Slitherine

I'm wondering what ideas the design team is looking at for making the super tanks a little more defeatable. The terrain effects for infantry is an excellent innovation but the only annoying thing is how a group can take on a gazillion slightly lesser tanks rending the lesser tanks useless. I mean the game has done a perfect job of managing the infantry / tank relationship but the heavy / medium tank relationship needs a bit of an improvement.

Here are some ideas I was thinking about:

Make heavy tanks very similarly priced as medium tanks but they produce in lower strength units. For instance, maybe King Tiger costs 600 prestige and only produces to 5-strength whereas Panther is 700 and 6-strength, M26 is 5-strength and IS-2 similar, etc. They remain very powerful but do you really want to use up core units? Well maybe but the trade-off is there to consider. Missions like Urban Warfare and Frozen North get WAY more interesting rather than just a heavy-tank spawn war.

Perhaps the same effect could be captured by simply reducing their rate of fire like artillery. That is probably the most elegant solution and quite realistic also.

Making King Tiger 600 prestige with rate of fire of 5 would be very interesting too. Want to buy a Panzer for the same price that is more mobile, far more potent against transports, recon, artillery and anti air or do you want the thing that will kill 4 and lose 0 every time it shoots at a medium tank? You could even beef up the defense / attack of Tigers / IS-2 / M26 more to reflect just how powerful they were.

The more you can add a "rock-paper-scissors" element, the better. It would be great to have strong merit in EACH category (which is almost there minus anti-tanks, and to a lesser degree, strategic bombers) and WITHIN each category (ie. it isn't obvious which tank you should buy, lots of variety in strategies)

I personally don't want to see much nerfs to the high end heavy tanks, these tanks should be able to be the kings of the battlefield. The King Tiger was truly a fearsome tank in terms of combat capabilities compared to a T34 or Sherman, in a straight forward one on one encounter.

I personally think that increasing the potency of medium tanks, tweaking the mass attack system to more strongly influence mid and late war armored combat, and increasing heavy tank vulnerability to tactical bombers are better answers.

That said, part of the problem is the content, TFN and UW and even HV are all set in 1945. These high end heavies obviously should outclass tanks from 1942 and 1943, shouldn't they? I guarantee when we have more scenarios of late 1943 and early 1944, where the King Tiger, IS-2, and M26 are not available, we will see excellent use of medium tanks.

Kerensky wrote:I personally don't want to see much nerfs to the high end heavy tanks, these tanks should be able to be the kings of the battlefield. The King Tiger was truly a fearsome tank in terms of combat capabilities compared to a T34 or Sherman, in a straight forward one on one encounter.

I personally think that increasing the potency of medium tanks, tweaking the mass attack system to more strongly influence mid and late war armored combat, and increasing heavy tank vulnerability to tactical bombers are better answers.

That said, part of the problem is the content, TFN and UW and even HV are all set in 1945. These high end heavies obviously should outclass tanks from 1942 and 1943, shouldn't they? I guarantee when we have more scenarios of late 1943 and early 1944, where the King Tiger, IS-2, and M26 are not available, we will see excellent use of medium tanks.

I'm curious about what your specific criticism of the rate of fire / prestige reduction idea for the heavy heavy tanks. It seems to do it all. The tanks can remain dominant (if anything, I would make their defense and attack even better) and their role is much better defined - they are unstoppable wherever they roam, but aren't numerous enough to inflict enormous damage. The medium tanks (T34, Panzers and Sherman) were the bulk of all the armies for good reason - and Panzer Corps, I think, would be a better game if the nimbleness of the medium tank was better illustrated / captured. There must be a very compelling reason to want a T34 more than a IS-2 (under certain circumstances). Adjusting down the rate of fire of the heavies would show this perfectly from what I can tell. Please provide a convincing argument as to why I am wrong (happy to hear it!)

Btw, is this moddable? I'd like to try it myself.

ruskicanuk wrote:

Kerensky wrote:I personally don't want to see much nerfs to the high end heavy tanks, these tanks should be able to be the kings of the battlefield. The King Tiger was truly a fearsome tank in terms of combat capabilities compared to a T34 or Sherman, in a straight forward one on one encounter.

I personally think that increasing the potency of medium tanks, tweaking the mass attack system to more strongly influence mid and late war armored combat, and increasing heavy tank vulnerability to tactical bombers are better answers.

