Balance discussion/suggestions

[Dog Soldier]

If a scenario has a limited number of bunker objectives that need to be held to be won by the defender, like Gertsovka or Butovo, equal stacking limits make taking those objectives very hard for the attacker.

It's the same problem PzC has with some of its smaller scenarios, where the defender can place large stacks on crucial objectives and sacrifice them because unit points are worth less than objectives or hold the objectives because they're supply sources (this also applies to one of the objectives in Gertsovka).

Any Gertsovka game, including ours, has shown what this problem can do to a game.

You were of the opinion that bunkers can be taken with proper tactics at all times.

I was of the opinion that in the scenario the Soviets could put most of their forces in a handful of bunkers, making it unlikely that all of them would disrupt. When you look at the mechanics, your loss was predictable. It had very little to do with the tactics of either of us.

This is actually one of the few wargames where the attacker is forced to stick to the hex stacking limit when attacking, and it can cause problems. It's one of the design decisions that I still don't really understand, particularly for PzC where replacements can cause defending forces to regain strength rapidly. The Soviets have no realistic way of removing a nearly full strength German battalion from its position by assaulting it most of the time, unless they apply ahistorical amounts of force for the timeframe (in Moscow '42) or have the time to fatigue the unit in a situation where the Germans can't bring in reinforcements.

FWIW, I think #0704_01 Gertsovka: The Cornerstone and #0705_02 Hill 228.6 - SS Preliminaries are the only scenarios in the game where this specific situation happens. The lesson to be learned is have strong artillery or AT support when facing a position with bunkers to be taken that have good interior lines of communication / reinforcement.
That is the main take away from these ten turn 'learning' scenarios.

These two scenarios are not a justification that the game system is all wrong.

There are plenty of very playable scenarios in the game. Bunkers are tough, especially those in the three main defensive belts the Soviets put up in the months leading up to Kursk. The correct tactic in #0704_01 Gertsovka: The Cornerstone, or #0705_02 Hill 228.6 - SS Preliminaries is to disrupt the Soviet advantage of interior lines and isolate the VP location bunkers before they are reinforced.
To state that in a HTH PBEM game this is not possible against competent play is a fair statement. To say the game system is seriously wrong based on such a small sample of play, is, well statistically invalid.

As to M42, you are quite correct that it may be impossible for the Soviet forces to remove a full strength German battalion from a strong position by direct frontal assault. In M42, theses types of positions are very rare of all the German positions on a huge front. Sun Tsu says attack were your enemy is weakest, not where he is strongest and expecting your attack. The replacement rate is just fine. In my experience Russian forces can remove enough Germans from the board each turn to create attrition well above and beyond the replacement rate.

It is a fiction that the Germans in the Moscow 42 game can run away, sit deep in the rear to receive replacements until full strength, then come storming back to a coherent front line and blast the Soviet winter offensive dead in its tracks. Well, come to think of it, that probably can be done if the AI commands the Russians. Not a chance against an human opponent.

Dog Soldier

[ComradeP]

I personally prefer high variability because I think the game becomes more intense when assaults are an unpredictable and dangerous affair. Maybe such high variability is more realistic too? Much safer to fire at a forest position from afar than storming right into the forest… Much less control, and much easier to get surprised with the latter approach… Bombarding the position into disruption with direct and indirect fire, cutting retreat opportunities, and then assaulting is the way to go… Would not that be the case in real-life too?

Making assaults similar to direct fire would make the game more "flat" and "one-dimensional" in my opinion. You would lose a very exciting decision scenario: Should I apply direct fire once more to further soften up the defender, or should I go ahead with a more risky assault. If you assault too soon, it could end in a disaster, but you do not want to wait too long either because of time constraints. Finding the correct time to assault is one of the challenges of playing the game.

High variability by itself is not a bad thing, but in this case there can be so many bunker lines to move through that the variability can decide the outcome of the game.

I also wouldn't want assaults to be more or less identical to direct fire, just to move the outcomes closer together, removing the extremes and making the disruption chance slightly higher. Contrary to PzC, the defenders won't become low ammo in a turn, so they're a bit more sturdy than they would be in PzC as well.

These two scenarios are not a justification that the game system is all wrong.

&

To say the game system is seriously wrong based on such a small sample of play, is, well statistically invalid.

I'm not saying the game system is all wrong, I'm saying that some mechanics can cause issues that might be the result of them being ported from other series to a new series, so some tweaking being required is natural.

There are plenty of very playable scenarios in the game.

I'm not saying there are none.

It is a fiction that the Germans in the Moscow 42 game can run away, sit deep in the rear to receive replacements until full strength, then come storming back to a coherent front line and blast the Soviet winter offensive dead in its tracks.

