(max range) 0.04*18 (target size) = 0.72. Means 28% (100%-72%) of shots are going to scatter. If 1/3 of scatter shots are going to hit
0.28*0.33 = ~0.09. 0.09+72 = 0.81*100 = 81%
So we have ( 0.04*18 + 0.33*( 1 - 0.04*18 ) ) *100% =~ 81%
This sounds correct. Based on my calculator (pardon the shameless plug) the scatter hit chance should be about 24% at 60 m. So a roughly 80% total hit chance seems quite accurate. Not a guaranteed hit but still far from coin-flip odds for sure!
MMX here once again to present you another handy spreadsheet for your daily dose of CoH2 unit comparisons - this time on the menu: tank vs tank combat!
So without any further ado, here is what this thing can do:
Calculate the chance to hit (including scatter) and penetrate a chosen target at a given distance, allowing an estimate of the number of shots (S2K) and time (T2K) required to kill the target.
Calculate the probability that the target is killed after n shots fired or n seconds elapsed and display the results in fancy graphs for better visualization.
Simulate a fight between two tanks at a given distance and and selected modifiers to calculate the average chance to win and the most probable HP margin.
An update with new features, much faster simulation speed, improved deflection hit calculation and a couple of bugfixes is now available here!
How to use the Pen Calculator?
Opening the spreadsheet, you should be greeted with the general interface of the calculator tab as in the picture below:
To calculate and visualize the hit and pen chance, as well as the average S2K, T2K and probability distributions, simply select the distance (col B), the attacker (col D:H) and target unit (col J:N) as desired and choose additional target modifiers, such as moving or FoW penalties (col O) as well as the facing (front or rear; col P) if necessary.
While the results are calculated and updated instantly, there is also the option to switch to a numerical simulation in situations where the standard calculation algorithm is inaccurate. This is the case for units with deflection damage (for example; the KV-2 as in the image below), for which I haven't figured out a way to calculate the results via standard binomials and, thus, deflected hits aren't properly modeled.
To generate the necessary data just switch the data source (col R) from "Calculator" to "Simulator", press the "Simulate" button and twiddle your thumbs for 1 or 2 minutes (or less, if you lower the # of iterations in the "Simulator" tab) until the sim finishes.
In order to customize the probability plots there are additional drop-down menus on the very left that allow switching between time elapsed and shots fired on the x-axis and continuous or stepwise display of the probability curves.
Last but not least, the "Head-to-head" tab, an hommage to (or rather a shameless rip-off of) Hannibal's DeCoHde 2.0 , contains a small simulator that can be used to calculate the win probability of a specific match up between two tanks by running a short numerical sim.
As in the calculator tab, simply choose the two contestants and desired conditions before pressing "Fight!!", and the sim should spit out the results in less than 2 minutes.
What can the Pen Calculator not (yet) do?
While most parameters in tank vs. tank engagements are relatively easy to compute, scatter has proven to be a bit tricky to incorporate into a rigid model, not least because the actual sizes and shapes of the tank's hit boxes aren't known very well. The fact these had to be estimated along with a couple of other simplifications means that the displayed scatter hit probabilities (and the results derived with them) should always be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, in-game testing seems to confirm that the results are convincingly close and should serve as a good benchmark when comparing the combat effectiveness of certain tanks with each other.
As this is kind of a work in progress, further improvements along the way as well as a couple of other features currently still on my 'wishlist' (such as engagements at different angles other than 0 and 180°) are definitely planned if time permits.
Anyway, before signing off another big shout out to Hannibal for bringing many of the outdated info in the data page up to date.
And as always, any feedback or error report is very much appreciated!
--MMX--
EDIT 11/25/2021: Just noticed that some last-minute formatting totally screwed up the VBA cell references in the "Head-to-Head" tab, causing the simulator not to work at all -.-
Fixed version now live.
EDIT 12/09/2021: An update to the spreadsheet is now online.
- Small overhaul to the UI of the Calculator and Head-to-Head tabs with additional graphs for the average S2K and T2K values
- Fixed an issue with the calculation algorithm that lead to the overestimation of AT performance for units with deflection damage (i.e. ISU-152, KV-2, Brummbär and 105mm Dozer Sherman)
- Fixed the simulated probability curves not being displayed correctly when set to non-continuous plotting mode
- Fixed an issue where the Facing selector in the Head-to-Head tab where applied to the wrong tank.
- Updated some errors in the data tab and added a preset for the Easy 8 in Focused Gunnery mode
EDIT 12/15/2021: Another small update can be found here that vastly increases the speed of the numerical simulation (~ 10x faster!) used throughout the spreadsheet. Alongside, a number of changes introduced with the last patch have now finally made into the data tab of the spreadsheet as well (hope I got all of them this time -.-)
How can B-4 fire 4 shots and you claimed it was "nerfed". B-4 used to fire a SINGLE SHOT!
