the_iron_duke wrote:Are you saying all of the stats look good for the Fusilier and Soviet Scout Cavalry?
I think so, yes. It's a bit hard to judge, because I'm not that familiar with how deducter designed his infantry units.
Internet on flamethrowers vs tanks
'Depending on where they hit the tank'... Erm. A lot of theoretical ifs and buts, if you don't mind me saying. Most tanks are not particularly vulnerable to flame weapons, but it heavily depends on the construction and use. The more modern Cold War-era tanks are very resistant, because they are usually designed with NBC-protection. So I'll try to comment on the Second World War machinery.
They talk of igniting engine compartments, which is not as easy as it sounds: despite the large grills on the back of most tanks, these are not automatically good targets for disabling the engine. For a quick, effective attack, the engine would need to be set on fire. But those grills are usually there for cooling, and the fresh air that is drawn into the engine is drawn through the personnel compartment. So it would overheat the engine after a while, but not 'choke' it quickly as they imply.
And an engine compartment is hard to set on fire, because it is designed to have a very hot & big piece of metal in the very close presence of flammable liquids; that's sort of how it works... Any fuel/oil leaks could cause it to catch fire, and this was the fate of some early Panther tanks, so pouring in a few litres of burning fuel will not automatically cause it to burn up. It will after some time, but most opponents don't sit still while you spray them with liquids, which seems to be agreed upon.
Sure, open hatches would be very vulnerable when targeted, but open hatches mean that the crew will see you coming more easily. And the only flamethrowers with that amount of range were vehicle-mounted; 50-75 yards would be difficult for even the Crocodile Churchill. Realistically, 30 yards. I've read some wartime quotes, and all seem to point that the flamethrower was effective vs. static, small, point targets, but the lack of info about anti-tank use might indicate how effective it really was vs. tanks. In an emergency, it was very usable, but not much more than an anti-tank hand grenade.
End of rant.
In general, I'm not sure how useful good HA stats are for infantry. It doesn't help them much when caught by tanks in open terrain and as infantry they already have good advantage against hard targets when in close terrain, so are unlikely to be attacked by them (well, much less likely in multiplayer than with the single-player A.I.).
Yep. That's why I had to try some theories, because I don't see the clear reasoning behind the high HA. I think the problem is compounded by the fact that SA and HA must use the same initiative; so the attacks are using the same 'range', which is not very logical. The Panzerfaust might have been able to take out a IS tank, it only had a very short range (but longer than most flamethrowers!
)
But even a light infantry unit could engage 'soft' enemy units from much further away with mortars, machineguns, rifles, etc. So there is a more limiting relationship between their HA and INI than their SA and INI, I think. So the higher HA of the engineers would be easier to explain if their INI is reduced, otherwise you would have to assume those flamethrowers had as much range as their machineguns, or something equally silly.
Now, INI is not just range, but it is one of the main factors in combat effectiveness. And IMHO engineers should be generally less effective in head-to-head combat, because they are specialized in short-range assaults on entrenched positions. So they should come out worse if they were to meet an HW infantry on open ground.
For horses, not quite so. One can get a transport to move like a horse and a horseshoe shows up graphically as the movement type. But in the user interface and with the movement radius it shows as a truck.
Thanks for checking, so it's probably hard-coded. I mustn't forget in the future to check if the Soviet Corps beta has this same problem.
VPaulus has given me permission to use his bicycle unit and modify it to a German unit (I think it's Hungarian at the moment). It should be straightforward, but I have a question about animation (gunfire). I would need to pick an existing one from another unit? How easy is it to create a new one? I was planning on swapping the infantry for two of the three guys in the in the Wehrmacht Inf graphic. But the muzzle flashes don't quite fit with an existing unit, I think (the kneeling shooter of the Fallschirmager unit is similar but is shooting from the hip, while the Wehrmacht kneeling guy is shooting from the shoulder). Any ideas?
The efx.pzdat file (in the \Panzer Corps\Graphics folder) uses 'offsets' to tell the program where exactly an animation must be played; PzC recycles many animations, so for a tank with a very long barrel, the animation gets shifted outwards. The offset can be different for left- or right-facing attacks. You can easily pick and rename any existing animation and rename a sound to be played alongside it.
The animations for the bridge engineers and the cavalry might be usable for you: those animations are made for icons with fewer figures.
As for making a new one, it's like making a hand-drawn animated movie: a multi-image png gets played rapidly, and at the same time a sound file is played. So it all has to be matched up manually. Great fun... If I may recommend something, McGuba has made a really nice mod (see his sig), which uses these bicycle units complete with matching animation. Check out his efx file.
)
