Profile of Doomlord52

All these threads about Allied TDs is solely due to lower CP requirements for heavy tanks and thus the heavy tank meta in the current patch. All these post are from people that play with Grand Offensive commander almost every game

No?

Let's imagine that all heavies were removed from the game; so the Panther becomes the heaviest Axis tank available. Nothing changes. The M36 would still be the dominant choice because it counters literally everything. Why get anything less?

The problem isn't that the M36 counters heavies effectively; it's that it counters everything so effectively that Heavies are the only reasonable choice. Two M36s can "2 salvo" a P4, meaning that they can delete a single P4 in about 6.5 seconds. A Tiger, on the other hand, has a 27% chance to bounce the M36 shots, and combined with its much higher HP pool, can survive for 35.5 seconds. That's a massive difference.

Meanwhile, this problem doesn't really exist with the SU85 - as shown by this thread. The SU85 has clear strengths and weaknesses, so there's actually some counter play available. Yes, if some P4s sit infront of the SU85s, they'll lose. However, the P4s are faster, and can flank the SU85s and easily win. Similarly, they're faster than Fireflys as well (and FFs have awful turret rotation speed).

Well 2 M36s vs 2 vet 2 P4s is actually not that hard to win as Ost, especially if you have panzer tactician and can retreat the damaged one.

The key is getting up close and having munitions for blitzkrieg and smoke.

How? The M36s have +15 range, accelerate faster, have a higher top speed, and 50% better moving accuracy. Provided the USF player is competent, there's no way the P4s could win; they wouldn't actually get within range of the M36s to begin with.

SU85 is the perfect 60 range TD:
+ Great range
+ Great Pen
+ Good rate of fire
+ Great vet
+ Self spotting
- Horrible mobility when self spotting
- Little to no armour
- Casemate so dies to flanking armour
- Cannot fight infantry
- No turret so has to rotate to fire at targets moving across its field of view

The SU 85 should be the bench mark.

Pretty much this. The SU-85 is a really well designed unit; great strengths but clear weaknesses. Ideally, we should be trying to get other units into a similar state. I'm sure someone could make an argument for +/-5% type changes, but I don't think that detracts from the core idea.

Don't vet 3 jacksons on Ap have 455 pen max range. I'm pretty sure ELE has only 400 armor. Jackson's could theoretically pen ELE's right.

M36/Vet3/AP at 60 range should be 390 pen, unless something has changed. That gives it a 97.5% chance to pen the front of the Ele at max range, which is "close enough" to 100%, IMO.

It's 74.28% vs a JT, in the same situation.

The Jackson needs both a vet change (similar to Su85) and somehow giving it a clear weakness compared to the other 2.

Just a 1 min thought example: what about giving it a really low acceleration value. Offensive wise it would still retain it's speed if it needs to flank heavy TDs but if caught with it's pant down, it wouldn't be able to reposition as fast. It would still have it's higher than normal on the move accuracy.

At this point, after all the discussion, I'm pretty convinced that the only major downside the M36 could be given without bricking it is a massive price increase.

-Pen needs to be high to counter heavy/super heavies
-Damage is already in-line with other TDs (160)
-RoF is about as low as it can go without being frustrating (6.43 sec reload)
-Mobility needs to be higher than a P4, otherwise it'll be nearly useless
-HP can't be much lower, or Panthers will counter it too effectively
-Armor is already close to irrelevant, so it can't be brought down much more (-20 maybe?)

Regarding your suggestion, I'm not sure there's a suitable acceleration value. Nerfing the acceleration by 33% brings it from 3 to 2. It now only accelerates slightly slower than a P4 (2.1), which is still quite usable. I don't think this would be much of a 'downside', especially when used by decent players.

/edit As Esxile pointed out, slower acceleration would make Blitz incredibly strong, too.

If we lowered it by 50% (from 3 to 1.5), we're now looking at acceleration speeds between the KT (1.4) and ST (1.6), which is going to make it really difficult to use, due to its low armor. Panthers, with their 2.4 acceleration and 6.6 speed are going to be able to dive on M36s quite easily. Additionally, from a usability standpoint, slow acceleration on a fast unit could be really frustrating, since if anything stops it (pathing issues), its going to take a while to get back up to speed. This could be seen as the unit being "unresponsive", which IMO isn't a good solution for units that aren't "visually heavy" (like the KT, JT, Ele, etc.)

One idea I've been thinking of lately is swapping the M8A1 "Scott" with the M10 in the Armor Company, and then drastically increasing the price on the M36 (ex. 460mp/165f). This could fix the "overlap" between the Scott and Pak-Howie (and lower their ubiquity, at least a bit), give USF an Intermediate AT source similar to a StuG-G, and would make M36 spam less viable.

I do not know how target size works. I will be assuming 1/4 of the time the IS2 misses

It's... complicated.

Hit chance = [Target Size] x [Accuracy at range]
So, for the IS2 firing at the StuG, it's 17 x 0.025 = 42.5%

However, if you actually try that setup, you'll find that the IS2 hits much more often than that, probably closer to 90-95% at max range (on neutral cover/flat ground). That's because of scatter, which allows 'rolled misses' to become hits, since the shell has a trajectory.

The calculations for scatter seem to be a lot more complicated, since it's basically comparison between the target vehicle's hitbox volume and a segment of a cone.

So again here is the question no one wants to answer:

Why should a Panzer 4 and Puma be able to take on something beyond their weight class like a Jackson?

The -20 armor nerf would only increase the P4's chance to pen by 15% at max range (45) and 4% at close range. It would increase the Puma's chance to pen by 11% at max range and 7.3% at close.

That's not going to drastically change anything.

Also, I did answer this question before.

2. No one is asking for the OST or OKW P4 to beat the M36. The problem is that the M36 currently makes everything irrelevant, from dedicated TDs (STUG), to mediums, premium mediums, and even heavies - it beats them all with ease, when in the right hands.

This is partly because of its range (60), which means that those tanks can never actually return fire (except for the JP4, all have 50 or less range), but also because of its incredible mobility. Its faster than every axis tank in both acceleration and top speed - with the single exception being the panther, which has an ever so slightly higher top speed (but it has 10 less range). Then, on top of all that, the M36 has a 0.75 moving accuracy modifier, which makes it 50% more accurate than every axis tank in the game when moving. It also has very good base stats (that make sense), such as very high pen at all ranges (220+), high damage (160), and average reload (iirc around 9.7sec?).

And of course, it has the bonus of being a USF tank, meaning it can self-repair with its crew, force enemy vehicles to stop targeting it by jumping out, and it can help USF bypass the pop-cap.

Any one of those benefits would make it an strong unit; the problem is the combination of all three. The "downside" of the M36 is supposed to be that its a 'glass cannon', but that's irrelevant if it can't be hit 95% of the time (also it has 640hp).

Yea, this is a pretty clear 'unintended side-effect' type issue. It should've been addressed ages ago, as it makes pop-cap changes on USF tanks basically pointless.

Increase pop cap of tank crews so the difference between tank and crew is smaller?

Any popcap above 100 could get an exponential grow by 10 increment in pop. 2x, 3x the rate per popcap value abouve it. Or basically an extra penalty for easier implementation at certain thresholds.

Either of these ideas seem good to me; not sure how hard it would be to implement, though.