Profile of Hannibal

Just to add to others (without having played the IS-2 much myself):
I think the main issues for team games are
1. a Panther can stop it. If the IS2 pops out of the fog of war unexpectedly, your Panther can still sit there and trade. And while this fight is fairly even to slightly in the IS2's favor (from what I know), the IS2 is usually trading down in terms of value. You can't break through in this scenario. The other way around: Tiger ambushes Allies, the Allies have to run and can at least temporarily secure the position.
2. No burst or alpha damage. The IS2 takes a long time to take out even a medium tank, it just isn't very cost effective in that regard. So you want to use it against infantry, but for this purpose just get a Katy. The IS2 has a good AI cannon, but it is not as wipey as a Katyusha, therefore it won't secure squad wipes as easily.
3. If the opponents get a JT or Elefant, which often the case, your IS2 is almost useless.
4. I am not sure about this point, but might it be that killing infantry does not give you as much XP as fighting tanks? At vet3, the IS2 is VERY good, but I find it hard to get to there. Harder than just using a Tiger.

Yeah the normal accuracy hits seem to always hit the front part if the targeted tank faces even just a bit forward (i.e between +89 and -89°) and vice versa for rear armor shots. Not sure what would happen if you hit exactly 90° side-on though, that would probably be worth to test. Also, for scatter shots to show this weird behavior you have to always fire at least some distance behind the target. The exact extent you need to overshoot seems to correlate with the distance scatter of the weapon; if some part of the scatter cone lies inside the hitbox of the target the whole thing doesn't work and you get a frontal hit instead (and not only sometimes, like if a shot would scatter too short to make it out of the tank's hitbox, but apparently it never at all). Hence why, even if you somehow managed to fail the accuracy roll of a regular attack at point blank, the scatter shot wouldn't phase through the front border of the hitbox.

That makes me think this is indeed some buggy and unintended interaction, and I've got no idea why it is even in the game. Maybe a remnant of some obscure bugfix in the very early days of CoH2's development that never got deleted? Hard to say for sure.

The editor description states that "distance_scatter_obj_hit_min" cannot exceed 10 m, yet for practically all weapons this is set to 10 by default. So whatever purpose it might have originally had to tweak this value, it seems pretty much redundant now.

Then again, it opens the door for shenanigans such as this, so there is certainly a purpose nonetheless

To be honest I believe this might have just been a quick and dirty fix for collision detection problems. Maybe even for an early, buggier version of the engine, but maybe it is still kind of "necessary". I don't know how large Relic was at the time, but there were probably multiple developers fiddling with the system at the same time. Might very well be that one "fixed" some issues with this one, then it got forgotten and/or no one tested if it could be safely removed.
As Vipper suggested, it might also prohibit vehicles from damaging themselves, although this could be set with other parameters. I also don't fully know where the projectiles spawn. If they spawn within the vehicle's hitbox, it might be to prevent instant detonation. Might still have been for an earlier engine version though, since shots phase through friendly tanks anyway now.

Just like you, I also noticed that a tiny angle change from 89° to 91° will fully decide about frontal and rear armor hits. Accuracy hits seem to always travel in a straight line, but I have only tested for stationary targets. Not sure what happens if the target moves. Weirdly, this might lead to tanks with high frontal armor, large target size and large hit boxes like the e.g. Elefant, IS2 and KT to perform better against ATGs, because shots will always hit, and thereby always hit the front armor, even if you attack from an angle. Technically, a low accuracy unit with very low scatter would perform better, since it has the chance to scatter hit the rear.

Anyway, that's a very nice find you got there, albeit an odd one.

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Alright, for this I can see the point.
However, if you want to compare the 105mm and the Brummbar regarding survivability at vet, don't forget that the 105mm also gets 160 HP more. Higher survivability with vet is not a specialty of the Brummbar in this case

I'd say Soviet T2 build is similarly easy to learn. Late game vehicles are surely easier to use as OKW though, especially in team games.

I never said anything about the very vague term of 'impactfulness', nor did I compare the 222 to the T70. Please don't make stuff up that I have not said
I am also not the oracle of CoH2, my opinion is not worth more than any random Joe's opinion.

And most of all, please all go back to topic, this topic is actually about OP claiming some Ostheer units need more accuracy. It is okay and normal to deviate from the main topic over time, but the 'impactfulness' of the 222 and T70 have nothing to do with the topic and this side discussion is dragging on a bit too long.

If you want to discuss that, go to PMs or a different thread.