DLC 43 Orel

[monkspider]

Orel
General, Imported Core
Starting prestige 2055
After upgrades 12
Ending prestige 765
Marginal Victory, 16 o' 16

This battle poses some interesting dilemmas. Do you dare go on the offensive against a superior foe? How do you get all of your troops up north to the center and southern fronts/ This battle was unique in that I actually found using the rail transport feature to be useful. I railroaded a few panzers to the southern front to prevent a breakthrough and this turned out to be a wise move.

As you can see, I am living "paycheck to paycheck" in terms of my prestige but I think the overall trend has been in the right direction. My decision to settle for a marginal victory was largely based on a desire to limit losses and preserve prestige for the massive battle to come.

One other theme of this battle is the continuing rise of the Red Air Force. They really were kicking my ass in this one. I did eventually win out, I never felt my position was strong enough to go on massive bombing raids, and even one my of 14 strength FW190's was knocked down to 7 strength.

Overall, a marginal victory on this battle wasn't terribly difficult, there were a few scares but overall my defensive line behind the Oka river proved quite impenetrable.

[Longasc]

Orel (FM, default core)
1405 -> Start Prestige
150 -> at start, after repairs

First impression: Holy batman I am going to die due to lack of Prestige. I decided early to focus on 3 objectives only, behind the river.
I have several highly damaged units running behind the front lines, the T-34 go for the weaker units first. The Russian Airforce is very dangerous as well, and there are a few AA units too.

This is going to be tough, also due to Prestige issues.

[charonjr]

Manstein - imported core

27.7k prestige after reinforcements, upgrading 1 StuG IIIG to a Nashorn and buying a Me 410A - it will be interesting to see if the 24HA on the Nashorn is really worth the sacrifice in defense - I keep the other StuG around for now, it should be better on the defense.

Using a core light on infatry again.

I moved 3 Tiger and 2 artillery south, lets see if this is enough. Elsewhere I went on the offensive and cleared up the obstruction on the rails in the NW.

After the first turn I wished I had bought additional 10 FW 190As instead of 1 Me 410... geez, tons of Soviet planes I shot down 3 and damaged 2 more on turn 3, slowly turning the tide.

At turn 3 I start to cut south with 6 Tigers in order to cut off the advancing Soviet troops (sadly there is no line of supply system in this game ). But the buggers simply refuse to die, I need 2-3 units to kill one enemy, but the situation in the north looks fairly good now, the south and center less so.

When it became clear that the AI will just rush mindlessly towards the Italians in the south I send even more units into their back.

I really liked the Soviet Paras that I saw at turn 6, had to move some troops back to deal with them. Sadly the Soviet steamroller was not focussed on the southern edge of the map, so I was able to react without any problems.

Setukha and the airfield were taken at turn 7.

Took Novopetrovka and it looks like I either triggered the next wave of Lemmings around Pozdeevo or it was time for it anyway. Again the ugly problem of the AI mindlessly moving infantry up in trucks despite my units being right next to them rears its head. Well, at least there are lots of units and I have not formed a defensive line yet, so some might actually have a chance.

At turn 10 the forces around Pozdeevo were eliminated, but I will save taking it till the end (easier to kill respawn there).

Medvezkha falls at turn 11, now for some kill-farming.

7 units spawned, but with a concentrated force and good weather even getting rid of them on Manstein is no problem.

DV at 16/16 - 29.9k prestige before any repairs.

Fairly easy again with the imported core and I might have actually gained some prestige here. As I said I dislike the lemming-like behaviour of the AI, but I think nothing can be done about this for the scenario design. The Red Airfore put up a nice show and it took me a couple of turns to get things under control. I will buy at least 1 more fighter-bomber since a strong Soviet airforce seems to be the theme now (and this is good IMO). Under the current restrictions (AI) the scenario is OK IMO since it seems to be easier than the early 2 and might give people who are not swimming in prestige some points.

And the Nashorn packs a very nice punch, havent tried to use it against unspressed units since I was afraid about its fairly weak defense.

Another 5k prestige for finishing this one is nice, 34.9k prestige before repairs - 32.9k after, and I got my first 5star unit - a Stuka. So even without the DV prestige I would have roughly unchanged prestige.

[deducter]

Fairly easy again with the imported core and I might have actually gained some prestige here. As I said I dislike the lemming-like behaviour of the AI, but I think nothing can be done about this for the scenario design. The Red Airfore put up a nice show and it took me a couple of turns to get things under control. I will buy at least 1 more fighter-bomber since a strong Soviet airforce seems to be the theme now (and this is good IMO). Under the current restrictions (AI) the scenario is OK IMO since it seems to be easier than the early 2 and might give people who are not swimming in prestige some points.

There is a massive difference between an imported core with tons of prestige and the DLC43 East core. I was far from DV playing on Rommel, and I even lost two units. I played so carefully that I did not hit reinforcements except during deployment, so all of my units are still 3-4 stars.

