TH doc unlocks and upgrades

[Warhawks97]

Recently i thought about the stuff being said in the luftwaffe doc and inconsistency of the ambush values such as detection range etc.


I just write down two plain changes:

1. Replace Zimmerit unlock which turns average HP TD´s into very durable tanks that can absorb many penetration hits and damage in general due to massive taken damage reduction. Their purpose is not to become some sort of "Heavy tank 2.0" that can take lots of pen hits. The doctrine is more focused on damage output against enemie tanks, not being super tanky. Their armor can be good, no question, but not ammount of shots that can be absorbed. Instead we could add something like "ambush expert" or "ambush expert training". It could be possibly that it allows the tanks to fire one more ambush shot or that the detection range is lower than those of normal ambushed tank destroyers or that the time required to ambush is short or a mix of that.
2. The Heavvy assault grens should lose the ability to upgrade G43. Not long ago people said that this squad shouldnt be able to suppress/slow down inf with G43´s while also suppressing tanks with LMg42 at the same time.
Instead the Panzerschreck unlock would not just add second Panzerschreck and a better Panzerfaust to the AT squad, but also enable heavy assault grens to upgrade schrecks. Or instead of schrecks a Panzerfaust ability would be added to them. Thus SE gets incendiary grenades as unlock for its inf, TH doc enables other inf squads to use Panzerfausts (in this case the regular Panzerfaust 60, not 100).





How would it look like?

The Ambush expert would no longer be between ammo/fuel trade and the mass prod upgrade and instead perhaps linked with the Tank commander veterancy or this skill above it that enables inf to see enemie vehicles on the mini map.

Perhaps the ammo supply would now sit between the mass production upgrade and the ammo/fuel trade (else it would be avaialble too early) while the former slot would be taken to the new "ambush expert" ability which is linked to the ability that allows vehicle detection on the mini map. So that branch would all about tracking enemie vehichles, setting ambush quickly and to upgrade the own tanks via improved crew training (veterancy unlock).

[Viper]

i agree assault grenadiers dont need g43 rifles. lmg42 is enough for long range.
maybe they should be able to get more stg44 in other doctrines (so 5 in total) or panzershreck upgrade after the unlock in tank hunter.

but i don't agree with removing zimmerit unlock from the game.
it is very important to make axis tank survive against endless bazooka and piat spam later in the game.
and the "ambush expert" unlock you suggest to add does not seem any useful. dont forget allies can overrepair tanks and can upgrade sandbags.

and you talked about sd2 removal from luftwaffe. i also dont think sd2 should be removed from the game.
it costs 120 ammo and very long cooldown. so its fine in my opinion.

[Warhawks97]

If you can quickly relocate and re-ambush fast.

If you combine the ability to detect vehicles on the mini map with inf and quickly setting an ambush, it deos help to surive.


Also infantry should be more or less the natural weakness of TH doc. Also its not that TH has no tools to deal with inf.... ss squad, basic inf, hotchkiss, vehicles with 20 mm guns.

We dont need powerfull TD´s with two ambush shots, decent armor and gun that can also soak up tons of damage like heavy tanks.

[Redgaarden]

I think ambush is not very fun to play agaisnt. I hate it when stuff goes invisible while I fire at it and it just shoots me and there is nothing you can do.

Might as well replace SD2 with cluster bomb frag heavy bomber. That is how they are used anyway.

If your problems is bazookas and piats we could do so that zimmerzeit only reduced dmg of that type. Zimmerzeit is quite broken atm.

Love the idea of Assault grens being able to get panzershreck as TH

[kwok]

Overall doctrine wise you’d be shifting a stalwart aggressive style to a more defensive style. Is this intended?

[Warhawks97]

Well, i didnt want it to make more defensive overall, just thought that it would allow quicker relocating your ambushes according to the sightings on the map (where you cans see vehicle movment).


my main goal was to make TH doc more unique in its playstyle and kind of nasty anti tank warfare. And since the doc is literally focused ambushes i just thought that the doc could get better in doing this over the time.

What i currently hate are these Zimmerit monsters which always get away with low HP pool after already taking several pen hits which are hard enough to achieve anyway already. They are invisible, very hard to hit, even harder to hit while moving when you try to use zooks, literally placing all zooks into the dirt from close range, and then being has hard to deal drain their HP pool as if they are some sort of very heavy tank, making all these tanks literally immune to oneshots.

I mean even the 90 mm guns must trigger their max damage in order to oneshot a hetzer and Tank IV H/J´s cant get oneshot-killed by a 90 mm gun and thats where things get crazy:

A 90 mm shot deals max 800 damage and is thus able to take out a Panther outright without even triggering this "oneshot 5%".
But with Zimmerit it drops to 600 damage while tank IV H/J in TH doc have 650 HP.
This is just one example of how ridiculous this Zimmerit boost is.
And on top of this this damage reduction is against all sources. Thus it drastically increases the chances to survive esspecially in arty and off map contested battlefields.

