Reply To: Continued Explorations of Normandy Wargaming

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Apologies for the late reply, @jamesevans140 – As you know I was balls-deep in Historicon, 83 pieces of content, 1200+ comments and growing!   Exhausting but fun.

I know what you mean about the fogginess of intangibles in unit design.  PB/PL and especially AIW have always struggled with this.  Michael Benninghoff’s Finland counters he designed were absurdly powerful, as in they exceeded 1973 Egyptian platoons twice their size, with AKs, PKMs, RPKs, and RPGs … Byron Henderson redesigned them at 30% Benninghoff’s values … and people raged.  But he applied math, without axes to grind or personal bias.  Needless to say, I use Henderson’s figures (especially since I recruited him to BoW community)!   Soviet units are too weak (all designed as if in 1941, but they have those values through 1945).  Arab tank units in AIW are even worse.  The excuse given is the quality of the crews, but then they slap the new morale system on top of that and of course give them the lowest morale rating.  So I feel like they’ve been “charged twice” for admittedly lower vehicle crew quality.  Anyway …  I agree it’s an issue in any game, even good ones.

Yeah, unit experience is a weird factor.  Novice units are often “better” in a weird, ironic way.  They don’t KNOW what’s waiting for them, they’re eager and fresh.  Veteran units get “war weary.”  Men can only take so much, and while vets are solid, they are admittedly closer to that threshold of “ENOUGH” than the new guys.

The 90mm was an awesome weapon that had its hands tied behind its back as the US only shipped solid shot as the only AT round for it. – YES, this is what I was trying to get across with other folks regarding the quality of some of these guns.  Why most games give the US 90mm poorer AT values than 17 pounders (i.e., why the 17 pounder replaces the 90mm in the M10 tank destroyer, making it an “Achilles.”  In Panzer Leader, a platoon of Easy Eights (76.2mm gun) gets the same value as a troop of Fireflies, but that’s only because the Easy Eights are a platoon of five and the Fireflies come in a troop of four (when not mixed with three Shermans, as was the norm).  Again, ammo shortfalls and delays.

Time after time in the battles of the Lorraine the 75mm M4’s was on the losing end of a unit of Panthers when some M18s would turn up. Resulting in either smoking Panthers or Panthers running away. Another issue in these particular battles was the terrible training these brand new Panther brigades had.  These kids were rushed to the front with barely an idea what was happening.  PL scenarios published for these Arracourt battles give you piles of awesome Panthers, but in understrength Wehrmacht platoons and with Morale “C.”  Heartbreaking!  😀

Keep in touch!  😀

JIM