I used to test them head-to-head on two computers with two accounts. The LEFH won roughly 80% of the time. Also, your argument about vehicles is specious. In the rare case that it hits a vehicle, players simply move it. Hitting a lot of infantry does make the howitzers vet faster.
The only points in this thread that seem correct are the ones that Descolata makes. It's marginally okay against OKW when they stack their trucks.
While I don't question your test result in the slightest, I doubt you drew the right conclusions from it.
In theory, both arty pieces should have a near 50/50 chance of winning a direct duel since they are virtual carbon copies of each other in every combat-relevant stat (now even more so with the number of shots per salvo being equalized as well). Still, that's not likely what you're going to see if you test it, say, 10 times in a row. An 80% dominance for either side out of 10 trials isn't much more unlikely than getting the expected 50/50 outcome. The reason is that each individual fight has a huge variance in possible outcomes due to RNG, ranging from 2-shot wipes within the first 2 shells fired to not even scratching the HP pool with a full barrage. You'd need to perform more than 100 or even 1,000 tests to get an accurate picture of the actual win chance.
The analogy would be to set up a duel between two KV-1s, for which the actual T2K should have a variance of similar magnitude. Even though the expected win chance is squarely 50%, taking the average out of 10 trials will almost certainly differ wildly from that.
Hence, unless you tested it (way) more than at least a hundred times I'd be careful to claim the leFH is way superior to the ML-20 in a direct arty duel.
Do howitzer FoW penalties apply for each shell going out individually or when the barrage is cast? It can be quite difficult to hold recon planes up nowadays with how potent AA has become.
You'll need vision for each shell, or more precisely, the moment each shell is fired to avoid the scatter penalty. Once the shell has left the barrel it doesn't matter if the target is in the FoW again or not. The moment you cast the barrage ability doesn't matter either.
It was removed for good reason since it could be exploited so that one could call multiple SturmTigers.
maybe, but i think there could have been other solutions to keep that from happening and still have the abandon mechanic in place. at least the damn thing should become immobilized again while reloading and maybe, MAYBE get reload on the move as a vet 5 bonus like it used to be.
The LEFH shoots two more shells per barrage. It shoots at squads that typically have more entities so it vets faster. It LOVES USF, as most every shot into the base will hit something. Also, when an ambulance is spotted, it forces a micro tax as the USF will either have to move the ambulance and Major or risk having their units randomly disappear.
I'll build a LEFH most every time I see a team with no counters to it. I build a ML20 in the rare times when I don't care if I lose and want to experiment to try to find a way to make it work.
If you're going to try to claim that the ML20 is better, post a replay where you beat someone at your level using one.
I think you quoted Sander out of context. His post was clearly about which of the two arty pieces has a better chance of winning a direct arty duel and why, not so much which is the better investment in a game.
Also, your facts aren't up to date or free of a good dose of bias either. The LeFH has only one extra shell per barrage (and at Vet 1 the ML-20 gets an extra shell at which point both are more or less equal). I'm not sure if the difference in squad size of the targets both guns are facing even makes any difference, as most often this is offset by lower XP value per entity for larger squads. Also, with the same line of arguing you could claim the ML-20 is actually the one that vets up faster since it will deal more damage per shot vs vehicles.
Another small update that fixes a couple of issues, adds some new features and improves the accuracy of the simulation for tanks with deflection damage is now online.
Improved interface and features
The interface of the calculator tab was updated to include a bar graph visualizing the average S2K and T2K values +/- SD for quick and easy comparison of the different match ups.
The head-to-head tab also got a new feature that allows to filter the results by setting a maximum engagement time (Time cut-off; cell A34) for the fight. If no winner is determined within the set limit, the fight is considered a draw and the results updated accordingly. In addition, the minimum, maximum and average time to win for each tank is displayed below the win chance graph.
Deflection damage
As it turns out, deflection damage (outside of handheld AT) can bring a tank to 0 HP but even subsequent deflected shots will not kill the target. This means that the previous calculation method overestimated the AT performance of tanks such as the KV-2 a bit. The improved simulator now takes this into account and should be more accurate than in the previous release.
Disagree to most of the OP as most of the arguments brought forward against Community involvement are flawed IMHO.
