Profile of MMX

There is a hole analysis on mortar and the result is quite clear. The auto fire of Ostheer and USF mortar are about equal and in live Ostheer mortar has a slight edge in barrage.

The patch improves the barrage and the cost.

That will simply make USF mortar superior to Ostheer and that simply goes against faction design. Ostheer have inferior mainline infatry and superior support weapons and vice versa.

since you mentioned the mortar analysis, i've just realized that i've mistakenly used the wrong aoe profile for the m1 while calculating the performance back then (should've used m1_81mm_mortar_team_mp instead of m1_81mm_mortar_mp... who would have known >.<)
it should thus be a bit worse than its german equivalent.
will update the guide with the correct numbers soon(tm)

Am I right to assume that the Vet2 20% reload buff and the Vet3 15% reload buff of the Jackson doesn't affect wind up and wind down? So this part of Jackson reload never gets modified and the 25% of FF at Vet2 does more than 20% and 15% of Jackson together because it affects 8.0 seconds out of 8.25 total reload.

absolutely correct. reload bonuses from abilities and vet only affect the actual 'reload' part of the firing delay.

Thanks that is interesting. Why the Jackson gets about 2 seconds more reload and the Firefly only gets 0.25 seconds in addition? What is the missing factor for such a huge difference in comparison to reload value only? I would appreciate if you would explain that.

there are a couple of additional delays, e.g wind up, wind down and aim time, that are mainly there for animation cues to play correctly (think of a mortar reloading (actual reload), then putting the round in to the tube (windup), firing, and post-fire animation (wind down)). this is usually not used for tanks, but for whatever reason some USF tanks have quite significant wind up and wind down delays

So, I went and checked the AoE profile of the Crommy. She is .25, 1, 1.5 AoE radius vs the .75, 1.25, 1.875 of the P4 gun. The P4 has NINE TIMES the OHK area of the Crommy. Not counting RoF or accuracy, Crommy feels worse because she doesnt KILL anything, just softens them up. HP damage can be healed for free by all factions.

I did the math a while back. Crommy has GREAT theoretical AI damage, but one of the smallest OHK radius of any medium tank. Feels bad. HE Sherman has .50 for close, 1.25 for far and feels deadly. Crommy... just feels bad.

Also, she has weird Pen scaling for her job. She has high close pen, and crap far pen (105) yet she's designed for high speed sniping (diving germans means a broken engine, EVERYTHING HAS A SNARE). ALSO, she is .3 faster than a P4, but thats BEFORE Blitz, so the P4 is faster in a pinch. And she has 50% lower Accuracy on move, so she has to be stutter steped to ACTUALLY USE her speed.

Her MGs were normalized to the P4 before Pintle. All P4s get pintle, which is another 50% non-directional AI. And that means you need to hug snare infantry.

She still loses to a P4 even with Commander accuracy (bad ranged pen, 160 armor)

All for a little less fuel and the same pop cost. I need to check teching, but assuming AEC and Bolster, P4 should time about the same as Crommy. Why buy something worse than a near peer unless you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. Comet is an actually efficient generalist, which is why its so used.

In 3v3 and 4v4, she just dies to the gatunteed Panther spam, with no pen and no mobility advantage.

Changes: copy gun AoE of Sherman (or at least .35 close range), and keep the Hunt skill. Make Hunt as cheap as Blitz.

If these changes are too much, drop her to 11 pop, she is a budget P4 and should be priced accordingly.

that sounds like a pretty solid analysis.

i've run the numbers myself quite some time ago, though i must admit i haven't taken a look on the exact results nor the editor for a long while before posting this.

still, if memory serves me right you're correct about the odd AoE profile of the cromwell; the OHK radius is tiny compared to other tanks in its tier, but it should more than make up for that by the huge minimum AoE damage dealt with each shot (a guaranteed ~1/3 of the total HP drained with each hit) that no other medium comes even close to.
hence the crom will deal more consistent damage than, say, a p4, which may snipe a model or two much more often, but will also shoot 3 or 4 blanks in a row on occasion.

whether this consistency, as you already elaborated on, is good or bad is certainly debatable, but at least in terms of average AI damage the cromwell's main gun is certainly not worse than most medium cannons (with the notable exception of the HE sherman, obviously)

i honestly can't say much about the mgs since i'm pretty much oblivious of their respective dps. i thought the most recent buff should have brought the cromwell somewhere in between pintle-equipped and vanilla p4 territory, but i assume you've got your numbers right. anyway, i'd say that due to the abundance of yellow cover and RA bonuses through vet in the mid to late game, mg damage contribution tends to matter less in terms of AI performance as the game progresses.

the AT part i'd probably subscribe to, although pitting the poor cromwell against a panther or even a tiger and expecting it to leave more than just a dent is a bit far fetched imho.

Is it possible to put a 3 min initial cooldown on T-34 ram ability instead of tying it to health or vet.

The goal is for fresh T-34s not to be able to ram. Having a 3 minute initial cooldown and 3 minute subsequent cooldowns would be ideal to prevent this. The player can choose whether or not to use said T-34 within the 3 initial minutes.

this indeed sounds like a much more elegant solution than the current 50% hp threshold to tame the il-2/ram combo.