HPS PzC II

[Xaver]

If you prefer i can use "Age of rifles" as example... you have training+morale+experience and a 4th value... i think is quality... i dont say nothing about the level of simulation i say that PzC (and in general tiller titles) lack of detail in units.

Sorry but for me low ammo means low ammo specially when this status reduce 1 level the morale in unit... think that an unit isolated suffer one penalty as isolated unit but as bonus receive one level less by low ammo, here i like how DC give to every unit a supply status that shows you how many turns can fight unit without supplies before run out of them. In your view of units isolated need hold fire i say WHY units isolated in an hex with a depot dont receive the status of stockpiled... they have tons of supplies well, why dont use them before enemy take them???

Age... well, Steel panthers is from 1995 and diference between morale and training and you can control when an unit recover morale by the rally value... here out of ok status you dont have a single idea of when an unit is going to recover the status.

Nap titles... well you can see how a regular unit © lose 1 soldier and breaks with 80% casualties... and you can see how a D unit suffer 20 casualties is at 50% and you are unable to break it... i hate excesive random values this is why for me at least separate morale and quality/training/experience is a must have to use morale as a good way to control when your units suffer.

[BigDuke66]

As said sure it would be better to have some more values but a lot can be maid out of those that we have.
Again I point to the FWW series were values are sometimes very different depending on the scenario played due to the fact that various factors are simulated, for example early and late French infantry, from the notes of that game:
"The French infantry in the early order of battle are blessed with the highest
assault rating of all infantry, but are cursed with having the lowest defense rating. This is
formulated from several conditions, but the largest factors have to do with the "cult of the
offensive" doctrine of the early period of 1914."
and
"In the late order of battle, the French had abandoned the flawed "cult of the
offensive" doctrine, and this is reflected in the game by French infantry assault and
defense values fluctuating back to a more standard level in comparison to the other
belligerents, thus making French infantry less effective in assaults but more effective in
the defense. "


Well stockpiling isn't an "automatic" thing just because there is a depot, there could be all kind of crap in that depot. And so according to the rules even when sitting on top of such a unit you still have to pass a test to get supply, that is exactly what can happen in a supply chain, a lot crap goes through it but just not the stuff you need. Again certainty isn't common on a battlefield.


And SP is a very different game that goes down to individual vehicles and soldiers, of course with this higher detail you would also have more values to simulate certain aspect on this detail level. SP is I think 2-3 minutes every turn while PC is 2 hours and at night even more, hexes are 50 meters vs. 1 kilometer, etc.. And btw recovery is also not predictable in PC, all the circumstances around it are impacting if a unit recovers or not, in SP I usually rally my ass off as long as the officer still has some of his "Rally" value left.


And for the Nap title, here even more randomness isn't bad as it could very well simulate all the "famous" or "weird" incidents on the battlefield, what you want is to make sure a unit with a moral of X is predictable to hold out against Y, gee most of the time the commander didn't even know how reliable a unit was until it was in combat and showed that it either held the ground or ran away.
Looking at that you can be glad the the Moral values of your own units aren't under fog-of-war until the first combat.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your position but I still remember my first steps in this engine in the early 2000's and there I didn't get hooked by it too as I also saw many flaws here and there, and now besides that fact that the engine itself evolved I'm also in a better position to wrap my head around the engine with the long experience in wargaming I had collected.

[dgk196]

Hello...

Interesting input... gotta love it... plenty to consider.

To sum up... I'd like to be able to set the 'level' at which 'disruption' occurs. Based on percentage of losses, moral, fatigue working together to determine the point at which disruption occurs. Each of these factors should have a selectable set point at which 'disruption' becomes a possible outcome.

Randomness helps the game from becoming to predictable. But I think in this situation, it is overdone. It may be that other things determine the point at which disruption is occurring in the game at this moment. Hard to say, but what I've noticed is you can get similar results on like units without getting a disruption. Then in a similar situation, the defending unit has those similar results, but incurs a loss of one man, that loss seems to be the tripping point.

