Balance discussion/suggestions

[Dog Soldier]

If a scenario has a limited number of bunker objectives that need to be held to be won by the defender, like Gertsovka or Butovo, equal stacking limits make taking those objectives very hard for the attacker.

It's the same problem PzC has with some of its smaller scenarios, where the defender can place large stacks on crucial objectives and sacrifice them because unit points are worth less than objectives or hold the objectives because they're supply sources (this also applies to one of the objectives in Gertsovka).

Any Gertsovka game, including ours, has shown what this problem can do to a game.

You were of the opinion that bunkers can be taken with proper tactics at all times.

I was of the opinion that in the scenario the Soviets could put most of their forces in a handful of bunkers, making it unlikely that all of them would disrupt. When you look at the mechanics, your loss was predictable. It had very little to do with the tactics of either of us.

This is actually one of the few wargames where the attacker is forced to stick to the hex stacking limit when attacking, and it can cause problems. It's one of the design decisions that I still don't really understand, particularly for PzC where replacements can cause defending forces to regain strength rapidly. The Soviets have no realistic way of removing a nearly full strength German battalion from its position by assaulting it most of the time, unless they apply ahistorical amounts of force for the timeframe (in Moscow '42) or have the time to fatigue the unit in a situation where the Germans can't bring in reinforcements.

FWIW, I think #0704_01 Gertsovka: The Cornerstone and #0705_02 Hill 228.6 - SS Preliminaries are the only scenarios in the game where this specific situation happens. The lesson to be learned is have strong artillery or AT support when facing a position with bunkers to be taken that have good interior lines of communication / reinforcement.
That is the main take away from these ten turn 'learning' scenarios.

These two scenarios are not a justification that the game system is all wrong.

There are plenty of very playable scenarios in the game. Bunkers are tough, especially those in the three main defensive belts the Soviets put up in the months leading up to Kursk. The correct tactic in #0704_01 Gertsovka: The Cornerstone, or #0705_02 Hill 228.6 - SS Preliminaries is to disrupt the Soviet advantage of interior lines and isolate the VP location bunkers before they are reinforced.
To state that in a HTH PBEM game this is not possible against competent play is a fair statement. To say the game system is seriously wrong based on such a small sample of play, is, well statistically invalid.

As to M42, you are quite correct that it may be impossible for the Soviet forces to remove a full strength German battalion from a strong position by direct frontal assault. In M42, theses types of positions are very rare of all the German positions on a huge front. Sun Tsu says attack were your enemy is weakest, not where he is strongest and expecting your attack. The replacement rate is just fine. In my experience Russian forces can remove enough Germans from the board each turn to create attrition well above and beyond the replacement rate.

It is a fiction that the Germans in the Moscow 42 game can run away, sit deep in the rear to receive replacements until full strength, then come storming back to a coherent front line and blast the Soviet winter offensive dead in its tracks. Well, come to think of it, that probably can be done if the AI commands the Russians. Not a chance against an human opponent.

Dog Soldier