Slitherine

I suppose we could force some air-portless maps for the phasing player, forcing him no choice but to get at least a couple AD units for these occasions...

Rudankort wrote:Indeed, if AD range is increased significantly, they might be more useful in all but the most fast offensives. But then, their range will cover huge portions of enemy controlled territory, which cannot be explained by their distributed nature.

If you look at my original suggestion again it was not to give them the ability to fire at any aircraft within that range but rather to fire at any enemy aircraft within a hex of any friendly unit within the AD's range which fits their distributed nature perfectly. That the AD radius may cover swaths of enemy territory is irrelavent if there isn't a friendly unit there with an attached AA platoon.

boredatwork wrote:If you look at my original suggestion again it was not to give them the ability to fire at any aircraft within that range but rather to fire at any enemy aircraft within a hex of any friendly unit within the AD's range which fits their distributed nature perfectly. That the AD radius may cover swaths of enemy territory is irrelavent if there isn't a friendly unit there with an attached AA platoon.

Indeed, I missed that. Still, the more I think about this, the more I find this scheme counterintuitive. If every unit has an AA platoon attached to it, why does it lose its ability to defend against air threat when a "central" AD unit is placed in organic transport? If those AA platoons implicitly have associated transports which enable them to move together with units they are assigned to, why they suddenly disappear when the central AD unit falls behind?

Rudankort wrote:Indeed, I missed that. Still, the more I think about this, the more I find this scheme counterintuitive. If every unit has an AA platoon attached to it, why does it lose its ability to defend against air threat when a "central" AD unit is placed in organic transport? If those AA platoons implicitly have associated transports which enable them to move together with units they are assigned to, why they suddenly disappear when the central AD unit falls behind?

Because within the limits of PG abstraction, the movement of the central AD headquarters represents the average movement and coordination of the various subunits. Minor movements of friendly units within the umbrela are covered by coordinating subunits so they're not all in motion simultaneously and can cover for each other. Major movements on the otherhand, requiring repositioning of many sub units simultaneously cause a dramatic drop in overall AD effectiveness until assets can again be most effectively distributed for area defense.

You seem to have given this a lot of thought.

What's wrong with a historically accurate depiction of AD units? A dual purpose unit.

For example, from what I remember in PG and PG2, AD and AA units had their soft and hard attack values in parenthesis, while their air attack value was normal. [8] [18] 15
What did that mean? It meant that these AD units had decent attack values against both soft and hard ground units, but could never initiate an attack against those units, only using those values when attacked BY a ground unit.

If AD units in PanzerCorp could be more of a versatile unit, a jack of all trades, I think it would go a long way into making them a much more useful core unit. Of course for balancing purposes, any jack of all trades unit won't be as effective as a specialized unit, such as having slightly weaker attack and defense values than a traditional ATG weapon of equal caliber, and perhaps also costing extra prestige on top of that.

http://www.lonesentry.com/tacticalstudy/index.html

That article covers the classic use of the 88, but in my experience in various games (Steel Panthers, Close Combat Series), even the smaller AD and AA units when turned against ground targets are quite deadly. Especially the 20mm quads taking on infantry targets is just murderous.

So, just as an example, I would say that a 50mm ATG would have attack values that look like
Soft: 5 Hard: 12 Air: 0 Soft type target with defense: 7 Prestige cost: 120
A dual purpose 50mm would look more like
Soft: 4 Hard: 10 Air: 8 Soft type target with defense: 5 Prestige cost: 200

Just an arbitrary example using numbers I pulled out of thin air, but that's the idea. The 50mm ATG clearly looks and *is* better at it's specialized job at a cheaper price, but the dual purpose 'AD' unit has that added Air value which could possibly make all the difference when used correctly.


As for making them actually useful in their AD role, I'll say this much.
I think that PG had a good idea going, you could catch infantry and artillery and other towed units 'in transport' and they would be incredibly vulnerable. You couldn't just drive your spearhead forward with all your units packed into trucks, you needed good scouting/protection on your flanks.

However, the idea of bringing AA along in your spearhead is to use it to protect your otherwise vulnerable transport from unexpected aerial assault, which realistically you couldn't scout ahead against because of the speed (amount of hexes moved) air units had. So, as a happy medium, perhaps towed AA units could have some sort of 'quick deploy' functionality that allows them to immediately unpack and provide their AD capabilities to the rest of the spearhead, within normal range restrictions.

