Hey Guys, I just finished my number crunching on non-rocket artillery:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/g1ikmr/howitzers_and_you_big_guns_and_what_they_do/ Howitzers and You: Big Guns and What They Do
My conclusion came down to Sexton/Priest need a pop decrease (Sexton to 10-12, Priest to 13), Sexton needs its gardening Super-Charged shells to have normal AoE (2.5 Mid AOE, not 2), and ML/20 needs an extra round base barrage, currently Vet 1 just brings it up to par. Also, EITHER something special for the ML/20 another another round/an ability or leIF needs to lose Counter Barrage. Statistically, they are almost exactly the same gun (once ML/20 has 9 shots), just leIF has serious icing on top.
I had to do a major revision after MMX pointed out Max Distance Scatter.
...Mobile Howitzers have some stupid DPS/Area due to Max Scatter being quite low. Like, caps at 75% of total range or less low.
Takeaways:
1.There is weird stuff afoot. Use your mobile howitzers at max range, cause getting marginally closer gives VERY marginally better results. And the only increased scatter is angle based (side to side). This results in huge damage concentrations compared to fixed howitzers as range gets higher and higher. The PRIEST is the best in-vision concentrated barrager at 160 distance PERIOD. The only exception to this rule is Counter Barrage.
Mobile Howitzers are WEIRD. This also reinforces my belief the Stuka is a Creeping Barrage Mobile Howitzer, not Rocket Artillery. Minimal long range scatter (SZF has 0 of ANY KIND) makes a good back FoW back breaker.
STILL, FIX THE SUPERCHARGED SHELLS. Stop making that additional hidden game knowledge.
2. ML/20 needs to be brought up to 9 shells baseline. AND maybe given Counter Barrage, or something. That gun is quite depressing relatively.
3.Fix leFH Friendly Fire. That sucker does half damage, its a HUGE outlier. All on-map artillery (UKF base arti is off-map for all intents and purposes) does negligible friendly fire.