Combined arms bonus/penalties and “pure” armour units?

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Firstly, congratulations on a great set of games .

For me it was a close run thing, in that it was only on my third attempt to get going on Korsun Pocket that I finally cracked it. I did this by actually reading the tutorials . Glad I did because all the hype surrounding the series is fully justified. Stunning game .

Now to the point of the post.

I have noticed that what appear to be “pure” armour units do not suffer a penalty when fighting alone. Armour units, when fighting as pure armour units, were at a very great disadvantage, even in open terrain. In broken terrain their casualties would escalate hugely.

My suggestion would be that when pure armour units attack out of a hex, or defend, their attack and defence values are halved, plus their should be no shock bonus or anti-shock bonus when attacking/defending as pure armour.

Note it is “pure” armour units that concern me. To give an example, Soviet armoured brigades of 60 tanks and 300 plus infantry inherent to their OOB are not the problem. They are “not” pure armour units.

This is one refinement that would be great to see in future games. In my very prejudice view .

All the best,
Kip.

[Fred98]

This is already done but it is approached in another way.

A full strength armour unit generally has a stronger attack value compared to a full strength infantry unit.

If 2 units are stacked together, and they have the same number of steps and they make an attack, and the attacker loses a step, the unit with the weakest attack value loses the step.

And therefore it is prudent to combine infantry with armour in an attack – the infantry loses the step.

If the armour attacks on its own, as you point out there is no initial disadvantage, but if the armour loses a step in action it has a disadvantage for the subsequent turns thereby achieving your desired result.
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[kipanderson]

Joe, hi,

Thanks for the reply… a spirited defence of SSG[;)], but in my view the penalties for using pure armour units are not taken account of[:)].

The fact that if one uses pure armour units your losses will be of armour units is not penalty enough. Even as early as ’41, maybe earlier, a pure armour unit attacking into even lightly broken terrain would suffer massive losses for little gain. By mid war the attacking armour would have been slaughtered.

The strengths of armour are modelled very well but it would be fun to see the weaknesses, the fragility of armour, modelled in future versions.

Greatly looking forward to future PC games from SSG, great series of games[:)].

All the best,
Kip.

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: kipanderson

The fact that if one uses pure armour units your losses will be of armour units is not penalty enough. Even as early as ’41, maybe earlier, a pure armour unit attacking into even lightly broken terrain would suffer massive losses for little gain. By mid war the attacking armour would have been slaughtered.

The strengths of armour are modelled very well but it would be fun to see the weaknesses, the fragility of armour, modelled in future versions.

Great topic. I've seen a number of accounts of Tigers being able to operate independently without taking undue losses but otherwise a good point for tank pure units. I think modelling the tank/panzer pure units as 2 step units is a good technique as it makes them much more vulnerable to being damage & destroyed.

In the Rommel game I made tank/panzer pure units unable to dig in.... both for considerations of the frozen conditions and to make them vulnerable to damage if not used with infantry.

JSS