Grand Campaign Unit Revisions - Update for GC42-43West

[deducter]

You seems to be pleased with the reduction of max strength for the heavy German tanks but i am a bit cautious when it comes to manipulating unit strength. This seems to be the most critical parameter in Panzer Corpse ... remember the Conscripts which got really bad stats but can be a real pain with their 15 strength.

Additionally this kind of makes them weaker which is not really historically correct. They was the superior tanks on the battle field. The problem was them being really expensive to produce and Germany not being able to field enough of them. Maybe making them REALLY expensive would be the better approach. If their costs are raised enough then they may become what they was in history: A force to be reckoned with on the battlefield but rare in appearance.

You may have a point, I need to play the Kursk scenarios to know for sure. It is clear to me though that they need to either be even more expensive or have some sort of limit. My main concern is that 13-14 strength Tiger/Panthers are so invincible that they STILL end up being a good way to save prestige.

In the vanilla game, the best way to save prestige is to get all heavy armor and overstrength them to the max. I want to do everything in my power to make sure this is not the case.

Another issue is that I am a very good player, so just because I'm not struggling doesn't mean the stats are well balanced, hence I need input. My goal is to make 1942 and esp. 1943 to have a mix of DV and MV, maybe even mostly MV in 1943, on General or FM.

I am very pleased with the German medium tanks though. The 3 star Panzer IVG absolutely destroys 1 star T-34/41. But the Russians will field better units soon enough.

[charonjr]

I think that lowering the strength of the Tiger/Panther is no good idea, too. Exactly for the reasons stated above, the Soviets had a hard time damaging them at first, their problem was simply their high number of breakdowns best simulated with ROF.

And if the battle was won they could be salvaged/repaired and see another fight - no need to blow them up under those circumstances

[charonjr]

I think that lowering the strength of the Tiger/Panther is no good idea, too. Exactly for the reasons stated above, the Soviets had a hard time damaging them at first, their problem was simply their high number of breakdowns best simulated with ROF.

And if the battle was won they could be salvaged/repaired and see another fight - no need to blow them up under those circumstances

[charonjr]

Hmm, looks like something is wrong with my Tab, 2nd double post here...

Just finished Kiew '43 with my uber-core (unmoded, 44k prestige at the start of '43) and can confirm (again) that using the most heavy/overstrength equipment is a prestige saver in the long run.

I started with 44k on Manstein and finished with 40k prestige before repairs, so maybe 35k after repairs which is still a very high number on Manstein. Since I have played those maps for 3-4 times now experience with them surely plays a large role here, too, but only losing 10k prestige on Manstein on maps/scenarios like this still seems way too low.

[deducter]

Play some more scenarios. The difference between 1 and 2 star Russian units is massive, and after the first two scenarios all Russian units are at least 2 stars. I've decided I've gone too far in my changes. Panthers and Tigers will remain at 10 strength, 10 ROF.

I will raise heavy armor prices slightly, by about 10%.
I will raise bomber prices also by 25-30%.

I'm not sure what to do about artillery though, either a 20-25% increase in price or the current reduction in ROF. The ROF reduction is quite significant, as it means your artillery more or less need to overstrength to maintain their effectiveness, and artillery isn't as safe in DLC43 as you think.

I forgot how tough some of the Russian units are now.

There will always be a significant gap between an experienced core and the DLC43 starting core. The game is quite tough with the DLC43 starting core.

[charonjr]

I would still favor raising their price more and let them keep their ROF. The Soviet fighters will strafe them if all bombers are covered and unless you buy a decent number of SP AA - which will basically weaken your core - the repair cost will be very high this way.

[deducter]

I have finished a new round of changes to my mod, which I think is sufficient to take it out of BETA status for 1943. Main changes below. If you have comments, please let me know before I release the update, which should be later tonight.

1. I reduced the ammo for all German air units by 1, which is pretty noticeable. Refueling should be a much higher priority now, and air power should really be brought to bear at the critical point instead of being used too freely.

Should I reduce the ammo of various Allied air units? I decided not to, because the AI is fairly incompetent with its air units. It might be too easy to exhaust the ammo of AI planes, since they love to strafe ground units. Currently, from 1939-1942 the Luftwaffe is dominant, as is historically accurate, but by 1943 air superiority is nearly out of the question for the German player.

