so much you can do to build more interesting infantry tabs for the soviets then just copypaste Motostrelkis and Sapery into almost every division

So uh... Out of interest, have you actually looked at any of the Non-Soviet Divisions or do you play only like the base Soviet ones?

Excluding Command Variants, there are 3 Infantry Tab Spets units, O.P. Spetsnaz, Spetsnaz, and Spetsgruppa V. Then you have the Spets Sniper Team and two GRU variants for Recon.

For reservists, you got Reservisten and K.d.A. Schützen.

You have MPs galore, Wachschutzen, and Sicherungs.

Right now it seems that you say Pact = Soviets, and only the Soviets, as if the other Pact Nations don't matter, as they are the ones currently bringing the things you want to the field. Poles got Marines, East Germans get Garrison and Security Units. Meanwhile you compare what the Soviets get to the entire Nato roster. Noticing a small flaw in logic here.

The whole point of the Division system is to add a theme to the decks. So if you are looking to play with certain kinds of units, you pick those Divisions, but you can't expect to have everything at your disposal at all times.

Gornos will probably make their debut when the Nordic Front comes out, as you don't send Mountaineers into the rolling plains of Central Germany. Same thing with Coastal Guards, not much use for those away from the coast.

So until then, how about you go play with the Non-Soviet Divisions, and experience like 80% of the roster you seemed to have completely missed.