How to understand scatter/area effect?

If I understand correctly scatter and area effect determine how effective a tank is against infantry. Looking at coh2 stats, there are allot of figures involved but I can see only 3 figures changing between tanks:

Scatter: distance max
Area Effect: distance far and distance near

What do those number mean and how do they effect each tank differently?

Thanks

Scatter is the max distance a tank shell can land in front or behind its intended target due to RNG.

AoE is the splash damage that the tank shell does upon impact. The splash does full damage at distance near, zero damage at distance far, and porportionate scaling in between.

Scatter is the max distance a tank shell can land in front or behind its intended target due to RNG.

AoE is the splash damage that the tank shell does upon impact. The splash does full damage at distance near, zero damage at distance far, and porportionate scaling in between.

Just want to add that this mostly concerns infantry since tanks have a low chance of scoring a hit on an soldier, therefore most of the damage they inflict to infantry is through the Area of effect on "missed" shots.

Scatter is the max distance a tank shell can land in front or behind its intended target due to RNG.

AoE is the splash damage that the tank shell does upon impact. The splash does full damage at distance near, zero damage at distance far, and porportionate scaling in between.

Thanks Johan. Based on this:

distance max: lower number is better because it means even if the tank misses, the shell will still land close to the target

distance far: higher number is better because the shell has a bigger area to do damage before making 0 damage

distance near: higher number is better because the shell has a bigger area to make full damage

Looking at some example, the t34-85 (2.6, 1.25, .625) will almost always make a kill for every hit where as the t34-76 (6.9, 1.25, .625) can easily miss shots.

Just want to add that this mostly concerns infantry since tanks have a low chance of scoring a hit on an soldier, therefore most of the damage they inflict to infantry is through the Area of effect on "missed" shots.

Because soldiers have very small size (1?) which also effects accuracy?

double post

Because soldiers have very small size (1?) which also effects accuracy?

Yes exactly.

I also remember in a developer stream that they talked about how a low scatter can actually work against you since when units are on the move, the tank would fire at where they were rather than hitting where they could be, such as the brummbar which has a near perfect scatter.

Scatter is the max distance a tank shell can land in front or behind its intended target due to RNG.

AoE is the splash damage that the tank shell does upon impact. The splash does full damage at distance near, zero damage at distance far, and porportionate scaling in between.

Couple corrections:

Scatter angle is the angle left or right of the target the shot may miss, dependant on range to target. Scatter distance is the distance front and back the shot may miss, with the distance set on the center of the target. The center of distance max may change bases on scatter offset, but typically this doesn't change much.

Area of effect does full damage from 0 to near aoe distance, then linearly scaling (same as accuracy range scaling) damage between near and far aoe ranges. At far range aoe weapons do .2 damage out to the aoe radius. Example:

T34 .625 near, 1.25 far, 2.5 radius. All aoe weapons have 1.0 damage multiplier near and. 2 damage multiplier far scaling.

From range 0 to .625 is 1.0 damage, from .625 to 1.25 range scales between the multipliers (i.e at range .9375 gives a. 6 multiplier), and from range 1.25 to 2.5 gives .2 damage.

Couple corrections:

Scatter angle is the angle left or right of the target the shot may miss, dependant on range to target. Scatter distance is the distance front and back the shot may miss, with the distance set on the center of the target. The center of distance max may change bases on scatter offset, but typically this doesn't change much.

Area of effect does full damage from 0 to near aoe distance, then linearly scaling (same as accuracy range scaling) damage between near and far aoe ranges. At far range aoe weapons do .2 damage out to the aoe radius. Example:

T34 .625 near, 1.25 far, 2.5 radius. All aoe weapons have 1.0 damage multiplier near and. 2 damage multiplier far scaling.

From range 0 to .625 is 1.0 damage, from .625 to 1.25 range scales between the multipliers (i.e at range .9375 gives a. 6 multiplier), and from range 1.25 to 2.5 gives .2 damage.

ok so you are saying from 0 distance up to near distance rating gives full damage and from near to far distance rating gives linearly scaling decrease in damage until it hits zero once it hits the far limit.

What is the accuracy scaling you are referring to?

