Profile of coh2player

I played a lot of team games and always went T4 (I know 1 v 1, it's T3).

The Panther has always annoyed me. They adjusted the price here and there and improved the pen of the T-34/85 & IS-2- nerf, buff, etc. but they have always missed the point.

The Panther itself needs a HP nerf. Its HP was always far too high, making it too survivable along with its high speed, smoke and blitz.

This is why I made this thread, as I am an experienced COH2 player but only bought the original trilogy a few days ago.

'Theoretically' 'less certain', that is. Reality is a different beast.

The Panzer IV H is pretty late in the service life the Panzer IV. You see H and J models being armed by the panzer divisions in 1944, or later.

As far as the Sherman 76 and Sherman Firefly, they initially were scattered pro rata but by late 1944 to 1945 they were increasingly issued to the point where almost half of the front line tanks were upgunned.

The Panzer IVs during Citadel and the summer soviet offensives were not mostly the H model. They were mostly earlier models, like the G. Not only that, but the Panzer III long 50mm was the most common German tank in the summer of 1943.

Second, the 'losses' are less attributable to tank to tank. The core of German anti-tank defense was also their towed antitank gun fleet. (panzerjaeger battalions of infantry divisions) and their Flak Korps in the East. German minefields, infantry AT, anti-tank air wings, and artillery concentrations also took their toll.

The Germans also overclaimed enormously in their tank kills and the Soviets were able to recover large numbers of their tanks as they retook ground. Many of the losses at Citadel for instance, were recovered.

The high soviet tank losses point more towards the fact that the soviets were rapidly advancing after they stopped the Germans at their last gasp @ Citadel. The offensive operations they performed wrote off armor for rapid strategic gains. You have situations where, for instance, the 5th Guards Tank Army suffered huge losses of tanks- several hundred- in days during Citadel but then the crews get rearmed 2 weeks later with a full set of equipment for the counteroffensive.

As in, the armor was very aggressively used and sacrificed for big wins. Tank corps & mechanized corps made many frontal attacks to smash the German defenses, and with predictable high losses.

I'm talking about actual combat reports and accounts from books- not wiki'. I've never read of an account of shots bouncing off the P4's front.

The 80mm vertical was a very theoretical protection that was within the upper limits of the 76mm/75mm's performance. Special AP rounds were enough to go through it although conventional AP rounds were less certain. Also, there was the question of substandard armor quality and the G's hull was a plate that was welded which would reduce the theoretical value.

To give you an example, the Tiger tank had 80mm Side hull armor with the highest quality steel used by the Germans. In close ranges the US 75mm AP would penetrate 70mm of the 80mm armor. But this was the top shelf armor of the Germans. The rest of the common tanks did not enjoy this luxury. In fact many of the late war tanks, including Panthers, were outfitted with armor that was progressively lower grader due to material shortages and cost cutting. They were brittle, had less protection than the theoretical paper value, and had a tendency to crack when struck.

Soviet evaluation of King Tiger tanks for instance, report that the armor is very thick, and well shaped to maximize deflection. But the armor quality was brittle and below Soviet standards.

The IV-H was very much a late war tank..within the last year of the war sort of business. T-34/85's, Shermans 76/Fireflies had proliferated greatly since then- the latter often encompassing half of tank platoons and the former being universally adopted by tank units.

Panzer III 50mm Long would be losing out to the T-34/76 as far as armor and main gun is concerned. By 44', which is when the game takes place- the P3 was already pulled out of the panzer regiments and either:

1. converted to Stugs
2. retained as training vehicles
3. kept around in odd places
4. Re-armed with the L/24 75mm stubby and used as a soft target tank.

On 'paper' the Panzer IV H was supposed to be well armored (bouncing Sherman 75 and T-34/76) but I have never encountered anything in history that has indicated that the P4 could not be easily penetrated from the front.