Matrix Games Forums

Elefantinho mentioned editing the game in a previous post so i figured i'd let you guys know i'v spent the last 2 months working on a tank stat realism mod for 1941 pbem. i'v looked up a few good websites on ww2 armour and plus used combat mission:barbarossa to berlin to come up with some realistic stats, but i havn't started entering data with editwir yet so i'm sure that's at least a couple more months.

all prices are now done in relation to other tanks being built at the time, and now making heavy tanks (especially for germany) costs way more than med tanks (for pbem purposes). i made very few gameplay consessions - all (except the marder II/III) are the actual stats. i ain't gonna bother with the aircraft for a while, if at all. (then again, if the
aircraft stats are as skewed as the tanks, mabe i should look into it later!)

basically i researched armour thickness for all vehicles in mm and modified the # according to slope. i then rounded it up to the nearest cm for the wir defense stat. for attack i used the vehicle's average gun armour penetration in mm for 100m and 500m, then rounded it up to the nearest cm. i also reduced the cost of both side's med tanks slightly since both sides have the same powerful guns but less armour! and who can argue with more tanks!

i could explain more, but i'll wait for comments to roll in first. there is 1 new tank - the sov t-34/57. they were never produced, but (off the top of my head) at the beginning of the war thats the t-34 they wanted to produce with the high velocity 57mm gun. the only problem was no factories were tooled yet to make the 57mm gun and they wanted tanks NOW so they went with the already plentiful 76.2mm. but who says if any player doesn't want to go the different route they can't take the 4 weeks of production hit and get the better gun! and they ain't cheap...

man, this site doesn't allow .rtf files! so i have to give you guys a crappy txt file. sry!


bibliography

combat mission:barbarossa to berlin
words do not describe how incredable this game is

http://www.panzerworld.net/
click tables and stats, then armour and arty

http://www.onwar.com/tanks/
wickedly detailed tank stats

http://users.swing.be/tanks.edito/3398.html#207207
good production info

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/ ... ztabd.html
found some missing info here

http://www.wwiivehicles.com/html/ussr/guns.html
http://www.battlefield.ru/guns/defin_4.html
some russian gun penetration tables

[&o] Great job! Some initial comments:
- PzKpfw-IVF: attack seems very low, so I assume the PzKpfw-IVF/2 goes with the PzKpfw-IVG.
- The Marder II now upgrades to both Elefant and Nashorn, the Nashorn to Jpz-IV/70 and Jagdpanther. I'd leave the Elefant and Jagdpanther out of any upgrade path.
I'll try to check the German side in more details later.

Just out of curiosity: what definition you use to distinguish the Marder II and III? According to my bible (Encyclopedia of German Tanks in WW2 by Peter Chamberlain) the Marder II has a Pz-II chassis, the Marder III a Pz-38(t) chassis and both exist with the 7.62 cm PaK36(r) and 7.5 cm PaK40 guns, leading to four variants: SdKfz 131, 132, 138 and 139. Other sources however distinguish the Marder II and III based on the gun. What's your opinion?

thanks for the kind words!

Pz IVf - yes, that is the original with the short barreled 75mm. the f/2 came out march '42 and the g in may '42. i noticed i didn't change the IVg to 3/42 in relation to the f/2 so it's now changed. the rest of the Pz IV series has the same velocity gun and armour so the pz IV only goes to that IVg version.

the upgrade paths i screwed with for fun and probrably won't change much. the last one was supposed to be marder III, not II. overall i think i did it because as it stands one of them is built for 3 years, but that doesn't matter anyways.

as far as i can tell there were 2-3 versions of each marder, and the initial version was usually better armoured. i just used the best one for the stats (retooled sov 76.2, i think). however the real new stats for the marder II is atk-14 def-4, and the marder III atk-14 def-5. i decided there's no way anybody's ever going to build the marder II if it's the same price as the III but only 1 less power so for gameplay i added +1 to the marder III atk, bringing it's power close to the StuG IIIf/g at the same price but with much better tank killing power and less def. for the marder II i made it cost 2, so i reduced atk and def by -1 to make it your cheap AT alternative (you can build 1/3 more per turn than the III). i'm sure it takes big losses in battle, but it still can kill t-34s and kv-1's easily!

