Blitzkrieg Mod Forum

Hello,

we finally got to release the new beta. We've already announced that this one will bring the GrB39 squad. There are few other changes on top of what was already present in the previous beta. One quality-of-life change is the formation that HMG teams take in heavy and light cover. Up till now they took the "V" formation which looked like this:

In this case only the gunner was in cover while the other two soldiers were standing without cover which means they were easier to hit and kill and also because of them not being in cover the whole squad would get suppressed faster.
Now they will try to take this formation:

Which should put all the soldiers in cover.

Another change is that tanks with the "single HE shot" ability should now be able to target empty buildings which means that if you suspect enemy hiding in a building you can fire a shot there just to be sure instead of waiting for them to reveal themselves by shooting at you.

This beta also brings a few texture tweaks and fixes by JustForFun1.

Drivebyhobo also worked on making the CW campaign playable. The files are in the beta patch now but we haven't adjusted the main menu yet to show you the campaign. However you can still launch the campaign by following these steps:
1) In main menu click on the AMERICAN campaign
2) Once you get to the "Select mission" screen click on top on the roll-out menu (currently you have shown the US campaign)
3) From the roll-out menu select the CW campaign (you can see there all the campaigns but the others will not work so only go for the CW one)
4) select the first mission and launch the campaign
Note: The campaign still has some minor issues, most noticeably in cutscenes you will see graphical errors (levitating soldiers etc.) but the objecties in the campaign should all be completeable. I also noticed in the 3rd mission (RAF) that the side-objective with Tetrarch glider is bugged but it does not prevent you finishing the mission, also Drivebyhobo is working on a fix already.
If you encounter any bugs that prevent beating the campaign, please report them.

Now here comes the changelog:
General:
- all HMG teams should now take better formation in green and yellow cover so that entire crew uses the cover and not just soldier operating the MG
- Axis MG nests now have wider cone of fire (from 45° left/right to 60° left/right)
- Tanks with a "HE shot" ability should no longer have trouble targetting/shooting MG nests with the HE shot in certain situations

Wehrmacht:
- Light AT squad can no longer pick up dropped weapons
- Changed Rifle on the new AT squad from Pzb39 AT rifle to GrB39 rifle
- 4 men
- 1x MP40, 2xKar98, 1xGrB39
- Abilities: Fire Anti-personnel grenade, Fire 46mm AT grenade, Fire Smoke grenade, Build sandbags/barbedwires
- Point capture speed 0.75
- Cost 240MP
- Geschutzwagen's "Static mode" should no longer dissappear at certain position on maps
- Panzer IV F2 (Terror doc) can now use the "Fire smoke" ability just as the Luft version

Panzer Elite:
- Observation HT and Bergetiger will now have Axis markings on them (did not have any; texture tweak)

The biggest thing to test is obviously the GrB39 - as I already said in the announcement post, the stats are not final. We need to tune the accuracy and damage vs specific targets so if you find the rifle overperforming or underperfoming against something, please report it here and I'll have a look at it.

Also the beta should have the new texts where we managed to get translations, where we got none there will be english tests for now.

Thank you for testing and helping us develop the Blitzkrieg mod

I love the idea to fix hmg team not taking cover. Great idea!
Gonna test the rifle asap

I don't have much to say about the new AT unit for now.

Though, I think it's time to seriously talk about some of the other changes that were earlier implemented.
Most of all, I can actually say that heavy tanks are quite weak now.. in fact very week... Didn't realize this the first time when I tested, but then... Beta after another.. and the more games I've played on the beta, I then came to the conclusion that heavy tanks are now pretty weak.

Generally weakening the rear armor of heavy tanks.. turned out to be very harming.


I lost a Tiger1 tank against 75mm Jumbo frontally!! Yes, 75mm Jumbo.. not 76mm. They kept firing at each other for quite some time.. but the 75mm Jumbo had higher rate of fire and kept bouncing off all the 88mm shells. Over the time, Tiger1 was penetrated 4 times and the Jumbo was penetrated once.. 4 times penetration were enough to kill the Tiger tank, and even 3 times penetration heavily crippled it most of the times.

Scenario got so much worse when I asked my opponent to get two 75mm Jumbo Shermans at once.. 1 of which kept distracting the Tiger1 at long range, while the other rushed to flank.. again, the Tiger1 actually lost the fight, and much quicker.

At the current official version (5.1.4) 75mm Jumbos can never penetrate Tiger tanks frontally, except in dreams.


Similarly,
Pershing is also getting smashed by 50mm Puma. Easily flanking and destroying the engine!

65 range is clearly not enough for these heavy tanks, specifically when keeping in mind that the reload times for big cannons are now also higher.
Not to mention that super heavy tanks (such as KT and SP) were badly nerfed... Not only weaker rear armor, and longer reload.. but also no range increase at all. Their range is still 70, as it has always been!

To sum this up:
Let's have a more precise look at what have happened here...

