Slitherine

Today, I have turned my attention to infantry. Here are the GCUR units used in my scenarios along with my new unit cost suggestions (in red).



GERMAN INFANTRY

- Grenadier 43 can be reduced in cost. It is slightly worse than a British HW 43 infantry (-1 ammo and -1 AD) which costs 197 points. So perhaps around 190 points.

- Pioniere 43 can be reduced in cost. Is identical to British Eng 43 at 207 points, with one worse ammo. So perhaps around 200 points.

- Fallschirmjager have been enhanced considerably to become elite infantry. I think half of the GCUR Fallschirmager cost might be good - so 250 points.

- Bruckenpioniere. I will need to choose between using the early war or 43 version. If using the original early war version the cost could be the Standard 113 points. The 43 version should probably cost a bit more.

- Kradschutzen has increased in price and been given an improved 43 version, as well as recon move ability. In my scenarios, the Kradschutzen and Soviet Cavalry units perform a similar recon role. So I think the Soviet Cavalry will also get a recon move ability. Since my intention is for these units to act as scouts rather than mobile infantry, I think I'll use their weaker early (non 43) versions with reduced fighting capabilities. The Standard's price for Kradschutzen is 147 points so that looks good.

SOVIET INFANTRY

- only change being to give the Soviet Cavalry recon move ability and to use the earlier (non '43) version, as it is meant as a scout unit rather than mobile infantry in my scenarios.

- bridge engineer version still to be decided.

BRITISH INFANTRY

- only change being to bring the Paras cost back down. In the GCUR, the Soviet Para 43 is almost identical in stats to the British Paras 43, but is one worse at GD and one better at AD. Since GD is probably more useful to infantry than AD, a British Para is probably slightly more valuable. A Soviet Para 43 costs 162 points so let's say a British Para could be 175 points, which is half of deducter's 349 points.

- bridge engineer version still to be decided.

the_iron_duke wrote:Incidentally, support attack: does it make any difference which hexes the support attackers are located in? I've sometimes thought that one should get a small extra bonus if the supporting unit is in one of the opposite rear hexes (as opposed to next to the attacker).

Assuming you are talking about the mass attack bonus: It doesn't matter where the support is positioned. Although when attacking a unit that has coverage by artillery/fighter escort etc., the relative positions of those firing support units matter, because firing is in a certain order based on relative hex position (clockwise).

Using the stock PzC cost for the Bf 109G, FW 190A, Me 410 looks OK to me. You are right to give the FW 190F a higher price, I think. Basically, the 'F' model was an 'A' model optimized for low-level operation and slightly better armored and adapted to use a decent bombrack. But the stock PzC unit is a very poor performer. So the real cost would be near that of a FW 190A.

In combat tests, the modded Ju 88A performs better than the unmodded one and so is probably worth more than the Standard 372 points but less than the GCUR's 600.

Mmmh... an educated guess is to put it somewhere in the 400-450 points bracket, especially with such low ammo.

The Mosquito VI has basically become a Mosquito IV - taking its ID number and unit cost, with reduced bombing capability but greater air-to-air - while retaining the Mosquito VI name. So one could go along with that. Or it could be redone along the lines of the Standard EQ file (S1 or S2). It depends on whether a Mosquito should be considered as a 539 point aircraft or a 580 or a 603 point aircraft? It was an excellent aircraft in real life.

I've got a few issues with how PzC portrays the Mosquitos. Since they probably needed a counterpart to the Me 410, they propbably boosted their stats a little. But I still think they are introduced way too early, although that is of no concern for 1943 and later years.

BTW, the Mosquito family is slightly more complicated than PzC wants us to believe. If you select it in the purchase screen in PzC and check the long name, they are all 'FB' types, fighter-bombers. Well, there was no FB Mk IV... That Mark was used for a 'B' model, a pure bomber. The first FB was the Mk VI. But the S1 or S2 PzC uses is a bit misleading: there were two 'Series' of Mosquitos, the Series 2 could be equipped with more powerful engines and had longer engine nacelles (also designed for aerodynamic improvements)

When the FB models became available, the Series 2 modification had already been introduced and was becoming standard, so only a few hundred FB Mk VI 'S1' were made, the rest was S2. The 'B' (bomber) model had a larger run as S1, but basically Mosquitos built after the first quarter in 1943 are Series 2, although some types got the changes earlier.

Still awake?

The strategic bombers have me a little baffled; you see, the difference between the Lancaster I and III was the source of the engines. The Mk III used American-built Packard-Merlin, instead of the Rolls-Royce Merlin that was used by the Mk I. Luckily, the in-game differences are quite small, and probably represent a general increase in effectiveness of bomber missions, but that leaves the Stirling and Halifax in somewhat difficult positions.

