1943 East unit upgrades

[Bonesoul]

Ok so artillery from 43 onwards. Its been covered in some detail on other threads that artillery looses its effectiveness vs. tanks as you move into 43 and beyond, that said, if you keep artillery what do you prioritise in terms of effect?

Personally I still look to maximise HA over SA, mainly because the biggest damage to my units is likely to come from Russian armour and even the lower SA seems fine to suppress infantry. I have a single wulf and a single neb which are more anti infantry, but for the rest I want HA. As a result I haven't upgraded to the stug42, the switch ability seems of limited utility and the upgrade increases SA but reduces HA.

I was wondering do you look for HA or SA in your artillery in 43 onwards and also do you start to reduce the number of artillery you deploy as scenarios move from offensive to defensive in nature. One of the other benefits of artillery, reducing entrenchment level, is of much less use in defensive scenarios, except for local counterattacks. I'm thinking maybe less artillery is one way to free up spaces for SPAAG in my deployment going forwards.

Cheers
Bone

PS : Do the SPAAG you pick up at Poltava come pre experienced with 2-3 stars and are they coming too late being mid 44?

[captainjack]

I currently have a mix of artillery units. I still use a few 10.5cm because of the better RoF and higher ammo than the 15cm. For hard hitting I upgrade any +2 or better attack hero gun to a 17cm. In 43 these still suppress heavy tanks - KV85 and IS1 - well enough and can take a point or two off the lighter ones - KV1B and T34/43, and can do 3 to 4 off light tanks. The stug 3 upgrade is a tough one. Better protection and SA vs worse Ini, HA and ammo. The low ini of the StuH means they often don't suppress infantry before the infantry attack, so they seem to get damaged more often despite the better armour. I have one wurfrahmen but the low ammo limits it and it will be upgraded to have slightly better armour and more ammo - the 16 SA will flatten most soft targets just as well as 20SA. 21cm nebelwerfer are great with +1 range and handy with a move hero.

Rather than go on in detail - above a certain point, ammo and RoF become more important for me than attack numbers. In 43 there seems to be more benefit to go from multi purpose artillery to units for soft targets and units for hard targets.

[Dragoon.]

You both play on FM right? Since I'm replaying right now for the 4th time the GDC, I was thinking to upload my save from today on Prohkorovka, here, but I'm playing on General diff and don't suffer from 50% malus on exp. Since the extra infinitive points from experience are very import, as it makes the difference between taking no damage or little damage by return fire when attacking 2-3star russian KV-1C & TF-34 '43 with Panthers and Tigers.

[captainjack]

Hi Dragoon - I don't think I'm up to playing FM yet and play on General, though I have disabled the soft cap (I don't like it - I view a big pile of prestige as a mark of how well I've played).

I use AT for the extra hitting power to complement the tanks rather than for prestige saving, and the fast mobile AA because it can get to somewhere useful most turns. The artillery mix is also guided more my ideas on what seems to work rather than to save prestige.

For info I do use a few home-made mods - switchable Grenadiers (usually better as infantry rather than providing supporting fire), a Flammpanzer III to replace the single Flammpanzer II some time in 43, and slightly improved AT units (including a128mm Pak44 if I ever get through to the end of 44 East), but any improvements in performance come with a price. I probably have the balance about right as I still use the extra and modded units sparingly.

[Bonesoul]

I'm playing on FM yes, but as its my first play through usually play each scenario twice, with the second being my save for the on going campaign. As I'm pretty careful anyway there is no guarantee that the second run will go better than the first, but it does give me a general feel for what I will be facing and allow me to avoid plan as I would on a 2nd or 3rd play through.

On prestige, I feel comfortable but cant be sure as I begin 43, one of the issue to me with PzC is you wont know your in trouble with prestige until later, if you haven't built up a prestige pool in the early DLC you are most likely doomed in the later ones. Nor do I see the soft cap as helping, Tigers may dramatically reduce your prestige gain per scenario, but also dramatically reduce your losses and so reinforcement cost, further with the importance of experience you cant afford not to elite reinforce or losses will just spiral, kind of the reverse of snowball effect the soft cap was introduced to prevent. Tigers are more necessary than ever but now penalised.

Even though the first couple of stars of exp are much easier than the others, not too difficult despite the slowed experience from FM difficulty, over the course of 6 DLC getting them as early as possible seems to pay off. As Dragoon says initiative is a true prestige saver even before the SA HD etc bonuses. Its why in general I look at a star of experience as more benefit than most hero's. This of course leads back to the prestige and soft cap issue because, if players run out of prestige and cant maintain their deployed units experience, they will take more losses requiring even more prestige they don't have. I cant speak for General difficulty and lower but on FM you have to elite reinforce from I would say 41 possibly as early as 40, especially if as I was you aren't deploying all units each scenario but rotating them to blood more units.

With the increased cost of elite over standard reinforcement, that means if you can possibly avoid it never reinforcing core units in scenario, only at the deployment phase, because of this one thing that seems to work for me is OS str units to 11 at deployment, its the cheapest OS point and allows units to take 3-4 points of losses but still be viable to fight without risking total loss. That one point giving an extra shot, when combined with the initiative etc benefits of experience is surprisingly effective, try a run with standard strength and one OS on a couple of scenarios and compare the cost of reinforcing at the end for comparison.

Cheers
Bone

PS: Dragoon, I will take a look at your save if I can get it to download, its will be interesting to see what you have done with your core.