It is irrelevant.
The unit was underperforming vs infantry regardless of timing, because it had and still has a shitty main gun.
Its main gun performs exactly the same way now as it did for last 6 years.
T34 received AI gun nerf, in return of AT buff, later it recieved AI buff in terms of MG buffs, because its AT perfomance was (and still is) kinda questinable considering its timing and price. Before that it recieved buffs in price\pop-cap.
No-one used T34 outside of combining it with windustry, because against armor targets SU-85 still was the main chose and T70 filled the role of AI tank, while even after AT buff T34 still was infior option to both T70 and SU-85 in AT\AI departement.
In 5.0 the 25 second build time is the same as the call-in cooldown for Osstruppen in live(also same as Grenadier build time I believe). If you reduce it any then you undermine the whole point of moving them to T1. Even a slight reduction in build time would cancel out the build time of T1 and the 80 MP delay to the next Ostruppen built.
Point to begine with wasnt to adress osttroopen timing. Otherwise there would be no reason to move them to T1, instead of just increasing cooldown could have been just increased. They were moved to T1 in order to adress ostts into T2 skip.
I actually agree with MMX - it's not about losing full squads, it's about losing infantry models, which you will be losing over the course of the game anyway. The trick is to timing ability activation in such way that you get the most of it, so standard risk-reward design.
Its not, but as I've pointed out, it was about loosing squads back in the day, with full wipes being more friquant. Thing is, you basically need to have huge inf consentrations, speaking of 3+ squads in one place taking sugnificant losses, in order to make this ability pay for itself. Spending all that muni to get 1 ost\const squad is not worth it, while in order to get 2 you need presice calculation and presice amount of squads in one place.
All of this makes both abilities in a global picture, simply not worth the all this efford. Risk is much highter then the reward. That was my point.
Additionally, the fact that you need to reach a specific number of losses to get a benefit is problematic. That's one of the reasons why I came up and implemented a rework for Rapid Conscription, which stores the number of lost models between activations.
This is sounds interesting. But again, lets say you are missing 1 model, so you would need 2 activations to get 1 squad, maybe 2 if you manage to pull it off this time or not. Still imo, this ability is a gamble at best.
i honestly don't get why people keep bringing this as an argument ad nauseum when it is so obviously flawed.
How it is flawed really? Consider amout of muni you are paying for both abilities, then consider amout of models you need to lose to get either new osttroopen or cons squad.
Lets not take into consideration 3v3 and 4v4 gamemodes, where you can easily have your small part of the map and all your units will be concentrated in this part of the map.
Playing as Ostheer you generally want to consider retreating your squads (based on situation) when they have droped to 2 models, if the engagement is not 100% winable. Same with soviets, you generally want to retreat with 2-3 models left.
Retreating with 1 model as ost or 1\2 models as soviets can be considered risky, especially if its not an early game engagements.
In other words, you are paying crap load of muni, and effectively you HAVE to lose 50% of multiple squad models in order to get un-vetted inf. Otherwise this ability would be just a muni waste.
Both abilities were designed with fast wipes in mind, because they were much MUCH more common back in the day. You could have expect to get wipes attaking\defending simply due to how damage worked.
After all the changes both abilities became a shenanigans schemes, where you kinda have to blob a bit, also lose models of multiple squads (ideally 1 model from each), also retreat (because they are vetted and losing them is not an option) and after that you might have 1 or 2 useless un-vetted squads, which will take a pop-cap aswell as lower your MP income and you will still pay for reinforcement of your main squads.
Honestly, I would have suggest stop beating the dead horse at this point.
vCoH had medics mechanic aswell as abilities to replace losses, because you was expected lose models\units.
CoH2 became a game, where even loosing 1 squad might be very punishing, especially if its vetted.
Both relief and rapid consicription are abilities that arent fit for CoH2. Anything based on loosing something in Coh2 by default wont fit its gameplay.
I would have been x100 times better to just replace this abilities, considering we have only 2 commanders for each side having them.
Lightning War Doctrine - can easily have Breakthrough from encirclement doctrine
Festung Support Doctrine - Defensive Fortifications from Defensive
For soviets its harder, both Conscripts Support Tactics and Soviet Reserve Army have not only rapid but also rapair kits. Which makes both of them even less usefull.
A lot of "learn how to use" issues in this thread I am afraid. As Sander said, the unit is totally fine once you got an exact idea of how the sturmtiger shell works and where you can/cannot use the unit.
Question is, why AVRE at the same time have pretty natular and easy learning curve. ST in a vacuum is a good unit, but some sort of consistency to unit balance is also requared, especially when they are pretty much the same type of unit. Or at least some trade-offs.
This is what most of the people dont like about ST. That it requare balistic physics and map knowlage, while other faction has unit, which even new player can more or less use effectively.
So tell me how to make the Sturmtiger useful then.
Its not about making ST usefull in a first place. Whole problem with ST is an example of inconsistency in unit desing.
Either vannila ST should be brought more or less in line with vannila ARVE (which is bad imho), with veterancy nerfs or vannila AVRE should be brought in line with ST, in other words start weak and get its perfomance back via Vet. Second aproach, again imho, is better, because of how devastating thous units can be.
That applies to ALL high cost vehicles when shooting against infantry, specially ones which have any sort of AT. Vehicles which are purely AI, can be balanced by giving them low xp requirements but that can't be the case for those who have AT.
Not sure if there's a modifier available that let's units gain more xp when fighting a specific type of unit.
Its not a point I was making. Lets take any heavy\med tank as an example. Does vet improves perfomance of the unit? It does. Does veterancy have to be obtained before unit can be more or less normally used? Most of the time it doesnt.
ST starts as an objectively weak unit, when compaired to his direct counterpart (being AVRE) or to pretty much any late game heavy call-in in terms of its raw perfomance and value.
In other words, lets say you get an Elephant\ISU or even AVRE. Does thouse units require vet to be used effectively and without pain in the dick? No. Veterancy provide utility and perfomance buffs on top of what they already offer to you. I'm not implying that vet 0 ST is un-usable, but as I said it requare deep game knowlage or luck to be used effectively.
ST case is different. It feels like it starts nerfed, then with vet it start getting its perfomance back. Pretty much like cons PPSH works, vet3 + reserves PPSH cons are great, without it ppsh pretty much gives them nothing that usefull.
Again I'm not implying that this approach to the unit design is bad, but at the same time its only good when its fair. Without AVRE in the game ST as it is would have been fine, but with AVRE and the fact that it feels and plays normally, being pretty much the same unit, makes ST design just unfair.
That's where you're wrong. Sturmtiger gets a very useful and deadly vet 1 ability that it can use besides its main armament / during down time, it gets 1280 hitpoints at vet 2 on top of similar/slightly worse armor (242 vs 290), it gets significantly more range at vet 4 and it is deadlier against tanks when you can manage to score direct hits (580 vs 440 damage). It also reaches most of its veteran bonuses faster at 1400/2800/5600/7400/8900 veterancy requirements compared to the AVRE's 2020/4040/8080.
It is more clumsy to use, that is for sure. And overal I would rate the AVRE slightly better because it is more versatile / easier to use. But the Sturmtiger definitely has its perks once you know when and how to use it and it can be really good when used properly.
Its indeed has nice and strong vet bonuses, but that wasnt my point. Point was that while AVRE almost comes as it is, strate of the bat, whith vet bonuses improving its perfomance, ST vet bonuses are mandatory for its normal perfomance. In other words, ST becomes actually usefull only when he reached a certain vet level. It still takes time to do so.
From my expirience of using it, I was able to reach hight vet with it, when I was killing or shooting tanks with it. It still takes painfully long to vet it up only by killing inf.
Its clunkyness of use is also one of the reasons I think its kinda suck. I wont deny, I still usually dont understand where I need to aim with it to actually deliver most of the damage and if shell will colide with this or that. Its like requare special learning curve and knowlage of what obsticals and map layout will block its shells.
Sure it payoffs knowing all of this, but ST gave me so much frustration and it failed me so many times, I cant force myself into deep learning of its timings and collision rules and exceptions in MP.
On the other hand I never expience this problems with AVRE and always can get it to vet 3 consistently, with ST its like a complete gamble most of the times.
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