The Halifax Mk III had very comparable performance to the Lancaster, although it carried a slightly lighter bombload. So it should be nearly equal, although the Halifax was cheaper to build. I might be able to find those numbers somewhere, I remember reading a large research paper about British WW2 bomber costs.

The biggest problem are the American bombers, which are a lot better in PzC than the British ones. Each had their strengths and weaknesses, the American machines had good defensive armament but carried much lighter bombloads. The big problem is that they were used differently, so performance (attack/defense values) is hard to judge. But a B-17 should cost about the same as a Lancaster I think, so I agree with deducter their prestige costs should be much closer.

I'll have a look to see if I can conjure some plausible numbers.

Thanks, Thomas.

Here are the tanks of the scenarios. They will probably be a bit more complicated to work out the unit costs for (note that the Soviet T-34-85s have also been greatly reduced in cost for historical production reasons). Before I try and work out new costs, are there any changes to the actual stats themselves that you think are needed? Also let me know if you think any of the infantry stats of a couple of posts ago need amending.



I haven't decided whether to use Panzer IVHs or IVJs. The Panthers will be Panther Gs.

The M4 Sherman I want to restore to 5 movement, as in the Standard EQ file, rather than 4 movement in GCUR. I am happy to keep the M4 Sherman as a cheap and weak tank unit in other respects.

EDIT: Woah! Have just noticed that Churchill tanks have 3 speed in GCUR rather than 4 in the Standard file. They are infantry tanks, I guess. What do you think of this?

So, let's have a look...

Panzer IVH or J?

'H' was produced from April-May 1943 until halfway 1944, with over 2000 made.

'J' was produced from early 1944 until April 1945, over 3000 made. But: one of the main 'J' features, the greatly enlarged fuel stowage, wasn't incorporated until the end of 1944. So For 1944 scenarios the 'H', stat-wise, would be a better choice.

The M4 Sherman I want to restore to 5 movement.

Would be my preference as well, esp. since the Firefly has move 5 as well.

Woah! Have just noticed that Churchill tanks have 3 speed in GCUR rather than 4 in the Standard file. They are infantry tanks, I guess. What do you think of this?

It depends on how deducter views the 'move' stat. For example, let's say 'move' represents mobility. Mobility can be expressed with different units. Speed is easy, just take the tanks sustained top speed, and scale/convert into hex movement. Done this way, the Churchill should have move 3, I guess, as it was very slow (26-22 kph).

But the Churchill was a very mobile tank in another sense of the word. It was slow, but it could go places other tanks couldn't, because of its good performance in rough terrain. With move three, it can't enter bocage (and swamps) in the game. And other terrain types cost 2 move points to enter, like forests and hills, so a tank with move 3 can only move a single hex instead of two through those (if it had move 4). I guess that's why (stock) it has move 4. To get around that problem I just modified my files so tanks with move 3 can enter certain terrain types, and some other movement penalties were changed as well.

It's hard to comment on the infantry, but I'll try:

Recon: Horses and motorcycles with reconmove sounds good.

Engineers: I see that the modded Pioniere '43 (and other engineer units) have very high CD and some better stats (HA) than the Grenadiere. So maybe all combat engineer units should be made a lot more expensive than their HW counterparts? They should probably be the most expensive infantry units with those stats. BTW, stock Pioniere '43 cost 233pr, so that's already more than your suggested 200, which I think is too cheap.

IMHO, they are a specialized unit that needs to be used against specific targets to be cost-effective; they should be too expensive to risk against HW infantry. It's hard to say how much thier traits are worth, unfortunately their special traits will not often be necessary during MP (unless you plan on including minefields and bunkers... )

Kradschützen: should be more than 147pr, because they don't need a separate transport unit, they are already mounted on vehicles. A truck is 50pr, you might give them a small discount because of their weak combat stats, but maybe somewhere between 170-200pr?


BTW, check deducters transport unit costs, he made them a lot more expensive to simulate their rarity (truck = 100pr instead of 50pr, for example).


Next up, some general impression about the tanks: fuel stat is sometimes very low. I know this is supposed to simulate (lack of) reliability for the campaigns, but overdoing it can mean the balance might be thrown off for multiplayer, where they will lag behind or a cunning player will target those units with strategic bombers to quickly deplete their fuel.