Have you played a full campaign game against someone who tried?

At first, you said the German replacement rate wouldn't allow for full strength units. Then I pointed out that large parts of the front are fixed and that nothing in those areas can influence replacements for either side. You said the Soviets could find a strategy to counter that, such as concentrating large amounts of men in a single sector. I said that it would require ahistorical tactics like those large unit concentrations or significant concentrations of artillery.

The first game result Strela mentioned also implied that concentrated Soviet artillery could be lethal. The 1941-1942 scenario can turn into a 1944 scenario with large artillery and unit concentrations in a single sector by the Soviets to remove the Germans from strongly held positions.

As to Panzer Battles: the results for assaulting hexes, or direct fire results, with the same units don't depend on the scenario. The mechanics remain the same. Artillery and AT support currently have a limited effect, aside from the artillery's capability to deploy smoke. If the enemy moves in AT units, they tend to get shelled by the defenders, suffer casualties and are generally not very effective. Likewise, Panzer III's have a limited effect as well and you need the better tanks to face Soviet armour. StuGs can work well, but they're currently vulnerable to Soviet artillery and AT guns.

The standard approach to a strongly held defensive position would be either to bypass it (not always possible, particularly when it's an objective) or bring in more of your own troops. If the Soviets man a position with a reinforced company, I can bring in a battalion. The problem is that I can't attack with that battalion in one assault. I need to attack with reinforced companies of my own due to the stacking limit. The stronger the defender's units are, the more problematic it becomes that both sides use the same stacking limit. This is why many wargames don't have such a rule.

At the start, scenarios are balanced in such a way that positions can be taken, but if the player can reinforce a position, that can quickly become very difficult. The difference in quality between the Germans and the Soviets will mean that even reinforced positions will eventually be taken if the Germans bring enough men, but it takes more time.

I'm not saying the game is broken or unplayable, I'm just trying to help improve certain mechanics to make the game more enjoyable than it already is.

[Strela]

The standard approach to a strongly held defensive position would be either to bypass it (not always possible, particularly when it's an objective) or bring in more of your own troops. If the Soviets man a position with a reinforced company, I can bring in a battalion. The problem is that I can't attack with that battalion in one assault. I need to attack with reinforced companies of my own due to the stacking limit. The stronger the defender's units are, the more problematic it becomes that both sides use the same stacking limit. This is why many wargames don't have such a rule.

At the start, scenarios are balanced in such a way that positions can be taken, but if the player can reinforce a position, that can quickly become very difficult. The difference in quality between the Germans and the Soviets will mean that even reinforced positions will eventually be taken if the Germans bring enough men, but it takes more time.

I'm not saying the game is broken or unplayable, I'm just trying to help improve certain mechanics to make the game more enjoyable than it already is.

I agree that there is definitely a time factor that needs to be considered for the HTH scenarios due to the 'smarter' reinforcement of positions by a human player. This is being factored in as we look at the 1.01 versions of the scenarios. For example the latest HTH version of Gertsovka is 20% longer with two additional turns as well as multiple other tweaks to ensure that chance does not play a significant role.

I appreciate all the feedback and have not viewed any as out and out criticism that the system is 'broken'. All is being considered.

One final comment; I am finally getting a little PBEM play action. I am seeing some 'interesting' tactics that are representative of not understanding all the game mechanics or using troops in an appropriate, historical manner. In some part, I believe this is a factor in some erroneous analysis of the game system. There is a lot of subtlety in playing the game right and the inclusion of the new hidden & spotting rules as well as players previous experience with Tiller games is resulting in some missteps. Additionally the initial situation at Kursk (attacking heavily fortified lines) is a polarizing factor.

David

[Strela]

Direct fire and assaults should be different tools, suitable for different situations, just like it is in panzer campaigns.

That being said, maybe assaults have become too tame in Panzer Battles compared to Panzer Campaigns (relatively to direct fire):

Panzer Battles: Combat Losses (per 1000 combat value):
Fire Low Value: 20 Fire High Value: 100
Attacker Low Value: 50 Attacker High Value: 250
Defender Low Value: 25 Defender High Value: 150

Panzer Campaigns: Combat Losses (per 1000 combat value):
Fire Low Value: 10 Fire High Value: 50
Attacker Low Value: 40 Attacker High Value: 200
Defender Low Value: 20 Defender High Value: 100

Strela, it would be interesting to know why you reduced the relative effect of assaults compared to direct fire in Panzer Battles...

Bayes

Hi Bayes,

A worthy question. I have just gone back to the archives to find the answer.

