Problem with historical arguments is...well... A sturmtiger could obliterate anything it was pointed at, but im game it cant kill a hole in the ground with some sandbags around it. Hell it would take 5 if they lean against said sandbags when it impacts
the design of the game is still guided by history. This is why the tiger, panther, king tiger, jagdtiger, elefant, are as strong as they are.
Everyone will cry foul if the panther lose 1 on 1 to a 75 sherman, but history doesn't stop at merely 1 on 1 scenario. Historical fact should not be cherry picked to favor one side.
ultimately balance is the goal, and we attempt to use historical facts to guide and inspire both balance and design change.
The medium are all in a poor state. They need buff. The current state of the medium tanks is neither balanced nor historical.
- Pz4 has 50mm of vertical armor.
- Sherman has 90mm of ANGLED armor. (or was it 65mm of angled armor?) I forget.
So the difference is even bigger than you think.
(Mind you, a later refit tacked on +30mm on both Pz4 and StuG front armors)
IIRC late war sherman had 62mm of material thicken at a 47 degree from the vertical. This is calculated to about 90mm effective.
The model of 75mm sherman in game is based on the m4a3 75w, which received the improved hull and water ammo storage.
the panzer4 turret was never uparmored and stayed at 50mm. The addition of the kwk40 and the resulting weight distribution prevented more armor from being added onto the turret. |
WHat are u talking about?
are fallis cheaper than guards? are fallis nondoc unit yet? Drunk? and obers are expansiver when u include the refreshing from models.
part of the falls' deployment cost is being able to spawn from buildings.
which should go down by quite bit. IIRC the falls still have instant grenade, as well.
They could get the infiltration commandos treatment. |
Honestly the Sherman needs a small buff as it stands now that the P4 has had such a drastic increase in performance.
I don't however find USF indirect fire lacking at close range *due to the mortar barrage being rly good* but I would say the long range pak howi is pretty bad due to its cool-down, scatter, 3 man crew, and the fact that most of its medium to close range is worthless.
Another thing that rly bugs me about usf is the core Riflemen squad's 5th man seeming to drop off a drop of a hat meaning you lose DPS while closing in on long range units like volks.
It makes it extremely stressful and hard to get around the range limitations of USF early on or until you get bars but its such a long stretch that you endlessly fight and up hill battle due to the manpower drain.
iirc the sherman AP is best in class so theres that at least. the p4 has been underperforming since WFA came out so if its finally top dog i think thats probably fine
https://www.coh2.org/topic/70398/the-state-of-panzer4
TLDR:
sherman: hp to 800, armor to 180, pen to 90/110/130,
the problem with sherman isn't its firepower. It is it lack of survivability.
Check out the thread on reworking the pack howi into a traditional onmap artillery piece, except slightly less powerful per shot and with less range compared to stationary guns, but retaining mobility. It would distinguish it from the mortars and give USF a more dedicated artillery unit that fills the barrage only, area denial IDF. Yes, Major artillery is sort of that right now, but it requires a lot of munitions if you use it a lot and is very easily dodged. This lets the Major still have his recon and artillery abilities remain useful and unchanged, but give USF a way to tech specifically for artillery like all other factions can.
It’s not homongeous, it’s different in execution but has a similar end state.
both the major and pack howitzer could use a change really.
The core USF currently have four separate piece of artillery (mortar, pack, m8, major) but are still losing the artillery war to the okw and ost.
The original three should have been improved upon instead of shoehorning an early game mortar. The USF didn't need an early game mortar, they needed better late game artillery.
the US 81mm is just redundant, adding it was a serious mistake.
Rifleman with smoke was enough to give the USF one of the best early game. By giving the usf the tool to break wehr that early it reinforce the idea that USF is a purely early game faction.
After all the business with the USF mortar was said and done, the USF is still stuck with their situation of having probably the 2nd worst late game core arty. It wasn't balancing, it was spinning in circle aimlessly. |
Being on recieving end of Stuka Dive Bomb have taught me that abilites with wipe potential without red smoke is complete bullshit and their existence makes this game only worse.
BUT!
I'm always up for making other side taste their own medicine, so I agree with your suggestion about removing red smoke and making this game shittier. The ends justifies the means.
stuka bomb is op because it's a front loaded ability. The deadliest part of a barrage/offmap is the early part.
artillery barrage that basically trickle in shells over time is different. It give the enemy time to react and retreat.
the Major's artillery have a significant delay, with six shells coming down sequentially 2 seconds apart. It's far over powered.
the Panzerwerfer and stuka are both devastating because they work on the alpha strike principle. |
the howizter pit needs its barrage range increased. It should be a "mini-howitzer". The auto fire should only be used in dire situations.
increase the range of the barrage ability
and allow the mortar pit to aid tommies' artillery call. |
Or keep the same range but remove red smoke warning, and add a sound warning.
that would work
Major artillery is simply OP. It is dirty cheap can be combined with recon flight and one can even sacrifices the major to use and buy a new one if he need him.
It has little counter other then relocating when possible. It does not need to be buffed.
1) Part of the assumption it being able to fire into FOW would mean the plane recon and it would no longer syngerize.
