Matrix Games Forums

In some future release, it would be nice to have more than 330 German casualties when I attack with 115,000 men.

Thanks for reading.

I see that you're attacking one of the very best Axis generals, and I see that your commanding HQ is the 34th Army, led by a good general. However, I also see your strength severely diluted by your attacking force being comprised of a bunch of other formations who each lose 20% off the top, due to intercommand penalties, even before they have to make their own seperate leader rolls. I think that you need to focus your C&C better, so that you have fewer reductions from this.

Overall casualties are in your favor, proportionally. Are you simply arguing that more casualties should be taken by both sides, before combat breaks off? If your C&C was better focused, you probably would have succeeded in the attack, and the Axis would have lost significantly more men and materials to retreat losses.

The ratio of losses is favorable to the Soviets. I agree their losses should be higher, because they would not call off an attack with less than 1% losses. In turn that would increase German losses.

1.08.04 will have a bit higher casualties, but mostly in battles versus heavily fortified defenders.

Apart from the universally low losses I noticed that fatalities among attackers are disproportionately high relative to disabled. Shouldn't it be around 3:1 disables:dead all round?

I think that prisoner take in battles not involving the destruction of non-isolated defenders is also way too low.

Remember these are weekly turns. Lightly wounded (85% of all wounded) are represented as disrupted elements, which later convert to fatigue and may increase losses during logistics phase (as they are back to duty before turn ends). These are not shown as losses. So I think the game has good ratio of heavily wounded (from damaged elements) to killed (from destroyed elements).

I understand the point about diluted results, but when I attack with 9 ground units it is rather hard to avoid when attacking with corps as an army will generally have no more than 4. I don't have a problem either with Model beating Vasilevsky but 115,000 attackers and 950 tanks (against zero) should generate more casualties. I also had 14 sapper regiments including some guards that couldn't even knock a mid size level 1 fort to 0. Eng value=9 Really? Sure, sappers were nerfed, but jeez.

You hit "too many attackers" penalty and most of your elements do not fire. This was introduced in 1.04 to fix some problem, and in 1.08.04 we're reducing this effect a little for large battles in defensible terrain (imagine Stalingrad battles).

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

I understand the point about diluted results, but when I attack with 9 ground units it is rather hard to avoid when attacking with corps as an army will generally have no more than 4. I don't have a problem either with Model beating Vasilevsky but 115,000 attackers and 950 tanks (against zero) should generate more casualties. I also had 14 sapper regiments including some guards that couldn't even knock a mid size level 1 fort to 0. Eng value=9 Really? Sure, sappers were nerfed, but jeez.

You would have been better off attacking with 6 ground units all from same formation. Because the combat engine nerfs attacking blobs coupled with all the -20% or more we don't see the hole window.

Remember modern warfare is about fire power and C&C.

Iraq had far more men then we did yet we won easly, many battles the Germans fought vs Russians same thing early in war.

Italy had 10x what British had in North Africa and the british won easly.

The sapper thing could be tweaked but that will also effect 41 and 42.

ORIGINAL: morvael

You hit "too many attackers" penalty and most of your elements do not fire. This was introduced in 1.04 to fix some problem, and in 1.08.04 we're reducing this effect a little for large battles in defensible terrain (imagine Stalingrad battles).

ok, so when does the "too many attackers penalty" kick in? I may as well not attack with the excess to avoid saddling more units with a loss.

Over 3 divisions... fb.asp?m=3845392

...but when you don't add divisions, then your CV is low. So your elements may not fire and cause losses, but they add to CV - important to get that win, by forcing the enemy to withdraw because he is in danger of (tactical) encirclement.

It feels like with all the rule changes over the years that I need to go back to school. [:(]

The way I read this, a defending unit in a hex may typically get attacked by up to nine non-support, non-artillery units of some kind where three attacking hexes are used. If they are all corps, let's say infantry of 30,000 men each that's looking at the attacker penalty calculation as 15x9=145. The limit being 28 means if the penalty is absolute, maybe only one or two of the nine corps are fighting. The logic behind this is the 60,000 men of the two corps are blocking the remaining 210,000 from participating. I can understand that.

So what seems to make sense to avoid much of this penalty is first not to attack with all 9 corps at once. Attack with the strongest two, then the next strongest two all the way to possibly 4-5 attacks. Or even 3 attacks of 3. Then rinse and repeat as long as MPs remain for hasty or deliberate attacks. At the same time one has to evaluate the defending CV against the attacking CV of really no more than 3 corps units. The obvious exception is if the unit CV differential is so great that the two or three attackers will easily beat the one that you can throw everyone else in still as spectators and still getting the win for it.

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS
So what seems to make sense to avoid much of this penalty is first not to attack with all 9 corps at once. Attack with the strongest two, then the next strongest two all the way to possibly 4-5 attacks. Or even 3 attacks of 3. Then rinse and repeat as long as MPs remain for hasty or deliberate attacks. At the same time one has to evaluate the defending CV against the attacking CV of really no more than 3 corps units. The obvious exception is if the unit CV differential is so great that the two or three attackers will easily beat the one that you can throw everyone else in still as spectators and still getting the win for it.

The penalty is not absolute and some elements may still fire. Worse, it applies to all elements from all units, so your "core" does not fight as before and only "extras" worse (it's not a "progressive" penalty). All attackers fight worse. And what you describe is a logical tactic resulting from rules as written, and that is exactly what I wanted to prevent in 1.08.04, thus the change for bigger battles, where players are forced to use more units to overcome huge defending CV, because of fort and terrain multipliers.

It's also clear that 3 German panzer, motorized or panzergrenadiers would not pay a penalty while two Soviet tank or mechanized corps, which are supposed to be their equivalent might pay a penalty. 27 vs 30. Nice for the Axis the cutoff number landed on 28.

I think this is supposed to represent higher efficiency of German formations. The same with initiative of units: corps -1, division 0, brigade and smaller +1

The corps value needs to go to 14 or the cutoff to 30 if you plan on changing things as you describe in .04. If two Soviet corps stand the chance of being penalizing themselves and all units to the stack up to 9 or more, getting the same treatment the Soviets are shafted big time.

Sorry Dave, if this goes in as planned, and you upgrade to .04 our game is over. I will not play this game under such rules.

Do not confuse 1.04 where this rule was introduced with 1.08.04 where it will be made more big stack friendly under certain conditions.

Is the penalty scaled to the number of units committed, i.e. slight influence on 2 corps attacking vs. great influence on 9 attacking?

So basically under the current rules you cant storm leningrad?

I did several attempts with 6 of my best infantry divisions with 18 pioneer battalions and all the heavy artillery in the corps HQ....

After 3 weeks of no progress other than reducing the fort from lvl 5 to lvl 4 and 76% I gave up....and all my divisions took huge hits to morale for all the failed attacks so i went from very high quality divisions to morals 60s divisions.

Ohh and the defending Soviets were only 2 infantry divisions and a fort unit.......so pretty unrealistic results......I can see the first week or two being needed to destroy the fort lvl but even that didnt happen......

In a real life city battle the fight would have been over in a couple weeks with that force disparity of of 100k high morale high experience troops with all the experts and heavy artillery they could ever want hitting 30k at best average trained/morale defenders. Even with the lvl 5 fort...I can see the attacks taking heavy losses but the city would fall very quickly....

My infantry division ratings went from 20s to teens from this and did really nothing other than allow the soviets to make guards units......

the game isnt working well at all with this type of combat action.

@M60A3TTS
The penalty is scaled, but this is not enough in certain circumstances.

@chaos45
And that is what we want to cure in 1.08.04.