Damage dealt to small units

[ComradeP]

In every scenario I've played thus far, I've noticed that small units below a certain number of men (50-60 or so) take significantly less damage from assaults, artillery and in many cases direct fire.

As far as I can tell, the mechanics behind this behaviour for non-artillery fire are not documented, but it does seem to be happening consistently. The only modifier to casualties that's mentioned in the manual is for the stacking limit starting at half the stacking limit (125 men, casualties normal and fire value at 100%) up to the stacking limit of 250 men (casualties double and fire value at 200%). It's almost as if there's also a third modifier, for half of the first value, so about 60 men.

The alternative indirect fire rule mentions casualties being inflict on units "proportionate to their strength" which presumably explains the lower artillery losses for smaller units, but it isn't clear how it works or how it is determined.

It can be problematic when assaulting small units, as often positions end up being held by a handful of guns or a couple of men who refuse to disrupt. As disruption is all that matters, small units can have an ahistorical impact on progress.

It has been said that the results supposedly model small units taking cover or not exposing themselves, but there is no explanation about that in the manual, nor does it make sense for assaults. If you have 10 men and the enemy has 100, you're very likely to lose. In the game, that isn't necessarily the case.

This ties into the main flaw of the assault system: it depends solely on getting the defenders to disrupt, which is a matter of chance and not skill, and encourages manipulating the assault system by either placing numerous small units in a hex (with each unit, the chance of the stack disrupting lessens) or by breaking larger units down to achieve the same thing.

As the attacker depends solely on a die roll for getting the defenders to disrupt, and in the case of large stacks also uses the same stacking limit, such situations can cause disproportionate delays to attacks. Direct fire from infantry units can yield reasonable casualties, but it doesn't work against bunkers.


In a current II SS PzK July 5th game, if my opponent decides to place the Guards sapper battalion in the north in the objective and supply bunker hex and split it up in 9 different units, that alone will probably mean I'll lose the game regardless of anything else that happened, simply because it is very difficult to counter such a strategy as the attacker. Yes, you can use direct fire from tanks, but the casualties you inflict are really not that great from two hexes (which is where you need to be firing from in this case, as the objective hex is also a village hex that will soon be reduced to rubble, requiring assaulting infantry to be next to it) and even if I'd fire at it from an adjacent hex, the odds of disrupting 9 units are not good.

You can only assault with an equal number of men at best, the defenders are not isolated because their hex is a supply source (this is also why I don't like objective bunker hexes having their own supply sources) and in this case they have a good organic assault value themselves. The result will probably be quite predictable.

For vehicles, the small units taking less damage situation means that one or two vehicles can survive and keep taking out your vehicles whilst you have to spend an again disproportionate number of units to deal with them.

In the current Gresnoye game against Landser34 for example, he has a Broken and isolated T-34 unit with a single tank sitting somewhere that is essentially invulnerable. Assaults by 90 men motorized Rifle units have no effect, and neither do attacks from anywhere between 30 and 50 T-34's or an assault by 12 T-34's. It just won't die. This occurs regularly, it is by no means a unique situation. In another game, a single gun holds against an assault by two PzG platoons.

For me personally, this is where a large part of the frustration of playing the game that I sometimes experience comes from: there seems to be an undocumented mechanic or a mechanic not necessarily working as intended, which results in strange behaviour which results in ahistorical events and which has a disproportionate effect on the results of a battle.

[Dog Soldier]

FWIW, my troops in the game eat small units for breakfast. It is also called 'mopping up'.

In every scenario I've played thus far, I've noticed that small units below a certain number of men (50-60 or so) take significantly less damage from assaults, artillery and in many cases direct fire.

The artillery losses on small units should be insignificant. Indirect fire is wasted against a small unit. This is realistic. Just because there is a game counter in the hex, it does not mean the troops, vehicles or guns are spotted down to the last man. In game theory, the counter represents that we know a unit is there, what the game shows about that unit and that is it. The last survivors are not coming out and holding up signs for you take them out. A failed assault could mean your troops were unable to locate the few enemy suspected to still be there. That is what is being simulated when the assault fails to secure the hex. Snipers are still there. The area (hex) is not secure.

As far as I can tell, the mechanics behind this behaviour for non-artillery fire are not documented, but it does seem to be happening consistently. The only modifier to casualties that's mentioned in the manual is for the stacking limit starting at half the stacking limit (125 men, casualties normal and fire value at 100%) up to the stacking limit of 250 men (casualties double and fire value at 200%). It's almost as if there's also a third modifier, for half of the first value, so about 60 men.

