Infantry Defense Against Tank Assaults In Red Victory?

[gamerguy]

Hey all, a Squad Battles noob here with two questions about infantry defending against tank assaults in Red Victory:

1. Can infantry in covered terrain (i.e. villages or trees) put up any sort of defense against assaulting tanks?

2. How do single use weapons like the Panzerfaust 30 actually work in game, and can they be effective?

Reason I ask is because of the experience I'm having playing the Germans in scenario 8, Peiper at Jeremjewka.  In nutshell while defending Jeremejewka against the Soviets my Panzergrenadiers were able to Pin or Demoralize all of the attacking Soviet infantry, but many of the attacking T-34's just kept coming and rolled over several of my (at or close to full strength, not Pinned/Demoralized/Disrupted, Morale A) squads in covered terrain with very little difficulty - the only defenders that have lasted longer than one assault have been multiple squads in Town hexes, and even they've been losing 8 or so guys per assault.  A few of the T-34's have become Immobilized, but that's it for tank casualties and I'm not even sure if it was the defenders or the terrain which accomplished that.

Regarding the Panzerfaust 30's, I see mine have both a Fire Value (which varies from 0-3) and a Strength of 1.  Per the manual the Strength of 1 means I get to use this Single Use Weapon once, so is the changing Fire Value irrelevant, or does it somehow represent how many Panzerfaust shots I can get off in a single "volley" fire?  Additionally I've also tried four flank shots against T-34's at range 1 (the max for the PF 30) with good order squads and gotten no kills so far- is this normal, have I just had bad luck or am I somehow misusing the Panzerfausts?  (i.e. instead of actually firing them at enemy tanks, should my squads be holding onto them to somehow better defend against those killer tank assaults?)

Any clarification that a SB veteran could send along would be greatly appreciated - so far my buddy and I have been really enjoying RV, which seems to get infantry combat right enough, but suddenly seeing unescorted Soviet tanks blitzing over elite troops hunkered down in a town has struck us both as being jarringly ahistorical.  Cheers!

[Xerxes77]

Hey all, a Squad Battles noob here with two questions about infantry defending against tank assaults in Red Victory:

1. Can infantry in covered terrain (i.e. villages or trees) put up any sort of defense against assaulting tanks?

2. How do single use weapons like the Panzerfaust 30 actually work in game, and can they be effective?

Reason I ask is because of the experience I'm having playing the Germans in scenario 8, Peiper at Jeremjewka.  In nutshell while defending Jeremejewka against the Soviets my Panzergrenadiers were able to Pin or Demoralize all of the attacking Soviet infantry, but many of the attacking T-34's just kept coming and rolled over several of my (at or close to full strength, not Pinned/Demoralized/Disrupted, Morale A) squads in covered terrain with very little difficulty - the only defenders that have lasted longer than one assault have been multiple squads in Town hexes, and even they've been losing 8 or so guys per assault.  A few of the T-34's have become Immobilized, but that's it for tank casualties and I'm not even sure if it was the defenders or the terrain which accomplished that.

Regarding the Panzerfaust 30's, I see mine have both a Fire Value (which varies from 0-3) and a Strength of 1.  Per the manual the Strength of 1 means I get to use this Single Use Weapon once, so is the changing Fire Value irrelevant, or does it somehow represent how many Panzerfaust shots I can get off in a single "volley" fire?  Additionally I've also tried four flank shots against T-34's at range 1 (the max for the PF 30) with good order squads and gotten no kills so far- is this normal, have I just had bad luck or am I somehow misusing the Panzerfausts?  (i.e. instead of actually firing them at enemy tanks, should my squads be holding onto them to somehow better defend against those killer tank assaults?)

Any clarification that a SB veteran could send along would be greatly appreciated - so far my buddy and I have been really enjoying RV, which seems to get infantry combat right enough, but suddenly seeing unescorted Soviet tanks blitzing over elite troops hunkered down in a town has struck us both as being jarringly ahistorical.  Cheers!

Hi there! I'm not what you'd call a veteran, but here are my 2 cents:

- First, the bad news...  infantry units have no chance against medium-heavy tanks in an assault.

In fact, any tank whose armor exceeds the Hard Vehicle Armor parameter data value by even one point is impervious to any losses in an assault, either as attacker or defender. This is not explained anywhere in the manual, where instead the relevant entries suggest that the effect of the ratio armor/Hard Vehicle value was intended to modulate the attack strength of armored vehicles, not making them invincible. It is my belief that this is another bug in the software.

Your best bet to mitigate steamrolling tanks is trying to stick to covered terrain. The Immobile probability seems to work and means that tanks will get stuck 1/4th of the time. Unfortunately, being immobile doesn't make them less invulnerable to assaults, but at least they can't wreak havoc around the map and you can plink at them from afar.