Last year, I did some calculations for most German vehicles without reliability adjustment, so I would have some ballpark figures to adjust further. Sometimes they are very close to the stock values or even those made by deducter. But remember my baseline figures do not have the same reliability tweaks that deducter made, although some have very minor adjustments. But it might be interesting to compare:

Unit name -PzC-Deducter-ThvN
Panzer IVH - 53 - 40 - 45
Panzer IVJ - 80 - 64 - 68

Panther A - 63 - 26 - 40
Panther G - 63 - 40 - 44

Tiger I - 31 -15/20- 24
Tiger II - 43 - 14 - 28

If I apply my methods to the Churchill Mk VII, I get (depending on source) a fuel stat of 49-52. The hard part is getting reliable sources; most ranges quoted won't even state what kind of use (offroad or not). I'll have a look at the other allied vehicles in those tables, out of curiosity.

Very interesting info and discussion.

Just a small correction: my sources (e.g. Encyclopedia of German Tanks of Word War Two) say the PzIV H had the larges production figure with 3774 produced until July 1944. And most sources seem to agree that less than 2000 Pz IV J were produced. (1758 + a few hundred chasses used for the Brummbar and the JPz IV/70).

Anyway, I am very interested in your terrain modifications, any chance for more info on this? Maybe a trial release?
I had problems as well with the stock values and noticed that some slower units cannot even enter fortification hexes.


I am also experimenting with unit stats and came up with this table which more or less corresponds to the stock values and to deducter's, especially with the German tanks. It seems that GD is calcualted on max armour (in most cases).

Note that a solid armour is always stronger than a strenghtened one e.g. the Pz III H had 30 mm basic armour + 30 mm added plate and it has GD 10 in both PzC and deducter's, while the 50 mm solid armour Pz III J has GD 11. There is some sense in it, that a solid armour could be stronger than two pieces attached together, I reckon.

max armour - GD
<14mm - 5
14/18mm – 6
20/25mm – 7
35mm – 8
25+25mm – 9
30+30mm – 10
50mm – 11
60mm – 12
65/70mm – 13
50+30mm – 14
75mm - 15
80mm – 16
90mm - 17
100mm - 18
120mm - 19
100mm all around - 22-23 (Tiger I)
180mm - 25-26 (Tiger II)

However, there are exceptions, e.g. Pz 38(t)A had 25 mm armour, still it has GD 6 in both PzC and deducter's. Probably it is due to its riveted construction, but still it has the same armour value as the much lighter Pz II which had only 14.5 mm max armour. So here GD 7 could be better.

For some reason higher values are used for certain Soviet tanks e.g. T-34/40 had 45mm max armour and it has GD 14 (deducter) instead of GD 12 (stock), which is still higher than its theoretical GD 10. Probably the T-34 got some bonus due to its revolutionary sloped armour. On the other hand, by the time of T-34/85 it seems OK again: GD 17 in both PzC and deducter's (max aromur: 90 mm - no more bonus here). The IS-2 looks a bit too strong to me in both version - it had 30-120 mm armour so GD 22-23 at best, like that of the Tiger I, could be better.

Some other tanks e.g. Valentine are seriously flawed: in stock PzC it has GD 8, and deducter left it like that, while in reality it had 65 mm max armour so it should have around GD 12-13. Probably that's why it was mentioned in another topic as one of the least used units by players...

Thanks, guys, for your input.

Yes, Panzer IVHs they shall be. I had gone for Panzer IVJ using the original EQ file as it was the best Panzer IV, but the GCUR mod accurately depicts the IVJ as a retrograde step (barring fuel increase).

The Sherman should be 5 movement, if only because everything else in the British Armoured Division can move at least 5.

I think that if things were being truly authentic, then infantry would move only 2 hexes per turn (perhaps even less). I may have mentioned it earlier in the thread when I was trying to work out the game scale (distance each hex represents). I'm not suggesting implementing that, though, as it would be entering a minefield of difficulties and would also slow down the game. It's worth remembering, though, when trying to work out unit movement rates and suchlike, that there is inherently some bending of the rules of realism going on.

Which leads on to the Churchill. Even as a slow tank, its approximate top speed of 24 km/h is a lot more than average walking speed of around 5 km/h (infantry). So I think maybe it should go back to 4 movement, as in the standard file. It would probably be better for multiplayer play too.

Engineers: I was going to go with the standard 233 points but then noticed that that didn't fit with the Soviet/British engineers costs. So one had to change. Probably better to go the other way and increase costs for the Allies' engineers then. I probably should have taken into greater consideration their CD bonus and meng trait. What sort of price were you thinking of for Pioniere 43? The standard 233 points maybe?

Kradschutzen could go up in price, perhaps to 197. I'm happy to keep the reduced movement (5) of the Kradschutzen and Soviet Cavalry as they are representing recon units of infantry formations and so don't need to be as fast as the AC recons of the Armoured Divisions. The Kradschutzen in the game represent "fusilier" units on bicycles that form the recon element of the infantry division in the ToEs. They could perhaps have their stats altered - use the early Kradschutzen stats but slightly boost HA. And Close Defense 4 like the other infantry, perhaps?

