SdKfz 221 vs M3A1 (weapon performance)

Beta is over, Retail is on.

I gave that vehicle a try over the whole beta. It just underperforms so sadly. It can't fullfill its supposed role to flank Support Weapons like Snipers, MGs and Mortars properly. And I call it its supposed role because eeven the Bulltin tells me to kill Mortar and MG Crews with it!

I still totally agree with Sepha, that none needs a PE Amored Car, but yet it is a 25 fuel investment and should force a russian player to get a proper counter just like M3A1 does to the Ostheer. That means fielding e.g an AT Gun + AT Nades, M70, high Armor elite infantry. But with its current weapon DPS it can simply be ignored.

And call me stupid for good, I really just recognized at the end of the Open Beta that the coaxial MG to the 20mm has 0 DPS!
WTF !? o0

Let me get the...
You pay 70mun to get a counter to a SINGLE unit(M3A1) but also decrease to effectivness of the vehicles basic role from super bad to 0.

Can anyone explain the meaning of this to me, please?

Regards
ace

I think this thread still needs some attention. Also:

It is a really interesting unit if the enemy doesn't build guards nor AT grenades...
It is still bad and needs a buff!

I cant except that probably the pros on the internal secret alpha board of CoH2 have not brought it up for serious discussion, Relic has not listened, planned changes have not been enacted or TLDR: Nobody "important" cares enough to have prioritised it.

it is 80 mp and 25 fuel it barely sets you back, i don't care when my scout car dies it is such a small investment you expect it to die. the scot car shuts down all m3 play, goes hunting for kat's su 76s (circle strafe and laugh) it can even make a dent in the rear armour of su 85's

Yes it is limited in it's role and yes maybe its main gun needs a slight buff but all in all it is a good unit imo, i really wish soviets had this kind of unit.

Lets make it open garrison, put a 50cal on it and able to transport 2 units and see what the sov fanbois think about that.

i dont have a problem with that, M3's are very easy to kill unless there is a sniper in it (which imo needs a fix, but flamers? meh ill take them all day

Personally, (and I'll preface this with I'm not the guy responsible for balance nor am I involved in any way with balance), I play Germans pretty much exclusively and it's never seemed all that bad to me. I agree that the 2cm upgrade is a gamble as one or two lucky shots from at guns will pop the AC pretty fast.

However, I've never had much trouble killing snipers or team weapons (which is more or less all I use the AC for). Against infantry, yes - it tends to take it up the tail pipe, but I would argue that you shouldn't be using it as anything more than a team weapon/harassment unit.

Its MG is inferior to the M3s 50cal.
This not even considering units garrisoned within it.

When upgraded to 20mm it is patently incapable vs infantry of any type and the MG does, literally, 0 dmg.

Personally, (and I'll preface this with I'm not the guy responsible for balance nor am I involved in any way with balance), I play Germans pretty much exclusively and it's never seemed all that bad to me. I agree that the 2cm upgrade is a gamble as one or two lucky shots from at guns will pop the AC pretty fast.

However, I've never had much trouble killing snipers or team weapons (which is more or less all I use the AC for). Against infantry, yes - it tends to take it up the tail pipe, but I would argue that you shouldn't be using it as anything more than a team weapon/harassment unit.

If my calcution is correct, and yet none pointed out a mistake so i guess it is somewhat correct, the M3A1 has almost twice the DPS of the 221. And as Nullist said, not even counting whatever is mounted in the M3A1. That alone screams for an adjust imo.

And if you say it is NOT made for fighting infantry, I guess you are talking about conscripts, cause that's typically that only fighting infantry on the field for the russians at that time in game. But Weapon Teams are basicly the same as conscripts, only firing with an MG/Mortar: 6 men, 80 health/man, 1 armor.

So I agree, it doesn't perform well vs Conscripts, and also disagree, it also doesn't perform well vs weapon teams. It doesn't do anything well at all for 25 fuel.

