Infantry Survivability

[Narwan]

As I have already said, there were almost no fights to death of equal forces in real life. Commander would prefer to fall back or request support in case of increasing losses.
And then, take a Kursk strategic operation for example. Were the sides equal? Almost. Was the fighting fierce? Surely yes, fanaticaly fierce in some cases. And the losses were great - with at least 200.000 only on German side, with some units almost annihilated in process. Almost every soldier out of 4 was taken out of action.

Infantry losses which took weeks to achieve. In SP you can do it in minutes. The game is far, far deadlier to infantry than the Kursk battles were.

In the recent test a platoon of 4 "Cherniy Orel" tanks advanced towards taliban infantry lying in the open ground. Fire was conducted from full stop with ranges from 300 to 400 metres.

That's quite a long range to fire at individual soldiers. Don't expect too many casualties at that range.

All settings were on 100%. 16 152mm HE-FRAG shells took a total toll of 5 casualties, and MG fire from NSV and PKT MG's inflicted 6 casualties. Second round of firing produced almost the same results with MG and HE fire incapaciating equal number of soldiers. Interesting to note that displayed accuracy for each (both MG and main gun) shot ranged from 78% to 85%... As the enemy retreated further (one squad was shot while running, with HE round taken out 1 and MG taken out 3(!) enemies) fire was conducted from 500-550 range and in two successive round of firing only 4(!) enemies were killed. Displayed accuracy ranged from 45% to 56%.

The game system use a hit determination first and then checks to see if the hit actually does any damage. That means a 80% hit chance does not have a 80% chance to inflict casualties. It may appear odd but it's just the way the game works. The listed hit chances are balanced by the damage routines to produce realistic outcomes. Don't focus on the game proces, but on results.

As for me, it completly ruins the tank role as a fire support vehicle.
Suppression is the other thing: both MG and HE fire cause nearly the same supression. But, from my experience, MG tend to actually wound 1 or 2 soldiers a round even when firing from extreme distances thus producing much more supression than the main gun does. Heh, I wonder why it was called "main" :)
Is it all right that 152-mm FCS-assisted gun is as effective as a HMG against soft targets? Same question applies to AGLs and autocannons.

No, the 152mm gun should be considerably less effective against infantry in direct fire at those ranges compared to the mg's. AGL's and autocannon should be in the same order of effectiveness as mg's, maybe just a little less effective but not much.

You seriously believe that the 'main' gun was/is the primairy weapon for direct fire use against leg infantry???
Well, with flechette rounds perhaps but not with HE r[/b]ounds.

It isn't even gameplay-wise: these tanks costs 2400 point which could be used to buy 3 rifle companies on trucks - a whole battalion with RPG-29s, capable of taking out a wide range of armored targets. Or 2 companies with TA-ATMGs with TI in each platoon...
Something should be done to vehicle-to-infanty accuracy.

No it shouldn't. And these point comparisons are useless Units need to be balanced in points against all other units in the game in all possible tactical situations. Picking just two (types of) units in a single setup doesn't work.
Example: infantry with TA-ATMG's and TI are far too expensive. You can buy a dozen or more mg armed AFV's for one of them (BTR-40's for example). The infantry can take out maybe 4 with it's missiles after which they get slaughtered by the remaining AFV's. Someone needs to do something about the cost of AFV's, they need to go up! See what I mean?