COH: Europe In Ruins

cloaking , ok why not.. nice gimmick.. but cloaking AFTER shooting a panther in sight and THEN cloaking to shoot "suprisingly" again.. come on..

there is no discussion wether we got paks and stormies or not.. paks cannot cloak again after shooting, especially not within a certain range. so before flaming, pls keep in mind i dont want the cloaking removed..

can you please post the replay, this sounds like a very extreme occurence

my hellcat had destroyed engine and main gun and cloaked becuase it was a fair distance from ur troops and wasnt the priority target of your panther, you're exaggerating what happened. its a lil less bs than storms cloakin right infront of mgs etc.

Fallschrimjaeagers cloak DURING combat too, its just relic's buggy cloaking system, really can't change M18 cloaking without changing every other unit that cloaks too so.. no point in discussing this.

replay or didnt happen, sadly...

unfortunatly since windows 7 i cannot find the "my games" folder anymore.. so if someone knows where to find the savegames, i`d be glad to post it, somehow.. thx

tomorrow of course.. getting late here ;)

Yeah ,basically the cloaking system sucks. If its not the main target, it'll cloak but it has to be targeted.

How 'bout we remove that stupid cloak (heck, I'd love to get rid of all cloaks except for the snipers' one, buts... yah I get it) and in trade we give it the speed it should have and also some reasonable gun (so it can actually penetrate as now it relies basically on that cloak shot)... just sayin' cuz it was actually even better tank than M10 but I guess ya'll know that - price adjustments could take place as well... :P

M18 cloak actually works extremely well.  Cloak after firing has never worked with it.

What is the damage bonus the m18 gets from cloak? It seems a little over the top atm.

50% damage bonus.

M18 isn't that good, I prefer M10s, reliable penetration is much more useful than one cloaked shot and then bouncing 20 times.  Plus M18s are much slower than M10s so it's hard to flank or run away.

m18s have insane range at vet 3 i feel.

They don't get any range bonus, they have identical range to M10s, and I have to say I'm leaning more towards reliable penetration on the M10 and speed over the M18, which both are just as fragile as the other but the hellcat - while it does have awesome cloak - can take a very long time to pull out of cloak and start accelerating to get away if a mass armor rush pushes on top of it (lost a vet 2 hellcat that way).  Least with M10s I can sacrifice to take out an infinitely more expensive axis heavy out.

people also seem to forget they have 46 range. all other tanks have 35.

Standard tank range is 40.
KT has 45
Hetzer with scope is 50

Oops, I meant 46 sight.

Ya that's the main advantage of the M18, being able to kite P4s all day.  M18 isn't so good vs panthers and KT and such.

M10s with observation is much superior IMO, but that requires a T3 unlock and a munitions cost.

agreed. I tend to kite with m-10's anyway. Jeep + m-10 = dead p4/stug

even with bonus cloak damage panther usually gets away ok if full health or 2/3...

i have seen this cloak thing on a 3v3
only seen it happen once.

wat about uncloaking with inf i hear u have to be right on top of it even if it is on an open road LOL!

You can't cloak it on red cover...

lol must have been back in the day or maybe omg on rtc lol

not true. detectable as, for example, pak.

about damage and effectivness - i using m18 as LV and PE p4 counter and as AT deterrence ("Hellcat still sitting overhere... Drive away driver!"). And it works.

dont forget how many u can call in at once.. thats the main advantage.. plus cloaking and damage rise..

Seeing as both it and the M10 cost 10 popcap... Yeah, you call in the exact same amounts of both.

ok enough.. it is really pissing me off.. by not purchasing mg on m18 u have the chance to cloak it RIGHT IN FRONT OR BEHIND axis tanks.. that is not right.. u cannot do the dsame clos approach with pak and stormy WITHOUT shooting once.. it is just not possible. the bonus when cloaked is an really unfair advantage..

this cant be really wanted to be that way.. seriously, it`s fucked up

PLS tell me how to give u the replay..

uh yes you can with the pak? you can cloak in pure sights, and a stormie squad can just cloak out of a 30 cal sometimes, even when its shooting them..?

on boht paks and storms, there's a "hold fire" right in the middle of all the commands.

tym u can hold fire AFTER cloaking

uh yea thats what i mean, m18's can only hold fire AFTER cloaking as well. Whats your point?