Not sure about how to price the transports - there are a lot of changes in the GCUR, with no transports costing less than 100 points. And lots of units change the transports they use, with much greater use of the SdKfz 7. In reality, they'd probably mostly be horses (I did just check the Unit graphics file to see if there were any horse transport units )!

Here's a summary of the Standard Internal Structure of German Infantry Divisions 1939-1945 which list personnel numbers and equipment used in a concise and easily comparable way (Note: the scenarios are using the Type 44 Division structure).

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/CGSC/CARL/n ... 39GXID.pdf

Theoretically, the German Infantry Regiments were quite well supported with heavier weapons, with a howitzer company and a panzerjager company separate, and in addition to, the two infantry battalions, but organic to the regiment.

Some points on the Fusilier battalion:

- they are equipped very similarly to an infantry battalion but have fewer personnel (700 vs 1,000 men)

- they have proportionally the same number of SMGs and LMGs, and the same number of HMGs, 81mm Mortars and 120mm mortars

- what they lack are half of (since the following are support for two infantry battalions): 36 Panzerfausts, three 75mm AT guns, six 75mm and two 150mm Infantry Support Guns (the AT and infantry support guns are from the separate regimental howitzer and panzerjager companies, while I'm not sure about the Panzerfausts - possibly they're in the panzerjager company or integrated within the two infantry battalions).

I think that the Fusilier/Kradschutzen units should be like a weak infantry unit in combat and with less hard attack capability. Inflicting two and sustaining three damage against another infantry unit, which is what they do now, so not far off. They could perhaps keep their lower initiative as they have to get off their bicycles to fight! (Or maybe three initiative, 4/5 soft attack, 2/3 hard attack, 7-9 ground defense, 2-4 close defence).

Very interesting discussion...

the_iron_duke, the 233 points for the improved engineers might still be a bit low, maybe 250-300? You can try 280 points, with a transport that will make them expensive enough. Keeping the Churchill move=4 is better if you use the stock terrain/movement settings. I think low speed is actually not much of a handicap for MP, I'm more worried about running low on fuel/ammo, which seems to be worse than arriving a bit later. But because they are sometimes the main frontline unit, they will hold up everything else, but I can live with that.

McGuba, I'm still trying different things with the terrain/movement settings, but I'll try to make a test version of those files, more balanced with the stock units if you want to trial it. The problem is that I adjust both the units and the terrain to work together, so just using one set of changes can throw things off-balance. At one point I was even considering making two different sets of 'tracked' movement, to better simulate the difference between pure speed and mobility in difficult terrain.

I'm assuming that the coming Soviet Corps will introduce some new traits and modding features, because the two previous expansions brought the same. So I'm holding off further tweaking until I know more about that, but that will take months... But apparently, horse transport will be included!

Your GD analysis is nice, the Panzer 38(t)A did indeed have riveted armour, which is weaker than welded or cast types. Its low GD is probably also to give some balance, although starting with the 'E' model (starting production near the end of 1940) an extra plate was added, giving it 25+25mm at the front. Stacking plates like that did mean that the total protection was less than a single plate of the same thickness, like you said.

One little thing: you mention the armour thickness values, but the amount of slope, hardness and construction method also determine resistance. The 60 degree slope of the 45mm armoured front plate T-34 gave it an effective thickness of about 70mm (against a projectile coming in horizontally). A nice tool to play with can be found here

But due to the high hardness it was a bit vulnerable to large caliber shells, which would 'overmatch' the armor and could break a large chunk out of it. Softer armour fared better against large shells but could be pierced more easily by hardened small-caliber AP shells. But this sort of stat discussion might be better held in another thread? I don't want to spam up the_iron_duke's mod thread too much.

ThvN wrote: But this sort of stat discussion might be better held in another thread? I don't want to spam up the_iron_duke's mod thread too much.

Depends how deep the discussion will go. I probably know the answer to that one, though!

I've had an attempt at making some stats for German Fusilier and Soviet Cavalry scout units. I don't have anything to base the Soviet Cavalry scouts on historically, so they are similar to the German fusiliers but a bit worse (although one better at ammo as a horse can carry more than a man on a bicycle!). The GCUR Kradschutzen and Soviet Cavalry units are there for comparison.

Here's a bicycle unit by VPaulus I found in another thread:

I've seen custom horse-drawn transport graphics on the threads. I'm pondering adding a horse transport unit to the scenarios. It could perhaps have 4 movement (or maybe 5 on roads and 3 off-road) and act as transport for the towed units of the infantry divisions. It would serve another gameplay role in that it would encourage keeping an infantry division's units together. With a truck transport there is a greater chance that things like artillery units will be separated from the infantry divisions and sent to support other formations, like Panzer Divisions, on the battlefield.

