3/18/2010

Realistic PG/AG Battalions?

Who Wants Realistic PG/AG Battalions?

If I attempted realistic battalions for PG/AG, I would be deleting units from the standard SSI efile instead of adding units.

A realistic battalion efile would have only maybe 10-20 units per country at any given time.
  • The best German armored car in PG (SdKfz 233) was only a platoon in real life.
  • The best Britsh D-Day tank in PG (Firefly) was only a single tank within a platoon in real life.
If you want realistic battalions:
  • Delete the German Tiger I unit at least before mid-1943. Early schwere panzer abteilungs were a mix of Tiger I and PzIII tanks. Later abteilungs were a mix of Tiger I and Tiger II tanks. The abteilungs were about half the size of a US tank battalion, so maybe at battalion scale a "Tiger" unit should be weaker than a "Sherman" unit.
  • Delete the German 88mm FlaK units. German FlaK battalions were mixes of large and small guns. Within a battalion, even the heavy battery was a mix of 88mm and 20mm guns.
  • Delete the British Firefly unit. The Firefly was typically only one tank per platoon among mostly 75mm-gun Shermans.
  • Delete the US Stuart tank units after 1943. Delete the M24 Chaffee. The revised US armored division disbanded the light tank battalion and dispersed light tanks to recon ("cavalry") battalions and the former Sherman battalions.
  • Delete the US Sherman tank units after 1943. The revised armor battalion was a mix of light and medium tanks. The new organization did not have light tank battalions or medium tank battalions, it had only tank battalions.
  • Delete most recon units (Puma, Greyhound, etc.). Recon battalions usually were mixes of various types. A US recon ("cavalry") battalion consisted of jeeps, White Scout Cars or M8 Greyhounds, M5 Stuarts or M24 Chaffees, and M8 Howitzer Motor Carriages (HMC).
  • Delete most anti-tank (AT) units (PaK40s, Marders, StuGs, Achilles, etc.). US 37mm and 57mm guns were in infantry battalions. British and German AT battalions consisted of mixes of towed and self-propelled (SP) guns. Common British and German AT battalions were neither fully towed nor fully SP.
Do we average PaK40 1MP and StuG 5MP to get 3MP?

Can a battalion with both towed guns and StuGs have organic transport?

Realistic battalions would look something like this:
  • "German Recon Battalion 1943" (mix of many vehicles of varying firepower, armor, and speed)
  • "German Recon Battalion 1944" (change by 1 point for a company of Pumas, unit is unpurchaseable due to rarity of Puma)
  • "US Tank Battalion Early 1944" (mix of Stuarts and Shermans)
  • "US Tank Battalion Late 1944" (change by 1 point for some 76mm-gun Shermans)
The biggest PG/AG irony is that its most unrealistic element (tactical vehicles on an operational scale) makes it a successful game.

I accept specific vehicles as individual units as part of PG/AG's essential personality.

Given that major concession, I try to craft the combined-arms interaction of those vehicles realistically enough.

AGW Efile for PGF

AGW Efile Available for PGF

The current Allied General Workshop (AGW) efile of 1,600 units includes 31 Bf109s (like a Baskin Robbins of Messerschmitts, and I have not even gotten to the Gustavs yet), 40 different 6pdr ATG/SPAT, Bulgarian engineers, tankettes, Lees, Vultees, 251/10s, ZiS-30s, Loire-Nieuport LN.401s, panje carts, and units with new mountain or amphibious movements.