Heavy tanks got the following disadvantages all at once:
- Less rate of fire, or i mean longer reload.

- Less sight range due to removal of scope upgrades.
(even ALRS ability can't be used effectively now btw, except only at around 70 range.. that's with a tank commander! Meaning a spotter is needed in order to use it at full potential range, which is 90) >>> Not saying it's wrong in particular, my point however; it's just another nerf combining others.

- Much weaker rear armor, meaning also higher chance to be penetrated frontally due to the game mechanics.


This is not fine. And there are 2 things that can be done in order to solve this in my opinion:
1) Either to reduce the cost of all heavy tanks.
2) Or to give heavy tanks even more range.

More precisely, I prefer the 2nd option of course. Therefore I could suggest the following:
- Pershing, Tiger1, Panther need to have 70 basic range.. 65 range has proved to be not enough, because of the weak rear armor and long reload.
- Eventually... KT, SP, JT, need at least 75 range.

The rear pen chance of 75 mm vs tigers or anything heavier shouldnt be that high actually.

That 50 mm pen pershings side. well why not. I would wait a bit and see how others will handle it.

Actually it should be like this: ligh AT should pen medium tanks rear (thus in flanking actions as well) such as tank IV´s. Mediums (57 mm, 50 mm, 75 mm from shermans) should pen mid to heavy tanks (Panther/Pershing) rear, thus in flanking them, but trouble against heaviers (tiger etc). More powerfull AT such as US 76 mm should pen rears like those of tigers, but trouble vs super heavies.... and so on.

I cant imagine that a 75 would pen tiger that often and easily from max range.


Two shermans that manage to distract and manage to flank a tiger and then kill the tiger. Why not?
Heavies are good and feared with good preperations, using their range and oneshot capabilties while being able to bounce more shots than others (still armor is not a gurantee, just increases chances to bounce stuff) and having more HP.
When mediums have the reconassaince advantage and manage to flank out a heavy, well then its deserved and the initial target we had is reached.


So at the end heavies have the range, damage (oneshot capabilties), penetration chances, sometimes accuracy and HP advantage.


I mean be honest, how many have played this or previous beta? Most still start normal BK. We have basically no real results from a huge part of BK players. Perhaps we let these changes sink in and see what happens.

@Markr: This beta looks better Thx for the HMG crew change. That was something that pissed me off quite often

@Tiger:
Frontal pen.chance of 75mm Sherman gun vs Tiger (max range, closer ranges give higher pen.chances):
8.2%
Rear:
37.6%

Frontal pen.chance of 88mm Tiger gun vs Jumbo (max range, closer ranges give higher pen.chances):
38%
Rear:
215%

How many times did you test this? "It once happened to me that..." is RNG, not a reason for changes.

Rear penetration of Puma vs Pershing was practically not changed (changed from 36.52% to 35% - max range, closer ranges give higher pen.chances) so you cannot blame this on the changes.

"2 Jumbos killed Tiger thanks to tactics, flanking and heavier micro-usage"...well, that was the whole point of making those changes. People complained that it makes no sense to bring medium tanks vs heavy tanks because even if you manage to flank the tanks, they usually don't penetrate anyway and so you lose them.

But if I followed your thought-pattern correctly then you're saying that because of one (presumably RNG-badluck) instance of losing Tiger1 to 75mm Jumbo, units such as KTs, SP and other super heavy toys need more range? That sounds like jumping to conclusions to me.

I am with Warhawks - give some time to people to try to play some games and try to adjust to the changes. If still then some penetration values seem too high, we will adjust them, but when Jumbo has 37.6% to penetrate the REAR of Tiger while at the SAME range the Tiger has 38% chance to penetrate the Jumbo FRONTALLY - that does not sound too bad to me, espeacially when the Tiger can just as likely score a rear hit too on the Jumbo.

Many of the hits were probably registered as rear hits, thus the Tiger1 was killed.. extreme bad luck, but it happens.
And if this happens in real PvP scenarios, it will be very mind blowing for the victim.. and it's not very rare to occur.

I tested it many times, actually since the 2nd beta and up until the 5th.. and I kept noting my results all over this time.
in fact, I doubt anyone has actually tested the beta(s) as much as I did.

Let me clarify my point, i have no problems to see these heavy tanks having a very weak rear armor.. actually, i'm totally fine with it.

I have no problem if 75mm Jumbo would even have 100% chance penetrating Tiger's rear, no problems at all.
However, the range of the Tiger1 (and other heavies) would need to be higher then.. just +5 (65) range, is clearly not enough, that's why I suggest 70.

Though, alright.. let's give it some more testing and see how it goes.

