Slitherine

There are a few candidates from the German Military Abbreviations manual for 'team of horses' or something similar:

Pferd - horse
mit Pferdezug - horse-drawn
Pferdefahrzeug - horse-drawn vehicle

vierspännig - drawn by four horses

Vorspann - team of horses

bespannt - horse-drawn

Zugpferd - draught horse

Using google translate, team of horses is Pferdegespann .

Using google.de Bilder (Pictures), they all bring up pictures of horses (except for Vorspann, which sounds like a movie villain's name).

Regarding the engineers, I think increasing Close Defense from 5 to 6, as you yourself suggested, would be enough to make them a more effective specialist unit.

What are you thinking for Ground Defense? I think the GCUR is better than the standard EQ file - it's pretty much increased it by 2 for infantry. This is in line with the Close Defense increases and together they make infantry vs infantry combat a bit less lethal (which I like).

Actually, thinking more about it, maybe it would be better to stick with the original Ground Defense values (or near). Close Defense combat has been made less lethal, but maybe Ground Defense should remain lower as, with less terrain cover, being in the open as infantry should be pretty deadly.

Another one of these moments:




Increasing Close Defence further?

I am thinking about the casualty rates of infantry vs infantry combat. Would infantry vs infantry fighting in the open produce more or less casualties, say every hour or so, than fighting in the woods or urban combat? Even if there wasn't time to prepare entrenchment I would have thought that, with terrain cover, casualty rates would be slower than on open terrain (especially with machine guns). Increasing Close Defense would decrease the overall casualty rates, and so infantry in urban areas would take a little longer to dislodge and eliminate.

I'm just thinking in terms of infantry vs infantry combat, so I'm not sure how big the repercussions would be on infantry vs non-infantry combat. Just throwing an idea out there...

A bit of testing on Close Defense.

Both with 4 C.D., a British infantry attacking a lightly entrenched Wehrmacht produces Kill ratios of 40% vs 44%. With C.D. of 8 this is brought down to 22% vs 26%, so a lot less lethal.

Infantry vs non-infantry combat in close terrain appears to be unaffected as the non-infantry use their Close Defense, while the infantry use their Ground Defense.

So changing infantry's Close Defense only has an effect on infantry vs infantry combat? If so, then this might be an idea (though, not necessarily to 8 C.D.).

More for me to say on this...

It seems logical to me to have C.D. for infantry as 8, or the same as what the Ground Defense is - or even higher!

This is what happens in the standard EQ file (and those with low C.D.):

A British infantry fights a Wehrmacht in open terrain. The kill percentages are: 26 vs 31%.

Now the Wehrmacht moves into a forest. The kill percentages rise dramatically to 49% vs 58%. What is there to explain this? If anything the kill percentages should be lower, at least for the Wehrmacht who is now in cover (less damage received).

With 8 C.D. for both infantry (and using ThvN stats) the results are:

In the open: 26% vs 26%
In the forest: 22% vs 26%

Now that looks more realistic to me. Perhaps, could even go the other way and make Close Defense higher than Ground Defense!

the_iron_duke wrote:There are a few candidates from the German Military Abbreviations manual for 'team of horses' or something similar

Yep, it depended on the type of cart the unit was equipped with, there were standardized models. Some comments:

Vorspann - team of horses

they all bring up pictures of horses (except for Vorspann, which sounds like a movie villain's name).

Does he have a long face?

This is a very context-bound phrase, so modern searches yield modern results... 'Vorspann' apparently (German is not my first language) is mostly used for trains these days, it means there are multiple towing 'units' (horses, locomotives), it isn't limited to horses. In theory, the following image could be called a 'Vorspann' (three Bf 110's towing a Me 321 glider...)


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

bespannt - horse-drawn

I saw this one in original Kstn documents, abbreviated as besp., so if you want to have a short designation for horse-drawn units, this could be all you need.

Regarding the engineers, I think increasing Close Defense from 5 to 6, as you yourself suggested, would be enough to make them a more effective specialist unit.

What are you thinking for Ground Defense? I think the GCUR is better than the standard EQ file - it's pretty much increased it by 2 for infantry. This is in line with the Close Defense increases and together they make infantry vs infantry combat a bit less lethal (which I like).