I cannot say this is correct. I have been with this game since the beginning when Strela took on the project. I know of no small unit modifier.

The alternative indirect fire rule mentions casualties being inflict on units "proportionate to their strength" which presumably explains the lower artillery losses for smaller units, but it isn't clear how it works or how it is determined.

Artillery fired in an indirect role is resolved against units "proportionate to their strength". If the result is a 10% loss, one of ten men is hit. No mystery here. When attacking a small unit, indirect artillery fire is a clumsy and wasteful way to try and 'mop up'.

It can be problematic when assaulting small units, as often positions end up being held by a handful of guns or a couple of men who refuse to disrupt. As disruption is all that matters, small units can have an ahistorical impact on progress.

It has been said that the results supposedly model small units taking cover or not exposing themselves, but there is no explanation about that in the manual, nor does it make sense for assaults. If you have 10 men and the enemy has 100, you're very likely to lose. In the game, that isn't necessarily the case.

This ties into the main flaw of the assault system: it depends solely on getting the defenders to disrupt, which is a matter of chance and not skill, and encourages manipulating the assault system by either placing numerous small units in a hex (with each unit, the chance of the stack disrupting lessens) or by breaking larger units down to achieve the same thing.

As the attacker depends solely on a die roll for getting the defenders to disrupt, and in the case of large stacks also uses the same stacking limit, such situations can cause disproportionate delays to attacks. Direct fire from infantry units can yield reasonable casualties, but it doesn't work against bunkers.

Just not true in my experience. Disruption is not always required. One has to develop a feel for this, I know. Many PzC veterans already know enemy units can be assaulted successfully without first being disrupted. Disruption makes the job of clearing an enemy unit from a hex more likely to occur. It does not guarantee that result. I have seen both ends of this spectrum occur in all the games I have played. Some good order units can be cleared by assault. Some disrupted units refuse to give up the ground. War is so unpredictable. I like that the PzB Kursk game models this aspect of battle. Better make sure you have a plan B for each move you make.

In a current II SS PzK July 5th game, if my opponent decides to place the Guards sapper battalion in the north in the objective and supply bunker hex and split it up in 9 different units, that alone will probably mean I'll lose the game regardless of anything else that happened, simply because it is very difficult to counter such a strategy as the attacker. Yes, you can use direct fire from tanks, but the casualties you inflict are really not that great from two hexes (which is where you need to be firing from in this case, as the objective hex is also a village hex that will soon be reduced to rubble, requiring assaulting infantry to be next to it) and even if I'd fire at it from an adjacent hex, the odds of disrupting 9 units are not good.

You can only assault with an equal number of men at best, the defenders are not isolated because their hex is a supply source (this is also why I don't like objective bunker hexes having their own supply sources) and in this case they have a good organic assault value themselves. The result will probably be quite predictable.

For vehicles, the small units taking less damage situation means that one or two vehicles can survive and keep taking out your vehicles whilst you have to spend an again disproportionate number of units to deal with them.

Game turn on its way. I will play the II SS PzK side in #0705_01 II SS PzK - July 5: The SS Attack, default optional rules. Use the Soviet engineers to man the bunker supply point at Bykovka as you suggest. There is no way of either side to guarantee victory in any PzB Kursk scenario. Some things work out to one side or the other side's favor as the situation develops. Every situation and each playing of a scenario can be different.
Win or lose I will post an AAR of the game. You are welcome to keep notes and screen shots to participate in the AAR if you like.

In the current Gresnoye game against Landser34 for example, he has a Broken and isolated T-34 unit with a single tank sitting somewhere that is essentially invulnerable. Assaults by 90 men motorized Rifle units have no effect, and neither do attacks from anywhere between 30 and 50 T-34's or an assault by 12 T-34's. It just won't die. This occurs regularly, it is by no means a unique situation. In another game, a single gun holds against an assault by two PzG platoons.

For me personally, this is where a large part of the frustration of playing the game that I sometimes experience comes from: there seems to be an undocumented mechanic or a mechanic not necessarily working as intended, which results in strange behaviour which results in ahistorical events and which has a disproportionate effect on the results of a battle.

No position is invulnerable. Some are tougher than others. Some take more time to reduce. Some are very tough if one tries to crack the defender's with the wrong tools.

