The Competition & Teaser Thread

[rzhev42]

I thought we would share a little info on the PB Order of Battle. The editor is very similar to the PzC OOB editor, but will breakdown into platoons/sections.

Since we know there are Germans in the game lets look at the German OOB. All German units are based on there period KstN's.

For instance:
KstN 1114 - Motorized Infantry Company
or for the Motorized Heavy Company
KstN 1122a - Motorized Heavy Company Pak zug
KstN 1123 - Motorized Heavy Co leIG zug
KstN 1124 - Motorized Heavy Co Pionier zug
KstN 1126 - Mortorized Heavy Co Granatwerfer zug
KstN 1127 - Mototrized Heavy Co Pzjag gruppe (sPzB 41)

See image below in which I have opened up the 1./ Motorized Infantry Company and the 4./ Motorized Heavy Company:



Now of course this is the optimum TO&E for the unit. few units had all of the components.

Now since the Division has all of its various component parts you can truly assign tasks to your units. Say the task is for an infantry battalion to capture a village. You can reinforce that battalion with say a company of pioniers and a battery of StuGs. Maybe after the town is capture reinforce if with a PAK company to help defend against a counterattack.

Or maybe a reconnaissance in force with the Aufk Battalion reinforced with a self-propelled PAK company and a Motorized Pionier Company

Working with the KstN's you have all the building blocks for the Divisions but that is only half of the story. You also need to have a picture of the Divisions around the time of the battle to see the actual TO&E at that time. Fortunately many of these are available in the "Captured Record Archives".

And of course having this OOB makes it easy to create your own scenarios within the battle time frame as even with 60+ scenarios we still can only capture so much of the battle.

Michael

[Xaver]

Thanks for the OOB pic.

A little question, the mortar range is not a little high??? 20x250=5.000m a lot over the mortar range, practically double it ever over arty guns range.

[jimcrowley]

I would also question the infantry range(soft) of 4 -1000m. Effective rifle range is around 400m (2) and the LMG might push out to 600m. (3). Anything beyond that would be on a wing and a prayer.

[ComradeP]

The ranges are indeed peculiar. The mortars fire twice as fire as their historical counterparts normally would, and the leIG 18 has a shorter range.

I also wonder why some infantry squads have a range of 2, like the Pioniere, whilst other infantry squads also with LMG's as their furthest reaching weapon have a range of 4. On the other hand, it makes sense if the PzG zug includes halftrack mounted heavy weapons.

It's as if some equipment is still balanced for a different scale or something.

The sPzB's performance is also a bit odd: its effective range was only about 500 meters, and due to its small calibre its fragmentation shells were not impressive. However, it could reliably penetrate the armour of a T-34 at short range (in game terms about 1 hex) because of its tungsten high velocity shell. If the in-game T-34's still have a defence of about 17, like in Moscow '42, both the sPzB and the PaK 38 will have trouble penetrating the armour at all ranges.

I guess that's the problem of having a single hard attack value that needs to be averaged out, which means "the next step up" from a gun can offer dramatically increased performance at all ranges even though historical performance improvements at short ranges might not have been spectacular (for example: the PaK 40 could penetrate about 1.5 times as much armour as a PaK 38 at 500 meters and below, the real gap in capabilities only really started to appear at greater ranges).

[Strela]

Thanks for the OOB pic.

A little question, the mortar range is not a little high??? 20x250=5.000m a lot over the mortar range, practically double it ever over arty guns range.

It's an error. I picked up a wrong value from the database. It's been adjusted back down to nine hexes. Thanks for picking it up.

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I would also question the infantry range(soft) of 4 -1000m. Effective rifle range is around 400m (2) and the LMG might push out to 600m. (3). Anything beyond that would be on a wing and a prayer.

We're discussing this now :)

That said there is a range attenuation algorithm that will obviously drop these values dramatically once you are shooting that far away.

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The ranges are indeed peculiar. The mortars fire twice as fire as their historical counterparts normally would, and the leIG 18 has a shorter range.

I also wonder why some infantry squads have a range of 2, like the Pioniere, whilst other infantry squads also with LMG's as their furthest reaching weapon have a range of 4. On the other hand, it makes sense if the PzG zug includes halftrack mounted heavy weapons.

It's as if some equipment is still balanced for a different scale or something.

