Axis armor points in CMBB

[BlackVoid]

Too bad, this thread was hijacked.

Getting back to topic. In a meeting engagement the combined arms armor ratios are even worse than in an attack-defense situation. In a recent meeting, I had a lone Stug and against it were 3 Su76s, and 1 T-34/85. Ok, I had panzerfausts and a few shrecks, but my opponent was good enough to stay out of range. I even had an ATG - that was quickly disposed of by mortars. So how is one supposed to win an encounter like this with Axis??? The map was also bad for me, so I never had a chance at all.

Smoke - you cannot have enough to matter, when your enemy is firing at your inf from 500 meters.
Inf AT weapons - very hard to get close enough
Vehicles - paper skinned, easily killed by ATGs
AT guns - in a meeting engagement they are very vulnerable and very hard to put them into a useful spot
Air power - way too expensive, especially for Axis

There is no way to counter Soviet armor in this situation, except if your opponent makes mistakes.

[dieseltaylor]

Curiously I thought we had dealt with your gripe quite swiftly in the first page of the thread. That you remain unhappy with "balance" in CMBB is up to you. There are so many things to be unhappy with in the game - "balance" rates quite low on my list.

I gave various ways to make the games more playable for my purposes - what you choose to do is up to you - but with 100+ friendly games against a large number of opponents in CMBB I think my solutions tried and tested.

However if you still want to play small games may I recommend 400 point games to you. As a canny German you can have a Marder III plus a Stummel plus three IG 75mm and in my brief test the T34 died in the first minute taking the Marder with it. Left the Stummel king of the battlefield and with the 75IG's I think my infantry platoon was reasonably happy they could walk to the flag.

[Tux]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

Too bad, this thread was hijacked.

Getting back to topic. In a meeting engagement the combined arms armor ratios are even worse than in an attack-defense situation. In a recent meeting, I had a lone Stug and against it were 3 Su76s, and 1 T-34/85. Ok, I had panzerfausts and a few shrecks, but my opponent was good enough to stay out of range. I even had an ATG - that was quickly disposed of by mortars. So how is one supposed to win an encounter like this with Axis??? The map was also bad for me, so I never had a chance at all.

Smoke - you cannot have enough to matter, when your enemy is firing at your inf from 500 meters.
Inf AT weapons - very hard to get close enough
Vehicles - paper skinned, easily killed by ATGs
AT guns - in a meeting engagement they are very vulnerable and very hard to put them into a useful spot
Air power - way too expensive, especially for Axis

There is no way to counter Soviet armor in this situation, except if your opponent makes mistakes.

Blackvoid, your StuG (assuming it is a G model or later) outmatches the SU-76s and is at a slight disadvantage in a duel with a T-34/85. Use your StuG and support weapons as overwatch over one covered route of advance, up which you push your (presumably superior) infantry. Any SUs that try and intervene against your infantry are killed by the StuG. If the T-34 appears it will probably concede first shot to your StuG, which has a good chance of killing it, and anyway the T-34 is by no means certain of winning any resultant duel.

If terrain doesn't allow you to cover your advance then there is nothing you can do about it, even with a whole platoon of StuGs - the Russians will land HE amongst your men before your StuGs can eliminate the threat.

Whether terrain is favourable or not, one StuG Ausf.G versus three SU76s and a T-34/85 is an interesting and challenging matchup.

[dieseltaylor]

But one where I would back the Russians 9 times out of ten.

Terrain can be important but if you play on small maps there is not a lot of terrain to play with. In 1500 point size battlemaps I think "unfair" maps would crop up about a third of the time, slightly favouring one side would take it to about two thirds.

Of course unfair is relative to the year , weather, and a bad choice of units can make a map "unfair". Early war tanks can get quite close to each other without it being curtains - late war - distances become less important.

[Tux]

Absolutely the Russians have a large advantage: Either the StuG is keyholed and the Russians hit German infantry from positions out of the StuG's LOS, or the StuG has a wide field of view and is engaged from three separate angles by the SUs and then finally by the T-34, once the StuG is committed to engaging one of the thinner targets.

There are also, of course, a great number of other factors that will affect the situation (as you mention) but it still sounds like a fascinating challenge to me. The StuG is a powerful weapon that can kill any of the opposition from range. One of the opposition can do likewise - where's the problem?

[BlackVoid]

I admit I was being stupid a bit
The answer to the T-34 is a Hetzer (high XP).
The answer to the SU-76: Hungarian 40mm AT and Hungarian Solothurn ATR - both cheap weapons and available up to April 1945.

But if your opponent bought a pair of ISU-122s, you are totally screwed. I still do not like the armor point ratios, but some of the time it can be compensated.

Overwatching infantry with a Stug? Well, I would happy to play you. A tank in plain sight is usually an invitation to disaster. The worst thing you can do is to let the enemy know where your tank is. A seen tank can be smoked, flanked or avoided. If you are outmatched in armor, suprise is absolutely crucial.

The point difference matters most in meeting engagements and in periods when Russian armor is up to par with the Germans (early and late war). In defense you can compensate with guns + surprise, on the attack you have parity in armor.

I still think it would have been better to make Russian tanks and AT guns cheaper instead of putting in a hard-coded point difference.

[Corvidae]

Originally Posted by dieseltaylor

Mark, your three comments in the thread have been cryptic - except possibly the last one : ). If you have a point to make on the game please feel free to expand as I am not entirely sure what you are saying about the gun problem that JC raised. Have you a solution?

Jason gets very pissy about a particular bug in the game, I dont blame him.
It IS a bug.
In reality the gun should either, have height, or be blocked from shooting.
In game we get neither.
It is a bug.
It gets exploited regularly.
At first I thought he was just spewing sour grapes... But then I tested it myself.
Turns out he was right.
The solution is to place your gun such that it is on the flat of the hill, just barely ahead of the slope.... and have it either, dug in, or in a trench.

alternately, you can give the other guy more mortars to play with.

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