Matrix Games Forums

(or lack of)

There appear to be several reasons for an apparently poor showing by German infantry AT weapons:

• No resupply to line infantry units, possibly related to mixture of two AT weapons types and a definition problem with the PzSchreck weapon (as this weapon will not re-supply when the only AT weapon, but Panzerfaust will do (most of the time) if the unit is not equipped with the Racketenpanzerbusch).
• Short maximum/effective range, coupled with a 'longer' minimum spotting range means that anti-tank ambushes are very rare even in close terrain, and getting close enough to an 'aware' US tank formation (with 3 MG plus lots of HE throwers each) is difficult and takes a lot of troops to spread his fires - add in universal artillery support and the 'ambushers' are very unlikely to ever get an effective shot off (suppression and fatigue reduce accuracy and increase ammunition expenditure to the extent that a Grenadier Company's 78 shots from PzFaust* (18 PzFaust plus 60 ersatz PzSchreck(PzFaust replace them 1:1) may not result in a single kill.
• Even with a successful hit, the damage probability is low - although the warhead is noted as being 3.06 kg, the PzFaust has 1.59kg in game, and the 3.25 kg RPzB is 'only' 0.65 kg** - while I concede that part of the projectile weight is in the rocket motor, this isn't 'heavy' and the Bazooka and PIAT have their full weight assigned to their warhead weight. As I understand it, the 'kill probability' is linked to this weight, so even though the Panzerschreck warhead will almost always penetrate, the vehicle will only be damaged as if it was hit by a much weaker weapon than the US and UK equivalents. (**The weight for 1 round is as listed for 5 - a simple data entry error).

As a note, the ammunition weights throughout most of the BFTB estab are the same (or close to) the warhead weight for each round, this can't be correct, as it ignores the weight of casing, propellant etc, even before the round packaging is considered.

COTA was more accurate in this respect, with most ammunition being 1.2-3x the warhead weight, with a tendency for high velocity weapons to have heavier cartridge weights for the same projectile.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through the extraction of this information, and an average doubling of ammunition weight will do much to curtail over-supply of ammunition (IMO).

Intresting point..

I think ambushes/effectiveness of ambushes is related tightly to the conditions.
Indeed with ´aware´ US formation, trough out the day it is highly inprobable.

But let us get a closer look at on of the examples of such clashes.

I have modeled an ´unaware´ US Arm Coy advancing in the direction of SS Inf ambushing in the village.("Manahay Crossroads")
As stated, the conditions are the key.
Night.. single US Coy with the force of 11x Shermans ( "single" is an important word when it comes to SS Coy confidence troughout the clash)

As seen, the Coy is intentionally pushed to advance bypassing the village (modeling and its caught in close contact by SS).
(You dont see it in a pic, but US Armor is turned face to face with the SS, and still 3 Shermans are burning within 10 mins) pretty drastic

So I gues, this example is backing up the effectivness of Axs Inf At weapons, but restricting it to a very narrow conditions.
And it takes a very ´unaware´ US cowboy , and very aware Axis ´jeager´ for the conditions to occure

With restricted visibility and restrictive terrain the effectiveness of weapons is very low..

A three company battalion fired 190+ rounds of PzFaust at a single company of M5A1, most in very short range ambushes (centre of firing unit within the footprint of the tank company). Ammunition weight had been increased to the nominal 3.06kg rocket weight (packaging & warhead 5.22kg for resupply (which never happened)).
Total hits unknown, but the stuarts only retreated three times with noticeable duration, and suffered two kills, before finally routing into oblivion after 3-4 days of fighting when their ammunition ran out and their morale broke.

The overall effectiveness of the Battalion was impaired as each company quickly ran through it's original supply of PzFaust (augmented to include the PzSchreck warhead numbers), and then couldn't assist the other companies as it was depleted. However, I felt that each Company would have individually been sufficient to cause 'several' casualties for minimal losses and a few dozen rounds in the town/village area the fighting occurred in. There were no additional units on the US side, and supporting leIG (that may have caused one or more of the two known casualties) and sGrW34 platoons, plus HQ and Supply for the Germans.

Pushing deployed stationary infantry's obscuration as high as possible ~100%, it was slightly easier to survive harassment from a single company of tanks, so that might be part of the answer - the number of rounds fired per kill also reduced a little. Setting the tanks deployed stationary obscuration higher also increased survivability post-routing - the firing and moving values were left fairly close to the originals, so during heavy action active forces will attract attention similarly to the existing behaviours - it is only the ambush/resting behaviours that are tightened up.

A further possible reason for poor showing might be the 'excellent' intel discrepancy between Gen strengths and Estab values - here I had a company with 6 tanks, 4 Sherman 75, 1 Sherman 76 and a Jumbo, showing as an 8 tank company. This might only be a display issue, but if this is carried in the firing code, is it possible to hit non-existant vehicles repeatedly?