It's 3 shots, not 4 and the AoE was nerfed hard with respect to its effectiveness against anything on wheels. It's arguably better vs infantry now if you count all 3 shots thanks to the larger total AoE and added suppression, but on the flip side it won't one-shot full-health squads nearly as often anymore. So overall not the OP cannon of doom you make it out to be, except maybe under very specific circumstances.
Ofc you could have easily known all that from a quick glance over the patch notes, but I guess that's too much to ask nowadays.
I like how vipper actually believes that DPS is a viable thing to talk about when discussing indirect fire.
Indirect weapons are not measured by DPS, because they do NOT provide reliable damage.
You either get hit or not, rarely can your squad stay in combat once its being hit by any indirect, which makes scatter most important stat and RoF second one.
There is no such thing as "DPS" on indirect weapon, unless you're firing at british emplacement or OKW truck.
just to add to what hannibal already wrote; while dps isn't automatically the most important stat it will always be a viable criterion to judge about any unit that somehow dishes out damage. and this is of course also true for indirect fire pieces, maybe even especially so since dps combines scatter, aoe and rof into an easy-to-compare metric. sure you can take scatter alone as the to-go stat, but then you'd end up with sth like the leig outperforming every other indirect fire unit by a far margin - which you'd probably admit isn't really painting an accurate picture.
it's certainly true that the graphs vipper cited don't really give a good impression about the reliability to hit something, which would absolutely be worthwhile to compare as well. in hindsight, adding error bars to capture the variance or standard deviation of the dps values, as hannibal suggested, would have been a good idea; i decided against it back then since it would have cluttered the graphs even more. but that still doesn't change the fact that the average dps curves vipper cited give a good first impression how well the different mortars perform compared to each other (albeit some of the data may be a bit outdated by now)
you are technically correct, because 120mm shines because of longer mid and far AOE radius, but mortars do not do 68 on direct hit, they do that damage at a point of "Distance near" radius.
That means basic mortar deals 68 damage at range of 1 and 120mm at range of 1.5. From that point towards point of impact (0) it rises in linear fashion to 80. So hypothetically if mortar hits a dude right in the dome, it should kill him even if he is fresh out of the base.
Personally I never paid attention if it happened, even tho I'm perpetual "build with a single 120mm" type of a guy.
Some stats:
If I'm wrong, pls correct, since this is how I see the situation through numbers.
This is a tricky one and I used to believe it works like this as well until I tested it a while back. As it turns out, no matter how clumped a squad is and how many models eat a mortar shell straight to the face, they'll all live to tell the tale if they've been at full health before. Max damage per shot is indeed capped at the AoE_near damage value, which is 68 for all mortar shells (except things like delayed fuse or heat rounds).
I'm not too sure about the exact reason behind this, but the most logical explanation is that indirect rounds can neither directly hit (i.e. roll a natural hit via accuracy) nor score a collision hit with an infantry model (all projectile-based weapons "phase" through infantry without colliding as opposed to vehicles or buildings). Hence, while mortars can and will occasionally deal 80 damage to tanks and buildings via collision hits they can't one-shot full-health infantry models due to the damage being capped at 68.
I think the most important thing about these stats is to take them with a grain of salt. Some people like to cite w/l ratios of 45:55 for certain maps/factions and use this as an indicator of blatant imbalance - yet more often than not the sample size of games considered is in the low hundreds. Even a 100 perfectly even 50:50 coinflips repeated multiple times will already have a standard deviation of 5%, so making any balance assertions based on such data alone means treading on thin ice. That of course is not meant to devaluate pageP's awesome contibutions in any possible way. Just to serve as a reminder that context matters when interpreting any form of statistical data.
Pathfinder CD is pretty much the same as riflemen building delay + time to effectively reach the battlefield. I don't know how you could increase it even more and call it balance.
I guess this (the bold part) is exactly his point. Increasing the cooldown on the PF call-in would make it way less feasible to just spam them and force you into a more diverse unit composition. Since people seem to more or less unequivocally agree that the raw combat stats for PF are not a problem, I'd say this is could indeed be a good balance approach
On the topic of Sturmtiger bugs. It can still start firing before its stopped moving. Not sure if its intended or not but its pretty powerful as it doesn't telegraph its firing time accurately when its still moving and firing.
Yeah, pretty disappointing that this hasn't been patched. Not sure if it was deemed unfixable for whatever reason or just went under the radar, but as far as I'm concerned this glitch was one of the main things that made the ST broken and abuseable.
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