MenciusMoldbug wrote:The Hetzer to me has always been one of those 'broken' and abusable tanks you get as PE. I never really mentioned it all that much because everything in PE costs so much that you usually get 1 hetzer for every 2-3 tanks/vehicles an allied player gets.
Reason I find TH the best doctrine in the game is because if resource limits were not a problem, there's a lot of tiny abuses that snowball together to make it overtly too strong. Low detection radius' on their TD's means infantry have to get right next to them to spot them; in the meantime a PE player can spam mark target on whatever is approaching his tank and mark target buffs stack as well. So double mark target is 40% more accuracy against that one unit. I have gotten armored cars (non-reward) with 60+ inf kills roaming around with broken flank speed/overdrive never getting caught by anything because I stack mark target buffs on enemy infantry and they get absolutely shredded.
I abused this mark target a lot. Same btw goes for US M20... i got two of them to double mark powerfull inf units. But regarding this matter, its really damn hard when two hetzers mark your inf squad supposed to kill the hetzer just to get shred outright by a single 20 mm car sitting behind.
The flank speeds need a general rethinking. I use this sdkfz 222 myself and its so fucking cartoonish. There can be a bazooka guy in front of you, aiming and within these two secs you can rush out of its range in reverse gear.
Camouflaged units also work in a really weird way in that some shots that are meant to hit them don't because they are 'invisible.' COH 2 had the same problem with their own OKW JP4 as far as I remember before they patched it and the same problem persists here regarding all camouflaged units. You can test this pretty easily by ambushing a Hetzer and then shooting PIATs with attack ground where it's ambushed. I have seen these PIATs do no damage, not even give the hint of 'penetrating' or 'deflecting' on the target rather than just hitting the ground or some weird stuff going on that is hard to describe without actually seeing it yourself. Weapons with mass AOE damage circles work out ok against ambushed stuff but everything that does not have those huge AOE circles get real iffy vs cloaked stuff.
Never tried this out, but its true. Forcing ambushed TD´s with Zimmerit out of its cover is almost impossible. Ive seen hetzers sitting in a long tom barrage just to take scratches.
Zimmerit I have mentioned elsewhere so no point repeating here. The other two things to keep in mind is ofc the the number of ambush shots the Hetzer gets, which is the highest ambush shot numbers for any TD in the game. No idea why the reward JP4 gets 2 and costs more if it's about survivability bonus. Because the Hetzer is technically more survivable by having more ambush shots to work with. You can also abuse multiple ambush shot modifiers by shoot twice or once and waiting a bit to let the number 'reset' to fire again and not be revealed at all, maybe ever.
I would say its not intentional to have hetzer with 3 ambush shots. But generally, when time is not pressing or when i see the target gets immobilized by first shot, i do order a ceasfire to reset this timer.
Another bullshit is when you have like 3 76 tanks advancing a Jagpanzer and suddenly it goes invisible... and it gets visible again first when your own tank is so close that it cant shoot at it anymore. Broken shit sometimes. I have seen this happen so often and not seldomly, a outmaneuverd actually dead Jagdpanzer IV/70 kept alive and knocking out two e8 shermans right in front of it just bc it went "sudden cloak". I would make ambush abilties like these to be deactivated once revealed and re ambush would require reactivating the ability manually but it would have some cooldown to prevent these "mid combat" "right in front the enemie cloaking" stuff.
Hetzer is also using broken gun ranges that ups its penetration values far beyond what they should be. It's gun penetration is mostly 10% higher than the reward JP4 on range distances because of how they are numbered. This snowballs with it's triple ambush shot and AP rounds to pretty much counter all tanks in the game barring the Pershing. Even the Pershing can get knocked out if Hetzer gets lucky with its ambush shots because usually it only needs one or two shots to lucky-immobilize it. Then it can just wait for the ambush modifiers to 'reset' and fire again.
i mentioned it in the M1 garand debate where i talked about broken range brackets for certain guns.... many of them are set random it feels, let alone many of the AT guns. But the Hetzer beats everything.
I think Nashorn was also a candiate.. not sure though at the moment making this post.
Most guns should have something like 15/30/45/60... the max range modifier would met with the actual max range of the gun. Bigger guns could be set accordingly to their max range.
