Patch?

[ComradeP]

Including armour penetration data isn't an option? It might be difficult to code, but it could be a results table with various values that influence the hard attack value at a certain range (basically a hard cap of sorts). A semi-hard cap for hard attacks at range that have a value lower than the defender's armour could also help. The current "attacking strength lower than defensive strength" formula doesn't really penalize the attacker as much as it could.

The long range shots can be pretty wild, but overall the main unbalancing thing in my opinion is that armor vs. armor combat can take a fairly long time, with quality advantages not always being clear.

As both sides have full control over non-Fixed units, this allows the side that historically had mediocre to poor organization and coordination during counterattacks (the Soviets) to gang up on the Germans with everything they have. In the Ozerovskii scenario, the Soviet counterattack happened in a piecemeal fashion, but that doesn't necessarily have to happen in the game.

The player could also concentrate both Tank Corps in the same area. You can place units at some distance from the next unit, but in the end crossing a certain part of the map is a matter of dividing the number of hexes covered by the average movemement speed to get to the average number of turns it will take a unit to get there. In short: time can compensate for flaws in the initial dispositions, or chaotic unit placement.

That's why in my opinion it's absolutely essential for the Germans to be able to deal with one Tank brigade before the next shows up, with attrition over time obviously. Currently, both the armor vs. armor lethality per turn (fairly low) and the German losses when facing a similar number of C or D quality units (average to high) make that very difficult. Taking Nepkhaevo as an example: if there would've been a second Tank brigade with 30 T-34's or so, the Germans would be in very serious trouble. Just like the air war in the East sometimes had freak results by Western standards in terms of Soviet aircraft shot down, tank vs. tank combat could also be very one-sided. Currently, tank combat is fairly balanced and it's difficult to make a mess out of things if you deploy your units correctly (this is probably the crucial point, but again the main limit is the time available to do so in the larger scenarios, which may or may not be enough).