Panzer Battles 2 - The Official Teaser Thread

[ComradeP]

tThe other thing to note is that the German PzKw III's and IV's were lightly armoured. I'm currently reading Robert Kershaw's 'Tank Men' and was very surprised to hear how dominant the 75mm Sherman was in their first engagement at El Alamein. This was against both III's and long F2 IV's. Considering this was November 1942, the Germans were only going to find it more difficult after that. As you point out it was superior training and equipment that helped balance these equipment challenges. Of interest the British were lulled into a false sense of security with the US 75mm to the point that they cancelled the 6 pounder AT gun. This gun was only revived when Tigers were encountered in Tunisia and that lost time was to hurt the Allies later in 1943.

My final question to all is what is reasonable? It's easy to use anecdotes to justify a point of view, but what should be the indication of 'getting it right'? No one here has told me what they believe the expected losses should be - just that they are too light. So what should they be?

German medium tanks were handicapped by either an overall low armour value or decent to good frontal armour but little side armour since the beginning of hostilities. The 2 pounder and the better French tank guns were perfectly capable of knocking out German tanks in 1940, just like the Soviet 45mm guns were capable of knocking out German tanks in 1941 and beyond.

Limited training in combination with limited technology and doctrine (poor to mediocre sights and small tank crews) prevented the Allies/Soviets from inflicting severe losses on the better trained Germans.

German combat vehicles were not necessarily superior to Allied/Soviet tanks mechanically or in firepower, the crews made the difference. The myths behind the Blitzkrieg being popped in PzC/PB is fine, as long as the real German advantages can still come into play.

In the game, the vehicle's capabilities weigh more than crew training as long as the crew is at the least decent (C quality).

A situation where the Germans are forced to respond or have forced themselves to respond to the enemy's actions in a case where they're outnumbered, like at El Alamein, made it difficult to use the firepower advantage (if any, keeping in mind that even in July 1943, the Panzer III to Panzer IV ratio is not in favour of the Panzer IV in all mobile formations as we can see in-game)  and superior training.

For units being reequipped with the Panther, the improvement was not gradual but a major leap. The Allies often moved to improved versions of the same type or variants, the Panzer III and Panzer IV were 1930's tanks that had reached the limits of their design halfway through the war.

That part is represented well in-game, and that by itself is a good thing.

The Panzer IVF2 and above were good at longer range fights against less flexible opponents, below 500 meters their relative advantage in effectiveness dropped sharply. This was also the problem in Normandy: the ineffectiveness of Allied tanks at longer ranges was nullified by the fact that most engagement ranges were short to medium due to the terrain.

A vehicle like the Panther, ideally suited for knocking out T-34's from over a kilometre away, was seriously flawed when fighting at shorter ranges in confined terrain.

Due to limited opportunity fire, engagement ranges can decrease quickly, leaving the Germans at a disadvantage as they need the enemy's cooperation to employ their advantage at range.

To return to examples from the desert campaign: luring an enemy into your long range AT kill zones isn't nearly as likely to work as it did in real life.

What losses "should be" is in my opinion not a question that can be answered with a precise number, as it depends heavily on the situation. I'd prefer to start with higher than current losses until we reach the point that feels right for the majority of the engagements.

However, if you split the combined tank unit into e.g 3 components, each with 3 tanks, you get three die rolls instead of one! And then you can actually kill 3 tanks in the above setting.

This is a key part of the problem: the side that gets to roll more often has a significant advantage in a situation where vehicles or guns have comparable capabilities, that's what makes T-34's so deadly in larger numbers, as well as giving the often numerous Soviet artillery pieces the chance to knock out a few vehicles.

If the smoke was anything like what you used in our Nepkhaevo engagement, then I can assume that RickyB (a far better player than I ) used your smoke against you like I did to isolate the German panzers from each other and clobbered them piecemeal.  Smoke is  a two edged sword in PzB.  It is not "owned".  Be careful how you use it.

I am sure those 5-10 panzers knocked out in the Soviet turn cost more T-34s.  How many?  You forgot to mention that leaving us all curious.

Our Nepkhaevo run was my first real test of armoured warfare, I often kept vehicles way overstacked. Smoke being a two-edged sword is also in a way a part of the problem as vehicles moving through your smoke to fire can only be effective in a situation where opportunity fire is limited.

Single units or a handful of units also often get better results for opportunity fire than larger concentrations, which made me wonder if the system perhaps gets somewhat confused if a lot of units can make an opportunity fire roll. There can easily be a dozen units which can do so in PB due to the long engagement/visibility ranges, a situation that was extremely rare for the PzC games for which it was devised. In a game like EP '14 for example, there are direct fire weapons with longer ranges, but they're limited by visibility being capped, so your field guns might as well have a maximum range of 5.

RickyB's losses from opportunity fire in Ozerovskii were only somewhat severe once or twice, on average he lost about 2-3 tanks when attacking with about two brigades and a bit more when attacking with both Tank Corps.

Early on, he didn't always attack after I attacked him, admittedly, and my vehicle losses mostly ended up being high because I sacrificed the majority of my Panzer III's, which were knocked out during the night and only knocked out a handful of tanks in all night turns.

In most cases where I deployed smoke to limit potential return fire, my tanks were no longer at their firing location at the end of the turn. Ozerovskii has numerous drops and rises in elevation, it doesn't play out like you're fighting on a linked series of plateau's like in Nepkhaevo.