Profile of FelixTHM

It just goes to show how single minded the one faction wonders are that they think this is a buff to OKW. It'd cripple it.

If you take Volks out of HQ, OKW has to build its core out of Sturmpioneers and Kubels. It loses the early aggression it relies on and has to play defensively. If anyone thinks a no-Volks opening is strong, I encourage you to try it.

If it goes Mechanized, it gets no suppression, all its infantry are glass cannons and it has no snares. It doesn't stand a chance.

If it goes Battlegroup, it gets all the support weapons, a shock vehicle and AT infantry but no vehicular AT until medium tank tech. Sound familiar?

If you make OKW a faction that's got to play defensive in the early game and is focused around compensating for squishy infantry with support weapons, you've made it Ostheer.

And then why not just play Ostheer?

@Lago because Ostheer is already too dominant in 1v1

So I want to play an Ostheer with far worse support weapons. Don't forget how this will make Volks under-vetted and outnumbered vs other mainlines.

It's amazing how people who only play one faction think that OKW getting T0 raketen is an advantage when it's literally the only way to make the faction playable. It'd be hilarious watching OKW bleed 50,000 manpower vs UC or getting entire battalions of Volks clown car chase-wiped if we were to remove the raketen from T0, but basically OKW playerbase would then drop to 0.

LOOK AT THIS TABLE: List of all tank values HERE

I pieced together a table of the most current values of relevant tanks from all of the factions. I was hoping to stir up some dialog within the community here and see how people feel about the way the tank game plays out in the current meta.

Formula: Penetration/Armor * 100 = % chance to deal damage

Example w/Panther vs Pershing: Panther's penetration from far away is - 220, the Pershing's armor is 230, so the formula would be: 220/300 * 100 = 73% chance to deal damage.
_________________________________________________________________________________
My OPINION: The game's AT guns are in a fine state, but the cost to value ratio of the German armor compared to the allied armor is disproportionate. You would think the natural answer to tank inferiority is the use of AT guns, but the counter to team weapons is artillery. Fortunately the Axis powers have access to mobile artillery pieces that allow for hit & run type tactics, this in-turn leaves very few options to the Allied player to respond to having their vital AT guns hit with artillery:

• Respond with some sort of flanking, hit & run tactic with their tanks. Doing this is risky, attempting to out maneuver your opponent with some sort of wide flank in hopes you track down his artillery piece before you hit a mine or become discovered is a less than ideal solution.
  
• Counter artillery is the obvious answer, in order to keep your team weapons alive, you spit back from just as far away with the same tool, but there is a complication. Artillery is only really available to the Soviets non-doctrinally which leaves the USF and UKF is a poor state of affairs. The USF's pakhowitzer is a temporary short-range solution that suffers from decrewing problems (the UKF landmatress likewise) due to its lack of mobility such as a stuka or panzerwerfer.
  

All of this effort is towards the goal of maintaining your AT guns as an allied player so you are able to fend off the superior penetration and health values of the axis armor.

I spent some effort in making this table since I had to manually piece it together via the attribute database in the tools section of steam. I am starting to draw the conclusion that the panther is just a step above ridiculous when it comes to health, armor, penetration. The first counter to my conclusion is "its range is inferior to other tank destroyers". So lets compare the 60 range SU-85 vs the 50 range Panther. It is very possible the SU-85 will get the first shot off, but the difference between 10 range leaves no room for any sort of shot evasion tactic from the SU-85, so it is highly likely that if an SU-85 (far less maneuverable) engages a panther, 10 range does not decide if there are free hits being dished out. Now lets look at the amount of hits to destroy the opponent.

SU-85 dies in 4 hits (with a 157% chance to deal damage if hit by panther)
Panther dies in 6 hits (with an 84% chance to deal damage if hit by SU-85)

The next counter argument is that the SU-85 is a cheaper tank. The problem I take with this, is the game being about veterancy. Keeping your units alive, gaining XP, (panther gets increased armor with vet), and eventually overwhelming your opponent with the units you were able to preserve. This sort of dynamic between tanks offers the Axis a huge amount of breathing room in terms of cognitive awareness of the battlefield. Allowing an Axis player to recover from what would have been a non-micro blunder with a 50% more time to react window.

