I said it once here, I will repeat it again.
Panther, Tiger, and Tiger 2 were build on a bad suspension for a tank. The reason why they used it, was because it was good for half-trucks.
T-34, Sherman, Pz-4, were build on better suspensions, hence they actually managed to get themselves through rough start.
After they were built, it was pretty much impossible to fix from there. It is fairly simple. If you have any doubts about it, check out more modern tanks, neither of which has anything similar, aside from a few after-war French designs that were dropped.
It was simply a bad choice, I read studies suggesting Panther could be 5-6 tonne lighter had it used better (read: more conventional) suspension.
Soviets managed to design IS-2 tank, that had 122mm cannon, 120mm front armor and 90mm side armor, that weighted weighted only 1 tonne more than Panther, and again, Soviets designed T-44 that was better protected and lighter.
Pershing, again, was lighter, better protected and with better gun.
So, yes, the vehicle was bad, because it was weight - inefficient.
I'm going to disagree on that.
Not the "weight" part. Certainly the Panther was quite heavy for a "medium" tank (and heavily armored as well for the stage of the war).
But I do disagree the "inefficient" part.
Now, it's true that the suspension set-up contributed to the weight of the Panther tank. But that's part of the "trade off" nature of any human engineering endeavor.
In the case of the Panther, the suspension system was designed to, well, absorb shocks.
That's why interleaved road wheels were used for mobility, those offer superior shock absorbancy. True, it's more maintenance-intensive, especially in precarious weather conditions. And things can get really mangled up when the crap hits the fan. But the fact is, when it works, it works really well.
As for the double torsion bar suspension, again, same thing. Yes, the double torsion bar suspension results in increased weight of the tank, but it also allows for much more efficient shock absorbing than the classic torsion bar layout.
Simply put, the Panther was heavier because it had :
1) Heavier armour
2) More efficient (but at the same time more complex) suspension and wheel system
However, I fail to see how that translates to "bad".
By the same line of thinking the majority of NATO tanks are "bad" because they are "weight inefficient" since they are not using an autoloader to save weight. To proclaim that an autoloader is clearly and irrevocably superior to a human loader is a bunch of Soviet propaganda hullaballoo.
Again, I'm not saying the Panther wouldn't benefit from additional R&D or a better strategic situation, but the vehicle itself wasn't so much "bad" as it was "expensive". And yeah, "expensive", given Germany's situation mid-1943 and onwards wasn't really a plus.
But "expensive" (or rather resource/time-intensive) doesn't equal "bad".
And finally, the above points don't really translate well to HOI 4's scale. Nickel-and-diming designs for every milimeter of armor/armament and every single sprocket in its design.
Thus, at the grand-strategic level the Panther is indeed a "proto-MBT".
