Profile of Lago

I think the mistake here is using the basic Sherman as a benchmark for medium tank performance.

The HE rounds make it the best stock medium in the game by a country mile. The reason it was never put in UKF Lend Lease is because it'd render the Cromwell and Centaur obsolete.

Compare the Easy Eight to any other stock medium and it stacks up much more favourably.

All the community balance teams have flip-flopped on Tank Hunter's howitzer.

The B4 is more thematically appropriate.

The ML-20 is actually good.

Which wins out?

It's an interesting idea.

Flak HT/Puma/Stuka's a solid tier: quick shock vehicle that shuts down infantry hard and a Puma to defend it. It's less mobile than the Luchs build, but definitely stronger at defending its turf. You'd almost certainly need an AT gun to fight that combo.

As for if the Luchs is a good replacement for the Flak HT? That's harder. It's certainly more capable against LVs than the Flak HT, but it's vulnerable to AT infantry in a way the Flak HT isn't.

Let's take a look at the numbers.




I'll assume everyone here knows how CoH 2's AoE system works: units standing closer to where the shell hits take more damage.

These are the damage values for the new King Tiger's main gun.



These numbers are quite hard to make sense of in this state, so I'll put them on a graph.





Compare this with the pre-patch King Tiger.



This makes the old gun look waaay better, but it's a little misleading. Infantry models only have 80 health, so anything over that is overkill.

Let's zoom in on 80 damage and below.



The point where the damage curve crosses 80 damage is the 80 Damage Radius. Any model closer to the shell than this gets killed in one shot.

As you can see here, the old KT has a substantially better 80 Damage Radius. It's almost double that of the new KT. If you're judging a gun on one-shot wipes, the old KT wins hands down.

But take a look at what happens after that. The old KT's damage drops off really fast. It kills what it hits, but does very little to what it doesn't hit.

If the 80 Damage Radius is a good metric for how good a vehicle is at one-shotting squads, the 40 damage radius is a good metric for how good a vehicle is at two-shotting squads. Look at how high the new KT's 40 damage radius is.

The new KT seems to be designed with a similar philosophy to the Brummbar: not much better than a medium tank at one-shotting, but lethal on the second hit.


Now let's address the OP's issue and compare it to the T-70.



The T-70 fires 2.6 times faster than the King Tiger, so I've added a line that multiplies the T-70's damage by that amount.

It paints a similar picture: 2.6 * T-70 has a similar 80 Damage Radius, so it'll feel about as wipey as a KT. However, the KT hits a much larger area.

I'll leave you with this: the New KT versus the High Explosive Shell Sherman.

Emplacements definitely need a redesign.

Personally, I think the model to follow for anti-infantry emplacements is that of the OKW Flak: cheap emplacements you can afford to lose.