How do you improve PzB???

[Xaver]

Something that could be interesting to add... if we have smoke ammo... why not illuminating ammunition? i think SQB has flares no??? to lazy to read the manual the idea is if units can fight in night a way to see more than 1 hex in night is interesting.

I think the same with the organization level, i think game needs show in counter at least regimental level... or like in other series a colour per battalion, you have in counter the divisional colour and a sub-colour to made easier find units in the map.

[ComradeP]

Xaver, the scale of 250x250 would make illumination rounds a bit too effective I'd guess. Even when illuminated, it would be difficult to hit targets at night at range of 500 meters or more aside from armour (which would be clearly visible). The attacking infantry might simply hit the deck for a while until the illumination rounds are burned up.

Units being silhouetted by burning tank wrecks would be nice for a game of, say, 50 meters per hex, but 250 is too much.

At PB scale, we're not talking about simple flares but about a reasonable quantity of artillery illumination ammo anyway, and I'm not sure how common illumination/star/flare shells were in regular field units.

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Tank vs. Tank casualties thus far in Nepkhaevo with Pijus Magnificus: 34 T-34's or Churchills, 4 (?) Panzer IV G's and 1 Panzer IIIM I believe, or 5 Panzer IV's. I think the HQ that was killed was a Panzer IIIM HQ that had already suffered 1 breakdown, so I've lost 6 tanks thus far. 3 of them to being "shotgunned" by a Churchill stack.

[ComradeP]

The Nepkhaevo game with Pijus Magnificus has just been completed.



The game with Dog Soldier is a quiet affair compared to that thus far, as both of us are keeping our good tanks out of sight for the moment.

In a 1 or 2 hex fight, the Soviets can do a lot of damage to the German tanks, but they're still likely to lose a firefight when evenly matched due to superior quality and guns of the Germans in the end, particularly if the Germans move back. The Katyusha's are likely to destroy a tank or two as well.

There was little opportunity fire most of the time.

One of the vehicle losses is an armoured car and about three others were destroyed by artillery. The rest was from tank vs. tank combat. I also lost two tanks to breakdowns.

German: 8 Panzer IV G's, 1 Panzer IV F1, 4 Panzer III M's.
Soviet losses: 24 T-34's, 21 Churchills, 20 T-70's and the armoured car. Only a single breakdown loss for the Soviets it seems.

I would say that tank vs. tank engagements can work fine, but if the Germans are seriously outnumbered, things will quickly get ugly for them due to ineffective opportunity fire. It isn't possible to stop an enemy tank unit in its tracks when it's moving unless it just happens to get disrupted.

[Fonebone]

Interesting discussion.

Here are my thoughts after my first weekend of play.

1) It's not particularly dangerous crossing open ground under fire. After the tutorial, I never bothered with smoke again. The usual result from being shot at while moving in the open is “NO EFFECT.” Maybe the loss of 1 man and 2-3 points of Fatigue. In fact, I don't really notice much difference between being stationary in a brush or village hex and moving in the open.

2) There's too much firing going on out there. I don't know how defensive fire is determined by the program, but it seems that every unit fires regardless of its actions during its half of the turn. While both this game and the PzC games remind me of The Gamer's TCS series, TCS handles defensive/opportunity fire much better. There units can fire once per turn. Broadly speaking, only units that did not fire offensively can be used to fire defensively. This is really the cornerstone of that game, strategically. Which units to fire and which to hold back? PzB would benefit greatly from such a system. As it is, combining the first issue with this one, your attacks don't have to be very thoughtfully planned at all. The end result is that you don't really get a very tactical feeling from the game. Maybe the scale is still too big. At 250m, the game is still PzC.

3) Speaking of Defensive Fire. A unit surrounded by the enemy and fighting for its life will still take thousand-yard potshots at non-threatening enemy units. I'd like to see greater restrictions on DF generally.

4) Units fight to the last man. As in PzC, Broken units are rare. It is more common to destroy a unit entirely. There needs to be a better morale system, whereby units rout rather than stand to the last man. Units can take a great deal of punishment. In my current game I have German units with B morale with greater than 25% casualties and they're still at B morale. I can be rushing across open ground assaulting bunkers with artillery flying everywhere and my start-of-turn Command Report always reads “1 unit undisrupted out of 1 checked.” After all that?