The sPzB's performance is also a bit odd: its effective range was only about 500 meters, and due to its small calibre its fragmentation shells were not impressive. However, it could reliably penetrate the armour of a T-34 at short range (in game terms about 1 hex) because of its tungsten high velocity shell. If the in-game T-34's still have a defence of about 17, like in Moscow '42, both the sPzB and the PaK 38 will have trouble penetrating the armour at all ranges.

I guess that's the problem of having a single hard attack value that needs to be averaged out, which means "the next step up" from a gun can offer dramatically increased performance at all ranges even though historical performance improvements at short ranges might not have been spectacular (for example: the PaK 40 could penetrate about 1.5 times as much armour as a PaK 38 at 500 meters and below, the real gap in capabilities only really started to appear at greater ranges).

The shorter range for the Pioniere reflect the increased dependence on SMG's and other shorter range small arms.

The PzGr here are motorised. The SPW PzGr have an (arm) in their name and slightly higher values to represent the SPW's.

As mentioned above there is a range attenuation algorithm that effects everything that direct fires over one hex range.

All the values shown here were done by Ed 'Volcano' Man using his McNamara database. We will double check anything of great concern, but keep in mind we have been play testing with these values.

David

[ComradeP]

The PzGr here are motorised. The SPW PzGr have an (arm) in their name and slightly higher values to represent the SPW's.

I know, I thought they might have some of the divisional halftrack mounted heavy weapons in support for a moment, but at this scale thus are all independent units presumably.

All the values shown here were done by Ed 'Volcano' Man using his McNamara database. We will double check anything of great concern, but keep in mind we have been play testing with these values.

I'm sure the values work well in practice, all I was trying to say was that averaged values and abstraction work less well the smaller the scale becomes, because minimum and maximum effective range are now on different hexes whilst in PzC they're usually in the same hex for small to medium calibre direct fire weapons and the range effect helps with balancing 2(+) hex range weapons.

[Xaver]

Maybe the problem is you are using in weapons range (i dont count the mortar bug) the weapon max range, this explain for me the 4x250 range in infantry, rifles and LMG have a range around 1.000 or over it and well this units have HMG (specially HT units) and well, this made values are very confusing when you leave the abstract level of PzC scale.

I refer that i remember very few PC wargames where you can control weapons range, here you need be more in vehicle/squad level and inside this have all weapons in unit to assignate diferente ranges, when you are in a scale over this...

Well, i allways think is much better show the firepower in a range list, i dont know if you know "Age of Rifles" here you can see the firepower value at 1hex, 5hex etc etc, the algorithm sure works but using black box system made it excesive abstract for direct fire and we talk here about more hexes than the 3 hexes you can see in a direct fire combat in PzC (i think a PzIV, Tiger or Panther have a 8-12 range).

When i see AT units ranges first thing i think is "well, and what is the real firepower at range 14??? and 10??? WHEN i can shoot with a decent chance to hit and pen enemy armor???" one solution out of engine is give a AT range chart where you can see the weapons with their firepower hex by hex.

SMG... i dont see the unit with range 2 in soft attacks, but for example in soviet "raider" units i expect see a range of 1 for example.

Maybe i feel surprised when i see the HT units with hard attack range of 1, now where AT guns are on map i dont know what weapon can have an infantry unit to have 250m attack range... maybe AT rifles??? because the other AT weapons like mines and Panzerfaust are more 0 range weapons and bazookas and panzershreck are not present.

With the lack of info about the weapons efficiency in diferent ranges we cant see where finish the weapon max range and where starts the effective range... for example at 500m infantry units firepower is more than 2x the max range at 1.000m for example.

Until i play the game i only can do blind theories...

EDIT: i remember the Nap games and arty... you have a chart with the effectivity of guns at diferent ranges, maybe add this information in the PDT is a good idea, you can see in Parameter data a list with the guns firepower in diferent ranges... and infantry... you can give the info by unit types (german Mot german HT, soviet infantry, soviet SMG).

[Tide1]

We just got the new update from David. It looks like we will be busy for the next week or so.

[Xaver]

So or SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO??? hehehe.

The question is how many cocktails of Redbull+monster+unicorn blood you need to finish the game, every new info about this made me and wall structural integrity is weaker every new day

A little question Tide1, in your signature what game is between Moscow42 and Campaigns??? thanks.

PD: no new "bones" for wardogs???

[Compass Rose]

We just got the new update from David. It looks like we will be busy for the next week or so.

Glad to hear it.

Finding things that aren't 100% correct this late in the "ball game" isn't always good due to time constraints however, locating "issues" now will make the game that much better in the long run.