Slitherine

Good that you see where I am coming from.

The availability dates of StuGs and the core campaign scenarios are indeed to blame for the absence of StuGs from the campaign.
Elefants and Jagdpanthers are available around the same time or to be more precise in the same scenarios as StuGs. Plus the mentioned soft:hard target ratio.

Some 8.000-9.000 StuGs were produced (by far the most produced armored fighting vehicles of the Wehrmacht) and I don't know how many Panzer III were converted into them, they formed the main force of the Wehrmacht together with the Panzer IVs.

So I really look forward to see more StuGs and medium tanks!


P.S. I still advocate for 4 or 5 SA on most StuG variants! But let's see how it turns out in practice, particularly 1941+ scenarios.

Just curious, what caused you to raise initiative by +1 for the 1943 infantry units?

That is why we are both planning for extended campaigns to better explore the currently underexplored areas of the game and also gearing balance to support expanded content. There really isn't anything I haven't thought of in this department, trust me.
Although I couldn't really figure out to do with the Hetzer... it's historical release date (1944) and historical combat performance (light tank destroyer)leave it as a very poor game unit.

There were complaints that super heavy armor was overperforming against infantry, even in close terrain environments.
As infantry are the only unit to not suffer from initiative cap in close terrain, the effect is a solid benefit for infantry in close terrain against non-infantry units. They still get decimated in open terrain though, where battles will be 6 initiative infantry vs 12++ initiative tanks.
Super heavy armor also had their close defense dropped to 5 instead of 6.

Super heavy armor with adequate support will still stomp infantry, but the hope is that they at least need that support now. Previously, some people were having success against infantry with ONLY heavy armor. I guess.