Indeed, what are you talking about, basic?

when u are commanding a unit, like stormies with shreks.. they do not shoot the shrek when they get orders constantly.. the guys without the shreks on the other hand, are shooting while running.. so no chance to cloak them within a certain range..

so if u do not equip the m18 with mg, it is not firing and u can cloak him easily in a range, impossible for other cloakable units

so is it better to or not tu add him mg? is dmg of mg any good?

basicallysceptical bist du es Mojo? Wenn ja biste heut abend da?

du kanst pm er...

exactly, so when you want them to fire you press teh halt button and they'll fire both.

i've seen snipers, m18's, schrecks, paks all cloak while in range of units firing.

it seems like you're upset that the m18 can cloak easily because the hmg isn't firing come on that's just retarded.

Never add the mg to the hellcat, I'd say. the infantry killing power it gets isn't nearly worth the impossibility of cloaking in range of anything.

just add the MG for free so people can't abuse the cloak anymore  ;D

so mg is bad,cause it cant cloack properly(or he starts to shot at inf when they come near,?)? I mean wont he fire with main gun also?

You can control the main gun (somewhat). The MG, not so much.

tym.. i am bitching because EVEN if i see the m18 i cannot turn the turret of MY tank fast enough to prevent cloaking.. and that is retarded

question for mods:

can u actually change the cloak system to something like not being able to cloak if enemy can see your tank?

could do the same for troops...

And this is different from other units cloaking how? Hell, as people have stated, stormies, snipers etc can cloak even while an MG is shooting at them. It's obvious you don't want m18s to be able to drive up, cloak and get the ambush bonus. You still haven't said anything about WHY you don't want it to, beyond "it's retarded", and that's rather lacking in both eloquence and rhetoric. Do you consider it unbalanced? If so, I disagree with you, and I think this thread shows that I'm hardly the only one. Is it unrealistic? Yes. Does that bother me? Not in the least.

it is unbalanced actually, because tank cloak is completely different from inf cloak.
1st: tanks that have cloak are hetzer, stug and m18.
hetzer and stug dont have a turret, so they can't really use cloak while in combat because he's probably turned the wrong way.
m18 however has turret, which makes it perfect to cloak during combat.

now to compare m18 with inf cloak:

inf does not get amush bonus, m18 does.

if you cloak your inf, you're probably trying not to be seen so u can retreat easy. however, enemy can still mortar you or run his inf into your slow moving cloaked units.
this is completely different with m18: you don't use it to escape or anything, you just use it for the amush bonus+ you will fire 1st and the enemý tank wont fire(if you're very lucky the enemy tank will even shoot another target while the m18 just cloaked)
and you cannot run your tank into his cloaked tank coz he fires instantly anyways.
inf also fires lots of bullets while tanks only shoot once in a while. this makes the cloak bonus much better for tanks.

m18 cloaking in combat is completly retarded and unbalanced. it should be fixed by not allowing the m18 to cloak while in combat.
if that is too hard to code/not possible, disable m18's main gun for like 10 seconds after it has just cloaked.

And what do you know, m18s are also a fragile platform with a low penetration gun, that relies on their ambush shot to be useful. It's their whole shtick. Even as it is, a lot of people prefer the m10. I think we can agree that making any of the changes you proposed would make it utterly useless, so unless you changed it completely you might as well remove it entirely. Now, "retarded" and "unbalanced"... Well, I wish people would stop using the word retarded in a discussion like this. It means nothing, it's nothing but a slur that can't be grounded in arguments. As for "unbalanced", that's a claim that can be substantiated, but I don't really think it has been. Yes, it can get off a powerful shot at the start of an engagement, but it pays for this by being horrible against tanks without ambush and useless against infantry. In a heads-up fight it will lose to pretty much any axis tank/TD short of the Ostwind and possibly the IST. For pretty much any other purpose than the ambush shot, you'd rather have an m10. Hell, a panther with a modicum of luck can destroy an m18 almost without taking damage, even if the hellcat gets the ambush shot.

