6pdr/57mm separate topic

[CGarr]

I never said specifically to leave it at its current state. But generically I’ve said to many things that any change to any thing will have a domino effect.

Anyways about the 6 pdr. What’s your suggestion?

I was nodding more to the domino part as far as what I've heard from you on the topicMainly just calling you out since I know you and I have talked about this before a ton and I remember you at least having some sort of opinions on the matter, I don't remember if we ever ended up agreeing on a solution. Anyways, made a separate thread to keep topics organized. Skip down to the dashed line for suggestions, the first bit is context.

As for 6pdr/57mm, I think the main issue is that it doesn't really have much utility, which compounds the fact that it's pretty awful at it's given job. Currently, it often 2 shots light vehicles (assuming it doesn't just miss, which it often does). With that being said, there isn't much reason to get it over the 37mm AT gun as US (since that kills in the same number of shots, is faster, can squad wipe, and can actually hit what it's shooting at), and for brits the 6pdr is in a weird spot in the sense that they don't really have a proper light AT gun so it kind of plays both that role and the role of a medium at gun, but it isn't great at either. The pen chance is hilariously bad when shooting at medium tanks / TD's (jagdpanzer 4 for instance, although that might again just be magnified by the fact that it misses most of its shots), and it is too slow to quickly react to light vehicles the way you would with a 37mm. The AP shot ability is there to help with mediums but that's another muni drain on a muni hungry faction that doesn't really have good early map control and cant increase income without slowing tech up time.

If we assume the intended role is that of a medium AT gun like the pak38, we are able to say that the 57mm/6pdr is weaker than the 50mm in the sense that it often has trouble destroying the mediums and TD's it faces. The pak38 generally doesn't have issues killing allied mediums and is pretty much guaranteed to kill allied TD's quickly. I don't know the exact pen stats of these 2 guns but I know they're not that far apart in terms of performance. When you factor AP into the mix, the 57mm still is still gambling (albeit with slightly better odds) against those 2 target types, whereas the pak38 is pretty much guaranteed to pen with AP and the only time it might have trouble hitting a tank is when the player decides to spend muni and activate flank speed. As such, the 57mm is overall much worse at its job for about the same cost and with no extra utility to make up for it. Therefore, this unit is fundamentally broken and should be changed accordingly.

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With all this being said, I think we either need to decide on a specific role for this thing and just heavily specialize it into that role, or give it more utility.

For a specialized approach, the easiest way to fix it would probably be to either raise the damage to the point where it consistently one hits light vehicles (might just be a problem with the HT version specifically) or we should raise the accuracy so that it almost always hits, so that the pen chance is the only big dice roll. The latter would put it on a more even level in comparison to the Pak, which takes two small dice rolls to get successful penetrating hit. The overall chance of a successful penetrating hit would be about the same for both guns with that change. I understand that coh is built around RNG, but when you have to make a big sacrifice in terms of balance to retain that element, it hurts the game.

The second option, if reworking the stats of the 57mm/6pdr in the AT role proves to be too create too much work, would be to add a different sort of utility. Since US doesn't really have a mobile direct fire field howitzer (the 76mm has HE but its extremely slow and risky to use in that role, on top of the HE only being temporary if I remember correctly), an HE toggle with a long cooldown timer similar to shermans would make for an interesting choice. For the brits I wouldn't be against that same addition, although RAF does have a field howitzer already, so a temporary version might be more fitting to keep them unique, at least for that doctrine.

If the latter is taken into consideration, I could see the AT nuke thing the pak38 had coming back to even it out, as I'm pretty sure both axis factions have access to the leig for direct HE fire, and their inf are generally strong enough to win inf vs inf anyways.

Note: edited some parts for clarity around the same time I posted

[Warhawks97]

The accuracy of AT guns is a complicated thing. For example: If you want to counter enemie AT guns that keep pusing the frontline, use medium AT guns as those have 200% hit chance against enemie AT guns. There should be a better standard on how effective AT guns are against others, esspecially light once often phasing each other in early game. I for example had success countering axis 37 mm AT gun spam that used HE rounds by using 57 mm AT guns.



as for pen the 57 mm has a quite small ammount of targets. As said, 37 mm is better vs vehicles but while 76 i required to take out anything bigger than a stug. The 57 mm is good against early type tank IV´s which barely make it to the field.

But the work as deterence, esspecially when deploying two of them while also being more mobile than 76 AT.

The 50 mm has indeed a wider range of targets as it can handle any sherman quite well. But i think the 57 mm isnt too bad in general but the 50 mm quite powerfull. The 50 mm beats the effectively 90 mm thick frontal armor of shermans pretty well and it did not even overmatch the armor plate (Overmatch= shell diamater in relation to armor plate thickness).

