Updated Normandy'44_Alt (third time, 13 AUG)

[Elxaime]

Thanks for the comments. There seem to be three issues here regarding the McNamara values and Normandy tank stacks:

1. Direct fire against infantry = should infantry be as helpless as they are?
2. Artillery fire = is it doing adequate damage?
3. Are tank quantities/qualities overstated?

On point 1, this brings up something that came up also during a Modern Campaigns discussion. Are certain armored vehicles doctrines and ammunition supply consistent with maintaining sustained long distance fire against soft targets? Some vehicles, like the US 155mm mounted on an AFV chassis, are dedicated to this task. Others, like the Panther or Tiger, is that also the case? Didn't they carry limited quantities of HE? How common was it for them during the war to sit and bombard enemy infantry, turn after turn after turn? As far as the doctrine part, AFV strength is always assumed to partly lie in their mobility. German generals lamented the necessary use of their tanks in Normandy as glorified pill boxes to stiffen their thin line. An emplaced or semi-mobile tank became a target for enemy air and naval guns. Maybe the answer is to reduce armor soft attack values to reflect both doctrine and ammunition supplies (being mainly for use against hard targets).

On point 2, the history books time and again point to how concentrations of targets, whether hard or soft targets, provided tremendous incentives for enemy artillery. I am not sure the current impact of artillery, even in the example given, is adequate. I am wondering if another way to handle things is to increase the values of weapons hitting an over stacked hex.

On point 3, that sounds like an interesting historical debate. The Germans may have had ready stores of replacement tanks. But what use are they without trained crews? And did the Panzer divisions, including SS, refitting in Normandy receive enough crews, and well-trained ones, to crew those new/repaired vehicles and operate them at their accustomed efficiency. Perhaps tweaks are in order to German numbers, and maybe use of the replacement system to simulate their reliance on repairing what they had rather than getting new vehicles. Maybe also a drop in morale rating for some of the battalions within a division that were the ones that were most recently refitted. Finally, how about raising the breakdown values for the Germans to reflect how worn some of their equipment was?

An example of how to creative address some of these issues was one of the mods that was done for Kursk 1943 (I forget which one). In stock K43, the southern front Germans get three battalions of Panthers. These were the early models and more or less brand new, still being subject to many "teething" issues and high breakdown rates. Many of the issues were not fully revealed until they had been tried in combat/field conditions. Alas, the stock Kursk 43 did not reflect these issues. The three Panther battalions were all rated at their "book" level of efficient and given "A" ratings. As a result, a stock Kursk 43 game did not play out at all like history. In the game, the Panthers are real killers and form an unstoppable wedge. In reality, in history many broke down repeatedly, others wandered into a mine field, and overall their performance was disappointing.

How did the mod handle this? The Panthers morale rating was reduced to "C". This is not because they didn't have skilled or motivated crews. This was a work-around to reflect the other issues that hampered their efficiency. Unfortunately, since the PzC breakdown rates are set globally, it wasn't possible to single out the new model Panthers for higher breakdown rates, so this was the only way to take the edge off their effectiveness and to better model historical performance.

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This brings to mind two things I'd love to see if they ever decide to update the PzC engine:
- the ability to set break-down rates by unit
- the ability to set replacement rates by unit