Artillery

[Molve]

I think it's somewhat strange how all artillery units of a certain caliber have identical stats regardless of nation.

A French "75mm mle" is depicted like some ancient piece (and it is from 1897!) while the German 7.5 cm FK 16 nA looks more modern. Yet they have identical stats!

The German 10.5 cm leFH 18 and Italian 105 mm 105/28 are completely the same. As is every other 105 mm artillery unit.

The German 15 cm sFH 18 have identical stats as the British BL 6 inch 26 cwt or the Soviet 152 mm M1938. Not merely similar stats, but exactly the same!

Now I fully understand that the scope of the game sets certain hard limits, primarily on range:
Range 3 is the "golden standard" where the artillery unit can fulfill all its duties as expected. Any range lower than this is a severe drawback, while any range greater than this is a huge advantage. So I am not asking for more "realistic" ranges - I fully understand the concessions that need to be made for the unit to work well within the game.

But even if Range 3 needs and must stay the same for all "mainline" artillery units, there are still lots of other values to tweak. But artillery of different nations have the exact same cost, the exact same attack values and so. This is very strange given how much differentiation there is among tanks, AT and other units.

Why was it decided to not introduce a little variability for artillery?

Then I make the observation that there are differences, if you just look hard enough.

The French deviate from the "standard" set by the German 7.5 cm, 10.5 cm and 15 cm units: their 155 C mle 1917 unit has +1 on soft and hard attack, but one less ammo. The Soviet 122mm M1938 is +1 on soft and hard attack compared to the 10.5 cm, but identical in every other way (there's a slight cost increase, but nothing the improved stats can't explain).

And then there's the British QF 25 pounder. Compared to the 7.5 cm it's got a +1 on soft and hard attacks, but it costs roughly double (215 prestige for range 2 artillery ). I know a recent patch have made the 25 pounder switchable into AT, however.

Why were these changes made and not others possible?

Then I read up on Wikipedia:

[The 15 cm sFH 18] was generally outdated compared to the weapons it faced.

Against the Soviet Union however, the sFH 18 proved to be greatly inferior to the Red Army corps artillery 122 mm gun and 152 mm ML-20 gun-howitzer.

That's not the impression at all a player is given by Panzer Corps! (I do remember the American Long Tom to have a very desirable range 4, but that must have been in a Panzer General game)

Again, I am absolutely not arguing "Red Army corps artillery" should be able to outrange German artillery, or that the extra range of the Long Tom should be reintroduced.

But what about changing and tweaking all the other values?

Why couldn't "ancient"-looking artillery units be given, I don't know, one or two points lower attack values to account for a myriad things (ammunition types, accuracy, supply etc)? Why isn't German artillery slightly inferior to allied (if that indeed was the case)?

I mean, two points of difference here and there (in areas where each point represents only about a 10% difference; such as for soft and hard attack) does not make a drastic difference - you would still use your artillery the same, all scenarios would be able to stay exactly the same, etc.

It would add greatly to color. And it is already part of the game for other unit classes, notably tanks (where the sheer variability is almost overpowering!).

M

PS. I am only talking about the core game here with the stock equipment file. I am fully aware I can download any of a number of variant equipment files or tweak the values myself. That's not what I am interested in. I am asking about the experience shared with the majority of Panzer Corps players, the unaltered core game!

[shawkhan]

I have talked about issues like these ad nauseum.
The fact of the matter is that the German 15cm doesn't have the actual range of most other large calibers, should actually be a range of two.
The German 17cm otoh, had twice the range of most other artillery and should come with a range of four.
There Are real differences with ROF, accuracy and even the ammunition used which should more severely restrict the older artillery types. There were real differences in the amount of explosive filler in different artillery shells as well as construction/material differences which greatly impacted(hoho) their effects.
As I have said several times before, the Sturmpanzer in the game is completely inaccurate, wasn't even ranged artillery at all.
You can look up some of the old arguments about this if you are still curious.

[Molve]

Didn't you read my post, Shawkhan? Please stop talking about range! Range for mainline artillery needs to be 3 for game purposes, and that's that.

