Does troop quality perhaps not matter enough?

[Uncle_Joe]

Hey all,

Ok, I'm playing some scenarios made to recreate some of the battles found in Harold Coyle's book Sword Point. The book postulates a Russian (Cold War era) invasion of Iran followed by US intervention to stop them.

Anyways, I'm playing out a Russia vs Iran scenario (Russian Assault). The Iranians have some Pasdaran and miscellaneous @ss and trash.

One thing I've noticed is just how incredibly often these low-grade troops are hitting with AT weaponry. RPG-7 hits out to 5-6 hexes are not uncommon and within 3, they are lethal (usually a 40% chance of a hit or so with multiple shots coming in).

Note that these Iranians are under constant bombardment from large calibur mortars, SP guns, and even some BM-21s. There is plenty of direct fire being thrown their way too. Granted they are entrenched, but it is mostly open ground or hills.

IMO, Infantry AT weaponry should be FAR less effective at the longer ranges, especially while under fire. With any form of suppression, accuracy should drop off pretty dramatically and when 'pinned', it should be non-existanct at the longer ranges. Obviously better troops should have lesser penalties, but these 48-55 quality troops are just seeming to hit FAR too often under combat conditions.

One other observation is that dismounting vehicles seems to carry too high of a vulnerability penalty IMO. Getting out of the vehicle within range of any enemy unit seems suicidal, even when fired on head-on. Shouldnt these guys be using the vehicle for cover and hitting the deck as they dismount under fire? It almost seems like they walk out upright and at shoulder arms to be killed off.

This is especially problematic given the smaller squad sized in modern vehicles. Often a very few casualties are enough to leave the squad pinned for the rest of the game, rendering them useless overall. If the penalties for a few losses are going to be high, I'd like to see a little more survivability when dismounting. Right now its often better to just remain mounted, something that I dont think is SOP.

Of course you can dismount far back from the enemy lines and hump it into battle, but the vulnerability seems to force you to do so much farther from the attack than in reality (a single MG position can make a platoon that tries to dismount within 800m combat ineffective..at those ranges, it should be fairly easy to use the vehicle as cover or practise a more defensive dismount).

Anyways, I just wanted to throw out some food for thought on these issues. I've been enjoying SP for quite some time and appreciate all of the effort that has gone into this release.

Thanks for your time!

[Pyros]

Hi,

Always when unloading in a hot zone have in mind:

1. Unload the passenger near the enemy but under cover (either a hill or trees or buildings)
2. If none of the above exist, then create a smoke cover in front of the unloading location (at least a lot of average units won't be able to fire through the smoke cover

cheers,

[SCAJolly]

I'd have to agree with you here. The skills or the hit percentage among a lot of AT teams often seems to reach ridicolous heights. In particular I dislike the fact that while an entire infantry platoon has been shot to pinned, the AT team in that platoon still advances, and remains as good as undetected! I'd like to see some more AI teamwork!
Still, you are able to do the same to the enemy, and it should perhaps only be realistic that your enemy's a sneaky bastard. God knows how many APCs I've lost to sneaky commies.

[Shadowcougar]

I have had a similar issue into I fixed my tactics. I use my tanks to prep the area I wish to dismount in and always use smoke from the APC to cover my troops.

AT teams are tough to effect. They are small, hard to hit and I havemt checked but may have a higher experence. They are or should be trained. I think in the Sovirt Army the AT teams was one of the groups that got someting other than the follow me training. Them the mortar and commo teams where the important groups. Any one can take a AKM and charge forward

[desh44]

Speaking on troop quality....one thing I have noticed in the games is the number of casualties it takes to break units. I have played games where a squad takes 6 casualties in a single turn retreats and the next turn it is back in the fight. I have been lowering the morale values in preferences on both sides so there is not this tendency to fight to the last man.

[Uncle_Joe]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the input. And yep, I've used varieties of the tactics posted to differing degrees of success. But I still feel that there shouldnt be any additional vulnerability implemented for dismounting (at least not from an APC).

As for the AT weapon, I'm not even talking about the little 2 man roving AT teams. These are the inherent RPGs in the standard Sections or Squads. So EVERY one of the little buggers is blasting APCs (and lesser protected tanks) to oblivion at over 200m!

It takes a certain degree of discipline and training to engage enemy armor in the first place at those ranges and while under fire, it should be a really low chance of a hit. Right now dismounted infantry seem to control too large of an area against armor even with no dedicated AT weapons (there are no ATGMs, RRs, or other such things that I've encountered).

Again, for high-quality troops, yeah, they should be up and firing and hitting at the longer ranges, but for the rabble and lesser trained troops, they shouldnt even be trying to engage armor at those ranges let alone scoring solid kills like they do. For the closer ranges, lethality shouldnt drop off as much for suppression, but it should definately factor in a LOT more at the farther ranges.

[nosrac]

desh44 said:
Speaking on troop quality....one thing I have noticed in the games is the number of casualties it takes to break units. I have played games where a squad takes 6 casualties in a single turn retreats and the next turn it is back in the fight. I have been lowering the morale values in preferences on both sides so there is not this tendency to fight to the last man.

i agree about this robo-troop morale. i was fighting egypt vs israel(me) and the egypt infantry (65 exp. avg) would get blasted by he and small arms and the next turn the remaining 2 or 3 men would be "pinned" or "ready". blasting away. i was expecting a banzi charge!!!

[BigJim]

One thing to remember about all Steel Panthers type games is that they are suppression games, that is why infantry fires on your tanks with no hope to kill it, it does however (in this game) supppress the tank making his next shots not as good if cannot rally. so always use tranport that can fire on any potential threat before unloading troops so as to suppress them and thereby prevent getting them killed. Spotting is another problem in these games the AI tends to remain unspotted no matter how times he fires, unless you have troops with good spotting ability within LOS of his firing troops.

This code was written awhile ago and while the guys here have done a good job with it, it will always have IMHO "quirks" that Grigsby wrote in (the orignal programmer) which I fear can never be totally removed.