Some examples to illustrate this:
Your convoy on the road consists of TANK TANK AD INFANTRY ARTILLERY INFANTRY, six units in a line on the road. The AD, INFANTRY, and ARTILLERY units are all being 'towed' or in transport. If an air unit, let's say some kind of fighter-bomber, attempts to attack the lead tank in this convoy, the AD unit will instantly unpack, and proceed to fulfill it's normal AD role should the air unit proceed with it's attack. I assume Panzer Corp will have 'predictions' just like PG and PG2, and basically the battle prediction will show a result of the AD unit participating, even though on the game screen it still appears in it's towed state. Should the player decided to attack with their air unit, the AD unit will unpack, and now appear in it's untransported form.
Should the air unit attack the transported AD unit itself, same rules apply, the AD unit instantly unpacks to defend itself.

HOWEVER.
If the same convoy is attacked by say a flanking force of armored cars. The AD unit would NOT be able to invoke their quick deploy (as it only responds to aerial attacks) , and would be incredibly vulnerable to the ground assault, thus paving the way for the air assault. Combined arms at it's finest.

As an added penality if 'quick deploy' proves too powerful, perhaps if an AD unit fires while invoking 'quick deploy' it suffers a % reduction to it's air attack value.

This way, you have your traditionally towed AD units:
1. Useful in protecting your spearheads from air assault while still managing to keep pace instead of falling behind.
2. Still vulnerable to being caught 'in transport' so they don't provide an impenetrable defense.
3. Still useful if there are no enemy aircraft present (dual purpose actively attacking ground units)

But they do not make SP, that is, self propelled, AD units obsolete because:
1. SP AD units would not have a 'quick deploy' penalty.
2. SP AD units would not be AS vulnerable to ground attacks.

However, SP AD would probably come with their usual drawbacks so they don't completely outclass towed AD (reduced fuel and ammo reserves, increased cost, and restricted to smaller calibers are traditional balancing mechanics)

One final thought though, if your 88mm AD unit has a range of 3 hexes against aircraft, I do not believe it should have a range of 3 hexes against ground targets. I don't know if it will be like PG where all ground units, except artillery, have a attack range of 1, or PG2 where some tanks and ATG units such as a King Tiger had an attack range of 2 hexes, but regardless I believe that an AD unit's ground attack range should reflect the ground attack range of an equal caliber ATG weapon.

Rudankort wrote:You seem to have given this a lot of thought.

Not really... I just have alot of experience trying to justify abstract gaming concepts, particularly if they're part of a game which plays loose with realsim anyways

Also, I'm afraid that in PG gaming model buying a fighter will still be much more attractive than buying an AD, because your goal in most missions is to grab air superiority and bomb the heck out of the enemy, not protect your own units. And by the time allied air force becomes overwhelming it is already too late to invest into AD branch.

Indeed, I missed that. Still, the more I think about this, the more I find this scheme counterintuitive.

However, the idea of bringing AA along in your spearhead is to use it to protect your otherwise vulnerable transport from unexpected aerial assault, which realistically you couldn't scout ahead against because of the speed (amount of hexes moved) air units had. So, as a happy medium, perhaps towed AA units could have some sort of 'quick deploy' functionality that allows them to immediately unpack and provide their AD capabilities to the rest of the spearhead, within normal range restrictions.

Another possibility to restore interesting choices as far as AD units (and possibly AT units) go is rather than have the light AD as their own entities, instead adopt a modified version of the People's General attachment system:

You would still have all the other classes in the game like Tanks, Infantry and Artillery. They would all come by default with built in basic AAMG defense value as part of their AA/AD factors.

You would then have the option of attaching a choice of AD unit for additional prestige cost - that would improve the AA/AD factors of the unit. This attachment could then have it's own independent upgrade path.