So, for me, the loss of one man out of a 500+ man organization resulting in the entire units disruption is just not acceptable.

Dennis

[BigDuke66]

Well it simply isn't like anti-tank vs armor where you can say that weapons penetrates and that weapons doesn't penetrate the armor.
Basically we speak about a unit being impacted by whatever and that lowers it's combat power, what crap went wrong in this 1 km hex(What is an area of 866025.404 square meters)and in the 2 hours is up to a wide range of possibilities, it may be obviously if a lot men are lost but even when only one is lost a lot could have happened.
-CO was killed
-Radio operator to higher HQ was killed
-Unit was nailed on open ground
-Sniper got one men what usually has a good impact on the rest of the unit
etc.
I'm sure that list can get very long but the examples should be enough.
Also don't forget that a disruption on such a small incident means not only was a moral check test triggered but that moral test was also failed so basically you lost 2 in a row what is very bad luck but well that can happen all the time on the battlefield.

And btw the range of moral is set on purpose from A-E, take a look at a Napoleonic title there the French Imperial Guard has values above A(starting with A+) and these are almost impossible to disorder as unless you stack together a lot moral lowering things like fire from the flank, high fatigue, low ammo etc. you simply won't lower them in a range where it is possible to disorder them.
But as said the range from A-E was set on purpose for the PC series.

[dgk196]

Hello...

Sure there are lots of possibilities... all sorts of things could happen... and then maybe they don't.

At this level of organizations with the basic idea, is that for most military organizations, redundancy is the norm. So that the loss of one person does not bring the unit to a standstill, it's the whole idea of a chain of command.

The random events are too frequent and inconsistent. Why does the loss of one in an infantry unit cause disruption when it may be as little as 1/600, or more, of the unit? Then if you get a loss of one on a 'gun' or 'tank' unit it doesn't cause a disruption?

I get that its not like an AT gun vs. Tank situation. But, if the 'engine' where consistent... shouldn't there be 'random' effects too for those types of units? And because of the higher percentage that a loss on 'one' is in such a unit, the 'random' events should take place more often in those situations. Take a Russian T-34 company for example. One lead tank with a radio and all the other 'ducklings' follow it and do what it does.

The Germans certainly know this, right? So, boom, take out the lead tank, loss of 'one'. Sure should cause a 'disruption' as regards that unit, eh? That's why I'd like to see the variables to be user definable and unit specific. I get really tired of having to fight the Russians as if they where capable of operating on a level as the Germans do. If that had been the actual case, would the war in Russia have lasted through the end of the first summer, given the size of the Russian military forces at the time?

In the game, the only thing monitored, and reported in unit results as to its 'status', is percent of loss, moral and fatigue. Those are the things I'd like to see a player have influence over in the scheme of 'results' in the game. Random events, yeah they certainly did happen, so the 'randomness' should also be a user definable variable.

Of course all this applies to, what I hope would be, PzC II.

Thanks for the feedback. In my 50+ years of war-gaming, I've learned that other points of view sure help and give thought to points to be considered and not overlooked! Hopefully, these will be given consideration for any PzC II, should it be produced.

Dennis

[Dog Soldier]

Be sure you are familiar with the command range issues of your HQs if you are seeing a lot of disruptions in your games. The effectiveness of a command HQ drops off quite a bit with range to its units. HQ's cannot be everywhere at all times. This reflects the command being focused on a sector of the battlefield leaving other 'quiet' places to fend for themselves.