Here are some explanations of the Allied General Workshop (AGW) efile available for download now (see AGW downloads link at right) for use in PG Forever (PGF).
  • SSI confused the sIG33 150mm infantry gun with the completely different Hummel 150mm gun (treating them the same) so the AGW efile corrected this big mistake that completely misrepresents the German artillery system by setting the sIG to range RA=1 (and adding many more infantry guns for Germany and other nations).
  • SSI gave heavy armor ratings to some light-tank-chassis vehicles (#78 sIG 38(t)M, #195 GB M5 Stuart, #410 FPO M5 Stuart) where the Stuart had Churchill armor so the AGW efile corrected these and other serious efile bugs (Fw190 date).
  • SSI doubled the efile anti-air defense (compared to otherwise similar units) of a few AA/AD units but not others so the AGW efile corrected this inconsistency among AA/AD by giving double air defense to all AA/AD units.
  • SSI AD IN was inconsistent with the German 88mm AD IN=11 but US 90mm AD IN=2 so the AGW efile corrected the inconsistency by increasing most AD IN (Soviet 25mm IN=7, Italian 90mm IN=11).
  • SSI AA are (1) self propelled (it is is difficult to chase planes if AA is 1MP) and (2) small caliber (range is in same hex) but 20mm is inconsistent with same-hex AA range and 2-hex AD range so the AGW efile corrected the inconsistency by using (1) AA class for SP 0-20mm but 2-3MP for light-weight "towed" 0-20mm AD and (2) AD 1-hex range for 0-40mm but a quad 20mm has more firepower in its one hex than a longer-range 75mm.
  • Infantry should be one of the most persistent unit types so the AGW efile increased infantry defense factors, increased certain infantry HA (Italian/Hungarian 20mm ATR), and added infantry class to some ATG, all of which should lessen tank charges into cities.
  • The AGW efile also increased ammunition for the standard infantry unit to reflect its staying power in the line while special units which often lacked support weapons and/or were smaller in size tend to have less ammunition to reflect a lack of staying power.
  • The AGW efile currently uses 40/43 Heavy Weapons (HW) infantry as RA=0-1 MG/mortar artillery class but I would like to try them as infantry class that can fire-after-move with support fire if Rudankort can add those options.
  • The AGW efile efile generally reduces direct cannon fire but increases MG for SA (generally reducing SA for MG-deficient recon/TD) to show the difference between tanks vs. infantry and pseudo-tank recon/TD vs. infantry.
  • There is a tendency in PG/AG to use combat aircraft as recon and recon as tanks. The AGW efile tries to undo this by reducing most plane/tank units' spotting, reducing spotting of heavy recon pseudo-tanks that were more of a backup rather than the primary recon, and adding much more light, soft, or infantry-based recon with nominal firepower (SA=1).
  • The AGW efile gives some AT small supplies of powerful HVAP/PzGr40 ammunition so they will reserve fire for important targets.
  • The AGW efile adds ATGs that were within infantry regiments as infantry class with no AT penalty, with better entrenchment rate, and with close-defense bonus in cities and woods.
  • The AGW efile classifies US TDs with special recon/aggressiveness doctrine as "tank" class with no AT penalty to show doctrinal differences where a US M10 behaves differently than a British M10.
  • The AGW efile gives light towed/leg ATG/AD more mobility. French 25mm, German 37mm, and other light ATG have 2MP. Soviet 25mm AD has 2MP. French 13.2mm AD has 3MP. Soviet PTRD ATR has infantry bonus and 3MP.
  • The AGW efile greatly increases the variety and distinctiveness of different types of artillery. Artillery towed/leg movement expanded to 0-3 (instead of only 1), range expanded to 0-7 (instead of 2-3), and class expanded to add long-term suppression (based on barrage weight) but no support fire for rockets and ignore-entrenchment but no support fire for some heavy artillery.

AD/AT/Recon Bargains

Do You Ignore AD/AT/Recon Bargains?

I find AA to be the least useful ground class but I find the often criticized AT/AD/recon to be very useful and often underpriced already (even in stock efiles).
It is easy to win many scenarios with ATG and towed AD if they have a defensive component. SP AD are excellent on attack. Recon and TD are excellent on attack for covering flanks, preventing enemy builds at cities, changing ownership of hexes, and many other jobs.

Underpriced units include:
  • $60 AD
  • Soviet 76mm ATG
  • Jgpz IV/70
  • M10
The exceptions are that I usually disbanded towed ATGs on the first turn of an attacking scenario to free slots (although I might have replaced them with TD/AD/recon) and I usually did not buy AT/AD/recon for core simply because I usually bought mid-priced units for core.
  • Recon is often superior to tanks/planes when considering bad weather usage (planes cannot attack in rain), capturing/holding territory (planes cannot capture/hold ground), fuel (planes burn fuel when standing still away from an airfield), time (planes have to return to base to resupply), risk (recon does not disappear if it runs out of fuel), spotting, speed (tanks are usually slower than recon), and cost.
  • AD in the front line backed by artillery defends the artillery from both air and ground attack while the artillery defends the AD. That versatility frees main units for the main attack. A fighter over the artillery leaves the artillery open to ground attack and the artillery does nothing to defend the fighter. In some situations, a fighter costs more, does less, and then has to leave before it crashes. In some stages of the war, AD is a better "fighter" than the fighters available to you.
  • AT is simply cost effective in the many roles where cost (including replacements) is more important than the initiative penalty, situations where an expensive tank would be worse.

Add Supply Lines

Add Supply Lines

An easy way to do supply lines might be to think of a friendly city as having a movement range and rate (20 wheeled) like a unit's highlighted hexes (including terrain/weather/ZOC) where any units not within the city's range get half-supply (after adjacent enemies or other current rules). That one sentence would add importance for partisans, LRDG, or bomber interdiction but not completely break any unit and be automatic for the player. You could add details like a "supply depot" unit (mobile city for supply and maybe build purposes, enabling a "Mulberry" harbor or Stavelot depot) that can be transported by truck, ship, or aircraft but also destroyed/captured by the enemy. You could add exceptions for mountain or airborne units, depending on how much detail you want.