I think the biggest thing that helps you is all those heroes, in conjunction with experience and overstrength. If the German army really was like yours historically, they would've marched to the Urals by 1942 and invaded the US in 1943...

I'm thinking that for these DLCs, there needs to be a prestige sink in the form of heroes. The idea is that upon gaining a hero, you are entered into a prompt for either accepting the hero for "x" prestige or declining it. The amount would increase for each hero for a unit, and would ideally be based upon the type of hero. For instance, the first hero for a unit might cost 300-500 prestige. The second hero would cost 1k-2k prestige, and the second 3-4k prestige. The prestige cost should depend in part on the type of hero too. You still don't get to choose your heroes, and you must have the prestige saved up to accept it. If you don't have the prestige or choose not to accept it, you lose that hero slot permanently. Obviously this idea needs an expansion to code for, and is only applicable to the DLCs as a way of massively increasing the difficulty.

This way, even if you are swimming in prestige, you can't get all these heroes for all your units. This makes units with heroes extra special, as opposed to going down the deployment screen and seeing heroes on every single unit.

[charonjr]

As mentioned in another thread I would prefer adding kills and heroes to the starting core.

Mainly two reasons for this:

1. People got used to the current hero system and a "nerf" does not tend to make people happy.
2. It is fairly realistic that pretty much all Wehrmacht units have seen some action at this point of time, completly green units (meaning kills here) seem fairly unlikely.
Oh, and a 3rd one, I think it would be fairly easy to add kills/heroes to the default core.

[deducter]

My proposal would be an option, like the supply/fog of war options. It could even be a "hidden" feature in gamerules.pzdat. Currently I think there is no way to mod such a feature. You can change the kill count for generating heroes, but there is no way to decline a hero. You can increase the kill count before seeing heroes to a very high number, but it wouldn't be the same effect as my proposal. There is no way that I am aware of that can delete a hero from a unit short of disbanding it. But then you lose the experience, the medals, and the history, which I love all of those other features.

I'm currently not of aware of how to add heroes to the default core, at least not in the scenario editor.

Again, my idea would be an option, probably not one used by most players. I think though it would increase the replayability of the game though. It's one thing for the Wehrmacht to be battle hardened, but it's another thing to see heroes in EVERY unit. I also think this feature is outside of the scope of the DLCs, but should be a feature in an expansion.

It is clear that playing on the starting core the scenarios are challenging, but having all these heroes make the scenarios easier. There is currently no way to reconcile this.

[Longasc]

I hit some 1 Prestige but I am up to some 200 and the enemy attack seems to be broken, but the Russian Airforce still makes me problems.

I lost a Recon unit and huge XP/star loss as I can only afford normal reinforcements.
Not sure if the scenario could use more initial prestige or a higher per turn income. At the moment it seems that I can re-conquer some objectives.

P.S. the Paratrooper attack is damn cool. They even captured a city and an important airfield, very nasty.

[Kerensky]

What I can't do:
Pre-placed heroes through the editor, or by any other means, simply not possible currently.

What I can do:
Modify the rules so that the first hero for this late DLC are awarded quickly(1-50 kills). This should not cause problems for people importing their heroes over from past DLC, but it should allow the pre-built CORE to catch up quicker, because the difference between an imported CORE of 40 units with average 2 heroes each vs 40 units with 0 heroes each is pretty significant.

I also pushed HARD to get a hero management system (mostly the ability so sack undesirable heroes), but it got voted down. Maybe one day, when the hero system gets a much needed overhaul we'll have this.

At the moment though, it is one of the major areas of Panzer Corps that needs improvement. Visibility of heroes on units, visibility of actual hero stats on unit statistic panels, heroes placed through the editor, heroes for other nations, et cetera.

[deducter]

I also pushed HARD to get a hero management system (mostly the ability so sack undesirable heroes), but it got voted down. Maybe one day, when the hero system gets a much needed overhaul we'll have this.

At the moment though, it is one of the major areas of Panzer Corps that needs improvement. Visibility of heroes on units, visibility of actual hero stats on unit statistic panels, heroes placed through the editor, heroes for other nations, et cetera.

Sounds great, I just hope in an expansion there will be lots of ability to customize the rules and to make the heroes easily moddable with tons of options. Something like an advanced hero management system with lots of potential options, like my proposal for heroes costing prestige, would be awesome.

[ivanov]

I also pushed HARD to get a hero management system (mostly the ability so sack undesirable heroes), but it got voted down. Maybe one day, when the hero system gets a much needed overhaul we'll have this.

Sounds good for me:) What a pity that I wasn't around when the voting was going on...

[charonjr]

I would love a hero management system, too, but as a bandaid lowering the kills needed for the first and maybe the second hero sounds good to me.

[Longasc]

Today ImageShack nagged me to log in/register, sigh!



Take a look at my situation.
I am winning - but then I encountered this armored counter-attack and lost a Panzer IV.
I must have lost 1 more core unit before, I think it was a recon. 2 more tanks are probably overextended and lost.

