john g
Posts: 984
Joined: 10/6/2000 From: college station, tx usa Status: offline
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quote:
Originally posted by BillSeurer:
Drat, this doesn't work. I took 3 armored cars as reinforcements at the start of one campaign scenario but they were no where to be seen in the next one.
Support units will not add to the core, due to a bug, reinforcements (ingame 20%)will add in one of the versions. Personally why do you want to add to the core size? The ai bases its purchase of the opposing force on how big the player side is, so more units = more enemy. All upgrades should be based on technological improvement, better guns, thicker armor, better rangefinder, etc.
Having said that I recall that I in my WWII campaign as the Germans replaced the generally ineffective 50mm mortars in the rifle company with 88mm AA guns, and the mg's with PzIb's. So there is something to be said for clearing out the weapon types that you find ineffective.
The upgrade path I followed was something like:
Pzib and IIc to III and IV up to the point where I had IIIj(s) then I held on till tigers were available and turned them into PzVIe until the PzVIb were available and they then stayed that way till the end of the war. Here it was a case of seeking the maximum armor for my tankers.
For tech upgrades: I started the campaign with 9 snipers: I converted 3 to 88mm AA then Ferds, then Mobilwagens, as my threat from the enemy shifted from infantry, to tanks to air. The other six sinpers changed to nashorns (snipers with 88mm which were a horrible failure, they got blown up in a series of low vis battles time after time), they then changed half to 88 at guns and half to mobilwagens. Again as the threat changed I changed my force to meet it.
My rifle infantry company converted 2 platoons to FJ once the panzerfaust version was available, and one platoon to spec ops which changed to FJ when I decided the spec ops wasn't effective with the rest of my core. So at the end of the war I had a company of FJ with the weapons platoon stripped off. With FG42 and panzerfaust 100 they were able to stop almost any threat except air. My A0 unit also converted to FJ but never upgraded to to pf100, they stuck with the pf30 since that unit never got a kill the entire campaign, and I didn't want to lower their experiance any further.
My engineer company started and ended the war as their 10 man squads armed with kar98's, I didn't think the increase in close range firepower warrented changing to the mp38/40 squads.
So over the course of the war my core went from
2 platoon PzIIc
1 platoon PzIb
1 infantry company
1 engineer company
2 sections 88mm AA
2 section 20mm AA
9 snipers
to 4 platoons PzVIb
FJ company
engineer company
2 three gun and 1 two gun 88 at gun sections
6 mobilwagens
2 sturmtigers
The fourth platoon of tanks came from the mg's that were transformed into PzIb (armored mg carriers) and later turned into PzIVe and then to tigers.
Along with this core when I moved to the defense of France and Seigfried line I spent at least 1/2 and more like 2/3 of my support points on AA. I only lost 2 tigers to air attack the entire war and that was in battles where the US would throw as many as 20 planes against me.
That core ended up the war with over 50000 repair/upgrade points not spent. Not bad for a force that originally cost 2200. My overridding concern was to keep my own casualties low, not go for a quick win, that seems to be the key to getting decisive wins.
I never had a battle where I couldn't repair damage and still have some left over for a possible upgrade. However I did not always upgrade just because a new version was available. If the unit was working fine against the ai, I let it stay there until a much better tank was available, this was important in late 41 early 42 where I was waiting for the tigers to arrive. I didn't clear the last PzIb out until early 42 where it was no longer useful as an infantry clean up tank
thanks, John.
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