I have a growing suspicion that the people panicking over the idea of the 3AD getting M10s and/or price/stats buffs for the Shermans are the same people posting this on the steam forums.
3rd Armored Division balance thread
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Better than a coin-flip is in fact "quite often", because that's more than half the time and certainly qualifies as happening with a high level of regularity.
Moreover, I would really suggest that you stop dancing around semantics when any similar such analysis of hit percentages and reload/flight times will reveal that your original comment that air and artillery automatically "delete" ATGs is little more than posturing. Because if we look at those then people will see the ATG can actually get off multiple shots and potentially kill multiple vehicles.
"By any metric" seems to be your semantic twisting of "any argument that runs contrary to mine".
How would he know where your ATG is to begin with so they can drop smoke on it? That's the point of masking it behind a hedgegrow line.
It's really obvious that you don't use ATGs or understand the basics of the game very much.
And this is relevant to M10 vs towed 76mms how?
If you want to be taken seriously, make a real argument based on actual gameplay instead of theorycrafting and pretending that 58% isn't a very high chance of a first-shot hit in the context of the game; or that your claims that arty and air "delete" towed ATGs before they can even fire a second shot is just nonsense.
Moreover whining about me being a Wehraboo is pretty much the most hilarious argument you can make. I've pretty much only played 3AD and my rep regarding Wehraboos is just about the most extreme opposite of your fantasy.
I have a growing suspicion that the people panicking over the idea of the 3AD getting M10s and/or price/stats buffs for the Shermans are the same people posting this on the steam forums.
Nice generalization
"Better than a coin-flip" is an extremely low bar to set for something to be considered "quite often", for comparison a Pak 43 will have an 83% chance of hitting the first shot under the same conditions; Now that is something i can consider "quite often". If you still don't believe me on the efficacy of mortars versus ATGs i can upload countless replays of me removing every single AT gun the enemy bought in an entire match by just right clicking it with a mortar or a rocket plane, the BF109 with the 210mm rockets is especially adept at this ATG removal role, with nearly 100% success rate.
Knowing where the enemy ATG is or might be takes nothing more than a functional brain and the most superficial understanding of military tactics. And with the effectiveness of rocket arty in the game you don't even need to be precise, you can literally target the general area of a forest and panic everything in a 1km radius with a single volley, which is enough to panic any ATGs in or around the forest.
What is really obvious is that you're at most a sub-par player, having your perception of your own skill being heavily biased by the masses of trash players currently in the beta.
The price is relevant because for an extra 20-30 points the M10 would be immune to indirect fire along with being a highly mobile platform. Again you fail yo understand 58% is a very low chance of hitting your first shot in the context of the game for an ATG, since the return fire will most times be done by units with 70%+ chance to hit the first shot, cause exponentially more suppression to your ATG and reveal your position to enemy artillery fire and air attacks capable of consistently destroying your unit or forcing it to become dead weight for the duration of the enemy advance.
In conclusion, when the rubber meets the road ATGs become tank food.
Definition of often: many times; frequently:
83% chance is "almost always", not "often".
Again, you really like to twist semantics when you're losing an argument.
Oh, and if you're advocating for the towed ATG to be buffed even more that's fine by me. Just don't spout nonsense like this:
You started off by saying they "delete" ATGs almost instantly before they can fire a shot. Now you've back-tracked to saying they can be eliminated "just by right-clicking". These are two different things.
Again, I knock out ATGs all the time with arty and airpower. I play 3AD almost exclusively with a strong arty component. Artillery is the tool of choice against ATGs (and only primarily because arty can't be shot down or driven away mid-stream like aircraft).
But the idea that you can knock out an ATG before it can even fire is ridiculous. Aircraft have travel time to target. Even mortar shells travel slower than an ATG gun can aim and fire. And that's before we get to the fact that most (if not all) mortars have even lower first hit rates than ATGs!
I'm not going to continue arguing further with someone who can't admit these simple and basic facts.
Says every wannabe general ever. And then they whine about Pak 40s having 80% hit rates that come out of nowhere because unlike vehicles where there are much fewer avenues of ambush the towed ATGs have a much wider range of terrain they can shoot out from.