I am thinking about the casualty rates of infantry vs infantry combat. Would infantry vs infantry fighting in the open produce more or less casualties, say every hour or so, than fighting in the woods or urban combat? Even if there wasn't time to prepare entrenchment I would have thought that, with terrain cover, casualty rates would be slower than on open terrain (especially with machine guns). Increasing Close Defense would decrease the overall casualty rates, and so infantry in urban areas would take a little longer to dislodge and eliminate.

I'm just thinking in terms of infantry vs infantry combat, so I'm not sure how big the repercussions would be on infantry vs non-infantry combat. Just throwing an idea out there...

I like throwing out ideas, so please share any, it can only help.

Regarding GD, I also try to account for experience bonuses when trying to come up with stats... I have to anticipate what happens when 4-star regulars fight 2-star HW as well. So in addition to the questions you ask, I also have my own questions to answer when I come up with those stats, like which experience gap would be sufficient to neutralize the INI/CD/whatever advantage within a unit class, and than again the same question but now between unit classes (infantry vs. AT in open terrain ) So that's why I try to find out your exact design goals, because mine are not always compatible with yours, and just copying some numbers might lead you astray...

But I'm leaning towards more CD/GD for infantry, and my exp.pzdat file already boosts defensive stats more than offensive stats, so that experienced units are a bit more deadly but above all way tougher, which keeps them 'in the game'. And it might even be historically accurate.

I say 'might be ' because I'm not well versed in historical infantry vs. infantry effectiveness, but I would argue that open terrain produces more casualties if there are regular armies fighting each other, with actual support available (organic or otherwise). There are studies that predict overall casualty ratios when fighting in different environments, and generally the worst ratios are when attacking defended cities (6:1 is commonly quoted as needed to take a city) ; but overall, it is safe to say attackers will suffer worse than defenders.

Most small arms only become effective within 400 metres, but mortars and machineguns can do a lot of damage at greater ranges, and they are often quoted as the primary killers of exposed troops; so if a unit would be able to creep up and 'hug' a unit so the enemy can't deploy his mortars and other crew-served weapons, it would be down to small-unit tactics and guerrilla-like firefights (see the recent conflicts were big, cold-war armies suffered at the hands of small groups of infantry), but further out the 'heavy' weapons would be decisive I guess. This is represented by both the CD and INI caps, so it's a bit tricky to get good values.

So in the end I gave the HW more INI, meaning this advantage still could be neutralized when there is an INI cap (due to terrain or weather), but when they can exploit their higher INI they will be able to inflict more casualties on average (higher SA does this as well, but having an INI advantage seems a more reliable way). And their firepower advantage is mainly at longer ranges, which translates nicely into their higher INI.


I think GCUR is better than the stock file, but it has somewhat different design goals than your mod. So it's better, but it could still be improved to better suit your wishes I think. Infantry are soft targets, which are quickly annihilated on open terrain late in the war, so the higher GD is there to help prevent this. A benefit here is that a units' SA can be completely independant from its HA, so you can 'downgrade' late-war SA for tanks etc. a little to keep infantry alive longer.

And a few points extra GD for infantry help more than the same increase for a tank, simply because late-war SA often is relatively lower than HA. But this makes it a bit more difficult to tweak this stat, because even small changes can have relatively big effects, a bit like CD has on close-terrain combat. But I need to plow through the later GC West campaign with these new settings, before I know if they are good enough.

It seems logical to me to have C.D. for infantry as 8, or the same as what the Ground Defense is - or even higher!

This is what happens in the standard EQ file (and those with low C.D.):

A British infantry fights a Wehrmacht in open terrain. The kill percentages are: 26 vs 31%.

Now the Wehrmacht moves into a forest. The kill percentages rise dramatically to 49% vs 58%. What is there to explain this? If anything the kill percentages should be lower, at least for the Wehrmacht who is now in cover (less damage received).

With 8 C.D. for both infantry (and using ThvN stats) the results are:

In the open: 26% vs 26%
In the forest: 22% vs 26%

Now that looks more realistic to me. Perhaps, could even go the other way and make Close Defense higher than Ground Defense!

This makes sense, but remember you are talking about equal experience; I have to watch out things don't get unbalanced with different experience levels. So a straight answer is difficult, but I'll give some factors I use to try and come up with stat values.

