Panzer Battles 2 - The Official Teaser Thread

[Strela]

Thanks,

Gerry

The culin is abstracted in the ability to cross hedgerows. With 30 min turns this is probably below the scale.

David

[GerryM]

Can someone briefly explain how you get a feel in the game that you are playing Germans or Soviets or American forces as some examples. All have similar toys. The only difference I see is the Morale setting?

[ComradeP]

Unit composition, unit size, nation-specific equipment and different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to soft attack, hard attack and assault values for the infantry make each nation unique.

As the Soviets in PB Kursk, your troops are mediocre to poor in quality, but the T-34 is a good tank in the game and your Tank Corps have lots of them. Your infantry will be outfought by the Germans in the open, but they can be quite stubborn when in bunkers. Initially you're mostly sacrificing men for time, just like the real Soviets at Kursk, whilst in the later scenarios you can bring masses of armour and artillery to bear on the Germans.

As the Germans in PB Kursk, you have mostly excellent to good units in terms of quality, and your soft attack ratings in particular will mean any Soviet units in the open will die quickly. However, you'll have to use the numerous pionier units to move through bunker lines and if the Soviets manage to kill or seriously weaken some of those, your progress will slow down as minefields will be cleared less rapidly and the pioniere are also your best assault units.

The Germans don't have dedicated assault units like the Soviet SMG companies, the boys that have to clear a path through the minefields, anti-tank ditches and obstacles also have to help with taking the bunkers.

German tanks are mediocre to good, but the Panzer IV isn't that great against large numbers of T-34's, although this is primarily caused by the mechanics limiting vehicle kills to 1-2 per shot for two platoon combined units, on average. You have lots of high quality forces at your disposal, but you also have to break through strong defences and the Soviets always have some new formation ready to backstop the line you're breaching. You can usually win on the operational level in terms of having a good chance to win most scenarios, but not on the strategic level in the sense that the "next" scenario covering the advance in a certain sector will feature fresh Soviet forces trying to stop you.

The three main sectors also each offer different challenges to overcome. The SS actually has by far the easiest area of operations to work in.

[GerryM]

Thanks very much for your answer.

Didn't the Soviets have high quality troops also. I notice the Guards in the Guards Rifle Division have a morale of C. Is that just a game mechanism to level the battlefield a bit. Does it take command systems into account - suppose it does. But C seems low.

[ComradeP]

Due to the high loss rates of Soviet formations, Guards were not necessarily better than their regular counterparts and the name was initially mostly a title, though mid-late war Guards units received more specialists and tended to receive better equipment earlier than their regular counterparts because they would be the forces at the tip of the spear or the exploitation force during a breakthrough.

Generally speaking, until German resistance/casualty causing potential decreased late in the war, with the loss rates the Soviets suffered having numerous formations that consisted mostly of veterans would only be possible after a lull in the fighting and during the early stages of an offensive, unless a pool of experienced replacements was available or inexperienced units would take most of the losses.

In game terms, the vast majority of the regular Soviet units are rated as D and the Guards units as C, which is a bit artificial but in practical terms it does what it needs to do: make the player rely on Guards to attack and defend, with the other units primarily acting as their support.

In my opinion, regular Rifle units are a bit underrated as they have only a soft attack rating of 5 (Guards have 8, German regular infantry 9, motorized Panzergrenadier units 11, mechanized PzG units 12. German infantry units also have a maximum range of 4 instead of 3 like the Soviets and they're all A or B quality) AND receive a -20 firepower penalty due to being D quality. That combines into A quality German units plowing through them like they're not even there, though the advantages the Germans enjoy in terms of raw soft attack firepower is such that they will also mow down Guards in the open as well.

One of the interesting things about Normandy that I'm looking forward to is that in terms of soft firepower, the sides are more evenly matched, although the Germans still have an edge in support weapons.

[Xaver]

Well, in PzC Normandy firepower diference is more in hard attack... germans here are better but usually they have less soft firepower in regular units.

For me in PzB the firepower in infantry is ok of course soviets have lower global firepower and with worst quality in the initial attacks suffer a lot BUT with a deep defense, good defensive positions, with more reserves and an enemy with less units to replace them in first line.

In game C quality is for me the middle point, here you have units trained and equiped for combat, if one of these areas is in bad situation you can move to D level and oposite to B level... extreme values like A or E (and lower) for me are to represent special situations like elite units (good equipment, training and morale) or oposite.

Maybe in Normandy i am curious about the german 2nd line (even 3rd line) units and their performance in combat because with E quality (and i think in lower combat values than other units) their performance in game could be problematic because even a good use of terrain and tactical situation could be irrelevant.

I dont know if is possible but can you post your feelings/experiences in the Cherburg scens??? i know they are placed in a late period of the Cotentin actions but with germans in prepared positions...

And well, thanks a lot for the info and all the time you use in feed us... sometimes this discusions are like a game inside the game hehehe

[ComradeP]

Lately, whenever I think about how something might work, I find out that I either think that attacks will work in a way that they won't according to the manual (such as thinking that the combined organization penalty also applies to the defender in an assault, which is not the case) or find out that certain specific situations are not covered by the manual as far as I can tell and I don't know how they will work in practice.