Regards
ace

ace, i totally agree with you here mate. i love the cheap cost of the AC and it's intended role. but i don't think the devs understand that it does 0 damage. the only reason i get it is to kill m3's and maybe stall a t-70 from pushing me off the map.

now that is ok with upgrade. i think the upgrade making it a very light AT unit is called strategy. it's a tradeoff. but without the upgrade, it should be something that sov weapon teams have to react to when it gets outside their arc/area of fire

@warmonkey:
my experiance is diffrent, when my weapon teams or CE see it they have to run as it will kill them, no question. it does not kill them super fast but it is not slow either. i think this needs more testing and probably a vid to show case it's killing speed

fibally buffed.

couldn`t play it yet since i am at work right now. any expirience how it performd now?

regards
ace

Couldn't play either, just had Cataclaw's stream running on the side last night and the scout car seemed much more useful, actually killing snipers and stuff. Looking forward to testing it myself.

And for those who might say "look at the Near damage, it's awesome point blank", that's why i mentioned the example with the mortar before.
CoH2Stats shows a "Near" range of 0 (for both guns of SdKfz and M3A1), which means you always have the accuarcy of firing at "Far" range.
At first I thought it might be a bug of CoH2Stats. But after desprately trying to kill that mortar at close range I really think it's correct.

Are you sure about that?
It feels to me like the accuracy does differ from "Near" to "Far". And my interpretation of that would be that, going for the AC:

It start's at 0.5 at 0 range and goes down linear till 0.2 at 35 range.
so a 0.00857 decrease in accuracy for each 1 range.

If that is not the case i would wonder what the "near" accuracy would be there for.

in a different thread a relic dev mentioned smth called "point blank" which would be be activated at range of 10 and would would grant the weapon full accuracy, whatever this means. I checked the Mosin and the Kar98 within the game files and both had a bool value called "point_blank" set to true. But i havnt checked that for the scout cars.

will do when i get home from work.

regards
ace

Interesting... so it is not linear.
Would like the linear approach rather than having a threshold at which the accuracy magically gets lowered.

Relic, you so silly!

Reveal to us your mysteries!

as in the other thread, coh2stats is missing key stats. calculating DPS correctly from it is impossible. also, min/max range (for calculating the accuracy) are missing too. basically, if you try to calculate anything from coh2stats, it is most likely wrong.

the stats it does grab are correct, it's just that key stats are missing.

To be honest, my only fuzz about the 222 (Upgrade) in particular is the severe specialization you're paying. Considering that Ostheer has a general overall-munition starvation through-out the game.

I remember back in Alpha, and I don't think we'd want to go down that route again if anyone was familiar with it. But nevertheless, I think it really does boil down to specific approaches on this. Either keep it a specialized upgrade, but adjust the munition cost for the 2cm canon. I don't know if I speak for everyone in the room, but I know once my scout car with the upgrade has killed the specific-target it was designed to kill, it loses alot of value and just runs around the battlefield doing close to nothing useful. Hell, I'm not even sad if I lose it.

The actual default upgrade isn't so bad esp. in conjunction with the rest of the german roster. (I'm not a big fan of direct-comparisons, since it's kinda moot when the factions play so differently anyway)
The Scout Car with it's default weapon has a good means of just being a plain nuissance and maintaing map control. But the chances of it controlling the map is often diminished as further the game progresses, but I suppose this is offset of it's cost & timing. It's T2 with a pity cost afterall, so I don't expect it to be massively super-strong, it's just meant to maintain some control, and pressure. Not ensuring battlefield skirmishes to turn in your favor.

Once you get vet rolling on it, and keep it alive. It's not that bad really, I really do like the normal scout cars. But once you progress through a certain state of the game (mid-late) that's when you probably shouldn't resort into getting scout cars at any point. You're more looking into the heavier hitters.

Sometimes, units aren't just meant to be brutal-efficient killers. Sometimes they're just more on the role of "Pressure/Map Control" type of role, and I just assume this is what the scout car does, and it does it relatively well if you ask me. I'm just weary of the fact if there's a buff increase down the road, it might be translated more into a "Skirmish" role, where you can effectively use to to cause more damage in the actual big fights, it might tip the favor of the Ostheer. Espicially such early-stages of the game.