is not so good against p4 it can win. but it will have to retreat.
An IS-2 should flatten a P-IV unless you do something silly with it (like maybe getting circlestrafed with blitzkrieg). Higher penetration, more health and much better armour. |
After playing some games recently i have to agree that a couple of ZiS guns with T34 and conscript support can create an area denial until you get to something more offensive, like an SU85. This especially works well on Minsk pocket to camp your fuel. Still when you add an ostwind to the mix your position is under serious danger since ZiS still wont hit and/or penetrate half the time.
My point is that i would much rather prefer ZiS to be a hard armor counter than it having 2 abilities and six man crews. I still _have_ to support this multi-purpose hard-to-kill AT gun just as i would have compared to a german PaK gun. So if i still have to do this why should i sacrifice solid AT capability? I just see no point in that. Barrage ability _is_ useful, but soviets have a dozen similar options to pick from. And when facing armor you need solid AT much much more.
I think they work as a hard armour counter. They're not offensive tank chasers like the SU-85 (which is still fairly OP in my view) but they can get a pretty good creep going and they synergise really well with the rest of the Soviet army (so, barrage to clear houses and MGs, extra sight ability on vet is pretty helpful when you suspect shenanigans). I think it needs less support and is less of a liability than the PAK right now, and the six men also makes it generally better at its AT role.
Ostwinds are really the only thing that can ruin their day right now, which is kind of inevitable if you don't have specific target tables. Again, compared to how badly the PAK-40 deals with T-70s (badly), T-34s (mixed), KV-8s (terribly), SU-85s (alright but not great), the ZiS seems to be in an alright spot to me right now. Making them cheaper I think would be too spammable, making them higher damage seems a bit risky when the survivability's so good. The PAK needs something else, I think, atm the vet ability's the main thing going for it and it's pretty hard to actually get the vet because it's so likely to get decrewed.
Edit: just seen your last posts - in short, I think the ZiS is pretty good (i.e. reliable, more or less) at AT and very useful for support, while the PAK's AT is lackluster against most of the things you want it against and it has no support capacity. Would support the PAK being a bit cheaper (like, 300/320) and a bit higher damage to discourage the anti-infantry tanks from just trying to take it head on. |
As i've said in the original post, yes, AT guns should be supported. Thats the whole point actually:
You are correct on the expensive Tank vs manpower AT, it should not counter them easily. But now you have two ways to go about that.
One way is an AT gun to be an effective counter to a Tank but have a lot of counters itself like mortars, snipers, artillery, infantry - basically _everything_ except a Tank. This way you have to invest additional resources into supporting your gun like counter-snipers, counter arty, infantry, mines, etc, which kinda evens out the costs between "cheap" AT gun and an expensive tank. You also have much more micro pressure on you. But your actual gun can do its job then.
The second way is like we see in CoH2 - soviet AT gun has less counters and has more uses (arty barrage) but is much worse at its primary role. I see a major problem with this approach, because you still need to pay additional costs to support your gun properly but even then your AT gun cannot really perform its role very well.
The bottom line: AT guns are cheap because they need a lot of support, babysitting, cannot be used offensively easily and react very slowly. But when you have proper support for it and enemy tank goes straight at it it should be effective, because you've spent a ton of effort to cover its many weaknesses.
In such scenarios, I find the ZiS perfectly effective. Especially compared to the PAK, which on account of low crew number, SU-85 range and accuracy, the small size of the T-70 and the KV-8 omnimuncher is much more liable to underperform. P-gren shreks are quite good but liable to dancing around and to just being blown up by the T3 and T4 armour they're supposed to counter.
Unlike the SU-85, it's not likely to kill a good opponent's properly managed tank but as area denial a pair of ZiS guns can be extremely effective. I tend to go for AT guns + T-70s/34s if I see the Opel Blitz commander.
Additionally, in terms of non-fuel AT solutions for the Soviets - 2-3 guard squads + Mark Vehicle can actually kill an enemy tank if they don't have Panzer Tactician.
In my opinion, the PAK needs a fix right now (specifically, to be less inaccurate against T-70s and have more gun health to cope with SU-85s)... the ZiS is pretty strong where it is, and the survivability on it makes a few of them very tricky to crack. This extra survivability probably benefits it even more in terms of fulfilling its role against tanks and especially tank + off-map pushes than against infantry. |
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Just report it to Noun. Pretty obvious grounds for a suspension. |
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A well-positioned, reasonably supported ZiS gun is pretty good against anything except a Flakpanzer. With mines or a second gun overlapping it it can take out an Ostwind. As in VCoH a lone unsupported AT gun is of very limited use.
I'm finding T-70s backed by a couple of ZiS guns a very strong comeback option from a bad start. IMO, the ZiS is far better at the AT role than the PAK, if just for reasons of survivability and the possibility of merge. The expanded sight is actually pretty helpful as well. |
That would also have the effect of making it too hard to kill with small arms. They would need to lower the armor as welll for that to work.
Though I'm not against lowering the armour necessarily, he would still be easier to kill with small arms than a single shock troop model. And the Soviet 2 man team would still have some advantages (direct tank or mortar hit on one model doesn't kill the squad, countersnipe, sprint... etc...) in terms of survivability. |
Doesn't 2 armour already basically = 80 HP?
Absolutely zero effect on anything with flames, or explosive (Or sniper fire, I believe). Which includes mortars, grenades and tank fire. Also, as pointed out, the lower HP and single model means the RNG can just wreck your day. |
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It's not phenomenal. A really good counter to P-IVs and extremely good against pretty much any infantry because very accurate. Also can shrug off a pfaust headon sometimes now. Occasionally good after a bad start followed by Tier 3 + AT gun creep, where you don't really have another good AV vehicle available. |
Peter from Relic said that indirect fire is meant to be the counter to snipers. The problem is, as you said, it works only against the german sniper. Also I remember from vCOH how many snipers died to AT guns in general until they finally fix this in some patch. It is however hard to say if snipers die to AT guns in COH2 cuz no one build german sniper and not so many soviets waist time with ZIS and PAK on the other hand gets very quickly decrewed.
Well, he said that in the context of two Russian sniper teams supported by an SU-85 in the late game, which is fair.
My experience is that the German sniper can die to an awful lot of things the Russian sniper will easily get away with, and especially to things that shouldn't really result in a sniper death (like, a single conscript or engineer squad that he retreats from reasonably quickly, or a tank near-miss on retreat, or a single low-calibre mortar shell that isn't directly on target), as well as being radically less dangerous. I think 80HP would be a huge help with his survivability. Currently when I see a German sniper I suddenly feel very confident, while if I see a Soviet one I start having to think about counters. |
Like the sniper squads, it's random whether tank crews are women or men for the Soviets.
Go fuck yourself.
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rndorian
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