Profile of Olekman

Well of course there aren't. This is an arcade game based on WW2. Sturmtiger was like that. It's not a product of somebodies imagination. It's a slow moving hulk that shoots nukes that wipe everything in the radius. AVRE shoots nukes as well, and it has better agility but lower Area of Effect and lower damage. The developers decided to include it and as such all the people calling it OP or UP need to cope with it. Unless you'll go develop your own game, with blackjack and hookers and no sturmtiger, then fine, but as long as it fits in the devs vision of the game, there isn't really anything that can be done. Same as how whereaboos call Calliope OP only based on it's survivability, neglecting price, timing and population. Or allyboos call USF Armour UP (mostly steam forum). Or whatever people complain these days behind the safety net of internet anonymity.

Just to note - I'm talking about are for projectile collision, so rockets undershooting when fired on slopes and rockets being blocked by environment objects (like wrecks or fountains), not a unit redesign.

Prompted by the recent discussion on Sturmtiger, I looked around for workarounds for two main complaints: undershooting when firing from a slope and environment objects blocking shots. Sadly there's no silver bullet, but I still want to share what I found. Maybe other modders will find this useful.

For undershooting on slopes, I found two possible fixes:
1. In Sturmtiger's projectile:
- projectile_ext/artillery/is_artillery - change from "True" to "False".
With that, the shots land almost exactly where you aim them every time. However, this causes the second problem - shots being blocked by objects - to be even more prevalent. As the rocket no longer travels in an arc but in a straight line, if there's pretty much anything in the way (wreck, wall, fountain, well, dead cow...), it will hit that instead. The arc does look a bit nicer too, but I think that having a rocket that always land where it should is more important. Plus, this would allow modifying the rocket's speed, which could be used for further balancing.

2. In Sturmtiger's projectile:
- projectile_ext/artillery/firing_angle_type - change from "low_angle" to "lowest_non_collide_angle".
Again, shots land almost perfectly (although less accurately as in the previous case), but there are 2 big problems with this. First of all, this will allow Sturmtiger to shoot above shot-blockers like buildings. Secondly, it will no longer shoot through line-of-sight blockers like hedges, but instead shoot above them too. If fired very close to hedge, the calculated angle can be super high, causing the rocket to land after several seconds of travel time. In extreme cases, when the game can't find a non-collide angle, it automatically sets it to highest value (89 degrees), which causes the rocket to hilariously fall right in front of the Sturmtiger. All in all, not that great of a fix, but useful info for anyone willing to turn Sturmtiger into a mobile B4 Howitzer.

For environment objects blocking the rocket, things get more finnicky.
First of all, every projectile has a collision_type. Every object (hedge, tree, wreck, building, etc.) has hit_object_ext, which dictates which collision types pass through and which blocked instead. There are exactly 7 collision types in the game: tp_artillery, tp_artillery_inf, tp_artillery_overwatch, tp_homing, tp_homing_inf, tp_sticky, tp_throw. There's no way of adding more. About 95% of all projectiles in the game fall under tp_artillery (mostly artillery, including Sturmtiger and AVRE), tp_homing (mostly tank guns) and tp_throw (mostly grenades). What's important is that there's one collision_type that's literally not used by anything - tp_artillery_inf.

1. Now, one ardours way of fixing Sturmtiger's (and AVRE's, though it has it a bit better because its main gun is located higher) projectiles getting blocked by random objects would be to set its projectile collision_type to tp_artillery_inf and for every object in the game manually set whether tp_artillery_inf should pass through or be blocked. Theoretically it's doable and offers 100% customization. Practically, modifying every object in the game is not recommended and is asking for trouble.

2. Alternatively, tp_artillery collision type stays with Sturmtiger, but a manageable number of notorious blocking objects gets modified to allow that collision type to pass through. It would be far less invasive, but on the other hand it would also affect other weapons (e.g. howitzers, mortars, rocket artillery).

3. One more potentially useful collision type is tp_throw. While it is mostly used for grenades, grenade projectiles have another weird trait to them. They have "use_collision_building_wall_panel_ignore" set to "True", which effectively ignores collision_type settings of buildings. So even though all buildings in the game are set to block tp_throw projectiles, grenades still pass through them. Outside buildings, there are very few objects that block tp_throw collision type. As such, if Sturmtiger's projectile is changed to tp_throw, it would be still blocked by buildings, but would phase through pretty much everything else - hedges, trees, wrecks, dead cows, wells, fountains etc. Sadly, that also includes solid walls like these, which infantry can't vault, but can still lob grenades over them:

Another side effect is that those projectiles would no longer detonate when hitting enemy vehicles. It's only important in rare cases when a vehicle crosses flight path of the rocket - if a vehicle is at or close to the target location, it will still be dealt massive damage and stun as usual.

To sum up - if slope undershot solution #1 is combined with one of the object blockers solutions (preferably #2 or #3), Sturmtiger and AVRE would likely be in better place. I bet that other modders already tried tackling those issues, so there's a good chance that those "fixes" are more problematic than what I could discern, but maybe I'm lucky enough to bring something new to modders.

Because Relic made a mess of the Sturmtiger's design (although it should've never been added in the first place) and now we're stuck with it because there's no way to change core functions like animations.

Sadly, the most relevant post in this thread and all involved.

Hammer and Anvil would have been a fine and interesting design for UKF teching if it was a little more fleshed out, perhaps either being an early (and linear) choice that changed (almost) all your units, or being a branching system to tailor your army in certain ways... but as it stands it's just a lategame choice between two tanks (And a couple of other gimmicks for each, but the Comet and Churchill are the main things you choose one or the other for).

I think UKF needed several more months of design and iteration before release.

I think that instead of having a strict choice and then following a linear teching path from it, it would be better if choices at T1 were more impactful. Instead of "Bofors or AEC" (which soon won't be exclusive, but that's for the better), it would be more interesting if there was "mini-Anvil or mini-Hammer" to further drive the "two armies in one" as Relic used to promote Brits. Something like unit + passive/upgrade. Bolster would be a great candidate for such "mini-Anvil" in my opinion, but that train departed many years ago. It's better to focus on making the Brits better with their current design (as much as I dislike it).

How about instead of making it a global ability, it would only take effect in a targeted sector and/or adjacent ones? Sectors could highlight, informing other player that they should expect an ambush there.

Alternatively, it could only affect units in certain circular zone, leaving a custom marker on the minimap and tacmap, allowing other players to easily pinpoint the "danger zone".

Or, if we want to scale it down even more, make it an ability that targets a friendly unit, granting it temporary minimap invisibility, speed boost and camo. This would preserve it offensive nature and theme of driving deep behind enemy lines for a surprise attack.