My initial balance thought with EIR:R

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[Schultz]

because button doesn't permanently immobilise vehicles, perhaps? in fact, the vehicles can still move under button

Yeah well, when competent brit players use button up, theyre not wasting it you know your vehicle is toast.

[Khorney]

but an axis player can just immobilise then bring in an assortment of AT to finish it off at his own leisure, whereas a brit player has to capitalise immediately, with unreliable AT options, save for the firefly

[Schultz]

At his leisure ? lol Hardly. If you dont capitalize on the threadbreaker, and you are pushed back repairs can happen to restore the vehicle back to proper use.
Treadbreaker only takes very little health out, and doesnt affect the main gun.
You see even if it doesnt seem like it, these two abilities require a fast kill.
Now, against button up, the axis vehicle have no way to protect itself, than crawl away on snail's pace.
I don't see how changing one ability while leaving the other intact makes for good balance.

[Akranadas]

Button Fire Slows the vehicle for 5 seconds, then it disables the main weapon, 5 seconds after that the secondary weapon is disabled. The whole ability lasts 30 seconds, and the squad doing the buttoning must remain in the same position. The target can crawl out of the area of fire and be unbuttoned immediately.

Button Fire is a stop gap for British Anti-Tank. Where as TreadBreaker effectively destroys the targets fighting capabilities instantly.

[stumpster]

At his leisure ? lol Hardly. If you dont capitalize on the threadbreaker, and you are pushed back repairs can happen to restore the vehicle back to proper use.
Treadbreaker only takes very little health out, and doesnt affect the main gun.
You see even if it doesnt seem like it, these two abilities require a fast kill.
Now, against button up, the axis vehicle have no way to protect itself, than crawl away on snail's pace.
I don't see how changing one ability while leaving the other intact makes for good balance.

You need to capitalize more on a 'good' Button than a Treadbreaker.  And getting pushed back works both ways, if they force your Bren squad to move (or kill them) it's immediately broken...but it still takes specialized squads to come forward and fix a Treadbreaker.

[Schultz]

Yeah but the same is required for the PE. It takes timing and good support to use it. I mean you don't just rush in the HT on a killing zone of infantry support weps and tanks. But apart from that its the actual one button insta stop as akra said that is crap.
Wheres wehrmacht option of that ? Americans have the sticky, ok but the OF brought a new world of gay abilities in this area imo always.

Lets just look at the availability as well. The HT is capped on 3.
Whereas button up is widely spread among the core infantry and basic transport vehicles of the british.
Which in the end means, even if do suck on timing and preparation to effectively use button, you can have a reasonable high amount of uses to try again and again.

[Akranadas]

I'm going to use your own quote against you right here;

Yeah but the same is required for the PE Brits. It takes timing and good support to use it. I mean you don't just rush in the HT Bren Gun on a killing zone of infantry support weps and tanks

Button is actually only effective you your enemy rushes his tanks into your guys; if your at max range with Button, he can just back out of the fire. TreadBreaker hits 100% of the time, and will always do significant damage at max range; which is equal to the same as the normal attack. So you can get in max range, pop treadbreaker and skittle out of there, leaving the enemy tank pretty much a large burden to your enemy.

[Schultz]

But i'm not arguing towards one side here. I'm equally raising the issue for both. If you're planning on looking up threadbreaker you shouldn't let button out.

[Akranadas]

And why shouldn't we?

The British have what? 3 maybe 4 Anti-tank units, where as every other army has more choices. Like it or not, Button Fire is a necessity for the British to compete with the other armies in this game; they do not have tank traps, nor do they have mines. They need a way to stop Tanks from roaming free on their flanks and button fire is that stop gap.

And that is what it is; a stop gap, it doesn't damage anything, it only slows and 'pins' tanks. You still to maintain a significant Anti-tank presence with your Button squad for it to be worth it, then if your buttoning a tank, you're not attacking anything else. Where as a ATHT can threadbreak, then switch straight to focus fire.