- Your Panzerfausts are probably working fine. With a penetration value of 60, they have roughly a 25% chance of knocking out a T-34 (armor 60) from the flanks. Shooting from the rear will increase your chances to about 35%. Note that the 1-3 number you see is not the Fire Value, but the amount of times they can be fired. The Fire Value takes the Lethality of the weapon into account, which is 80, and the Strength, which is 1. Even if you can't get a kill, the loss of effectiveness will diminish the target's threat.

Hope you find this useful and keep enjoying the game :-)

[gamerguy]

@Xerxes77 Thanks much for your quick and informative reply!  After reading it and rereading the manual I now understand what's going on with my PF 30's and am perfectly fine with that.  That said your explanation for what's happening during the killer tank assaults, while completely believable, was also a big disappointment for me - that's one heck of a bug and IMO pushes RV dangerously close to crossing the line dividing "light simulation" from "faux reality game."

Don't get me wrong I'm not expecting even elite squads of grunts to routinely destroy or immobilize AFV's at close quarters, but they should have some chance of doing so especially if they're armed with dedicated AT weaponry - having the only risk to the AFV's come from the terrain itself strikes me as being as lazy as it is inaccurate.  Far worse though IMO is how lethal these AFV's can be, even when unsupported by friendly infantry in covered terrain.  In reality even a squad armed solely with small arms could force an AFV to button up thus allowing the grunts to then just hide in the trees or buildings, but the assault results I'm routinely seeing don't reflect that at all - even experienced, well trained squads seem to be lining up in front of the assaulting tanks so they can be quickly gunned down by their bow machineguns and run over by their tracks, in a manner that comes across very much as "Ha ha, look at my mighty Panzertanks, crushing your puny men and the buildings they're hiding in!"

I see you're an active SB modder, so do you know if there's any mod or way to fix this?  I gather (from an older 2016 post on this subject) that part of this problem stems from how the Vehicle Assault Value is calculated - in addition to giving the assaulting AFV credit for its weapons it also gets heavily credited for its armor, so much so that according to that one older post a Tiger 1 is the equivalent of 66 infantrymen in the assault!  Again I'm not saying the Tiger wouldn't be a very tough nut to crack, but equating two machineguns firing from inside a single, easily pinpointed, slowly moving armored box to two full platoons of assaulting infantry strikes me as a real stretch, especially if the defenders have any sort of covered terrain to work with.  If that's really the case, it might be time for me to dust off Combat Mission and see if that's still playable instead.

In any event, thanks again for your reply and cheers!

[Xerxes77]

I see you're an active SB modder, so do you know if there's any mod or way to fix this?  I gather (from an older 2016 post on this subject) that part of this problem stems from how the Vehicle Assault Value is calculated - in addition to giving the assaulting AFV credit for its weapons it also gets heavily credited for its armor, so much so that according to that one older post a Tiger 1 is the equivalent of 66 infantrymen in the assault!  Again I'm not saying the Tiger wouldn't be a very tough nut to crack, but equating two machineguns firing from inside a single, easily pinpointed, slowly moving armored box to two full platoons of assaulting infantry strikes me as a real stretch, especially if the defenders have any sort of covered terrain to work with.  If that's really the case, it might be time for me to dust off Combat Mission and see if that's still playable instead.

In any event, thanks again for your reply and cheers!

Hey gamerguy, glad to help! I really wouldn't call myself a modder, in fact it was only late last year that I got into the series (I do however like to play with data and simulations and do some light programming on the side, so I usually find myself spending more time tinkering with the game than actually playing it!).

I definitely share your concern and frustration. I think the main problem is that we're basically late to the party,  as the series is no longer actively supported and the code is, as far I know, locked and final. That said, if I may suggest, do not give up on SB just yet. It's a beautiful, nearly endlessly expandable system that just needs a bit more love, and there are some actual modders and designers who are still doing a great job breathing new life into it.

This AFV issue seems to be basically a one-two punch of Hard vehicles being impervious to any type of damage and their Assault Values escalating with Armor, which means their assaults are absolutely devastating for infantry. I haven't looked at it in detail and I'm not sure how veterans of the series have handled it over the years. I imagine preventing an AFV rampage should be a challenge for scenario designers!

As for ways to fix this, I don't think we can make AFVs vulnerable again, however I think we can definitely do something about their general lethality. The idea is that by making assaults less profitable, the tank player would be forced to balance their risks more carefully. I'd need to do some more testing before proposing a suitable modification. I'll keep you posted.

