Profile of sherlock

Thats a matter of opinion, and it depends, and you shouldnt be comparing units in a vacuum.

Requiring a 100% unit to be able to capture a weapon as Ost is quite a difference from requiring only 75% unit as Sov. This is a significant difference and something that needs to be carried in mind, since everything depends, affects the meta, and we don't want to compare units in a vacuum, do we.

He voiced his personal opinion and did not make any comparison while you, in the second paragraph of your post, do just what you accuse him to do .

Anyway, I do agree that capturing with just 2 entities of a squad would be a change one could look at in the beta patch branch and if no problems are encountered included into the game. However, the underlying concept of a higher risk for Axis to capture a crew weapon was around since CoH1 and could be intentional (for PE capturing a crew weapon isn't possible without loosing the squad before the global upgrade to increase the squad size to 4. This fact however is perfectly accounted for in the faction's design).

There is no DPS for tanks because it is listed under the individual unit tables. There's no point in listing a tank dps as it will be different for every target you fire at.

The target tables on the unit pages do account for accuracy, penetration and reload. Time to kill increases as range increases because accuracy degrades over distance, and this factors into how many shots will be required to kill a target.

The panther has a 94% chance to penetrate an SU-85, while an SU-85 has a 63% chance to penetrate a panther. The panther also has 50% more hp. From the front, the panther will always win vs a lone SU-85 in a straight shooting fight.

Accounting for average armor bounces, the Panther requires at minimum 5 shots to kill an SU-85 assuming nomisses. An SU-85 requires at least 10 shots to kill a Panther from the front. You could get lucky and penetrate every shot with the SU-85 but that is highly unlikely.

The one thing our tables do not take into account is scatter, which we cannot easily quantify into accuracy. Keep in mind that the SU-85 has much better scatter than the panther and will likely hit more of its shots, however Blitzkrieg gives the panther an evasion and accuracy bonus.

Thanks very much for the clarification and thanks a lot for the hard work you and the others put into the spreadsheet, it has proven to be a brilliant source of information (I'm still learning new things). Also thanks for displaying all formulas.
I have to admit that I didn't realise that you also had target tables linked for all vehicles (I mostly used it for infantry related information so far).

Now that the facts are established we might have a more constructive discussion

@Furyn Good analysis, thanks for sharing your calculation. Did you account for the reloading times and the potential misses due to accuracy?

@Nullist You have a tendency to isolate 2 units and argue their merits in direct comparison, completely neglecting the fact that the two sides being analysed are asymmetrical with asymmetrical balance.

Flanking is more risky but that fact applies to both sides. It is rather well established that flanking is required in different situation for the Soviet faction.

Furthermore most seem to forget that the best counter to a SU85 (apart from the doctrinal Elefant) is found in tier 2. I employed a combination of 1 pg with a schreck, 1 gren to faust the SU (very good penetration chance even frontally of 140/180=0.77 or ~80%) and a pack (with target weakpoint, if available) with great success against SU85 heavy strats.

Edit: @Furyn, I just realised that you already raised my last point, but I'll leave it in to potentially make more people aware of it

The problem with the Elefant is not the Elefant itself in my opinion but the Jaeger armor Doctrine.

The assessment of some that the doctrine is useless in general seems somewhat ill-informed.

1 CP Riegel, while costly it can be very effective to secure a flank and prevent flanks targeted at taking out the Elefant.

2 CP Recon flight, while made mostly redundant by the Elefant, Spotting Scope and Focus Sight combination it is still useful especially combined with the Stuka Bombing Strike. The reason why it is very useful is the fact that according to the devs the 152mm Howitzer should be a rather useful countered to the Elefant but it's instantly counter by a Stuka Bomb and the Recon.

3 Spotting Scope, while not a huge problem on most other tanks, it grants the Elefant with Focus Sight 150 sight range (according to Barton).

5 Stuka Bombing Run, see the remarks on the Recon Flight.

In summation. It's the doctrine design that seems somewhat flawed since it completely negates the use of one of the suggested counters to the Elefant.

I've used this doctrine very effectively in 2v2s games. Straight up there is no unit that can kill the Elephant head on. Flanking can be negated with Riegels or normal mines.

With the arty counter out of the equation, the only counter, that I used to employ when playing as Soviets, is to try to disable the main gun by ramming the Elefant. Due to the recent changes to ramming this has become a rather risky venture. If successful a SU85 stands a chance at taking it out, if the Elefant remains unsupported over time.

Thanks for the explanation.