I feel like abilities like this should be built into the faction in some way.
Like imagine if Whermacht had something similar to Hammer/Anvil in which you can choose between Spotting Scopes, Panzer Tactician or Hull Down.
Pretty much every commander I use has one of these abilities and I pick them specifically for one of these abilities only.
CoH3 seems to try something like this with the Wehrmacht, which will be interesting to see if it works out.
I disagree though that CoH2's Wehrmacht would need a general tank upgrade, since the tanks are already very strong. There's no problem with having a faction with generally stronger tanks by design, but then all factions need to have their specialty. CoH2 is currently not balanced for this, and one faction working differently surely will cause issues.
Why is this the answer? Because you (nor me nor anybody else) can define what these terms means for COH2 Balance:
Consistent (across what and when and where?)
Cost for benefit (decided by whom????).
That's a very loosely defined and weak argument according to which you basically never need to update any game.
There are clear objective parameters such as cost, performance etc available to sketch out a rough idea. The rest is up for testing. Cost and benefit of an ability can be determined the same way literally all units and abilities have been balanced. Just play test.
If no one could ever properly say that something is too cheap or expensive for what it does, we'd never have any balance update.
There's definitely means to make things more consistent in CoH2, the points you made in the post above have no real argument behind them.
Please stay on topic and don't derail by overly exaggerating.
This is not an Axis vs Allies thread, nor is it a Panzer Tactician balance thread or focusing on any other commander in CoH2.
The point is: Should abilities be scaled to offer a more consistent cost for benefit whenever possible?
As for Hannibals argument, while I agree with it, can cause a slippery slope. The best example would be "Mark Target" as it does the exact same thing. It doesn't provide much against smaller units such as LV upto all 4 shot MED tanks. However once you get to the Panther and heavier it creates a situation where it takes 1 less shot to kill(sometimes 2 depending on tank). With the prevalence of snares it can be quite disproportionate on the value of the ability. The much larger issue is that most doctrines with Mark Target also have Guards who have access to Button. So you get into a situation where abilities synergize a bit to well and we get to where we are now. (Guards doctrines are over picked)
Definitely there are some downsides to it.
There will be concessions to make as in the example of the button ability. However, the button ability is definitely not an analogous form of things like Panzer Tactitian or Vehicle Repairs. It only exists on one single unit and the ability is integral to the design of Guards. The cost of Guards can reflect how useful they should be against heavies. It doesn't cover all the bases, but you can tune a couple of knobs very specifically.
That's not the case for abilities that are handed out generally to a wide variety of different units.
For me, increasing costs of panzer tactician on Medium/Heavy/Elite tanks is a HUGE nonono simply because it would make those type of tanks even more discouraging to play (in 2022 coh2, where clearly tanks are not very effective), in turn damaging the core gameplay of the game even further.
Also, I truly believe that by paying 350mp and 120fuel for a machine covers the "skill cost" and "ability cost" to justify the muni staying the same, due to the simple fact that you are risking way more putting so many resources into one unit instead of 2-3 infantries or whatever.
Heavier tanks are the preferred choice in larger modes and T4 is also viable in smaller ones, I can absolutely not agree with tanks being useless in CoH2. The cost/risk assessment of heavier vs lighter units is also another story.
To come back to the point of the thread:
Panzer tactician is quite a special ability. All of Ostheer's the vehicles are designed to work without it. It is not a unique combination such as Shocks getting a better nade for the same cost. This makes it even different from the Puma's smoke, where the rest of the Puma's stats and cost has been balanced with the Puma having the smoke in mind. We're looking at vehicles that are fully functional and balanced without it. They all get the same ability and become stronger, which in itself is totally fine. Yet, cheap and costly units all use the same ability with the same costs, which makes the whole investment more worthwhile the more costly the unit is.
This is true for other abilities. Soviets vehicle repair comes to my mind. But technically, you can also include weapon racks. Putting a BAR on Rifles gives you better bang for the buck than putting it on Rear Echelons. PIATs are bad in general, but even worse on Sections than on Engineers.
Ost already has a simaler feuture on all their vehicles just for a tiny amount of muni in a lot of doctrines. Saving many vehicles from destruction...