The 50 mm was low in production in germany compared to 37 and 75 mm. The germans actually ceased production after just about 5000-6000 made while the allied just began to produce the 57 mm in three times the numbers. The 57 was actually way better but i dont think its too weak in BK.

Finally Axis AT guns firing way faster than allied. Sometimes an entire second. The Axis 75 is about as fast as allied 57 mm AT gun.


As for AP rounds US never ever had special AP for that gun. Only basic AP and APCBC. Thats why in game you see only "AP ammo" but no description at all. It still has the vanilla descritpion i think. Usually the game tells you the name of the shot (eg HVAP).
The brits however developed wide arange of special rounds, including even APDS rounds that could potentially penetrate a Tiger at shorter ranges.

So i would argue as follows:

1. Keep the 57 mm pen stats
2. Lower 50 mm pen stats against some allied armor. I see no reason why it needs to be as good against shermans as the 57 is against early model Tank IV´s.
3. Increase the rate of fire of the 57 mm a bit or even of all AT guns by a bit. (Or check idea below)
4. Brits could get APDS rounds for their 6 pdr.


General idea for AT guns:
Perhaps add some sort of rate of fire increase. For a short time these guns could fire shell after shell. There was nothing that could restrict the loader. That could potentially helpfull when having to fight of some swarms of enemie tanks and vehicles. Perhaps after that the guns rate of fire is lowered due to exhaution and gun barrel overheating.

[CGarr]

The accuracy of AT guns is a complicated thing. For example: If you want to counter enemie AT guns that keep pusing the frontline, use medium AT guns as those have 200% hit chance against enemie AT guns. There should be a better standard on how effective AT guns are against others, esspecially light once often phasing each other in early game. I for example had success countering axis 37 mm AT gun spam that used HE rounds by using 57 mm AT guns.



as for pen the 57 mm has a quite small ammount of targets. As said, 37 mm is better vs vehicles but while 76 i required to take out anything bigger than a stug. The 57 mm is good against early type tank IV´s which barely make it to the field.

But the work as deterence, esspecially when deploying two of them while also being more mobile than 76 AT.

The 50 mm has indeed a wider range of targets as it can handle any sherman quite well. But i think the 57 mm isnt too bad in general but the 50 mm quite powerfull. The 50 mm beats the effectively 90 mm thick frontal armor of shermans pretty well and it did not even overmatch the armor plate (Overmatch= shell diamater in relation to armor plate thickness).

The 50 mm was low in production in germany compared to 37 and 75 mm. The germans actually ceased production after just about 5000-6000 made while the allied just began to produce the 57 mm in three times the numbers. The 57 was actually way better but i dont think its too weak in BK.

Finally Axis AT guns firing way faster than allied. Sometimes an entire second. The Axis 75 is about as fast as allied 57 mm AT gun.


As for AP rounds US never ever had special AP for that gun. Only basic AP and APCBC. Thats why in game you see only "AP ammo" but no description at all. It still has the vanilla descritpion i think. Usually the game tells you the name of the shot (eg HVAP).
The brits however developed wide arange of special rounds, including even APDS rounds that could potentially penetrate a Tiger at shorter ranges.

So i would argue as follows:

1. Keep the 57 mm pen stats
2. Lower 50 mm pen stats against some allied armor. I see no reason why it needs to be as good against shermans as the 57 is against early model Tank IV´s.
3. Increase the rate of fire of the 57 mm a bit or even of all AT guns by a bit. (Or check idea below)
4. Brits could get APDS rounds for their 6 pdr.


General idea for AT guns:
Perhaps add some sort of rate of fire increase. For a short time these guns could fire shell after shell. There was nothing that could restrict the loader. That could potentially helpfull when having to fight of some swarms of enemie tanks and vehicles. Perhaps after that the guns rate of fire is lowered due to exhaution and gun barrel overheating.

I think the amount of compensating changes that'd have to be made to make up for the buffs to allied AT and nerf to the 50mm would be a lot more work than needed to make a significant improvement on gameplay, but I like where you were going with some of it.

1.In general, I wouldn't be against flat rate of fire increases all around for AT guns, the ability is a cool idea but not really necessary since AT guns generally aren't in prolonged fights anyways so it'd functionally be the same as just a flat increase.

2.Additional damaged engine crit/main gun crit chance for all medium AT would be nice to keep them relevant later in the game while adheering to the idea of them working more as a deterrent than a means of destroying armor quickly. Both the 50mm and 57mm/6pdr would take a lot of shots to outright kill anything heavier than an early p4 or a cromwell/unupgraded m4a1. They wouldn't have to get kills on tanks with more armor though. As long as they score at least 1 penetrating hit, the tank they were shooting at would need to be pulled back so the damaged part could be repaired (it wouldn't be heavily damaged, just unfit for use in combat). This way, medium AT guns would be more useful to the defending player while being less aggravating to deal with for the player who was pushing with armor.