The thing is the Hellcat only gets a damage and penetration bonus for that one shot, no accuracy bonus like pak38s.  And that shot can still BOUNCE even if it hits, which is utter bad luck and happens too frequently for my tastes that I went back to mass M10s or Shermans with upguns.  And the M18, already priced slightly higher than an M10, is pretty much a crap Tank Destroyer that relies on the one ambush shot, otherwise its horrible combat gun sucks too much to effectively counter anything that isn't a light vehicle or Ostwind (M10 being the premium tank destroyer with its much better main gun).

On the counterpoints, you can easily use hezters and stugs to do the exact same thing, as they don't fire immediately (due to turret tracking) so as your stug is aiming, you hit cloak and get the ambush bonus off that, same with hezters (though having any Mgs on them negates the power of ambush, hence why I rarely take hellcats with them).

Infantry does get ambush bonuses, but only certain squads.  Falls had them and probably will again with the reintroduction of their docs, I'm pretty positive that sapper Piat Ambush gives them accuracy bonus to their first attack, Storms only use it for stealth as well as Airborne, snipers its only for hiding, and paks get ambush bonus while the 6lber does not (unless through a T4 doctrine buff).

On the 'cloak is only for retreating' is utter nonsense.  You can use it offensively when attacking an MG and it suppresses and pins the squad.  Once they can't shoot, they go back into cloak and can crawl forward to throw that bundle nade.

In Regards to the M18 combat cloak, it can't even move and many a game I have lost my vetted M18s when they do the ambush shot and you have to 'unlock' them by toggling the ability and it has much slower accleration than the M10, which means most of the time it can be easily caught and ganked, besides having fragile health/armor compared to the Sherman.

In regards to the cloak is more beneficial to tanks than infantry due to volume of shots, what if your one shot bounces, that's a pretty big disadvantage when comparing an entire squad if they all had powerful weapons and every one had a bonus when ambushing.

And on top of that you want to nerf the M18, which already sucks as a Tank Destroyer since it lost its range bonus and has lower penetration than the M10 by adding a TEN second delay on firing after it cloaks?  If we're doing that, let's add a 10 second delay to Storms and Paks firing immediately after cloak too then, when you can 'clearly' see the Pak move up, go invisible and get its more powerful cloak ambush shot that I use all the time to snipe ATGs due to the better accuracy and rate of fire.

In short, M18 is just fine.  If we're going to reclassify it from a crappy, hidden Tank Destroyer, then I propose it being made a 'heavy' tank destroyer... more armor/HP, can equip an MG to fight (like a Sherman light) as the M10 has no option for an MG, and the Hellcat overall looks more like a beefier tank than the M10.

changing it to a heavy tank destroyer would be cool.

this is only available as a doctrine abillity. bouncing off doesnt happen that often, u still have an insane range (no bitching bout that tho)

and if it bounces off.. just uncloak, drive around the corner and get the same bonus like 20 sec later again..

The hezter and stug has much better armor than a M18 hellcat anyday...

And what insane range are you talking about? It has normal M10 range, which is slightly more than a P4/Sherman.. and if you want to fire once every 20 seconds and micro the slow M18 away after uncloaking, move it, move it back, recloak, fire, uncloak, move it... go right ahead.

