How do you improve PzB???

[Strela]

1- i feel the germans are not scpecially deadly at range in armored combat, i test many times a T-34/76 rush VS 2 Tigers and very few times Tigers kill at range one of them... and when do it only 1 tank before the 10 tanks be in the adjacent hex.

Agreed.I have not played with the armor much yet,but it seems AT as well as Tanks have no real stand off capability.Not sure what the answer would be here.

2- i feel the company HQ tank in companies is a little useless, because very rare times do something and is the first vehicle killed in a shot duel... apart this if you launch an air attack in a hex where you stack 2 armored units, one of them with 1 vehicle practically all the time planes only destroy 1 tank and is the alone tank, is more usefull attack an hex with 10 tanks in a single counter than attack 2 counters with 1 vehicle + x in the 2nd counter.

Something to possibly consider would be to have the 10 Russian Tanks divided into two units of 5 each? Would this not increase German survivability at close range?
(I have played the Teterwino 2 Tiger scenario twice,vs AI, once from each side,each game the Tigers failed to survive.Russian armor losses at the end seemed reasonable,but when I played as the Germans, Armor kills were more from agressive Infantry assaults than Tank-AT fire.)

Franz's incredible adventure is a difficult scenario if you play it 'like normal'. The Tigers will NOT survive if you leave them where they start. In real life Franz had two things going for him, the Soviets arrived piecemeal and he used ambush tactics whenever possible. We actually tested with random release by company for the Soviets but the games become too erratic and too unbalanced, particularly with the Panzer Grenadiers ability to assault. So the second thing is don't sit in the front hex once Franz opens up; I usually pull back south west which still allows me to shoot north but removes most of the Soviet return fire. That will make a huge difference to survivability for a couple of turns.

It's the volume of Soviet fire that kills the Tigers - particularly as it is usually 9 T-34's etc firing at a time.

The game does reward quantity. Nine T-34's firing at one to two hexes are going to have a much higher chance of a kill than two Tigers firing at four hexes. Even at one hex, two Tigers would be exceptionally lucky to get two kills. A full Tiger platoon (four vehicles) is getting into the realm of both multiple and long distance kills - but its hard to find four Tigers to put in one unit a lot of the time. With more tanks firing, abstractly you are reflecting flanking shots etc. Same with AT guns. Most are 3 gun batteries. They will be effective up close but much less so at range. This is why the Soviets built their Pakfronts to get enough volume of fire to slow a tank attack down. 3 50mm or 75mm guns will only work at relatively short range.

Long range fire does work. Combine two or more platoons of PzKw IV tanks and see what damage you can do, just don't expect to be plinking lots of tanks off beyond four hexes - its written the ideal engagement range was 500 - 750 metres. The Germans have a huge advantage with their larger Panzer Company size and that swings things back the other way when both sides armour faces off.


David