2. Artillery and bomber cost up by 30%, although the % is lower for some late models.

3. Heavy armor costs up by 10%.

4. Important Change Gamerules.pzdat: UpgradeExpPenalty from 0 to 66. This is to keep upgrade outside of family costly in terms of experience. It would be rather silly to have a player suddenly have a bunch of 3-4 star Panther Tigers as soon as they are available. This frankly was the best fix I could think of to prevent the 13-14 overstrength Tigers/Panthers from crushing everything in Kursk, AND it makes sense from a historical standpoint. One big problem with the heavy tanks was that it took some time for crews to get effective at them. Don’t fear though, even green Panthers/Tigers crush experienced T-34s without much trouble.

My experience has been that DV, without a good imported core and a good amount of prestige (10kish) saved up, is extremely difficult in 1943. If you can get all DVs with FM or even General with my mod in 1943 using the starting core, that is an impressive feat.

5. Various other tweaks
-La-5 better in 1943 than 1942
-Italian units got some attention
-combat engineers have +1 CD

Edit: Hmm, the UpgradeExpPenalty is an absolute value, not a % value. I have to think about this now.

[charonjr]

I dare to say that lowering the aircraft ammo by one will make the Me 410 a even more popular choice which will lead to less unit diversity instead of more.

But I agree that the AI ammo does not have to be lowered.

Taking away some XP when upgrading sounds good/reasonable.

[deducter]

I will have to do the ExpPenalty manually for every year:

Gamerules.pzdat:
UpgradeExpPenalty 1939: 100

UpgradeExpPenalty 1940: 150

UpgradeExpPenalty 1941: 200

UpgradeExpPenalty 1942: 250

UpgradeExpPenalty 1943: 275

I dare to say that lowering the aircraft ammo by one will make the Me 410 a even more popular choice which will lead to less unit diversity instead of more.

But I agree that the AI ammo does not have to be lowered.

Taking away some XP when upgrading sounds good/reasonable.

Don't worry, the Me 410 isn't going to be popular. I went over all the units pretty carefully. For instance, here are the stats for the Me 410 and the Fw190F

Me 410: fuel 105, ammo 3, cost 541, INI 8, SA 5, HA 5, AA 18, GD 22, AD 17.

Fw 190F: fuel 50, ammo 4, cost 564, INI 10, SA 6, HA 8, AA 15, GD 22, AD 19.

The Me 410 has very good AA, but that's about it. Given that I removed the family with the Bf 110 series, I should probably reduce its cost back to 492.

Edit: Note the global reduction to airplane ammunition is based off of my stats, which already severely reduced ammunition for many planes. Only a few level bombers have ammunition of 5, most other planes have 3 or 4 ammo.

[deducter]

Updated to v1.52, this mod should work well in 1943. The difficulty increase is very significant, and and it is not trivial to get DV on all maps on FM or even General.

[Uhu]

Could you explain, how does this work?
For example, I have a 300 experience Pz IV and I upgrade it to a Panther. How will the xp change?

I will have to do the ExpPenalty manually for every year:

Gamerules.pzdat:
UpgradeExpPenalty 1939: 100

UpgradeExpPenalty 1940: 150

UpgradeExpPenalty 1941: 200

UpgradeExpPenalty 1942: 250

UpgradeExpPenalty 1943: 275

[deducter]

Could you explain, how does this work?
For example, I have a 300 experience Pz IV and I upgrade it to a Panther. How will the xp change?

I will have to do the ExpPenalty manually for every year:

Gamerules.pzdat:
UpgradeExpPenalty 1939: 100

UpgradeExpPenalty 1940: 150

UpgradeExpPenalty 1941: 200

UpgradeExpPenalty 1942: 250

UpgradeExpPenalty 1943: 275

The ExpPenalty means you subtract the experience from your unit's current experience. Your Panther would have 25 exp after the upgrade. Imight lower the values slightly, but for 1943 the minimum is 225, so if you have 425 exp panzers (not hard to get in 1942) you end up with a 2 star Tiger at Kharkov 43.

[Uhu]

Hmm, it will be more complicated, if somebody uses a modified experience grow setting. For example, I will use, when I start again the DLCs, the following setup: 50-30-8-4-1-1.

I use this, playing the Italian Campaign 2.0, to avoid 4-5 star super-units in the middle of the campaign (the number of the scenarios will be about 20, or even more). But after 10+ scenarios, I already have 4 star units... (OK, only a few, mostly level bomber, but still.)