With this being said, I do think germans would need to be compensated in some way since the amount of tanks they generally face is higher, so another reasonable means of outright killing tanks while on the defense would make sense. 75mm's in their current state are too slow to effectively cover a large front with in reasonable numbers, as the pack up time makes rotation of the gun to deal with a flank or multiple tank rush much more difficult. The same could be said about the 76mm and 17pdr AT guns, although honestly it's not as bad with those guns because axis generally doesn't have the same spam capability that allies do since their medium tanks are individually stronger (maybe not against armor doc E8 spam but thats a special case and by that point an axis player will likely have transitioned to using heavier tanks like panthers or heavy TD's). This brings us to my third point.

3.Since the 75mm would serve as the backbone of the axis AT arsenal after a nerf to the 50mm, it would likely often need to cover more ground. As such, cutting it's pack up time a bit would make sense. It was lighter than both the 76mm AT gun and the 17 pounder, with the latter being twice as heavy as the pak40. It'd be both more realistic and a means of filling the void left by the pak38 in terms of gameplay. The pak40 was only about 500 lbs heavier than the 57mm, so it should be roughly the same, or only slightly slower. The pak38 was lighter than both, but if I remember correctly, the medium AT guns were already at the upper limit in terms of pack up speed since letting them do it any faster would potentially allow for exploitation of a bug that made them rapid fire.

4. With all this being said, I still think the 57mm would benefit from an HE ability to set if the 6pdr gets APDS, and the 50mm should get its AT nuke back so it isn't completely overshadowed by the 75mm. Again, US is the only faction that doesn't have a light/medium direct fire HE field gun. Brits have the commando field gun and axis has the leig.

I understand that this is a lot of changes, so I'd assume that if this does get taken into consideration, it won't be implemented until after the doctrine reworks are done. Ignore the exlamation mark things, just put them in to make it easier to read.

[kwok]

A lot of these are net buffs to allies and nerf to axis. Experience says to always counter balance something. For example, buffing the 57mm in anyway deters using any of the med armor units by axis, which as mentioned by warhawks already barely come on to the field (though on the BETA IF YOU WOULD F*CKING TRY IT med armor is used so much more. It's the light vehicles that aren't being used especially by axis because of other reasons...). If med tanks are used less it would mean that axis players will likely stall out mid game to go into late game and we go back into the cycle of axis camping to big tanks again.

In general, too many buffs to AT guns, especially across the board buffs, will cause delays in vehicles. AT guns are hard to balance because of the dynamic they impact vehicles in general which are critical components to the game. Slightest tweaks cause the biggest ripple effects because of how fast AND bugged vehicle movement is. We can't control for bug caused factors, for example rubber banding, ballet spinning, bugged halt buttons, etc. Those are other factors that impact how fun a game in the sense of how badly we want to punish players for a move that they can't deal with. Extreme example, a tank goes haywire and walks into an AT gun ass backwards. Should that player have that vehicle one shotted even if it's not their fault at all? Even bug fixing AT guns has caused such a huge firestorm of complaints by players. A couple patches ago, AT guns were able to rapid fire due to exploits, so aim time was introduced. Players complained (including me) that aim time lead to AT guns not even shooting a single shot at all unless it was on camo and the vehicle just stood there. So about half the aim time (JUST HALF) was moved into teardown time. Players bitch all the time how the changes ruined the game because they can't reposition AT guns on the fly. If we were to increase the fire rate of AT guns, we might as well just reintroduce the original bug because that was the original problem.

Personally as a player, I'm not against many of the changes at all. I will adapt to whatever, no matter which side gets buffed/nerfed and what dynamic changes. As someone that will eventually need to answer to the community though, I really thing this needs to be thought of a lot more than it is being thought of in this post so far. Feel free to keep posting ideas but keep in mind some other things i mention. We tend to prefer fewer changes rather than many because of how quick things change to one small thing (ironic because we are pushing for big doctrine reworks, i know. That being said don't forget the AT guns might find a new home with the new doctrines because build orders are changing fast).

If this post is more specifically geared towards the jp4 as per the original post (i haven't heard the 57mm and 6pdr being too much of an issue against things like stugs, p4s, etc) then it IS possible to tweak specifically the AT gun against that tank.

[Warhawks97]

I did not say flat allied buff. The 57 mm feels just fine with a very few exception and that is the effectivness of the very early Tank IV models with their 50 mm armor. But those have overrated armor anyways and most of them should be replaced by Tank III N model in most docs which would be placed between the 50 mm armor of early Tank IV´s and late Tank IV H with their 80 mm armor.

I would also remove the special AP rounds on US 57 mm in exchange for that buff against very specific targets. The brits would get APDS rounds for their 6 pdr later in the game so they would not need to get costly imobile 17 pdrs everytime they have to face german Tank IV H/J. Brits have the issue of not having a really cost effective counter against mid armor spam.