i guess i can note that i have the jgpz IV/70 and not the IV/48 - the IV/48 has identical stats to the StuG IIIg so why bother including it! too bad germany wasted their time building other TD's, as the jgpz IV seemed like a superb tank killer probrably for cheaper than all the rest! and it looks cool too! (the jgpz IV is the TD in my new cool icon!)

also i combined the kv-85 and the is-I because they actually only made 100 or so of each! i figured i'd combine 2 three month production periods to 1 six month period.

i had the stats in an .rtf file with the sov and german units differentiated but in the .txt they are no longer so, so mabe tonight i'll give a list with the units seperated by country.

Pz IVf - yes, that is the original with the short barreled 75mm. the f/2 came out march '42 and the g in may '42. i noticed i didn't change the IVg to 3/42 in relation to the f/2 so it's now changed. the rest of the Pz IV series has the same velocity gun and armour so the pz IV only goes to that IVg version.

As I thought.

the upgrade paths i screwed with for fun and probrably won't change much. the last one was supposed to be marder III, not II. overall i think i did it because as it stands one of them is built for 3 years, but that doesn't matter anyways.

Let's discuss. I'd like the idea of having the Pz-38(t) upgrading to Marder III and then to Hetzer.

as far as i can tell there were 2-3 versions of each marder, and the initial version was usually better armoured. i just used the best one for the stats (retooled sov 76.2, i think). however the real new stats for the marder II is atk-14 def-4, and the marder III atk-14 def-5. i decided there's no way anybody's ever going to build the marder II if it's the same price as the III but only 1 less power so for gameplay i added +1 to the marder III atk, bringing it's power close to the StuG IIIf/g at the same price but with much better tank killing power and less def. for the marder II i made it cost 2, so i reduced atk and def by -1 to make it your cheap AT alternative (you can build 1/3 more per turn than the III). i'm sure it takes big losses in battle, but it still can kill t-34s and kv-1's easily!

Don't want to depress you and make life complicated but there were actually five versions of Marder II and III: SdKfz 131 (7.5 cm PaK40/2 on Pz-II), 132 (7.62 cm PaK36(r) on Pz-II), 139 (7.62 cm PaK36(r) on Pz-38) and two versions of SdKfz 138 (7.5 cm PaK40/2 on Pz-38H or M). See my comments in the next mail.

i guess i can note that i have the jgpz IV/70 and not the IV/48 - the IV/48 has identical stats to the StuG IIIg so why bother including it! too bad germany wasted their time building other TD's, as the jgpz IV seemed like a superb tank killer probrably for cheaper than all the rest! and it looks cool too! (the jgpz IV is the TD in my new cool icon!)

I fully agree. The whole Pz-IV story for Panzerjägers or Stugs is a mess to sort out. What was there is the following:
- SdKfz 167: the "Stug-IV" with a 7.5 cm StuK40/L48: 31 converted + 1.108 produced.
- SdKfz 162: the "Jpz-IV" with a 7.5 cm PaK39/L48: 769 produced.
- SdKfz 162/1: the "Pz-IV/70" with a 7.5 cm PaK42/L70: 1.228 produced.
IMO the first one can go under StuG, the other two can be combined as Pz-IV/70.

