Profile of Hannibal

Currently, the OKW Flak Half track is quite weak compared to other light vehicles. The not viable light vehicle makes OKW at the moment pretty linear to tech since T1 is basically useless and everyone builds T2 for Puma/Luchs, while T1 is teched sometime later for the medics and the option of the Königstiger.

The Half track especially sucks against USF, because their AT gun fires so quickly that you often don't get your vehicle out if you don't pull it back in a split second. It performs decently against SOV T1 builds, due to SOV lack of AT. Against UKF it is also usually not worth it due to the AEC and also a good AT gun.

Now, enough problem description. The key design of the unit is to hold ground, not take it. Volks shall push, the Flak drives up, sets up and then supports against the counter push. That design is interesting and I would like to keep that. What I feel that drags the unit down the most is that it dies in 2 shots, which makes is a throw away unit after the first medium comes out, because the medium will always get two shots off so you must pray to RNGsus to make one shot miss. Also it usually loses to other light vehicles due to immobility (which enables vehicles to shoot the rear armor) and generally low DPS.

I want to make three suggestions to discuss that could potentially fix the issues. Not all of them are meant to be implemented at once, only one might already be enough:

1. Give it 40 HP more. Does the trick, now it dies in three shots, or two shots and a snare. Or maybe also in two shots and a bit of small arms fire. Maybe this needs to be compensated with 5 FU cost more, slightly longer set up or pack up times etc, but it would greatly add to the survivability and make it more usable once the mid game begins.

2. Give it more penetration. Would allow to defend better against T70, and maybe also the AEC and Stuart. Not to the point where it beats them, but where it can deal some damage when supported properly. Remember, the half track can't run away anyway unless there is enough infantry near it to snare the attacker.

3. The most intricate one: Give it a fortified mode. Either a toggle or OKW Volks/Sturms can set it into a fortified mode like OST has it in doctrines. But instead of giving it more range, it could just get a damage reduction like the KV1.

You can't get supply before first 5 or 10 minutes of the game.

It's 5 min.

it also happens after a sync error

As far as I know that's not quite true. You get them, but not instantly. You will get rewarded for the game once the player that desynced connects to Relic servers again or something like that.


To OP: If this is the case, I unfortunately have no fix for you. Are you sure that you don't get them "silently" like in a desync situation? But I assume you wouuld have noticed that.

Good luck that it fixes itself soon.

Molotov fits the theme of cheap conscripts that have to fill in where they are needed. However there's not much reason beside that to give them molotovs, especially since SOV can upgrade flamethrowers.

Early anti garrison can cause problems especially for OST that relies on MGs in the early game, but for conscripts there is currently an okayish kind of balance by having the long throw animation that negates an otherwise good ability.

But to make it short: Nice idea from OP, but I think it's too complicated with quite a few potential drawbacks

Can someone please explain to me how the bounce rates on armour works?

In 1 game i had a T34/85 bounce 4 shots in a row against a panther

And the same tank also bounced 3 shots on a Panzer 4.

It seems the SU85 (Which has the exact same gun) rarely ever bounces a round on German tanks, except from Tigers.

I find it irritating when a German tank is nearly dead, yet the game wants to rim you and make all your shots do nothing.

Also why do Soviet tanks rarely ever bounce shots? Soviet armour was way more sloped.

Is this just RNG?

Basically what Barton said.

Penetration value divided by armor of the enemy. Penetration is range dependent and increases at smaller distances, armor is always constant. So the penetration chance is bigger at low distances. Rule of thumb: Axis are better at distance, Allies should close in distance. Heavies (independent of faction and side) are always better used at long distance.

Example: At range 40, T34/85 has 120 penetration. Ostheer PanzerIV has 180 armor. This means:

120/180 = 66,7% chance of penetration.

If the shot penetrates, full damage is applied (160 damage for most of the weapons, while most mediums can take 640 damage = 4 shots, fourth shot is the kill shot).

Now penetration increases at lower distances. The setup above at range 10 would be:
T34/85 penetration: 150
armor P4 (stays constant): 180

pen chance = 150/180 = 83,3% (so 16% gain by closing in).

The rest is RNG. Your tank could actually never pen an enemy the whole match or you could pen every shot although you only have 20% chance per shot.



Are you also sure that the T34/85 really bounces a Panther shot? Technically, a Panther should always pen a medium tank.
One thing though: there is also accuracy. First it is rolled if a shot hits or not. If it does, there's RNG again to see if it penetrates. A shot that "misses" is still fired (obviously) and can still hit the target by collision.

This whole discussion (especially Panther related stuff) keeps ignoring that one of the main factors that drives tank price is actually armor and HP. The Panther is that expensive because Allied mediums are super unreliable in frontally penetrating it. Also it can take 6 hits insted of 4. The Pen of the Panther is decent, but not needed unless the Allies player calls in a heavy tank. If you just want a next to 100% penetration chance against basically all Allied stock vehicles (and many call ins, too), a StuG would do. What the StuG does not provide is a turret and high survivability ("only" 140 armor and 4 hits worth of HP).

Just comparing raw pen values is pretty much stupid by itself, because it tells you nothing. You need to calculate pen chances against certain targets, but that apparently is too much effort for many of our forum keyboard warriors.


With that said, back to a hopefully more normal discussion.

and you are ignoring rate of fire and gun's arcs as well as how durable their crew is. Pak is only marginally better (which means almost nothing in a real game scenario - 10 more penetration - ridiculous), while othe at guns have wider arcs of fire and often higher rate of fire.

Aren't arcs standardized the exception of Raketenwerfer?
But AT guns are now all pretty close (exception 57mm, which has way lower pen and higher ROF). The ZiS3 has 6 men, but also slower rate of fire. 6-pounder and PaK40 are almost carbon copies, Raketenwerfer has now been more standardized with the range buff, the main differences here are retreat functionality that compensates the lower survivability due to lacking shield and model spacing.
Axis AT guns can basically penetrate all Allied stock units, the limiting factor is hit chance. For Zis and 6Pounder it is the same with the exception of the heaviest Axis tier (Panther, Bummbär and OKW P4). The 57mm even starts to struggle against mediums.

and again the differences are too tiny to be significant. Rate of fire, speed, turret riotation will be more important here. Again the price of p4 might not be justified here, the price of a panther might also be just too high.

As I said, please factor in the armor of the opponent. Against other mediums, the P4 wins at long distances. At short distances (5m), Allied tanks EVEN OUT their penetration chance (almost at least) with every tank having ~75% pen chance against each other. Raw pen values are misleading. Also, the P4 has a very slight edge in ROF, Sherman in moving acc, Cromwell has a bit higher top speed.

I'd say the P4 is fine. Panther is more difficult to compare since there is no direct Allied counterpart. One thing that gets ignored though in the Panther vs Allied TD discussions is that the Panther is way tankier (4 vs 6 hits) for costing about 90MP/45FU (+22,5%/+32,1% over Jackson) more. Now you don't get the additional firepower etc, but for getting 50% more HP and also better armor while similar mobility it's not bad. The main drawback of the Panther is the 10 range difference compared to Allied TDs, which - given the rest of Panthers stats - they also need to be able to deal with a Panther if microed correctly.