About the new AT rifle:

1. AT grenade has it's descripion put in the title instead of name when u hover mouse on it.
2. It has huge fire rate and almost no aim time, feels like 2x faster than boys and 2 squads kill anything instantly. 1 sec aim time allows you to rush anything and kill with almost 100% chance of success
3. It kills 1hp tanks, even with standart grenade. I finished off a pershing with it.
4. U can kill crew of mg nest from safe distance with 4 he grenades, Quad is decrewed with 1 He shot
5. If u fire any of grenades at fast moving target it bends reality and turns in the air to hit the target (well its the engine I know... its more like graphic bug but still I feel like I should mention it)
6. It kills all hts and light tanks (scott, chaffie) with 2 standard shots, pretty op for first tier unit, it makes 50mm pak obsoloete. It's not only an exchange for pak 37mm, it's strong early game buff. Just like boys make all PE cars useless, this rifle does the same to allies. Moreover it has bigger range than any MG and anti inf weapons like crusader. That means it's like sniper AT. Too strong imo for 240 mp.
7. Smoke grenade is very inaccurate, lands too close, stops on obstacles etc.
8. AT grenade does big damage to inf, even better than he grenade, it kills trenches in 4 shots and inf inside easily.
9. It doesnt have vehicle fire priority, it rather shoot at buidlings
10. Damage vs CW trucks is too high. It does shreck level of damage, u need 12 shots to kill full hp truck. 1 shot every 5 seconds means that with 2 squads u kill a truck in half a minute. Again too op.

@Tiger: I noticed that you keep mentioning the Jumbo example. But 75mm Jumbo is available in only one doctrine which means that this 75mm unit will face Tigers only seldom, other 75mm guns are M4 Sherman, Sherman V, Cromwell and Churchill, Shermans and Cromwells can be fielded in bigger numbers but also die to single hit from Tiger. Churchill might survive more hits but it is so slow that flanking a Tiger with it is impossible.
The range advantage is helping Tiger against these units because they have crappy armor and so the Tiger can kill them in 1v1 situation before they even fire and in case of Churchill the Tiger can kite infinitely thanks to Churchills low speed. Jumbo is an exception here but it is also limited.

@The New BK Champion:
1) will fix that
2) it has actually exactly same aim time and reload time as BOYS
3) I will have a look at it
4) Not sure what this means...that it decrews too slow? Killing the crew is a critial hit which has percentual chance to trigger based on how much HP the emplacement has. If it killed the crew of quad mount in one hit then it was probably a RNG.
5) as you say - it is engine...Bazooka/Schreck rockets do that occasionally too. I mighty try to disable the tracer to make it less visible.
6) "2-hit kills are pretty OP for first tier unit" - but that was the case with the PaK36 too. 2 hits destroyed any HT with 2 hits. 2 Hits were enough to kill light tanks too. Pak36 could bounce off, true. We could lower the accuracy of the rifle vs light tanks or lower the damage to compensate for the fact that the grenades don't bounce off. How many hits-to-kill would be appropriate here?
7) will check this...probably projectile collision settings problem
8) I thought I made the AT grenade only targettable at vehicles...will check this too
9) Will also check it
10) OK, I overlooked the damage output vs HQ trucks, we will lower that too

Thanks for the feedback.

MarKr wrote:6) "2-hit kills are pretty OP for first tier unit" - but that was the case with the PaK36 too. 2 hits destroyed any HT with 2 hits. 2 Hits were enough to kill light tanks too. Pak36 could bounce off, true. We could lower the accuracy of the rifle vs light tanks or lower the damage to compensate for the fact that the grenades don't bounce off.

This is what i meant when i said that there are different types of anti tank, anti inf etc weapons.

You cant exchange for example a rifle with a sub machine gun saying "Its an anti inf weapon, too". Boys in CW somehow fit in the faction making.... the units, cost, build times etc. There you need some stuff to balance out disadvantages (like only one building to build and tier up etc).

WH is a completely different thing. You have a few more option to put your army together. More buildings to recruit, more units bc they are cheaper and a mix of sniper, quite early mortar, versatile inf for close and ranged combat etc.
I dont think its impossible to add a rifle to WH as well, but its much more than just a "unit swap", its a total rewamp of WH early game or even entire gameplay. They can run arround much easier early on... few volks squads and this squad and you dont have to bother about flanking jeeps, even fuel costing cw vehicles and other nasty stuff..... there is no more need to decide where to place the AT gun that it cant get flanked easily while covering all units. Before WH was bound on a place (exaggerating) more or less with volks, recons, AT gun.... then came Puma and mortar that went for the push and provided much better mobility. And WH was good in this "defensive and heroric comeback" gameplay. Now you can literally run arround wherever you want right away. No more smart positioning with volks. This squad can be wherever the volks are, not volks wherever the pak was. That also changes the situation when Puma and 81 mm mortar comes which we know are the best units at this time availbale in all terms. It simply changes everything.

+ if you combine this squad with late stage inf that has usually schrecks... well.... Vehicles? nope, get sniped. Tanks? perhaps, but get easier caught by schrecks or even by the special shot of this squad.

In the long term it might mean that lots of other things would need to be changed.