We also never said we were going to remove treadbreaker. If you want to make comparisons, do it with stickies and treadbreaker, not button.

[CrazyWR]

They may have fewer choices, but they are all(except Piats, which are garbage) far superior options to other factions...Fireflies are the best tank, 17 pdrs are the best AT gun....Brens mean you can't get close, just like ATHT's...I don't see how you can't see that.  It's like they said earlier...treadbreaker doesn't destroy the main gun or the secondary gun(if it has an mg on it), and hardly does any damage.  Its not hard to repair if you can get support up to push the AT back.  Bren stops the main gun and the secondary gun(albeit after a delay), but doesn't do any permanent damage.  Both essentially mean you can't just bumrush in tanks.

[Schultz]

Button up and threadbreaker are both stop buttons and in that essence they can be very much used in comparison but taking in the consideration the actual effect and sum of parts not just the mere parts..

Anyway to return to how poor gameplay these abilities are, i would add that the fact that relic chosed them and are in the official game doesnt mean neither that they aren't nor that it can be justified.

As to your points, you don't need to attack anything else when you want to kill a heavy tank. With careful use you can easilly do it. And light vehicles will die even easier.
Sappers can lay mines in vcoh, have you taken that out ?

Again yeh british AT is limitted but if youre telling me that we need to compensate that with button spam, (or treadbreaker for that matter) then i'll accept it but that doesn't mean its right considering the devastating effect the pounder and firefly have.

As far as sticky goes in no way resemble the above and doesnt fit in the comparison. And unless youre very unlucky or get stickied a couple of times you won't get "stopped". Again where's the stop button for the wehrmacht ?

And yeah like Crazy said both essentially mean you cant rush in tanks unchecked.

[Akranadas]

Sticky Bomb and TreadBreaker are the same. The have the same effects; chance to damage engine ect; not a true at weapon, just a slow tank weapon.

Button requires the squad with the Bren to stand there, for the whole duration of the ability to do it's job. During this time, if you kill the squad, the effect is gone. Unlike tread breaker and sticky, if you kill the unit, the effect is still on your tank until you repair it; like wise you do not need to repair after being buttoned.

Also, if a player is button spamming... BRING ON INFANTRY. Tanks aren't IWIN buttons anymore; they should be used as support. And if a british player beats you by buttoning all your tanks then killing him, then well... he's a better player then you.

[CrazyWR]

Yes Schultz they took out mines from sappers.

[CrazyWR]

You make it sound like killing a tommie bren squad or an upgunned bren carrier is much easier than killing an ATHT.  The ATHT is very fragile as well...

[Schultz]

I dont think were on the same lvl of conversation here and i have to go to bed so gn :p
Tanks were never an IWIN button akra btw lol.

Why did you took that away from sappers again if youre worried about at variety for british ?
And wheres the stop button for the wehrmacht ? :p

[scrapking]

This button  / treadbreaker comparison is ridiculous.  There is no comparison.  An immobilized tank is often a soon-to-be dead tank.  A buttoned tank simply has less firepower for a short, temporary duration.  In a persistent game, this is the important difference.

And for that matter, the logic doesn't work like "faction A has something that needs to be nerfed, so faction B should suffer as well".  Especially when faction B doesn't even have that type of unit.

You would be better served as to explaining why you think PE needs this ability in its current form to have a fair chance at winning.  I don't think it should be taken away, but it is too effective right now, and too frequently.  Either less effective, or less frequently, or both is the answer.  

If 25 pounders are ridiculous, believe me, I'll be clamoring for nerfing them too.

[GamerAndy]

Sticky Bomb and TreadBreaker are the same. The have the same effects; chance to damage engine ect; not a true at weapon, just a slow tank weapon.

