You’re gonna sit here with a straight face and tell us the IS2 with vet 1 Frag shells and either IL2 looter or flame barrage from commanders can’t break through an enemy line and provides no benefit different from other Soviet units? How exactly does the Panther zone it out with its slow reload? IS2 pushing with double zis and cons is not in danger from a lone Panther. The real danger comes when the IS2 is snared in front of 2 pak40s and the Panther chases for the kill.
The frag shells are okay but nothing to build your army or strategy around. So nope, they bring nothing really interesting to the table.
Your example is pretty biased. If you use a fully coordinated push as an example (which is fair), then at least compare it to a fully coordinated defense. I also never talked about zoning.
The point is: One Panther is enough to block the IS2 from advancing, all support units being roughly equal, even if you manage to not get scouted with your attack. Do the same thing as Axis with a KT or Tiger, and your units are on the run, because Allies do not have a beefy Panther-like TD. Which is also fully fine balance-wise, it just makes the IS-2 uninteresting. |
Because Axis struggles more then allies vs heavy armour, because axis DONT HAVE access to 60 range high pen TD's. Yes, currently team games modes with Kt's, elephants etc is annoying and everybody knows teams 3v3,4v4s games is a balance mess and will ALWAYS be a mess and yet you want to make changes based on whats happening in team games. IS2 is fine as it is, your complaining it being push back by a panther with support lol, im sorry are you saying it should be able to walk through the entire axis roster? and last time i checked isnt panther supposed to be a somewhat of a counter to is2?
I don't think people are seriously arguing that the Panther should be bad against the IS2 (it's the only unit Axis have that can really stop a heavy, apart from buying your own heavy).
The point is though that the IS2 does not really provide any gameplay benefit. Because of the Panther, it cannot break through an enemy line, since the Panther will just sit there, and with minor support the IS2 can't advance. That's basically how the rest of the Soviet units already play, relying on long range pot shots to whittle the enemy tanks down. You don't need an IS-2 for that, there's nothing new.
The canon has an AI focus, which I also don't fully get why. Both ISU152 and KV-2 also focus on AI which their special flavor. Either long range shots (ISU) or a large AoE and even lobbed indirect shots (KV2). The IS-2's cannon is still good AI wise, but also offers nothing special. It does decent damage, but is not as capable of wiping squads. As I said previously, you can get a Katy instead if you want to wipe enemy squads.
The unit is okay, but it just doesn't offer much new to the faction. |
if you get suppressed normally you cant move and he will switch targets, with this way if he switches target you will send the hit-the-dirt squad mobile and walk straight through the machine gun
god has given you the ability to do human wave tactics, and you shall utilize them if you are audacious
To be honest I am not sure how long the delay was until you can de-activate the hit the dirt ability (haven't used it in ages) or if it still exists in the first place.
The way I see it, there are two options after immobilizing your frontal squad (suppression, hit the dirt), assuming players with decent micro:
1. Your flanking squad runs past the cone of fire. This forces the MG to retreat or reposition.
2. Your flanking squad gets suppressed as well. Without HTD, you can just retreat at this point. With HTD, your mobilize your frontal squad again. However you're in the middle of the cone at realistically range 30-40. You're not going to overrun the MG. Best case is that you can pull back one squad. With an half-decent opponent that switches targets, he will switch back to the frontal and this one gets suppressed, too.
The only gain I can see is that you can reactivate your squad unsuppressed if the flanking succeeded and the MG retreats. If there are other enemy squads in the area, you can fight them quicker. If there are not enough enemies to fire at the frontal squad to keep suppression, well, you did not gain much because the suppressed frontal squad will lose suppression quickly anyway.
Put you pay higher micro tax. You need to HTD at the same time your flanking squad should already ooraah around the MG.
Anyway, the whole point when this discussion started was about a defensive setup. HTD does not help at all. It's an ability for an offensive assault squad that needs to be close range. Your trade off is to not get a seventh man. 7 men Cons in green cover will at least decently damage an MG when shooting back. HTD PPsH squads will do even less damage, plus you make yourself vulnerable to nades of assaulting squads. |
its an anti-mg ability and that's what matters, one squad eats up suppression and the others oorah around it
Which is perfectly possible just without this ability. Just let the squad get suppressed, and the others flank the MG. Any good player will try to switch targets to the flanking squads manually. It doesn't matter much if your middle squad is immobile by suppression or hit the dirt. It's immobile, so the defender will switch targets.
You either time the flanking maneuver well enough to make it or not, but this ability does not help.
You're actually taking your own squad out of the fight. Even before it got suppressed, which technically means that you allow the opponent to switch targets earlier than necessary. |
assault package --> hit the dirt --> underappreciated commander ability
This ability is probably one of the worst you could get for a close range squad. |
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Just to add to others (without having played the IS-2 much myself):
I think the main issues for team games are
1. a Panther can stop it. If the IS2 pops out of the fog of war unexpectedly, your Panther can still sit there and trade. And while this fight is fairly even to slightly in the IS2's favor (from what I know), the IS2 is usually trading down in terms of value. You can't break through in this scenario. The other way around: Tiger ambushes Allies, the Allies have to run and can at least temporarily secure the position.
