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We agree. We hear you. We are changing it. Ok?

They were classified as a secret weapon and operated by NKVD troops. They were loaned out on pain of death not to be captured. That did not stop them from being captured. It just stopped them from being reported on being captured.

If you're playing as the Germans the Soviets should in all but the rarest of engagements have more of everything than you do.

But they don't, which is another thing that could use some work: in my random campaign, I've only fought a handful of battles where the enemy had an equal amount of AFV's and none where the AI had more, I believe. The AI generally has plenty of infantry, but less than 10 tanks.

Which is another thing we need to look at.

Good Hunting.

MR

I did some (5) output tests on the RBG when its generating scenarios for the RCG. Looks like it doesn't use the presets for generating a single scenario.

This point spread was pretty typical:
Inf: 262 50%
Trans: 24 5%
Arty: 47 9%
Air: 24 5%
AT: 72 13%
Arm: 97 18%


So given the numbers above you would see a whole wack of infantry units, a smattering of AT, a sprinkle of Arty and a few tanks.
It seems the generator doesn't account for the greater point expense that tanks cost so you almost always end up with an infantry heavy opposing force.

I've put increase tanks for some battles on my wishlist for my random generator mod.

dazoline, thanks for looking into this.

During developement, I played a lot of random battles, the others were working on scenarios, we all playtested scenarios and did some multiplayer. I don't think we gave much time to random campaigns. Erik did the interactive AAR. The point of all this is that we didn't expect so many people to be playing the random campaigns. You guys are playing them and finding out some shortcomings. We hear you and will get things changed as quickly as possible. We want you to have fun and enjoy the game.

The point of all this is that we didn't expect so many people to be playing the random campaigns.

To me, it's a key selling point for the game. I personally enjoy games where I can keep a certain core and use it in a large number of battles. The historical campaigns are mostly fairly short, the random campaigns can be lengthy.

My own experiences thus far don't necessarily confirm what dazoline discovered. The number of tanks is generally not that high (6 to 9 in most battles), but it's pretty consistent, as there are 6 to 9 tanks in most battles. On the other hand, infantry numbers vary from battles where I'm facing 60 Rifle platoons (albeit understrength ones) to battles where I'm facing about 10. There are usually 2 to 4 AT guns in a battle.

AI artillery support is again pretty varied, but there's generally at least one supporting battery, more often than not heavy instead of light/medium support.

In the 2 1943 battles I've played thus far, the AI got an Il-2 as well.

My own randomized support (if I get any) usually consists of artillery (81mm mortar, 105mm and 150mm howitzer, no Nebelwerfers thus far), possibly with a Stuka or two and with a rare appearance by Panzer IVD's, FlaK 36's, Sd.Kfz. 231's, Trucks, Sd.Kfz. 251's and Pioneers.

The battle descriptions are also not entirely accurate. For instance: I've yet to encounter a single minefield, both in offensive and defensive scenarios, even when the description says (for example) that likely avenues of attack have been heavily mined.

ORIGINAL: junk2drive
During developement, I played a lot of random battles, the others were working on scenarios, we all playtested scenarios and did some multiplayer. I don't think we gave much time to random campaigns. Erik did the interactive AAR. The point of all this is that we didn't expect so many people to be playing the random campaigns. You guys are playing them and finding out some shortcomings. We hear you and will get things changed as quickly as possible. We want you to have fun and enjoy the game.

Actually, I did quite a lot of testing on Random Campaigns and expected quite a few people to play them. [8D]

The fact is though that once they get out to the public, it's inevitable that some issues will turn up that we missed. We are working to fix and tweak those reported issues ASAP.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
But they don't, which is another thing that could use some work: in my random campaign, I've only fought a handful of battles where the enemy had an equal amount of AFV's and none where the AI had more, I believe. The AI generally has plenty of infantry, but less than 10 tanks.

That's by design. Not all players are as skilled as you are or willing to restart to avoid losses and we found in testing that if we balanced it to have more Soviet armor in each battle, the loss rate for the German side would get too high and players would not be able to finish the campaign. The difficulty settings do help with this, but the existing force balance seemed to be about as much challenge as most could handle. We could certainly crank that up, to make a more challenging campaign. Perhaps just adding an even harder setting in the RCG would help.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: dazoline II
I did some (5) output tests on the RBG when its generating scenarios for the RCG. Looks like it doesn't use the presets for generating a single scenario.
It seems the generator doesn't account for the greater point expense that tanks cost so you almost always end up with an infantry heavy opposing force.
I've put increase tanks for some battles on my wishlist for my random generator mod.

It should use the presets defined within the Random Campaign files. Are you saying this is not happening in your testing? The opposing force should be more infantry than tank heavy by design for the Panzer campaigns, just to avoid wiping out the player's force in one or two battles.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
The battle descriptions are also not entirely accurate. For instance: I've yet to encounter a single minefield, both in offensive and defensive scenarios, even when the description says (for example) that likely avenues of attack have been heavily mined.

We'll test for this and confirm they are being generated. It worked in the past, but it's certainly possible something broke between the briefing and the generation of minefields along the way.

Regards,

- Erik

I didn't do enough testing to find out.
The info I got back from the function that creates the units indicated the percentages were from none of the presets.
You'll note the precentage I did record is a bit like the Soviet Infantry Battalion but Infantry % is at 50 rather than 65 and Armor is at 18 rather than 5.

I could be mistaken and there is more code that my small sample set or limited persual of the code didn't let me observe. Such as varying the % of a preset per type per battle. But it does strike me as odd that the variance in Inf and tanks as as large as it was.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

It should use the presets defined within the Random Campaign files. Are you saying this is not happening in your testing? The opposing force should be more infantry than tank heavy by design for the Panzer campaigns, just to avoid wiping out the player's force in one or two battles.