The 'original' game in the series (now the follow on to Kursk) was suffering with high casualty rates. We initially started with the original PDT values from that title and they looked like so;

Original Panzer Battles: Combat Losses (per 1000 combat value):
Fire Low Value: 35 Fire High Value: 175
Attacker Low Value: 140 Attacker High Value: 700
Defender Low Value: 70 Defender High Value: 350


As part of our testing for Kursk we realised these values were off the scale and came back to the ones you see here. There was a clear reason why we didn't align these closer to PzC's. Assaults were viewed as being more bloody in PzC because they occur in such a gray area of "all combat between 0m and 1000m" but at the PzB scale we assumed that the enemy can disengage and fall back easier, and that the true casualties should come from direct fire, while assaults really are for "taking the terrain" i.e. the last 250 meters.

This is another area that obviously can be tweaked and we actually have a test version where these values can be scaled by a modifier for hard attacks. This allows a different combat value for hard attacks vs soft attacks if desired. If you want to make your hard attacks more lethal you just use a modifier greater than 1 etc.

As I have mentioned in other threads (on other games), John has provided the designers huge latitude with the parameter data. The trick is to find values that deliver the expected results and with multiple variables its important to work through them systematically.

We spent a lot of time looking at combat values and comparing the results from a number of test scenarios to what actually happened historically. We found that was one of the best barometers for deciding if the representation was correct.

Hope that's a little clearer...

David

[76mm]

The problem is that I can't attack with that battalion in one assault. I need to attack with reinforced companies of my own due to the stacking limit. The stronger the defender's units are, the more problematic it becomes that both sides use the same stacking limit. This is why many wargames don't have such a rule.

ComradeP, I don't understand this comment--I'm not familiar with any games that allow the attacker to ignore stacking limits, etc. Or are you saying that they impose lower stacking limits on the defender (ie, fewer of them can "fit" in the fortifications?).

I don't actually play many games at this scale, so I'm genuinely curious how other games handle this issue...

[ComradeP]

ComradeP, I don't understand this comment--I'm not familiar with any games that allow the attacker to ignore stacking limits, etc. Or are you saying that they impose lower stacking limits on the defender (ie, fewer of them can "fit" in the fortifications?).

I don't actually play many games at this scale, so I'm genuinely curious how other games handle this issue...

My comment was probably confusing. The stacking limit applies in other games as well, but you're not forced to attack with units up to a maximum of the one hex stacking limit.

Let's say the stacking limit in a hex is 4 units. If you attack from one hex, you can attack with a maximum of 4 units. If you attack from 2 hexes/across two hexsides, the maximum is 8 and so forth. In the PzC and PzB series a single hex stacking limit is imposed on both attacker and defender, which means the attacker is at a disadvantage when attacking a defending unit or stack close to the stacking limit.

You can attack from multiple hexes, but there's no modifier for how many more units/men can join an attack per hex you're attacking from. The maximum is always the single hex stacking limit.

[Bayes]

Thanks for the thorough answer Strela - sounds reasonable!

Bayes

Direct fire and assaults should be different tools, suitable for different situations, just like it is in panzer campaigns.

That being said, maybe assaults have become too tame in Panzer Battles compared to Panzer Campaigns (relatively to direct fire):

Panzer Battles: Combat Losses (per 1000 combat value):
Fire Low Value: 20 Fire High Value: 100
Attacker Low Value: 50 Attacker High Value: 250
Defender Low Value: 25 Defender High Value: 150

Panzer Campaigns: Combat Losses (per 1000 combat value):
Fire Low Value: 10 Fire High Value: 50
Attacker Low Value: 40 Attacker High Value: 200
Defender Low Value: 20 Defender High Value: 100

Strela, it would be interesting to know why you reduced the relative effect of assaults compared to direct fire in Panzer Battles...

Bayes

Hi Bayes,

A worthy question. I have just gone back to the archives to find the answer.

The 'original' game in the series (now the follow on to Kursk) was suffering with high casualty rates. We initially started with the original PDT values from that title and they looked like so;

Original Panzer Battles: Combat Losses (per 1000 combat value):
Fire Low Value: 35 Fire High Value: 175
Attacker Low Value: 140 Attacker High Value: 700
Defender Low Value: 70 Defender High Value: 350


As part of our testing for Kursk we realised these values were off the scale and came back to the ones you see here. There was a clear reason why we didn't align these closer to PzC's. Assaults were viewed as being more bloody in PzC because they occur in such a gray area of "all combat between 0m and 1000m" but at the PzB scale we assumed that the enemy can disengage and fall back easier, and that the true casualties should come from direct fire, while assaults really are for "taking the terrain" i.e. the last 250 meters.