It would depend on which units fight each other; a unit which would be more focused on short-range combat would have the advantage here (higher CD), so which units (historically) performed better under such circumstances? Experienced light infantry? Doctrine and training will matter a lot, and with longer ranges marksmanship will matter more. I think light infantry could beat HW infantry in 'close' terrain, especially if they were well equipped for short-range combat, at least the fight will be on more equal terms. That was my reasoning behind the higher CD for engineers (and Soviet units).

But even in close terrain GD is important; artillery always uses GD when attacking them, so GD, combined with the entrenchment bonus, can make a big difference if there is more going on than infantry vs. infantry.

The name for towing horses would appear on-screen in the space where it says 'Opel Blitz' or 'SdKfz 7', so it wouldn't be an abbreviation. And it should probably be a noun not an adjective, so 'horse' or 'horse-team', rather than 'horse-drawn'. I'm not even quite sure what it would be in English, but 'horse-team' appears a bit more frequently in web-searching.

I'm making it a priority to find a solution to the casualty rate differences between open and close terrain. I'm still early in testing, but so far I'm liking these changes: regular infantry go to 8 C.D., engineers go to 9 C.D. and engineer initiative goes down to 1. If Close Defense is increased then the initiative advantage is decreased; so instead of getting two suppressed, engineers were getting 1 or zero suppressed. With initiative of 1, engineers have two suppressed again.

It doen't affect the comparative proportions of damage inflicted/received just reduces the overall intensity. It sounds a bit radical but the tests are going well so far. No doubt, I'll find the fatal flaw in due course...

I appreciate things might distort more with large experience differences but in a one-off battle this should be less of a problem. There could even be an experience cap of 299 or something.

I've found a flaw already. Here are some statistics using the experimental high C.D. values (with the GCUR values for comparison).

British Infantry attacking Wehrmacht in open terrain:

British inflicts: 26% vs Wehrmacht inflicts: 26% / GCUR 21% vs 21%

The British Infantry attacks a Wehrmacht that has moved into a forest hex:

British inflicts: 22% vs Wehrmacht inflicts: 26% / GCUR 40% vs 44%

British infantry attacks well-entrenched Wehrmacht (Level 5 entrenchment, +2 Entrenchment bonus)

British inflicts: 21% vs Wehrmacht inflicts: 26% / GCUR 35% vs 44%

So the flaw would be that, proportionally, the British damage inflicted is not so different in the experimental system between a lightly and well-entrenched enemy. The reason, I suspect, is that with increased C.D. values, the entrenchment bonus is reduced proportionally. The chances of Rugged Defence have increased from 6% to 16%, however, so there is always that to take into consideration.

A couple of questions:

1) Is the value of the entrenchment bonus or the speed at which entrenchment takes place easily moddable?

2) Is Rugged Defense percentage easily moddable?

I found these variables in the gamerules114 folder. They look as if they might be useful, but I've tried adjusting them and haven't noticed any effect on gameplay.

# Entrenchment bonus to defense vs. infantry, ranged units, other units
EntDefBonusInfantry 50
EntDefBonusRanged 100
EntDefBonus 100

the_iron_duke wrote:The name for towing horses would appear on-screen in the space where it says 'Opel Blitz' or 'SdKfz 7', so it wouldn't be an abbreviation. And it should probably be a noun not an adjective, so 'horse' or 'horse-team', rather than 'horse-drawn'. I'm not even quite sure what it would be in English, but 'horse-team' appears a bit more frequently in web-searching.

I seem to see more instances of 'horse team' (without the hyphen)?

Some suggestions:

Pferdezug (horse traction, zug here means towing unit, like a tractor or locomotive)

Pferdegespann (horse team)

Pferdebespannt (horse-drawn)

Example sentence I plucked from the internet, with a rough translation:

"...die schwere Abteilung war zunächst pferdebespannt, die schwere Feldhaubitze mußte bei Pferdezug in zwei Lasten gefahren werden."

"...the heavy battalion was initially horse-drawn, the heavy fieldhowitzers, when using horse traction, had to be moved in two loads."

I'm making it a priority to find a solution to the casualty rate differences between open and close terrain. I'm still early in testing, but so far I'm liking these changes: regular infantry go to 8 C.D., engineers go to 9 C.D. and engineer initiative goes down to 1. If Close Defense is increased then the initiative advantage is decreased; so instead of getting two suppressed, engineers were getting 1 or zero suppressed. With initiative of 1, engineers have two suppressed again.