How about we just buy a bigger tank on the allied side. Well... that one is kind of complicated, there are some, with advantages and disadvantages, mainly doctrinal choices if you want to go bigger, and even then, you are limited to a single one of them, while the Axis player is free to spam as many 960HP panthers as they see fit and give them a modicum of anti-infantry with an MG-42 upgrade (Jackson's would die to have this).

I understand the game is supposed to be asymmetrically balanced, and it does occur to me that the Axis do not win every game. I am simply trying to better understand why things are the way they are, since I am inclined to draw conclusions from the raw data I see. I am also aware that veterancy and commander/vehicle abilities strongly influence the dynamics of tank combat.

TL/DR: I'll leave it at that, there are plenty of more tank match-ups that can be compared, and I encourage everyone to do so. I spent a lot of time piecing together this table manually, I hope you guys make some use of it. I am interested to hear your conclusions. Most surprisingly to me, was the sheer amount of vehicles that actually deal 160 damage!

There's a couple of pretty serious problems with your line of analysis though. In your example, you mentioned that "10 range will not give any ability for the SU85 to evade the Panther". This presupposes a very low level of player skill AND assumes that battles in COH2 occur in vacuum of strange 1 tank vs 1 other tank situations. Because in such strange hypothetical situations, a single T34-76 will easily defeat an Elefant or Jagdtiger, even with a low level of micromanagement skill.

In reality, 10 range is MASSIVE, and usually results in dozens of unretaliated shots across a whole match. The Panther(s) will get shot at the moment they pokes their heads out by the SU85s (notice how they are in the plural form, because a 1 Panther vs 1 SU85 scenario is not a reasonable test). The Soviet player should reverse his tank destroyers if the Panther(s) push forward, and the Panthers would need to commit to a chase to even attack the SU85s. Since COH2 is heavily based around infantry play, the chasing Panthers will often be threatened by infantry units with snares. If the Panthers don't move closer, they can't hit anything. The penduluum only swings one way, because the SU85s doesn't need to get exposed to fausting-infantry in order to attack Axis tanks. Basically you don't just let a Panther waltz in and claim an easy 1vs1 victory against an SU85 - at least not at a reasonable level of player skill.

The second problem is that your horribly flawed conclusion was based off a comparison of generalist tanks with tank-hunter(s). This is a favourite pasttime of players who have only played as USF, in which they compare the Pershing to the Panther, as if the Panther had a main gun that guaranteed multiple wipes of enemy infantry squads per game, and could throw grenades to defend/attack. The Panther also has an inferior chance to penetrate, worse armour, inferior moving acc, and inferior reload time, and requires a very expensive tech path, but hey let's only look at the Panther's slight movement advantage and 20% increased health. All in all I'd say the Panther is slightly better in the tank vs tank matchup against a Pershing, but that is simply a comparison of his chicken being tastier than your fish.

Not to disparage your efforts, but all of your claims hold no water. You even go so far as to claim that the Axis armour is more cost-effective, for which there isn't a single piece of evidence. The "Axis superiority" in terms of armour comes at a steep price. As an example, the P4 is objectively superior to a T34-76, but the P4 has a 133% fuel price premium and costs more manpower and pop cap. And if all I wanted was a medium tank to bully infantry squads and bleed my opponent, the T34-76 does the job for much cheaper.

In a game which you have already acknowledged is about asymmetrical balance, you've spent most of your efforts cherry-picking the strengths of Axis armour whilst ignoring the weaknesses, and purposefully contrasted it against Allied weaknesses while ignoring Allied armour's strengths. Hopefully you'll reflect on that.

In a fight to the death the Kuble will outlast any other t0 infantry it faced in 96% of the tests. I'd call that being able to fight. It's a part of an army though, not the whole thing. Use it to cap and use its mobility to help goon enemies.