The cost of basically no ability in CoH2 is directly scaled towards the benefit. Currently, the paradigm is "same/similar abilities always cost the same" almost regardless of faction or the unit. This definitely makes sense in many cases, e.g. line infantry getting grenades, those grenades having the same profile and costs. Or "standard" mines for 30 munitions also having the same cost across factions. You get the point. It keeps stuff simple to understand, intuitive and also makes sense since the benefit of the respective abilities is fairly similar. At least similar enough to usually not warrant another +5 munitions increase in cost.
However, in some cases it objectively does not make an awful lot of sense. To stick with the example of Panzer Tactician from above: This ability performs the same on all vehicles. You click the button, pay 30 mun, your vehicle rips a pretty big vape, that's it. While there is the possibility to use if offensively, the main use is overwhelmingly defensive: to break break line of sight, gain a couple of seconds and force ground targeting to make your tank survive.
However, the benefit is depending on the unit. Getting e.g. your 251 out alive for 30 mun is nice, but losing it won't be deciding the game either. Getting your P4 out alive for 30 mun could already be game changing. Using this ability on your Brummbar, Panther or even Tiger and getting it out alive not only could, but absolutely will be game changing.
This begs the question if abilities like these should have different costs depending on the unit to keep the benefit to cost ratio a little less lopsided.
Im sure the CD was over 1 min but could just be memory bias
You're absolutely right. What I meant is that there are two types:
1. Full CD after interruption (Sexton, but I believe also some or all rocket arty)
2. Short CD (mortars). Annoyingly, this is still long enough that you can't just wait for the CD to pass and reorder the barrage
Unless you have the source code and are looking at the defined functions for the accuracy or whatever it would be called, you can't really know how things behave.
I have noticed that MGs suppress much worse if slightly behind some large cover like a car. You can notice it by looking at all the bullets that hit the large object in front. Even though some say that small arms fire does not have any collision data and does not behave like tank shells. I've also noticed that KT pintle MG in spearhead, and MGs in buildings suppress almost instantly, even against green cover. Confirmed it on Across the Rheine by building sandbags, putting 4 man IS behind them perfectly, and using that large top-left building (below the top fuel) to shoot at the Infantry section. They got suppressed in one volley and I noticed that the MG was positioned on the 2nd floor (so the tracers could easily be seen going directly onto the IS, rather than the sandbags).
So nobody except Relic really knows. Hence why you have bugs like JP4 shooting across the map, killing an ambulance.
You can open the attribute editor and check all the variables that are defined somewhere inside the source code, but unless you see the functions themselves, you will never completely know. You can only assume and deduce.
I can't confirm what you say about MGs.
What happens though is that Relic had to find a solution to the height dimension. What I described assumes a 2D map, which is likely the basis also for Relics calculations. Still, they have to spawn the shot somewhere in the barrel of the tank and move it down to the ground while dealing with their glitchy engine. We can regularly see shots disappear in the ground and other stuff.
What you describe for the JP4 can happen to all tanks. I've seen it with the SU85, Panther, P4 and others as well. My best guess is that Relic calculates the (2D) shot similar to my model and based on that calculates where the barrel etc must be pointing to.
I don't know where those long ass overshots come from. Rare glitches or different calculations fighting it out and presenting an odd solution. It is hard to tell. But casemates will be slightly more prone to tjat due to their higher first shot inaccuracy.
What you write makes sense from the mechanistic point of view.
Almost every vehicle - by design - has the tendency to overshoot. That is the 'ghost point' I described. I can't recall the exact numbers, but it should be in the range of 1-1.5 meters for most mediums. On average, that is. Shots might still be shorter than that. So the best option is to aim those 1-1.5 meters short of the squad center. This will maximize your chance of dealing maximum damage.
I just doubt that it is really worth it with the exception of a few vehicles like the Brummbar and maybe heavies. 99% of players (myself included) don't have the micro to max out the damage of a normal medium tank. I am better off investing that elsewhere, capping a point or building cover etc. The tank will find a decent solution on autofire. Those additional 5% damage or what it will be does not compensate me forgetting squads that I could micro instead.
I don't see a reason why the Sherman should be special in its mechanics compared with other mediums. I assume this is probably an observation bias that stems from the HE shell. I think you'd need to sink in tons of hours to >really< get the correct feeling of manual targeting being that much better than autotargeting with medium tanks. The difference is not that large to begin with, and everything becomes even more noisy with non flat terrain and rubble/world objects around, as you already mentioned.
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