Tank Loads for Africa at War

[TheBigRedOne]

Frank thought that the lethality values in the stock games were too low. When he had a chance to create his own, he raised them, sometimes by quite a bit. Since he was a Marine in Desert Storm, he might know what he is talking about. But apparently, he didn't think much of WP or HEAT rounds.

I too think that all the lethality values in the stock games are low. It would be nice to see Tiller/ HPS bump them up someday.

You can bump them up however you'd like it, but I don't think your PBEM opponents would appreciate it.

Given that the playtesting on all games was done with the levels given, bumping up values across the board would potentially affect the balance and victory settings of all the scenarios. There really is no easy way to do this, save play-testing every game with new values. That's probably not going to happen. The stock games will continue to get tweaks in terms of the engine, but nothing wholesale, most likely.

The values are what they are at this point. It's always a balance between playability and realism. The testing of Modern War really drove that home, especially in trying to model US armor. Armor is where most the consternation is, from what I've read, especially some folks feeling that German armor has been made too easy to kill and not deadly enough.

As for AAW, I agree, Jeff. I wasn't being critical of Frank's levels. If anything he allowed the community to see what increased lethality would mean in terms of playability. If you're a soft target in AAW and you expose yourself, you're going to get hurt, as you'd expect on a a modern battlefield.