@Tiger: Did you know that the 50 mm AT gun always had a 100% pen chance vs jumbos rear armor. Basically Panthers (and to some degree the tiger) face the same situation now against 75 mm sherman guns and Panther vs 57. I wonder why nobody every had issues with this fact. Just now it becomes a problem?

MarKr wrote:@Tiger: I noticed that you keep mentioning the Jumbo example. But 75mm Jumbo is available in only one doctrine which means that this 75mm unit will face Tigers only seldom, other 75mm guns are M4 Sherman, Sherman V, Cromwell and Churchill, Shermans and Cromwells can be fielded in bigger numbers but also die to single hit from Tiger. Churchill might survive more hits but it is so slow that flanking a Tiger with it is impossible.
The range advantage is helping Tiger against these units because they have crappy armor and so the Tiger can kill them in 1v1 situation before they even fire and in case of Churchill the Tiger can kite infinitely thanks to Churchills low speed. Jumbo is an exception here but it is also limited.

Thing is, it's already a shock that 75mm Jumbos are a threat to the Tiger... I mean, in the current patch (5.1.4) who fears the 75mm Jumbo with a Tiger1 ?!?! It's a big change.

When I played the beta.. the Tiger1 seemed extremely weak (armor wise) because the armor feels like paper... It's really weak. Reason is most hits actually count as rear hits for some reason, and since that the rear is weaker now.. it often gets penetrated by anything really.

A single penetration would soak up at least 25% of its health. And that's a very big deal.. if you combine that with some arty, then the Tiger1 is basically dead.

The situation is even worse with Panther tanks btw. I don't know... Panthers seem to have their butt in the front somehow, nearly.. every 3rd shell counts as rear hit, and suddenly... BOOM.

Story is almost the same with the Pershing, I'm not sure if this is a problem with Bk Mod in particular or just the game engine.. but i discovered that at least 50% of the hits actually register as REAR hits, even when the shell comes from the front, and so.. weakening the rear leads that heavy tanks are simply screwed.


I mean, I did crazy things in the BETA that are pretty much impossible on the current official version (5.1.4) such as: (did the following things many times actually)

- I killed full HP Tiger1 with just 2 Cromwells flanking.
- Killed Panther with just 1 Cromwell.
- Easily smashing Tiger1 with 3 M4 75mm Shermans... And I lost only 1 Sherman, and a 2nd one was heavily damaged but was still alive.. the 3rd killed the Tiger.
THREE 75mm Shermans in Armor doc cost ONLY 90 fuel altogther... A single Tiger costs 170 fuel. Since when regular 75mm Shermans are even a threat to the Tiger1 tank??


EVEN a Vet2 Tiger1 with ALRS ability AND tank commander, still won't be useful without a spotter...

Balance wise.. in a real PvP, such situations are simply EXTREME.

It is also harmful for heavy Allied tanks, but I think it's way worse for Axis generally.. because Axis rely more on heavy tanks, not to mention Allies have a lot more tools and units that are capable of using the speed to flank, while flanking isn't an Axis tactic on the other hand.

==========================

Bottom line,
I don't think that rear penetrations would need to be adjusted, they are a bit extreme but acceptable.. though, acceptable only if those heavy tanks would have some more range, the current range advantage is almost negligible.

Not trying to pressure anything, but these are just things that I had to point out.

Warhawks97 wrote:@Tiger: Did you know that the 50 mm AT gun always had a 100% pen chance vs jumbos rear armor. Basically Panthers (and to some degree the tiger) face the same situation now against 75 mm sherman guns and Panther vs 57. I wonder why nobody every had issues with this fact. Just now it becomes a problem?

I think the answer is pretty obvious.
It's because the price difference between 50mm Puma and Jumbo Shermans, isn't so big... Shermans are generally cheap.
While on the other hand, the price difference between a Panther or a Tiger with 75mm Sherman and Cromwell, is actually very big.
Axis heavy tanks are not as cheap as Jumbo Shermans, or even regular 75mm Shermans.. those can also kill a Tiger1 now.

I don't have a problem with this squad except the stuff Champion mentioned. I never considered AT boys to be fine but if they are working in perfect condition to most, then there is not much to say about this squad.

Are they more useful than the old pak 36? Yes. But it's not like they will go invisible on you and shoot from ambush; they can't camo. I am actually happy Wehr finally gets a unit to make their early game playable rather than a stale camp behind your sandbags that Wehr is forced into 99% of encounters. Even Puma and Mortar are not enough considering how much stuff the Allies can throw at you when you get them.

This might actually solve a lot of Axis early game problems actually, so I am happy with how the unit works currently. Just tone down the damage to stuart armor so it isn't uber effective against Crusaders, Recces, and Chaffees/Scotts. Make it take like 3-4 shots to destroy a Recce instead of 2-3.

The New BK Champion wrote:1. AT grenade has it's descripion put in the title instead of name when u hover mouse on it.