If you do not daisy-chain cities, a surrounded Bastogne would provide full supply.

You could use aircraft-style red in ground units' movement highlights to indicate areas out of full supply.

People can think of specific situations in desert or muddy steppes to see if 20 wheeled and half-supply or some other specifications are best (especially if there will be no supply unit).

You could add a few more gradations, such as 100% supply within 20 wheeled, 67% supply within 30 wheeled, etc. You could have hex-by-hex gradations and use red highlights to warn units when moving past less than 50% supply.

You could have cities like Bastogne that break the daisy-chain lose supply and build abilities (equivalent of bomber neutralization) after 2 turns (run the daisy-chain check after the infantry-recapture check).

You could include airfields in the daisy-chain by air ZOC but maybe not in rain/snow.

Supply convoys improvised routes. In terms of recon realism and your supply status giving you information about enemy locations, it is realistic to know that the supply route was clear of enemy when the trucks arrive and the drivers tell you how they got there.

Overlap of Axis an Allied supply zones is OK. US units reinforced Bastogne in between German units that already had bypassed Bastogne.

British 1st Airborne in Operation Market Garden should get supply from a "drop zone" (a designer could use a standard airfield hex but a new type of drop-zone hex or a grass-field airfield for only planes like Lysanders would be better) that it must defend against German capture.

Add Naval Night Action

Add Naval Night Action

I dislike PacG night turns but I like night action so I prefer adding night action to existing turns, such as Rudankort's suggestion for a third geometric plane for night aircraft would do and my ideas for night fighters/bombers did.

You could allow ships (or even commandos) to have night actions in a way similar to rugged defense but there should be a method for units that are better at night action to prefer a night action. Suppose each unit has a night bonus (or name it "night penalty" if it is negative in a formula). If attacker wins initiative and attacker's night modifier is better than defender's, then apply night modifiers to both sides (action happens at night, flash "Night action!" message).

Desant Troops: Transport Types

Add transport types and possibly allow transports to stay on map as separate units (like PacG aircraft carriers).

Assign Certain Transports to Certain Units Only

The Bren carrier should not tow corps artillery at all but PG allowed anything that could tow a 37mm to tow an 8in gun. Another important factor is that even some small guns could be towed only at cart speed because of the gun carriage. Maybe the PGF organic transport efile column could be changed from binary to numbers for certain transport types (if organic transport=8, then this unit can be towed only by transport type #8) and then transports can use the same column to identify themselves (if class=15 and organic transport=8, then this unit is transport type #8).

Examples:
  • 7=heavy horse
  • 8=heavy motorized
You can keep 0=no transport and 1=all transport so the default efile works as normal.

PG Lacks Mechanized Fire-Support from Transport and Lacks Tank-Riding "Desant" Troops

PG is weird that, after dismount, the fleet of half-tracks disappear and do not give fire-support to the soft-target infantry who entrench and fight close-defense unencumbered by the fleet of half-tracks until the half-tracks suddenly materialize again when needed.

Soviets used desant instead of half-tracks for cross-country infantry so it is an important aspect of the Ostfront that is missing from PG.

PacG Aircraft Carriers for Ground Transport

PacG aircraft carriers load, transport, and unload planes with both the carrier transport unit and the transported plane unit staying on the map after unload.

PacG fighter CAP sticks to the carrier and moves with the carrier.

These existing "General series" rules could apply to desant troops or all transport units. The rules would not confuse players any more than PacG carrier rules.

PG/AG Mod Roundup

PG/AG Mod Roundup

Here are some ideas from my forum discussions. You can find elaboration of some points in earlier posts on this site.

Campaigns

Allow any country to be a core for campaigns (Rumanian core in Ostfront campaign).

Add Vichy nation.

I am not familiar with how the code handles core but maybe it is possible to treat it like CSS code where the campaign refers to "core1" and the country for "core1" is defined globally.

Once you have a Polish core in a formerly British AG campaign, the Polish core can deploy in the Allied deployment areas. One issue might be how to have Polish-owned cities but this might be solved by allowing allies to change ownership of allied-owned cities by occupation which often would result in Polish-owned cities and airfields at the end of deployment. "Capturing" cities/airfields from your own allies can use the DOS instant-build rule instead of the WIN delayed-build rule.

Weather

Sandstorms, typhoons, local weather in one part of map

Terrain (or terrain-related units)

Shallow sea, blowable bridges, railways, dirt/grass airfields, drop zones (air supply if supply lines implemented)

New unit classes/types/parameters

Allow more attributes (evasion, long-term suppression, support fire, fire after move, initiative penalty) on a unit-by-unit basis, like bridging already is.

Allow AD-type support fire by AA.

