Technologies - Unit Types, Armour & Equipment

[IainMcNeil]

We were originally planning to use NATO style symbols through the game, but have recently decided to add in an option for unit icons. Although the hardcore players wont care a lot of people want something a bit prettier to look at

As you go through the game you develop new technologies which boost the performance of your troops. We're hoping to be able to reflect at least some of these changes graphically in the unit icons. For some units this wont be possible - e.g. infantry icons wont show weapons clearly enough to distinguish between different rifles, machine guns etc. Other untis such as tanks and aircraft are far more suitable. What we are undecided about is what would be the best progression. For example the armoured dividion could go from Panzer III, to Panzzer IV to Panther, or it could include Tank destroyers such as the Stug III.

We're looking for about 5-6 levels for armour, though we are thinking we might want to break armour into light & heavy. Light armour could include more recon style scout cars. We've also got fighter & bomber separated out. Fighter should probably include tactical bombers such some of the Me110 models. We don't think naval technologies are going to be visibly different so don't plan to chnge the destroyer, submarine, battleship & carrier fleet icons, so we'll need to find another way to show the tech level.

We dont think it makes sense to split the allies up too much so France US & Britain are in together. Soviets are on their own and Italy is in with Germany, giving us 3 sides - Axis, Western Allies, USSR.

This means we need :
Light Tank * 6 technology levels * 3 sides
Heavy Tank * 6 technology levels * 3 sides
Fighter * 6 technology levels * 3 sides
Bomber * 6 technology levels * 3 sides

It may not be possible to find a good fit for every tech level. E.g. the German fighter might go from a Me109C to a Me109E, which could mean a change to its colouring but not the basic shape. For the higher techs it might be ok to use designs that never made it in to combat e.g. the JS III.

We have our own ideas about what might work, but we would like to hear are your thoughts are on the subject. Everyone has their own favourites that should be included and we want to make sure we get a good spread. Any feedback is much appreciated!

[firepowerjohan]

Regarding splitting up armoured units into 2 separate unit types:
The idea with having 2 or more armour unit types (whether we call them light tank, medium tank , heavy tank, light armor, heavy armour, armored car, propelled artillery or whatever) is that it can distinct between fast armour and strong armour.

Propelled artillery armour units and anti-tank gun armor units existed in real WW2 and those would probably be fitted to the heavier armour type due to its relatively high piercing firepower. For instance, Marder (Self Propelled Artillery), Vespe (Self Propelled Artillery) or Soviet SU85 (Self Propelled Anti-Tank Gun) would be the heavier armour type and then when tech improve replaced by the by known Tigers, IS2 and other super giants.

If using several armored unit types the result would be a distinction between some kind of breakthrough unit (say light tank) and a battering ram (like a heavy tank).

It would add much variety to the looks of different tanks but question is what the hard core war buffs think of the correctness.
It is clear that this distinction is more on a operational/tactical scale so it is a trade of between realism and playability (if if makes game more varying and fun that is). Yes, the corps scale of the game means it does not get 100% realistic. That is why this realism vs playability issue is interesting to hear from you players. Now you players have a chance of affecting the outcome of the design, happy posting to you all


En example of Armour Units for Axis could be:
Light Armour 1: Panzer I
Light Armour 2: Panzer II
Light Armour 3: Panzer III
Light Armour 4: Panzer IVD

Heavy Armour 1: Marder II
Heavy Armour 2: Jagdpanther, Bison or Panther A
Heavy Armour 3: Tiger
Heavy Armour 4: King Tiger (or Konigstiger for you Germans out there )

[lascar]

Hi,

I am looking forward to the release of this game. It sounds quite promising. Before I offer any comments regarding armor/tank technology categories and ratings I need some clarification about the nature of the ground units. I understand this is to be a corp level game, correct? Will these corps reflect historical reality in that they will be armored/panzer corps or will they be a more generic type of unit representing corps size units?

Thanks,
Lascar

[firepowerjohan]

Hi,

I am looking forward to the release of this game. It sounds quite promising. Before I offer any comments regarding armor/tank technology categories and ratings I need some clarification about the nature of the ground units. I understand this is to be a corp level game, correct? Will these corps reflect historical reality in that they will be armored/panzer corps or will they be a more generic type of unit representing corps size units?

