50-60 range difference gives you the ability to kite, as well as a good chance to not constantly get fired at by enemy ATGs
45-50 range difference means you get the first shot off, but unless you have godly micro you won't be able to kite your opponent. You will also always be in the range of ATGs.
And while Panthers are an issue in team games, for most modes your points are exaggerated. The Panther is a dedicated AT counter, obviously it should be able to go toe to toe with generalist tanks that cost more.
All while The Tiger I seems to do the same as the cheapest generalist tank off the Axis roster. While Allied Heavy tanks get consistently beaten by the Tiger I itself.
Even when i agree on the range part , still seems just because off the extra range every single Allied tank get's dunked and penalized in stats into oblivion while adding some extra utility/abilities to balance out the part that they are so heavily penalized as because without it do not even stand a chance against the Axis roster in terms off raw stats.
This kind off assymetrical design is just stupid , we even overpay on these abilities just to be able to counter what's coming. These is no fair distribution in these rosters when it comes to raw stats/ability balance just Axis ridiculously high Raw stats > Alllies abilities & utility , nothing in between.
Meanwhile people seem to agree here that it's completely fine to just dump every single stat into AI & AOE for a heavy tank and call it balanced cause you know it's oh so effective against AI so it should lose against every AT & Heavy AT on the battlefield. No , just no ... this is wrong just stupid from my point off view.
If this is the case then i advocate to have the sturmtiger do almost no damage against AT or lower health/armour values to a point every single AT has 50/50 chance to pen , cause you know it overperforms on the AI side off things i mean look at those stats?
I mean could even add in Allied "Heavy tanks" as non-doctrinal 11 CP extra's just like the KT , i mean does it even matter , just a glorified worse Tiger 1 anyway? It's that bad , that the cost for it is laughable and is told to be balanced cause it's good at A) but not at B) so it should completely suck at C) cause when doing the math it seems to have even numbers if i just add a couple off abilities on top.