That said, part of the problem is the content, TFN and UW and even HV are all set in 1945. These high end heavies obviously should outclass tanks from 1942 and 1943, shouldn't they? I guarantee when we have more scenarios of late 1943 and early 1944, where the King Tiger, IS-2, and M26 are not available, we will see excellent use of medium tanks.

I'm curious about what your specific criticism of the rate of fire / prestige reduction idea for the heavy heavy tanks. It seems to do it all. The tanks can remain dominant (if anything, I would make their defense and attack even better) and their role is much better defined - they are unstoppable wherever they roam, but aren't numerous enough to inflict enormous damage. The medium tanks (T34, Panzers and Sherman) were the bulk of all the armies for good reason - and Panzer Corps, I think, would be a better game if the nimbleness of the medium tank was better illustrated / captured. There must be a very compelling reason to want a T34 more than a IS-2 (under certain circumstances). Adjusting down the rate of fire of the heavies would show this perfectly from what I can tell. Please provide a convincing argument as to why I am wrong (happy to hear it!)

Btw, is this moddable? I'd like to try it myself.

To be clear, I don't want to simply weaken the heavies. I think they should actually be tougher (except maybe to tac. bombers). In some ways, I want to make them better (lower prestige cost and even better hard attack / ground defense). I just think doing this + adding a rate of fire reduction would make it a fascinating decision for a player (do I want the uber powerful heavy tank that will not die, let me hold a position very steadily vs. the fast moving and potent (against non-heavy tanks) medium tank?

I kind of like this idea. Sure KT and JSII tanks were the King of the Battlefield but they also were pretty rare. There weren't divisions outfitted entirely with them. Giving them a lower starting strength makes some sense. It's not like Shermans, T34/85's and PzIV's weren't used in 44-45. They were still the most common tanks.

Exactly - Tiger and IS-2 should be the rarities, not Shermans / T34s / Panzers. The latter were the mainstay. Adjust rate of fire down and this realistic scenario would result more often (or at least give the Panzer Corp commander an interesting "what if" choice). As it stands, the only rational thing to do is to buy heavy (not medium) tanks.

MartyWard wrote:I kind of like this idea. Sure KT and JSII tanks were the King of the Battlefield but they also were pretty rare. There weren't divisions outfitted entirely with them. Giving them a lower starting strength makes some sense. It's not like Shermans, T34/85's and PzIV's weren't used in 44-45. They were still the most common tanks.

The problem with RoF changes is they are a hidden attribute. There is no in game access for this stat, the only reference exists in the equipment file. It will only lead to confusion, similar to issues where people were wondering why super heavy artillery such as the Gustav with 60 soft attack really wasn't doing much damage.

Yes, Rate of Fire is not the answer.

Allies ratio should be 3 tanks to one Tiger. The German ratio should be 2 tanks to the KV-2 and IS-2.

I'm taking about the number of Medium units needed to compensate one enemy unit on the battle field.

If you increase the combat statistics too much on the medium tanks you will destroy this historical ratio.

A Map should be designed with these ratio's in mind. Then you will see more balance.

Pitting one tank vs one tank is not the answer. Same with planes.

Units should match history, then be compensated by numbers on the map/experience.

The combat statistics should only be adjusted for game play and fun.

I believe this is what the team is aiming for but it takes time testing and feedback from multiple players.

There are other games that are being worked on so time must be allocated.

For historic realism you need to make the heavy tanks cost much more prestige than today. Since one is worth as much as three or even five medium tanks they need to cost three or five times as much.

But this isn't fun. And "prestige" isn't an exact equivalent of "manufacturing capacity" anyways, there's always the dimension of "back at HQ we don't have lots of Tiger IIs but since you are so badass we're giving them all to you" that makes up a big part of the game's allure and fun factor.

The solution? Expand the "unpurchasable" flag into a proper value (call it "restricted" or somesuch). If the value is 1 or 2 or 5 that is how many units of that family you can have in your core army. A value of zero still means "unpurchasable".

You can still field more than that in any particular scenario (simply by the scenario designer adding preexisting units onto the battlefield), you're just limited on the number you can absorb into your core to bring with you to the next battlefield.

The argument against using rate of fire to make the game better is "it will lead to confusion???". Well, that is a disappointing argument, I'm sorry. I mean, it is already used for artillery... Arguably, it should be added to the unit profile given that this stat is WAY more important than many others.

