[...]
while i don't necessarily agree that the kv-2 needs to become even more potent against tanks than it already is, the siege mode could really use a bit of tweaking. i'm rather ok with the long travel time of the shells giving infantry ample time to move out of harms way; however, the huge scatter makes not only barrages highly inaccurate, but also manually targeted predictive shots difficult to pull off. obviously pinpoint-accurate HE shells at 70 range aren't a very good idea (hello isu-152), but at least a bit tighter scatter than that of the normal shells wouldn't hurt.
that or shaving a second or two off the hilariously long setup and tear down delays. especially the latter combined with the 300% increased damage (not sure if that still applies) more often than not leaves you a sitting duck when things go south, while offering little else in return. |
A couple of days ago I stumbled upon a neat little VBA feature that greatly improved the performance of the numerical simulation used throughout the spreadsheet. The more programming-savvy folks will now probably roll their eyes, but that day I found out that not only is it possible to manually define when to recalculate the whole workbook (which I already used to speed up the code quite considerably before), but also to limit the recalculation to a specific range in the spreadsheet.
Well, turns out updating just a couple of cells with volatile functions is considerably faster than recalculating the entire workbook several thousand times over - who would've thought?? 
Anyway, suffice to say that the code is now much faster and what took a good 2.5 minutes before on my 5-yo potatoe now runs in less than 10 seconds.
The updated spreadsheet that now also contains (hopefully) all of the changes brought along with the most-recent patch can be found here or via the updated link in the OP. |
I might be misunderstanding hannibal here, but he may mean AT capability vs the panther instead of AT in general.
While I agree that because of deflection damage the penetration buff would make it less prominent, buffing RoF would risk overbuffing the tank. The ISU can already 2 shot 640s and 3 shot panthers with mark and it doesn't need to be done faster. While in all honesty I've had fantastic success against the elephant with the ISU, probably due to the deflection damage, penetration would benefit more against super heavies while keeping TTK vs 640s-960s roughly the same. I don't really think the ISU needs a buff, I'd just like the ability it has to be more useful or changed.
I also think the ISU doesn't need a buff with respect to AT, is does pretty well against tanks and fares even better compared to other TDs the heavier the armor gets it it facing. The graph below shows this in a bit simplified terms (DPS as a function of armor, with and without 20% penetration buff)
If you exclude factors like accuracy and alpha damage, the ISU-152 happens to get pretty even in performance to the SU-85 at about 320 armor, and surpasses it afterwards. This is probably also why it feels surprisingly potent against the really heavily armored beasts, even though it wouldn't win a head-to-head fight directly. In this respect, the current implementation of the concrete-piercing round is actually quite helpful, since you still need the finishing blow against any target to be a penetrating hit. |
You're still wrong. The ML-20 always fires less, it just isn't as bad as it was before. The ML-20 always fires 9 now instead of starting at 8. The LEFH fires 10. The last test I did was several patches ago so it wouldn't be quite as bad on an artillery duel, but all the other points remain the same. The LEFH vets faster, particularly if you can set it up within range of the USF base. Also, nobody builds arty to counter other arty. Arty is at best a soft counter to other arty so talking about an arty duel is just a red herring.
As for your comment An 80% dominance for either side out of 10 trials isn't much more unlikely than getting the expected 50/50 outcome., all you did was tell everyone that you've never taken a statistics class. Binomial distributions are covered in the first couple weeks. The probability of 80% for one side is 4.4% versus 24.6% for a 50/50 split. Those two numbers really aren't about the same.
You're right about the shell count. For some reason I was under the assumption that the latest patch equalized both arty pieces, I should probably have used common sense and checked this quickly before posting. My apologies! In any case, this should of course tilt the probability slightly in favor of the leFH.
As to the second part, this comes down to the question if this can be broken down into a simple binomial distribution (A beats B) instead of two nested distributions that each have their own variance (A beats B before B beats A). After giving this some thought I think you are correct and this case is much more straightforward than I assumed. 8/10 should indeed be quite a bit more unlikely given a 50/50 chance and 10 trials. Good points overall and a healthy reminder to double-check one's assumptions every now and then.
|
How is SU-85 shooting against a tiger equal to an ISU shooting at a super heavy? Super heavies at minimum have 375 armor where the tiger has 300. At baseline 220 max range pen the pen chance, especially when the SU-85 gets its vet and goes to 264 min is a far better pen chance than 200/375(400/450).
No one claimed these two examples are equal, at least not me. What I meant is that the DPS (measured by the T2K) of the ISU against heavily-armored targets is roughly equal to that of the SU-85. This of course includes other factors than pen, such as ROF or the fact that the ISU deals deflection damage, which diminishes in effectiveness the higher the pen chance gets. The latter is the reason why penetration bonuses are less desirable for the ISU than for other tanks, and an equal increase in ROF would be much more beneficial. |
I vaguely remember that we once estimated the ISU's AT capability to be roughly equal to an SU85. So overall, it should lose to a Panther.
Your post got me the impression that you want the ISU to win or at least roughly be equal to the Elefant in terms of AT when the ability is activated. But pen buffs are as you said not as valuable for the ISU due to the deflection damage, which would mean damage and or ROF buffs. And those would hit lighter targets alike.
[...]
This pretty much. The ISU is already pretty decent when it comes to AT with almost exactly the firepower of an SU-85 (against a Tiger), while being much beefier when it comes to HP and armor. That means it's already able to facetank anything lighter than a KT, JT or Elefant without breaking a sweat unless it is forced to constantly move. Adding 20% more pen will do next to nothing against the three super-heavies mentioned before, hence I'd argue a timed pen boost ability would be even less useful than the current skillshot. |
This stolen ISU really seems to haunt you...
Still shell-shocked from the pre-nerf model I guess...
Anyway, I agree the ability could use some love. I mean, shooting through walls and with laser guidance is nice, but for the price tag it should maybe have something more unique than that. A stun vs tanks à la shell shock could indeed be one way to go, or suppression vs inf in a small radius around the explosion if the focus should go back to AI duties. |
[...] Also doesn't ISU have some kind of hard limit of how much models it can kill with one shot?
7 per squad  |
|
Agree to the sentiment that this ability is a far cry from its former glory against team weapons. I guess the fact that it still has 70 range and nigh zero scatter makes it still somewhat useful, but other than that it is just a marginally better yet much more expensive HE shell. Yes the guaranteed pen is nice to have, especially if you can't or don't want to switch to AP for a quick anti-tank potshot, but other than this is just a highly situational ability |
All my 1v1 maps are meh at best 
I did quite enjoy Novgorod tbh |
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