Dog Soldier

[Ricky B]

...
This ties into the main flaw of the assault system: it depends solely on getting the defenders to disrupt, which is a matter of chance and not skill, and encourages manipulating the assault system by either placing numerous small units in a hex (with each unit, the chance of the stack disrupting lessens) or by breaking larger units down to achieve the same thing.

As the attacker depends solely on a die roll for getting the defenders to disrupt, and in the case of large stacks also uses the same stacking limit, such situations can cause disproportionate delays to attacks. Direct fire from infantry units can yield reasonable casualties, but it doesn't work against bunkers.

Just not true in my experience. Disruption is not always required. One has to develop a feel for this, I know. Many PzC veterans already know enemy units can be assaulted successfully without first being disrupted. Disruption makes the job of clearing an enemy unit from a hex more likely to occur. It does not guarantee that result. I have seen both ends of this spectrum occur in all the games I have played. Some good order units can be cleared by assault. Some disrupted units refuse to give up the ground. War is so unpredictable. I like that the PzB Kursk game models this aspect of battle. Better make sure you have a plan B for each move you make.
...
Dog Soldier

Curious if you have a before and after example, DS, of a good order unit being pushed out of a hex by a assault, without disrupting from the assault. In my experience, the ONLY time the defender will be pushed out is if ALL their units are disrupted, either before or during the assault, and the attacker has at least 1 unit not disrupted. And then only if the defenders have a place to retreat to. ComradeP did not say the defenders had to be disrupted first, so if you are just stating that good order units can be assaulted and forced out after disrupting, then agreed and that matches what ComradeP stated, and that is what I want to clarify, as otherwise the defenders won't retreat. But otherwise, reading what you stated implies a good order unit, not disrupting, can be forced out and want to see that if it is possible.

Thanks
Rick

[Dog Soldier]

RickyB,

Sorry if my comment caused confusion.

I am saying is a good order unit can be assaulted, disrupted during the assault, retreat, then rally at the beginning of the next player's turn, so it appears a good order unit was retreated without disruption.

Having good order units in a hex prior to assault is no guarantee they will hold the hex. That is a point I want to make. They have better chances of holding a hex than a stack of disrupted units. The idea that inserting one good order unit into a stack of disrupted units is a assured way to hold a hex against the coming assault in the next turn is not correct in my opinion. It can work. It may not work. It is not a sure thing.

All units in a hex have to disrupt to be forced out. They do not have to be disrupted prior to being assaulted.

We are in agreement that is how it works.

I do not find that PzB scenarios are difficult because defenders do not disrupt as often as they appear to have done in some PzC games.

Dog Soldier

[ComradeP]

FWIW, my troops in the game eat small units for breakfast. It is also called 'mopping up'.

In the open, sure, just like any Soviet D quality infantry formation might as well not be there, but that's not the situation I'm talking about. I'm talking about stacks of small units in crucial positions, usually bunkers, not being removable in a timely manner.

Just not true in my experience. Disruption is not always required. One has to develop a feel for this, I know.

This has been mentioned regularly as well, and it is true to a certain extent. However, the disruption mechanics do depend solely on a die roll. Direct player influence is limited. There are no consistent results, and if course some unpredictability is fine but the results can be too inconsistent in my opinion.

For example: in the same turn that a 90 men A quality PzG unit removed a ~30 men Guards recon unit out of its hex on the first assault, a 90 men unit failed to assault a single gun. It's that lack of consistence, and such clear examples of it all coming down to a die roll, that in my opinion degrade the system. In the past, I've posted a test run or two of how direct fire generally gives more predictable and better results than assaults.

In the same II SS PzK 5th of July game, there are or were several Soviet stacks that have been isolated for a while but which I just can't attack in an efficient manner because the "both sides use the same stacking limit" and "multiple small units in a hex all need to be disrupted" part of the mechanics mean I literally can't launch a good assault. As my influence stops after isolating the defender and gathering a large force, that again shows just how much the assault system depends on die rolls, and what the weaknesses of the current assault system are.

In Pokrovka, splitting the 4 gun AT units up makes it less likely for an assault to work, and has resulted in a significant difference in the results between my game against Gregor and the one for the tournament against PijusMagnificus.

The "average" result for assaults is at the moment in my opinion too unreliable to be able to say that you can truly develop a feel for it. I've seen too many assaults on small units fail, particularly gun units, to be able to say that there is enough predictability in the results to develop a feel.

The same goes for direct fire against small units. You have good and bad direct fire results when the smaller units have 20 or so men, which is fine, but situations such as Landser34's single T-34 taking fire from an entire Tank Brigade and just sitting there again reinforce the feeling of there being too little consistency.

