Patch?

[ComradeP]

I guess that's where we disagree to a certain extent Volcano Man.

Tank losses in tank vs. tank combat shouldn't be like the losses in tactical games like Steel Panthers, Combat Mission or Panzer Command, but they do need to be higher for units that can fight less effectively than their attacker to allow for a situation where the defender has a credible chance when outnumbered in a tank vs. tank fight.

It's important to keep in mind that this isn't a WEGO system, but IGOUGO. That means that there's a phase of the turn where one of the sides can only rely on automated rolls and can't act.

Currently, the (effective) volume of fire generated by opportunity fire is low, which means enemy tank units can close in at a rate that would not be possible historically without taking serious losses. In your example, if that Tiger platoon facing the T-34's would be second to act, it might very well take losses from T-34's moving close to them while the Tigers can't act in a fully responsive manner.

Relative to the amount of fire, movement is rapid. Your men ignore their personal safety, they will happily charge into a hopeless situation and as you have full control over all your units and always know where they are, you can always maximize the effects of a breakthrough.

Combine the limited amount of (effective) opportunity fire, advantages given to an attacker by the IGOUGO system and the rapid advances with:

-the limited edge quality currently gives.
-the inability to coordinate air operations with ground operations because air operations require 1 turn of preparation, can only target known enemy units and thus won't hit anything if the other player moves his units during his next turn.
-being able to manually select targets and concentrate your fire, instead of spreading it out to deal with all the threats on the battlefield.
-the ability to fully screen an attacking force with smoke.

and you get a system that is currently not yet as good as it could be at modelling tank vs. tank combat in a situation where one side significantly outnumbers the other, but not in a way that would historically be likely to result in serious losses for the numerically weaker side.

Your comment about units not being able to perform at full capacity is very true, but a fatigue model is in place to model that and I'd say that's the part of the combat system that works fairly well (although depending on the amount of fire that is concentrated on a unit, units sometimes become fatigued in 1 or 2 turns).