What exactly did you mean by this? I see this in the game:

MenciusMoldbug wrote:I

Are they more useful than the old pak 36? Yes. But it's not like they will go invisible on you and shoot from ambush; they can't camo. I am actually happy Wehr finally gets a unit to make their early game playable rather than a stale camp behind your sandbags that Wehr is forced into 99% of encounters. Even Puma and Mortar are not enough considering how much stuff the Allies can throw at you when you get them.

What you mean with "what they throw at you when you get them". At that stage i usually felt equal in numbers, if not quantitativ better for WH due to low upkeep. That "what they throw at you" is bc of the mixery of units CW and US field compared to the rather static and mirrored PE/WH gameplay most players had.

This might actually solve a lot of Axis early game problems actually, so I am happy with how the unit works currently. Just tone down the damage to stuart armor so it isn't uber effective against Crusaders, Recces, and Chaffees/Scotts. Make it take like 3-4 shots to destroy a Recce instead of 2-3.

sounds not bad. But still, how do we proced with early vehicles. We had this discussion already about AT rifles making light recon vehicles like schwimmwagens quite usless.
And the new rifle apparently oneshots early expensive fuel costing Brens and dingos. Whats their point now if they cant use their mobility anymore due to 360 degree fire arc and high rof They are getting as usless again as they were once used. They got a buff and thats gone again. Esspecially Wasp.



@Tiger: Not just jumbo, as you can see Pershing hasnt got more vulnerable so far. The 50 mm AT gun had iirc even 100% chance to pen its rear and it costs more like a Panther. (Yes, Puma and 50 mm AT had quite often very different rear pen chances vs certain targets).

Warhawks97 wrote:sounds not bad. But still, how do we proced with early vehicles. We had this discussion already about AT rifles making light recon vehicles like schwimmwagens quite usless.
And the new rifle apparently oneshots early expensive fuel costing Brens and dingos. Whats their point now if they cant use their mobility anymore due to 360 degree fire arc and high rof They are getting as usless again as they were once used. They got a buff and thats gone again. Esspecially Wasp.

What would you do? If you make those vehicles survive shots from the early AT units, then the recon units will just rush and kill them because they are armed with MGs and those at close ranges kill soldiers in no time. So making the early vehicles more durable to early AT drastically lowers the effectiveness of those AT units against the units they are meant to counter, on the other hand if you keep the early AT at the current one-shot settings, you're making the early recons drastically less effective.

I think it was set this way because these early recons can quickly kill infantry units and those AT units are meant to provide protection from these recons. So the current setup is probably to prevent light vehicles dominating the early game.

Maybe a solution could be lowering the accuracy of those AT units vs the scouts so that driving with the scouts into the range of AT is not 90% suicide but rather around 60% suicide?

Warhawks97 wrote:
What you mean with "what they throw at you when you get them". At that stage i usually felt equal in numbers, if not quantitativ better for WH due to low upkeep. That "what they throw at you" is bc of the mixery of units CW and US field compared to the rather static and mirrored PE/WH gameplay most players had.

You're right in a way. To put it in more detail, every point you capture in a game(regardless whether it is a strategic point or not) gives you +6 MP to your income. I find that allies most of the time have a much greater advantage in winning the early game and securing many points with US's fast capping speed. With UK support of LT and AT BOYS to help with other stuff. Adding to that, allies have a better early game composition and most build orders between a US and a UK player work out ok. Meanwhile, axis have the problem of as you said 'doubling capacity;' say in 2v2: 2 pak 36s, 2 mg42s, 1 mortar and motar halftrack, etc.

If allies win the early game, then the upkeep drain for US is not really noticeable early on since it is offset by the MP income you get from holding 60%+ of the map. If they don't win you can notice how much US is hampered by not getting more than half the map in the first few minutes(especially noticeable when axis take most of the map early on).

Warhawks97 wrote:
sounds not bad. But still, how do we proced with early vehicles. We had this discussion already about AT rifles making light recon vehicles like schwimmwagens quite usless.
And the new rifle apparently oneshots early expensive fuel costing Brens and dingos. Whats their point now if they cant use their mobility anymore due to 360 degree fire arc and high rof They are getting as usless again as they were once used. They got a buff and thats gone again. Esspecially Wasp.

I would be ok with retuning the weapon to be a low damage, high ROF gun so it isn't an upgraded version of a pak 36. But I would like the same to be done with AT boys since these guys are pretty much an upgraded version of AT boys that cost less and can hurt shermans(though it's not cheap, 50 munitions for each of those big grenade shots). AT boys already oneshot shwimms, motorcycles, and kettens. And 2 shot scout cars, 28mm pzb cars, PE halftracks, etc. At least unlike AT boys you can see these guys on the map. If you move your shwimmwagen to the wrong hidden ambush point, and the 65+ firing range of a AT boy rolls a positive on the RNG at max distance; that shwimm is gonna die to a single BOY's rifle shot.

