Shouldn't they all have a good/reasonable hard attack value at 1 hex distance?
Currently that is not the case. To me that is strange, since they all have the capacity to blow up a wall, but not the power to harm a pillbox or armored vehicle.
This problem became apparent to me when I tested the **Big Bully scenario. The Italians have plenty of engineers, but they can do nothing against the pillboxes with an hard attack value of only 1.
This value does not match the description of the unit which says:
Like other nationalities, the Italians had many different types of engineers. Combat engineers were called "Guastatori", and carried a variety of assault equipment such as satchel charges and flamethrowers.
Even these Italian engineers have a hard attack value of 1:
This unit represents an RSI Divisional Engineer Platoon. German trained and equiped with German small arms and panzerfaust similarly to German Engineer Platoons. These units were sometimes moved on bicycles 
Huib
Totally agree. Here is a link to an Italian website (I think). It is in mixed Italian and English. Nice pic of an Italian engineer with flamethrower.
http://mvsn.forumcommunity.net/?t=10527274
I've often wondered about the reasoning behind making the German Engineers "hard attack" capable, while leaving all other armies with engineers that were not. Each army had it's construction engineer and it's assault engineers.
Some to build it and some to break it! :smoke:
RR
As I recall,
Only the American, British and German engineer units have a hard attack factor that is greater than 1 or 2, no matter what the time period. Now I do seem to remember that the PB#1 disk had Russian assault engineers but I do not recall what their hard attack strength was.
As an aside a backpack mounted flamethrower would not increase an engineers hard attack strength as the range is too short to be factored at 1 hex. It does show up in the higer assault factor.
I think the better question may be is why does the German engineer 30 platoon have a hard attack factor of 18 at 1 hex for the start of the war through the end of the war?
Thanx!
Hawk
So... change it for 1.05, or leave it?
Jason Petho
Jason Petho Wrote:So... change it for 1.05, or leave it?
Jason Petho
I think the question that needs to be addressed first is what is the accurate number for an engineers hard attack factor at 1 hex.
Is it the German 18, the US 12 (unsure of the value), the British 10 (unsure of the value), the Japanese 10, or the 1 or 2 points for everyone else?
Lets get the base hard attack value for engineers properly set and then modifiy it up or down based on nationality and type (assault, construction, etc) of engineer.
Thanx!
Hawk
Yes, of course... but just was curious if it was something worthy to pursue to start the research process.
Otherwise, there are many other things that can be done.
Jason Petho
Hawk Kriegsman Wrote:As an aside a backpack mounted flamethrower would not increase an engineers hard attack strength as the range is too short to be factored at 1 hex. It does show up in the higer assault factor.
Hawk
Nor does a Panzerfaust if you use a mininum distance of 250 meters. However in the game the distance between 2 adjacent hexes can be anywhere between 0 and 500 meters.
Moreover representing a flamethrower with an higher assault value doesn´t really work well, at least not with extreme assault.
To Jason, Yes it should be modified and all engineers that have satchel charges or flamethrowers should have a reasonable hard attack value IMO whatever the number is.
Jason Petho Wrote:Yes, of course... but just was curious if it was something worthy to pursue to start the research process.
Otherwise, there are many other things that can be done.
Jason Petho
Yes engineers are a very important part of the game. They are much needed for all nations to be more accurate than they are now.
Thanx!
Hawk
Huib posed an excellent question.
I had always assumed the weak hard attack values for other engineers was historically accurate either on the basis of equipment or training. I first noticed it with the French engineers in the May-June 1940 scenarios, but I assumed French doctrine simply didn't contemplate using them against tanks and, since the French were in a defensive posture, their use against pillboxes was ignored.
The small hard attack values may be the product of insufficient time or interest in researching the matter more thoroughly.
This is an important question, but one I think that is greatly constrained by the game fundamentals. For instance, bunkers and pillboxes in CS have have full 360 degree visibility, whereas in real life this was much less. I think the problem lies in the scale of 250 m per hex, which IMO really does not allow the depiction of small unit tactics. That said, early sappers should have some ability against hard targets.
I think Hawk's idea of a base value, modified upwards dependent on nationality and known capablities, is the way to go.