2) the major's price is its own problem, and 150 mp is really too cheap
3) Major artillery require the major, and munition. The major is a relatively fragile unit with only three member. If you see the major suspiciously close to the front line make him your priority. If the player is using the Artillery liberally he will need the munition to keep it going.
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One thing that annoys me when I play usf is how bad their stock anti-camping weapons perform. There are some mortar changes being tested out on the new balance preview, but I was thinking more about the scott. The scott performs the same role as the he sherman, they both are good vs moving or stationary infantry. Maybe it is time to rework the scott to be less effective vs infantry squads but more devastating vs bunkers, static weapons, or campers. One way of doing this is to to make auto-fire less effective and make the barrage more powerful. As of now, it takes little skill to use.
I think some changes ,to make it more barrage focused, will be healthy for both sides.
Until then, Priest everyday!
I guess we may add some more tweaks/suggestions for usf balance to keep the title relevant, I should have made this into a m8a1 scott thread.
the major artillery is the USF's analog of the rocket artillery for the okw/wehr/sov, but several limitation restrict its usefulness.
Major artillery range should be increased to 80m (with vet bonus), and be callable into FOW with scatter penalty.
And while the major artillery is a munition ability, the USF can compensate by building munition cache. Two munition cache cost around the same as a katyusha anyway. |
in real life the t34 had no radio, no sight and the bad trained crew was overdosed with task in a little turrent. no effency and a inaccurate gun with no good aiming
in real life the p4 would have a nice radio to other units with a well trained crew, good task managment, nice gun with excelllent aiming and good view over the war area.
The T-34/76’s one great weakness was its fire control efficiency. It suffered from the same two-man turret syndrome as other Soviet tanks in this period, namely that the tank’s commander, gun aimer, gun firer and platoon commander (if a platoon leader), were all the same person. Exacerbating this was the fact that the T-34/76 had relatively poor main gun optics quality, no turret basket, a very cramped and low turret (the gun could not depress more than three degrees severely restricting use on a reverse slope or at close range), poor turret drive reliability, no radios, and generally poor target observation and indicator devices (including no turret cupola and only one vision periscope for the tank’s commander).
a quick look at the game stats show the t34 reload slower than the panzer 4 (6.1s vs 5.5s), with a worst scatter ( distance_scatter_max 6.9 vs 6.4).
hence, what you say about the t34/76 is true, and already represented in game. There's no need to dwell on them
The bad fire control doesn't really change its effective armor thickness, top speed, power to weight ratio, low ground pressure, or small size.
Infact, a large part of the lack of radio and poor turret ergonomic is precisely because the turret is so small. Hence the t34 should be a smaller target than the panzer4.
Make a mod yourself and see how it goes
are you offering to help me test out the changes? |
Ah yeah I needed that part. And some certain people (Katitof) wouldn't like you making all of the tanks have the same stats.
It says ostheer p4 stat changes? so what about the OKW one?
With those current cromwell changes, it would be even more useless. Ostheer p4 would have 100% pen and RoF adv on it. Speed means nothing unless you can get on the rear in a 1v1. Otherwise it's just rotating from sides of the map to push infantry. and with its current scatter (awful) I'd still go centaur 2x AT gun.
Although I like the idea of USF kind of having a beefy type tank, they'd have to rework price MAJORLY for those stats.
T34 is pretty meh. slight pen buff from current (+10 to each). Again they'd have to rework price for it. I always wanted ram to be similar to a reliable snare under snare threshhold. You could make the tactical decision of making a tank useless like it does currently for the guaranteed snare under threshhold. Your ram I feel wouldn't help ram at all unless you made a successful flank on the tank. If you just dive in 1v1 and then take damage as the ram is delivered you basically just screwed your own tank over. And even if you did make the successful flank on the tank you can always go for the block or just attack the rear, again possibly making ram not worth it since there are better options.
the biggest problem with the current ram is the fact it usually screw over the soviet more than the german. A full health t34/76 should be able to escape after a ram. the size buff and armor is meant to increase its survival.
as it is currently stand, the 160 armor on the cromwell is good against the panzer and puma mainly. the smaller size is a more reliable mean of survival. It used to be size 18 and I thought about lower it back there. In addition the cromwell could use a buff to its mg or to its scatter.
I make a thread regarding TD accuracy not too long ago. https://www.coh2.org/topic/69042/tank-destroyers-should-be-less-accurate
if TD accuracy does get nerfed, size 20 should be small enough to make the t34 and cromwell hard to hit. Size 18 was good against the current TD accuracy so it would probably be OP if the td accuracy got nerf.
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You understand that would be a buff to the p4 right? And the p4s currently are pretty kickass for price.
as a simple summary/preview for the other tanks:
sherman: hp to 800, armor to 180, pen to 90/110/130, size to 23. (durable)
t34/76: pen to 90/110/130, armor to 180, size to 20. speed to 6.9 accel 2.5. (mix of speed and armor)
Ram now use faust rule on self. (a full hp t34 no longer suffer engine damage after a ram.
cromwell: pen to 90/110/130, armor to 140, size to 20. (speedy)
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