This is another area that obviously can be tweaked and we actually have a test version where these values can be scaled by a modifier for hard attacks. This allows a different combat value for hard attacks vs soft attacks if desired. If you want to make your hard attacks more lethal you just use a modifier greater than 1 etc.

As I have mentioned in other threads (on other games), John has provided the designers huge latitude with the parameter data. The trick is to find values that deliver the expected results and with multiple variables its important to work through them systematically.

We spent a lot of time looking at combat values and comparing the results from a number of test scenarios to what actually happened historically. We found that was one of the best barometers for deciding if the representation was correct.

Hope that's a little clearer...

David

[Bayes]

Hi ComradeP, I think this a very nice feature of the game. Let me clarify. Assume that you assault with 250 men into a hex containing 250 defenders, and that you for instance kill 10 men, losing 9 men yourself. Using 6 times more men in the assault should not necessarily produce 6 times more casualties for the defender, without also increasing the number of casualties for the attacker. It may for instance be more difficult to coordinate a larger attack, leading to more casualties for the attacker too. I believe that the game forces you to split up big assaults into sequences of smaller ones to simulate such effects.

As an example, in real-life Normandy´44, the Douvres-la-Délivrande radar installation, "heavily fortified with bunkers, machineguns and minefields", was successfully defended by the Germans for 12 days. In the PzC N44 game, if the British forces were allowed to make one single enormous assault into the Douvres-la-Délivrande bunker, the position would fall maybe in just a few rounds. The current system allows the position to last much longer, making the game more realistic in my opinion.

Bayes

ComradeP, I don't understand this comment--I'm not familiar with any games that allow the attacker to ignore stacking limits, etc. Or are you saying that they impose lower stacking limits on the defender (ie, fewer of them can "fit" in the fortifications?).

I don't actually play many games at this scale, so I'm genuinely curious how other games handle this issue...

My comment was probably confusing. The stacking limit applies in other games as well, but you're not forced to attack with units up to a maximum of the one hex stacking limit.

Let's say the stacking limit in a hex is 4 units. If you attack from one hex, you can attack with a maximum of 4 units. If you attack from 2 hexes/across two hexsides, the maximum is 8 and so forth. In the PzC and PzB series a single hex stacking limit is imposed on both attacker and defender, which means the attacker is at a disadvantage when attacking a defending unit or stack close to the stacking limit.

You can attack from multiple hexes, but there's no modifier for how many more units/men can join an attack per hex you're attacking from. The maximum is always the single hex stacking limit.

[ComradeP]

I agree that you shouldn't be able to get a guaranteed result from an assault in the game. However, comparing it directly to real world results in terms of how long a position was held is problematic because we're not facing area of operation restrictions and can bring more men, tanks and artillery than were historically used. By design, units will also remain in combat longer than they would in real life and will take more casualties.

An attack on a radar station is difficult to model on a 1 km scale map, but it might be possible in PzB. One of the main challenges in a wargame is recreating historical results. An isolated position holding out for almost two weeks is very difficult to recreate, because you're using a numerical system that can be beaten by increasing odds or by attacking more often.

The various French ports that were encircled by the Allies would not be likely to be besieged in a wargame, they would probably be attacked as you know that it will free up troops in the end even though you take higher losses on the short term. Often, a position held out for a long time because it wasn't deliberately attacked by larger units, but was slowly being reduced by follow-up units as the spearhead containing the best units moved on.

It's sort of a paradox in wargames: breakthroughs are not often as shattering as they were in real life because the defending player has full control and can often instantly respond (either directly after the breakthrough started in WEGO or in his part of the turn in IGOUGO), but at the same time units take (substantially) more losses than they would in a comparable operation in the actual war. For assaults, that means units are over time likely to be either completely destroyed if they hold out until the last man or will no longer be combat capable. However, destroying them or removing them from the fight takes a long time.

With only 1 assault mechanic, balancing assaults on positions that were strongly held or not so strongly held but held by determined troops and which still resisted for a long time, with balancing assaults that turned into overruns within 1-2 game turns is a challenge. Making the stronger positions pillboxes helps, but it will always be a difficult balancing act. That's also why I'd favour small changes to the assault mechanic to bring it closer to direct fire, but no serious changes to how an assault works (possibly aside from an assault strength percentage bonus if you attack across multiple hexsides).

[Xaver]

Strong defensive areas are like Poker... you can lose with better cards and oposite... usually good troops in good positions hold and bad troops in good positions no... but not allways.

Maybe i think the main problem in PzB is AT combat, bunkers... well are not perfect but is not the main problem for me now, after solve the AT combat part they can try first some changes in hard positions values and hard value attacks in infantry units.