[WargameGeneral]

I was running into the same problem today playing one of the RV bootcamp scenarios where I could completely wipe out entrenched German units with my tanks in a simple assault. In my opinion this leads to quiet unrealistic results and certain maneuvering strategies become pointless.

Is this bug also present in AotR and other SB titles or a RV-specific problem?

A patch that updates armored warfare mechanisms of the series would be really great...

[Xerxes77]

I was running into the same problem today playing one of the RV bootcamp scenarios where I could  completely wipe out entrenched German units with my tanks in a simple assault. In my opinion this leads to quiet unrealistic results and certain maneuvering strategies become pointless.

Is this bug also present in AotR and other SB titles or a RV-specific problem?

A patch that updates armored warfare mechanisms of the series would be really great...

Just like the issue with infantry, my guess is that this is baked into the code of every game in the series.

You can even try it with the freely available Grenada, it has a lower Hard Vehicle Value (20) so the LVTP-7 (Armor 24) is as  unstoppable as the M-60 Patton.

[Ashcloud]

The armor and vehicle characteristics in Squad Battles are amongst the oldest issues debated. Until we get a programmer and the motivation from the development team to work on the series all we can do is design scenarios that balance out these issues as much as possible and in that way keep the game system alive.

Unlike PzC and PzB the abstraction level in SB is much lower because individual weapons are deployed. Therefore in my experience squads that have no anti-tank weapons are almost completely helpless against an armored foe. In designing scenarios with armor I typically like to employ a healthy dose of satchel charges and other ad-hoc explosive devices to try and give the infantry a little help in this regard besides the obvious use of terrain and such. I personally feel the game does a pretty good job of conveying the terror which the unequipped man on the ground must of felt when faced with a huge armored vehicle bearing down on him. So I thoroughly enjoy the experience of both having armor or facing armor, but then I am also not hung up on winning as my record can attest. Lastly, vehicles break down often - are immobile and useless quite regularly on this platform so it kind of balances out in the end. See Warhorse's WW2 mod for some fantastic armor scenarios where they are both terrifying and terrible often within a single game.

[Xerxes77]

The armor and vehicle characteristics in Squad Battles are amongst the oldest issues debated. Until we get a programmer and the motivation from the development team to work on the series all we can do is design scenarios that balance out these issues as much as possible and in that way keep the game system alive.

Unlike PzC and PzB the abstraction level in SB is much lower because individual weapons are deployed. Therefore in my experience squads that have no anti-tank weapons are almost completely helpless against an armored foe. In designing scenarios with armor I typically like to employ a healthy dose of satchel charges and other ad-hoc explosive devices to try and give the infantry a little help in this regard besides the obvious use of terrain and such. I personally feel the game does a pretty good job of conveying the terror which the unequipped man on the ground must of felt when faced with a huge armored vehicle bearing down on him. So I thoroughly enjoy the experience of both having armor or facing armor, but then I am also not hung up on winning as my record can attest. Lastly, vehicles break down often - are immobile and useless quite regularly on this platform so it kind of balances out in the end. See Warhorse's WW2 mod for some fantastic armor scenarios where they are both terrifying and terrible often within a single game.

Hi Ash, all very good points as usual.

It seems that there are two sides to the issue of vehicles. Based on some older posts, I see some folks complaining about their general lethality. I understand this is the result of the game equating armor with firepower (note we're talking exclusively about assaults here).

As far as the game is concerned, the bulkier the tank, the heavier the losses it inflicts.

I don't have a particular problem with this abstraction (even though the game doesn't really need it, and I can easily envision a more nuanced and realistic approach). Ultimately, lethality can be adjusted by tweaking the proper parameters.

The question of toughness is a different story. A tank with Armor 24 will take 50% losses in a given assault. Give it 25 Armor and it becomes invulnerable, regardless of the strength of the opposing force.

This looks like a bug. And it may be explained by a simple rounding error. If I were to guess, I'd say the "Hard Vehicle Value/Armor" multiplier applied to the assault damage against vehicles (as explained in the manual) is dropping fractions. When the Armor value exceeds the Hard Vehicle Value parameter, this multiplier becomes zero and nullifies all damage.

Seeing as a tank still has to take risks to get in position for an assault, including the danger posed by immobilization and AT weapons, the practical effect of all this can be subtle and situational. As you said, there are many ways in which a talented designer can work around an eventual exploit. In terms of game impact, I think the issue affecting the Di/Pi/De infantry assault values is much more prevalent and egregious.

Still, a few days ago in the naval thread someone pointed out a bug (a broken passive sonar, I believe) and got a confirmation that the issue will eventually be looked into. I believe that's an old series as well. One can dream