Russian Tanks in Soviet Corps

[proline]

So, how do you suppose the designers of Soviet Corps are going to be able to balance USSR tanks in the hand of a skilled human? Prior to the Tiger coming out, the Russian T-34s and KVs are way better than anything the germans have- at the time of the invasion their tanks have defense values of 12 and 18 respectively vs. 11 for the IIIJ and IVF. Their tanks are also faster and in the case of the T-34 have enormous amounts of fuel from the /41 model onwards. The only reason they are balanced in the current campaigns is that the AI makes all sorts of blunders with them- not defending them with artillery, especially when in close terrain, complete lack of air defense, and inability to focus down the easily killed German anti-tank units. I could see a human using Russian tanks to devastating effect in 41 and 42 especially.

[timek28]

That is a very good question. Not only are USSR tanks better at certain stages of the war, but there was also much more of them. For example compare these two:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_com ... rld_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_arm ... rld_War_II

Just in 42' there was about 23000 USSR tanks produced and only about 3500 German ones. Come to think of it I really don't understand how Germans had initiative in 42' with those odds?

[proline]

Well, part of it was the weakness of Russian infantry and air.

I'm really looking forward to the challenges of the air situation. The early Russian fighters are pretty terrible, so I imagine I might actually have to use AA in this campaign? I'm looking forward to playing with the Shturmovik, which has much better defense values than the Ju 87 and even Bf110 yet harder than the Bf110. However, I don't think balance will be difficult in this case because it will probably still be hard to keep the Shturmovik alive with the lousy fighters getting creamed by Fw190s.

As for infantry, I'm not really sure how it will work out. If they let the human player load up on SMG and Guards infantry then it really negates one of the key reasons the Russians did so poorly early on- their weak regular infantry and conscripts. If they force us to use the latter then it gets to be a tough slow grind that isn't fun for a lot of people. Kind of like having to use Bulgarian infantry. Those guys drive me nuts. Hopefully they find a good balance between the two extremes.

I guess one way to balance the tank situation out a little bit is to give the Germans lots of XP reflecting their pre-invasion experience. Maybe fighting 3 star 13 point Panzer IIIs would give 1 star T-34s a challenge? But for that to work they'd have to keep the Russian XP caps very low early on.

[ThvN]

Hello proline, you are not alone. I'm a bit worried as well, I'll quote myself from the Soviet Corps unit suggestions thread:

T-34's and KV-1 were far from rare, at the end of 1941 the Soviets had already built 3000 T-34's and 1500 KV tanks, much higher than the Panzer III/IV production up until that point. Of course, not all reached the frontlines and spare parts were scarce. So buy them all you want, it's still historically accurate.

I've used single KV units in multiplayer games (Rush to Moscow) to wreak havoc in the Axis rear for many turns on end (84 fuel/11ammo is way too much) and frequently wondered what the game designers would do to stop a player in a Soviet campaign simply buying some of these and flatten all before him.

What I'm trying to say is that it might be more beneficial to review some of the existing units and tweak some of their stats instead of adding too many new ones. The KV-1'A' (model 1940) would be simply too good to ignore, is available from november 1940 (earlier than the T-34/40) and the even tougher 'B' is for sale one month after the start of Barbarossa. These were in reality very slow and prone to gearbox/clutch failures, but in the game they have move 5 and a lot of fuel, so they are very mobile, even more so than the early T-34/40 (which has very little fuel, probably to model its mechanical problems?).

Most problems the Soviet tank units faced early on will be nullified by the current unit stats and availability. Then there are the available upgrades which are also overpowered (JS-1, KV-85). Although the air units will struggle, just like some infantry, until you get Guard units. Actually, I don't see why players would use lots of T-34's, which is a shame. It might be possible that the equipment file will get some tweaks, but any changes will affect the existing content so it isn't likely.

Just in 42' there was about 23000 USSR tanks produced and only about 3500 German ones. Come to think of it I really don't understand how Germans had initiative in 42' with those odds?

1942 was the year the Soviets gained the upper hand, so the Germans actually lost the initiative during 1942. So while Stalingrad was devastating (for both sides), it was just the confirmation that the Soviets had gained the upper hand. And the Soviets had been slowly gaining the upper hand since the start of 1942, mounting several offensives which the Germans had kept in check but at the price of slowly giving away the initiative. The Soviets lost a lot of men and equipment during these 1942 offensives, so the Germans managed to launch their own spring offensive, which ended up with the Battle of Stalingrad.


And I hope I don't sound too pedantic , but any production/losses numbers from any side should be treated carefully. If I understand correctly, for example, it was common practice to rebuild a 'destroyed' but recovered tank in a factory, and I've read that in the Soviet Union such units were treated as a new one, and therefore added to the production numbers. In Germany, a repaired tank would not be viewed as new production, so a comparison between the two countries is difficult.

