Yes, this is another "M36 OP, Also Panther" thread (now there's 4 of them!); but I think I've found a solution to the problem that isn't simply nerfing the M36/Panther/Etc. That solution comes from the realization of a problem in the core USF design: USF has no intermediate AT
Stats may be slightly old, but it should explain the point
This chart should help explain what I mean. It lists each faction's main infantry AT weapon, ATG, Light-AT vehicle, Medium-AT vehicle, and Heavy-AT vehicle, and compares their pen against a bunch of enemy front armor values.
What you'll notice is that the USF has a giant gap no other faction has, between pen values of 150 and 260. That means, if the USF runs into a vehicle with over ~150 armor, the ONLY reliable answer is the M36. That means against an Ost P4, JP4, OKW P4, Panther, Tiger, KT, Ele, JT, etc. - the answer is always "M36".
This is a problem, especially when trying to figure out what to do with the M36. Essentially it needs to be available to counter those vehicles, despite the fact that those 'targets' usually come much earlier and cheaper. In turn, this means that for the USF to not be completely out of luck against anything stronger than an OST P4, the M36 (by design) needs to over-perform.
My suggestion is that, rather than redesigning half a dozen vehicles, we simply fill that gap; give USF an intermediate AT source so that the M36 doesn't need to over-perform to keep the USF faction viable. From what I can see, this can be done in one of two ways:
A) Make the M10 a non-doc vehicle (currently 180-140 pen close/far) B) Add a "big" ATG; a clone of the Pak40 / 6 Pounder (210-190 pen close/far)
Once that's done, the M36 can have its price increased (and/or pop), as it will no longer need to be the USF's main source of AT. From there, we can more easily look at the panther, since it no longer needs to stand up to a cheap, very powerful, TD.
USF needs EZ-8 non-doctrine or overly buffed Sherman AT rounds if the Jackson were to be nerfed. Also, I am sorry but I dont want a buff AT gun to offset Jackson nerfs especially when late game comes with arty spam cancer.
I don't think we need to shuffle things around that much. Buffing/non-doc'ing the EZ8 to replace a nerfed M36 is just adding extra steps for (imo) no reason. This was brought up earlier in the thread, but basically, USF needs an intermediate AT solution, somewhere between the M1 (weak) and the M36 (very strong). Lago brought up the idea of making the M10 a non-doc intermediate, which (I think) is a good implementation of the idea (minus the 70-range M36).
Not to mention, the EZ8 having better AT than the M36 would look strange, visually, since the M36's cannon is visually much larger.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that this is the ONLY viable solution. The entire TD issue revolves around USF having essentially one viable non-doc AT solution, since the M1 doesn't have the pen to go against axis heavies. This has resulted in the M36 being the de-facto AT solution for literally every unit, which means it needs to be viable against opponents as tough as the Ele/JT.
As far as I'm concerned, there are two ways of implementing this idea. The USF AT hierarchy can be either M1 -> M36 -> BigATG or M1 -> BigATG -> M36. If it's the former, the M36 needs to be nerfed down to STuG levels, with a comparable price reduction; if it's the later, the M36 needs its price increased to panther levels (i.e. +40f) with no real performance buffs. Then we slide in an ATG into that new performance-slot, with performance/price being a copy of the Pak/6lb.
Lago's right, ambush invis is the direct counter to "a lot of range"
OST have doctrinal camo. OKW has JP4. ATGs are safe from M36s, its not that impossible to beat a jackson if they had 70 range.
Except that camo only applies to infantry (and MG42), not the Pak40 or other AT weapons. So yes, you could camo some PGrens w/ schrecks, but that's about all the upgrade would do.
JP4 has 60 range, which means the 70-range M36 would out-range it. You can camo, but that'll only help with your first shot; after that it can still be flanked, or simply out-ranged (back away the M36's speed). Even with two of them, you'd still need an extra shot to take out an M36.
ATGs are safe from M36s, but they also have 60 range; again, you'd need to either push with ATGs (not really going to work), or wait for the M36 to get in range - which it doesn't need to do.
In general, ATGs just aren't viable against super mobile vehicles with a decent amount of HP. They work against LVs since they can usually 2-shot them, but against 480hp+ vehicles, they need 3+ hits to beat them. In that amount of time, the target can easily move out of the ATGs firing cone. ATGs become even less viable when that target can survive 3+ hits, is super mobile, AND has 10+ range over them.
I'm not trying to say they're exactly the same but they have similar characteristics and fill a similar role. The difference is the scale at which they preform. The Puma is like the Jackson of light vehicles. The Jackson is like a large Puma for use against medium and heavy armor
Like Vipper said; not really.
Firstly, the Puma has only 50 range, compared to the M36's 60 - conveniently, 60 range is the same as (almost) all ATGs, so the puma needs to be in danger of those to fire at a tank, whereas the M36 will be just at the edge of an ATG's range.
Secondly, at max range (50 vs. 60), the Puma has 80 pen, meaning that it'll bounce 39.5% of the time against even the "lightly" armored M36 (80 pen vs. 130 armor), whereas the M36 will pen even a panther's front armor 84.6% of the time (i.e. 15.4% bounce chance).