It doen't affect the comparative proportions of damage inflicted/received just reduces the overall intensity. It sounds a bit radical but the tests are going well so far.

Sounds good, most late-war combat is quite deadly (all-or-nothing) with the stock file. A big note here, I am currently using a different INI advantage bonus in order to minimize the effects of the pre-combat initiative dice roll. I want to find out if setting the INI advantage to 10% (instead of the stock 20%) makes combat less unpredictable/lethal.

Basically, stock you need 5 INI more ( 5 x 20% =100%) than your opponent to get in all your shots before they can return the attack. I changed it so now an advantage of 10 INI is needed to fire all shots first. So far it seems to work, but now a lot of units might need their INI tweaked again . Oh well,

Thinking out loud here: these changes probably work less well for the weaker early-war units; they will need a lot of turns to inflict damage with their lower SA. But that might also be the answer, perhaps it would be fun to boost the SA of early-war infantry as well. Some other units like towed AT and artillery would have to have higher GD to avoid getting slaughtered, which means some tanks will need higher SA to remain effective, which means they will have an easy time taking out infantry unless their GD/CD gets boosted as well... Mmmh, it seems the biggest changes between early and late infantry would be their HA. Maybe I will need to try some things as well...

I appreciate things might distort more with large experience differences but in a one-off battle this should be less of a problem. There could even be an experience cap of 299 or something.

Very true, my design goals are a bit different, just tweak things to match your ideas, an ignore my opinions if they are not a factor for you. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' value, that all depends on what you want to achieve.

A couple of questions:

1) Is the value of the entrenchment bonus or the speed at which entrenchment takes place easily moddable?

The bonus, like you discovered, is moddable, the speed and ('depth') depends on terrain type and unit class, and it partially moddable. Terrain has a moddable 'Base entrenchment' setting (check the library), which is the entrenchment an infantry unit will get when it has entered the terrain this turn (see viewtopic.php?p=280420#p280420).

2) Is Rugged Defense percentage easily moddable?

Seems hardcoded, sorry.

I found these variables in the gamerules114 folder. They look as if they might be useful, but I've tried adjusting them and haven't noticed any effect on gameplay.

# Entrenchment bonus to defense vs. infantry, ranged units, other units
EntDefBonusInfantry 50
EntDefBonusRanged 100
EntDefBonus 100

Maybe they only work when using 1.20 rules? I've changed them, and they seem to work. For example, I put the 'ranged' bonus at 200, and 4 entrenchment now gives +8 defense when the unit is attacked by artillery. You can try and check with the combat log, note the entrenchment level of the target and check if the entrenchment bonus is properly calculated.

ThvN wrote: Maybe they only work when using 1.20 rules? I've changed them, and they seem to work

Yes, that was the issue and I've fixed it now.

If at game set-up I chose classic rules (1.14) it worked, but with the default 1.20 rules it didn't. So I copied the entrenchment stuff and pasted it in the gamerules.pzdat file and it's working now.

I have changed the Entrenchment bonus vs infantry from 50 to 100.

I am using the following stats:

--------IN-SA-CD
Infantry 3 5 8
Engineer 1 4 9

Test results...

Engineer attacking Wehrmacht in open:

Engineer kills 22% x 0.8 = 17.6% / Defending wehrmacht kills 26% [Note: could give engineers 1 extra GD in which case Wehrmacht kill rate reduced to 22%].

Engineer attacking Wehrmacht in forest:

Engineer kills 22% x 0.8 = 17.6% / Defending wehrmacht kills 22%

British infantry attacking Wehrmacht who has just entered forest hex:

British Inf kills 21% / Wehrmacht kills 26%

British infantry attacking Wehrmacht who is well-entrenched in forest (+5 entrenchment):

British Inf kills 15% / Wehrmacht kills 26%

These stats look good to me.

Ideally, engineers should only be superior against well-entrenched enemy. Against an enemy that has only just entered a close terrain hex, a regular infantry should perform better at attacking than an engineer. This is just about the case.

Another small thing that can be done is to set the entrenchment bonus to 99 instead of a 100, so a unit that has only just entered a close terrain hex only gets +1 entrenchment in the first turn instead of 2. In which case, the kill rate for British infantry attacking a wehrmacht that had just entered a forest hex would rise from 21% to 22%.

Another way to make engineers more specialist, which I like, is to reduce engineer ammo to 3 or 4.