I am going to make a Minor Victory most probably but at the end of this scenario I hope for a massive prestige injection.
Hey cool that I go for a Minor and not for a DV, that's novel!

I think this scenario is quite fine if people start it with more Prestige after the upcoming changes to the Kharkov scenario and maybe needs some more Prestige per turn instead of a big boost in the beginning?

[deducter]

Yeah the Russian counterattacks are no joke anymore. Gone are the days when 2 T-34s and a cavalry count as a counterattack...

[BriteLite]

DLC43, Mission 3 Orel, Lt Difficulty, Prestige 3642, Default Core
MV 16/16, End Prestige 65
Units Lost: Core, 1x88mm Anti Air, 2xPzIV-G, 2xPzGrenadier
Aux Units Lost: 2x Wehr Inf, 3x Ital Inf, 1xM14/41, 1x47mm AT, 1xM40 75 da 18 SPG
No Captures

Orel was the hardest mission for me yet. During the placement phase I upgraded: All panzers became PzIV-G except 4 that were already Tigers; All regular infantry upgraded to PzGrenadier; Artillery upgraded as follows: 3x21cm Mrs18, 3x21cm Nblwrf 42, 1xStuH 42, 1Bf109 to FW 190, 1XJu87D to ME410. This left 532 prestige. Lost unit replacement and heavy losses kept the prestige till empty from turn 2 till the end. I kept with my plan to use elite replacements through out. After dealing with partisans and the mass of enemy armor in the east I turned south with the bulk of my force following the few units I had started moving to help the Italians on turn 2. The AI contested the advance every turn. Fuel shortages and resistance kept me from moving at optimal speed. Russian air was the strongest most numerous representation yet. The strength increase of enemy infantry is very evident. They are no longer sub par. Enemy armor is an ever present danger to all ground formations with the exception of full strength supplied Tigers.

The result is reflected in loss of many Italian units. I could not get to them fast enough to save them even after withdrawing to just east of the Oka River. Once again we have a well designed, enjoyable if at times frustrating scenario. DLC43 also continues to exhibit many historical parallels. The para drop was a nice touch that caused a few problems. Using rail transport helps if you can keep the line clear. I should have dedicated more force to do so.

[Longasc]

Yup I forgot to use the railroad, this could have saved the southern objectives from getting conquered at all and would have made things considerably easier.

[Longasc]

Marginal Victory 16/16, 227 Prestige

The two tanks of the previous screenshot got lost and I am 4 units below the core maximum. I could have won this decisive, I was already surrounding the final two objectives. I think using the railroad more and earlier would have allowed for a decisive victory.

The scenario is wonderful, spot on. Very interesting map to play. I like the mix of defense and counter-attack. The StuGs got to show what they can do when fending off the final Russian attack.
Prestige complaint: I think this is nothing new and people already said it several times, for such an intense battle not enough Prestige. I was often below 100 Prestige or down to almost zero despite only regular replacements throughout the entire scenario.

Edit: The AI really likes to take on weaker tanks. Marders make excellent T-34 bait, as the odds are pretty even which makes the T-34 attack them.
Edit 2: Pic & good night! http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/7531/orel43end.jpg

[Mountaineer]

I enjoyed the parachute assault, it really caused problems. I also like the counter-attacks, it makes you cautious about going into a pursuit if you know that the enemy has a reserve.

Where does the names of the scenario appear after you have started?

Will you add the DLC campaign trees to the library?

[billmv44]

General, imported 1942 DLC Beta Core.

Is this the point in the war where the Germans said "uh oh". The Red army is aggressive and has much better material to back it up.

I decided to make a stand in the north with my 2 tigers and send faster forces south (after clearing out the partisans). I fairly easily smashed the Russian attack in the north, but the Italians were getting hammered. After stopping the northern attack, I began a sweep south with my strongest forces (Tigers and SE Tanks). The big counter attack by the Russians in the south was quite a surprise. I was just able to crush it and get the DV on the last turn. The paratroopers were a nasty surprise. Well done Kerensky! This was very challenging. I came out with over 7k prestige. I have a feeling I'm going to need every bit of it for Kursk south.

No issues with game play at all.

[tmgiles1]

Lt level, standard core, starting prestige 1000 after rearmament, ending 70.

Marginal victory, 16 turns.

I thought this was a great scenario, it kept me guessing. After dispatching the northern attack, I headed south, took out the southern attack and headed east. I didn’t get far with the Soviet counter. I lost a Tiger and a Stug. The paratroopers was a great idea, fortunately I had two infantry units and a Stug B there to take care of that. The partisans at the rail lines was good too, it took me a few moves to get everybody I wanted down to the Italian lines. All in all I really liked the flow, it changed several times with Soviet attacks and myself trying to figure out strategy.

[tmgiles1]

I think campaign trees in the library is a great idea.