But that's a question of how many people think the AT boy's are currently working 'fine.' Is it completely okay for them to just oneshot a shwimmwagen from max range? If it is, what's the problem with this 30mm AT grenade oneshotting jeeps and fast-killing other stuff from max range?

Putting more thought into it, you can't really turn a grenade launcher into a high ROF, low damage weapon. So the best you can do is nerf its damage a little bit and decrease their accuracy a lot at range. So it's not complete suicide to attack them at max range with light vehicles. Though if you over-nerf their damage output against light vehicles, it might make them useless, and people would just skip to get panzerjager squads and pak 50mm's instead then. In all honesty, all I want for now is to see an accuracy drop at distance and a nerf to the damage it does to stuart armor and see how it goes.

Tiger1996 wrote:When I played the beta.. the Tiger1 seemed extremely weak (armor wise) because the armor feels like paper... It's really weak. Reason is most hits actually count as rear hits for some reason, and since that the rear is weaker now.. it often gets penetrated by anything really.

I gave you the numbers but you were so persistent that I run a test on my test map to see if maybe you're right and some hidden modifier makes the Tigers easier to penetrate than they should be.

Test 1:
M4 Sherman, standard ammo, maximum range, shooting directly at front of the Tiger:

I counted the number of shots of from the M4 before it penetrated:
1st series of shots: 11th shot penetrated (tank immobilized); tank left at about 75% HP
2nd series: 3rd shot penetrated; tank left at about 50% HP

(now I moved the M4 a bit to the side to have a chance to score a "rear hit" from front)

3rd series: 19th shot penetrated (engine damage); tank left at about 25% HP
4th series: 2nd shot penetrated (tank destroyed)

Number of hits: 35
Penetrated: 4
Penetrative percentage: 11.4%

Test 2:
75mm Jumbo, standard ammo, maximum range, from the start shooting from a position where rear hit of the Tiger is possible:

1st series of shots: 18th shot penetrated
2nd series: 8th shot penetrated
(now I moved the Jumbo to the side to have a 50:50 chanceto score a "rear hit")
3rd series: 3rd shot penetrated
4th serie: 15th shot penetrated

Math for the first 2 series (with the 3rd and 4th it is impossible to say which shot was front and which rear hit)
Number of hits: 26
Penetrated: 2
Penetrative percentage: 7.69%

This was just one series of tests and the frontal penetration statistically sticks around the numbers in Corsix (8.2%) but I believe that if I ran more series the numbers would on average stick around this value too. Anyway, this hardly counts as "most hits actually count as rear hits for some reason". I think we have here another case of buttered-bread effect here

The new version of the light AT squad isn't valid to compare against the AT boys squad anymore. It's now much closer to the Rifleman Squad with GL upgrade except that you don't have to pay for Rifleman's GL AT shot.

A Rifleman GL squad costs 255 mp, 35 munitions, has a dependency on the WSC which in of itself requires a Barracks, has a very unreliable AT ability intended for armored cars and burdens your upkeep with a crippled Rifle squad.

The Rifleman GL squad's level of performance was once considered dangerous enough to be locked behind the Motor Pool instead of the WSC. Consider that the GBR squad is available at the start, cheaper, has roughly the same durability as a 6 man Rifleman squad and a much more powerful pay per shot AT ability.


On a related note, I think pay for AT infantry abilities aimed at countering armored cars are a concept that doesn't work. Unlike AT abilities that target tanks, an infantry unit cannot exploit mobility to easily escape a failed attempt, making them harmless prey for armored cars if they fail. (I'm thinking of Rifle GL shot and the Ranger Infiltration Squad's Bazooka ability).

@MarKr
The test you have done is a very seldom scenario, I know you did come up with this just for the sake of testing the penetration values.. but this is not what happens in a real fight. Most of he examples I mentioned on the other hand.. were in fact incidents that happened throughout some actual PvP battles on the beta, and not testing scenarios.

These for example:

Tiger1996 wrote:I mean, I did crazy things in the BETA that are pretty much impossible on the current official version (5.1.4) such as: (did the following things many times actually)

- I killed full HP Tiger1 with just 2 Cromwells flanking.
- Killed Panther with just 1 Cromwell.
- Easily smashing Tiger1 with 3 M4 75mm Shermans... And I lost only 1 Sherman, and a 2nd one was heavily damaged but was still alive.. the 3rd killed the Tiger.
THREE 75mm Shermans in Armor doc cost ONLY 90 fuel altogther... A single Tiger costs 170 fuel. Since when regular 75mm Shermans are even a threat to the Tiger1 tank??

Those weren't testing scenarios... I mean that in a true PvP situation, no one is going to attack a Tiger1 with a single 75mm Sherman, but possibly 3 ones or more, and the Tiger1 won't stand still.. it will try to relocate itself all the time, in order to avoid getting flanked or exposed to arty...
Hitting the rear of the tank seems to be a lot easier when the enemy tank is moving, and with 9 seconds reload.. the Tiger1 will mostly lose.