Could you explain, how does this work?
For example, I have a 300 experience Pz IV and I upgrade it to a Panther. How will the xp change?

I will have to do the ExpPenalty manually for every year:

Gamerules.pzdat:
UpgradeExpPenalty 1939: 100

UpgradeExpPenalty 1940: 150

UpgradeExpPenalty 1941: 200

UpgradeExpPenalty 1942: 250

UpgradeExpPenalty 1943: 275

The ExpPenalty means you subtract the experience from your unit's current experience. Your Panther would have 25 exp after the upgrade. Imight lower the values slightly, but for 1943 the minimum is 225, so if you have 425 exp panzers (not hard to get in 1942) you end up with a 2 star Tiger at Kharkov 43.

[deducter]

I'm not going to modify expgrowth rate for my mod, but you are of course welcome to do so yourself. I find that in 1942 and 1943 you will probably need to buy replacement units, and those need to gain experience fast, so using the currently experience growth rate is good.

What I want to avoid is for a player to train up a bunch of 4 star panzers, and suddenly in 1943 many of them are magically converted to 4 star Panthers/Tigers. I think the current penalties, while severe, are the best way to balance this without resorting to any ROF or unit strength modifications. Perhaps players will even want to get green Tigers/Panthers, which still perform very well, and they gain experience pretty quickly too. It makes sense that good units need to be trained.

v1.53 out, some minor tweaking of various units and some consistency problems fixed.

[dragos]

I'm going to restart the campaign starting from 1939 and use your mod. I'm not yet decided which difficulty level to chose between Field Marshall - plenty of prestige but slower experience gain, or Rommel - less prestige but fast experience (some units reach the 39 cap after 2-3 scenarios). Which difficulty of these two do you recommend to be used with your mod?

[deducter]

I'm going to restart the campaign starting from 1939 and use your mod. I'm not yet decided which difficulty level to chose between Field Marshall - plenty of prestige but slower experience gain, or Rommel - less prestige but fast experience (some units reach the 39 cap after 2-3 scenarios). Which difficulty of these two do you recommend to be used with your mod?

FM is definitely easier, as you get a lot more prestige to work with. Rommel may seem pretty easy from 1939 to 1941, but you will almost certainly lose units in Moscow, and a few more in various 1942 scenarios (like Stalingrad, Tatsinkaya), and then you get to 1943, where I'd be shocked if you got more than 10k prestige saved up on Rommel. And those Tigers start at 1320 prestige...

Keep in mind especially that in 1942 and 1943 getting at least some overstrength elite units frontline units will be helpful. 4 star 14 overstrengthed Panzer IIIM can do surprisingly well.

Just fyi there is a v1.54 up if you haven't started, just some minor fixes, the most serious of which affects 1942.

[dragos]

I haven't started yet. Ok, I will use Rommel then, but I guess I'll be only playing through 1939-42 because after a large number of scenarios I lose focus and start making mistakes which causes a restart because I don't like reloading.

[dragos]

I have played the first four scenarios of DLC 39 on Rommel and I must say I am impressed. No longer can I occupy the entire map, but I need to focus only on objectives as my forces advance slower thanks to less ammunition and lack of Sturmpanzer. Until now the adjustments feels just right. Good job !

[deducter]

I have played the first four scenarios of DLC 39 on Rommel and I must say I am impressed. No longer can I occupy the entire map, but I need to focus only on objectives as my forces advance slower thanks to less ammunition and lack of Sturmpanzer. Until now the adjustments feels just right. Good job !

Thanks for the feedback. GC40 and GC41 aren't too different, but GC42 is noticeably harder, and GC43, well, that should be suitably challenging for anyone.

[deducter]

I am working on v1.6, but I was thinking about a few other changes that I might want to implement in 1939-1943.

Increase Panzer IV prices by 10%-20% in 1940-1942? Panzer IVs didn't truly enter mass production until 1943.
Increase StuG IIIB prices slightly in 1942-1943?
Add a chance to purchase the Elefant in 1944? Only two battalions of Ferdinands were ever produced, and some got sent back to the factory in 1943 to get converted to the Elefant in 1944.

I also lowered the ROF of the 88 in AA mode. Should I lower the ROF of heavy caliber AA guns for the AI?