Regards,

- Erik

Looking at the 1st Panzer Division campaign, for the initial battles it should be using the "Soviet vs 1st Panzer Attack.xml" preset in the \Data\Presets folder, which has these settings:

<preset title="Force" armour="40" gun="5" air="5" artillery="10" transport="5" infantry="35" name="Soviet vs 1st Panzer Attack" id="Soviet vs 1st Panzer Attack" side="Russian"> </preset>

Which campaign were you testing when you ended up with 50% infantry? I believe the RBG may also adjust this a bit based on the map template to make sure the forces fit within the map, so some variance can be expected, but I wouldn't expect it to be that great.

Regards,

- Erik

That's by design. Not all players are as skilled as you are or willing to restart to avoid losses and we found in testing that if we balanced it to have more Soviet armor in each battle, the loss rate for the German side would get too high and players would not be able to finish the campaign.

Thanks for the compliment, but restarting has more to do with it than just skill. I'd estimate that I would normally have lost about 1 tank per battle in 1941 even with the current settings, primarily due to the initial artillery barrage, a handful to Soviet tanks and AT guns, and one or two to close assaults.

In terms of battles, combat intensity in a short random campaign is pretty low, with a battle a month or less, but at over 90 battles, intensity increases to 3 or 4 per month, so losses will mount within a much shorter time than they would normally do in a short campaign.

You won't hear me bragging about the campaign being too easy as a whole, as it would still be fairly difficult without restarting, but I did expect to fight more tanks, or at least a better balance between enemy tanks and infantry. For example: the enemy has a combined arms force in almost every battle, whilst the Soviets realistically didn't have nearly enough armour for that in the AGC area in 1941.

I was expecting to fight two kinds of battles: one against a good amount of infantry, with a handful of AT guns, and one against a mostly armoured force, with about two dozen or so tanks at the least, but with little to no infantry.

All in all, I think the random campaigns (at least 7th Panzer's one) might be more enjoyable with more variation in terms of the enemy force you encounter during certain types of battles (for example: primarily infantry in Soviet defensive battles, primarily armour in meeting engagements and a combined arms force when the Soviets are attacking). As suggested elsewhere, adding 2 more platoons of PzG's/motorized infantry would also be nice. It would give the player a company of infantry to go along with his company of tanks. Given the numbers of Rifle squads or MG team concentrations I normally face, using just a single platoon of infantry for any non-defensive task is pretty suicidal. You just don't have the firepower to deal with the Soviet infantry when all you can counter them with is 3 squads, so I tend to use primarily tanks against Soviet infantry.

Good feedback, thanks ComradeP. I agree that more variation and those types of forces would be historical and fun. With that said, the concerns Dazoline raised about the existing presets possibly not being respected (18% armor instead of 40%, 50% infantry instead of 35%) has me a bit concerned. Once we either rule out or fix any issue there, we'll add some more presets to make the opposing forces a bit more varied.

Regards,

- Erik

1st Pz Div Short.
I did it again and came up with 241 out of 487 for inf: 49% and 90 out of 487 for tanks: 18%.

Note:
The alert for giving this type of info is on line 3494 of the unmodded RBG.
when reading the output type 0 is infantry and type 5 is armour.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Looking at the 1st Panzer Division campaign, for the initial battles it should be using the "Soviet vs 1st Panzer Attack.xml" preset in the \Data\Presets folder, which has these settings:

<preset title="Force" armour="40" gun="5" air="5" artillery="10" transport="5" infantry="35" name="Soviet vs 1st Panzer Attack" id="Soviet vs 1st Panzer Attack" side="Russian"> </preset>

Which campaign were you testing when you ended up with 50% infantry? I believe the RBG may also adjust this a bit based on the map template to make sure the forces fit within the map, so some variance can be expected, but I wouldn't expect it to be that great.

Regards,

- Erik

As this is the most active thread, I'll just ask this here: the manual specifies that sloped armour and rounded armour are especially effective in terms of the protection they offer against certain types of ammunition. Is there a certain rule of thumb we can use to guestimate the additional protection? Say, sloped armour will usually be printed armour value+2 against APCR or something like that, or do the armour types just lower the chance of penetration, instead of making the armour effectively thicker when engaged with certain types of ammunition?

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

As this is the most active thread, I'll just ask this here: the manual specifies that sloped armour and rounded armour are especially effective in terms of the protection they offer against certain types of ammunition. Is there a certain rule of thumb we can use to guestimate the additional protection? Say, sloped armour will usually be printed armour value+2 against APCR or something like that, or do the armour types just lower the chance of penetration, instead of making the armour effectively thicker when engaged with certain types of ammunition?

It has a higher chance of deflection.
The penetration of all hits are adjusted by a multiplier. This comes from the Variable Penetration table. Which is four tables. Each one is for a different armor variation type. A random die is rolled on these tables so the multiplier can be different each hit. There is a "HighlySloped" armor table where you can see how a regular AP shell compares to APCR.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
The battle descriptions are also not entirely accurate. For instance: I've yet to encounter a single minefield, both in offensive and defensive scenarios, even when the description says (for example) that likely avenues of attack have been heavily mined.

We'll test for this and confirm they are being generated. It worked in the past, but it's certainly possible something broke between the briefing and the generation of minefields along the way.

Regards,

- Erik

I have encountered mines in my 4th battle of campaign.It didnt say it was a mine but one of my recon 222's exploded with no eneamy near or seen.Is it supposed to say whether it is a mine?It didnt,it just blew up with no explanation.

This comes from the Variable Penetration table.

Thanks, I found it. There's much less of a penalty than I thought there would be.