Damage dealt to small units

[ComradeP]

With two fairly weak units, the benefits of getting to roll the dice more often might not be significant enough to assault twice with platoons instead of once with a bigger unit.

It could've been coincidence, but in my experience assaulting the AT riflemen in II SS PzK 5th of July with 4 individual assaults instead of one big one gave more reliable results. It's still random, though, and a lot does depend on the results of the first assaults. If they give poor results, the defending unit might not disrupt if fatigue doesn't build-up.

By the way Jeff, was it a C or D morale gun unit? The gun my 90 or so men failed to remove from their hex was (at best) E morale at the time due to being isolated.

[Steve Bohlin]

In every scenario I've played thus far, I've noticed that small units below a certain number of men (50-60 or so) take significantly less damage from assaults, artillery and in many cases direct fire.

LDAT - Low Density Area Target

Once all the NCOs have bought it, you're left with "The few, the scared, the unseen!"

[ComradeP]

That may be so in any area with some cover to hide in, but otherwise each target in the small unit is more likely to be fired at than if it were part of a large target I'd say.

10 men firing at 10 men would mean each man would usually attract a limited amount of fire, as each opponent also needs to keep an eye out for the rest of the enemy's men. 10 men firing at 5 men is already much worse for those 5 men. Similarly an assault against a single house is more likely to end badly for the defenders than an assault against 3-4 buildings.

Target density has an effect on artillery fire, but not necessarily on an attack with a target like an assault or direct fire.

[Ricky B]

Remember, though, that you can't assume that just because the firing unit has 10 men, or 10 tanks, or whatever, that all are firing and/or can see a target. Otherwise, as has been said by many, the fighting is way to bloodless, especially when firing at tanks. My thought has always been that even though maybe 10 Tigers are firing at 10 T34s, it may be that only 1 Tiger can see just 1 T34, and it gets a kill, and that explains why it is hard to kill more than one tank in a turn. Of course, there are other situations where 1 tank could see 10 enemy tanks and is able to kill most of them in a turn, although that is much more rare. Still, that is where I see the games - PzB and PzC - being unable to replicate history, unfortunately. And I don't have a solution without significantly changing the overall firing/loss code.

Rick

[ComradeP]

True, not all men/tanks/guns might be able to see the opposition. There's already some abstraction in the game as you can't be in the same hex as an enemy unit, so units are never truly hidden no matter how small they are. The enemy also fires back, which implies it offers resists the enemy attack and thus exposes itself.

The 250m hex scale does leave less room to hide in for clear terrain than the 1 kilometre scale, however.

On one hand, a small unit being able to hide and take less losses is realistic, even though at this scale its chances of hiding are not as good. On the other, the unit resists and can stop you from making progress, which makes it unrealistic that it often can't be dealt with in an effective manner that doesn't require committing a disproportionate number of units.