In this case, it's the latter: the defender benefits from getting the quality of the best unit when defending in an assault. However, the manual doesn't specify if that best quality unit needs to be undisrupted. The situation I was thinking of was: you have some of those E quality Ost/ear and stomach issues units and stack them with an A/B quality German unit.

The attacker will presumably try to disrupt the good unit first, as they can target it freely because you can select the target of direct fire and can tell it's a good unit based on its unit graphic even without having accurate information on the quality of the unit gained from playing the scenario as the Germans or checking the OOB. The A quality unit can't disrupt as long as it's A quality, so for the sake of the example let's say you have a Disrupted B quality unit.

If the B quality unit is Disrupted, do the defenders still defend at C quality?

Edit: OK, I ran a test with an edited version of Gertsovka with one B quality PzG company and stacked it with a D quality MG platoon. Strangely, after disrupting the B quality unit and turning it into a C quality unit, the Defend modifier was still 25. The Defend modifier wasn't decreased with the lowering of the unit quality, it retained its original value.

Degrading the B quality PzG company to C quality through Fatigue did decrease the Defend modifier to 15 (medium fatigue penalty is -10%, as always the use of the percent symbol is confusing as it is a -10 reduction and not a -10% reduction, I still don't know why it's used like this) but it should theoretically actually be -10 now as the best unit is a fatigued C quality unit.

As before, this is one of the things you never notice if you play PBEM because the odds/formula are not shown with FOW on.

This might be a bug, I'm not sure.

As to why the use of percentages is confusing: what isn't clearly explained is that all the percentage modifiers are applied to a base value of 100, they're not applied in sequence or directly to whatever value they modify (combat value or supply) until all penalties or bonuses have been added/substracted.

If you have 50 combat value and you have a -20% and a -10% penalty, you don't end up with ((50x0.8)x0.9)=36 but with 50x0.7=35. Similarly, supply is always seen as a certain percentage value out of 100, so even though it's given as a number instead of a percentage (say, 70), this actually means 70%. A reduction of 10% means 10% out of the base value of 100, so you end with 60 and not 70x0.9=63

[Xaver]

Well, the trick of stack low quality units with others to add more "numeric" power using the rule that defenders defend with the best quality unit only works ok in big scens where you have time to do something more than tactical movements (you can create in certain areas good defensive positions but not allways) in Normandy you have big 2nd line units and is not like you can move them as you want and need allways, at this level in medium to small scens you fight more with the units as you find them and maybe you can use some small units to strenght certain areas.

Until i understand the rule says that you use the BEST unit quality to calculate the defenders power (worst quality to assault) and this for me only refers to the letter you see in the unit... if is disrupted is only divide by 2 the numeric value of the unit disrupted in defense but not affect the effect of quality over defense/assault, in the end you see the quality reduced in 1 level when unit is disrupted... an A unit is hard to remove from a good position disrupted and with fatige at level C if has with them a non disrupted unit.

[GerryM]

Due to the high loss rates of Soviet formations, Guards were not necessarily better than their regular counterparts and the name was initially mostly a title, though mid-late war Guards units received more specialists and tended to receive better equipment earlier than their regular counterparts because they would be the forces at the tip of the spear or the exploitation force during a breakthrough....

Wouldn't the Germans have lost many of their veteran and best troops also? Or was this not so serious in the Kursk time frame?

[ComradeP]

That became a problem with Kursk and never really improved again afterwards, at least not on the Eastern Front. A division that was sent to France for R&R and remained there or a division that was created in Western Europe and remained there had the time to properly train its replacements until Overlord. This is why most of the German mobile units we'll be using at the start of Overlord will still be decent to good, but any forces that showed up later like the independent Panzer Brigades without proper training won't be.

The majority of the German forces attacking at Kursk are their veteran/elite mobile forces, so they also took the bulk of the losses. Those losses could no longer be replaced either in terms of available experienced replacements or in terms of available replacements at all. Losses in NCO's and lower officer ranks tended to cut effectiveness the most: without an experienced cadre, it's more difficult to bring recruits up to speed.

The Germans, like the Soviets, also had months to train their new recruits pre-Kursk. After Kursk, the Soviets had the initiative and there would be fewer quiet periods to train replacements. Pre-Kursk, the Germans lost entire units in Tunisia and at Stalingrad, but those were (nearly) entirely destroyed, the mobile units you use at Kursk haven't experienced those kinds of disasters yet.

For them, the worst part of the war was still to come, with attrition and having to act as fire brigades to stop Soviet breakthroughs taking their toll over time. There would also be no rest for them like there was in the first half of the war.

It did depend on the service branch of the forces: the infantry took the heaviest losses, so the infantry quality would decline more rapidly than that of the tank forces. For the men in the Panzers, the lack of available vehicles would be a bigger problem than lack of replacements. For example: even as late as Operation Konrad in early 1945, the SS units involved had a sizable pool of experienced tankers but no tanks for them to use.

The Soviets were waging a front-wide offensive with a mix of experienced and less experienced forces and air support and land combat doctrines that were still evolving against an opponent that was still quite capable of limited counterattacks, which resulted in heavy losses for their offensives, but a war of attrition could not be won by the Germans.