This is a good point IMHO. While getting 7 bounces in a row isn't exactly likely with a bit under a 1% chance, it's not astronomically improbable, either. Yet the perception about how rare such occurrences are often depends if people find themselves on the receiving end of RNG or not.
TTK is certainly not the only and most important performance figure, but I'd argue it is also far from irrelevant and can be quite suitable to prove a point (at least as long as it is put into the right perspective). It should, however, more be seen as a surrogate for DPS/DPM that also takes things like over damage into account than as a simple measure of 'how long does it take A to kill B'. After all, the fact that firefights usually don't last more than 20 s doesn't mean it can't serve as a good benchmark for comparing the relative performance of different units against a similar target.
In the end, though, you're of course right in that TTK shouldn't be taken as the only measure and things like alpha damage or the variety of mobility and other non-combat relevant stats also play an important role.
Getting 7 bounces in a row doesn't seem likely, but if you have 100 Sherman shots in a game, the odds of it happening to you are about 50%. Since most people here don't use Excel, I decided to see if I could make the same spreadsheet in Sheets. Here it is:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Doyd3MrUB83xvzYpcqS3TkeXsWtziEI-uCbJPbqusr0/edit?usp=sharing
It can be recalculated by hitting the refresh button if you're looking in a browser. Scroll down and see the streaks of bounces or penetrations. You can change the odds by editing the "if" statement.
You're right that I overstated the "irrelevant" part. It has relevance when talking about infantry as target since reinforcing costs manpower. There is less relevance when talking about tanks since repairs are free. It can be a substitute for DPS as you pointed out. |
Let's put this into a test setup: 20 meters distance (120 penetration vs 180 armor), flat terrain, only frontal shots possible, only actual hits counting. We count 50 hits, assuming that the players in the discussion above would have their last roughly 50 shots in mind when thinking about the engagements. We do 20 tests to form each player's experience.
Basic statistics tells us that the real penetration chance is 66.7%, meaning 50*(120/180) = 33.33 shots should penetrate with a standard deviation of 3.33 shots (10% of the mean in our case). This means that almost one third of the players discussing will have had the Sherman penetrate less than 30 times or more than ~37 times. One player will have had the experience of the Sherman hitting less than 27 times or more than 40 times and probably be screeching about the trash Sherman or saying it were OP.
Even if all discussion was fully rational (good luck with that), players will regularly report a penetration chance anywhere between less than 60-75%.
This is human nature - remembering anything that seems out of the ordinary. I once had 5 shock troops killed by a single Panzershrek shot because they walked around a corner and were stacked on each other when it hit. Clearly the Panzershrek should've been nerfed! I just couldn't motivate myself to start a thread over it so justice wasn't served.....
Normal people (meaning everyone that didn't have to take a statistics to get their degree) often underestimate how common "uncommon" results are. Take the normal heads or tails. Theoretically it's 50/50. Would you ever expect to roll 9 tails in a row? You can simulate this in Excel by putting "=rand()" in cell A1 and "=round(A1,0)" in cell B1, copy that down 99 cells. Rand will recalculate every time you hit F9. If my Sherman had a 50/50 chance of penetrating a Tiger and I fired 100 shots, I would've got 9 bounces in a row on my third recalculation. Streaks of 9 are somewhat uncommon, but 5-7 are really common.
Excel will also simulate your test. Replace the Round function with "=IF(B1>0.667,1,0)" and add "=COUNTIF(B1:B100,1)" to any cell near the top. Hit F9 a bunch of times and see how bad or good your Sherman is. In short, Excel is OP.
The two counter arguments I'd make against just looking at the numbers in Excel are about the effect of alpha damage and time to kill being irrelevant. In a RTS, alpha damage has an outsized effect because it greatly increases the risk of losing a squad. That was a lot of the problem with the old IS2. It seemed to go miss, miss, wipe on squads a lot, but sometimes it started with the wipe. The other problem is that people like to argue about the time to kill. I've seen multiple comparisons where people are comparing TTK times in the 20-40 seconds and trying to use that to make a point. In an actual game, 20 seconds may as well be an eternity, as nobody has reactions that are that slow. The bazooka was once nerfed because Relic thought the TTK was too short.
Back to original topic - Based on how often the commanders are picked, it doesn't seem like the majority of the top 200 think the IS2 is trash. It's just that the commanders have fallen into the "B" tier. Trash is more like Conscript Support, Tank Hunters, any Partisan commander, etc.
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With the low player count and my CELO rankings from 82 to 3171, there are lots of times I play against players who are beginners. Based on those observations, I wouldn't recommend OKW as a beginner faction at all.
OKW is better than average only in 4v4's. Even then, it is only because of map shape and a couple units. The LEFH, Sturmtiger, and Walking Stuka are what make them good in 4's, but mostly in maps like Port of Hamburg where the LEFH will eventually range everywhere and the other team has to funnel into the middle from a few points so you can just bombard those areas (assuming that the other side doesn't know how to counter LEFH's). Those map shapes are also good for the Walking Stuka. The Sturmtiger is still good on a few maps, but not as much of a go-to as before.