In case of the Soviet Union, a 'destroyed' tank could be patched up and rolled out again some time later, so actually battlefield losses added to new production, while a similary repaired German tank would not add to the production numbers. I don't think it is cheating or anything, just a particular way of bookkeeping. The Germans had their own particular bookkeeping tricks: some German 'newly build' units were written off tanks that were rebuilt into self-propelled artillery, for example.

[proline]

I'll have to read that other thread- didn't realize you already discussed this in such detail. It does seem to me like the current equipment file was designed to make the Soviet AI a better opponent (as it is there are scenarios like Kiev '43 where you mow down like 100 USSR tanks with a handful of experienced Tigers and some guns- imagine if the Russian tanks were even weaker!). This could come back and bite the designers when they try to make Soviet Corps. Allied Corps was kind of similar- an army of US Rangers with M10 tank destroyers and ultra-powerful allied fighters and strategic bombers can easily crush anything the Germans have. But they can't really change the equipment list at this point without affecting all the existing content, right?

On a related note, are there any other Soviet units besides the tanks that are devastating in the hands of a human player? I haven't played any multiplayer yet.

[timek28]

I think experience could easily handle that problem actually. Give German units more experience. That is not unreasonable or realistic IMO. Although, battling such an opponent is never fun as experience can mean everything in PC.

[rezaf]

I think experience could easily handle that problem actually. Give German units more experience. That is not unreasonable or realistic IMO. Although, battling such an opponent is never fun as experience can mean everything in PC.

I agree on both accounts. Giving Soviet units a harsh (=low) XP cap whilst fielding lots of experienced german units as the opposition could "solve" the issue, though it might come at the price of the result not being very fun for the player.
Hopefully this last part can be avoided somehow.
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rezaf

[sauvequipeut]

Maybe one way of doing it would be to look at the unit initiative values. At present, they seem to represent nothing more than the size of the gun and take no account of such things as tactical doctrine, availability of radios and vehicle design (three man turret vs one or two man turret, for example). Given how important initiative is in combat, there should perhaps be more to it than 'mine is bigger than yours'.

[MartyWard]

This game will certainly present challenges presenting the weakness of the Russian forces early even though better equipment was available.

One way to counter this is to limit the size and make up of your purchasable core. The liberal use of SE units could go a long way. Instead of a starting core of 15 units plus 1 SE maybe you start with a core of 7 purchasable units and 10 SE. SE could limited to Guards Infantry, the better tanks, the lousy tanks, conscripts, whatever and then their upgrade time line could be adjusted without effecting the time frame for units you can purchase. This would help limit the building of tanks with overwhelming stats from the beginning of the war. In my example with your 7 core units you need Artillery, Air, Infantry, AA etc so you can't just but a bunch of T34 tanks in your core especially if you have a few tanks as SE units already. Additional forces could be given as Aux to flesh out the numbers because the one thing the Russians should have is a numerical advantage in units.

[proline]

I think experience could easily handle that problem actually. Give German units more experience. That is not unreasonable or realistic IMO. Although, battling such an opponent is never fun as experience can mean everything in PC.

I agree on both accounts. Giving Soviet units a harsh (=low) XP cap whilst fielding lots of experienced german units as the opposition could "solve" the issue, though it might come at the price of the result not being very fun for the player.
Hopefully this last part can be avoided somehow.
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rezaf

The trouble with a harsh XP cap that I could foresee is that

a) Initiative isn't as much of a factor in bad weather
b) If Russian fighters are held to a low XP they may be useless
c) human players tend to completely suppress opponents anyways

Point c brings up another issue that I hope will get thought of- the way to win in PC is to never take any damage. That fits with the way it was for the Germans- they were outmanned and outgunned and in no position for a war of attrition. However, I hope they find a way to change the tone for the Russian campaign. The Russians had plenty of economic output and were quite willing to let their men die, especially infantry. There should be scenarios that reward sacrificing a few units for the sake of fast/glorious victory.

[rezaf]

There should be scenarios that reward sacrificing a few units for the sake of fast/glorious victory.

Actually most of the entire campaign should technically be like that, but there is a problem: There is hardly a middle ground in PzC. Either you totally slaughter your opposition or they slaughter you.
Initiative has a huge impact, as if the odds are even remotely close (which is often the norm in many scenarios), it decides who shoots first, and in best wild west shootout manner, that usually means who gets to live and who does not.
A war of attrition approach would constantly endanger your own forces - by definition you'd have to attack at bad odds, which would leave your unit battered and easy to destroy with a counterstrike.

Also, there's the problem that the RNG has a tendency to deliver outliers instead of the exact prediction.
If you only attack on favorable odds (which wou basically have to playing as the germans), this can lead to the perspective that the RNG is somehow "cheating", which is not the case.
BUT you never get to see those examples where you had a bad prediction and did considerably better (as you never attacked with the bad prediction to begin with), you only get to see those examples where the prediction was a wipe and you took huge losses. Or, maybe sometimes the examples where you did a bit better than predicted when the prediction had been excellent to begin with.
Once again, there's a tendency for outliers, which means 0:x will VERY often actually be at least 1:x and 0:[enemy strength left] will often end up in 0:[enemy strength left - 1/2].
There are now game modes to work around with, chess and dice chess, but the vanilla RNG - with whom most people play, I'd expect - is still like that.

