Profile of woolypeanut

Ost' vs USF | Minsk Pocket

Alright so this one ain't a troll post for those who recognize my name just an FYI

Righty, so here's a replay of myself playing Wehrmacht against Soviets, pretty straightforward, now I get pushed off the map pretty early unfortunately.

The guy goes Guard Motor, the current meta(?), very very strong because of buffed guards, 120mm mortar and the brutal t-34/85 call in, those two tanks will shit on an unsupported tiger.

The guy goes inf heavy and until my tank comes out there's not much I can do. I'm not able to deal with the shear weight of his inf even with LMG grens, legit the only way that I can fight him is with MGs, I get 3 that's how much I rely on suppressing his inf.

I have to ask what I'm doing wrong? Grens even with the LMG don't have the DPS to discourage his blobbing. I understand cobined arms as Ostheer is important, but without MGs I just can't do anything.

If I hadn't had a tiger commander, I would have been completely fucked as it was my only real source of survivable damage that allowed me to push forward. Mech assault may have worked well too as the Stug gives some serious damage which can deter enemy infantry.

•  
  

  0

  VS

  Mark

  ISIS Foreign Affairs Dept.

  Soviets.......

  by: woolypeanut map: Langreskaya

  1

  -

(Sorry if I didn't link the replay correctly)

Additionally I must ask, aside from suppressing infantry, what options does Ostheer have? LMG grens are great but simply don't have the pushing power that you need you quickly dislodge the enemy.

Made a few mistakes this game, as you do. What the hell should I do against soviet players??

finally, thankyou someone for providing the information I want via stats.
I must just be incredibly unlucky, I've had disgusting luck with Pak guns vs IS-2s and also some unfortunate experiences with the tigers main gun bouncing frequently, I can upload a replay if people really want but it doesn't seem necessary.

It seems like the tiger being shit is more of a problem, really though as if that thing doesn't under perform... Doesn't help that I had a game where a several Zis literally did not fail to pen my panther a single time (frontal hits mostly). I'll ask about stats next time.

So based on performance there are some factors that need to be taken into account when comparing Zis Guns and Pak 40s.

For TLR skip to the BALANCING PROBLEM section...

Both of these AT guns perform very consistently against light vehicles and medium armour, the Pak very occasionally bounces T-34s but they have slopped armour so this can be deemed reasonable. If the Zis can bounce Pz4s I have not yet seen it happen in my 263 hours played but this isn't an issue.

FOR REFERENCE:

Against heavy armour there are some serious problems.
The Pak 40 statistically had 132mm of penetration at a 90 degree angle at 500 metres, so had to be far closer to penetrate IS-2 frontal armour. From a balance point of view it's very reasonable that a basic AT gun isn't likely to penetrate the frontal armour of a heavy tank. The pak doesn't have any issues with the KV series and performs fairly. When not comparing the Pak to the Zis, there are no issues.

The Soviet Zis gun, on the other hand, barely bounces when firing upon a tigers frontal armour, that's 100mm at a 90 degree angle. The Zis gun could not touch a tigers frontal armour unless it managed to strike a critical point like a vision port, so by that logic a Zis gun should not penetrate the tiger from the front most of the time. Zis guns only had 82mm of perpendicular penetration even at 100m.

Don't even get me started on the panther, 140mm (effective) sloped armour, Zis guns still seem to bounce very infrequently.
Then to make things even worse there's the elefant, 200mm of armour (even though not sloped). Zis Guns are a serious threat to even these beasts from the front.


BALANCING PROBLEM:

Now real life aside, it should be obvious what the issue is here. Zis guns effectively out perform Pak 40s simply because they actually hurt heavy tanks which they fire at. The Pak is regarded as the best AT gun in the game and while it does have the stun, in every other respect the Zis is just better

Pak40:
4 man crew
pens all tanks consistently excluding IS-2 and ISU (which it is useless against when firing at frontal armour)
stun ability

Zis Gun:
6 man crew, very good survivability vs mortars and grenades
Only has issues with the king tiger, it's a king tiger after all.

Based on the fact that Zis Guns can shut down panthers tigers and even elefants (although not so much elefants because you can sit outside Zis Gun range) while IS-2s will sit there bouncing consecutive frontal hits, the Zis gun is actually the better of the two AT guns.

The IS-2s armour could be considered the problem however it is a heavy tank and it;s fair enough that AT guns should have trouble, but this should be universal! The Zis gun does not deserve it's crazy effectiveness and superior usefulness over the Pak 40. The soviets have a tank destroyer option with an 85mm gun which they should be forced to rely on for dealing with heavier tanks as 2 AT guns should not be an immediate pain in the arse for german heavy armour, especially considering the soviets DO have other options which are redundant because the Zis gun's crazy goodness.
The Germans on the other hand, rely completely on the Pak 40 for long ranged AT support (unless elefant), while panzershreks are a decent supplement AT tool they still have issues with heavy armour and are not really worth the cost on pgrens, not to mention they really don't operate like tanks destroyers, more like glorified AT guns.

This issue really needs a fix, especially because of the poor neglected SU-85...