Infantry Casualties at 50m

[Uncle_Joe]

Hi all,

Been playing quite a bit since it came out (and a lot of SP-WW2 for DOS as well). Great games and thanks a lot for the effort!

OK, onto the question/observation:

It seems to me that infantry casualties at 50m are dramatically increased from the DOS version (and this is just from standard rifle fire not even included the often added carnage from grenades and whatnot). They seem to be high almost regardless of circumstance (smoke in the hex, terrain in the hex, 'assault moving' into the hex etc).

I fired up a 39 Russian Campaign against the Poles and the first battle generates a lot of woods. LOS is basically 50m for most of the engagement due to the woods meaning you basically have to walk into the enemy unit to find them. And doing so invariably results in 3-5 casualties from rifle fire alone and being thrown back. Given that you can make no return fire unless you 'stick', it leads to some fairly unassailable positions far in excess of what I would consider to be reality.

In the DOS version, casualties at 50m seemed to be lower on average (although with the occasional heavy loss and throw back). If you could get one guy to stick, you could return fire and put some suppression fire down allowing another squad to come up and start the assault. So far I have been unable to duplicate that ability in the Win version simply because the initial rifle shot is so deadly (again, regardless of conditions).

So, was something done to increase these close action casualties and if so, why? It never seemed out of whack before. And given that its a turn-based game, there is no opportunity for a 'firefight' in these situations. You either get to stay in the hex or you dont with no chance of even firing a single round at the enemy position.

My suggestion, for what its worth, would be to reduce those initial casualties quite a bit and restore the flow of the close-terrain battles. Right now they dont seem to be a lot of fun and there isnt much you can do beside just hope you get lucky and have a guy stick and not retreat (not likely with the casualties inflicted). Sure, you can bombard with arty, but you have to have a clue where the enemy is first and unspotted fire (the only kind you'll get in these situation) is just as likely to hit friendly troops as enemy.

I have no save games, but its easy to recreate. Just make any map with a lot of close terrain. I first noticed it when I was playing a 'Bulge' scenario as the Amis. The Germans just had no chance to every really get shots at my troops. I was killing 4-5 per shot and they never got to 'stick' and fire back. I killed off about 450 German troops losing 6 of my own. I attributed it the AI. Then I've played a number of assault-type scenarios as the attacker into close terrain and the situation is similar...horrendous losses without so much as a shot back at the enemy.

Another suggestion that would probably be difficult coding-wise would be to have the moving troops shoot back once at 50m before being repulsed. That would at least put some suppression potential on the defender and allow follow-up squads to not be walking d#ck in hand into a 'known' ambush and being slaughtered again and again.

Thoughts? Was the code changed? Is it really an improvement over the old results?

Thanks!