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Have sometimes wondered about this. The Tiger is 18/16 Attack/Defence, cost 7. The Panther is 20/14, cost 8. I always thought I'd read that the Tiger was incredibly expensive to produce with excellent power-steering etc (so I thought more costly than the Panther which was more mass-produced as a medium tank). Also I thought I'd read that the Tiger's 88 packed a bigger punch than the Panther's 75 (I know calibre was not everything of course). Am I wrong about this - are other factors taken into account in the attack rating, like manouverability??
I recently watched a documentary about the battle of Kursk which mentioned an individual Tiger which was struck over 200 times. It destroyed a number of Soviet tanks, lost tracks etc - but was recovered from the battlefield, repaired and was back in action again the following day. Does WIR under-rate the Tiger as going by the WIR numbers the Panther seems quite comparable??

You raise some good points. The ratings, from my point of view, include factors such as ammo storage, maneuverability, speed, range, etc in the attack strength, not just main gun. Originally, the Panther had a 21 attack rating and has been toned down slightly, but it may be too high still. Currently, the cost is 6 for the Panther and 7 for the Tiger, and maybe equal attack ratings would make some sense for a future update. I will keep it in mind.

If we count the armor destroying ability, then panther is suprior with the 70 caliber lengths gun and higher velocity of it's shoot. If we count high explosive shooting power against let's say infantry, tiger should be better with it's higher caliber. But if we count that, then js-II's should go back to the attack value of 21 it had a long time ago. So I think wir attack value is based mainly on armor piercing ability, and then the current value is preatty good.

Oh yes, I know I love my little panthers way too much but: if I remember right the historic cost ratio of tiger : panther : pzIV was 5:3:2. So if tiger has a cost of 7 we should make panther cost 5.

In actual Reichsmark amounts at the time a Tiger cost 300,000RM to produce and Panther 117,000RM. A PZ IVF2 cost 115,000 and a Pz IVG 116,000. I was very surprised that a panther and a mark IV were so similar in cost but that was the data I read. The Tiger for certain cost 300,000 RM the others i only noted from 1 source-not sure how reliable but seems accurate.

Caruthers, German Tanks at War has the data for the Tiger production costs as well as Pzkfw III


i would say after all the teething problems were done (after the nightmare initiation at Kursk) the Panther proved a better tank than the tiger on a cost/effectiveness ratio and the best overall was in actuality the Stug III and later Stug IV assault guns (cost/effectiveness) usually the stugs disabled russian tanks at a 3:1 on the eastern front.