1) I don't agree that the community is not able to balance the game. Comparing the experience 3-4 years ago to now the game feels generally more fair across all factions and less reliant on cheap and cheesy strats than ever before (at least for 1v1 and 2v2 which I play or follow actively). Unfortunately, the analytical tools we have nowadays thanks to pageP didn't exist back then, but I'd wager if we had access to historical data the trend towards more balanced games would show up clearly. That is not to say that everything is great now and there aren't any balance decisions that were not controversial, to say the least. However, seeing that there were almost always tight boundaries to what the balance team could or could not do with every patch should put things into perspective a bit.
2) Insinuating that everyone playing the game is inherently biased to such an extent that they could never balance the game properly and only want their own faction to be OP is a pretty bold statement to make. This may be true for a large proportion of the playerbase, but certainly not for everyone. There are enough people that play each faction more or less equally at a high level and, thus, have a pretty much informed and objective vantage point on the game as a whole. Coincidentally (?), these are the ones that have the most influence on the balance process. It should also go without saying that it doesn't take a University degree to balance the game you play and know better than some of the original developers. Or to quote Rosbone:
I do not know who is on the balance team. But all you have to do is ask yourself a couple questions:
1) How often do you see a Relic employee in tournaments. There is a huge difference between designing a game and being a top 1v1 player. I can design a game and adjust DPS etc but would get curb stomped in 3 minutes by Luvnest. I can make a chess board but I cant play chess.
2) Many Relic employees dont even play Coh. How many Relic streams have there been of people who barely know whats going on. Put that against community members with 6000 to 8000 hours of play time. A game as rich in possibility as coh requires 1000's of hours to be in game situations that may require adjustments or thought.
Relic would be completely nuts to not seek out what players, modders, tourney directors, etc want out of the next iteration. And the fact Relic has added some key community members to their staff proves what I am saying.
I dont keep track but I have heard rumor of:
Tarnation - Top 2v2 player
MonolithicBacon - Prestigious mapper extraordinaire
DevM - Top Coh1 and Coh2 1v1 player
I for one am very happy to see Relic reaching out to get the best version of Coh3 they can. I am very impressed. Now if they would just fix the Coh2 servers....
Relic not connecting to their future playerbase and listening to their feedback already at a very early stage of development would obviously be a huge wasted opportunity, not least considering their recent DoW III fiasco probably still cuts deep. I'm personally happy Relic chose this path for CoH3 and given the number of top level community members involved I'm also confident they have the best chances to succeed.
I do have to point out that actually hit box of the 17p is not the same as the area with sandbag.
This can been see if one fire an ATG will small aoe and shot land within the circle it will do little to no damage.
I did some testing and fired 10 barrage of three shots on 17p from a brumbar and JT at around max range in normal map not test range.
Brumbar did on average 577 damage (as I remembered it has bonus damage vehicles)
JT did on average 312 damage
None of them managed to destroy a full HP 17p, man brumbar damage was 700 (from a potentially max 750) and JT 460 (from a potentially max 480/800 with 3/5 shots)
17p has 900 HP.
Very interesting results, thanks for sharing these.
Btw, do you know where does the Brummbaer's extra damage come from? I didn't even know it deals more against emplacements. Also:
Only make sure that have disable instant build when making the 17p emplacement.
Why is this important? I remember there are some issues when spawning vehicles vs building them, but I never heard about any bugs related to instant building speed being enabled.
Which other abilities' scatter are most similar to this ones? So we can get an idea of how accurate the barrage is.
Because the replay shows some consistent shot grouping, I'm sure you'd agree.
It's frustrating that people seem to be posting without looking at the replay for context (or they're just trying to downplay its strength)
The scatter is definitely large if you're trying to hit an infantry squad or a tank, but compared to the size of something as huge as the 17 pdr it's rather negligible for sure. The picture below isn't 100% accurate but should give a good indication about how big the JT's barrage scatter is (the inner box is with vision, the outer one for firing into the FoW, both at max range of 95 m)
So, nuking a large structure like the 17 pdr is definitely no problem as long as you have constant vision on the target, and even without you shouldn't see more than one or two shots per barrage miss completely (this assumes of course that the hitbox of the gun is as large as the model, which I don't know)
And, yes, I'd say for 40 ammo that's a pretty cheap way of getting rid of it.
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