He is referring to Area of Effect. So for example you have an explosion: Soviet Mortar stats

Let's say the mortar shell lands somewhere and causes an explosion. Its Area Effect Near Distance is 1.5 and the Damage Near multiplier is 1.0. So inside a circle of the radius 1.5 the explosion deals 100% of the mortar shell's damage, so 80 damage if the target is inside.

Its "Distance Far" is 3.0 and the damage multiplier for "far" is 0.25. So if the target is standing exactly 3 from the explosion's center, (and if hit), it takes 25% of the mortar's damage, 20.
Actually it even takes those 25% damage if it is farther away than the distance of 3 because the third zone, (Area Radius) is 6. So a unit between 3 and 6 from the center can take 20 damage.

Between "Far" (3.0) and "Near" (1.5) it scales in a linear manner. You can see this at the top of the page I linked: The blue damage line is at a high level (100%) until it reaches a distance of 1.5, then drops linear until it is at 25% at 3.0 and then stays at 25% all the way out to 6.

The same counts for the explosion's accuracy: It has a "Near" accuracy of 5 and a "Far" accuracy of 0.6. So between "Near distance (1.5)" and "Far distance (3.0)" the accuracy of the explosion decreases but inside the Near circle and in the ring between 3 and 6 distance units, it is constant.
This means that if the target is between 3 to 6 distance units from the explosion's center, the explosion has a chance of only 60% to deal damage at all. This is why sometimes some units don't take damage despite being "closer" to the explosion and some "farther" away still take damage. It is just random.

The "accuracy/damage scaling" is basically just a linear interpolation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_interpolation
This can be applied to most stats (accuracy, splash damage, cooldown multipliers) in the game, from the accuracy of small arms to the biggest explosions.

He is referring to Area of Effect. So for example you have an explosion: Soviet Mortar stats

Let's say the mortar shell lands somewhere and causes an explosion. Its Area Effect Near Distance is 1.5 and the Damage Near multiplier is 1.0. So inside a circle of the radius 1.5 the explosion deals 100% of the mortar shell's damage, so 80 damage if the target is inside.

Its "Distance Far" is 3.0 and the damage multiplier for "far" is 0.25. So if the target is standing exactly 3 from the explosion's center, (and if hit), it takes 25% of the mortar's damage, 20.
Actually it even takes those 25% damage if it is farther away than the distance of 3 because the third zone, (Area Radius) is 6. So a unit between 3 and 6 from the center can take 20 damage.

Between "Far" (3.0) and "Near" (1.5) it scales in a linear manner. You can see this at the top of the page I linked: The blue damage line is at a high level (100%) until it reaches a distance of 1.5, then drops linear until it is at 25% at 3.0 and then stays at 25% all the way out to 6.

The same counts for the explosion's accuracy: It has a "Near" accuracy of 5 and a "Far" accuracy of 0.6. So between "Near distance (1.5)" and "Far distance (3.0)" the accuracy of the explosion decreases but inside the Near circle and in the ring between 3 and 6 distance units, it is constant.
This means that if the target is between 3 to 6 distance units from the explosion's center, the explosion has a chance of only 60% to deal damage at all. This is why sometimes some units don't take damage despite being "closer" to the explosion and some "farther" away still take damage. It is just random.

The "accuracy/damage scaling" is basically just a linear interpolation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_interpolation
This can be applied to most stats (accuracy, splash damage, cooldown multipliers) in the game, from the accuracy of small arms to the biggest explosions.

Hey thanks allot man, that was really helpful!

See comment in bold, do all soldiers in the area get each 80 damage, or is the 80 damage spread over the number of soldiers in the area?

Every soldier in the area gets 80 damage. That's how it wipes out squads.

Every soldier in the area gets 80 damage. That's how it wipes out squads.

ok, that makes sense.


On a related note, the tiger and t34 share the same scatter and area stats, except that tiger has better scatter distance 4.3 vs 6.9. Given that the tiger damage is higher, that means the tiger should be much better in killing infantry, but in practice I don't find it particularly better. Are there any additional factors influencing this?

Tiger is shooting at larger squads, t34 shoots at smaller squads. Larger squad is more likely to spread out versus a smaller one.