The 50 mm would get nerf vs frontal armor of most shermans. And if still not fixed, it should not have 100% rear pen chance against jumbos (and pershings ?).

The german would therefore get a mobility advantage on their Pak 40 which would be slightly worse than mediums.



As for the JP IV. It had good armor, actually better than basic Tank IV´s bc it had no weak spot like turret and slopped armor. I think the JP IV has other issues that hurt more (eg a bunch of zook guys shooting into the face of that thing and most miss while the others bounce off).

[kwok]

YOU didn't say it was a flat allied buff but your suggestions ARE.

1. Keep the 57 mm pen stats --No change
2. Lower 50 mm pen stats against some allied armor. I see no reason why it needs to be as good against shermans as the 57 is against early model Tank IV´s. --Net axis nerf
3. Increase the rate of fire of the 57 mm a bit or even of all AT guns by a bit. (Or check idea below) --Net allied buff
4. Brits could get APDS rounds for their 6 pdr. --Net allied buff

I'm not a fan of any of the suggestions nor the support given to them because of how short sighted the suggestions are from the overall game flow perspective all for the sake of "realism" because some tanks have certain armor values and some guns had certain penetration values in reality. The game already struggles with rewarding camping as complained by many many players who actually play the game.

[CGarr]

YOU didn't say it was a flat allied buff but your suggestions ARE.

1. Keep the 57 mm pen stats --No change
2. Lower 50 mm pen stats against some allied armor. I see no reason why it needs to be as good against shermans as the 57 is against early model Tank IV´s. --Net axis nerf
3. Increase the rate of fire of the 57 mm a bit or even of all AT guns by a bit. (Or check idea below) --Net allied buff
4. Brits could get APDS rounds for their 6 pdr. --Net allied buff

I'm not a fan of any of the suggestions nor the support given to them because of how short sighted the suggestions are from the overall game flow perspective all for the sake of "realism" because some tanks have certain armor values and some guns had certain penetration values in reality. The game already struggles with rewarding camping as complained by many many players who actually play the game.

The options I suggested when I made this thread would probably be better then, since they wouldn't really add much to allies that axis doesn't already have. That and either of the options I suggested in the initial post could be implemented with only one change to each of the affected units.

-increased damage for 57mm/6pdr for reasons i described could work

or

-increased accuracy for 57mm/6pdr, would defitely fix the issue and could honestly also be applied to the 50mm if you consider the fact that it would give these guns more utility over their heavy counterparts. Drawback would be the loss of a single RNG element, I'm personally willing to make that sacrafice since there's so many others still in the game but again that's up to the dev team to decide.

or

-give 57mm/6pdr some extra utility since they currently suck at their main job, HE would be an easy solution and would fill a hole in the US arsenal. Honestly I don't care what the ability is if this route is taken, just as long as it gives the player a reason to get these medium AT guns other than "it kills light vehicles in one hit sometimes and it's slightly less slow than the big ones".

[kwok]

Bumpity bump. sounds like people are not happy with the axis mid game med tank rush/spam. One proposed solution on the other threads was to improve mid game AT. Revisiting this thread as one potential solution.

[mofetagalactica]

SIgh.... just... try my suggestion about changing allied teching cost/system before even trying something else.

[kwok]

no. we tried your suggestion for other things and now we're trying to balance against exactly that.

- change WM tiering so that vehicles come earlier
- change k98s to be lazer rifles

and people wonder why all of axis just seems stronger than all of allies. because the base changed.
besides there's a whole other thread to talk about JUST that. get consensus there not here.

[Warhawks97]

Bumpity bump. sounds like people are not happy with the axis mid game med tank rush/spam. One proposed solution on the other threads was to improve mid game AT. Revisiting this thread as one potential solution.

The 57 should provide good protection against early tank IV models, including F2. That already would help.


Against everything else its not that bad.


What bothers me at the other hand is that the 50 mm axis AT is so highly effective against shermans. It shouldnt be better against them as the 57 is againt the Tank IV H/J version.



What comes into my mind is the rof. Its slower than that of the 50 mm. German AT guns are effective against many tanks due to their rof. That includes the 75 mm and the 88 with 3-4 sec reload. If the 57 mm would at least fire decently fast, that would also help, esspecially when fighting against the spam of the F2´s.




But what i would do in general:
Buff the 57 mm and 6 pdr basic stats against tank IV types. Just dont overdo it.
I currently dont have numbers at hand but against the basic PZ IV´s it should have easily a 65-70% pen chance from max range.

Against Tank IV´s J that would translate into something like 50%.


Ultimately it depends on whether the J will still share the TT from regular Tank IV F2 or not.

The H and J with skirts have luckily their own TT. Against them the base pen could be arround 50% (bit less perhaps) from max range without camo and stuff.