Just wanted to point out that while they have roughly the same intended use, the crit tables and level of effectiveness are *extremely* different

Sticky Bombs:
http://www.coh-stats.com/factions/american/weapons/stickybomb.html
Green Health (100%-40%): Engine Damage 95%, Destroy Secondary (usually mounted HMG) 5%
Yellow Health (40-10%) Destroy Engine 50%, Immobilize 50%
Red (10% or less) Make Wreck 50%, Destroy Engine 50%

Treadbreaker:
http://www.coh-stats.com/factions/panzerelite/weapons/37mmhttreadbreaker.html
Green Health (100%-40%) Immobilize 50%, Destroy Engine 50%
Yellow Health (40%-10%) Immobilize 50%, Destroy Engine 50%
Red Healht (10% or less) Make Wreck 50%, Out of Control 33%, Immobilize 32%

As you can see, while they're similar in their effects, the treadbreaker has a 100% chance to really cripple a full health, fresh onto the field tank whereas the most a sticky will do is give it engine damage.

[Vondrakin]

your right, 95% chance to engine damage, that disparity just wont do... lets nerf stickies then

I think your forgetting that a green health tank will suffer a lot more actual damage from the sticky making it a lot harder to repair the damage, where as treadbreakers do very little actual damage and a full health tank can be repaired and back in action very quickly (circumstances depending in all cases of course)

At the same time its relativly easy to have a lot of stickies in an army and not destroy your anti inf capabilities, same cannot be said for at halftracks.

Perhaps tone down the chance to destroy engine for both, bring em in at a 90% a piece, with in mind that your army is not meant to be a clone of the enemy...

variety is the spice of life.

[GamerAndy]

I'm just saying a guaranteed minimum engine destroy is exponentially better than a 95% chance of engine damage, the ease of repair of the more serious crit isn't a big deal in vcoh because the repair rate is 5.56hp/s, so it will take aprox 6 seconds to repair a tank that has only taken a crit from treadbreaker... In EIR tho with your published rates of .5hp/s thats a 60s repair.

If the PE player is nice enough to drive into your lines and immobilize a tank while its in a defendable position thats no big deal, the difficulty arises because most players will use treadbreaker to diffuse offensive pushes, immobilizing or engine destroying a tank when its at best in no-mans-land and at worst pushed into the enemy lines.  a 60s repair is a long freakin time when your engies are required to be exposed AND taking more damage since they're repairing to boot

When I use it, I'll immobilize a tank then leave it there with a mortar barraging into the FOW hoping someone will try to repair the tank (since its so close to full health) - That way I can have the tank tying up pop and maybe get some repair kills for my trouble

Edit: You realize that Engine Destroy is exponentially worse than engine damage right?  Engine Damage applies a .5 modifier to the affected units top speed, while Engine Destroy applies a .1 modifier

Using a sherman as an example:
Uninjured: 5.2 Max Speed
Engine Damage: 2.6 (infantry move normally a 3.0)
Engine Destroy: 0.52

with engine damage you're almost moving as fast an an Inf squad so its still hypothetically possible to retreat out of danger from a schrek squad, etc. and pull back for repairs - Compared to .52, thats roughly a CLOAKED SNIPER walks 4x as fast as this...

Sorta a different league of "oh man am I boned"

[Vondrakin]

your right, it will devastate your push... thats the purpose behind it, and for a lot of cases the PE would be meatcicles without that.

Sure tone down the % as stated in prior post, but then again i dont see Pe and Whermacht players screaming about tank shock from tanks with heavy armour, guns, machineguns and a flame thrower... nor about at emplacements that do more damage, can take more hts and are now mobile, when thier "counterpart" can and has been engine damaged by a sniper, takes setup time and has less range... oh and cant auto heal by getting up and going for a walk. and lets not mention a certain aa gu that rips 90% of the PE vehicles to shreds.
yes im sure they scream, i just dont listen much

yes i know, your thinking "But they have this, or they have that or can do this to that" but lets face it, each army is different on purpose, each person plays each army differently and by nerfing one thing you can devastate the balance of the entire army.

variety is the spice of life. lets keep it spicy.