Dog Soldier

[Fhil]

Hi guys,

I also don´t see any major issues with the disruption system in Panzer Campaigns. I mean, playing this for 7-8 years and I don´t remember I had any problems like experiencing situations when 1 man taken down causing whole unit to disrupt. I mean, surely maybe it happened to me in some of my games, but for most of the time I can pretty well guess which units are more vurnerable to disruption. I believe it´s extremely rare in let´s say standard B Morale German infantry unit to get disruption after losing one man. But let´s take a standard D Morale Red Army infantry - damn, there were cases when whole units put up their hands with the first shot being fired from the enemy on them, while in other cases they were defending to the last man in a hopeless situations, it was pretty hard to guess for germans to expect the given enemy unit´s behaviour, especially in the first years of the war with Soviet Union.

I mean, I wouldn´t be so wondering if some of my rifle battalions would be disrupted after losing one man. If you take the panic in the first months of the war in the east for example - man, some units didn´t even have to lose anybody and they started to run from the battlefield, it was enough for them to see a unit in front of them or next to them running in panic into the rear, they´ve joined them, the panic was spreading like fire, if you didn´t eliminate it in the beginning, you had a problem, and for some units that this ´fire´ spread onto, you didn´t even need any heavy loses. And I think in this sense it can be really considered disrupted - it cannot stand an enemy assault or be fully effective or being easy to command. At least this is what I read, I wasn´t there of course.

I don´t think there is some PzC II to happen or something, current system is good, maybe not the freshest, but I think it´s pretty flexible in means of updates to the system. There are many things I would like to see being implemented of course, but (especially after this new stuff - disrupted units do not lose movement points by half, which I hope will be implemented into PcZ soon as another very-well-balancing-the-game gift for the defender), I don´t think that the disruption system is a part that needs any special treatment.

[dgk196]

Hello...

So, after a couple of gaming sessions... and discussions, we came up with additional items for PzC II.

Infrastructure as Targets This would be such things as bridges, rail-lines, towns, crossroads. Artillery and Aerial attacks could be used to 'attack' such targets.

Command Range of Headquarters Units This would be setting the 'command range' (in hexes) of the individual HQ Units.

Interdiction Attacks This would be designating a hex for attack when 'enemy' units enter or move through designated hexes. Specific units could / would be assigned to conduct these attacks.

Dennis

[Dog Soldier]

Command Range of Headquarters Units This would be setting the 'command range' (in hexes) of the individual HQ Units.

Dennis

I do not think I understand what you are asking for here. All HQs have a command radius assigned to them. Right click the unit image of any HQ in the information bar to see this distance in hexes.

Dog Soldier

[Dog Soldier]

Interdiction Attacks This would be designating a hex for attack when 'enemy' units enter or move through designated hexes. Specific units could / would be assigned to conduct these attacks.

Dennis

I am not a fan of games that have this type of feature. It is so open to abuse. Consider this situation that happens in games of PzC. I am attacking and my opponent is conducting a fighting retreat to a better defensive line being fortified by reserve units.

Now there are certain key defensive units that are consistently holding up my head long rush to disrupt the new defensive line before it can be consolidated by the enemy.

I move my units to next to this special enemy unit or stack and occupy the three hexes to the enemy's front. My ZOCs reach down his flanks to limit his movement to straight back before being free to move off in any direction.

I invoke the interdiction rule to target the one hex behind the enemy unit or stack. If the game allows, I increase the intensity with more interdiction strikes to the maximum allowed. The enemy unit(s) cannot move at all, or can move only one hex.

Another scenario would involve the game not allowing multiple interdiction attacks to be placed in a single hex. I would then interdict the target enemy unit or stack in layers spreading out behind the unit or enemy stack starting in that single egress hex directly behind the enemy unit or stack so it is now three hexes deep in all directions the enemy unit would probably go to keep the retreating screen in good order.
The yellow blast icons in the image below represent the interdiction strikes set by the attacker.


Whether the interdiction attacks cause losses, lost movement points, or both the effect is to create a some what solid force field effect behind the retreating defensive unit or stack. This seems a very unrealistic allocation of assets for the period covered by the PzC series of games. It is my humble opinion this type of rule could be abused to create very gamey results.

Dog Soldier