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I am curious why British infantry units may only have an AP value of 14 or so when they have nearly 100 rifles, 8-10 Brens, a few Stens and a couple of Vickers MGs? By comparison I see German units in the AAR which have only 36 Kar 98s but have an AP value roughly double that of the British unit.

Something is wrong then. Want to check it out, which specific units do you refer too?

Keep in mind that in the scenariomaker the Aper and AArm don't change even if you give a unit 0 rifles, 0 smg's, 0 lmgs etc.
Aper and AArm values change if you change the % of estab.

Here is an example.

T Coy 1st Para BN in Arnhem has a starting strength of 134 men. The unit breaks down as 85 Lee Enfields, 33 Stens, 10 Brens, 3 2in mortars, 4 PIATs and 1 Vickers MG. This gives and APer rating of 20 and A-T rating of 14.

Now KG Weber which starts near Deelen Airfield and is described as a poorly trained and equiped unit hastily thrown together has the following. 90 Men with 80 Kar 98s, 6 MP40s, 4 MG 42s and 4 PzFaust. It has an APer rating of 21 and an A-T rating of 30.

Now the Kar 98 and the Lee Enfield were both bolt action rifles and should have a similar value, the MG 42 was superior to the Vickers and the Bren, but there were only 4 MG-42s comapred to 10 Brens and 1 Vickers, the Stens don't seem to be counted at all and neither do the 2in mortars. The Anti tank rating seems reasonable given the limitations of the PIAT versus German Armour.

So in this case the question is how can an Ad-hoc unit of rear echelon troops have an equal APer rating to a highly trained and motivated unit which has nearly 50% more troops? This is assuming unit cohesion is 100% also.

Sounds a little odd yes. Those MG42's stats probally compensate a lot.

In the gamedatabase, values of:
Indeed the bolt action rifles are equal, same for Stens and MP40's.
MG42 is superior to the Brens (Higher rof (factor 2.5) and longer reach)
Vickers MG is superioir to the MG42 (Higher rof (factor 1.2) and longer reach)

Hmm Dave, Steve? A higher rof for the Vickers then the MG42 (its rate of fire was only 1/3rd that of the MG 42 (~500/minute rather than 1500/minute up to 1800), it can fire longer bursts without overheating so it still has around 2/3rds to 3/5ths the firepower.


Those APer and AT ratings are only based on the weapons itselfs.
Those values will be modified by the troops. Parameters like training, experience, morale.
Since T coy has far better fitness, training, morale and experience I bet after those modifiers the Values are higher for the Para's then that they are for KG Weber.


Furthermore I see those values in the database:

T Coy 1st Para Bn has an inf of 120, recon value of 26
LW KG Weber has an inf value of 81, recon value of 9

To be honest I don't know what excactly "inf value" is and what it's effect in the game and in firefights is. Can anyone from PantherGames answer this?

<edit - need to confirm exactly what is used in calculating APerFP values.>

I'll take a look at the MG42 vs the Vickers. There are two versions of the MG42, the LMG and the HMG, where the LMG should be compared to the Bren or 30 cal and the HMG should be compared to the Vickers. Possibly the Vickers ROF should be reduced to the same as that of the MG42 LMG.

Inf/Recon/Engineer values are only used by the AI to determine force allocation and suitability for tasks, they are not used at all in combat resolution.

Regards
33

I've had a look at the weapon values in the estab. They are fine, Vickers MMG is the same as the light MG42 and slightly slower than the heavy MG42. Remember that the Vickers is a sustained-fire support weapon that must be deployed to engage, like the heavy MG42 and unlike the light MG42 which is a squad MG not a support MG and does not have to deploy to engage. It also is reasonable that belt-fed weapons will have a higher rate of fire than something like a Bren or BAR which is magazine-fed. Accuracy and range figures also look pretty reasonable to me with the lighter, non-tripod weapons being less accurate and shorter-ranged.

I have edited my post above - having checked back with Dave I'm not so sure exactly what goes into calculating APerFP. We'll look into it and see where those values are coming from exactly.

Regards
33