More comments, well, you asked for it. And they might bore most readers to death. Just that everybody knows, I'm not claiming to be an expert at all. But here we have a guy that has spent a lot of time on something that might be worthwhile for a lot of us, so I think at least he deserves some constructive comments. I once started something similar for German armour and aircraft, but I gave up. So I have only respect for someone that shows more determination…

• From an upgrade perspective let's base the distinction between Marder II and III on chassis, not on guns. So both were produced with the 7.62 cm PaK36(r) and the 7.5 cm PaK40 and should therefore have the same attack strength of let's say 14.
• Both Marder II and III should be available only in April'42 when conversion of the PzKpfw-II to Marder II and production of the Marder III started.
• The reduction of attack strength from 15 to 13 when upgrading Marder III to Hetzer seems strange. I'm not at all an expert on guns but as far as I could check the performance of the PaK39/L48 (Hetzer) and the PaK40/L46 (later models of the Marder III) is pretty equal. Sure, the PaK36(r) was better, but by I guess after 1942 these guns must have been in short supply in Germany. My suggestion is therefore to increase the attack strength of the Hetzer to 14 also.
• The Elefant was actually produced in April and May'43. Considering the fact that until refitted after Kursk they were very vulnerable in defense, let's postpone the availability date to May or June'43.
• For the Pz-III series I'd combine the Ausf. L and M, they come too close after each other in the game. And I'd introduce the Ausf. N with its 7.5 cm KwK/L24 as a very cheap tank for close support.
• For the Panzer IV series I'm missing the PzKpfw-IVh and PzKpfw-IVj, while more than 5.000 where built. The Ausf. H was equiped with the KwK40/L48, which was a small improvement over the KwK40/L43 of the Ausf. G. In addition both the Ausf. H and J had additional armour...
• The strength of Panther versus Tiger is remarkable. I know the 7.5 cm gun of the Panther outclassed the 8.8 cm of the Tiger, but on the defense side I'm not sure. Didn't the Tiger have 100mm and the Panther 80mm armour? Still, the Panther is very expensive, almost twice the price of a T-34/85….
• You're harsh on the Tiger II in terms of costs. Just a gut feeling, but can be put down from 12 to 10 or 11, I think. And it's part of a standard upgrade path.
• Especially for all those who think the Elefant is appearing to early and/or is too powerful or too cheap: I still don't see my favorite?!?!? [;)] Official name is "Selbstfahrlafette L/61". Just a 12.8 cm K40L/61 gun on a Tiger chassis of which two were produced early 1942. You'd not need Elefants, Nashorns, Jagdpanthers or anything since this gun is better than anything else produced on both sides until 1945 and, with equal ammo, even outclasses the Jagdtiger's 12.8 cm gun. [8D]

It is not boring at all, I dare to say

I think it's great that the game developes and this looks like a huge project if you include aircraft, I just wonder what factors went into the original design decisions. The Panther has better attack strength than the Tiger, but is this more than just ballistics. Is it because the Tiger had a slow turning turret and despite the power of the 88, other tanks could get off more shots. How much does speed count in defence, or turret layout (early tanks had commanders acting as gunners reducing the effectiveness of tanks, which had good stats, but bad performance). The T34 and KV1 were much better tanks then most other models, but especially in the early years had few radios. No good having a better gun if you don't know where to point it, or having good armour if you can't turn to face an enemy that you haven't been warned about. This is a stategic game and I wonder what factors should be taken into account to measure the overall combat effectiveness in attack and defence of these vehicles. I haven't got any answers I just wonder how you draw the line in these decisions, remembering that this is not a tactical simulation[&:].

hmm, mabe realism mod isn't the right word for what i'm trying to do, but i'll explain what i have in mind.

well, i'd like to delve deeper into truly representing each tank with exhaustive stats, but having played combat mission:barbarossa to berlin and such, having the bare bones single digit 2 # system for tank stats in WiR is a generic proposition at best. my intent in changing the stats is not to faithfully and exhaustingly recreate the tank stats down to their finest details, but to just take the actual cold numeric stats of tanks and then price them all in relitive fashion for the hardcore PBEM factory fiddlers. to me the actual stats were not the most important part, but making sure each vehicle availible unique in it's own way and priced accordingly to make diff vehicles attractive to diff players was very important. but i only changed the actual real hard stats when i absolutly had to, and off the top of my head only the marders were changed from their original hard stats - for example:

- - - - - - - - - - - atk def cost
3.3 Marder II ---- 14 3 4
actual Marder II - 14 4 2
my Marder II ----- 13 3 2 ->power 16

3.3 Marder III ---- 14 4 4
actual Marder III - 14 5 3
my Marder III ----- 15 5 3 ->power 20

actual StuG-IIIf -- 13 8 3 ->power 21

as it stands right now in 3.3, marders are not worth building since StuG IIIg's are better and cheaper. and why ever build marder II's when marder III's are the same price? those stats are for people who don't screw with the factories and keeping it 'historical'. but i myself will take the value for the money over historical realism anytime ingame since i wanna win! so, with research, it seems the marders are still very similer but i wanted to make them diff prices so they are each valuable in their own way and i may not be so inclined to change them now and lose the 4 weeks of factory down time because the unit is now worth it's price. yes, it's a little gamey, but the marders are the only vehicles i did that to so we'll see how it goes! plus if they doubled the number unit costs are divided from to get max factory capacity you could really fine tune the vehicle costs, but i can't do that so i gotta stick with the generic single digit costs.

notice in the txt file how germany always has a vehicle that can take out the best sov tanks way before vice-versa. '42 is a real lean year for sovs tank wise - t34's are cheap to make, but the german tanks pretty much fully out-class any sov ones! the sov's don't get their 'tiger' (IS-I) for more than a year after! i made tanks cheaper, but i think there's gonna be more casualties so it should balance out. only testing will reveal the results, i guess. i'm sure there will be no shortage of volenteers!!

as far as adding new vehicles perhaps i opened a can of worms with that one as there's so many possibilities, but for now i'm going to keep it as is until i actually input the crap - that's the REAL work!! but it'l be very interesting to take votes on new possibilities later! i included the t-34/57 only because it was in CM:BB and didn't see other german rare vehicles in there - i'll have to look into that! plus the germans already have a great many possibilities and generally superior tanks so they don't need new vehicles as much. i just may pull the /57 off until after playtesting, just to keep the units as is.

as for the price of the panther, it's priced according to its power relitive to the Pz IVg +1 (german heavies are deliberatly expensive, but i may reduce the cost of the panther to 6 since i guess it IS a med tank). you can check on my links above and see for yourself why the panther has better armour than the tiger - the tiger has about 110-115mm af armour but much of it is vertical. the panther has less armour, but is very sloped. i just looked at the math and there it was!

NEW ATTACHMENT. much more organized!

Thanks for the extra info. I was a bit dumb, but I see what you are working towards. The more the game does what we each want, the better it is. Still amazing that WIR can be so flexible, makes you wonder how Gary Grigsby managed to do so much will the original design.[:)]. Watching with interest.

The Tiger should have higher defense value than Panther :
Armor was thicker (not sloped) but side and back armor was much thicker than Panther .
Production cost for Tiger is too low and Panther too high - there should be at least a 2-point differenc between them (6 Panther and 8 Tiger or 7/9)

Turretless tanks - Jagdpanzers/Tank destroyers and assault guns - should have a penalty as in the original game - usually 1 point attack removed compared to tanks with the same gun
-> The whole tank had to be moved while tanks only need to move the turret

Armor of the "Big" Tigers is a little low - should be near JS-III level

As already mentioned the PZ-IVf2/IVg mainly use the 75L43 gun and from H it was always the 75L48 .
The same with Stug-IIIf - primarily used was a 75L43 gun and f8/g and later used a 75L48 (Hetzer used it,too)

thanks for the comments!

as for all armour stats i used front only. i may one day revise the armour to be more encompassing, but again 1 # representing the entire armour of a tank is generic at best. i used 2 diff sources to calculate each tank's front armour, and the math doesn't lie! when using only the front armour my thought is that's the thickest armour any gun has to go through so that's the # to use - side armour is thinner regardless of tank so increasing front armour because of thin vulnerable side armour doesn't make a lot of sense to me at theis point! i will, however, definatly look at side armour in a future update of these stats, especially since it's being brought up!