For the Germans and Soviets, it would be straightforward as they used horses for such purposes. Here is a document showing the equipment changes in Soviet Rifle Divisions. There are around 2,000 horses in a late-war Rifle Division (of around 10,000 men).

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/CGSC/CARL/n ... 39RXAH.pdf

For the British, it would be more complicated as they didn't use horses. Here's a list of the equipment of a 1944 British Armoured Division:

Total - 18,347 men

Pistols 1,011
Rifles 11,254
Sten guns 6,525
Light Machine Guns, Bren 1,525
Machine Guns, Vickers Mk I 40
2" Mortar 283
3" Mortar 60
4.2" Mortar 16
PIATs 436
20mm guns 71
40mm Anti-aircraft guns 36
40mm Self Prop AA guns 18
25pdr Field guns 72
6pdr Anti-tank guns 78
17pdr Anti-tank guns 32
Motorcycles, solo 983
Cars,
Miscellaneous 495
Armored 31
Light Reconnaissance 32
Miscellaneous carriers 595
Ambulances 24
Trucks, 15 cwt 954
Lorries, 3 ton 1,056
Tractors, Misc. 205
Trailers 226

(From here: http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/939BXIA.pdf )

One option for the British transports would be to keep the historical vehicles used and have two versions of them, accepting that the infantry division's transport have a movement cap for gameplay reasons. So a 25 Pounder in a British Armoured Division would use a Quad and one from an Infantry Division would use a Quad*. It could use a different unit graphic, with camouflage, perhaps, like this one: http://www.wwiivehicles.com/unitedkingd ... 941-01.png

I'm brainstorming...

If going down the capped movement for infantry division transports route, then there could be different unit graphics for them. Here are some roughly-made examples to get an idea of colour (originals on the left, rough drafts on the right).

Nice idea, and I see you have entered the slippery slope of icon modding...

As for the different trucks, you can also (as placeholder icons) use the 'minor axis' variant of the Opel Blitz (Minor_Axis_Opel_Blitz.png), the Chevy WB (Chevy-WB.png), or even the jeep (Willys_Jeep.png). This way you can start testing your scenario without having to make all kinds of different icon variations.


BTW, a few posts back, you talked of the light anti-tank weapons that were issued to the 'Type 44' divisions. I noticed something odd in the list which I forgot to mention: where did the number of Panzerfausts come from? These weapons were not noted separately in the German bulletins I looked at because they were not issue (personal) weapons, like a rifle, or crew-served weapons like mortars etc.

The way I understand is that Panzerfausts were issued like handgrenades would have been, and they were officially part of the 'ammo' that could be issued to soldiers. What I started to suspect, but that would be a rather silly (but common) mistake, is that they confused Panzerfausts with Panzerschrecks (bazooka). The Panzerschreck was a crew-served weapon (operated by two men) that was usually assigned to specialist tank-hunter units. Usually it's mentioned by its official name, which is Raketenpanzerbuchse 54 (RPzB) , the abbreviations might be misleading if you don't know what it is.

So... I checked the source (TM-E 30-451, which is a US description of the German forces made in march 1945) for the pdf's you linked, and it does not mention '36 Panzerfausts', it mentions '36 bazookas', so they did not quote the source they used correctly, and this is a good example of getting it right and then making a silly mistake and partially undo all the hard work. And while I was into research mode, I looked at where these 'bazookas' could have been located within units.

Example: I looked up KStN 1114 (dated 1.11.1943) which describes a 'Kriegsetat 44' Grenadiercompany (either motorized or armoured). The pdf I have is a direct copy of a US microfilm made of the original German documents. So this is basically a primary source.

It mentions a separate 9-man 'Panzerzerstörertrupp' (tank destroyer team) which had four 2-man teams, each with a bazooka. Additionally, there were three 'regular' platoon and a 'heavy' one (with mortars). Each regular platoon was allowed 3 bazookas, the heavy 2. So that gives 4+9+2 = 15 bazookas for a company, with about a third allocated to a small, separate tank-hunter team.

Maybe you have seen this page, presumably the same document? http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/HB/HB-2.html (The contents page from the handbook is here http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/HB/ )

To see the relevant table, search [II-15] in the page. I think it is the one you pointed out. A very useful source.

Anyway, this discussion was initiated by trying to come up with some stats for the fusilier unit. I gave them 4 soft attack/2 Hard attack which looks about right?

