Profile of Cabreza

D-IX:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-IX



Nice one Relic.

Learning is fun.

Did anyone else read Relic's forum post and immediately assume they were making a dick joke?

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Vet gain is only based off of the health of a tank while durability is a function of both armor and health. Therefor if the goal is to reduce vet feed while maintaining durability you need to to reduce the health pool of the tank while simultaneously increasing its ability to mitigate damage. Using your methodology we can lower the HP of the Churchill and increase its armor to achieve roughly the same durability level. For example:

Churchill, 240 armour, 1400 HP (durability level = 336K)
Speculative Churchill, 325 armour, 1040 HP (durability level = 338K)

The speculative Churchill in this scenario has roughly the same durability as the current tank but more of that durability is based around armor deflecting shots than health tanking hits. As a result the speculative Churchill will produce less vet for opponents at the cost of being more prone to RNG elements (it can survive 2 fewer penetrations than the current Churchill) and a bit more vulnerable to superheavy AT (JT, Elephant, Pak43 all require one fewer shots to kill).

Below are the average number of shots require to kill each Churchill variant:

vehicle health/(opposing weapon damage*(average opposing weapon penetration/armor))=average # of shots to kill

Churchill
vs P4 1400/(160*(110/240))=19.09 shots
vs Pak40 1400/(160*(190/240))=11.05 shots
vs Panther 1400/(160*(240/240))=8.75 shots
vs JagdTiger 1400/(320*(240/240))=4.37 shots

Speculative Churchill
vs P4 1040/(160*(110/325))=19.20 shots
vs Pak40 1040/(160*(190/325))=11.11 shots
vs Panther 1040/(160*(240/325))=8.80 shots
vs JagdTiger 1040/(320*(325/325))=3.25 shots

As you can see 1040 HP and 325 Armor would achieve similar survivability vs most sources of AT while bleeding less vet. Although this speculative Churchill would be more vulnerable to bad sequences of RNG if the smoke was fixed it could effectively mitigate those times with a well-timed smoke cover. I would favor this approach over the alternative because it works within the existing ruleset instead of creating special vet gain modifiers for one specific tank.

This of course assumes we want the durability to remain the same. If we wanted to make the Churchill more durable we could always increase the armor further (1040 HP 375 armor would put it at the same durability as an IS2).

I think one of the main issues with the churchill is that it has very little impact when it arrives. The main gun is hardly special and the low armor means that all the AT your opponent currently has will penetrate it easily. Since it doesn't create any matchup mismatches your opponent doesn't have to adapt their strat to cope with the presence of a churchill. By contrast when the comet arrives it outclasses medium tanks/AT infantry and is a constant flanking threat. This in turn requires your opponent to react to the comet by placing tellers or investing in panthers/dedicated TDs. For the curchill to be successful it needs to be able to create a similar kind of mismatch when it arrives on the field.

320 armor with 1280 hp.

and remove the speed penalty on the smoke ability.

+1.

The reduced vet solution isn't a bad idea but it would mean creating specialized game rules for one specific unit that aren't in any way clear to the average player. I'd much rather see the churchill just brought in line with the survivability of every other heavy tank.

IS-2 all the way. I'ts big, clumsy, and horribly devastating if it ever scores a direct hit. Everything about it screams Russian.