And bouncing off happens very often, its penetration sucks horribly.

easy to say in theory, lets see you do it.

i am talking about 4 clicks, not really rocket science

M18s are only good in skirmishes.  You can't press an attack with them and if your opponent pushes back you're gonna wish you had an M10.

m18 works fine against PE inf ht based strategy (hiden AT in your positions = fail inf ht or IST rush). When PE SE doc was released Hellcat save my company from loosing every game vs double PE. But it sucks vs any wh medium armor and hetzers. Dont think that u will fight agains unsupported tanks, usually in games against good wh players my hellcat deals 1 umbush hit, then fall back and repear, then 2-nd ambush hit and  retreat\die. Hellcat has a  penetrating problems even with side p4\stug armor, and MG upgrade is useless, because its not a main line tank, and its possible that Hellcat even dont meet an infantry.
About heavy tank destroyer - may be doc unlock for companies, which has no doc buffs agains armor?

I do like to start with them...they almost always earned theyr weight in gold...

as I said, lets see you do it, theorycrafting and saying "you can just and boom OP" on the forums is so different than doing it in game. Show a video of you doing exactly what you said you can do and it's overpowered and I'll side with you, other wise dont bother me with it.

But shouldn't the balance of a unit be based upon what the most advanced of players can do, because if they can do it now with a bit of work and practice almost anyone has the potential to be able to exploit this in the future. 

Yeah its not THAT hard, best way I have found is to angle to the left or right, a bit, when the turret starts to track towards the tank, halt and cloak, now back up.  You can be chased but a single piece of AT behind your Hellcat will force your opponent to avoid you and remember before you accuse me of theory-crafting on the basis of allowance of a secondary unit, you should never have Just one piece of AT on the field at a time, there should ALWAYS be two of them.

what im saying is i've never seen anyone do it and i play with and against a lot of advanced players on both sides. The fact is, most advanced players go with m10's, why? because you get the same penetration without the cloaked shot so you get 25 more damage who cares when u can only do it every now n then. The bonus gets you more damage yes but it only boosts up the penetration to the level of the m-10 so tell me, how does that benefit an allied player until its against an unarmored target or in the butt? Fact is, an m-10 serves me better in the long run rather than playing around with the m-18's cloak

+1 to Tym

With an M10, you can throw the unit away and it do a shit-ton of damage to any axis tank it fights, and even if they run the M10 is probably the only US tank that can effective pursue with its speed and still penetrate frontal armor with massive damage.

Try chasing stuff with a Hellcat and watch it cry.  Many tears.  Great Lakes size we're talking about here!

Hellcat Ambush is decent but has no accuracy modifer, and worst thing is to ambush a panther and watch the shell bounce.. now your hellcat will die very, very quickly and you have pretty much no chance to scratch it as it turns to face you.

M10 is the much better alternative for tank busting, while a Sherman is great for taking shots.  M18 pretty much only good against light vehicles I would say (sneak shot on a HT for example) or hiding aura buffs for infantry with the tank.

Basicallysceptical - are you honestly implying that firing a cloak shot once every 20 seconds with a hellcat is OP? In the same time I could fire off 4 shots on an M10, which will, I guarantee, deal at least twice the damage as the single cloak-shot from the hellcat. On top of the M10 being cheaper and better in general.

only the m18 can get away unharmed every time it uses ambush shot coz of it's basic 46 sight and 45 range.

Not really, after it fires you need to click the Ambush button to mobilize the unit, then you have to give a move order and it has to accelerate slowly to get away, while at that point it is already being ganked by the axis armor unless its like an IST or some crappy tank like that.

Now I can't pull COH Stats on that, but isn't the M18 hellcat overall slower and less maneuverable compared to the M10?

Maximum speed is 6 instead of 6.8, as a rule of thumb 1 is the difference between KT and Tiger.  Acceleration is noticeably slower as well.

Cloak has a recharge time of ten seconds, not sure if that means 10 or 20secs though and is a *5 multiplier for penetration which results in against panther frontal armor of standard pen of.4*.4 for panther armor and *5 for cloak resulting in a chance of 80% penetration when firing at maximum range of 45 in the long category.

Hellcat has M10 modifier for Wher tanks of dmg*1.25 as well.  When combined with the cloak bonus damage*2 we would get the normal damage of 112.5*2*1.25 of 281.25 of the panthers total health of 742 or a percentage of 37/38% which means three successful shots would kill a panther minus 5%. 