For example in 1939 I have a standard Inf 39. It costs 60(?) prestige and comes with AAMG and and AA value of [1]. At some point I can decide to buy either a 20 or 37mm flak attachment for X prestige which would increase it's AA and AD values by [???].During 1940 I decide to give my infantry a truck - it retains the 20mm flak attachment but now only receives the bonus when NOT mounted. In 1943 I decide to upgrade my infantry to Inf 43 with a half track - at this time I decide to upgrade my flak attachment, at additional cost, to an SdkFz 6/2 halftrack so I don't lose my +AA bonus when mounted. Finally in 1945 I decide to upgrade my attachment again to an Ostwind FlkPz for an increase in the AA and AD bonuses while still protecting me while mounted.

That could increase the usefull options for customizing one's core force - is it better to purchase a minor upgrade for my fighter or spend the equivalent prestige adding or upgrading AirDefense attachments to a half dozen ground units to enhance their survivability.

PG2 where some tanks and ATG units such as a King Tiger had an attack range of 2 hexes

IIRC, PG-III had 3 hex ranges for the 88 AA, which is another reason I always tried to keep one around. And then you could also extend the range by 1 hex if you had a strong enough leader and enough action-points left to do so.

Hope to still see the Range-2 guns though in the remake, it added another strategic window into the box.

Obsolete wrote:I would not mind seeing HQ units, perhaps this could be integrated to prevent people from complaining about the un-realism of wondering units behind lines at no penalty.
But development may be too far along by now to incorporate these...

I like HQ units in practice but with this game I think it would be a tad to much for this type of game. Being we go from scenario to scenario, I think an HQ would be more required for a more GRAND map, i.e. the the entire Eastern, Western, or Southern front type map.

boredatwork wrote:New to the forum but keen on the upcomming PzC.
Without knowing how closely or otherwise PzC follows the original PG it would be hard to say which improvements PG2 made on the later would be in anyway applicable to the former.
However 2 things that I thought were big improvements with PG2 are:
1) Anti-tank units only loosing the initiative to tanks if they moved *before* firing.
2) a) Air units not revealing their entire flight path and b) Recon Units being able to break down their move into phases.
Both these changes made 2 previously broken classes which had little utility other than as broken tanks usefull in the way they were intended.

COMPLETELY agree with those two statements. Its been so long since I played PG2 I forgot about those features.

boredatwork wrote:IMO the real fix for AD units to make them viable as core units is to change their mechanics from air killer units (which they will always be at a disadvantage compared to fighters due to the later's mobility) to air shield units (a unique role at which they could be uniquely effective):
- Rather than assume all the guns are at the location of the unit itself instead assume the unit represents the location of the AD headquarters (battalion or Brigade)
- Rather than assume the range is the actual physical range of the gun instead increase it to 4(?) to 6(?) and have it represent the C&C/supply range for all the abstracted sub units (platoons & batteries) attached to Friendly units within that range.
- Divide AD into 2 categories: heavy and light.
- **Reduce the kill probability for all AA guns**
- Do not treat AD units mechanically as artillery that fires at aerial targets but instead:

Key concepts:
Heavy AD HQs: any enemy aircraft that *overflies* ANY hex within the ZOC of ANY friendly ground unit within a HEAVY AD HQ's range is brought under fire for a small chance of taking casualties but a large chance of having suppression inflicted **for the remainder of the turn**. Note by overfly it doesn't actually have to stop within the radius, the AA merely takes opportunity fire as it flies by.

Light AD HQs: any enemy fighter or tac bomber that attacks any friendly ground unit within the LIGHT AD HQ's range is brought under defensive fire with a slighly higher chance of inflicting casualties and a large chance of having suppression inflicted for that specific combat.

In otherwords AD units would sacrifice their ability to cause heavy damage to aircraft in a tiny radius (relative to A/C movement speeds) for the ability to prevent heavy damage to friendly units in a bigger radius through suppression as opposed to kills.

IMO reducing the frequency with which IL-2s gut my mounted units by providing them an AD umbrella would be worth sacrificing a few other core units for.

I agree with most of your statements, such as AD units should be more air SHEILDS as opposed to air KILLERS.
Your concepts with light and heavy are spot on. I think that would be a great addition to the game mechanics. Heavy AA should have a higher AT value then AP value due to its caliber and rate of fire, complete opposite for Light AA. Since both units act and individuals (i.e. no infantry attached), they have NO attack value on ground units. Only able to attack aircraft and defend ground.
One thing I am strongly opposed to is HQ units due to the fluidity of combat and the complete lack of needing any unit that does not engage in combat. The current PG supply system, IMO, works great. You will gain supply, manually, as long as you are not surrounded.