I'm not suggesting getting the ratios right somehow (3 to 1 tanks, etc). I don't care what that is. Only interested in a more nuanced / interesting game where a player can realistically think about a medium tank / heavy tank trade off. Now the trade is simply GET HEAVIES OR DIE. There is no reason ever to buy mediums and simply boosting their stats will just undermine realism + the appeal of big fat tough tanks.

You can both keep the heavies as super strong + make mediums relevant simply by (1) increasing the power of heavies (2) reducing their RoF and (3) equalizing the cost of the "best in class" medium and "best in class" heavy tank.

Would make things very interesting.

My 2 cents. I will drop it now

Kerensky wrote:The problem with RoF changes is they are a hidden attribute. There is no in game access for this stat, the only reference exists in the equipment file. It will only lead to confusion, similar to issues where people were wondering why super heavy artillery such as the Gustav with 60 soft attack really wasn't doing much damage.

I think ensuring heavy tanks have a hard time taking on infantry and AT guns in any terrain would be the best option. Right now I think they tend to do a bit too much damage for not enough loss when attacking cities etc.

I think ensuring heavy tanks have a hard time taking on infantry and AT guns in any terrain would be the best option. Right now I think they tend to do a bit too much damage for not enough loss when attacking cities etc.

I agree with this, entrenched troops and AT guns pose almost no problem at all to some heavy tanks. I've played enough now to say that the IS 2 can totally ignore any danger in these situations and blast right through a town. I'd prefer it if the heavy tanks were a bit more vunerable when doing jobs there not suited for. Sort of nerfing through indirect means rather than weakening them straight out.

iainmcneil wrote:I think ensuring heavy tanks have a hard time taking on infantry and AT guns in any terrain would be the best option. Right now I think they tend to do a bit too much damage for not enough loss when attacking cities etc.

Absolutely ( although i would argue all armour, and not just the heavies)

Maybe though the problem isn't as acute as the uselessness of the (widely used in real life) medium tank when compared to the heavy on every metric. The designers did an amazing job in adding the infantry / city+terrain dynamic to Panzer Corps which has significantly improved the game together with the artillery improvements (suppressors rather than killers).

Too bad we can't convince folks to make the medium vs. heavy tank choice an interesting one with trade-offs + specialized anti tanks (ie. huge initiative / hard attack so they always get their shot off first, especially when defending, but very very low defense / soft attack to make them very vulnerable to soft / air attacks).

Ah well.

iainmcneil wrote:I think ensuring heavy tanks have a hard time taking on infantry and AT guns in any terrain would be the best option. Right now I think they tend to do a bit too much damage for not enough loss when attacking cities etc.

We could say that heavy tanks have a lower close defence rating or equal to medium tanks to discourage their use in close terrain. Currently I think teh close defence values are too high for late war armour making them impervious to to infantry attacks.

Agreed. Arguably, they should have lower close defense than the mediums given their bulky size, lower speed, less mobility in close.

iainmcneil wrote:We could say that heavy tanks have a lower close defence rating or equal to medium tanks to discourage their use in close terrain. Currently I think teh close defence values are too high for late war armour making them impervious to to infantry attacks.

ruskicanuk wrote:Agreed. Arguably, they should have lower close defense than the mediums given their bulky size, lower speed, less mobility in close.

iainmcneil wrote:We could say that heavy tanks have a lower close defence rating or equal to medium tanks to discourage their use in close terrain. Currently I think teh close defence values are too high for late war armour making them impervious to to infantry attacks.

While i agree that smaller ealier war tanks likly were a great deal more nimble in close territory than heavy tanks, i fail to see that much of a difference between medium/heavy or say between a panther or a tiger . I mean , driving down a narrow rubble littered street, a tiger would likly be a much safer bet than being in a panther as the thicker armour would at least provide much greater prtection vs HEAT rounds. (slope isnt going to do much vs a satchel charge or heat round)

On neat thing about Tigers is they could use the trans axle to spin treads in opposing directions to literally spin the tank which often surprised their opponents . Not sure how many tanks could actually do this but the fact that it aledgedly was surprising indicates not that many tanks could do this.... The biggest problem with the Tigers mobility was really its very wide turn radius, and of course its weight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzWAinUJ ... r_embedded

Cool little clip of tigers in action, some in combat but some obviously in design trials. There are some brief clips of neutral steering , although they dont seem too impressive, mostly because the muddy ground is pushing up a berm of 2-3 feet high as the tank is pivoting...

I absolutely agree with toning down the close defense (and air defense) of late war heavies. But then I've felt this way since BETA, so it's nice to see agreement.