2. No burst or alpha damage. The IS2 takes a long time to take out even a medium tank, it just isn't very cost effective in that regard. So you want to use it against infantry, but for this purpose just get a Katy. The IS2 has a good AI cannon, but it is not as wipey as a Katyusha, therefore it won't secure squad wipes as easily.
3. If the opponents get a JT or Elefant, which often the case, your IS2 is almost useless.
4. I am not sure about this point, but might it be that killing infantry does not give you as much XP as fighting tanks? At vet3, the IS2 is VERY good, but I find it hard to get to there. Harder than just using a Tiger. |
Some stats are simply oversight...
Stuka rocket penetration of 0
FF mid range of 45
Sniper HP 82
HVAP deflection damage
ISU-152 skill deflection damage
KV-2 minimum range
Churchill's acceleration/rotation
PzIV J XP and rear armor values
Stuka penetration has been fixed a couple of patches ago.
I won't debate these to not go off topic. But these stats are slightly different. Most of these are directly visible and directly impact the performance of a unit in an obvious, visual, sometimes even quantifiable way.
This minimum distance that MMX was talking about looks more like some odd fix to something the engine could not handle properly, or that Relic did not figure out to handle otherwise.
But I agree that, if there are even "obvious" stats that got forgotten, it is likely that "hidden" stats got forgotten even more often. |
Yeah the normal accuracy hits seem to always hit the front part if the targeted tank faces even just a bit forward (i.e between +89 and -89°) and vice versa for rear armor shots. Not sure what would happen if you hit exactly 90° side-on though, that would probably be worth to test. Also, for scatter shots to show this weird behavior you have to always fire at least some distance behind the target. The exact extent you need to overshoot seems to correlate with the distance scatter of the weapon; if some part of the scatter cone lies inside the hitbox of the target the whole thing doesn't work and you get a frontal hit instead (and not only sometimes, like if a shot would scatter too short to make it out of the tank's hitbox, but apparently it never at all). Hence why, even if you somehow managed to fail the accuracy roll of a regular attack at point blank, the scatter shot wouldn't phase through the front border of the hitbox.
That makes me think this is indeed some buggy and unintended interaction, and I've got no idea why it is even in the game. Maybe a remnant of some obscure bugfix in the very early days of CoH2's development that never got deleted? Hard to say for sure.
The editor description states that "distance_scatter_obj_hit_min" cannot exceed 10 m, yet for practically all weapons this is set to 10 by default. So whatever purpose it might have originally had to tweak this value, it seems pretty much redundant now.
Then again, it opens the door for shenanigans such as this, so there is certainly a purpose nonetheless 
To be honest I believe this might have just been a quick and dirty fix for collision detection problems. Maybe even for an early, buggier version of the engine, but maybe it is still kind of "necessary". I don't know how large Relic was at the time, but there were probably multiple developers fiddling with the system at the same time. Might very well be that one "fixed" some issues with this one, then it got forgotten and/or no one tested if it could be safely removed.
As Vipper suggested, it might also prohibit vehicles from damaging themselves, although this could be set with other parameters. I also don't fully know where the projectiles spawn. If they spawn within the vehicle's hitbox, it might be to prevent instant detonation. Might still have been for an earlier engine version though, since shots phase through friendly tanks anyway now.
Just like you, I also noticed that a tiny angle change from 89° to 91° will fully decide about frontal and rear armor hits. Accuracy hits seem to always travel in a straight line, but I have only tested for stationary targets. Not sure what happens if the target moves. Weirdly, this might lead to tanks with high frontal armor, large target size and large hit boxes like the e.g. Elefant, IS2 and KT to perform better against ATGs, because shots will always hit, and thereby always hit the front armor, even if you attack from an angle. Technically, a low accuracy unit with very low scatter would perform better, since it has the chance to scatter hit the rear.
Anyway, that's a very nice find you got there, albeit an odd one. |
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This is cheesing the game engine on a whole new level.
I only had time for a quick read so I might have missed it:
Why is it important to ground attack? Do normal "accuracy" shots behave differently? I know they often ignore world objects, but to they always impact on the frontal armor then?
Also, do you have any idea why it exists? Would Coh2 really be THAT buggy if shots didn't phase through for a couple of meters. If so, why is it shorter for only a hand full of units?
Or is this just a weird remnant of a CoH developer entering a random value because he forgot that the SOP said "10"... |
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Alright, for this I can see the point.
However, if you want to compare the 105mm and the Brummbar regarding survivability at vet, don't forget that the 105mm also gets 160 HP more. Higher survivability with vet is not a specialty of the Brummbar in this case |
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