Rudankort wrote:

boredatwork wrote:Indeed, in PG fighters are often a more attractive alternative for core, but fighters are more vulnerable, more expensive and less effective in defending other units. They are also difficult to replace (you can't do it on the spot - need to return to airfield, losing a few turns in the process). For these reasons in defensive scenarios ADs played quite a big and important role. Perhaps the main problem with ADs as core units was that they had hard times keeping up with the rest of the core. No matter what useful properties you give to an AD unit, they will not work if it stays in truck most of the time. How do you propose to address this problem?

A lot of keeping core unit depends on the scenario and game play style. Early scenarios in PG, AA was useless and aircraft was king. As time went on you needed to supplement your core (or aux) units with AA to fend off the growing airpower and dwindling friendly aircraft. IMO I still think this feature works as intended. Not to mention AA works well for holding objectives and putting in place of depleted ground unit defense. I honestly think there is nothing wrong with the AA usefulness, just some slight mechanics that can be built on. Adding the light/heavy suggestions on top of ZOC, air shield, and killing air units initiative, explained by bored at work, are something that can be built on.

Rudankort wrote:Indeed, if AD range is increased significantly, they might be more useful in all but the most fast offensives. But then, their range will cover huge portions of enemy controlled territory, which cannot be explained by their distributed nature.
Also, I'm afraid that in PG gaming model buying a fighter will still be much more attractive than buying an AD, because your goal in most missions is to grab air superiority and bomb the heck out of the enemy, not protect your own units. And by the time allied air force becomes overwhelming it is already too late to invest into AD branch.

Aircraft are KEY to air superiority (which in itself is key) and will always be a priority. AA will simply supplement key area for defense and siege. New AA suggestions should make people think twice about launching a COUNTINUOS and COSTLY attack with AA in the area.

Rudankort wrote:

boredatwork wrote:If you look at my original suggestion again it was not to give them the ability to fire at any aircraft within that range but rather to fire at any enemy aircraft within a hex of any friendly unit within the AD's range which fits their distributed nature perfectly. That the AD radius may cover swaths of enemy territory is irrelavent if there isn't a friendly unit there with an attached AA platoon.

Indeed, I missed that. Still, the more I think about this, the more I find this scheme counterintuitive. If every unit has an AA platoon attached to it, why does it lose its ability to defend against air threat when a "central" AD unit is placed in organic transport? If those AA platoons implicitly have associated transports which enable them to move together with units they are assigned to, why they suddenly disappear when the central AD unit falls behind?

I must of misread the original statement buy boredatwork also. I agree with Rudankort, added such AA ability to ALL friendly units within range would be counterproductive. In reality AA units were distributed to units and key junctions throughout a division, brigade, etc. but not on such a grand scale and defiantly not every friendly unit. Keeping AA usefulness around the unit makes the unit and its placement more tactical within the parameters of the scenario you go through.

Obsolete wrote:

PG2 where some tanks and ATG units such as a King Tiger had an attack range of 2 hexes

IIRC, PG-III had 3 hex ranges for the 88 AA, which is another reason I always tried to keep one around. And then you could also extend the range by 1 hex if you had a strong enough leader and enough action-points left to do so.

Hope to still see the Range-2 guns though in the remake, it added another strategic window into the box.

Never been a fan of gun ranges outside HEAVY AA. Tanks were never intended to act like artillery. Especially the distance each hex SHOULD BE (i.e. miles)

KEEP UP THE DISCUSSION, great ideas flowin

Hmm not sure if all this added complexity would be worth it if not done across the boards for all units. Why some in depth treatment for some units and some staying abstract for the rest ? But then , if you make all units "holding units" for various equipment types what you really would be building is not Panzer General but Operational Art of War Lite....

