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What if instead of focusing on heavy tanks, from 1941 on the Germans opted to focus more on heavy artillery self propulsion? Looking at US SP artillery in the Cold War there are a number of options that the VK3601 chassis that eventually morphed into the Tiger could have been used for and been more useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M107_self-propelled_gun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M110_howitzer
The Germans had 170mm guns and 210mm howitzer/mortars for their corps level artillery, but one of the major problems they had with using them was that they'd have to be broken up for transport and take forever to assemble and put in place and were frequently lost in retreat because they'd need hours to break down and move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17_cm_Kanone_18
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_cm_Mörser_18

The US actually managed to self propel their versions of these guns on even lighter chassis than the VK3601, so it was certainly doable to mount them on a proto-Tiger chassis in 1941.

Beyond that I've been reading about Soviet artillery in WW2 and comparison are often made with the German system, which the Soviets do not do well in comparison to, except in huge numbers of tubes. Late in the war they managed to effectively organize their artillery to minimize the weaknesses and maximize their strengths in positional warfare, but even then the flexibility of the German artillery arm kept them relevant until 1945. In the meantime the majority of casualties inflict on the Russians came from German artillery, while I've seen it estimated that only about 5% of casualties were inflicted by tanks. So given that artillery, especially the big guns, were critical for outranging/gunning Soviet heavy artillery concentrations AND inflicting casualties, much more than the 1200 or so Tigers made in WW2, wouldn't a better use for the Tiger chassis have been to self propel the heavy artillery that the Germans had (and probably make even more with the resources then not needed to make the KWK36 88mm cannon)? Assuming they did so, saving the horses/prime movers to haul these big heavy guns around, while making them a lot easier to get into action quickly and get them out of the way if needed, would it make a significant difference? The 17cm gun outranged anything the Soviets had outside the super heavy class and could dominate in counter-battery fire given the more flexible German artillery system.

Given the attritional style of warfare that the East turned into from 1942 on, artillery was one of the most important factors in maintaining a more favorable casualty ratio, so wouldn't it have made more sense and made more of a practical difference having large self propelled artillery instead of Tiger tanks and using things like the Nashorn tank destroyer for long range AT work?
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