5) Some strange Line of Sight rules in forests. It seems that a unit at a higher elevation can see over the top of adjacent lower forest terrain and into the forest hex on the opposite side. Usually in games like this, a unit in the middle of a forest means adjacent LOS only. It's hard to tell at a glance who can fire at whom.

The best I can say about the game so far is that it's a serious hex wargame, and that's good. I hate to be critical since these games are so rare. But I consider this, like PzC, a missed opportunity. But I've only played a few scenarios. Hopefully, things will improve.

[ComradeP]

I was also expecting the game to be a bit more revolutionary than it is at the moment.

In terms of how the game calculates combat results, my main problem remains the variability of results in between weapon systems and the way numbers are used.

The most obvious and problematic part of the numerical system is for defending units in improved positions or trenches: those only give a percentage defensive bonus, they don't stop fire entirely. If you'd previously take 10 losses on average, you will now take 7 in trenches. That just doesn't cut it. Soviet non-bunker positions are untenable more or less by default due to the high direct fire casualties the Germans cause and the low protection offered by entrenchment.

That also means that a bunker isn't the next step up from a trench, but exponentially better as units in it are a Hard target and get significant bonuses. The benefits from defensive positions don't scale well. This could also be a problem in PzC, and it's one of the areas where I was hoping the smaller scale and somewhat higher defensive bonus values might've improved things. In terms of protection from artillery fire and area suppression direct fire (like MG's), a deep trench isn't much worse than a log bunker. In game terms, it's a lot worse.

Due to how the game system favours rocket and projectile artillery units, the weapon systems that were primarily used for area suppression don't just cause the most casualties per gun for casualties caused, but as the game just gives a percentage bonus for entrenchments, they are also highly effective against entrenched troops, something they were historically poor against aside from a suppression effect (the weapons being inaccurate and taking a long time to reload compared to tube and barrel artillery).

The lack of absolute protection and a numerical system also means that tanks are able to take out tanks at ranges where they shouldn't be able to do so based solely on their attack/defence values. What keeps surprising me is that even though infantry vs. infantry combat is deadly, tank vs. tank combat is a very slow affair. 50 tanks knocking out 5 enemy tanks in the open per half hour is a very, very low figure.

Aside from that, the only other thing that somewhat disappoints me is both the artillery concentrations that are possible against single targets and how many units are spotters for nations, like the Soviet Union, where radios were less common, as well as Isolated units being able to spot. At the least, I was hoping they would spot at Detached value, so 1/2. More restrictions on which units can call in non-mortar artillery could help. The centralization and rigid nature of Soviet artillery support is largely nullified by the generous number of spotters.

In the game, many German forces are motorized formations with plenty of radios compared to infantry formations, and the Germans also had a more flexible artillery doctrine.

[Xaver]

Maybe after play more the game i am with Comrade, i notice the defensive bonus work "worst" than in PzC.

For example a german infantry platoon in a village+trench 20%+30% defensive bonus suffer practically the same as a soviet infantry unit in open.

I see fire combats between german infantry B level with 9 soft attack with +50% defensive bonus VS soviet guards C level 5 soft attack where germans lose 2-3 soldiers and soviets 3-5... not specially valuable the defensive bonus... maybe the problem is that units in terrain with good cover BUT only with soft bonus (no bunker or pillbox hexes) suffer a lot of "average" 1 casualty in any attack when in PzC you see more non effect or fatigue attacks... and well, lose 1 soldier is not the same at PzC level than in PzB level.

Armor for me has the problem in how is modeled... i think a good improvement is remove the actual range system and use the model from Nap/EAW/ACW where you have x firepower at y range, much better than use a formula to reduce from the hard attack, i think is better like in other wargames use firepower hex by hex and use the slot used by the range formula to control how letal is the gun used... for me gama needs be more Steel Panthers in tank combat and less PzC, this sure solve the problem with units made of 3 or less tanks/guns (they are practically useless, only a full company stack can do something) and increase the feeling of play a semitactical game... apart made disapear some strange things like 3 empty hexes between a tiger unit and a T-34/76 unit where the T-34/76 destroy tigers and they are the only units in a range of 10 hexes...WTF!!!

Game is now a 1.0 version and is excesive PzC, maybe for my taste now is son of SQB and PzC but needs in future be itself and leave PzC and SQB limitations.