Small tweak to make engineers defend better in forest versus attacking Wehrmacht.

Entrenchment bonus at 100 (better than 99)

--------IN - SA -GD -CD
Infantry 3 - 5 - 8 - 8
Engineer 1 - 4 - 9 - 10

Engineers have to have 1 initiative for the suppression to work.

Latest thinking. Increase SA, making infantry combat slightly more lethal, especially in the open.

Entrenchment bonus down to 99 again

--------IN - SA -GD -CD
Infantry 3 - 6 - 8 - 8
Engineer 1 - 5 - 9 - 10

And now the latest version! Infantry vs infantry on open terrain is more lethal.

Entrenchment bonus at 100

--------IN - SA -GD -CD
Infantry 3 - 6 - 8 - 10
Engineer 1 - 5 - 9 - 12

Infantry attacks Wehrmacht in open:

31% vs 31%

Engineer attacks Wehrmacht in open:

26% x 0.8 = 20.8% vs 26%

Wehrmacht attacks Engineer in open:

wehrmacht 26% vs engineer 26% x 0.8 = 20.8%

Engineer attacks Wehrmacht in forest:

21% x 0.8 = 16.08 vs 19%

British Infantry attacks Wehrmacht who's just entered forest hex:

19% vs 22%

British Infantry vs well-entrenched wehrmacht in forest (+5 entrenchment)

14% vs 22%

Wehrmacht attacks engineer in forest (engineer's just moved into forest hex)

wehrmacht 15% vs engineer 21% x 0.8 = 16.8%

So engineers are weaker in the open and only slightly better at defending in close terrain, but its key strength is attacking heavily entrenched positions - they inflict 15% more damage than an infantry when attacking a well-entrenched enemy, while taking 14% less losses.

EDIT: I like this version a lot! Have been having mini infantry battles in forests and on the plains. On the plains infantry are vulnerable, while in the close terrain it's more dogged and epic! I recommend you check it out if you get the chance.

2ND EDIT: another thing I've noticed is that if the engineer unit attacks a unit and it has friendly support in an adjacent hex, then it doesn't get suppressed and so fires at full effect rather than at 80%. Not sure if that's what normally happens, but it's a nice effect.

I'm happy with how the engineers are performing. The only way they perform better than regular infantry is in attacking heavily entrenched targets. I think this is realistic. The engineers have many strings to their bow including fortkiller and minesweeper, represented in the game, but they also do many other things and include bridge-engineers organic to the division. Plus, in size they are smaller than an infantry battalion - 600 vs 1,000 men.

Since having support attack nullifies suppression from initiative differences, engineers get a bonus boost in attacking performance when part of a multi-unit attack, which is realistic.

As a consequence of support attack nullifying suppression from initiative differences, I think things will be more straightforward if Soviet infantry have 3 initiative points, the same as other regular infantry. Their lower performance will be reflected with decreased S.A., H.A. and G.D. (as in the regular and GCUR EQ files).

I will also give them the same C.D. level as other regular infantry. Since they have lower G.D., being equal at C.D. can in itself be considered as having a C.D. bonus.

I think I will re-designate the German heavy weapon battalions as machine gun battalions and hence try and model them for that role. The British heavy weapon battalion of the Infantry Division is itself a Machine Gun Battalion, so for balance reasons it would be fair to make the German ones machine guns also. They don't seem to have been that widely used, the German independent heavy weapons battalions, and so there will probably only be up to two of these units for each side, even for a large battle.

I also wonder about making one for the Soviets. There isn't a Soviet heavy weapons unit image in the stock game - they only have a SMG unit. I'm not sure if there were independent Soviet SMG battalions?

Here are some stats I've come up with for German, British and Soviet regular infantry and engineers. I haven't decided on engineer H.A. values or unit costs yet. I've used your ammo stats and have been influenced by your S.A./H.A. values.

I think I'll use your H.A. stats for engineers, Thomas.

The German machine gun battalion would represents this one:

e. MACHINE-GUN BATTALION (Maschinengewehrbataillon). The independent machine-gun battalion consists of three companies equipped with heavy machine guns and bazookas and a heavy weapons company. It probably has been redesignated fortress machine-gun battalion. (http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/HB/HB-2.html)

According to the German Military Abbreviations manual, the abbreviation would be Masch.Gew. or M.G.