Another thing to notice about that same table is the transportation. The artillery regiments are horse-drawn, the AT battalion uses motor vehicles and the engineer unit is a bit of a mixture but more horse.

EDIT: another interesting thing about that table is there isn't much to recommend giving engineers strong hard attack. All they really have to distinguish themselves are their flamethrowers, i.e. meng trait.

A couple of questions, if anyone's got the answers:

1) Does the structure of the equipment file have to be kept intact? More specifically, would I, in the equipment file, be able to cut all the units that aren't in my scenarios and paste them at the bottom of the page underneath, so all the units I'm using are at the top of the page?

2) How are sounds linked to units? For example, the Kradschutzen has a motorcycle sound but I can't see anything in the equipment file that would link it to a sound file. It has the same Movement Type as wheeled units but they don't share a sound.

1) Does the structure of the equipment file have to be kept intact? More specifically, would I, in the equipment file, be able to cut all the units that aren't in my scenarios and paste them at the bottom of the page underneath, so all the units I'm using are at the top of the page?

As far as I know you can. Just make sure you do not leave any empty lines in between, as in that case PzC would not read the rest of the units after the empty line thinking that that is the end of the file. (But, if you do not use those units, you can completely delete those lines as well.) Also, you can add the "#" character in the beginnning of the line, so that PzC will disregard the contents of that line and jump to the next line.

2) How are sounds linked to units? For example, the Kradschutzen has a motorcycle sound but I can't see anything in the equipment file that would link it to a sound file. It has the same Movement Type as wheeled units but they don't share a sound.

Sounds and animation files are linked to the units in the efx.pzdat file, which can be found in the "\Panzer Corps\Graphics" folder. All the unit icons have an entry in this file, most are in alphabetical list, but the rest are just tossed in after. E.g. here is the entry for the Kradschutzen:

BMW_R12.png (29,-18) (-30,-6) (,) (,) MG1 motorcycle1 motorcycle2 motorcycle3

BMW_R12.png says that this entry refers to the motorcylce icon. In the equipment.pzdat file, in the Kradschutzen line, you can find the same png filename in the "Icon" column. The numbers in the brackets determine the positioning of the attack animation relative to the unit icon image. The MG1 is the name of the attack animation (machine gun). The motorcycle 1-3 in the end are the movement sounds that you need. Movement sounds are stored in the "\Panzer Corps\Audio\MoveSfx" folder e.g. motorcycle1 refers to the motorcycle1.wav file. In this case there are 3 movement sounds, one of which is used randomly every time you move your motorcycle unit.

When you make changes to the contents of this file, it is important preserve the original layout of the lines. E.g. if you want to change the movement sound references, the best way is to go the the end of the "motorcycle1' word, delete it with the backspace until you delete the "m" and then enter the name of the new movement sound. Otherwise you can mess up the the file and some sounds/anims would not work. (The positioning of the contents is important here.)

If you add a new unit to the game, e.g. you want to add an additional truck as you wrote above, you have to add a new line to the efx.pzdat file as well so that it will have a movement sound (and attack animation, although trucks don't have it), starting with the file name of the new unit icon. If it is just a "clone" of an exisiting truck, you can simply copy the contents of the entry of that other unit after the file name. Again, make sure to keep the same layout, i.e. after the "newlorry.png" press the "Tab" once to get to the correct place of the first bracket with the number in it.

Thanks for the info, McGuba. So if I look around the internet for a bicycle sound I should be able to make the fusilier unit!

I'm trying to think of the practicalities of adding capped movement for the infantry division transports. I think it would be a good idea if it can be made to work. Probably I'd want the transport to be able to move three hexes in flat/countryside offroad terrain (or possibly four) and three or four hexes on road. It may have to involve changing the transport type. For example, wheeled vehicles expend two unit points entering flat/countryside hexes and so would need to have six movement points. If they were designated as all terrain vehicles then it might work. However, this might lead to visual discrepancies. So a couple more questions:

1) On the unit info panel on the user interface on the right of the game screen there is a little picture showing the unit class above the stats. Units with transports have two little pictures. How are these pictures determined?

2) When clicking on a unit, its movement radius is shown. The white dots change to a picture of the transport to the more distant hexes. How is that transport picture determined?

Basically, I'm wondering whether a truck transport could be set to have all terrain movement of, say, three hexes and still have a picture of a truck in the unit class info in the unit stats panel and also a truck on the game screen showing hexes that can be moved to.

the_iron_duke wrote:Maybe you have seen this page, presumably the same document? http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/HB/HB-2.html (The contents page from the handbook is here http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/HB/ )

To see the relevant table, search [II-15] in the page. I think it is the one you pointed out. A very useful source.

Very useful, but not without small errors, I'll get to that.