I could be wrong but wernt there two classes of air defense units in PG? AD units were generally towed and couldnt intiatate attacks on other ground unts and then their were AA units (mororized, ie mount on tank chassis etc) that didnt provide support fire for when an enemy plane attacked an adjacent friendly , but you could actively fire these units at enemy planes after moving (underneith them as most had 0 hex range) Since his game is Panzer General and the emphasis is on mobile warefare is it really a concern that players dont want to buy fixed AD units? They still make formidable obstacles to take out(in game terms) , especially when entrenched and backed by artillery

rayduhz wrote:I must of misread the original statement buy boredatwork also. I agree with Rudankort, added such AA ability to ALL friendly units within range would be counterproductive. In reality AA units were distributed to units and key junctions throughout a division, brigade, etc. but not on such a grand scale and defiantly not every friendly unit. Keeping AA usefulness around the unit makes the unit and its placement more tactical within the parameters of the scenario you go through.

The problem is in the abstracted mechanics of PG there is no such thing as "key junctions" or supply depots or vital bridges or HQs or maintenance depots or other rear area units - there are *only* the front line units themselves. Hence when I say "every friendly unit in range" I don't litterally mean every battlion or company gets it's own 88, but rather the guns are abstractly protecting the abstracted rear areas that are supporting the front line units from damage being abstractly represented by the additional damage air units do to the front line units.

The AA's tactical positioning is still very important - the radius is bigger to increase the AAs value to the point of cost effectiveness - but it's still very small compared to the overall map size. Tying it to the units within that range is a simple mechanic to allow for that increased range without permitting the AA to deeply cover enemy territority which would be unrealistic.

On a semi related note - will strategic bombers be in the game?

If they are and function like they did in the original I think they should have a chance to "drift" like Paratroops - so that if you use them on units ajaction to your own there is the possibility of friendly fire.

If you add drift, be prepared to have a lot of bitching going on about the engine...

Obsolete wrote:If you add drift, be prepared to have a lot of bitching going on about the engine...

I'll start now, with the floating scale of the game hexwise, is drift needed, or should it be floating drift

I would not mind seeing HQ units,

Actually, I remember now PeG had an HQ already. This new unit addition was called the COMBAT SUPPORT unit. It not only allowed re-supplying of aircraft away from an airport, but also acted as a movable deployment hex.

It was considered so good, that some experts claimed it was over-powered and banned it from scenarios, especially in ladder clubs.

Obsolete wrote:It was considered so good, that some experts claimed it was over-powered and banned it from scenarios, especially in ladder clubs.

You could cheese win the campaign battles on the first turn with them. Deploy 1 HQ unit, move it forward. Deploy a second HQ unit in the radius of the first, move it forward, deploy a third in the radius of the second, move it forward and so on. You wind up with a long chain of 20 or so across the map and would only deploy core units to break through the front line and take objectives.

boredatwork wrote:

Rudankort wrote:Indeed, if AD range is increased significantly, they might be more useful in all but the most fast offensives. But then, their range will cover huge portions of enemy controlled territory, which cannot be explained by their distributed nature.

If you look at my original suggestion again it was not to give them the ability to fire at any aircraft within that range but rather to fire at any enemy aircraft within a hex of any friendly unit within the AD's range which fits their distributed nature perfectly. That the AD radius may cover swaths of enemy territory is irrelavent if there isn't a friendly unit there with an attached AA platoon.

I agree with BoredatWork, concerning the AD units. Something needs to be done to make them more useful. Why not give the larger AD units a two-hex umbrella so that they can protect units (during defense) that are two hexes away, just like they can now with units that are adjacent? The AD units should be able to shoot on the fly at any plane that overflies them, and not just stops near their hex. I mean, think about it, planes don't stop in mid air!! The fact that they do in this game just represents how far they've flown at a given time. Maybe we could have a automatic shoot order for any and all AD units to shoot at any enemy plane that is within range. And that unit will fire at your plane as soon as you move it within range, even if your plane doesn't stop withing range. To counter this tactic, we should have the ability to instruct our planes (especially the vulnerable fighters) not to fly withing range of any known AD gun.

This "opportune fire mode" should also be given to artillery. (Ditto for offshore naval batteries) We should have the ability to enable our artillery to fire on any soft or hard target that comes within range of it, even if it doesn't stop within range. They should be able to fire on every unit that passes through a target area (until their ammo runs out). Artillery units should also have the option to only attack soft targets if their hard target value isn't that great. (Maybe further differentiate fire/nofire into the classes) And if they do fire at an opportune target, then that should be their only fire mission of the round and they won't be able to fire during their player's turn. This way, the game will behave a little more realistically I think, and maybe give players more options on the battlefield.