Here is a source on the composition of the British Infantry Division's Machine Gun Battalion:

Machine Gun Battalion (from early 1944 onwards) - with thirty six Vickers medium machine guns, divided into three Companies, with three Platoons of four MMGs per Company. Also one Heavy Mortar Company with sixteen 4.2-in mortars, divided into four Platoons of four mortars each. (http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/Bri ... 201945.htm)

The German independent machine gun battalion looks like a stronger unit, certainly in terms of Hard Attack.

I've made some stats for heavy weapons machine gun units. Some notes on them:

i) Ammo - I've gone for your ammo stats. By the way, what is your reasoning for increasing heavy weapon ammo levels (to regular infantry levels)?

ii) Initiative. I've actually increased their initiative to 6. The units' main feature is suppressive fire.

iii) S.A./H.A. I've gone for the values in the standard EQ file, which make the German version stronger, especially H.A.

iv) Ground Defense. I've made the Ground Defense the same as in the standard/GCUR - that is equal with regular infantry. I can see the logic for reducing it if they were more representing mortar units, but as they are machine gun units, with some supporting mortar, I have made them normal ground defense. Machine guns should be devastating when faced with on open ground. But they should also be hard to attack when they are in defensive cover.

v) Air Defense. I've kept with the Standard/GCUR. The British HW unit has one higher Air Defense than other similar units. I'm not sure why, or whether it's warranted - I might make it 17.

So to summarise, the machine gun units are suppressive fire infantry, but also a bit more powerful than regular infantry. So they are useful when attacking, but they can also be defensively strong and sited to hold strategically key hexes.

They are stronger than the stock HW units, but I think that's fair for their historical battalion-sized roles, and for the very small numbers (around 2 per side) in which they will appear on the battlefield.

Three more units.



The bridge-engineer gets 1 initiative, like other engineers. Also like engineers, they have 1 better G.D. I've only given them one extra C.D., unlike 2 for other engineers, as they are bridge engineers rather than more general combat engineers.

The fusilier is like a weak light infantry unit. Their H.A. is low as they don't have much in the way of anti-tank capability. Like Kradschutzen in the Standard/GCUR stats, their G.D. is lower than regular infantry as they are more vulnerable in the open on their bicycles. They have regular C.D.

The Soviet Cavalry I'm renaming as Cavalry Scouts, as they are intended for recon rather than as mobile infantry. They are weak in combat and very vulnerable if caught in the open by enemy on the ground or in the air - hard to get a horse to hit the ground and take cover. They are much safer if they end their move in cover and have regular C.D.

The ammo levels are provisional - you're good on those, Thomas. Bridge-engineers have 5 in the Standard EQ file and 4 in the GCUR. I've given Fusilier 5 as they are light infantry, so are intended for some combat, while carrying less than regular Wehrmacht as they are on bicycles. Soviet cavalry I have given as 5 as they're not intended for much combat but their horses are able to carry ammo.

The Fusiliers and Cavalry Scouts have the reconmove ability, which enables them to safely scout up to five hexes distance and return to where they started. (Their 5 movement means they can advance two hexes without being ambushed, due to their three hex vision, and can then safely retreat two hexes to where they started or advance another two).

Also, if you are interested in testing these units, make sure you set the entrenchment bonus for infantry to 100 (by copying from the gamerules114 file and pasting into the gamerules file, and adusting the figures).

I'm thinking about paratroopers. Both the Standard and GCUR give high initiative and Soft Attack. The Standard gives very low G.D. The GCUR gives Fallschirmjager above-normal G.D., boosting them to elite troop status. The GCUR also gives Fallschirmjager +1 C.D.

I haven't settled on any stats for paratroopers yet, but here are some thoughts:

- I think they should have regular infantry G.D. (8).
- I'm thinking about giving all paratroopers +1 C.D. and Fallschirmager +2 C.D. (as they're a bit more elite). This would make paratroopers a bit more dogged defending close terrain and make them take slightly less casualties attacking close terrain.
- I'm thinking about decreasing their initiative. In weapons-terms I don't think they deserve any more initiative than regular infantry (range of weapons being a major factor in this). So possibly all Paras to 4 initiative, or 4 initiative for Fallschirmjagers and 3 for other Paras, or even all at 3. In which case, their S.A. and C.D. values would be keys to their strength.

Testing should help with finding some good stats. But if you have any thoughts on my paratrooper ideas...