Hi terminator,
Played Kursk v1.04 just now. As always and first of all, thanks for this scenario. I really enjoyed it (again). There's always some fighting going on and always some enemy unit coming out of the fog of war whenever I think I could use a pause to regenerate and repair my units. Great.
But the SU-152 bug's really messing this scenario up, sorry. I had to buy the 3CP/50RP arty version despite knowing the usual units cost of 200RP and 5CP (e.g. Petsamo scenario). Then, I used negative "#warbonds" to substract the resp. RPs (which isn't shown in the replay so it seems like I'd have over 1000RP all the time
) and switched to "tank" setting in favour of the correct CP amount. Furthermore there's also the issue of the repair costs being too low then... I tried to estimate the repair costs sometimes, but it's hard to say how much RPs I may have exploited along the way.
And it's not just the costs, the SU-152 (arty) unit has a "5" inf./mech. def. value and the SU-152 (tank) unit obviously has the "Swimmer" trait (see Mojko's Unit Navigator Tool).
- Screenshot 33.jpg (447.75 KiB) Viewed 2809 times
Please don't tell anyone (whisper), but actually ... I really liked your mine placements, as you're always using them in a clever manner, IMO. That's why it feels so annoying running into them again and again... but in a good way somehow. I can choose to go the long way around them and mess up my formation or to deploy engineers, something I'd never do in this scenario otherwise. And even though you may be overdoing the minefields sometimes, other scenario designers may be using them way to rarely, in my opinion.
And the 10->5 HP reduction was a good idea too, as the effect was there: the reduced strenght allowed the full clearance of minefields by damaged engineers on one turn. And the minefields seemed to have been destroyed (by enemy units walking into them) more easily and completely.
I'll attach a replay, although I'm kind of embarrassed by my poor gameplay, to be honest. But still ... even though I've made some very bad choices along the way, the mission was still very well doable. At least, this demonstrates an overall balanced playability of the scenario...
- terrific picture of the supposed "mad German scientist".
- thanks for the added "Zombie" challenge, liked it!
- I kind of lost track or forgot about last fighter plane which shot two of my tact. bombers down at the end and thus prevented the completion of the sec. obj. (30 damage to tanks) for me. On the one hand, there were quite many enemy fighter planes present which made the completion difficult (a BF109G at turn 25, seriously?), on the other hand I may have used more AA or fighters. Still, this was the same problem I encountered last time. My suggestion would be to dial this down (20 damage?) or to include AT units (or all mechanized units) to the count, instead of tanks only.
- there was no "static defense" unit guarding "Ivanonski"
- no idea about the conc. bunker this time, I gave it no chance to attack back...
- combat actions with units in the southernmost towns (i.e. Vinogradovka, Teterevino) are kind of hard to see because of the UI overlay. Maybe add one or two more land hex rows to the bottom of the map
EDIT: and there's something wrong with the replay this time again. I wonder if it's the "combat randomizing" setting or the SU-152? I DID destroy both Tigers by turn 30, just couldn't meet the last sec. objective.