Again, that you're denying the fundamental terrain and its effect on the gameplay belies the short-sightedness of your analysis. And that's because it's coming out of your insecurity rather than objective analysis, otherwise we wouldn't get these pointless diversions on trying to pretend that "often" is "always" or that you accuse people of being Wehraboos.
Oh really? I thought I already mentioned from the outset that I am not a great player?
Really, posturing like this is tiresome but just a lot of pointless hot air. I don't have any validation issues and need the forum as an opportunity to fish for praise about how "leet" my skills are. I do however know enough of the game to know that ATGs can be very effective because they have capabilities that are not present in vehicles, and that I'm wasting my time with someone who's just blathering because they can't accept that their win rate doesn't actually make them all that good at analysis or anything else at life.
"Highly mobile" in a game where all off-road movement is slow to begin with and where you're still channeled into a handful of firing zones because the M10 can't cross hedges?
Again, nobody's denying that a 76mm armored gun platform is useful. But you're too busy denying that ATGs have an entirely different dimension of capability.
The real problem with 3AD, again, is that it's not getting played as an "armored" Division because the game was fundamentally designed to be infantry-centric. The Division is generally at its strongest in Phase A when it doesn't have a lot of tanks. If you want people to continue risking armor in those narrow firing channels in Phase B and C, make them cost really low like 50 points apiece and price up everything else.
Whining about Wehraboos and the lack of M10s in a Division that really doesn't have a shortage of armor to begin with - indeed 3AD seems to suffer from having way more armor cards than can be played (just like 12th SS, where you will never be able to buy all the Panthers) - shows you don't even understand the core of the design issue at hand.
Which really isn't surprising given how many "leet" players think that clicking faster and harder and relying on alternative fact semantics makes them qualified to comment on game design balance. Posturing isn't the same as thinking.
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You keep asserting things like 3AD is supposed to be mainly defensive in B or that the game was "designed to be infantry centric". Where are you getting this? Did Eugen ever say it was infantry centric or is this an inference?
And the point of giving them M10s isn't to give them more armor, it's to give them more 1200m-capable options. It was never about giving them more armor.
And the point of giving them M10s isn't to give them more armor, it's to give them more 1200m-capable options. It was never about giving them more armor.
I wasn't aware your definition of "often" is what defined its meaning, if anything the one arguing semantics here is you.
You do know that if you're hiding your ATG behind the forest and only bringing it up when you spot an enemy tank inside your engagement range you'll get shot before you can fire, right? Enemy recon can spot your AT gun moving to the edge where it can see the tank, so the enemy tank will aim at you while you set up and stun you before you kill it. Alternatively if you leave it there recon will spot it and arty/planes will remove it before it fires a shot.
This is all self evident and i don't see why you have a problem with admitting AT guns are nearly useless unless used in a situation where the enemy can't: A: Retreat 1m past your maximum range; B: fire at you while you move to set up from behind a hedge or C: fire his mortars/arty/rocket planes at you while you sit in a hedge waiting for his tanks.
I don't "whine" that the Pak 43 has 80% CTH at max range, i complain that it is the ONLY ATG in the game that has that hit rate for absolutely no reason, with other AT guns having at least 11% less accuracy (3 star 17pdr) or 25% less accuracy (3 star 76mm M1).
The effectiveness of enemy recon, spotting your towed AT gun at 1000m away through dense bushes in the middle of a hedge with barely the tip of the barrel showing, negates that "fundamental terrain and its effect on the gameplay". Since your AT gun in a hedge will get spotted, for all intents and purposes, just as easily as an M10 sitting in the open, with the difference being the M10 can quickly (compared to an ATG) relocate from one side of a hedge to the other, or back up and avoid incoming fire.
It's highly mobile compared to Johnny, Nicky and Vinny pushing a 1,000lb piece of steel around as 105mm HE shells make them really rethink the whole buying fireworks for the 4th of July thing
ATGs to have an entire different dimension of capability, they have the capability of getting BTFO'd by artillery or mortars. The real problem with 3AD is the mediocrity of the M4A3(75)W and M4A3(76)W, which cannot compete with even similarly priced German tanks like the Stug IV or the Jagdpanzer IV.
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The issue isnt the total number of tanks alone, its the ease at which they can mass a sufficient number of tanks in proportion to the Allied ability to mass armor. People rarely go through their entire decks in the course of the game. It matters very little if you can spam more tanks over the course of the game if specific enemy mass at any point in the game prevents acquiring said mass. If your enemies force concentration is mathematically superior, he will have the initiative to apply sufficient pressure to prevent you ever increasing mass sufficiently. OR, he can just defend with just enough of the map to bleed you out, either through destruction or conquest points.
Bottom line, limiting the cards alone is not sufficient.
I just had a very annoying game with the 3AD and i need some advice what to do. I took the left side of Colombelles in a 10v10 Destruction, the river seperated lane. Had a little bug at the start, could not spawn anything and did not see the other players spawning and so i was a little late at the start. I took 2 Stuarts and 2 at guns, rest infantry. Now my enemy was a 12th and he basically parked his Firefly at the left opening between the side of the map and his treeline and waited. So i am sitting in my treeline have 2 ap guns in there and wait for him to make a move. The move was artillery spam. He started to bomb me and just never advanced. Off map artillery, normal artillery, aircraft. Whenever i tried to advance, the Firefly would stop that. Whenever i played agsinst 12th before, they would eventually close the distance themselves to let my AP guns deal with the Firefly. In a 1v1 you can simply use the width of the map and push somewhere else, but in that scenario, i am just sitting there and hope my team wins while i try to save my people from the artillery. This is probably less of an issue in Conquest mode because at some point he probably needs to push.
You can't do anything about it. The lane is too narrow; the firefly eliminates your ability to advance. The only move is to densely smoke the firefly, making sure you're within range to drive it off if it drives forward through the smoke.
If I understand correctly the 10v10 Colombelles map is the same as the 4v4 one? In that case, balance is really rather skewed. The front is just too dense.
Yeah, for some reason people like playing Colombelles 10v10 more then Sword. I don't get it at all.
Maybe because it's still playable after half your team inevitably drops?
I think the issue is how accurate the panthers are. They are amazing at hitting and destroying your tanks with the first shot and then fall back to safety. Once the panther G start showing up the allies will just bleed tanks.
the closest thing the allies have is the 2 stars 17 pounder. The challenger have the penetration but lack the accuracy.
Another thing i have "experienced" lately is the P-37 being utter crap. It's the only rocket plane that, in my subjective experience, cannot kill anything. As a Scot, my Spitfires are better at killing ground units as the Lightning will ever be. They are very good at scaring the crap out of every enemy but that's it. The rockets simply do not hit anything. Usually, 2 will land in front of the enemy and 4 behind it. None will kill. Neither moving uncovered infantry nor at guns. On the other hand, my AT guns get sniped by Me 109s in one attack and that is again, in my subjective experience, anytime they attack. It might be a simple case of really really bad luck or it might be intentional, but i stopped buying any air vs gorund planes as the 3RD until the typhoon come around.
they lack firepower. they are decent fighters tho.
the german rocket planes are amazing at killing at guns, one of them even creates nebelwerfer-sized flaming death dots.
the german rocket planes are amazing at killing at guns, one of them even creates nebelwerfer-sized flaming death dots.
I think Eugen's idea with 3AD is that they can use shermans to get a lot of work done, but the shermans are super pricey and not very high on performance for what's paid for them.
My experience has been that 99% of the time, if a sherman's good in a spot, so is a stuart for significantly less. The 1000m+ firelanes are bad for all your tanks regardless.
Also, expensive sherman 76s and 3in guns are insufficient to really control open areas given the increasingly powerful artillery in german decks.
My experience has been that 99% of the time, if a sherman's good in a spot, so is a stuart for significantly less. The 1000m+ firelanes are bad for all your tanks regardless.
Also, expensive sherman 76s and 3in guns are insufficient to really control open areas given the increasingly powerful artillery in german decks.
I didn't say 3AD is infantry centric. I said the game was. And if you look at all the complaints from actual good players (which is looking distinctly to not be you or Sharkey despite his pointless posturing) is that the problem is that infantry is OP because it's the only thing than can sponge up artillery - which is also OP. Tanks and anti-tank capability barely enter into the equation.
So yeah the guy with a lower win rate figured out that switching ATGs to M10s is going to be completely meaningless from a primary balance perspective because that was never the issue to begin with.
Oh man, check out this literal "git gud" response. People like you are specifically why SD is bound to suffer the same death RD did.