Thirdly, while the puma is more mobile, it has 0.5 moving accuracy multiplier, whereas the M36 has a 0.75 mult - that's 50% more accuracy when on the move. That makes the Puma pretty bad when chasing vehicles, whereas the M36 doesn't really have that problem.
So, the Puma needs to be in ATG range to hit anything, has more than twice the bounce rate against fairly lightly armored vehicles, and is 50% worse when moving. Interestingly, those three categories are the ones people want the M36 nerfed in (range, pen at max range, moving acc.).
edit
Since it'll be brought up that I'm comparing an LV's pen vs. a medium to a medium's pen vs. a medium, the M36's chance to pen a Tiger (heavy) at max range is 73.3% (26.7% bounce). That's still a 57% better chance compared to a Puma vs. an M36. That results in an even bigger effective DPS difference when factoring in that 50% better moving accuracy.
Alternatively, you could nerf the shit out of all the heavies's ranges.
Panther and all the generalist heavies down to 40 range, Jackson down to 480 HP.
The Jackson'd then counter heavy armour as intended by outranging it, but be more vulnerable when closed on by a medium.
Jacksons in turn would be countered by StuGs and JPIVs.
All heavies already have between 40 to 45 range, with the exception of the Ele/JT/ISU-152. Nerfing those to 40 range would make them unusable, since they're such incredibly slow units; flanking them would become trivial.
As for the Panther, it's a medium TD, like the M36 - it just has more HP/armor than the M36 due to its much higher price.
The M10 goes in T3, the Jackson goes up to 180ish FU but gets 70 range.
The M10 could also work, although it would mean replacing it with something else in armor company. Really, it's just about giving USF an intermediate AT solution, which they're currently lacking.
70 range on the M36 would be too much; that would put it out at the same range as the Elefant (720mp/240f/doc locked), who's main weakness is being incredibly slow, and not having a turret. A 70-range M36 would just kite every single tank in the game, even more so than it does now.
USF could use two different types of Atgun (like in Coh1), one on T2 (better stat, no need munition) and the actual unlock after T3.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that this is the ONLY viable solution. The entire TD issue revolves around USF having essentially one viable non-doc AT solution, since the M1 doesn't have the pen to go against axis heavies. This has resulted in the M36 being the de-facto AT solution for literally every unit, which means it needs to be viable against opponents as tough as the Ele/JT.
As far as I'm concerned, there are two ways of implementing this idea. The USF AT hierarchy can be either M1 -> M36 -> BigATG or M1 -> BigATG -> M36. If it's the former, the M36 needs to be nerfed down to STuG levels, with a comparable price reduction; if it's the later, the M36 needs its price increased to panther levels (i.e. +40f) with no real performance buffs. Then we slide in an ATG into that new performance-slot, with performance/price being a copy of the Pak/6lb.
Once that's done, we can adjust the panther down a bit, so that the price/perf matchup of the M36/Panther actually makes sense.
Regardless of what happens, this type of gameplay is exhausting, and the opposite of what CoH is supposed to be about.
The difference in reload speed is actually between 1.3 and 0.7 iirc, and your armor stat is backwards as the OKW P4 has 234 armor compared to E8 215, and 90 rear armor compared to E8 95.
Yea, just noticed I flipped the front armor, it should be -19 front +15 rear (P4 has 80 rear, vs 95 for the E8). As for the reload, I'm taking the average of the min/max, and then using the difference between them.
Further, with all due respect for your dilligence in providing a stat sheet, the P4 in tests has remarkably better AI performance, a cheaper MG upgrade, and on the topic of factional bonuses, an ability that grants it both better accuracy and mobility (combat blitz).
Yes, like I said, the P4 is better against infantry; that's not a surprise when looking at the stats.
As for the MG upgrade price, +70muni is pretty much standard for USF. It's 70muni on the 105mm Bulldozer, M4A3, and the E8. The exception is the M4A3(76), which is 60muni for some reason (and the hotkey changes from V to M).
Combat blitz is a fair point, but it's also important to note that the E8 gets non-doc, vet0 smoke as well.
The trade seems to be 80 hp and marginally better alpha pen, but worse DPS against most vehicle or infantry targets.
+80hp, +60%/43%/41% pen, +50% moving accuracy, in exchange for -14.5% DPS against vehicles (ignoring the pen differences).
Turret MG Better dps at 4-15m, worse at 0-3m, 16-35m
To me, that seems like a fair trade. The P4 has better AI power (but not much), while the E8 has better AT power. The E8 has the benefit of 50% better moving accuracy and a vehicle crew, too. Overall, I wouldn't change anything; getting 3x E8s can be devastating, due to their ability to chase.
So one can spam "trash" units and then replace them with elites...
No I don think that is a good idea.
Or that I can replace all weapon crews with better entities, no again not a good idea.
This is a good idea only for USF vehicle crews. Then one could actually increase their Pop.
Even with the "refund" suggested by OP, replacing your mainlines with elites wouldn't really be viable; you're still going to lose 75% of the MP, and 100% of the vet when dismissing. With that said, I do see some problems with the whole "leave behind pickups" thing; It would allow for (somewhat expensive) pickup transferring, and the very cheap (or possibly free?) upgrading of weapon crews as you said. The only way I would support this, is if dismissing took the weapons (pickups or crewed) as well as the models, with the only refund being in MP.
Doomlord52
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
