Losses for Axis allies in combat.

[tyronec]

4 battles from my game with Quantas.
Attacking 3 level forts against Germans the Soviets are generally taking about double the losses of the defenders.
However against Hungarians the Soviets are doing better.
Yet the two Hungarian divisions had morale similar to many German divisions and the Mountain brigades were over 80, perhaps 15+ points better than the average German division.
The Hungarians were in a German corps in the normal chain of command.
The only thing they are missing is arty support.

Is there something else at play here ? Is there an Axis allies penalty in combat ?
We are playing with +10 and Allies morale but throughout this game they still don't seem to be doing too well when it comes to combat although their display CVs look perfectly respectable.

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[Joel Billings]

Gary's never mentioned anything, but that doesn't mean there isn't something buried in the code. I'll ask him, but I'd be surprised if he remembers any exception code.

[Wiedrock]

I'd say it's a multitude of four obvious and one somewhat "hidden" thing, coming together.

1. The GER battles had 2-3times the manpower of the HUN battles (ignoring the "guns"), so more elements means more chances to kill the attacker.
2. The attacker in the GER battles also had more men (more men/stacking = more chance to hit (may even hit multiple elements per larger Artillery shot at once)), at least that's how I understand it.
3. German Battles had GS.
4. German Battles had 3times more "guns", so higher quantity (+see point 5).

5. The only thing they are missing is arty support.

   Generally higher Artillery Quality (bigger calibers), not just Support. The hungarian/axis allied internal Divisional "guns" are obsolete, like using 75mm Artillery/field guns (as your Mountain Brigades). Their firepower can't even close compete with their German counterpart Divisions comparing the manpower/firepower ratio (on what they actually could field). German divisions had sIG 150mm leIG 75mm (ok they are small too) and 105+150mm Artillery and generally bigger Pak (theoretically HUN had also big stuff in TOEs (using the late 1943 planning) but they never had anywhere near sufficient).
   
   You may also check the 120mm mortars of which you will most likely have close to 0, since at least for the Hun. Infantry Divisions the game uses the autumn 43 planned TOEs with high heavy mortar requirements and not the adjusted ones which removed most of the 120mm from the TOEs (since HUN could never produce sufficient numbers) (see Niehorsters book about the HUN Army), this means the 120mm Mortars that are theoretically in the TOE will never rly be there making the situation even worse, lacking the 120mm punch.
   
   So this leaves you with just a hand full of 150mm, ~100mm, the rest is medium mortars and small field guns and lots of obsolete Pak or empty Pak TOE slots which makes big Gun count but little gun effects.

[Joel Billings]

I always assumed it was a difference in weaponry in the ground elements, but never really focused on the guns. Wiedrock makes some good points on that (and other items).

[K62_]

Based on what I've seen in my games, it seems likely that retreat attrition is more influenced by national morale rather than unit morale. This would explain the high retreat losses experienced by the Soviets in '42 and the Germans in '45, even for some very capable units.

[tyronec]

The GER battles had 2-3times the manpower of the HUN battles (ignoring the "guns"), so more elements means more chances to kill the attacker.
The attacker in the GER battles also had more men (more men/stacking = more chance to hit (may even hit multiple elements per larger Artillery shot at once)), at least that's how I understand it.
German Battles had GS.
German Battles had 3times more "guns", so higher quantity (+see point 5).

That is interesting, what you are saying is that the German units will hand out more damage. Which is as it should be.
However the Hungarians are taking more damage. In these battles:
Hungarians: 1 per 59 and 1 per 48 attackers.
While the Germans: 1 per 109 and 1 per 100 attackers.
So in general 100 Soviets hits 1 German or 2 Hungarians.

Maybe the defenders weapons can justify some of this.

WhatK62 writes is very interesting, it had never occured to me that National morale mattered for combat.

Anyway, 4 battles is not much to go on. I will try and make sure my Hungarians have better air and arty support and see if that makes any difference.

[Wiedrock]

However the Hungarians are taking more damage. In these battles:
Hungarians: 1 per 59 and 1 per 48 attackers.
While the Germans: 1 per 109 and 1 per 100 attackers.
So in general 100 Soviets hits 1 German or 2 Hungarians.

Ahh, I thought you'd only worry about Soviet losses.

Generally I'd suggest to take a look at the Details Screen of those battle reports (the first/main one) and tick the destroyed checkbox at the bottom, to get max information. Especially in observing battles in running scenarios (so not having all things set up to 100% in editor) one can find the non detail TLDR view representation of the battle report missleading at times (like showing damaged guns/men being included in the white number, giving no sense how much GS did and not knowing what happened during the RTR).

I feel like comparing infantry (in light woods) vs. mountaineers (in heavy woods) with the latter having more MOR to show some losses that make sense immersion/logic wise (from just looking at those 2 HUN battles and without "Show Detail" info)...although exploding trees are dangerous...but nvm . Those two losses also add up with the number of enemy manpower being higher (altough not "too high" I suppose - topic stacking penalties) in the battle with the higher losses.

Now comparing HUN vs GER losses the Soviets in the German battles may have had higher stacking penalties and therefore having less chance to shoot. The manual states that they will still fire more than being less men but it's still something to consider I guess. More important here again (imo) are the factors stated before (points 3,4,5). What you hit (first) can't hit you, basically. And if Germans killed 12times more men (yellow numbers) they will most likely also have generally hit 12 times more elements (also DIS/DAM).

To me it all adds up, although only having limited info and a somwhat biased set of battles.
But K62s observation may also take part I guess, ...mostly in the RTR-losses section I guess?!

WhatK62 writes is very interesting, it had never occured to me that National morale mattered for combat.

I feel there's need for some investigation.