Also cons are not cheap as they cost 240mp and then another 205mp in sidegrades (that do nothing but stuff for cons so it is a direct cost increase to them) and 35 fuel. That's half a T70 EXTRA just for a full kit.

The Kuble costs 210mo and can beat 280mp in an outright fight. Cons cost 240mp and can lose against 250mp infantry.

Rather questionable testing a kubel against infantry on negative cover.

OK, I don't usually post things this dramatic, and I'm also posting in replay reviews so that I can L2P, but I honestly think this is the most broken matchup in the game right now.


Have been trying to get back into UKF for the last few days but I have experienced this nonstop. Every Wehr matchup I win easily, every single OKW matchup I lose, even in the 50% of games where I completely outplay the opponent and get several wipes.

JLI are making things worse, but they aren't even the real problem (there are plenty other OKW call-in infantry options). The problem is that OKW gets more infantry, faster than anyone else. And anyone who isn't a completely new player can just run them around the map, cap everything, spam flame nades to beat every garrison or defensive position, spam sandbags to effortlessly defend every point they take, spam fausts to beat any light vehicle. Once OKW has map control, it's an automatic economic victory anyway. This is way worse than USF Riflespam ever was.

Yes, there are very good counters in Vickers, Bren Carrier, AEC, and Sniper. However, any map with a lot of sight blockers strongly negates all of these counters, and there are already enough OKW squads running around that there will always be another you can send in from the side or behind your opponent.

I play all factions but I've stopped playing OKW now, it's just boring to rely on infantry / territory spam, and I'm quitting UKF until this shit gets fixed.

I've been making this argument that Volks need toning down for something like a year now, I have no idea how they have not only been untouched despite the ongoing discussion, but JLI has been added into this ridiculous mix. Seriously, just change one small thing, be it sandbags, flame nade, StG, faust, MP cost, vet, whatever. OKW early infantry spam is ruining the game right now.

How strange. We have similar ranks for most factions yet I've never once experienced what you mentioned. As Brits OKW is easy food and Wehr is a nightmare. As Brits I constantly struggle vs Wehr, probably 30% win vs Ost and 80% win rate vs OKW. MG42 is difficult to counter because there's no garrison counter, no indirect fire, and you have expensive infantry who can't flank that well. IS stomp Grens with ease early on but rifle nades really punish that one moment of carelessness, and GRW43 is a nightmare for the tommy. Ost LVs often force me to get a much more expensive AEC, which puts me behind in fuel. Ost teching means P4 comes earlier than OKW P4, and tellers are many times scarier than schu mines. Ost sniperplay dictates that you MUST be able to countersnipe effectively.

Not counting JLI, I've always had supreme ease beating similarly ranked OKW players as Brits. IS cap faster, reinforce for cheap, stomp volks at all ranges, and Brits have the best healing in game for even more early game dominance. Stgs turn the tide like crazy, but they arrive mid-game. When I see that I usually either rush Centaur or double upgrade to counter the strengthened Volks. Early Vickers in garrison can be oppressive on many 1v1 maps since OKW has no flamers, and UC is just the nail in the coffin, inflicting serious bleed and forcing him to build an early raketen, which only forces you to be less aggressive and to spend some time repairing.

Late game lack of indirect fire is a problem with the Brit faction, but luckily vs OKW you're not exactly fighting Pak40 and mg42, only their retarded cousins.

In fact the only issue I have with OKW is on maps like Kholodny. Dealing with p4s roaming around the map wiping squads, fearing Panther dives, and watching vetted Obers shredding my infantry are what I struggle with vs OKW. But the game is usually won before we get there. Apart from certain maps in which early sturmpio aggression can be crazy cos of shotblockers, I always win vs similarly ranked OKW playersby snowballing from the get-go. How strange that you're so bad at this matchup.

What if blancat is secretly a top 20 player? I daren't take up his challenge.