Anyway, this discussion was initiated by trying to come up with some stats for the fusilier unit. I gave them 4 soft attack/2 Hard attack which looks about right?

I checked a late-war German table, and half of the troops had rifles, the other half (two-thirds of the actual combat troops) was supposed to use Sturmgewehre, so your stats look good to me. Cost is difficult to estimate, but they should be cheaper than regular infantry, so about 150-160? Soviet Cavalry '43 could be 135-145. BTW, there is a big difference in most of their defense stats, I reckon they should be about as vulnerable, which is shown with the CD. I might be using the wrong logic here, but a unit on horses vs. a unit on bicycles won't matter that much I think?

EDIT: another interesting thing about that table is there isn't much to recommend giving engineers strong hard attack. All they really have to distinguish themselves are their flamethrowers, i.e. meng trait.

This is strangely absent from the US document, but a Pioniere Kompanie had to form two tank-hunter teams, 6 bazookas total. It is clearly mentioned in the original German document. There were at least two of those (theoretically three) in a battalion, so mentally mark down a '12' in that spot in the table.

About the strangely high HA, I have two theories: the flamethrowers can damage tanks etc., and are especially effective against small bunkers. This brings me to theory no. 2, that maybe the relatively high HA is necessary for them gaming-wise to do good damage against strongpoints and forts? The flamethrowers might also explain the high CD. Overall, I think they are too good in their modded state. The stock file gives them INI=2, so maybe it's better to go back to that to represent that their firepower was only very short-ranged.

1) On the unit info panel on the user interface on the right of the game screen there is a little picture showing the unit class above the stats. Units with transports have two little pictures. How are these pictures determined?

2) When clicking on a unit, its movement radius is shown. The white dots change to a picture of the transport to the more distant hexes. How is that transport picture determined?

I have no idea. What I do know is that, during Allied Corps beta, the new all-terrain and tracked transports used wrong map movement icons, which I mentioned to Rudankort, and he partially fixed it. The all-terrain (Quad truck) now use the truck icon, but the Kangaroo still uses the halftrack icon. So it might be hard-coded?

What I do know is that in the Panzer Corps\UI folder are two .png's, transport0.png & transport1.png, which are used for the sidebar display. For the map movement icons, in Panzer Corps\Graphics\Overlays there are movetruck.png & movehalftrack.png. So they can be replaced by a more 'generic' icon, but I don't know if adding new types of transport icons is supported.

I'm curious what they will do with the upcoming horse transport?

Are you saying all of the stats look good for the Fusilier and Soviet Scout Cavalry?

Here is something from another internet thread on flamethrowers vs tanks:

Internet wrote: The technical merits of this are that flamethrowers will work on tanks very effectively. They will (depending on where they hit the tank) set the engine on fire, suck the air out of the vehicle (by consumption), leak into the vehicle through hatches, vision slots etc. In short, a flamethrower will generally destroy an AFV.
Now, on the down side, AFV are rarely unaccompanied. This means that the operator of the flamethrower is going to become a very visible target almost instantly. This will mean he will also be the target of certain massive retalliation resulting in his demise.
Given that most flamethrowers have a range on the order of 50 to 75 yards at most using one in this way is almost certainly suicidial.

In general, I'm not sure how useful good HA stats are for infantry. It doesn't help them much when caught by tanks in open terrain and as infantry they already have good advantage against hard targets when in close terrain, so are unlikely to be attacked by them (well, much less likely in multiplayer than with the single-player A.I.).

I'd agree on engineers going back to 2 initiative.

I might have got the movement thing to work. I've set an Opel Blitz truck to have 4 movement and have set its Movement Type to offroad (7). I have then made it the transport for an artillery piece. The movement radius is showing one hex artillery movement (dots) then a further three hexes of transport movement. The movement is the same on or offroad. In both the User Interface and in the movement radius the graphic is showing as a truck. So that is working completely as hoped!

For horses, not quite so. One can get a transport to move like a horse and a horseshoe shows up graphically as the movement type. But in the user interface and with the movement radius it shows as a truck.

Still, that's a minor issue. In gameplay terms, the plan would work and so I'll use it - the infantry division units fight and die together. Could probably assign the cavalry audio to a horse-drawn transport?

VPaulus has given me permission to use his bicycle unit and modify it to a German unit (I think it's Hungarian at the moment). It should be straightforward, but I have a question about animation (gunfire). I would need to pick an existing one from another unit? How easy is it to create a new one? I was planning on swapping the infantry for two of the three guys in the in the Wehrmacht Inf graphic. But the muzzle flashes don't quite fit with an existing unit, I think (the kneeling shooter of the Fallschirmager unit is similar but is shooting from the hip, while the Wehrmacht kneeling guy is shooting from the shoulder). Any ideas?

the_iron_duke wrote:Are you saying all of the stats look good for the Fusilier and Soviet Scout Cavalry?

