PTRD, PTRS- ultimate heavy tanks destroyers

I play mostly with AI, but it is very frustrating when amassed AT rifles destroy heavy tanks like Tiger, Panther, etc. from the front when they have quarter of health- it seems that their deflection damage is very high. Maybe it's gameplay wise, so they stay useful late-game, but from real world view it just looks awkward. Or it is just me and specific beauty of playing against Expert SU with whole army of these things?

Panthers literally disintegrate once they get caught in a couple of those (even from the front).

EDIT: I just remembered there is no Panthers in beta, with Panzer IVs it's even worse. Those things + AT guns and you don't have to build a single tank.

The origin of this is the fact comes from gameplay reasons, yes. If you look at PTRS in CoH 2 for example, the guards pretty much suck throughout the game. As we don't want to add abilities like "mark target" and stuff like that the idea is that ptrs/ptrds deal comparably high deflection damage to tanks, to make them useful throughout the game.

Of course, the amount of deflection damage can be tweaked if it's too high, but so far I didn't find it to be too high.

Also, a historical reference: because soviets couldn't damage heavy tanks by penetrating their armour, often all soviet units were ordered to focus fire the powerful axis heavies, destroying secondary weapons, scopes and other mechanical stuff which was needed to operate the tank. So, the tank was intact but was inoperable because the crew was "blind".

To be historically accurate they should have the British button ability then- they have plenty of other AT options (ZiS and SU76 with ammo upgrade for early anti-tank protection, T-90 for light vehicles and T-34, but these come in late-game) to finish off immobile vehicles, but that's just my opinion. Gonna be extra careful with my precious tanks then, just as I was before ;)

Edit: Also with AT rifles upgrade Concripts get AT grenades, which are extremely effective against armor- for some ammo of course, but still. Button vehicle ability would make them easier to approach the normally retreating vehicle to finish it off- Conscripts are fragile though, so maybe that's the problem...

Last edited March 13, 2015 at 8:06 PM by Xenobane