On the current version (5.1.4), killing a Tiger1 with 3x 75mm Shermans or 2x 75mm Jumbo Shermans, or 2x Cromwell tanks by flanking.. is simply impossible, not even when you keep shooting at the rear. Only 76mm guns could do that...
So, in the beta... I consider this to be a very big change!

Overall, heavy tanks are only weaker in the beta.. compared to the current official version.
Reload got increased, sight range got reduced, and rear is now weaker... Only +5 more basic range in return DOES NOT compensate with all these.
So for heavy tanks; these are 3 nerf and only 1 small buff.

For the super heavy tanks... Such as KT and SP, now they have 10-11 seconds reload (used to be 5-6 seconds), also weaker rear.. and less sight range.
Aaaand? Even no range buff just.. nothing. Almost double the reload time, and no range buff.. not even +5 more range like heavy tanks.

>>> I know that JagdPanther and Elefant got more range (from 65 to 70) but only now they are FINALLY same as SP and KT, but these are fine anyway because they get even more range from ambush mode or static position abilities <<<

Getting back to my point though.. so what's the point of all this? This way, you only achieved the following:
Super heavy tanks (KT and SP) are now only weaker against heavy tanks (Pershing and Tiger).
And heavy tanks (Pershing and Tiger) are now weaker against groups of medium tanks (Pz4 and Sherman).

Not sure what's the intention behind this.

Anyway, here is what I could suggest:
- Super heavy tanks (KT, SP, etc) should get +5 more range (from 70 to 75).
- Heavy tanks (Pershing, Tiger, etc) should have +5 more range (from 65 to 70).
- Than you could also remove flank speed from Tiger1 tanks.. and nothing in return, ALRS stays at vet2.
- Eventually, you could make the "rear armor" EVEN MORE weak if you want.

I hope you get my point here.

Tiger1996 wrote:@MarKr
The test you have done is a very seldom scenario, I know you did come up with this just for the sake of testing the penetration values.. but this is not what happens in a real fight.

Yes, I was testing the penetration values because you said all these things:

I lost a Tiger1 tank against 75mm Jumbo frontally!!

At the current official version (5.1.4) 75mm Jumbos can never penetrate Tiger tanks frontally, except in dreams.

Many of the hits were probably registered as rear hits, thus the Tiger1 was killed..

I tested it many times, actually since the 2nd beta and up until the 5th.. and I kept noting my results all over this time.

When I played the beta.. the Tiger1 seemed extremely weak (armor wise) because the armor feels like paper... It's really weak. Reason is most hits actually count as rear hits for some reason

So you make it sound like there is some in-game/engine bug that makes the Tiger frontal armor count as rear.

In the real game many factors are different for sure - e.g. units are moving to get to flanking position. Moving units should only affect accuracy, not penetration. Penetration can be higher if you move the Shermans closer, no doubt about that, but when the Jumbo moves closer the Tiger gun has also better chance to penetrate it so it is double-edged. However this test only proves that the front/rear hit registration works correctly. So when you say that the game registers most frontal hits as rear hits, it really seems like the "buttered bread effect"...That being said, I don't have a problem lowering the 75mm gun's penetration vs rear of Tigers - perhaps it could be like 40% at rear from very close range which would make shots from long range much less effective but I would like to avoid 75mm guns having 0% chance at any range from any side.

@MarKr-I just want to say something, if you want the sherman tanks very similar to how they were in the second world war "realism", I imagine you know the results, "quantity" exceeds "quality", summarizing (the axis will be violated ), and since this is a game ,it would not be fun anymore, there would be only one strategy to win, so, what sense would play a game like that .... On the other hand, I think that the game is currently balanced in 90% approximately or more, I also like that they want to implement new things, make this game more fun, I value all the effort of the developers, it is respectable but I also think that they should be more careful with such big changes, since this game is not a "2 + 2", what I mean is that everything is very relative, and a big change in the system of damage, or speed of certain units, could be very harmful when playing pvp , causing a huge imbalance

I understand that. But the changes to rear penetration were not implemented to come more to realism.
There was this trend where people automatically rushed for the heavy tanks because mediums had no chance to kill the heavies even if you had numerical advantage with the medium tanks. You had very little chance frontally and even if you microed the tanks to pull off some flanking, you usually had no luck either. The rear penetration changes were implemented to make usage of medium tanks in numbers a viable option rather than waste of resources. We don't want to make heavy tanks obsolote, we want to make mediums more useful. And this is the reason why we have it in beta - to find the balance before it is released to live version.

Shanks wrote:@MarKr-I just want to say something, if you want the sherman tanks very similar to how they were in the second world war "realism", I imagine you know the results, "quantity" exceeds "quality", summarizing (the axis will be violated ), and since this is a game ,it would not be fun anymore, there would be only one strategy to win, so, what sense would play a game like that .... On the other hand, I think that the game is currently balanced in 90% approximately or more, I also like that they want to implement new things, make this game more fun, I value all the effort of the developers, it is respectable but I also think that they should be more careful with such big changes, since this game is not a "2 + 2", what I mean is that everything is very relative, and a big change in the system of damage, or speed of certain units, could be very harmful when playing pvp , causing a huge imbalance

Well said.