One distinction for AA might be to denote small calibers that cannot attack high-altitude level bombers at full strength or at all. However, you also could use AD range as an effectiveness modifier against high-altitude planes.

Allow Soviet tank-riding desant troops.

Allow seaplanes from battleships, cruisers, or I-class submarines (variant of aircraft carrier that can operate only certain recon planes, which probably would have limited spotting to represent one or two planes instead of a squadron of SBDs).

Assign transports so a Bren Carrier does not tow an 8in gun at 50mph cross-country.

Add a partisan nation.

Add direct-fire multi-hex range that stops at obstructions like woods/city hex.

You could split current columns such as ground spotting from air spotting, AA ammunition from artillery shells, AA ammunition from aircraft bombs (jcrouch had the same idea), HE from AP ammunition, or different types of AP ammunition. Can a Typhoon fire its cannon at tanks after it runs out of rockets? Can a Zero fire its MG at a Wildcat after it runs out of 20mm shells? Can a tank fire its hull MG at infantry after it runs out of cannon shells? However, do not make it too complicated for the user. An easy possibility is to say that a B-17 has "unlimited" AA ammunition and firing defensive AA does not reduce the B17's "ammunition" (in practice, the B-17 is limited by fuel range or dropping a single bombload). Maybe each unit could have an option of unlimited bracketed fire.

Balance

Players with too much prestige already can play at player -2 and AI +2.

A PG plane attacking AD is a special initiative (IN) case that sets both units to IN=5 with no experience modifier and only a die-roll modifier. The problem with removing the special case would would be even less effective AD in stock PG with its mostly AD IN=2. Adding experience with current PG IN would make AD less effective because 3-5-star planes are much more common than 3-5-star AD. You could set AD IN to the greater of efile IN or 5.

Non-submarine units should evade (as some people proposed) only if they retreat (opposite of PacG's fearless, I think). Jeeps should not be able to evade King Tigers while also preventing the King Tigers from entering Bastogne. It would be like if a sub occupied a port victory hex and somehow prevented an infantry battalion from occupying the port while hiding at the bottom of the harbor.

Allow random AI deployment.

Disable overstrength or elite replacements, or vastly increase cost for 3-5-star elites.

Remove the unit limit for core so a player can choose a larger number of cheaper units instead of pushing the player to a smaller number of wunderwaffen.

Add vehicle rarity, such as a column that starts with everything set to a default value for common or unrestricted but which could be changed for actual production in hundreds (Jagdtiger=1, Jagdpanther=4, Panther=60) for use in an availability formula.

Other/Additional

You can think of 10 strength as meaning 100% and small units would have lower combat factors than larger units. However, choices for maximum unit strength and for which units can capture cities are good ideas for this thread.

Overstrength (OS) removes your favorite units from much of the game, since bringing a 9-point unit to 15 strength requires 6 turns out of action or maybe even 8 turns out of action if an aircraft has to return to base first.

It might be OK if normal infantry strength were 15 while normal strength of smaller units were less than 15, simply because on the current 10-as-normal scale a 5- or 3-strength Tiger is delicate rather than powerful. However, I would prefer the 100-strength idea. The 100-strength units would add granularity, would make 50-strength units more practical (contrasted to 5-strength units), and could incorporate Teo's idea about the difference between 700-men and 900-men units.

An idea for variable elite costs could use the actual current number of experience points as a cost multiplier to distinguish preserving 37 experience points from preserving 437 experience points.

Rate of fire affects attack and ammunition factors and the lack of rate of fire makes artillery difficult to model, to compare 1 heavy shell every 2 minutes vs. a few dozen 81mm mortar shells in the same time.

Maybe fighters and recon should not reduce entrenchments. You can increase maximum entrenchment levels and increase the rates at which units entrench (an often overlooked factor).

The ability to add support-fire or fire-after-move to certain units would help.

Another option is an advance-fire parameter for some units (maybe like the "bombing accuracy" column) for partial-strength attack after moving to be used in a formula, possibly also reducing attack strength based on if the unit used 10% of its MP or 100% of its MP.

Contingent captured equipment could be based on a % of those "destroyed." One way to simulate the spare parts and ammunition problem is to make captured units free (based on game performance like 1 PaK36(r) available for every 10 destroyed) but they cannot be resupplied or reinforced, making them disposable, as they were.

Plane/tank/run crews could be like infantry with organic transport, with the organic transports available to those classes being the usual plane/tank/gun units. On the other hand, you could argue that elite reinforcement of a 1-point unit represents the surviving crews getting their equipment replaced (the unit was 1 point because of disabled or shot-down vehicles, not killed crews).

Rail can be like air transport, if you think of a rail line like a string of airfields,* and with only enough rolling stock to transport a certain number at a time. I was thinking of infantry embarking anywhere on the line although maybe the rail line should be like a river with ports to embark Tigers only at train stations.