Tank combat discussion/suggestions for improvement

[ComradeP]

Tank combat in this case refers to combat involving tanks either as the firing unit or the target, so it also applies to guns or other non-tank units firing at tanks.

Now that we've had a bit over a year to play with the new engine, and have recent experience with the tournament, it might be a good idea to think about how tank combat can be improved.

Personally, I feel tank combat is one of the weakest parts of the current engine, primarily as a result of the mechanics being ported over directly from PzC.

As the mechanics are the same, tank combat also had its flaws in PzC, but there they could be concealed within a larger scenario lasting several days, weeks or months, with the ability to regain strength.

The main reason tank combat feels "slow" and the opposite of what usually happens in tactical games (where it's probably too violent) is that tank losses are decided by a die roll, and that tank units more or less fire as a single tank. You'll rarely inflict more than 1 loss per turn for a unit with ~10 tanks.

Keeping in mind that turns are 30 minutes per turn, it's a very low loss rate. Tank losses at the end of a scenario can be more or less accurate depending on how the game went, but getting to that point often requires committing tanks to tank vs. tank combat for far longer than would historically have been the case, or knocking out tanks through infantry assaults or artillery fire. I often attack tanks with both infantry and my own AFV's as it's a bit faster, though not very historical (real infantrymen would be less enthusiastic about crossing an open field to assault a tank with handheld AT explosives).

Having to spend more time dealing with tanks than you would historically also means that the pace of your advance slows down, sometimes considerably.

As a recent comparison: even though my tanks in Das Reich's Panzer battalion outnumbered the D quality separate tank battalion about 4 to 1 after the initial Stuka strikes, actually knocking out most of the rest of the battalion took a significant number of turns, often with just 1 or 2 T-34's actually being lost per turn.

Knowing I'll be facing two Tank Corps in Ozerovskii, that doesn't bode well and at the moment I'm not too sure Ozerovskii will be a pleasant experience, as my tank loss rate is likely to be significantly higher than the historical loss rate for July 6th against a good Soviet opponent.

The main culprit for the lack of effectiveness of the German armour, is the PanzerIIIm's weak HA value. Though in most tactical games (and also war time tests) the penetration of the 5cm KwK 39 L/60 was comparable to that of the F-34 on the T-34 at about 500 meters, using regular AP ammunition, in the game the HA values are presumably (and this is purely a guess on my end) based on penetration at various ranges and lethality of the shell. As there are no penetration values for a certain range (and whether you lose a tank or not is decided by a die roll with no direct relation to the number of tanks or the volume of fire), there is also no hard cap that makes knocking out an enemy tank impossible at a certain range.

Obviously, the T-34's armour is sloped whilst the armour of a Panzer IIIm isn't, but the T-34's actual armour thickness is about 45mm and early war Soviet ammunition could be brittle when fired at armour as used by the Germans (armour thickness comes just from the thickness of the actual armour, there being no slope). At around 500 meters, the F-34 could already have issues with the frontal hull armour of the StuG IIIg or Panzer IVg.

The Panzer IIIm, with a HA of just 12, faces T-34's with a defence value of 18. There is no accounting for engagement ranges, so the Panzer IIIm performs poorly at any range. The chance of knocking out a single T-34 with a 10 tank A quality Panzer IIIm unit isn't very high. Without running a test run but based on experience, I'd guess it's about 25%, maybe 33%, per shot at range 1 (so when adjacent to a T-34, engagement range being 250 meters). Due to the variability inherent in the loss being based on a die roll, and statistical averages being more likely to happen over time, you could very well knock out a T-34 with every shot in a short game, but that is not common.

As the T-34 has a HA of 17 against your defence value of 10, you're likely to lose a Panzer IIIm when the T-34 unit fires. A 10 vs 10 duel isn't something you're likely to win as the Germans, and even if you win, your tank unit will be in a sore shape.

You could say reload time, better crews and overall efficiency favouring the Panzer IIIm are factored into the quality, but the problem with percentage bonuses is that they favour units that already have a high value. Example: a 20% bonus for a unit with a HA of 12 gives a bonus of 2 for a HA of 14, the game usually rounding down as far as I know. A 20% bonus for a Panzer IVg with a HA of 26 gives a bonus of 5 for a HA of 31.

As all bonuses (quality, height, hard fire modifier) give percentage bonuses, the Panzer IIIm will always get the short end of the stick compared to other vehicles.

The low defence value of German tanks also means you're prone to losing some to artillery fire. In a recent Nechaevka turn, I lost 4 tanks to Soviet artillery fire and none of them were in an overstacked hex. Similar to how Stuka's sometimes suffer from ground AA fire, the low defence value of your tanks makes them vulnerable to any kind of fire. I also lost 2 StuGs to 1 hex HA fire from a single Guards Rifle platoon earlier.

I would say cutting the existing HA ranges in half (more or less) would be a good start as to making engagement ranges more realistic, and in the process the HA values of all tanks could possibly also be looked at again. The Panzer IVg's penetration at 500 meters would only be about 50% better than that of a Panzer IIIm for example, yet in the game it's over twice as good. The gap is, in my opinion, just too great for a game with this scale. Cutting engagement ranges and rebalancing HA values will hopefully make the relative quality of the various tanks more clear than it is now. The Panzer IIIm is simply a bad tank currently, whilst it was still capable in 1943.

The Panzer IIIm doesn't feel like the workhorse of the Panzerwaffe at the moment whilst since 1941 it had knocked out more T-34's by mid-1943 than the Panzer IV's did. In tactical wargames, the Panzer IIIm is an excellent weapon when properly used and when engagement ranges are less than 500 meters. With a veteran or elite crew, it has a significantly better rate of fire than the average T-34 in most cases, for example.

Tank combat as a whole feels a bit too uneventful currently, with tank units just banging away at eachother with limited loss each turn. There's often little excitement. It can be quite frustrating for the Germans in terms of the time it takes to remove even limited numbers of enemy tanks from open terrain. The edge the Germans still had in tank warfare isn't felt as much as it could be.

Of course, playing with Panzer IV's instead of Panzer III's is a night and day difference, and LSSAH's Panzer battalion is significantly more capable than its counterparts in Das Reich or Totenkopf (I'd go so far as saying it's as good as the other two combined, considering how weak the Panzer III's are currently).

I hope we can think of improvements that won't mean changing percentages, for the reasons mentioned above (that it reinforces high HA units instead of truly improving low HA units).

So, what do you guys think? What are your impressions on tank combat thus far?