Dont understand me bad, i like the serie but needs evolve in their own way

[Bayes]

Hi Xaver,

The village + trench is actually more effective than what you indicate because it HALVES damage. Also, the result is modified by the 25% quality bonus of the german infantry. As an example, a "raw" damage of 10 men for each part would change to 12.5 lost men for the russian infantry, and to 5 lost men for the german one. I.e., the russians will lose 2.5 times more men than the germans.

Also note that the "damage roll" ranges from 20 to 100, so variability in lost men is quite large. If you prefer less variability, you can turn on:

Optional Fire Results – when this rule is selected, each combat fire result is calculated as the average of two normal fire results. This has the effect of reducing the variation in results.

Would that help?

Bayes

Maybe after play more the game i am with Comrade, i notice the defensive bonus work "worst" than in PzC.

For example a german infantry platoon in a village+trench 20%+30% defensive bonus suffer practically the same as a soviet infantry unit in open.

I see fire combats between german infantry B level with 9 soft attack with +50% defensive bonus VS soviet guards C level 5 soft attack where germans lose 2-3 soldiers and soviets 3-5... not specially valuable the defensive bonus... maybe the problem is that units in terrain with good cover BUT only with soft bonus (no bunker or pillbox hexes) suffer a lot of "average" 1 casualty in any attack when in PzC you see more non effect or fatigue attacks... and well, lose 1 soldier is not the same at PzC level than in PzB level.

Armor for me has the problem in how is modeled... i think a good improvement is remove the actual range system and use the model from Nap/EAW/ACW where you have x firepower at y range, much better than use a formula to reduce from the hard attack, i think is better like in other wargames use firepower hex by hex and use the slot used by the range formula to control how letal is the gun used... for me gama needs be more Steel Panthers in tank combat and less PzC, this sure solve the problem with units made of 3 or less tanks/guns (they are practically useless, only a full company stack can do something) and increase the feeling of play a semitactical game... apart made disapear some strange things like 3 empty hexes between a tiger unit and a T-34/76 unit where the T-34/76 destroy tigers and they are the only units in a range of 10 hexes...WTF!!!

Game is now a 1.0 version and is excesive PzC, maybe for my taste now is son of SQB and PzC but needs in future be itself and leave PzC and SQB limitations.

Dont understand me bad, i like the serie but needs evolve in their own way

[Xaver]

I know the "Optional Fire Results" but the problem is that in game defensive bonus looks a lot less effective compared with PzC because many times units even with 50% bonus suffer 1 casualty over fatigue or no effect... think that suffer 1 casualty in PzB is like lose 9 soldiers in a PzC battalion (1x3=company, 3x3=battalion=9) that is A LOT in a single attack/defense, if you add to this the infinite defensive fire... even big units can eat a lot of damage.

I think infantry combat needs be a little less lethal and improve a little the performance of "soft" defensive works.

[ComradeP]

Currently, the bonuses protect the Germans from direct fire, but they can still take substantial losses from artillery. The Soviets just take a lot of losses from everything, with the saving grace that German artillery aside from Nebelwerfers or large 150mm units isn't all that good at causing losses.

The losses the Soviets cause with direct fire might actually be a bit too low. A single German MG platoon can mow down at least twice as many men per turn as a full Soviet Guards Rifle company supported by 2 MG platoons depending on whether the Germans suffer from the stacking penalty causing increased losses.

[Dog Soldier]

5) Some strange Line of Sight rules in forests. It seems that a unit at a higher elevation can see over the top of adjacent lower forest terrain and into the forest hex on the opposite side. Usually in games like this, a unit in the middle of a forest means adjacent LOS only. It's hard to tell at a glance who can fire at whom.

Most of your questions are for the designer of the game to address. I can say form photos I have seen of the Kursk battlefield, both historical and contemporary images, the 'woods' we portray in Kursk are not very dense at all.

Not like western Europe or around Moscow. I do not think trying to create a 'trees' hex would have solved the issue since the scale is larger. Such a thing would be more suited to Squad Battles.

I am sure members here can find an post images which are examples of what I am saying or images that show me to be wrong. I welcome that.

I think that at Kursk in 1943 there were very few places to really hide for long. The persistent concealment mechanism works well to capture that feel, IMHO.

Maybe you can post some images of where you think LOS is really wrong. I am sure we did not think of everything.
Such instances can be reviewed.

Dog Soldier