Reminder that in combat you have to discount the first salvo, as the vehicle already has the shell loaded.
Hannibal did some testing a few pages ago, and came to the conclusion that the Puma fires once every 4.33 seconds, and the M36 every 9 seconds. This is only 5% off your numbers for the puma, which seems reasonable, but 27% off for the M36, which is a lot.
That said, I did forget to remove the first reload, as you pointed out. However, this just shifts things more in favor of the M36.
Puma fires 10 shots in about 39 seconds at approximately 2/3 of it's max range (so 30-35 m, forgot to test on the range map). This means it has an effective reload speed of 4,33 seconds.
Jackson fires 10 shots in ~63 seconds at the same range, giving a reload of 9 seconds.
/edit
I just realized there's some flawed math in Hannibal's post. 10 shots, or 9 reloads, in 63 seconds means 63/9... which means the reload is 7 seconds. Not really sure where 9 came from.
My own testing showed 11 shots (10 reloads) in ~68 seconds, which gives a reload of 6.8 seconds. This still doesn't line up with your (or CoH2DB's) numbers, but it's closer.
I also tested the Puma, which gave 11 shots (10 reloads) in 42 seconds, which works out to a 4.2 second reload. Again, not exactly your numbers, but very close.
Not sure if i got the point, but you mean a change which has already been established changed years later? Because if not, there's plenty of changes which were completely flopped upside down.
I mean "core concept" changes. The M36 was changed from low RoF/High damage to Medium RoF/Medium damage because it used to do absurdly high 'alpha' damage, which was a real problem when in groups (or against LVs). I can't think of a time when a change was made, justified thoroughly, and then reverted entirely (i.e. full 180) after years of use. There just hasn't been an argument as to why changing the M36 back to low RoF/High damage makes sense.
Again I'm just asking why does the Puma have to kill the Jackson in order to be a success? Since when does it mean you lost just because you didn't kill something? If you use that vet 1 ability, the Jackson is gonna back off
I don't want to buff the Puma to reliably kill Jackson's. I want to tweak a few things so it can contribute to fighting it more easily. "Time to kill" scenarios can only tell you so much
Because we're already making a ton of compromises and conditions to even get this far.
1. We've nerfed the M36 armor from 130 to 110
2. We let the M36 be take a single Pak40 hit (so it's at 480hp)
3. We've hit the M36 with the Puma's Vet 1 ability (which means a vet 1 puma)
4. We're not using the M36's vet 1 ability, that forces the Puma to retreat after 1 hit
5. We're assuming that the USF player has no other methods in which it can scare off the Puma (another tank, ATG, mines, etc.)
6. We're assuming the M36 doesn't fire (or hit) a single shot, despite the Puma's Vet 1 turret lock only lasting 15 seconds
This is already such a horrendously bad situation for the USF player that not losing the M36 to the diving puma would be a bit ridiculous. And even then, if we ignore point #6, all of those adjustments only result in a 50% win rate for the Puma.
They haven't reverted full groups of changes like the one from the notes you just shared, but they definitely go back partially. Look at the comet. Was OP, got wildly overnerfed, and recently they fixed the overnerfing
Yes, partly; not completely reverting the core of the change. I'm not saying its impossible, I'm just saying it's unprecedented. Also, there would likely be a lot of pushback on that reversion.
Can we stop ignoring the Puma's vet 1 ability? We are literally talking about the puma vs a turreted vehicle, and it has a turret lock ability. That can completely swing a fight against a Jackson and you left it out completely from this analysis
HVAP can certainly change puma to a 2-shot kill, but the longer aim-time could screw it hard against a Puma which has smoke to break contact and the ability to self-spot
Accuracy is the only point that I think is trouble. Could increase the target size of Jackson since most people already think it needs some nerfs against everything anyway. The armor nerf should happen regardless just to at least eliminate the rare p4 deflections
Even if the M36 never fired, you're still looking at a 60-80 second "chase" time (60 if the M36 has been hit once by a Pak40), which is going to be nigh-impossible considering the Puma's HP and armor.
We can shift around a bunch of other stats, but (IMO) we're still looking at a 33% shift in DPS between the two, which is really, really high regardless of how its done. Without causing massive knock-on problems, we can adjust any of the following (at least, from what I can tell):
Stat | Current value Puma
Accuracy (far) = 0.025
Moving Mult = 0.5
Pen (far) = 80
Damage = 120
RoF = 4.33sec
Note that changes to the Puma's Damage, RoF and even pen would have significant impacts on other areas of the game.
Why? Is it not possible Relic made a mistake?
It's possible, but I can't think of a time when an old change (2+ years) has been reverted because the core reasoning for the change was flawed. And as others have said, it would make Axis heavies (or panthers) extremely oppressive against USF.
The only issue with that is the fact that they'd get dumpstered by panthers for lack of enough DPS since the panther is almost as fast.
Considering the M36 was changed back in December 2017 for this exact reason, lowering the RoF and Increase damage isn't really an option.
The M36 is having its damage modified to be more reliable against tanks, including heavies, but less potent in terms of burst damage against lower health vehicles.
Cost from 360/125 to 400/140 Damage from 200 to 160
Reload from 5.2/5.8 to 4.375/4.975; does not affect HVAP
HVAP damage decreased from 240 to 200
HVAP penetration from 300/250/220 to 300/280/250
Penetration from 240/220/200 to 260/240/220
Health from 480 to 640
Veterancy 3 reload bonus from 30% to 15%
Okay but I'm talking about tweaks to both units not just the Puma. Lowering the Jackson's armor does not effect LVs. Moving accuracy would effect it a little
But it's already incredibly strong against LVs?
