Slitherine

Ok time to open this discussion.

Heinz, ah good ole Heinz...

What do you do with this amazing hero?

What I have done and am continuing to do with Heinz in 44 in the West, and so far in 43 East is make him into a monstrous Flammpanzer.

I have him at 4 Stars of experience in both West and East.

My thinking with keeping him in Flamm in the West Guderian playthrough is the following:
1) I do not have many experienced or good Infantry units, so I try to use him as a highly mobile Infantry unit to wipe out suppressed soft targets.

Problems: Very vulnerable to hard attacks from Anti-tank and tank units of the allied attack.
Bonuses: Fills gaps in my weak infantry force.

I do not overstrengthen as trying to keep my soft cap down and need to use all of my units as the maps are so spread and since I am playing blind I am never quite sure how much I will need in each area.


My thinking on keeping him a Flamm in the East Manstein playthrough is the following:
1) I already have so many Big Dog tanks that I do not need another one.
2) I do overstrengthen at around 13 to help overwhelm any suppressed soft targets.
3) I like the idea of eventually getting him at 15 strength and using to try and get that ultimate 20+ kill shot, just for fun, as will be able to get based on 1.4 ROF. 15 strength 1.4 ROF would mean that a 15 strength would actually hit with 21 shots.
4) I have 3 Flamms at this point that I am waiting to use in any heavy infantry scenarios that take place in cities defense, to use as mobile Inf to help overwhelm soft targets.

Problems: Extremely costly replacements and Overstrengthening for an extremely vulnerable unit from the air and with Anti-tanks and Tanks.
Bonuses: Love, Love, Love lighting up the enemy sitting in vulnerable spot. Just so much fun lighting up those soft targets.

So these are my thoughts for me...what are your thoughts?

Do most people upgrade them to a Flamm or something more boring?
How long do you keep them in the Flamm?

Other thoughts on how to best use this hero?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Using the flammpanzer as if it was a mobile pioneer brigade sounds sensible - I'm sure it's been mentioned a few years ago and the only drawback is that as a tank the flammpanzer doesn't get the Close combat benefits of infantry and still attracts enemy air interest.

A flammpanzer is a unit that will receive high casualties as well as dishing them out, so you might be better off with 12 or 13 strength and saving the cost of 14th and 15th strength point for elite replacements. Having said that, a 15 strong unit dishing out 21 attacks would tend to put a crimp in the enemy's day and is worth a screenshot when you get to do it.

captainjack wrote:Using the flammpanzer as if it was a mobile pioneer brigade sounds sensible - I'm sure it's been mentioned a few years ago and the only drawback is that as a tank the flammpanzer doesn't get the Close combat benefits of infantry and still attracts enemy air interest.

A flammpanzer is a unit that will receive high casualties as well as dishing them out, so you might be better off with 12 or 13 strength and saving the cost of 14th and 15th strength point for elite replacements. Having said that, a 15 strong unit dishing out 21 attacks would tend to put a crimp in the enemy's day and is worth a screenshot when you get to do it.

If I knew how to do a screen shot and upload it I would, but I am technologically retarded

I would have to disagree with you, although the heroes are nice I find that as a flammpanzer against soft targets even overstrengthed he still takes more losses than he does as a tank (whatever the latest toughest upgrade tank is). Even as a tank i find he is not the best as by that time I have quite a few more experienced tanks with heroes. His movement +1 is quite useful as a king tiger though.

I usually convert Rondorf to a Panzer IV, but sometimes keep him as a Panzer 2 for as long as possible to see how well he does (usually not very well). The most successful Flammpanzer experience was when using Rondorf as the flammpanzer backed by a wurfrahmen and a 20mm mobile AA (wurfrahmen and flammpanzer attract aircraft too well not to have a deterrent), plus a move-hero infantry unit. The next most successful approach was in a high-speed pioneer-type role, but these days I prefer using Oleh Dir for this.

In general my most successful flame tank ploy is to use crocodiles when playing Allied Corps, but this doesn't work for Rondorf.

Unfortunately the max kill rate is 0.81, so 21 shots can only kill 16, not 20

From the combat tables the best is 0.1 miss, 0.09 suppress, 0.81 kill; with A-D 14 or higher.
Search this forum for 'Combat Equation' to find full tables.

Oh But I play Normal Dice, or whatever the normal setting is called, and I have ... often gotten greater than predictions, or even gotten greater then the amount of attacking units I am using.

So it is possible to hit with every single kill shot, as I have done it before.

The Greater challenge will be finding a unit with 20 or greater Strength, that I am able to hit fully. Conscripts, on Manstein are about my safest bet.

The 0.81, 0.09, and 0.10 are probabilities, or more simply, ranges that the dice rolls have to land in for the three specific outcomes. If goose has 21 shots, then it just means that 20 of the 21 dice rolls (range from 1-100) would have to come up 20 or above. As they are each mutually exclusive rolls (outcome of one does not depend on the outcome of those prior or after) and the same number can be repeated (i.e. you could roll 50 twenty times), each roll has a probability of 0.81 of being in the kill range. For multiple outcomes, the probabilities are multiplied, so the odds of rolling a 'kill' shot 20 times out of 20 is 1.45% and for 21 out of 21 is 1.20%. Long odds, but not impossible and this is the probability you would expect if you ran a 20 or 21 roll experiment numerous times (100+). For any single experiment, the results can deviate dramatically from the theoretic odds, as anyone who plays this game (or anything else with probable outcomes) on normal dice can attest.