Direct 105 arty shots that deal usually 452,25 damage per hit on a tank are dealing just 339,1875 damage per hit when zimmerit is applied.

As a result, the 1000 HP strong jagdpanther (that has 1000 HP bc of its elite status in vcoh where it was a one-time call in) has effectively the highest HP pool in the game. Only jagdtiger (bc of zimmerit as well) can bypass is. A tank with ambush, speed, gun range and plenty of abilities has at the end more or less the highest healthpool of all tanks in the game although its not even a heavy tank.



Now we might make it that Zimmerit works only against zooks but then we would have to create special Zimmerit target tables of every tank that can get zimmerit. We dont even have own target tables for units like comet or skirted Jagdpanzer IV´s. I dont think that we will get a bunch of Zimmerit target tables to make it working this way.


And now, the most hated argument: Realistically Zimmerit was against magnetic mines but got removed from end of 44 towards end of war.
But in BK its some sort "magic paste" that makes you survive a bombs falling on your head. Perhaps its just a deflector shield provided by the galactic empire. I will try to use proton torpedos next time.

[MarKr]

I am not 100% sure but I think that upgrades cannot change the number of shots you can fire before canceling camo nor can they affect the detection range, if I am right then your proposed changes are not achievable.

[Shanks]

@warhawks..Why do you always cry for the Zimmerit? as if it were OP, put your jagdpanther or any other tank in an allied area to watch him die in front of a single Achilles

you ask too much nerf for the axis, and the allies are getting stronger more and more and more ... what kind of balance are you looking for?

believe me, I know what I'm talking about

EDIT by MarKr:
Removed the repeated lines that served no purpose and were breaking the posting guidelines:

2.1 Don't post in an obnoxious manner.
This includes abusing the colour and size tags, spamming images or smilies all over the place, and generally creating an eyesore.

[Shanks]

yes, I am the monster of bk markr

[MarKr]

I wouldn't say you're a monster just because you broke forum rules, you could just spend some time reading the rules and them paying attention to following them, if you do that I am sure there will be no need for me to edit your posts in the future .

[MenciusMoldbug]

I would replace zimmerit with something that buffs paks (because pakfront was a strat that existed). Pak guns feel left behind in TH because they get basically no buffs from this doc at all; so most opt to using the cheaper TD's and vetted dual shreck AT inf.

So instead of zimmerit you get a CP unlock that:

- Makes pak guns a bit cheaper: Pak 50mm goes down to 240 MP, pak 75mm goes down to 300 MP (maybe the puma version can get a MP cost drop when the CP tree is unlocked because of how the reward functions).

- Pak guns come with their AP rounds already upgraded (still have to use munitions to fire them though).

- Gives pak 50mm the rocket strike ability.

So tank hunters is still tank hunters, just less P4 H's that are somehow better than blitzkrieg P4 H's thanks to zimmerit.

[Warhawks97]

@shanks:

Nice, you uploaded two games from duclair. I am not even going to waste my time anymore with these "duclair/autry games" that shall "proof" something.

I played these maps up and down long before you even knew about BK mod. These maps are the best example how maps can make certain docs great, other docs nuts.

In 2 vs 2 one very good ally combo was or still is inf/RE due to their tec style, esspecially on duclair you can easily create tactical "bluepints" and formuals that need to be played down by two players.

But this doesnt reflect the actual balance between doctrines and units. Get a bigger map and RE becomes much weaker bc it cant cluster all paths with a single silly 17 pdr pit.


Duclair is also a vcoh map. Means BK and Terror are one of the best arty docs bc they dont have to spend a single CP for it. Get in a regular 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3 and BK becomes one of the worst arty docs bc range starts to matter more.


Or take mobility as example. At duclair, one you got two hetzers up on the hill, no silly cromwell will bother you again. On other maps you would need 5 of them to be "Cromwell save" or save from any other high mobile unit like daimlers etc.





@menicus:
Thats just a great idea. So Tank hunter doctrine buffs basically everything that is designed to counter tanks, TD´s, AT inf, AT guns. The cost drop seems most appealing to me. The AP rounds could be given to AT guns as well when ammo supply is unlocked, not just to TD´s. However idk how it would work once you must recrew the gun. I guess you would have to buy the ammo again, or?

[Shanks]

@warhawks...I had not read your explanation of zimmerit, now that I read it, you are right almost in everything, I think the solution would be to reduce 200 damages (so it is not 400), what do you think friend? ... By the way, I was laughing so of the "galactic empire" hahahhaa

[Redgaarden]

Do you guys know how shit the TH tanks would be without Zimmerzeit? just as shitty as all the other tanks that get penetrated twice and instantly explode. Dont see why TH tanks should survive 33%-100% more hits than other tanks and still be able to spam them to all hell. You kill one TH hellspawn and two takes it place. I haven't seen a jagdpanther cloak in a long time, they just zoom throughthe lines killing every American tank they see and reverse home. Jagdpanzer4 L7 also just one hit kills pershing from camo. (AP rounds nerfed so dont know if they still do)

The thing is US doesn't have a reliable way to counter the hellspawn as brits do. So the question is how big of a difference does a US buf buff "Allies"? since brits did 80% of all the work. US has finally gotten infantry that can compete with Germany infantry and doesn't lose to pioneer spam anymore. Now the US only need something to be able to compete with German tanks. Comparing their best vs Germans best.

I believe Warhawks is trying to put TH in the same shitty standard as US sine PE units are already stronger without buffs. (Exception PanzerGgrens)

[Warhawks97]

Do you guys know how shit the TH tanks would be without Zimmerzeit? just as shitty as all the other tanks that get penetrated twice and instantly explode. Dont see why TH tanks should survive 33%-100% more hits than other tanks and still be able to spam them to all hell. You kill one TH hellspawn and two takes it place. I haven't seen a jagdpanther cloak in a long time, they just zoom throughthe lines killing every American tank they see and reverse home. Jagdpanzer4 L7 also just one hit kills pershing from camo. (AP rounds nerfed so dont know if they still do)

The thing is US doesn't have a reliable way to counter the hellspawn as brits do. So the question is how big of a difference does a US buf buff "Allies"? since brits did 80% of all the work. US has finally gotten infantry that can compete with Germany infantry and doesn't lose to pioneer spam anymore. Now the US only need something to be able to compete with German tanks. Comparing their best vs Germans best.

I believe Warhawks is trying to put TH in the same shitty standard as US sine PE units are already stronger without buffs. (Exception PanzerGgrens)

I am not quite sure what you mean to be honest. The german jagdpanzers still have quite a lot of HP and decent armor. The IV has as far as i know 650 HP and hetzer 600. Just to give you an idea: M10 has 550, M36 600, Tank IV´s 636 HP, TH tank doc H/J 650, churchill 750.

With Zimmerit a regular JP IV has effectively more HP than a Panther. Basically a 600 HP tank becomes more or less a 800 HP tank and so on.


Do you have a problem with that "two shot" standard of BK? I am not sure to 100% what you really want to say.

[kwok]

you didn’t want to make the doc defensive overall but you are effectively buffing a defensive aspect and nerfing an offensive factor. Ambushes are naturally defensive based tactics. You don’t ambush into an attack (unless you do something like crawling stormtroopers but I don’t think anyone wants invisible moving tanks). Which isn’t wrong, but I just wanted to point out some impacts if the changes are implemented. It seems counter intuitive to your anti-camping stance from patches ago.

[Warhawks97]

patches ago it felt much much harder to get through axis defenses as US without RA support bc:

1. US arty was far inferior to axis
2. US arty came late
3. The damage dealed by artillery was not balanced and in a big favour of axis. Best example were damage taken by tanks from arty. So while axis camped more or less behind almost arty resistant bunkers and tanks, the US did not.


what changed?`
1. Since arty rework the arty balance improved a lot, esspecially for the US
2. Units generally surive longer on the field despite heavy arty rain, speaking of allied tanks now. Thus more units for the offense remain operational.
3. This damage change and arty range change reduced the allied losses to "random fired missiles" accross the map drastically.
4. Defenses being killed easier now as arty deals more damage on point.


Also i dont think removed zimmerit in exchange for cheaper paks would cause more camping. I would say the opposite would be the case. While your td´s can currently "camp out" heavy artillery bombardments and surviving more hits during combat, their number of operational tds rise over time when you dont lose them due to zimmerit while also reproducing new ones. So this "camping effect" wouldnt change much, i would even say that you might have more AT guns available, but they make games less campy than "never dying" tds that always escape with minimum HP after battle.



This "ambush expert" thing is thrown over already. Menicus ideas fit much better into a a doctrine purely to stop tanks. Right now it can stop tanks only when having access to fuel (ok there is ammo trade but for high CP cost). This way this doctrine could become some sort of real "anti tank doc" as it would be able to do so even when lacking fuel.

[Viper]

what is wrong with panzer4 behaving better in tank hunter because of zimmerit than in blitzkrieg doctrine?
isnt the panzer4 in tank hunter more expensive to build? you cant have mass production to reduce price of panzer4 in tank hunter doctrine. and i dont think anyone will build panzer4 in blitzkrieg doctrine for 550 manpower and 80 fuel. it is only used when it is cheaper. so the zimmerit unlock in tank hunter compensates with the expensive panzer4 that you cant have cheaper like in blitzkrieg doctrine.

so. if you remove the zimmerit unlock there is nothing valid to replace it except mass production unlock.

[Warhawks97]

Doesnt the Vet 1 unlock affects the tank IV´s as well?


You would also be surprised how many TH doc players going for early Tank IV H without unlocking zimmerit bc they simply dont know the true effect of Zimmerit.

And the majority uses the J anyway for cost reasons which is a bit more expensive than in Bk doc.

Thing is with Zimmerit these Tank IV´s can become quite abusive. They bounce every second 76 mm shot and survive three pen hits in a row sometimes. It makes you feel that you have some sort of Tiger in front of you.