Other than that, OKW doesn't seem that great right now. I play most games as Soviets and they always have counters for OKW. When I'm playing as axis, OST feels the same as Soviets. Both of them are easy to pick commanders that counter what the other team does, whether it's Storm or Guard Rifle Combined Arms, Spearhead or Guard Motor, etc, etc. OKW's weakness is that it doesn't always have counters, particularly when playing with randoms. |
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A lot of other RTS's let you zoom out and in as much as you want. Overall, I'd rather have this than the COH2 zoom levels, which seem really small even in comparison to COH1. |
Exactly. If I join and see 2 of my teammates less than level 20 and they start their build by spamming engies or mortars you bet your ass im dropping, especially if it's a map like port of hamburger or shitball express.
This is the second most frustrating type of player to play with. The worst is when the game goes on for 40 minutes, but it feels like you've spent the last 10 minutes playing by yourself, then you look back and see your teammate has 5 Katy's so you now know why it feels like that. Inevitably, someone gets a Panther behind the front lines and you teammate pings it constantly because they want you to kill it while they run with their 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,0 Katy's, then calling you a Noob after the Katy's are gone. |
You're right about the shell count. For some reason I was under the assumption that the latest patch equalized both arty pieces, I should probably have used common sense and checked this quickly before posting. My apologies! In any case, this should of course tilt the probability slightly in favor of the leFH.
As to the second part, this comes down to the question if this can be broken down into a simple binomial distribution (A beats B) instead of two nested distributions that each have their own variance (A beats B before B beats A). After giving this some thought I think you are correct and this case is much more straightforward than I assumed. 8/10 should indeed be quite a bit more unlikely given a 50/50 chance and 10 trials. Good points overall and a healthy reminder to double-check one's assumptions every now and then.
Mistakes on patch notes and effects happen. I've done that myself a couple times. Have a nice day |
They didn't really convert the AoE2 base though. The DE version has only slightly decreasing player numbers. It does not explain where those ~20k AoE4 players come from. These must, for the most part, be players that are either new to AoE or older gamers that decided to pick the game up.
I think CoH2 will remain after CoH3 is released. I think the Mediterranean theatre is interesting, but probably not as widely known as the western and especially eastern front.
CoH3 however has quite an advantage over AoE4 though. AoE4 had to somehow outperform a VERY highly acclaimed and polished AoE2. CoH3 on the other hand has to outperform "only" CoH2, which still lacks a lot of features and fixes.
That's were CoH3 can really shine. I hope Relic realizes that.
OUCH! This wasn't aimed at me but it felt like it was. I hadn't played AOE in so long that I can't remember if it was AOE or AOE2. AOE4 is a good game. I'm a lot happier with it than the vintage games that Blizzard has been remaking. |
While I don't question your test result in the slightest, I doubt you drew the right conclusions from it.
In theory, both arty pieces should have a near 50/50 chance of winning a direct duel since they are virtual carbon copies of each other in every combat-relevant stat (now even more so with the number of shots per salvo being equalized as well). Still, that's not likely what you're going to see if you test it, say, 10 times in a row. An 80% dominance for either side out of 10 trials isn't much more unlikely than getting the expected 50/50 outcome. The reason is that each individual fight has a huge variance in possible outcomes due to RNG, ranging from 2-shot wipes within the first 2 shells fired to not even scratching the HP pool with a full barrage. You'd need to perform more than 100 or even 1,000 tests to get an accurate picture of the actual win chance.
The analogy would be to set up a duel between two KV-1s, for which the actual T2K should have a variance of similar magnitude. Even though the expected win chance is squarely 50%, taking the average out of 10 trials will almost certainly differ wildly from that.
Hence, unless you tested it (way) more than at least a hundred times I'd be careful to claim the leFH is way superior to the ML-20 in a direct arty duel.
You're still wrong. The ML-20 always fires less, it just isn't as bad as it was before. The ML-20 always fires 9 now instead of starting at 8. The LEFH fires 10. The last test I did was several patches ago so it wouldn't be quite as bad on an artillery duel, but all the other points remain the same. The LEFH vets faster, particularly if you can set it up within range of the USF base. Also, nobody builds arty to counter other arty. Arty is at best a soft counter to other arty so talking about an arty duel is just a red herring.
As for your comment An 80% dominance for either side out of 10 trials isn't much more unlikely than getting the expected 50/50 outcome., all you did was tell everyone that you've never taken a statistics class. Binomial distributions are covered in the first couple weeks. The probability of 80% for one side is 4.4% versus 24.6% for a 50/50 split. Those two numbers really aren't about the same. |
Do howitzer FoW penalties apply for each shell going out individually or when the barrage is cast? It can be quite difficult to hold recon planes up nowadays with how potent AA has become.
I'm pretty sure that it is when the individual shell is fired, based on having used cheatmod and toggling FOW. |
I think you quoted Sander out of context. His post was clearly about which of the two arty pieces has a better chance of winning a direct arty duel and why, not so much which is the better investment in a game.
Also, your facts aren't up to date or free of a good dose of bias either. The LeFH has only one extra shell per barrage (and at Vet 1 the ML-20 gets an extra shell at which point both are more or less equal). I'm not sure if the difference in squad size of the targets both guns are facing even makes any difference, as most often this is offset by lower XP value per entity for larger squads. Also, with the same line of arguing you could claim the ML-20 is actually the one that vets up faster since it will deal more damage per shot vs vehicles.
Not even close to being correct.
I used to test them head-to-head on two computers with two accounts. The LEFH won roughly 80% of the time. Also, your argument about vehicles is specious. In the rare case that it hits a vehicle, players simply move it. Hitting a lot of infantry does make the howitzers vet faster.
The only points in this thread that seem correct are the ones that Descolata makes. It's marginally okay against OKW when they stack their trucks. |
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