Use the Soviet engineers to man the bunker supply point at Bykovka as you suggest. There is no way of either side to guarantee victory in any PzB Kursk scenario.

There is no way to guarantee victory, but there are ways to guarantee victory in a particular scenario. In this case, I'll have 4-5 turns to clear the objective hex. That might be impossible. I'm not saying capturing the hex is impossible, just that there are very efficient tactics (manipulating the assault system through creating stacks of small units in bunkers) that can prevent the capture of an objective in a timely manner as in the end it will all come down to die rolls.

If we'd play the scenario, and you would have 5 or so turns to clear the objective in such a situation and you would do so, whilst I in the same situation wouldn't, that would simply mean your disruption rolls were better, all other factors being (roughly) equal.

In Panzer Battles, you will generally have both more units and more small units in an area than in PzC, and in my opinion the effect this has on how assaults go against a good defender in prepared positions is clear.

[Jeff Conner]

Apparently having nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon, I ran a test to see how many times 90 panzergrenadiers would fail to clear a bunker of a single gun. I was a bit surprised by the results as only 67% of the time were they able to clear the bunker. There was a 58% chance of the gun being destroyed and the average loss to the Germans was slightly more than half a man per assault. I ran the test in ten samples with ten assaults in each sample. The range of results was five to eight with the median being 6.5. So while I was a bit surprised by the results, they were pretty consistent throughout the test. If I had more time, I would run the same test again to see if assaulting twice with 45 man units gives better results. Alas the weed-eater is calling my name, but maybe tonight, after the wife goes to sleep.

[ComradeP]

I have found that multiple assaults by platoons can be more effective than assaults by 2 platoon combined units/companies, due to you getting to roll the dice more often.

In a small test I just ran, I had ~170 Panzerpioniere and ~80 Panzergrenadiere, both units A quality, assault 40 submachinegunners either in a single unit or in two units in a field without fortifications (so not in a bunker or pillbox). The German assault stack is about as impressive as it gets in the game, and you're likely to be attacking with much less. This is a bit of an extreme example.

Out of 30 times, the attack against the submachinegunners split up into two units took the hex 14 times, killing or disrupting the defender (mostly killing). Average German casualties were 10.5 men, including casualties from artillery support fire.

Out of 30 times, the attack against the submachinegunners as a single unit took the hex 18 times, killing or disrupting the defender (again mostly killing).
Average German casualties were 11.6 men, including casualties from artillery support fire. The higher casualties can mostly be explained by the Panzerpioniere taking more opportunity fire during this run, and as they're overstacked they take more losses.
Average Soviet casualties were 31.2 men. The casualties are similar, but the single unit didn't hold its hex as often.

A lot of the oddities we're seeing in the game, from tank/gun vs. tank/gun combat resulting in low losses compared to the time the combat takes, to artillery being good tank killers and assaults against small units, particularly guns, failing come from PzC and have been reported for years. I'm confident the PB engine will at some point evolve beyond the limitations it borrowed from PzC, but for the moment they're there.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

If I remember correctly, I played Dog Soldier several scenarios and there were times I assaulted good order units and took the hex. It is a crap shoot though.

[ComradeP]

Yes, there's always a chance that it happens, the system allows for it.

The casualties are also often more or less the same between a stack of smaller units and a single larger unit with the same number of men, as the mechanic that determines the casualties taken by the defender doesn't take the number of units into account, so that's working as it should I'd say.

The problem comes from multiple units requiring more disruption rolls, which can seriously slow you down or prevent victory (depending on how much time you have left). Parking a big stack somewhere could be effective in PzC as well, but in this case the actual stack might have a fairly large number of units (4-5 or more), but still not that many men.

[Jeff Conner]

And while I do have better things to do on a Sunday morning, I am procrastinating. I ran the second half of my test and again was a bit surprised by the results. Instead of using a stack of two panzergrenadier platoons, each of 45 men, to assault a single gun in a bunker, I assaulted with each platoon individually. I expected the results to be similar or even better than for the combined attack, but this was incorrect. Only half of the time was the bunker cleared by the two assaults. Gun losses were down too, as the gun survived 66% of the time. German losses were about the same. The increased ability of the combined assault to clear a bunker of a single gun was statistically significant at the 95% level. I'll have to do some more testing when I want to waste time to see if there is any difference when assaulting more than one gun, which is a much more likely scenario to be found in a game situation.