as far as construction costs go both sides have their primary med tank for dirt cheap - the Pz IV and T-34. everything else's cost is based on their power above that. historical production has nothing to do with new costs - in 3.3 you can build whatever tanks you want and put them where you want, so if you want to build powerful tanks it's gotta cost you. who ever builds Pz IV's once the panther comes in? not me! but now you'd be a fool to stop producing Pz IV's because they will fill out your tank korps faster than heavies! i gave germany a penalty for heavies, but not the sovs as their heavies come in a year later then the german ones. it does seem harsh, but i want to test it like this first, then reduce costs. but i don't know what germany's industrial capacity is like in '43/44 playing the '41 campaign, and i can't see the sov's having more factories than germany at that time! i guess i can note this mod is (for now) for the '41 campaign ONLY! i'd have to do additional research for '42 on!

the -1 atk for tank destroyers thing makes sense - i will likely implement it!

i know there are newer guns for later Pz IV's, but the increase is insignifigant according to my stats. what WOULD change the gun stats is if i averaged penetration for 100m, 500m, and 1000m instead of 100m and 500m - gun power would go down quite a bit! it would be more realistic too! i will look into that for my update!

since i'm going with what i already researched, if you think something should be changed the only way to convince me to change my mind is to include multiple sources to back your claim. i'm using cold math for all calculations so i need the #'s to see if things ARE different!

keep the comments coming! i'm glad people are this interested!!

The "old" stats had a +1 attack value for IVh+(15 compared to 14 on IVg) tanks and Stugs(14 for StuG-IIIg(15 -1 for no turret)) and that would be OK so .
The Panther is a "Big" Medium Tank and should cost a sufficient number but it was a lot easier to produce than Tiger-1 .

4(IVf2/g/h) 6(Panther) 8(Tiger) should be Ok for cost if you upgrade Tiger's armor

The tanks and their Values should represent the whole tank armor not only front Armor - it's a "little" bit unrealistic .

But most of your values look very good

P.S. : I very often use PZ-IV of any type in Western/Italian front as well as italian and abolete tanks and I still maintain some factories in PZ-IV production

so i did it all quickly last night and it turned out to be easier than i thought to do! the only problem is that the game didn't like the new units added to the end at all - every single army/korps in the game had a StuG IIIf icon at the very end of the unit picture list with 200 StuGs - i didn't try to see if they were there in an attack, but anyhow just being there isn't good! i will have to use the excel pgm (i have it downloaded) but i gotta find excel first since i don't have it. in the meantime i guess i'll keep playing with the editwir and look for other editing pgms.

the math for the panther after slope for the front is 125mm, and i rounded up to 13cm. i'v looked a little into side armour and i would agree that mabe i can add a little def to all sov heavy tanks and some of the german heavies based on their thick side armour. i'll keep ya posted...

i did, however figure out how to make 1 tiny change to my own original obwir - i fixed the Pz II icon! the only thing is i wanted to put it up for you guys, but this post doesn't allow anything except txt and gif files. so, if you want to do it yerself:

Go to the WIR program directory.
Start the editwir.exe program
Type L (load data)
Type X (complete scenario file)
Type OBWIR as filename followed by Enter
Type T (tank type)
Goto tank 1 (Pz-IIf)
Type H (graphic symbol)
Type 0 (zero) for the new symbol followed by Enter
Type Q (quit)
Type S (store data)
Type X (complete scenario file)
Type OBWIR as filename followed by Enter

Regarding the Pz.Kpfw. IV confusion.

The Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. F had the 7.5cm. Kw.K. L/24 gun.

