Profile of Hannibal

You are exactly proving my point here. You are crying out "oh my god! that tank bounces everything with that 240/180 armor! We need PANTHER!". In reality, Churchill only has 6 higher armor than axis medium tank. (vet.2 OST p4 or stock OKW p4).

Should we go to create another thread complaining axis medium tank has so high armor that allies need TD to deal with them? Please feel free to do so if you want.

My personal theory here is that axis player simply don't experience much of the bounces from the shot, that if allies tank actually does, it just leave some marks in their heart.

You need a TD to stop a medium because an ATG can't damage the Churchill quickly enough before it will get wiped. That's why Axis usually need a TD to fight it. The Panther is the only thing that can reliably deal with the Churchill without being threatened by it itself. Amassing e.g. StuGs works as well, but people usually go for Panthers for scaling.

I wouldn't call it useless it's more like it situational.

T34-76 is cheap. It cost less than Ostwinds, Command p4 and even Centaur. And it can already fight these thing. The fact it gets situational utility isn't necessarily unfair to Soviets.

T34-85 is simply the best medium in the game. It's got HP, Armor(less than p4 but still), Pen, AI performance, Mobility with cost efficiency to boot. + all the commanders this tank is available on are good. I can't see giving them a good vet 1 ability(I'm guessing combat orientated one that you think are usefull) be anything other than making it Borderline OP.

As you said, you can mostly use it with a doctrinal repair ability. If you use engineers to repair in a capping point, you don't need secure mode. Technically you could use it to optimize and maybe cap a couple of seconds earlier, but that is usually not worth the micro.
I personally have not used it in a long time (which is also due to not enough skill in micro) and I think I can remember it being used in tourney casts, but not really more than once in all casts.
The situations in which it really gives you a benefit are very, very rare to the point that I'd really call the ability useless.

The problem is that both the 76 and the 85 are already good and great respectively. If you can come up with a replacement vet 1 ability that is useful but doesn't buff their combat capacity we're all ears, because we couldn't think of anything.

I assume you mean cost efficiency? I agree that especially the T34/85 is a very good tank, but that's why I think that the idea of secure mode is quite good. I'd personally go for a quicker decap rate (and normal cap rate) coupled with a delay to getting the gun back. This would at least allow for some cut off play with the risk of being found "pants down" if the opponent realizes.
Improve the ability to make it useful, then increase the risk to have a trade off. If balanced right, it should reward proper judgement of the game while punishing misjudgment.

Well, Even though I get your point, I still don't mind having this ability on t34/85's and would be pretty sad to loose it if I'm being completely honest honest. T34's ability to cap can be used to stall capping until infantry arrives or be an extra capper if your on pinch.

That's why I said I would like to buff it instead of removing it.
The opportunity cost is higher when using a tank, so the reward should be higher too

It just got copied over from the 222's vet. No idea why that has -11,1% instead of -10%.
But it reduces target size from 18 to 16, which does help against AT sources.

I see it now. The 11,1% bring it down to almost exactly a size of 16, otherwise it would be 16,2.

Well, I'd estimate that the unit will survive two ATG shots between 5-10% more often than without the target size buff. I doubt though that it makes the unit itself that much stronger. Since it dies with the second shot, you will always retreat as soon as you see an ATG.

This target size reduction does not have the same effect as with medium target size reduction for example. Those need to run through 4 hit rolls, making the effect overall much larger and not as binary. The 221/223 takes two shots, making it die quite quickly and you will probably only build one unit per match. This makes these outcome almost binary. What I basically mean is: While the unit will be improved over multiple of games, there will probably not be enough RNG checks in a specific, single game to really make a really noticable difference. Something that a player would count on. Your unit will just randomly survive the second shot slightly more frequently.

To be fair on Commanders with crew repairs it's actually not that much of a waste to repair while capping territory.

While you're right, this fact alone is a good demonstration of the extend of conditions you have to meet to make secure mode worthwhile.