@MarKr
in my opinion, you really don't have to lower the rear penetration chance for anything.. what is better, is giving more range to the heavies.
With this long reload time, combined with weak rear armor... The long range will be more than justified. At least we could test this out!
And in case heavy tanks turn out to be a bit OP after increasing the range.. then you could actually make the rear armor for heavy tanks even weaker, by increasing the penetration chances at the rear.. instead of lowering them!

If you think giving a bit more range for the heavies would not be good, then I would really like to know why you think so.

This beta is out for how long? i asked players and nobody has really tested the new pen changes and those who played it didnt feel or recognized any sort of real disadvantage. So let this topic rest for a while and let players get used to it pls.

Thing is heavies shouldnt be no brainers, but it was often the case, esspecially when there was no priest to fear.
The games got dominated by heavies very often in terms of tank to tank combat.

If you check the reality you can also see that a heavy tank is not automatically "bad ass like overshit". Positioning was cruical. If you dont manage to get proper intelligence and caught off-guard by a small group of standard shermans, well, the Panther will be dead.
And why not making 3 shermans being able to beat one tiger? It happens the other way arround as well. Three shermans advancing without proper intelligence will also get killed very fast. First shot from tiger scores the first kill, relocates before shermans can react. Would you really risk to turn for an attack with two basic shermans left?
I mean we have just solved one part of the issue that pure unit cost beats tactics and movment.
Currently most go for heavies simply bc they are better. Now people will go for heavies when they fit in their gameplay and the unit composition.
And units like tigers and others dont need so much support to be effective than cheaper tanks or lets say they combine many aspects in one tank. In this case firepower with armor. You can just as well calculate it as churchill+Firefly, perhaps even better.

And idk for how many times i said it: Stop comparing mass prod cost with basic cost. Mass production is supposed to boost the cost efficiency, not to be a requirement to be cost effective.

For inf and AB doc it might become a possibility now to use a few shermans as well to beat Tigers. Use the basic cost of shermans and you wont see a problem in terms of cost when 3 shermans can beat a Tiger and Panthers. If you face armor doc, you should perhaps choose def, TH or luft doc anyway.
And as long as you hold the upper hand in intelligence and reconassaince, you can always place your heavy tanks in a favoured position.

Warhawks97 wrote:let this topic rest for a while and let players get used to it pls.

Why suppressing this topic for now though, and till when?
Look; I supported the concept of increasing the reload times for heavy tanks in return of increasing their range since the very beginning, and I still do. And I focused around 75% of the time that I spent for testing the beta(s) exclusively on this in particular, the rest of my time was for bug hunting.

Later though, after testing for a long time...
I only came to the conclusion that the current way how this concept is distributed in the beta, is in fact very harmful.. not because the concept is bad, but mainly because the way how the concept is currently implemented, actually still need some serious tweaking.

>>> The idea was to increase the basic range of heavy tanks while in return increasing their reload time <<<

What happened in the beta however, wasn't just that!
The rear armor also became weaker, and sight range was dramatically reduced by removing scope upgrades as well, which I'm not against btw.

Nonetheless, I'm just totally convinced now that the current range increase prior to the other changes implemented.. is simply not sufficient.
The range increase of just +5 to heavy tanks, and "NOTHING" for super heavy tanks despite increasing the reload times to almost DOUBLE the original reload time value, which means that the rate of fire is now half as it used to be.. is simply so downgrading.

Clearly; the current range bonus is not enough, as it does not compensate with the other drawbacks combined...
That's because the current range bonus is very minimal.

Warhawks97 wrote:Thing is heavies shouldnt be no brainers, but it was often the case, esspecially when there was no priest to fear.
The games got dominated by heavies very often in terms of tank to tank combat.

From what I can tell, this is not exactly true... I have seen many situations in the current versions, when heavies were simply useless and waste of resources too.. and currently in the beta, it only became much worse.

I know you are that sort of a player who doesn't like to use heavy tanks generally.. as you mentioned yourself several times that usually you play only with mediums, and other light vehicles.. as you never preferred deploying individual units that are heavy and expensive.
That's your play-style though.. but I can't let anyone completely wipe heavies out of the game... Specifically when many others (including me) are relying on a much different play-style that is greatly tank oriented, and thus... Heavies are a core part of the game to me and many others.

Currently in the beta, heavies are just... WEAK, can't say it any better! Certainly, more range is needed.

You have been wanting more range for the tiger even before this beta appeared, so i wonder why are you using this as an excuse to add more range to them now, lol. I would just recommend to tweak the new wh at unit as peopple said before in this post, and give peopple time to get use.