Thanks,
Lascar

To make it more fun, meaning is to separate units as much as possible without creating units that are too similar and also not to make the game too unrealistic. Every unit need to be distinct and good for something.

For instance, if we mixed in tanks with infantry, fighters with bombers and motorisation among every corps (instead of special motorised units) then perhaps the game would be more realistic but less fun and varying, so that is not what we want to do. Toelrating some tactical elements into a strategic game is what we considering.

So, what we wonder is what the players feel about that and how far from realism ppl want us to go without ppl being bothered by it.

[lascar]

So would having the following type of corps units make sense in what you are trying to acheive?

Infantry (non-mechanized)-good for general attack and defense in all types of terrain, but limited mobility

mechanized infantry - same combat ability as regular infantry but with superior mobility in clear terrain/roads but with restricted mobility in rough terrain (mountains, forest, etc.)

mountain/alpine infantry-- less combat power than regular infantry but superior mobility and combat effectiveness in mountains.

paratroopers-- elite troops with airdrop capability

armor/panzer -- very strong shock/attack capability. High mobility in clear/open terrain. Restriced combat power and mobility in mountains, cities, forest etc.

cavalry-- less combat power than infantry but with better mobility than infantry in both clear and rough terrain types.

Shock armies--special soviet units with extra artillery for breakthrough attacks

Artillery corps -- large groupings of artillery used by Soviets.

These are the basic historical types of corps that give you a wide variance of capabilities. Is this what you have in mind or are you thinking of something more abstact like light armor units and heavy armor units?



[/b]

[joe98]

I really like lascar's comments in the above post. And I would urge you to follow.


However the following comment is a concern:

To make it more fun, meaning is to separate units as much as possible without creating units that are too similar ??¦??¦??¦Every unit need to be distinct and good for something.

Some divisions were mostly infantry. There were lots of these. Different armies had different capabilities but otherwise an infantry division was an infantry division.

".....without creating units that are too similair...."------------is a worrisome comment.


-

[IainMcNeil]

What Johan is saying is that from a gameplay point of view it is more interesting to have multiple unit types such as Armour, Infantry, Mechanized, Fighter, Bomber etc. If all of the units are teh same i.e. a non descript Corps, then the tactical & strategic options are limited to numbers. We want to have different types of units with strengths and weakness that encourage more interesting ways to play. However, we want to do all this within a historical framework. We do know a fair bit about WWII, but it is such a big subject & we know there are people who know far more about it than we do and we want to make sure we tap in to this knowledge to create a realsitc and historically accurate game that is fun to play.

We will of course have infantry divisions and these will basically be the same for all sides and you'd expect to see more of them than anything else. They can vary in ability due to technology, manpower and experience. In general though they will have similar statistics. Infantry are better at defending than attacking meaning you either need numbers, air support or tanks to launch an offensive. Armour is the opposite, it is at its best when attacking.

Having Artillery corps would be great, as it offers some really interesting new options. We had assumed that artillery would not work at the corps scale. Artillery ranges would not have been large enough to fire over a hex, so we can't allow them to strike units they are not adjacent to. If they have to sit adjacent to a target to hit it, then I'm assuming they shoudl get beaten up badly when that unit attacks them.

One possible option would be to have artillery act as a supporting unit. E.g. If you have an artillery unit next to you it supports you when you are attacked and when you launch an attack. They would not need to be next to the unit they are firing at, just next to the unit they are supporting. We'd have to assume that the artillery was moving up to support an attack, or that the enemy attack comes in to range of the artillery by targetting the adjacent unit.

What are peoples thoughts on artillery?

[xtiaan72]

First post. Had to get in on this one! Long-time CWGamer.

Engineers would be cool. And I think would actually add to the realism. These units would be particularly good at attacking over river hexs and/or digging in defensive positions. Or maybe even setting up permanent defensive positions over a period of time that other units could utilize. These advantages could be off-set by being expensive and higher supply penalties?