Hetzer is one of the very few tanks who can actually make "point blank shots" with its `20´short range bracket. Tanks with 10 range have virtually no chance to do so bc min range is 5....
Thinking about it, I liked Warhawks idea of having low member squads instead of having big ones because the big ones don't work with stuff like the infantry halftrack PE gets. PE infantry halftracks are meant to carry 1-2 squads that is 3 or 4 members strong because that's how many of firing slots they get when they are inside the halftrack. As long as you get hugely expensive squads; combo-ing them with the infantry halftrack is not going to work out because the risk of losing them is too great. I didn't like PE squads being 7 members strong late-game either because they are way too spaced out in some occasions and in others blob too hardcore in maps with weird obstacle placements.
thx that you like that idea.
Ultimately, in my privcate version, i did set them to 4 men standard bc 3 was really harsh to play and fatal losses occured to often early on. But with upgrade they went up to 5 men. This upgrade didnt require logistic company upgrade so you can bump up to 5 men quicker.
The good thing is that no squad costs more than 300 MP when i think out of my head. The heavy assault squad was 280 mp or something, grens 240 and pios 260. The cost remaind exactly same after 5 men upgrade.
That would be a faction identity. Who can get elite squads for not more than 300 MP? non. And you can use elite abilties more frequently.
The prob with 7 men squads that are supposed to be elite is that they are expensive as fuck. You gain firepower per squad but you lose too much on a tactical level. You either get them at front or back at base to reinforce. And a squad loss (lucky arty shell) cuts a huge whole into your lines.
Also i made all squads serving special purposes instead of all coming with same armament so far (usually k98). The assault squad got an stg right away and mg42 and stg as upgrades, the normal grens could upgrade the full squad with G43 and the assault pios started with 2 stg and 2 mp40 (but less hp than assault grens of course).
Further changes were dropping build time for grens in order to get sufficient numbers early on to prevent getting instantly overruned.
Also the faster cap upgrade boosted the ss squad and heavy assault squads more. Those went up to 175% cap rate (compared to rifles 150%) in order to make them special, hard beating, fast attacking and turning them into real assault grens that can overrun enemies.
Idk if anyone ever played World of warships... but there japs fighter squadrons from carriers are smaller but they have more squadrons. And often this helps them to dominate the US carriers... its not the sheer numbers but the ammount of tactical options that makes you win.
I used this principle for PE and thats why i like PE in vcoh as a faction a lot more.
I would also ask for a further sniper rework based on higher aim times and changing their camouflage stuff to match this because I still feel snipers are a bit broken when they come in numbers. like over 4+ snipers on the map with an M20 vehicle running around scouting for pesky spotters and the like. Makes the game a bit too frustrating and stressful because there's no real 'easy-way' to counter a sniper other than getting a lucky artillery hit or strafing them to death. Using other snipers is also pretty RNG depending on enemy sniper vet level and what cover they are behind; as I've seen my sniper miss an enemy's one like 9 times before he finally hit him behind a wall. A sniper rework would also be needed if PE squads were to be transformed into lower numbers/cheaper in cost because of how easy it is for snipers to kill squads out-right by themselves (especially with the rapid sniping ability). The problem would be of course is how many people are used to big elite squads of PE and don't want that changed. Because I seriously believe this is what hampers PE the most from being too weak or too strong.
totally agree.
Viper wrote:
from realistic point of view. 8 detection radius is funny of course. but the jagdpanther costs 1000mp and 180 fuel for 6cp. or 900mp and 160 fuel for 8cp. that is also funny. because in reality the jagdpanther was not more expensive than a tiger or a pershing.
The cost argument. Well, Jagdpanther is technically a Panther just cheaper design (same as Jagdpanzer IV is a cheaper Tank on Tank base).
This JP thing is a silly remnant from vcoh. Everything on it.
I would drop HP to 800 like normal Panther has, completely remove Zimmerit from Th doc, drop JP cost down to roughly (750/130) after mass prod upgrade (?)... and detection range like 15 or 20 so that inf has a realistic chance to clear up the path? (its a quite huge tank compared to hetzer).
So it would just become a Panther that can ambush with decent frontal armor, better gun and no turret.
But i would increase the upkeep, just as i would do with all panthers, esspecially fuel upkeep is a joke sometimes.