I would remove special AP from US 57 mm in return. The brits however will retain the APDS rounds which will be super capable.

That would create some difference between these two factions and the brits far less dependend on rushing expensive 17 pdr units and gives them better mobile AT options for lower cost while US can rely on cheap 76 guns (which hopefully get buffed to a lvl where they are actually usefull against something).

[MarKr]

It doesn't seem people are too interested in this topic, there is no consensus on this topic so the upcoming beta will not change anything about the medium AT gun performance. The one after that might bring some changes if there is more interest in this topic. I'll leave here another idea, maybe it will stir the discussion a bit.

The medium AT guns could keep their effectiveness against light vehicles, they would have their penetration chance a bit higher against medium tanks (better than now but still worse than the 75mm/76mm guns), but their damage modifier against medium tanks would be changed from the current 250-450ish to (let's say) 150-270 (or whatever values, just to have the higher penetration offset by lower damage) and they would also have higher chance to cause criticals on medium tanks. Performance against heavy tanks would remain the unchanged.

This way the medium AT guns would have some more spefic function among the AT guns compared to the current "better than 37mm but worse and not much cheaper than the heavy AT guns".

[Walderschmidt]

^I’d like that I think.

Wald

[mofetagalactica]

no. we tried your suggestion for other things and now we're trying to balance against exactly that.

- change WM tiering so that vehicles come earlier
- change k98s to be lazer rifles

and people wonder why all of axis just seems stronger than all of allies. because the base changed.
besides there's a whole other thread to talk about JUST that. get consensus there not here.

WTF,

1) I suggested changes to k98s having in mind 50 cal would be still around as it used to be, wich was BEFORE changing 50 cals to what they are now, locked behind WSC to some random price <-- Something that you suggested (and i was againts it), There are also posts on the forum about me saying that the K98's buff weren't needed anymore when you forced the change on 50 cals.

K98's BUFF WAS ONLY A SUGGESTION THAT WAS NEEDED AT THE MOMMENT WHEN THE BETA STARTED WHEN THERE WASN'T THAT MUCH CHANGES, AND YOU FUCKING KNOW THAT, EARLY WH BETA WASN'T THAT GOOD COMPARED TO LATE BETA.

2) I really didn't say anyone complaining about WM/PE new teching system wich makes them easier to play, most of the complains are towards Allies that didn't receive any change in tiering system/cost for the better.

I guess you're just gonna nerf k98's, buff 76mm and magically the game will get "fixed" again.

Seems you're gonna blame me for doing suggestions and not participating in your stupid "tournament" but yeah fix what i suggested is not like i didn't admit that i was against it,i was also thinking on making another post about CW tiering system wich was gonna add some interesting things, but you know? Fuck you and good luck mate.

[Warhawks97]

It doesn't seem people are too interested in this topic, there is no consensus on this topic so the upcoming beta will not change anything about the medium AT gun performance. The one after that might bring some changes if there is more interest in this topic. I'll leave here another idea, maybe it will stir the discussion a bit.

The medium AT guns could keep their effectiveness against light vehicles, they would have their penetration chance a bit higher against medium tanks (better than now but still worse than the 75mm/76mm guns), but their damage modifier against medium tanks would be changed from the current 250-450ish to (let's say) 150-270 (or whatever values, just to have the higher penetration offset by lower damage) and they would also have higher chance to cause criticals on medium tanks. Performance against heavy tanks would remain the unchanged.

This way the medium AT guns would have some more spefic function among the AT guns compared to the current "better than 37mm but worse and not much cheaper than the heavy AT guns".

so far guns have always a x5 damage modifier against tanks. So idk if such drastic damage reduction is a good idea.
Also it seems off to me when a 37 mm does more damage when it pens. Like when they hit the rear. So i wouldnt mess arround too much with the damage values.


The bad performance of the 57 mm against early axis mediums has been discussed as side issues in many other topics.

[MarKr]

so far guns have always a x5 damage modifier against tanks. So idk if such drastic damage reduction is a good idea.

And up until the 5.2.0 Blitz doc has always had Tigers. Just because something has always been some way doesn't mean it has to stay like that. Or is there some gameplay reason why guns must have x5 damage vs tanks? Also I said there that the values can be set to anything, not necessarily what I wrote there.

Also it seems off to me when a 37 mm does more damage when it pens. Like when they hit the rear. So i wouldnt mess arround too much with the damage values.

True, but the cases when someone actually penetrates a medium tank with a 37mm gun (even from the rear) are really rare. If that suggestion got implemented we could lower the damage of the 37mm guns vs medium tanks too. I don't think it would change much in terms of balance.

Also, it is just an idea. Not saying it has to happen but I personally think that having some more specific for these guns would be a good thing.

