Rear Armour needs to be nerfed - Across the board

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 14:13 PMWarthrone

Its all about penetration

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 14:22 PMastro_zombie

In my opinion, the single biggest design failure in this game was not adding real "side armor." For those of you who do not know, the tank is cut in half, the front half, including sides, gets "front armor", the back half, again including sides, gets "rear." That is why they will probably not nerf rear armor, because it's also the faux "side" armor and the consequences of doing it are large. I said it in beta, they have their excuses for not implementing it, none of which swayed my opinion.

Now they are limited their in balancing to only two armor variables as opposed to at least 3 (sides, front, fear) that it should have. It's the main reason why flanking is not rewarded for the effort you put into it.

IMHO, them gutting the doctrine concept and not implementing this are two really unfortunate flaws in this game.

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 15:29 PMMilkaCow

I'm sorry, but this is hilarious. Flanking is not rewarded? Most of the tanks have half the rear armor compared to their frontal armor, so you have almost always a 100% chance to penetrate. There are a few exceptions in both directions.
The heavy assault guns / tank destroyers tend to have far more frontal armor compared to their rear armor, examples would be:
Jagdtiger: 525 front, 150 rear (29%)
Panther: 290 / 110 (38%)
Elefant: 400 / 150 (38%)
...
There are like I said also exceptions in the other direction, units that have more than 50% of their frontal armor as rear armor. Those ones are they heavy tanks:
King Tiger: 425 / 225 (53%)
Tiger: 300 / 180 (60%)
IS-2: 375 / 205 (55)

Why is that? Because these tanks are extremely slow and easy to flank, but also need to be directly in the center of the action. The support guns listed previously need to stay at range and their armor reinforces that role - flanking is super efficient vs those since it's hard to do and creates an interesting gameplay where a player needs to protect those. Flanking against something like a Tiger on the other hand is far easier to do - it can't stay on range and it is not really mobile (less mobile than IS-2 unless it's blitzing, FYI). So I'm fine with the concept and I honestly don't think that rear armor would change that much. If you fight a heavy tank and you can flank in most cases you drive right behind him to block his escape route. Even with side+rear armor that would make those tanks too susceptible to flanks and too punishing, so the design in the end would stay similar I guess.

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 14:22 PMastro_zombie

In my opinion, the single biggest design failure in this game was not adding real "side armor." For those of you who do not know, the tank is cut in half, the front half, including sides, gets "front armor", the back half, again including sides, gets "rear." That is why they will probably not nerf rear armor, because it's also the faux "side" armor and the consequences of doing it are large. I said it in beta, they have their excuses for not implementing it, none of which swayed my opinion.

Now they are limited their in balancing to only two armor variables as opposed to at least 3 (sides, front, fear) that it should have. It's the main reason why flanking is not rewarded for the effort you put into it.

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 10:14 AMspam.r33k

its penetration/armor = chance to penetrate
120/180 = 2/3 of the shots will penetrate

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 15:50 PMAerohank

Only the short range heavy tanks have high rear armor. The king tiger as much as 225.
Other vehicles don't have that much rear armor. Even the mighty Jagdtiger, with his frontal armor of 525 (LOL, that even has a chance to block the 500PEN (LOL) shot of another jagdtiger) only has 150 rear armor.

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 14:27 PMhallolinski

giggle

Jump back to quoted post8 Aug 2014, 10:05 AMMarcoRossolini

I've been arguing for this since the game released, yet still nothing has been done nor has there been much notice taken of this, which I regard as one of the most glaring issues in CoH2 today.

Currently rear armour is too strong. This is particularly prevalent amongst heavy call in tanks.

One of the few ways it should be possible for an inferior tank to destroy a larger heavier tank is to flank it. But the superior effort, micro and skill required to pull this off goes entirely unrewarded. Often, be it a Panzer IV or T-34 or Sherman, getting around the flank is rewarded by nothing more than a few bounces, whilst the rest of the enemy's support destroys those tanks with ease. The happens all the time, be it if it is an ISU, IS, Elefant or Tiger series.

Let's look at a classic example: The T-34/76 vs Tiger.

The Tiger's rear armour is 180

The T-34's penetration is 120

I'm not exactly familiar with the way penetration is work out, but those odds don't look good. (+/- 25% chance to pen I guess...) In the time that is required for a T-34 to flank effectively, it is easy for the Tiger to turn and knock it out (particularly given the state of CoH2's pathfinding). The problem here is that the skill required to flank a Tiger simply isn't rewarded. A player's (at times heroic) attempts to flank a Tiger go unrewarded and useless and almost invariably would result in the loss of a T-34 for next to no gain.

I've noticed similar situations where Panzer IVs have flanked an IS only to find their shots bounce off enough for the IS-2, slow and heavy as it is, to knock out even 2 flanking panzer IVs, this shouldn't happen, that IS-2 should be dead.

The situation worsens in the case of Heavy Tank Destroyers.

Take the classic case of an outflanking Pz4 taking on an ISU-152. The Panzer IV in this situation has not only had to try to flank the enemy's support (be it cons, AT guns etc) but also has to be mindful of the ISU's 75 (iirc) range, not to say the sheer power of the ISU's gun.

The statistics are more favourable here (120 pen v 155 rear armour) but the fact remains that that a significant amount of the Panzer IV's will be bouncing off and the effort that is required to flank simply goes to waste. An even worse situation follows with units such as the T-34 versus the elefant or Jagdtiger, both of which have even harder front armour. The Sherman obviously falls in the same category.

So what's to be done? It's clear that for all sides medium tanks, flanking goes unrewarded. Whilst it does provide a better chance of penetration, the amount of shots that will bounce are still offensively high (offensive to the player's skill in pulling off the flank).


So what needs to be done?

Simple.

Lower the rear armour of all tanks across the board.
Certainly below the penetration of non-doctrinal medium tanks. With the skill involved in flanking, RNG should not come into play at all. A personal recommendation from me would be roughly 90 for all heavier tanks. ISU, Tiger, all of them. Make it almost a guaranteed penetration for flanking. That's why you flank.

This change should make flanking more rewarding whilst at the same time not damaging heavy armour too much in other categories. The damage done to them when those shots do penetrate are fine. What isn't okay is when planning and skill are unrewarded. Granted, it's a nerf for heavy tanks, but what were you doing showing your tanks rear to the enemy in the first place?

Reward player skill, not player stupidity.


[disclaimer: I apologise if my stats are incorrect, but long games trying to flank still make my views valid.