Now, I didn't want to threadjack this into another RNG discussion, my point was that you'd have to attack with bad odds, and a bad roll in this scenario might very well be your units death sentence.
Which is bad for one of the aspects of the game I'd guess people like the most - building up a core of veterans.

One way to circumvent this problem would be to give the player a smallish core force of crack units and a large force of fodder auxiliaries. Maybe also a generous amount of auxiliary slots and prestige so the player can replace these units at will during the battle. Purchasing aux units was occasionally featured in PG, but in no official PzC campaign was it really an option, as far as I recall.
Nikivdd made use of large amounts of auxiliaries (albeit german ones) in his LoV mod, and it works nicely, but the downside is that the battles get more epic in scale, which results in long turns both for player and AI. It can be nice every now and then, but in LoV it was so common that it kinda resulted in "player attrition".
From what I understand Nico realized this himself and thus went on to develop the new LoV (which I guess now will never be finished or released, at least not in the forseeable future) with a smaller core and less forces in general.

TLDR: Maybe you're right and this can be used in SOME missions, but I'm not sure the game systems can make this work properly.
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rezaf

[proline]

There should be scenarios that reward sacrificing a few units for the sake of fast/glorious victory.

One way to circumvent this problem would be to give the player a smallish core force of crack units and a large force of fodder auxiliaries.

Indeed. I get that building up super-units in the core is fun, But I don't think it is necessary to force players to have a 50-60 units core the way you do in the grand campaign. Half that size with more auxiliaries would be fun too. Grand campaign is super-dependent on your core to the extent that if you have a bad scenario and lose a good chunk of your core you pretty much can't recover and have to go back to an earlier point in the game and restart. It creates balance issues because scenarios go from ultra-easy to ultra-hard depending on how good your core is which is something the designers can't predict.

Funny story- back in the 90s when I started playing PG I didn't know how to deploy core forces at the start of scenarios yet eventually I was able to beat the (western) game using only auxiliaries each scenario. When I figured out what I'd been missing the game became ridiculously easy. Point being- auxiliary units used to matter a lot more.

[Baku42]

Come to think of it I really don't understand how Germans had initiative in 42' with those odds?

Yes, if the Germans knew how inferior their position was, they probably would have sought peace terms. They were overestimating themselves, underestimating the Reds, and Stalin was overestimating the Germans.

In 1942 numbers, the Russians were producing 1265 tanks in the 76mm gun range per month, while the Germans were producing 73 PzIV F2/G per month. Adding StuGs, they got to 124/mo; add Marders (whoopee!) and the number goes to 163. The Germans still produced 2600 Panzer III in 1942, but then you can't forget 5000 T-70. Then there were lend lease.

in 1942, the Russians were good at the strategic level (knowing when to run and when to fight-STAVKA), and had great equipment, but were still very bad at the individual level and operational level. For example, the tank battle of Voronezh in July 1942 pitted 11 Tank Corps plus several independent brigades vs. 3 Panzer and 3 Motorized Divisions (each had a panzer battalion). But it was fought very much like the AI attacking a human. The Tank Corps were committed individually, not supporting each other, the Germans laid ambushes on the ground and the Luftwaffe trounced the VVS, so Stukas had a big impact. The tankers of two tank brigades just got up and climbed out of their tanks & ran when they were mishandled in the city of Voronezh. This whole episode - piecemeal commitment of Tank Corps, Germans laying ambush, Russian tankers climbing out & running was repeated again at the battle in the Don bend a few weeks later. The Russians ran at Rostov and all the way to the Caucasus mountains. The Germans had good reason to get a little cocky. The German underestimation of the Russians finally ended at Stalingrad...the stretched rubber band finally snapped and the Russians got the great confidence boost they needed out of that to take the Germans on in fair weather. There wasn't much Russian running after Stalingrad..still some though.

1942 Luftwaffe is still very high quality in the east. All those experienced aces have yet to be killed off in the high altitude skies over Germany by P-47s

[Baku42]

Oh somebody mentioned repairs. That's true that it was only in 1942 that Russian tank crews started to be given the most basic training on tank repair so they didn't have to abandon their vehicle if something broke.

[Razz1]

XP is a good balance but don't forget heroes.

[rezaf]

XP is a good balance but don't forget heroes.

Stock heroes do not make that much of an impact, though (what good is a +1 attack hero for a tank with 18 base attack anyway?), and "special heroes" should be an exception rather than the norm, imo.
It'd be pretty ridiculous to be facing an army of Rudels just so the scenario is balanced or difficult enough. Scenario designer fail.
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rezaf