[Diablo]

This way the medium AT guns would have some more spefic function among the AT guns compared to the current "better than 37mm but worse and not much cheaper than the heavy AT guns".

Let's try this.

[Walderschmidt]

I’d like a slight cost decrease, at the very least. Maybe for all AT guns given how much cheaper one would be compared to a tank.

Wald

[Warhawks97]

i am honestly against the damage change. So far this was one "BK standard" that the damage guns had were mutiplied by 5. Thus the damage difference between weapons with bigger shells stayed logically higher. This is one reason why i dont like AT rifles at all bc they have such a insane high damage for what small bullet they actually fire.


Now we gonna throw off the damage difference bwteen the light an mediun AT which i dont like at least vs medium AT.



Quite some time ago someone (think it was redgaarden) brought up a good point that he doesnt like for example the oneshot system of many odf the heavy guns which more often oneshot targets than not.



On a wider scale i would support perhaps a change to the damage system in general so that AT guns and also Tank guns will more frequently cause smaller damage with crit damage instead of everything blowing up outright.


That would also support the tactic of massed fire to knock a tank out and thus the number of guns becomes equally important or at least more important than the pure size of a gun. Right now size is all. It always pens and usually oneshot targets while huge number of guns keep on bouncing.



So, changing this system and giving guns in general higher pen chances and crit chances and less damage is something i would support.


Not like it is in vanilla where you had to hit something like 5 times and not even dealing a crit.






But i am against doing this just for a small part of the gun variety bc this throws off too much and people will be even more surprised why a medium AT does so little damage while a single 37 mm pen can cause just as much damage.

[CGarr]

If you're going to drop the damage, there needs to be something else put in place to stop Axis players from just ignoring the hits and charging forward, as the 57mm is already weak enough that they can get away with this relatively often (especially when compared to the equivalent matchup with shermans and 50mm's). A few I can think of are as follows:

NOTE: these are all separate options, together they would probably make the 57mm stupidly OP for it's cost.

1. Really high crit chance (around 75%).
- While it would take many shots to actually kill something, taking the enemy medium's combat effectiveness away would force the axis player to either back up or stay engaged and wait for reinforcements to continue the push, risking destruction if the 57mm can keep landing hits.
-Counterplay would just be actually supporting armor pushes instead of rambo charging, as any supporting units would easily be able to kill the 57mm after it's first shot or two (assuming the medium can't do so on its own).

2. Higher RoF.
- Makes the gun more effective in softening up medium spam charges, potentially also allows it to kill a tank fully before getting HE'd to death if it doesn't get a gun crit with the first shot.
-At this point just revert the stupid packup time change for the 57mm if you actually consider this, as "exceedingly high RoF" was apparently what that change was meant to address.
- Counterplay options are reduced, as charging with multiple tanks would no longer be a safe bet.

3. A free rapid fire ability with a short duration and short cooldown. Decreased standard RoF.
-This would allow AT guns to become extremely effective killers if micro'd actively. Un-micro'd guns would only be capable of merely discouraging attempts to push, lacking any real ability to stave off armor on their own.
- Counterplay would be trying to distract your opponent in some way so that diverting attention to the gun has consequences elsewhere for them.

4. Increase the range significantly.
- Risky since this makes the 57mm better at dealing with structures and affects it's performance against vehicles. One could argue that this isn't necessarily all that bad since shotblockers will prevent the full range from being utilitzed, but by that logic the range increase wouldn't help much against tanks either.
- Would probably necessitate narrowing the aiming cone to around 40 degrees to prevent a single gun from covering a massive area on it's own without micro.
- No resulting changes in terms of counterplay, as inf and indirect fire are unaffected.

5. Drop the cost to like 180MP so a US player can more easily double up.
- This option would be annoying asf to play against since there is no sweet spot in which they could be made viable without going so far that they become spammable. They are already pretty cheap and you have to remember that they can be re-crewed.
-Can't really think of much in terms of counterplay, this option should be a last resort IMO.

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As I stated in the original post, 57mm's don't have to be strong against mediums if alternative medium AT options are made more feasible (inf AT, chaffee/sherman 75mm, stickies, etc). If other AT options come about, the 57mm can instead serve a more multipurpose role. Increased accuracy against inf could make it an effective support without risking turning it into a wipe machine the way HE would, as it's splash damage would still be lacking. Mark target could allow it to at least tag enemy armor for bazookas to more easily finish off. An increased sight range mode that prevents it from firing could allow it to serve as yet another (albeit more stationary) recon element. There's plenty of ways we could make these 2 guns useful.

I don't think a change to teching would solve the issues of the 57mm/6pdr, as they would still be trash against their intended targets. The only reason I build them currently is that the other alternatives are somehow even more shitty for preventing medium tank pushes, either due to lacking firepower (37mm and 75mm don't do shit to Pz4's and stugs) or lacking mobility (76mm AT gun might as well be stationary).

[MarKr]

If you're going to drop the damage, there needs to be something else put in place to stop Axis players from just ignoring the hits and charging forward

The idea says that damage would be lowered but penetration would be higher + more chances to cause crits. These don't mean "just" lost tracks or engine damaged/destroyed but also destroyed gun, killed MG gunner etc.

This would mean that instead of chipping off bigger chunk of HP once in a while, it would chip off smaller chunks of HP more often + the criticals would be what could stop the players from ignoring hits - if the main gun/MG gunner/engine/tracks get destroyed, the tank becomes an easy target for AT infantry or for finishing it by the AT gun itself.

One thing that needs to be considered, no matter what change we're talking here, is that same weapons have standardized behavior so if something gets changed about the 57mm AT gun, same changes will apply to the T48 halftrack, 6 pounder AT and 6 pounder Churchill as they are all the same gun. Likewise, whatever change applies to the 50mm AT gun will apply to the 50mm Puma.

[F31.58]

I was thinking same with CGarr, fearing that tanks would be just HP Juggernauts to the mAT guns, just rushing to the HE round range, if not loosing tracks or whatever.
Also I have question for the devs, can you actually remove the possibility of crits applied to the tanks, if their HP is lower than 15% percent, just to stop tanks being saved by what is meant to be a crit damage?

Also, I'm still want to give you guys idea of upgrading Shermans to 76mm gun manually through buying upgrade for MP/Fuel cost, same with Panzers 4 (maybe stugs too) models, to make it more global, rather than doctrine dependance (which I don't really like). And you will get also a free CP slot in doctrine upgrades.
76mm gun would be more expensive, than a Panzer upgrades, because it's just becomes more universal gun and Panzer upgrades should be just about cost of building/HP/Armor/time of building to allow players upgrade series or leave things as it is. Also 75mm gun should be just having more chances on penetrating medium tanks (maybe with special AP rounds upgrade if you feel too cheesy about it), so it won't be anymore specialized tanks despite the historical fact.
In fact, I would like to change ammunitions upgrades cost to somewhat affordable level for every faction. So you won't have a situations to pay munitions just to pay for it again.

[CGarr]

If you're going to drop the damage, there needs to be something else put in place to stop Axis players from just ignoring the hits and charging forward

The idea says that damage would be lowered but penetration would be higher + more chances to cause crits. These don't mean "just" lost tracks or engine damaged/destroyed but also destroyed gun, killed MG gunner etc.

This would mean that instead of chipping off bigger chunk of HP once in a while, it would chip off smaller chunks of HP more often + the criticals would be what could stop the players from ignoring hits - if the main gun/MG gunner/engine/tracks get destroyed, the tank becomes an easy target for AT infantry or for finishing it by the AT gun itself.

One thing that needs to be considered, no matter what change we're talking here, is that same weapons have standardized behavior so if something gets changed about the 57mm AT gun, same changes will apply to the T48 halftrack, 6 pounder AT and 6 pounder Churchill as they are all the same gun. Likewise, whatever change applies to the 50mm AT gun will apply to the 50mm Puma.

We should test it with just the pen boost and damage drop and see how often crits are achieved with the current stats. If it is 75% of the time or more I'll concede on additional changes, but I am guessing it will be significantly lower than that in practice, which would essentially mean these 2 AT guns and their HT versions would be useless for stopping pushes. I chose the 75% threshold because I feel like if the gun's chances of success in it's role are any lower than that, it cannot be considered reliable and thus we would be back to square one in terms of allies not having a reliable means of stopping medium pushes. Heavy AT guns are very situational due to their slowness in repositioning (which also makes them a very easy target), and the other effective options cost CP.

I think the emphasis on crit damage would only help the 6pdr churchill, as it would solidify that tank's role as a support to actual damage dealers like the sherman variants and achilles. The RA doc churchill would play a crucial role in that doctrine (and possibly warrant higher CP cost), as it would not only be able to halt medium tank pushes, but also score mobility crits on potential arty targets.

If needed, the effective fire rate of the 57mm/6pdr could be lowered, as if it has a high chance of penning and scoring a critical, it doesn't need to have quick follow ups. This would represent additional time spent aiming for critical areas. As you said, the 57mm/6pdr doesn't need to finish off the unit on it's own, it just needs to consistently be able to halt medium tank pushes.

I would also support this change being applied to Axis 50mm guns, as it allows these more lightly armed AT units to be effective late game and I don't think this sort of utility should be limited to allied factions.

[Warhawks97]

1. Really high crit chance (around 75%).
- While it would take many shots to actually kill something, taking the enemy medium's combat effectiveness away would force the axis player to either back up or stay engaged and wait for reinforcements to continue the push, risking destruction if the 57mm can keep landing hits.
-Counterplay would just be actually supporting armor pushes instead of rambo charging, as any supporting units would easily be able to kill the 57mm after it's first shot or two (assuming the medium can't do so on its own).

