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!