I think so, yes. It's a bit hard to judge, because I'm not that familiar with how deducter designed his infantry units.

Internet on flamethrowers vs tanks

'Depending on where they hit the tank'... Erm. A lot of theoretical ifs and buts, if you don't mind me saying. Most tanks are not particularly vulnerable to flame weapons, but it heavily depends on the construction and use. The more modern Cold War-era tanks are very resistant, because they are usually designed with NBC-protection. So I'll try to comment on the Second World War machinery.

They talk of igniting engine compartments, which is not as easy as it sounds: despite the large grills on the back of most tanks, these are not automatically good targets for disabling the engine. For a quick, effective attack, the engine would need to be set on fire. But those grills are usually there for cooling, and the fresh air that is drawn into the engine is drawn through the personnel compartment. So it would overheat the engine after a while, but not 'choke' it quickly as they imply.

And an engine compartment is hard to set on fire, because it is designed to have a very hot & big piece of metal in the very close presence of flammable liquids; that's sort of how it works... Any fuel/oil leaks could cause it to catch fire, and this was the fate of some early Panther tanks, so pouring in a few litres of burning fuel will not automatically cause it to burn up. It will after some time, but most opponents don't sit still while you spray them with liquids, which seems to be agreed upon.

Sure, open hatches would be very vulnerable when targeted, but open hatches mean that the crew will see you coming more easily. And the only flamethrowers with that amount of range were vehicle-mounted; 50-75 yards would be difficult for even the Crocodile Churchill. Realistically, 30 yards. I've read some wartime quotes, and all seem to point that the flamethrower was effective vs. static, small, point targets, but the lack of info about anti-tank use might indicate how effective it really was vs. tanks. In an emergency, it was very usable, but not much more than an anti-tank hand grenade.

End of rant.

In general, I'm not sure how useful good HA stats are for infantry. It doesn't help them much when caught by tanks in open terrain and as infantry they already have good advantage against hard targets when in close terrain, so are unlikely to be attacked by them (well, much less likely in multiplayer than with the single-player A.I.).

Yep. That's why I had to try some theories, because I don't see the clear reasoning behind the high HA. I think the problem is compounded by the fact that SA and HA must use the same initiative; so the attacks are using the same 'range', which is not very logical. The Panzerfaust might have been able to take out a IS tank, it only had a very short range (but longer than most flamethrowers! )

But even a light infantry unit could engage 'soft' enemy units from much further away with mortars, machineguns, rifles, etc. So there is a more limiting relationship between their HA and INI than their SA and INI, I think. So the higher HA of the engineers would be easier to explain if their INI is reduced, otherwise you would have to assume those flamethrowers had as much range as their machineguns, or something equally silly.

Now, INI is not just range, but it is one of the main factors in combat effectiveness. And IMHO engineers should be generally less effective in head-to-head combat, because they are specialized in short-range assaults on entrenched positions. So they should come out worse if they were to meet an HW infantry on open ground.

For horses, not quite so. One can get a transport to move like a horse and a horseshoe shows up graphically as the movement type. But in the user interface and with the movement radius it shows as a truck.

Thanks for checking, so it's probably hard-coded. I mustn't forget in the future to check if the Soviet Corps beta has this same problem.

VPaulus has given me permission to use his bicycle unit and modify it to a German unit (I think it's Hungarian at the moment). It should be straightforward, but I have a question about animation (gunfire). I would need to pick an existing one from another unit? How easy is it to create a new one? I was planning on swapping the infantry for two of the three guys in the in the Wehrmacht Inf graphic. But the muzzle flashes don't quite fit with an existing unit, I think (the kneeling shooter of the Fallschirmager unit is similar but is shooting from the hip, while the Wehrmacht kneeling guy is shooting from the shoulder). Any ideas?

The efx.pzdat file (in the \Panzer Corps\Graphics folder) uses 'offsets' to tell the program where exactly an animation must be played; PzC recycles many animations, so for a tank with a very long barrel, the animation gets shifted outwards. The offset can be different for left- or right-facing attacks. You can easily pick and rename any existing animation and rename a sound to be played alongside it.

The animations for the bridge engineers and the cavalry might be usable for you: those animations are made for icons with fewer figures.

As for making a new one, it's like making a hand-drawn animated movie: a multi-image png gets played rapidly, and at the same time a sound file is played. So it all has to be matched up manually. Great fun... If I may recommend something, McGuba has made a really nice mod (see his sig), which uses these bicycle units complete with matching animation. Check out his efx file.