The Competition & Teaser Thread

[ComradeP]

I don't entirely like the current fatigue mechanics for 2 reasons:

1) As losses in active parts of the front are much higher than in real world operations, fatigue can also rise to a level where a unit becomes combat ineffective way before its historical counterpart. Taking a battle like Korsun as an example, both German corps inside the pocket seem to have suffered only ~300 losses per day KIA/long term WIA/MIA, combined. It's always surprising to read just how low combat casualties were compared to wargames. In a wargame, you destroy division after division. In the real war, a battalion suffering 50 casualties in a single day was extreme, at least for the Germans.

On average, Soviet casualties were also not all that much higher than those suffered by Allied armies in Normandy as mentioned in the book I'm currently reading, but that's misleading because in combat the Soviets could lose most of a battalion in a single attack. Taking Korsun as an example again: an attack is mentioned where a Soviet unit loses ~500 men in a single attack.

In a PzC title, attacker Assault losses are often not all that high for single assaults and fatigue gains varies. The defender is usually worse off. This is why it's difficult to replicate situations where a weak force held a much stronger force at bay, also because doctrine and protection offered by a hex are just modifiers and not real defense values (as in: a unit always takes losses, you can generally get a die roll where it takes losses even when such a result would be highly unlikely at best in real world conditions).

2) I agree with Outlaw Josey Wales that fatigue gains for small units can be problematic, because in real world conditions when fighting units were small (which generally meant the fighting was desperate) those men often did the best they could without minding losses as much as their pixelated counterparts. 30 men in a hedgehog position with a reasonable number of automatic weapons was a viable defensive force against a Soviet attack without artillery support. In game terms, it would be more or less toast after 1 Assault most of the time.

Xaver: Prokhorovka wasn't my official guess, so Ricky B would still win if it's a Kursk Panzer Battles title.