Stats were taking from COH-Stats and used M18 and Wehrmacht Panther with no skirts modifiers although panther with skirts still has same penetration values for the M18 of a .4 modifier.
 

seems pretty accuracte deathsheads.

i have once fought a hellcat with my panther.
1: i see m18 and charge it
2: m18 cloaks and shoots
3: panther goes WTF coz of m18 just cloaked, idk what he did but no dmg done to m18(maybe panther just shot when m18 cloaked, so missfired)
4: m18 shoots again and penetrates panther at long range(16% chanse)
5: m18 backs off and my panther has lost over 50% hp with no dmg done to hellcat.

I've never seen that happen. I usually rape m-18's but at the same time, i usually just pop 'em with paks n schrecks, even though they have the penetration of a bazooka, and no armor, I dont want the dice being rolled against me.

I have only played a few games here however in those games my M18 has NEVER failed to earn its cost back, neither has my M10, their power is excellent in their respective categories to begin with, combine this with the modified repair system implemented in EIR and those shots that kicked the crap out of your unit hurt even more, because now you are almost forced to repair the damage or face being more easily killed by a previously minor threat that now has a far greater chance of winning due to your lack of power.  This power has often forced my opponents to withdraw to repair or pull of, allowing me a far greater advantage in the near immediate future battles which will more than likely only go to further the need for a push unit such as a tank yet with 1 m18 and 157 there is almost nothing that can be done to beat it in a cost effecient manner.  Only time it has outright failed me was against two squads of double shreked stormtroopers, however suppressive fire and and mg to further pin them resulted in their subsequent destruction and as such any advantage they gained in killing the AT weapons was nullified by the loss of their own. 

The problem is cloak is SO powerful it causes too much damage instantly resulting in either a charge to kill it, right into another AT unit, or a withdraw to repair or pull off, or sit in the backfield for a bit, regardless of the outcome I won the engagement, no questioning it.  Offensive usage of the unit only goes further to confound the problem. 

Lastly as to why the Best allied players use M10s, perhaps it is because they want a stand-alone unit.  One capable of killing a tank on its own, killing it fast, and killing it quick, would that sound more appealing than a unit that requires another piece of AT in support but with that can kill any tank under a Tiger quickly.

And this is why your entire analysis is completely wrong.

M18 cloak in EIR only gives 2x penetration and 1.5x damage.  Against a panther at long range it has default 0.16 penetration, which increases to 0.32 penetration, if it penetrates it deals 211 damage.

Average damage from a cloaked hellcat shot vs a panther at long range is only 96.2.  Average damage from a regular M10 shot vs panther at long range is 65ish.  After the cloaked shot, the M10 will always do the same damage, where as the hellcat's average damage per shot drops about 35.

30 more damage on the first shot is not worth losing 35 damage on every subsequent shot.   Hellcats are good at skirmishes where both sides are too scared to do anything and just take potshots at each other, but the M10 is far superior in all other situations.  The only time I would take a hellcat over a M10 is if I'm facing only P4s and PE light vehicles.

You should clarify that gamesguy :p

There's nothing much to clarify unknown - CoHStats fails. End of story. :P.

what do u mean with average dmg?

Is there a massive total change-list that could help me as a new player to fully understand the changes made to game-play somewhere lurking in these forums and I just plain don't see it.  If so any help in finding it would be most appreciated by myself and perhaps many other new players.  Also my experiences with them have always resulted in earning its cost back or by collaboration making its cost back.

By average damage do you mean odds of pen on a pass fail check or what?

Exactly that.  Average damage dealt of a cloaked hellcat shooting a panther at 45 range, accounting for bounces, deflection damage, etc.  Not including misses.

http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php?topic=14995.0

i think there are also small, hidden changes. not sure tho

http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php?topic=13548.0

Those only cover most of the changes we did from vCOH.
CoH-stats is not entirely up to date on the latest vCOH stats.