Thing is that i would make it the other way arround. Small weapons will more often deal small crit damages. Like AT rifles will mostly do crits to vehicles, 37 mm being more deadly to vs vehicles than AT rifle and when it comes to tanks the 37 mm will be more about rof and crits than the 57 but the 57 again more about crits than the 76 and so on.


Kind of as i said that weapons and their ammount of damage remains still based on their size and power. But in general pen chances being increased and depending on target being more about dealing crits rather than big damage once in a thousand a shots.

So bigger guns will also deal crits, just their damage will logically go also up due to the bigger size of the shell and HE in it.

But picking only the medium AT to lower damage and going for crits while all other guns remain unchanged is not a good idea in my opinion.

It should be a universal change or no change at all.

2. Higher RoF.

Thats something for all AT guns.

They remain their sluggishness but once in firing position their rof could be quite substantial.

3. A free rapid fire ability with a short duration and short cooldown. Decreased standard RoF.

that could also be an option.

4. Increase the range significantly.

nope. Bad idea.

That would mess too much. AT guns are just so that they arent OP and being ultimate long range guns.

5. Drop the cost to like 180MP so a US player can more easily double up.

old price was 230 and 250. And the pak 38 was spammed a lot. Being cheaper than an inf squad wouldnt be a good idea.

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As I stated in the original post, 57mm's don't have to be strong against mediums if alternative medium AT options are made more feasible (inf AT, chaffee/sherman 75mm, stickies, etc). If other AT options come about, the 57mm can instead serve a more multipurpose role. Increased accuracy against inf could make it an effective support without risking turning it into a wipe machine the way HE would, as it's splash damage would still be lacking. Mark target could allow it to at least tag enemy armor for bazookas to more easily finish off. An increased sight range mode that prevents it from firing could allow it to serve as yet another (albeit more stationary) recon element. There's plenty of ways we could make these 2 guns useful.

I don't think a change to teching would solve the issues of the 57mm/6pdr, as they would still be trash against their intended targets. The only reason I build them currently is that the other alternatives are somehow even more shitty for preventing medium tank pushes, either due to lacking firepower (37mm and 75mm don't do shit to Pz4's and stugs) or lacking mobility (76mm AT gun might as well be stationary).

Nah, dont make them too much anti inf and no more mark target.

Also, I'm still want to give you guys idea of upgrading Shermans to 76mm gun manually through buying upgrade for MP/Fuel cost, same with Panzers 4 (maybe stugs too) models, to make it more global, rather than doctrine dependance (which I don't really like). And you will get also a free CP slot in doctrine upgrades.
76mm gun would be more expensive, than a Panzer upgrades, because it's just becomes more universal gun and Panzer upgrades should be just about cost of building/HP/Armor/time of building to allow players upgrade series or leave things as it is. Also 75mm gun should be just having more chances on penetrating medium tanks (maybe with special AP rounds upgrade if you feel too cheesy about it), so it won't be anymore specialized tanks despite the historical fact.
In fact, I would like to change ammunitions upgrades cost to somewhat affordable level for every faction. So you won't have a situations to pay munitions just to pay for it again.

you mean upgrade per tank or globally?



Generally it would be like in vcoh?
Technically i wouldnt be against such ideas.

Like you start with f2 Tank IV and via upgrades the versions available in the factory change from F2 to H to J. The tanks in the field would be unchanged.

The Stubby F1 and E would all be outright replaced by Panzer III with perhaps very few exceptions.

Same for Panthers. Starting with expensive but early available D, then better A versions and finally G being the cheapest.

For shermans i would keep it different though so that you can keep both because its role never changed. It was designed as multipurpose right away. The 76 was just an upgrade to enhance the anti tank perfomance but was for a long time no deemed necessary since the 75 mm was usually good enough as anti tank.

Also 75mm gun should be just having more chances on penetrating medium tanks (maybe with special AP rounds upgrade if you feel too cheesy about it), so it won't be anymore specialized tanks despite the historical fact.

Thus what historical fact are you talking about?
The 75 mm sherman wasnt designed only for HE shooting and inf support. It was mutipurpose right from the start and could pen all targets except tigers then in service. And it remained in service because it was usually good enough in killing tanks due to the short range nature of the western front and the much better HE rounds which was the most used type of ammo.

For the Panzer IV its true. It was there to lob HE shells into trenches with its short 75 just like the US scott later. The stuh 105 basically had the same role as the short barreld 75 mm tanks. Later it got the longer 75 mm for better AT power.
But sherman never had such role like "HE only". Its a myth.

[F31.58]

no I actually said the opposite about shermans, sorry for misunderstanding