Scenario Design Questions

[76mm]

Range Modifier/Range Effect:

The lower the range effect, the more casualties will be caused at ranges of 2 hexes or more by direct fire. There is a problem with this, though, in how the casualties are actually determined...

ComradeP, thanks for the very informative post; I guess you pulled the formula from the manual somewhere? I must have overlooked it, thanks for pointing it out.

I don't understand one thing though--PzC classifies "Hard Targets", and you'd think that would enable the game to limit the effectiveness of 82mm mortars, for instance, vs tanks? I guess what you're saying is that artillery vs tanks is still fairly low odds (because the arty's low hard values are against the armor's relatively high defensive values?) but still results in more armored kills than it should?

For those reasons, I prefer lower range effects as higher range effects are basically a lottery where you may or may not knock out a gun or vehicle without much direct input: you're just rolling the dice. With lower range effect values, equipment will perform more or less as advertised in their SA/HA values. The issues are still there, but the outcomes become more predictable.

I really don't like WWII tanks taking out other tanks at 3km, so I'm going to go with a higher Range Effect--currently at 4. See the end of this post for a summary of my "experiments".

Keep in mind that casualties per vehicle/gun in vehicle vs. vehicle, vehicle vs. gun or gun vs. gun combat are actually quite low as you generally need 10 vehicles/guns to have a credible chance of inflicting a loss. So not only are the combat results very unpredictable, but it's very difficult to model a small force overcoming a larger force in the current system, keep that in mind when editing the values. You're far more likely to get "fatigue" results than to inflict casualties currently.

After tweaking a few parameters (see end of post), my experience is rather different: I have small units (2-5 vehicles) wiping out other other small units at two hexes, at one hex it is a real bloodbath. I think I actually need to tone things down a bit...

The values in the parameter data screen are just the effects for fire (low/high) and assaults for both sides, it's somewhat confusing but it works as described in the Combat Results part of the manual.

So it sounds like the Low Combat Value and High Combat Value referenced the manual are actually the Fire Low and Fire High values in the parameters file?

Unfortunately, unit VP's are the only part I couldn't find in the editor either. If I recall a recent post correctly, they're set automatically based on quality and other values.

A strange oversight--sometimes friendly casualties are rather important (high VP), other times the mission comes first (low VP)...

Just so you understand what I'm doing: I've playing around with PzC to try to make it an operational layer for the current Combat Mission East Front game, but reducing all of the units in PzC to platoon sized-units... At first, with default parameter values, casualties were remarkably low, but now that I've changed the Fire Low and Fire High values from 10 and 50 to 50 and 200, the casualties are MUCH higher, especially for vehicles--a few platoon-sized German tank units wiped out a handful of platoon-sized Soviet tank units within a few turns at a range of 2. And you are right, there are lots of Fatigue results, and Disruptions.

The area that seems the most off is artillery, which generally produces very low casualties and not much Disruption, which seems odd. Generally 2-4 mortars inflict either zero or one casualty on infantry in the open, and batteries of heavy guns don't do much better. A couple of times German nebelwerfers produced a nice batch of casualties (5-6) against infantry in the open, but Soviet rockets don't seem to have much effect, I need to look more closely at their values...

I think I need to tone it down to maybe 25 and 100 and see what happens...

I haven't changed the Attacker Low and High and Defender Low and High settings yet, and assault casualties are typically rather low--typically 2-3 men out of a platoon sized unit, which is OK for a probe-style attack, but not a true assault, and it has been very difficult for attackers to get defenders to retreat. I will increase these values next.

I know that scale-wise Panzer Battles would be better suited for this, but I want to use the time and map scales utilized by PzC rather than PzB.