The first 200 Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. G had the 7.5cm. Kw.K. L/43 gun, after which it was changed to the 7.5cm. Kw.K. L/48 gun, which was retained for the duration of the war. The Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. F2 and Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. G was the same vehicle!

ok, i think i'm getting close to the final version of stats. due to the popular request for side armour i added +1 def to the KV's and SU-152, and +2 def for all IS/ISU vehicles.

on germany's side i really tweaked, putting the panther down to 12 from 13 def, and giving the tiger +2 def to 14 and +1 extra def to 15 because the tiger(7) is +1 more expensive than the panther(6) but both had power of 30 so i made the tiger more worth your while for the price. the elefant, jagdtiger, and konigstiger all got +2 def as well.

instead of penalizing german jpz's for no turret i gave all german tanks +1 atk, except the Pz II, Pz IV w/the short 75, since that was not for AT purposes, and the italian tanks/R-35.

i did give both versions of the pz38 +1 atk as well - good idea?

i penalized all sov TD's -1 for not having a turret. sov tanks stayed the same, except the KV-2 went down -1 atk for having an artillery gun and to make it less attractive pricewise. sov tank prices went down, but those german tanks are gonna be killing them in droves now that they are less armoured!

i have a couple naming issues:
ISU or JSU?
ferdinand or elefant? - especially since they were renamed the elefant after they were pulled out of the eastern front, then sent to italy. in our games i'm not so sure they would be pulled out so soon!

Regarding wheter ti use ISU or JSU.

'ISU' (as well as 'IS' and 'KB') is the spelling in Cyrillic letters. If you use these designations, you should also use the Cyrillic 'CCCP' for the Soviet Union, and 'MOCKBA' for Moscow, etc. This would quickly get tiresome, and would create problem when the Cyrillic equivilant isn't a 'normal' letter in the Latin alphabeth (in fact, the Cyrillic alphabeth is closer in resemblence to the original Latin alphabeth, but that's another story ).

'JSU', 'JS', 'KV', 'SSSR', etc. are the Latin letter equivilants. These will be easier to use, and they will all be available with most character sets. Notice that I use SSSR as the exact letter translation, rather than the more common 'USSR', as the USSR was also the designation for the Ukranian state under Soviet rule (YCCP for those interested in the Cyrillic equivilant).

Mixing them will only create havoc. Writing 'ISU' or 'IS', unless you're a Russia (in which case it can be excused), only shows that you don't really know why you're writing it that way.

Regarding the name change, for your reference, it was ordered by Hitler in November 1943, and officially changed in February 1944, and would most likely have been carried even if they had not been withdrawn (as the name change had nothing to do with the modifications).

ok, i'm about 2/3 of the way through editing and it's going very well! i thought i'd mention that i'v changed all the StuG Bn's into JPz Bn's so that you may now upgrade StuG IIIb's to IIIf's and g's manually. sad i had to do it since i can't rename those ones back to StuG Bn's, but it's nice to have control of upgrading! i'm now going through factories and trying to make a more accurite upgrade tree. i guess i'm going to call this a PBEM historical mod as opposed to realism mod - makes more sense!

You really love that game, hm? Me too, it was my first "real hardcore" wargame, and i
like (and play it) to this day. Thanks to Matrix who keep it alive[&o]!

I think a very clever[:'(] way to show the difference between light/mid/heavy tanks
would be a bonus-reduction of readiness for the heavy-class-units when plotted...
to show the difficulty of moving those heavy stuff. To my knowlegde the heavy tanks
had not the influence in combat that you could expect... because theyr weight caused
low speed, over-average-often breakdowns and things like that. But, this wouldn´t
be that realistic, too... a JS-II (for example) is a completely different design as a Tiger II
(lighter and with much more armor-slope) and seemed to be more reliable. On the other
hand: it would be a bonus to build more mid-weight-tanks.

Just my two pence!


Greetings, Wuotan.

...and i am afraid it would collide with some hardcoded rules. Would like to know
how "overstreched" the game machine is in the recent version.