Also the Jackson use to have much slower reload than it does now and imo the buff that changed that went WAY too far
/EDIT: The reload times used below are incorrect (by a fair bit). I've corrected them in this post: link
I mean no one is saying it can dominate the m36, or that it should. Presumably you wouldn't dive after a full health Jackson with your puma for 1 on 1 showdown
But with a few tweaks it could be a much more reliable option to use against it
No, of course not, but even diving on a 60% hp M36 would be very risky, which makes the puma a 'not so great' counter.
Also, the tweaks required to make the puma a good counter (or even just viable) would make it incredibly strong against LVs, which would cause a bunch of other issues.
I already addressed some of those points. I said they should add it to another Commander in Ost and maybe give mobile defense some love. The unit could also be buffed, maybe with better moving acc
You are leaving out the fact that the Puma can self spot, so it should get first shot advantage pretty often. And Jackson turret speed isn't great either
Awful pathing isn't unique to the Puma, I think all the light tanks suffer from it since they can't crush anything besides wooden fences
1. Forcing a commander pick to counter a very common mainline isn't a good idea, imo, especially for a faction that currently relies very heavily on doc abilities/units.
An interesting idea might be to put the puma in the HQ, but locking it behind BP3 (but not the T3 building) - or putting it in the T2 building, but requiring BP3 to be researched in order to build it (to prevent T2 skipping). This might also help Ost in facing LVs, since they're currently extremely vulnerable to fast T70s (and others).
2. The +15 sight the puma has over the M36 is nice, and would come into play a fair bit. However, when chasing/diving, the M36 is going to have vision from other units closer to the front-lines. Additionally, if we're talking about "other bonuses", the M36 has a vehicle crew (self repair, target dropping, pop-avoidance, etc.).
As for turret speed, the M36 and Puma both have a rotation speed of 35, which is also the same as most medium tanks (panther, P4, Sherman, T34/76, etc.). I only brought up rotation because the Puma is an LV, and most LVs have around 100 rotation speed (as do some AI-focused mediums, like the Ostwind).
3. This is a good point, and I agree, it's probably an issue with most/all LVs. The thing is, the M36 doesn't really have these issues, so it's just another advantage it would have in this match up.
It already does. A well timed Panther dive can easily kill a Jackson on most occasions.
I'd agree with you in 1v1s, but in 2v2+ this just isn't the case due to numbers. It's pretty common to see USF players with 2-3 M36s in team-games, which means up to 12 M36s in total. A panther just can't dive that - neither can a bunch of panthers.
Additionally, Axis (ost in particular, imo) is much more reliant on vehicles as AI than most other factions, which means less pop-cap is available for spamming panthers. Most games I simply don't have the room for more than 2.
I mean if we made the Jackson's armor 90-100, that would give it really good pen chances at all ranges?
Jackson also has a larger than average target size iirc, and the pumas vet 1 ability gives it a decent chance against most t4 units. If the armor nerf went through i think that would be a good spot
I could be overplaying the target size difference though, i trust your intuition on the accuracy point more than mine
The problem with the puma isn't the pen, it's everything else. The puma is simply an awful vehicle for chasing other fast vehicles:
1. Low accuracy at max range. At 60 range, it has 28.6% less chance to hit than the M36 (when both are stationary).
2. Low moving accuracy (0.5) means you're going to miss a lot, or be forced to 'stop and start' a lot, which allows for the enemy to eventually get out of range. The M36 has a 0.75 moving accuracy modifier.
3. Low damage. This one is arguable due to RoF, but not so much once you factor in accuracy. 120 damage just isn't that much against a 640hp tank when you have trouble hitting it.
4. It has horrible turret rotation (for an LV), so corners or even just flanking it are very viable counters. There are some medium AI-tanks and other LVs with nearly 4x faster rotation.
5. Awful pathing. I'm not sure if its just confirmation bias, but the puma seems to get stuck (or turn randomly) on just about everything when its chasing stuff.
6. Low armor. At 25/12.5 armor, the puma takes damage from just about everything; combined with 400hp, that's not great for diving.
7. Availability. The puma isn't available to OST unless you pick the "mobile defense" doc, which is incredibly unpopular now (it was never picked in WCS). It also forces OKW to go mech-truck to counter USF's late game, which either means the med-truck becomes even less popular than it currently is, or mech becomes a required back-tech in USF games.
You can make panther effectively fight jackson. And still retain Jackson effectiveness against panther and heavies. It is not 1 or 0.
Cost of panther to perf is simply poor
Op m36 armor nerf is pointless since puma is okw nondoc.
While I don't disagree with you, balancing it so that the M36 and Panther counter eachother would be an insanely difficult task, since the balance would need to be so incredibly precise. It could also run into the situation where if one player comes out even slightly ahead, they'd win automatically, since either could become nigh-unbeatable via snowballing. It could end up being like current "sniper wars", except that would be the entire late-game.
Implementing this feature would mean that vision is greatly increased as well, since all units should see further than they detect enemies. This would drastically change the core of CoH though, since much bigger maps were required.
This was pretty much my initial impression, too.
Additionally, this would make the game much more campy and slow paced, since the defenders would always see the attackers first (since it would be stationary vs. moving). This would give a massive advantage to long range units, such as snipers or TDs, which many people don't enjoy that much with the current (lower) vision system.
It could be interesting if OP's suggestion was applied to all units as "detection range", as an additional system on top of the existing vision system. Detection could give information on the mini-map only; that way the 'detected unit' info could be somewhat useful, but wouldn't allow for direct targeting.
/edit
As a side-note, I would also point out that drastic changes to systems can be very hit-or-miss. True-sight worked out well in CoH2, but 'cold tech' (blizzards, snow/mud) wasn't very well received in competitive multiplayer.
Doomlord52
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
