M-150s have SuperPowers in FPG?

[mmacguinness]

In Dawn's Early Light, a reduced platoon of 3 M-150s was defending against 2 companies of T-80s.

As they approached, it killed 8 of them. Then it came under close assault by the remaining 12 T-80s.

The M-150s managed to kill 9 of the T-80s.

In addition, while presumably try to hide their flimsy sheet metal vehicles from the more numerous T-80s sharing the same 500m hex, they found time to kill 6 T-80s , 2 BTRs and 2 MR squads 2.5km away on the hill in the top right of the screenshot.

19 kills while under close assault. By M-150s? Really?

I have been playing the Soviet side recently. In virtually every game, one or two NATO units rack up unbelievably high kill counts.

Infantry in urbans areas are notoriously tough, infantry in the open very vulnerable to armour. But in FPG, NATO infantry overrun in the open routinely score multiple kills before being destroyed.

In A Test of Wills, two Eng platoons overrun by a battlegroup killed 7 tanks, 33 APC's, 24 MR squads, 6 HQ's and 2 AD for a total of 72 kills for 2 platoons. OK, they were heroes, but really?

I also note that Soviet units frequently appear to be unbelievably slow to fire on enemies in plain sight, and fail to respond with fire when fired on. That's great when you are fighting them, not so much when you are commanding them.

Is there a thumb on the scale, even if only by giving excessive credence to NATO/US estimates of their own effectiveness and/or excessive credence to NATO/US disparaging estimates of Soviet training and effectiveness?

[CapnDarwin]

We did not add in any bias to the sides. Everything uses the supplied data and runs through the same code. What is possible in Red Storm is units in some cases being able to shoot more ATGMs than they should coupled with a rare cases on some maps of a non-reciprocal line of sight. There are also valid weather and equipment reasons for units shooting and others not. Line of sight is not global either. One other factor with impact is readiness. If those tank units are at low readiness compared to the defending American units, the Soviet units will have degraded spotting and shooting as well.

The good news is we have addressed the problems stated above for Southern Storm. Everything is much more refined and deeper in detail.

[mmacguinness]

I did not at all mean to imply any bias on your part, just that US sources of info are likely to be biased in favour of US training and equipment, and against Soviet training and equipment, and perhaps should be taken with very large grains of salt? (Yes, I read Suvorov, very popular in his day, writing exactly what people wanted to be told, but accurate? Haven't heard of a Russian yet that agreed with him).


In Hell's Crossing, I got all my tank companies in line North from Samern, along the tree line through the village and up to the hill North of it.
My tanks were waiting for the Brits to charge up from the valley. Anticipating a turkey shoot.

So what hapens?
A Brit platoon pops up on the edge hex, blasts away, kills 5 or 6 tanks and backs off, all without a shot in reply, despite LOS from over 9 companies of my tanks.
Granted, LOS to the edge hexes is poorer, but from 9 or more companies, over 100 tanks, someone should have seen the bugger and shot him. Instead, he had time to brew up a cup of tea and do his Times crossword while leisurely shooting up tanks in the tree line that should have had poor LOS properties from him.
Happened several times.
Very frustrating.
Wanted to execute a couple of company commanders!
Still got a good Tactical Success.

Generally, Soviets seem to be very very slow to spot and shoot, even if alert and in a defensive position.