Hello all,
as frequent readers of the forums have probably noticed, I'm very fond of unit stats to the point that I do rarely accept debate positions that are not based on hard stats. So I wanna share a project that I've been developing over the last few weeks. I've already posted an old version quite some time ago, which basically did not get any response at all. Might have been due to the very long text I put in front of it, maybe because it was too complex if you just look at it.
Still, since I've put in a decent amount of time so far, and the sheet logic is developing to my satisfaction, I thought some might be interested. I've named the tool DeCoHde, as it seemed fitting for me to better visualize the blackbox that is CoH2. Basically, DeCoHde needs to be fed with the unit game stats and then calculates basic analysis for you at the press of a button.
It started out as a tank-on-tank warfare comparison tool, and that's what it mainly still is.
So, what's in there at the moment?
There is a pen-chance calculator. Ever wanted to know how big the pen chance against a certain target is? DeCoHde calculates all the pen chances for almost every vehicle in the game.
While first versions could only calculate the pen chance at the unit's max range, I've recently implemented the logic of range dependency of penetration into Excel. What you need to do is enter the desired range and the unit (currently the 57mm AT gun of USF). The sheet autopicks the correct stats and compares them to the armor of all units below.
Secondly, basically the heart of the sheet, tank comparison. This tool is already outdated due to recent data by DerbyHat where I had to learn that scatter hits in tank warfare differ wildly from what I believed to be true. Still, there's some truth in at least many other calculations of this tool.
The tool can visualize the range dependent performance of a theoretical battle between two tanks. Again, you need to enter the desired range and the two unit names, the stats are auto picked for calculation. We can see that the T34 performes much better compared to the P4 at close range. The "hits to kill enemy" is the most important value here, since it is basically the number of times your tank must hit the enemy on average to kill it. Basically it's hits-to-kill normalized to pen chance. As we cann see, at 40 range the T34 is vastly inferior to the P4, but it gains a lot of performance from closing in (from 9 shots down to 6,86), while the P4 gains almost nothing (5,45 down to 5,11).
Short note: All values below that are faulty due to scatter hit or wrong time between shots (at first I only accounted for the reload time and neglected other factors, not fixed yet). Also, I attempted to make cost correction for performance analysis, which you can see in a brief excerpt below for range 15.
Lastly, and the most recent addition I implemented while also being the most visually appealing: AoE analysis.
Enter up to four units of your choice and get the result both as a table and a graph.
The red horizontal line currently represents 80 HP, the threshold to kill a full health infantry model. Below the table, the kill radius for the respective unit above is calculated. The graph scales itself and visualizes the damage curve from the center in a side-to-side comparison of all units. Below the table, we can see that the Sherman Bulldozer must land a shot within 0,867 meters of a model to insta-kill, while the Brummbär has a bigger radius of 1,106 meters. Also, the StuGE can't kill a full health model, so the output is "none". Finally, the area under the plot (= the integral) is roughly estimated as an indicator of the total potential AoE damage. Since more than 80 damage in our setup are overkill, it would scew the area comparison. Therefore, the "functional area under plot" estimates the area of each graph below the indicated threshold at currently 80 HP.
So far, I had fun writing the project and not letting my Excel skills get too rusty.
I hope you liked this short showcase of DeCoHde!
Hannibal