Hi, I'm new to Panzer Battles

[Ekaton]

As in the title - I'm new to the Panzer Battles series, playing mostly WWI battles and squad battles from JTS so far, and I have some questions.

I've just finished the Utah battle from getting started and it was really tough. I managed to take most of the coastal bunkers but with quite heavy losses. 

First of all - my artillery was useless. Even when concentrating my whole artillery in one place, most of the time they didn't kill anyone at all. The best I've got was one dead. Same with the aerial support. Is this how it's supposed to be?
Second, It took several repeated assaults to clear a bunker - I combined my infantry, engineers, tanks... nothing worked. Each time I had about 1 dead on each side, sometimes 2 Germans dead, sometimes none. Is there any trick when assaulting a bunker? I mean, 200 men vs oftentimes less than 10, and still - nothing?
Third, what's the best way to use your tanks against infantry in bunkers? Are they any good when assaulting? They were not very effective when firing against bunkers anyway.

[19 Delta]

https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=66968

HI

I'm also new to the series, for the first month playing the game I really struggled with bunkers till I started applying some of the bunker busting tactics shared here on the forum by members. The link above was very informative and gave me tons of insight on how succefully knock out Bunkers while minimizing my casualties all in a timely manner...hope it helps

[Ekaton]

I don't know about Kursk and the German panzers, but Shermans seem to be poorly suited here. Their direct fire does nothing or nearly nothing, just as MG fire. No German infantry unit was even disrupted before finally being killed because its last man was dead, and about 4 tank units, 2 MG units and infantry units were shooting at the same hex every turn. Rockets, mortars, ships, guns - all did nearly nothing apart from occasionally killing someone, it very rarely caused even 'Fatigue' effect, even when I ordered everything to shoot at the same hex during one turn. No disruptions apart from AT guns. Perhaps with German guns and their better quality it is easier to kil enemy, but not here. I counted on my engineers being specially equipped with satchel charges or something but it seems that while they might be better (in one case two enginner units defeated a bunker in one turn), in most cases they don't seem particularly efficient here.

That post raises many good points though. I haven't isolated those bunkers, which probably is why it was so hard as the morale didn't drop. Also, it seems that some bunkers are easier to take than others - guns prolong assaults a lot.

Also, is there a bonus for attacking a bunker from different sides? It seems that in one case I did so and the bunker was taken after just four assaults.

[ComradeP]

Capturing bunkers with mediocre infantry and mediocre tanks can be quite frustrating.

There's a significant amount of randomness involved, which can lead to odd situations where a handful of men hold of a company for several turns. It's one of the main parts of the game, together with tank/gun vs. tank/gun combat where luck can matter more than which side has better units.

Be sure to check the hexsides you're firing through and elevation levels. If you're firing through a hedgerow, your fire will do -50% damage, which combined with a bunker in difficult terrain -50% penalty can mean a C quality unit can't damage the defenders due to suffering a 100% fire penalty.

High quality units have a significant advantage when it comes to firing into difficult terrain, as their quality modifier is substracted from the terrain penalty, instead of the attack value being modified by the quality modifier and that total being the base for calculations using the hexside/terrain/fortifications fire protection.