Why are unit sizes still different between Gold titles?

[ComradeP]

Changes to the engine and mechanics are usually ported over to older titles from the latest title, as are the standardized McNamara values in the Alt versions.

Unit strengths, however, are not and I'm wondering why that is the case.

The gold releases would've been an excellent time to move the series to the larger unit standard set by Moscow '42, or Panzer Battles (converted to the PzC scale) or to some other standardized strength values.

I've bought Stalingrad '42 today to test the Fischreiher scenario, which I can't open at the moment, but it seems the unit strengths for the stock and Alt July/August scenarios for Stalingrad '42 like Don Bend are very different from the Fall Kreml scenario for Moscow '42 even though they cover the same time period.

Number of men for full strength formations in Moscow '42:

German motorized infantry battalion strength: 900 men.
German regular infantry battalion strength: 800 men.
Soviet Rifle battalion strength: 600 men.

Stalingrad '42:

German motorized and regular infantry battalion strength: 525 men.
Soviet Rifle battalion strength: 305 men.

From what I can determine from the OOB's of other titles, there's variety in unit strengths based on the standard that was in vogue at the time as well.

So, my question is: why is there no standard for unit size even in the latest updates?

[Ocito80]

I cannot speak with any authority on this, however, I will throw in some currency on the matter. I echo the sentiments, and I think part the matter is the evolution of how the 4th company, or heavy weapons company, is treated. This has changed for many scenarios and games, particularly on the eastern front. Some scenarios, which I think it started with the alt scenarios, got rid of the heavy weapon company altogether. Therefore, battalions only had 3 companies instead of 4 listed. This was the first evolution that I noticed. The second one was the emergence of the 4th company again, but as a normal rifle company. This allowed the german player two units of combined infantrymen to help combat the large Russian infantry battalions that were not broken down to company level. I only noticed this configuration on the eastern front titles.

The heavy weapon company, in my view, is hard to accurately represent at the current scale of the pzc series. Thus its 'evolution' over time.

I'm sure this is only part of the story.

[Volcano Man]

My memory is failing here, but wasn't the reduced Stalingrad units sizes due to the reduced strength at the time of the battle? The issue however is that in some titles the designer set the actual (average) battalion strength on paper to be the 100% max strength in the OOB, which means that they don't recover strength beyond that level, and their firepower is treated at full effectiveness rather than being reduced (when a unit gets below 70% strength).

But I can tell you the short answer here: because making a change like that would require reworking everything, including playtesting. If this was a serious issue then it would have been evolved through mods by now (and it never was). Maybe we will have a new wave of PzC Gold modders. ;)