Recon units- Extra sighting. Intel on enemy strength.

Paras- Obvious abilities

Close Air Support? Was it attached to units at the corp level in WW2?

Also something to think about is the way Hoi implimented brigades. That game is a bit of a mess but the brigades are cool. It puts the player in control of this whole issue. Using infantry to cross a river? Give it an engineering brigade. Using armor for a break-out? Maybe you need to attach some recon. Preparing a defence? You need artillary. I realize that that could be hard to impliment. (Seperate brigade units that you could attach)

Or if you guys are too far along to impliment something like that. Then maybe players could have the option to build Corps with special abilities. So when you built a corp you could specify that you wanted to have Recon or Engineers or an Armor brigade when you built it at extra cost.

I would suggest that what ever you do with the special units, that their numbers be capped. I imagine the A.I would be crippled if it were bombarded with 30 para corps drops all over Germany!

I suppose that is a problem for you guys too. Everything you add, the computer has to know how to use properly. Hard decisions to be made I'm sure.

.............But you could make some of the units optional in multi-player games if that is the case. Players always like options!

[miki]

German combat vehicles:

Armoured cars, APCs (sdkfz 250 & 251 variants) and light tanks: Pz I, Pz II, Sdkfz 222, Sdkfz 231 series, armoured personnel carriers mounting guns (from 20mm to 75mm both short and long). All had light armour, high mobility and light guns. Many APCs and Light cars mounted 37mm, 28mm, 75L24 and 75 Long guns).

Medium tanks: Pz 35(t) & Pz 38 (t), Pz III, Pz IV, even the Panther.

Assault guns: Stug III with short 75L24, Stug III & IV with 75L43 and 75L48. Stu 42 (105 howitzer), Brumbarr (150mm). Decent armour and good punch.

PanzerJaeger: Marder series, PzJgr 38, etc. Obsolete tank chassis with state of the art guns. Chasssis from Pz I & II & Pz 38(t) mainly. VEry lightly armoured but good punch.

Jagdpanzer: JagdPanzer IV, JagdPanther. Very similar to Assault guns. Good armour and very good guns.

Heavy tanks: Tiger, Tiger II (king tiger). Absolute beasts.

Heavy Jagdpanzers: JagdTiger, perhaps the Jagdpanther. Same as above.

Self-propelled artillery: Wespe (Pz II chassis) and Hummel (hybrid PzIII/IV chassis) mainly. Armoured howitzers only. Not really tanks nor designed to fight other vehicles.

Self-propelled infantry guns: Bisons and other infantry guns on obsolete chassis. Used as self-propelled artillery, and to give artillery direct fire support.

Self-propelled Anti-Aircraft: from lightly armoured trucks mounting 20mm AA gun to the whirlwind.

I see this hard to put into only two categories, light and heavy tanks.

You can put armoured cars, Heavy APCs, light tanks, some med tanks (the Pz 35(t) and Pz 38(t)), and panzerjaegers into the light category. Then medium tanks (PzIII and IV), jagdpanzers, assault guns and the real "heavies" (tigers et al) in the Heavy category.

[miki]

Units will be corps or divisions? I'm a bit confused here. Also, germans deployed the heavy tanks into separate, korps-level, units (battalion sized mostly). Same with swere jagdpanzer units. And there were also assault gun independent battalions and brigades... I would like to see them as support units.

[xtiaan72]

I believe it's Corps at the moment. Which is why there is a bit of discussion about how much unit variety is realistically viable.

[miki]

Then I would like to see changes/improvementes reflected into the unit (corps) stats: For example, One german infantry div in 1939 (first wave) had 37mm Paks but a Volksgrenadier 44 division had 75 Paks and even JgdPz38 or StugIII as anti-tank units. So the anti-tank value coudl vary a lot in time, and even the Shock value of the unit.

[tora_tora_tora]

I guess if I could customize corps with division counters, that would be good.

For exsample, if you have Panzer korp, it includes several panzer divisions, reinforced panzer divisions, motorised infantry divisions,
some self-prolellent artillery brigades, deisgnated direct support dive-bombers and reconn aircrafts wings and so on.

