Panzer Battles 2 - The Official Teaser Thread

[Strela]

Mixed units using the range of the best vehicle worries me, and so do the still generous engagement ranges.

The current vehicle vs. vehicle loss calculation system doesn't include penetration data/an actual representation of effectiveness at range. The range modifier is the same for all units, guns are not rated for how long their projectiles preserve penetrating power.

Vehicle losses are also decided by a die roll in many cases (statistically speaking, the result is rarely precisely 10 men abstracted into 1 vehicle).

1 vehicle loss is also the average loss result in the case of a result.

All of that combines into the current situation where weak guns can knock out vehicles at ahistorical ranges, whilst units with good guns are at a significant disadvantage due to also usually knocking out only 1 vehicle. The quality modifier doesn't tip the scales in favour of the better unit all that much.

For example: I've spent an hour or two running calculations as to how it's possible, but I can't figure out why a T-34 unit has a better unmodified Fire effect than a Panzer IV F2/G, whilst its gun is significantly worse and even though the armored effectiveness ratio is better, the square root formula means that the relative decrease in effectiveness for targeting a vehicle with a lower defense value than the hard attack value also reduces its effectiveness more.

This means that German tank units have issues with dealing with C quality and above units with decent to good guns. The vast majority of the Allied tank units are likely to fall in that category.

The quality of an HQ has no direct effect on fire results, and in a system without a quality penalty for detached units combined with short command radii like what EP '14 has, it normally shouldn't have too much effect on combat performance.

The opportunity fire isn't modified by things like quality, proximity or being fired upon and depends on two rolls with highly variable results: the roll for whether it happens or not and the casualty roll. This makes it impossible to setup a reliable overwatch position, which in turn makes it impossible for the Germans to defend against large numbers of relatively fast tanks with good to decent guns in a situation where the Germans are outnumbered.

Yes, the Germans hit hard on their turn, but it's usually not too difficult to create a situation where either the defender becomes the attacker with tanks or where German armour can be more or less forced to attack.

A significantly superior vehicle exchange ratio is difficult to achieve currently due to superior firepower usually only weighing in on the German turn, and due to the low vehicle losses per shot resulting in relatively few enemy losses.


The problems also apply to AT guns as they use the same formula's.

Aside from Fixing units, there are currently no limitations preventing ahistorical unit concentrations either in terms of unit frontage or in situations where in the real war C&C difficulties prevented close cooperation. The player has perfect information on his forces, and can move them anywhere on the map when they're not Fixed.

Taking the Ozerovskii scenario as an example: the Soviets historically counter-attacked in a piecemeal fashion without coordination between brigades. This allowed the Germans to deal with the attacks one at a time and made each attack likely to stall. Aside from being Fixed for a few turns, there are no limitations keeping the Soviets from concentrating.

With the Soviets having superior numbers, the terrain and smoke making it possible to get to range 1 or 2 with relative ease and limited opportunity fire, the Germans are likely to lose the scenario if the Soviets concentrate in the hands of a capable player. Example: Gregor's two results in the tournament.

To move the example to Normandy: the fighting west and east of Caen featured large but either poorly coordinated attacks or attacks that were impeded by the terrain forcing attacks to be made in a fashion that made it possible for the Germans to counter them.

From a purely hypothetical perspective, I am worried that through using smoke, the lack of areas of operation/strict unit frontage and superiority in numbers, the British will be able to cycle their tank units around to attack German tank units in the same manner that Soviets can do. The British also have a large number of divisional and corps artillery pieces to help them.

In this case, there will be numerous Panther units as well, but at least half the tanks will still be Panzer IV's, although the slightly better H variant in many cases.

If the game uses the most recent alt quality values, most German units will be C and B quality as well, a further handicap relative a scenario like Ozerovskii where the Panzer IV's are A quality.

I am wondering how the new game will deal with these issues, and am looking forward to see what changes to the system will be included.

Edit: the Germans also have  5 vehicle tank platoons at full strength, which means combining them into a 3 unit company puts them above the 1/2 stacking limit threshold. Using 10 vehicle merged units is an effective way to avoid taking more damage from enemy fire whilst still having an effective unit.

However, as it is a merged unit composed of 2 sub-units, it gains more fatigue from incoming fire than merged units composed of 3 unit, which puts them at a disadvantage compared to Soviet, and judging by the visual OOB screenshot, British tank units, which can create merged units composed of 3 sub-units that stay below the 1/2 stacking limit threshold.

In practice, even with the quality modifier reducing incoming fatigue, German fatigue can increase quickly due to the above. When facing T-34's, it's not unusual to gain 10-20 fatigue from a "Fatigue" result. With fatigue penalties starting at 50 fatigue, this is another factor complicating the use of the edge in quality to your advantage.

Ok - I have just spent my whole evening (no progress on PzB 2 today!) working through whether there are any issues with the values showing up for the PzKw IVG vs the T-34. I wanted to understand like ComradeP why the values appeared to be weighted towards the T-34 overall.


Firstly when we look at the raw numbers we see the following;



The key numbers here are the HA & Defense values as well as the 1/Sqrt(H/D) modifier.


I set up a simple test scenario with 1 vehicle of each type one hex away. The T-34 was C morale and the PzKw IVG was A morale;





When running with the combat report on we got the following for the T-34;


The way to read this is a range of 1 hex, a zero modifier for terrain, a fire value of 13 and an 'ARM' modifier of 170%. Importantly the 170% is the 1.7 value for hard attack/defense value shown as 1.7 in the raw numbers table above. Note the fire value of 13.





And for the PzKw IVG;

 
Same thing, range of 1 hex, no terrain modifiers, a fire value of 12, a quality fire modifier of 50% (2.5*20%) and an 'Arm ' modifier of 144% which also aligned with the raw numbers table above.





I queried John as I didn't understand the fire values as reported. He confirmed they are derived as follows;

PzKw IV => 26 * 10 / 18 = 14, Times 0.83205 = 12.

T-34 => 17 * 10 / 10 = 17, Times 0.766965 = 13

 
Essentially this is the Hard Attack value multiplied by ten (for a 'man' equivalent) divided by the target Defense value. This is then modified by the 'Arm' modifier as per the 1/Sqrt(H/D) calculation above.

What is not included in the reported Fire value is the uplift for the Quality Fire Modifier. This is a reporting issue, not a missed value. It is included in the overall calculation.

John ran my test scenario through the debug reporter and with all the numbers, the combat value ranges were as follows;

T-34 firing: Loss range 0.26 to 1.3

PzKw IV firing : Loss range 0.36 to 1.8


He confirmed that the Mod value was being added after the combat report shown above. This was borne out in my test scenario where the PzKw IV destroyed the T-34 in 3 out of 4 run throughs. Essentially the fire value is closer to 18 rather than the 12 being shown in the report. If this was a C morale PzKw IV it would then be 12, ie without any quality uplift.


So what does this all mean? Essentially the key factors in armor combat is the hard attack value and the defense value. The variation between those two values are the biggest determinant to the fire value. The fact that the T-34 has a significantly better armor tends to neutralise the better gun of the PzKw IV in a head to head duel. The difference ultimately was the quality.

The biggest discussion that can then be had is if these values have been set correctly. I believe they have and essentially the determination of 'penetration' is an interplay of these two values. Bigger guns such as 88's have the higher HA value to represent their better penetrative ability.

So can values be tweaked and improved - maybe, but ultimately I think we are reasonably close and I can't see any significant issues with the overall combat algorithms.

Hope this primer helps someone....

David