Enough AFVs?

[Bozo_the_Clown]

Trying to imaging this wall of tanks. And the Germans lose a total of 2 Panzers. [:D]

[56ajax]

Soviets fire pop corn

[chaos45]

Soviet tanks lol....yes this has been an issue with the game forever....you can mass thousands of soviet tanks on one German division and do like nothing until your tankers learn to drive and shoot their weapons later in the war.

The experience penalty on soviet tanks seems to be extreme or their stats are just so low they do nothing in the game effectively until they get better experience in 1943.

[Bozo_the_Clown]

Many of these corps are 60+ morale and 60+ experience so that alone cannot be the reason for these numbers.

[chaos45]

I think it comes down to the game simulating that the soviets would never be competent enough to mass that many tanks to assault with...IDK its something I complained about years ago when I played pelton and was able to mass truly massive tank assaults that basically did nothing against even single German divisions.

Russian tanks are just hot garbage in the games combat system for some reason. My guess is its because the massive amounts players can amass over what the soviets could historically amass for combat is why they had to nerf them in combat heavily. Historically the soviets were super bad until 1943 at successfully committing tanks in anything larger than a single bridage….even when they had the corps organized they were super bad at coordinating assaults.

[eskuche]

I suspect there’s a hard modifier for soviet firing that’s independent of unit and element-intrinsic stats. Anyhow they still contribute their CV. Isn’t that more important?

[56ajax]

ORIGINAL: chaos45

I think it comes down to the game simulating that the soviets would never be competent enough to mass that many tanks to assault with...IDK its something I complained about years ago when I played pelton and was able to mass truly massive tank assaults that basically did nothing against even single German divisions.

Russian tanks are just hot garbage in the games combat system for some reason. My guess is its because the massive amounts players can amass over what the soviets could historically amass for combat is why they had to nerf them in combat heavily. Historically the soviets were super bad until 1943 at successfully committing tanks in anything larger than a single bridage….even when they had the corps organized they were super bad at coordinating assaults.

+1

though I do think my theory of Soviet guns firing pop corn also has some merit.

[thedoctorking]

Somewhat more favorable loss ratio in this battle, with experience levels in the 60s for the Soviet tank formations. Still, kind of odd that two German tank divisions were routed through a Soviet-controlled hex and only managed to lose 18 tanks:

[Bozo_the_Clown]

Still, kind of odd that two German tank divisions were routed through a Soviet-controlled hex and only managed to lose 18 tanks:

These are just implausible results. And the fact that is still happens in mid 43 is disconcerting.

[chaos45]

yep its 1943 in that report you posted.....which is when I said soviet tanks become decent lol...until then they are garbage.

Also you had massive superiority in that fight Soviets should win easily with 4:1 in men, 10+:1 in artillery and 3:1 in tanks...ohh and total air superiority.

My guess would be the battle was basically won before it even started...the air and artillery onslaught probably disrupted most of the German forces before the fighting even started. Its why in the past I have mentioned one of the most important metrics for turning the tide is how many tubes of artillery the Soviet player has. As this increases german losses when they attack and allows the Soviets to win battles against even heavily dug in positions fairly easily as the war goes on. Basically once the soviets have enough artillery you can win by losing since the Germans will lose more men attacking than the soviet defenders will.

As to German tank losses.....well its been debated to death as well. All the tweaks were done to keep the German tank divisions from losing all their tanks....or to keep losses closer to historical.....however maybe players attack with their panzer divisions far more than historical and should have higher loss rates? That's one for ppl to debate and its again been going on for years.

You can notice in games that go the distance tiger and king tigers are basically invincible...players end up with full battalions and extra battalions worth of them sitting in the pools in some games. So the lack of some german tank losses create some odd effects long term.

[thedoctorking]

Yes, exactly, the key to making progress on the offensive as the Soviets is the artillery divisions. I start out as soon as it will let me make those light gun brigades to have one in each army if possible. Later, they convert to divisions and fill out. Then, same thing with the heavy rocket brigades. But Soviet armor seems implausibly weak. The T34 was a superior vehicle when it first came out and maintained technical parity with the comparable German vehicles throughout the war. The PzV was superior to the T34/85, but only available in limited numbers. The handicap for the Soviets was tank crew training. If you have comparable skill levels, kill ratios should be pretty close to even, and I don't see that in this game as currently structured.

Earlier in the thread I think Bozo mentioned the enormous numbers of tanks produced by players in this game, caused by the ability of the omniscient player to evacuate the T34 factories in Kharkov before the Germans get there. Maybe the devs could do something about this - reduce the production of the T34 factories farther back or freeze the Kharkov factory? This would give the Soviets motivation to try to stand farther forward anyway.