And depending on the situation, you can cross atatch their divisions with other corps, or give some extra resource points to move more freely.
So in this way, people who understands battle sequences rules, they can make specialized corps depending on their needs.

And if possible, if their could be something like rail-gun, 80cm big gun Dora, or 60cm howitzer Karl, that would be interesting.

<unit types
light tanks Pz Ⅰ, Pz Ⅱ
middle tanks 　Pz Ⅲ、　Pz　Ⅳ, Panter, Lee, Sherman, Cromwell
heavy tanks Tiger, Persing, Churchile
tank-destroyers Stug Ⅲ, Stug Ⅳ
anti-tank artillery 37mm, 88mm FLAK, PAK, Marder, Nashorn
anti-aircraft artillery

Infantry
motorised infantry
armored infantry
Mountain Infantry
Paratroopers, Glider-infantry
Sappers, Combat engineers (specialised against fortress, urban battles)
horse-riding infanty

recon unit
armored cavalry


special units
construction engineers (bridging, fortress, airfield, railroad, road construction)
armored rail car
rail gun
heavy artillery
rocket artillery
snipers
raders
V-1, V-2, V-3 superguns to bombard London http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/v3.htm

[xtiaan72]

Having Artillery corps would be great, as it offers some really interesting new options. We had assumed that artillery would not work at the corps scale. Artillery ranges would not have been large enough to fire over a hex, so we can't allow them to strike units they are not adjacent to. If they have to sit adjacent to a target to hit it, then I'm assuming they shoudl get beaten up badly when that unit attacks them.

-There are definately ways you could model this in the game at the corp level. And you should because massed artillery was so important in WW2 when launching break-through attacks ( and static defence for that matter). It would just be a matter of slightly jacked attack or defence for the corps that had additional attached artillery. Or some kind of shock value that affected the opposing unit's organization and unit cohesion.

[IainMcNeil]

We have thought about the idea to customise the make up of a corps by letting players decide how much armour, air & infantry to allocate to it, but we decided that was a step to far for this game. A corps will be a fixed size and the only thing that can be attached to it right now is a commander.

Having artillery contribute a shock attack if supporting a friendly unit could be a nice way to help them create breakthroughs & break up enemy attacks on defensive positions.

[xtiaan72]

"Having artillery contribute a shock attack if supporting a friendly unit could be a nice way to help them create breakthroughs & break up enemy attacks on defensive positions."




-Then I guess the question is how much stacking your going to allow per hex? ( If any). There is no reason to have artillery firing multiple hexs on this scale but you could stack it and give it some shock value on ajacent hexs. That would definately add a tactical element to the game that would be fun for players.



"We have thought about the idea to customise the make up of a corps by letting players decide how much armour, air & infantry to allocate to it, but we decided that was a step to far for this game. A corps will be a fixed size and the only thing that can be attached to it right now is a commander"




-Here's an idea. Give the leaders specialities or skills that attach to the Corps. So you could add a leader that had a..
shock artillery or recon ability or panzer ect and then the corps would have it. That would be really cool. Panzer General did some stuff like that and it worked well for that game. I've never seen that on a strat level game though. Where you could attach leaders to different units and their abilities would move with them. This would abstract some of these specialty units we are talking about into the leaders themselves. You could also make it historically accurate so Patton would be a great tank commander. Zukov is amazing with massed artillry ect.

[tora_tora_tora]

Can players stack corps? Put several corps in one hex and move and fight together as one?

If you can do this, this means you can customise army with corps counters, I guess.


squad < platoon < company, troop < battalion , squardron <brigade, regiment < division < corp < army < army group

[IainMcNeil]

At the moment you cannot stack corps in a hex. The idea is that the scale of the map reflects what size a corps should fight on.

We also wanted to keep the UI easy to manage. Allowing stacked units makes it extremely difficult to show at a glance what is in a hex and complicates the process of picking the unit in the hex.

There are obviously arguments for and against this, but this is what we've decided to do for this version.

[tora_tora_tora]

then

corps unit type could be

fortress garrison, garrison defends Maginot Line, Brest-Litovsk, Atlantic Wall, and so on. as technology goes up, unit symbol could be FLAK towers.

standard infantry, average mobility
armored infantry, superior mobility, somewhat reconnaissance ability
paratroopers, drop into behind enemy lines

armored corps, including all kind of tanks, armored vehicles
armored corps(LITE), if you want to send armored corps across Mediterranean Sea, or in harsh logisically disadvantaged front.

artillery corps, including rocket artilleries, cannon artilleries


or, can technology development be in tree diagram? For exsample, can player choose between Bf209 and FW160 as their next fighters?
not so much too trival, though tanks could be heavy tanks or middle tanks or cost-effective assault guns at some certain point, could be good.
or if several prepositons were met, there could be V-1?

[honvedseg]

The suggested Axis category for tanks which Firepowerjohan listed has some serious flaws.

First, the Pz I was mainly a training tank, armed with dual machineguns, although they were pressed into active service in a few of the early campaigns, and later served as anti-partisan support vehicles. Many were converted to "command tanks" or early tank-destroyers. The Panzer II was originally conceived as the "normal" tank, but combat quickly showed the limitations of a 20mm gun against other tanks. They did serve for several years in a recon role, and provided additional anti-infantry support for heavier tank units. The Pz III served as a main battle tank, and was considered the standard German "medium" tank for the first half of the war. Originally armed with a 37mm gun which proved to be somewhat marginal against the French tanks, they were redesigned with a medium length 50mm L46(?), and eventually upgunned again with the longer 50L60 (50mm diameter, length of 60X the diameter). Some of the final models were "upgunned" again with a short 75mm L24 HE gun for direct infantry support, essentially as a turreted SPG (self-propelled gun), but were relatively useless against other tanks. The Pz IV was originally fielded for HE support of the PzIII, rather than for anti-tank use, armed with the same short 75mm gun as the later PzIII, but the need for a more powerful tank forced these to be upgunned with a 75mm L43 medium barrel weapon as the PzIVF2, and again with the slightly longer 75/L48 gun on the H model. The basic function of the vehicle was dictated by the gun, rather than the chassis. The PzI, PzII, PzIII, and PzIV were all in service at the start of the war, designed for different purposes, not developed in succession. The large turret rings and roomy 3-man turrets on the PzIII and IV allowed for steady weapons upgrades throughout the war. It was primarily due to the limitations on engine horsepower and armor that the Germans developed heavier tank designs (PzIV Tiger and PzV Panther) as the war progressed.

Classifying the PzJgIII Marder as a "heavy" tank is absurd. It was an open-topped self-propelled AT gun based on a light Czech Pz38t or PzII tank chassis, depending on model. Essentially it provided medium tank firepower, but with light tank armor at best, typically classed as a medium "tank hunter" (Panzer Jaeger). The Sturm Geschutz (StuG) III was a fully enclosed turretless infantry support gun (that old 75L24 again) on a PzIII hull. The StuG IV was the same concept based on the PzIV hull, although these were armed with increasingly long and powerful guns, making them effective as tank destroyers as well as for close infantry support.

The late war Jagd Panzers ("hunting" tanks) were turretless tank-destroyers (JgPz rather than PzJg), with fully enclosed crew and massive frontal armor. Some, like the Hetzer, were based on a light Pz38t (Czech) hull, and were extremely vulnerable from the sides, while the massive JgPzV JagdPanther and JgPzVI JagdTiger were well armored all around, and all but indestructable from the front. Only a few were built. JgPzIII and IV models were again based on the PzIII and PzIV hulls.

Rather than deal with this confusing array of hull and weapon types, open topped, closed, and turreted, it would be much simpler to deal with them by function. These would be Light, Medium, and Heavy tanks, Light and Heavy tank destroyers and self-propelled guns (HE, dual-purpose, or AT). This does not even touch on the bewildering array of half-tracks, armored cars, SP anti-aircraft tanks, and other armored vehicles which the Germans utilized or cobbled together from their standard designs or from captured French, Czech, or Russian equipment.