[Wiedrock]

Dug a little. On paper Hungarian "normal" Infantry Divisions (like the one in your second battle) planning looked great in late 43 and even Germans planned with those numbers when they took control in 44.
To give some examples.
When Germans took over command in Hungary, the Hungarians had 149 guns of caliber 14.91cm and 66 Pak of 7.5cm caliber.

• The 14.91cm were spread between multiple Artillery SUs (14 Artillery units they had, tho not sure which used the 14.91cm, but they also only had 36 21cm "Mortars" left, so either they used the 14.91cm Artillery or, which I doubt, the smaller ~10cm or 7.5cm?!) and other 17 formations (tho not all had them had 14.91cm in their TOE). Of which the 6 Infantry Divisions (excluding security/reserve) each should have already had 12, 16 or 24 (depending on source, game uses 20). So at least 6x16=96 or using Niehorster 6x24=144. So not much left for Army Artillery or other formations - or more likely, Divisions without proper Artillery.
• 7.5cm Pak were 66 available and inside TOEs you find either 30 or 21 (depending on source, game uses 30). So 66 Pak40 available and need of at least 6x21=126 only looking at the 6 Infantry Divisions (excluding Security/Reserve formations).
• Then the 120mm Mortar, as mentioned before. That ones were not even counted by the Germans for whatever reason. Of those the Germans planned with 40 as the Hungarians in 43, which they later changed it to 8 (Niehorster) (game uses 40).

So the biggest calibers were just not sufficiently available at all, not even to equip the 6 normal strong Infantry Divsions (or barely). Now looking at the other "worse" Infantry Formations like light/reserve/static/mountain in your example battles (of which there only is 1 "proper ID" with theoretically nice TOE), it won't get any better firepower wise looking at their TOEs.

[Joel Billings]

If someone has a lot of time on their hands, they could try setting up a situation in the editor where they create one battle versus Hungarians and saves the scenario, while they then set up another identical scenario with the battle against Germans defending instead. You could then make sure all the variables are the same on both sides (same defending leader, same morale/experience). Same rough number of troops (you could even set up another battle where you took a German unit and then just changed it to Hungarian (retaining all the ground elements). By running each of these similar battles 5 times each, and comparing the results, you might find there is no difference, or you might find something and can pin down whether it's the ground elements themselves, or the nationality that is causing an issue (if there is one). If I had something like that to work with, we could try to dig into see what's going on. Gary doesn't remember there being anything special going on to hurt the non-German nationalities, so until we have something more to go on, we're assuming everything is WAD.

[tyronec]

I have not done any testing on this but have been looking at the combat results over the past few turns, and also been stacking German with similar Hungarian units to see how that effects things.

With a mixed stack, and Hungarian units with morale not far off the German morale, the Hungarians are generally taking more losses than the Germans, perhaps around 10% or so extra.

With a Hungarian only stack then some of the time the losses are about the same as normal and then some of the time is is catastrophic. And it can be catastrophic even when the Hungarians are better quality than the average German infantry.

Am thinking that there may be two effects here.
As Wiedrock has pointed out, the Hungarians have poor arty, so they are not suppressing enough of the attackers and are suffering as a result.
The game gives the Axis allies higher CVs than they are worth in combat, so there can be the expectation that they will perform comparable with another unit of similar CV but they are not as good as their CV might suggest.

[Wiedrock]

If I take a German Division in the Editor and make it "HUN" and make the TOE "HUN" and additionally make all the Elements "HUN", I do not see any diffeence to its combat performance as if it was a German one.
This is a Test concerning another topic, so some other things have been modified (Leader Ratings), look north of Königsberg/South of the Kurland pocket for the Testing Division. Attack it with the 3 adjacent Soviet CUs, some wins/some losses may occur. All of the results are only depending on the RNG at the end of combat and not on the Combat itself and individual element GER vs HUN performance (which is equal looking at HPE/FPE/DAM/DIS/DES numbers). So I do nto see a built in modifier from how I look at it. So I'd stick to your observation mostly cuased by trying to compare "real Divisions" with Reserve/Brigades - or "real HUN Division" which only on paper but not production-wise may look good.

23.8.5. Leadership, Experience and Morale and Combat Value Modifications

There are many factors that go into determining the modified combat values used in deciding the winner and loser in a ground battle. One of the most critical is the leader combat (mech or infantry) rating check.
A successful check can result in the CV of the combat unit being doubled. Several failed checks can result in the CV being halved. As with other leader checks, a failed check by one leader will allow the next leader in the chain of command to attempt a combat rating check, albeit at a reduced chance of success (15.5.3).

[chaos45]

Perhaps is a default axis allies take more losses esp if stacked with a German unit......who knows is alot of stuff undescribed in the rules on how it works or if a hardcoded penalty is in place.

HYLA had mentioned when i did a ground attack on a mixed stack the Romanians took massive losses while the German division hardly any....was abit odd....knocked down like 40% ToE on the romanians and not much to the Germans....was alot of sorties lol.

[Wiedrock]

HYLA had mentioned when i did a ground attack on a mixed stack the Romanians took massive losses while the German division hardly any....was abit odd....knocked down like 40% ToE on the romanians and not much to the Germans....was alot of sorties lol.

If you have the save, go and see the GA Mission reports and see the "Ground Losses" Tab. You may observe that each GA UNIT Mission picks one Division in a Hex to only target this one.
So you will either see all Elements being hit "Rum" or all "Ger" (if you did not mix the nation of SUs attached to the Divisions) from how far I know. So if you'd have 2 Rum and 1 Ger CUs in a Hex you'd expect to hit 2 times more Rum than Ger when doing enuff Missions.
Now guessing of additional factors follows:
Additionally the Detection Level may have an impact (may) and then there may be more like EXP/MOR/NM/AMMO/SUPPLIES ... having an impact - as said may.