Slitherine

In the battle for Stalingrad in the PzC Wehrmacht campaign a Gustav artillery unit is available as an auxiliary unit. A very useful gun for attacking the fortification and later on the AA's and artilleries behind Stalingrad. Normally auxiliary units that have stars can have overstrength. (Yes I know it is often a waste of prestige.... ). The Gustav is a very expensive unit, 7.000 prestige, but it can't get overstrength, despite its 2 stars and more than 5.000 prestige available. Is there a reason for it?

If you could, would you really want to? Given that the gun has an ammo capacity of 3, you're already only going to be able to use the gun at best 75% of the time (fire on turns 1-3, reload on turn 4, repeat). On top that, you'll wind up losing more time (and therefore opportunities to fire) as you move the unit along railroads from Sevastopol to Stalingrad & then perhaps to other targets. So, even if you waited until the Gustav was empty to over strengthen, you'd get a limited amount of total shots during the scenario. For the first over strength point, you'd have to spend 7000/10 = 700 + I think another 10%. The second over strength point would be even more. So, you'd be looking at spending something like 1500 prestige on a unit that you can't take with you once the scenario is over.

In my opinion, you're better off saving the prestige for the post-Stalingrad battles. Tigers & Panthers are pricey. Good luck.

I would not overstrength the Gustav, don't worry . It's just a theoretical question. I like to know the why's and how's of the design of this battle.

kanniethexen wrote:I would not overstrength the Gustav, don't worry . It's just a theoretical question. I like to know the why's and how's of the design of this battle.

I think the base unit is not 10 SP so maybe it is already overstrengthed?

MartyWard wrote:

kanniethexen wrote:I would not overstrength the Gustav, don't worry . It's just a theoretical question. I like to know the why's and how's of the design of this battle.

I think the base unit is not 10 SP so maybe it is already overstrengthed?

No it is 10 SP.

kanniethexen wrote:I would not overstrength the Gustav, don't worry . It's just a theoretical question. I like to know the why's and how's of the design of this battle.

Good deal. Perhaps the strength is hard coded in? I don't know. Perhaps one of the moderators or gurus can shed some light on this.

As an aside, I love getting a range hero on an artillery unit. It's nice to hit things from far away. Cheers.

TSPC37730 wrote:

kanniethexen wrote:As an aside, I love getting a range hero on an artillery unit. It's nice to hit things from far away. Cheers.

I have got a +1 range artillery. Indeed very useful!

The Gustav has the "noreplace" trait that's why it can't be overstrengthed by the player in the game. If it ever looses strength below 10 or any other set max strength value, it couldn't be "repaired" with any replacement command either.
It's the same with any building types, V rockets, mines, and some other units. All these traits can be found in the equipment.pzeqp file with the rest of the unit data. There should be some explanations about any of them if you search the forums.

Thanks Horst. I had searched for "Gustav" in the forums, but not for "noreplace".