What I am interested in as regards old threads is if there is some commentary in an old forum post etc from the team on why they decided not to spice things up regarding artillery the way they did for almost every other unit category?

I am sure when you read the literature people would say things like "The Rumanian 75 mm was significantly easier to load" (=translate into extra ammo capacity) or "Polish artillery did not have access to explosive ammunition" (translate to lower soft attack).
(Note made-up examples only!)

Any insight into how the artillery category came to be the one with the least variation in Panzer Corps would be most interesting

[McGuba]

What I am interested in as regards old threads is if there is some commentary in an old forum post etc from the team on why they decided not to spice things up regarding artillery the way they did for almost every other unit category?

I do not know any such commentary from the dev team and I doubt there is any. But, I do know a saying: "If it ain't broken, don't fix it".
Panzer General had the very same simplistic approach regarding towed artillery: each (major) nation had one 75 mm, one 105 mm and one 150-155 mm artillery unit, with the very same stats. (OK, I know, the Soviets had a 122 mm one instead of the 105 mm.) And what can we see in Panzer Corps? Just about the same. It only added a few novel ones to the list such as the 21 cm gun, with somewhat better stats.

Secondly: the attack value of the artillery units in Panzer General and thus in its successor, Panzer Corps, is simply calculated by the caliber of the gun. Therefore, for example, all 105mm guns have the same attack value (with the little exception that you noticed), regardless of their make or their obsolence. Obviously, as you wrote, there was a difference between the guns within the same class, but taking all these factors into consideration when calculating their stats would have required further research. In their defense, I must say that it would not be easy to come up with a 1-2 digit number to be used as the attack value, which takes all these things into considertation i.e. accuracy and reliability of the gun, weight, effectiveness, and quality of the charge, general training of the crew, doctrine, etc etc. It is much easier to say: "well it is a 105mm gun, so it will get 9 as attack value, just like all other guns with the same caliber".

To add:

The Soviet 122mm M1938 is +1 on soft and hard attack compared to the 10.5 cm, but identical in every other way (there's a slight cost increase, but nothing the improved stats can't explain).

122mm is bit bigger than 105mm so it has +1 attack. Following the rule above.

And then there's the British QF 25 pounder. Compared to the 7.5 cm it's got a +1 on soft and hard attacks, but it costs roughly double (215 prestige for range 2 artillery ). I know a recent patch have made the 25 pounder switchable into AT, however.

The caliber of the 25 pdr Quick Firing Gun was 87.6mm, which is a bit larger than 75mm. Again, +1 attack, following the rule above. And it is more expensive, because now it is multipurpose. Before the change (AK), in earlier versions, it cost 152.


Thirdly: PG and PzC, as their name suggest, are mainly about panzers, i.e. tanks, so the majority of the players are expecting many different and well detailed tank types with different characteristics, and not many different guns. Sadly.

However,

Why couldn't "ancient"-looking artillery units be given, I don't know, one or two points lower attack values to account for a myriad things (ammunition types, accuracy, supply etc)? Why isn't German artillery slightly inferior to allied (if that indeed was the case)?

I think, in this you are absolutely right, it could have been done, but for some reason (hint: read the saying in the first line of this post again), it seems that they decided not to depart from PG in this (and in most other) concept. It was clearly a concept decision made early on, I guess. By the way, I am not so sure that German artillery was inferior to allied, if not in numbers. Most German guns were of very high quality made by Krupp and had a "double recoil" carriage which absorbed all the recoil forces with virtually no movement to the ground resulting in much higher accuracy. However, the extra mechanism increased the weight of those guns immobilizing them in the Russian mud, so many were left behind during the retreats. So, was it an advantage or a disadvantage? It depends.

A French "75mm mle" is depicted like some ancient piece (and it is from 1897!) while the German 7.5 cm FK 16 nA looks more modern.

Yeah, because FK 16 uses the image of the 10.5 cm leFH18. The devs seems to have saved some time here, which they could use to make one more tank icon instead, I guess. In reality, those two guns looked very different. I know that you are only interested in the stock equipment file, and not in custom equipment tweaks, but some time ago I attempted to make a unique icon in PzC style for the FK 16 so it is only here to show you how it should be in the stock game: