why buy armor?

[RVPERTVS]

DRG said:
For those of you who may have been paying attention to the information provided in the thread about WinSPMBTv3 you may recall I mentioned that infantry is more expensive in V3 than it was in the last release so you guys can debate this further if you like but the change is a done deal.

That´s good to hear Don, I´m impressed how commited you guys are with the game´s development; maybe with this change and the one marked with number 13 things would be balanced up.

The issue regarding armour cost(I guess) has to do with the fact that infantry was modeled much more capable and resilient than tanks, meaining you had to spend more ammo and time to kill infantry while the cost was much inferior. Let´s wait to see how v3 handles these issues.

Regards
Robert

[bhutnath]

sorry folks, as an auther of this thread I have been away from the discussion due to problems with my PC. But it seems most points have all ready been thrashed out

(some of the points are excellent and thank you for the discussion!)

I did whant to clarify, that so far my experience with SP is very limited. In some (recent) games I have been able to successfuly win by employing only infantry (with light trucks) and lots and lots of arty (160x200 map 15k points India-pak 2010). The idea generaly is to have an advance allong the entire map and force the enemy armor to come to aid of infantry that would be badly out numbered. Use infantry to spot and fix armor and then cluster their collective rears to oblivion. The cluster ammo equiped arty with dumps/trucks seems to make up for lack of armor.
There is often enough atgm and arty troops to implement move and scoot and yet cover 'interested' areas thoughout the game. This helps me avoid enemy mortars and counter battery fire. I realy on reaction fire to get those damn pesky tanks and leave my grunts to the fighting during my turn.

(did I mention I buy no air?)

One thing I have noticed is that infantry traveling in apc often dies with the apc but infantry traveling in light truck will simply jump out with no or little damage. I find the light tr a much better ride. It doesnt make sense to me? is it a bug??

and is it just me, for in these large point games I buy logistic (ammo dump/trucks crates) worht almost 10% of my points!?
-Ak

[narwan]

bhutnath said:

One thing I have noticed is that infantry traveling in apc often dies with the apc but infantry traveling in light truck will simply jump out with no or little damage. I find the light tr a much better ride. It doesnt make sense to me? is it a bug??

Dutch troops deployed to Iraq (not there anymore though) and Afghanistan used mostly unarmored transports just for that reason. Armored vehicles keep the blast effects from penetrating hits inside the vehicle (the armor preventing it to escape) causing extensive damage to occupants. That doesn't happen with unarmored vehicles. While those are more vulnerable to for example mg fire, personal body armor meant that casualties from such fire remained low and usually not life threatening. The vehicles were often write offs when receiving lots of fire, but the occupants remained relatively safe.

Narwan

[Uncle_Joe]

For those of you who may have been paying attention to the information provided in the thread about WinSPMBTv3 you may recall I mentioned that infantry is more expensive in V3 than it was in the last release so you guys can debate this further if you like but the change is a done deal.

From the looks of it, your increase seems to be pretty good. I certainly dont think it was horribly off before, but a few builds ago the prices of the more capable armor really started to increase while the cost of infantry stayed static. That was bound to create some sort of inequity.

From your example, a ~30% increase sounds about right. That would mean you could get an infantry coy and change for the price of some first line MBTs. That sounds closer to the pricing of the WW2 equipment which I think is pretty accurate in reflecting their capabilities.

[pdoktar]

A Light truck inf company will run into serious trouble, if hit even by 60mm mortars. Trucks will be destroyed and infantry will jump off, not taking maybe much damge, but suppression and thus halting the advance, to get hammered again with those pesky 60mm the next turn. An APC company will survive much better light caliber barrages and keep infantry inside, thus not stopping and having a good chance of avoiding the next barrage.

[DRG]

Uncle_Joe said:

From the looks of it, your increase seems to be pretty good. I certainly dont think it was horribly off before, but a few builds ago the prices of the more capable armor really started to increase while the cost of infantry stayed static. That was bound to create some sort of inequity.

From your example, a ~30% increase sounds about right. That would mean you could get an infantry coy and change for the price of some first line MBTs. That sounds closer to the pricing of the WW2 equipment which I think is pretty accurate in reflecting their capabilities.

Here are some examples then. From the game with Country Training ON. In the infantry company examples I've shown the cost range from lowest to highest as with infantry coys there are always different ways of picking you force

UK Infantry Co 1988 328 - 351 points.
A Chieftan Mk11 is 371 points


Russian Infantry Co 1988 301 - 437 points.
A T-80BV is 294

German Jaeger Kp 347-369 points
A Leo 2A4 is 419 ( the 2a4 has TI which drives the cost up a 2a1 is 306 points )

A US Rifle Co [-AT] in 1988 ( without all the Dragon ATMs ) is 375 - 411 points. ( with the Dragons it goes up to just over 1100 points )
An Abrams will cost from 376 - 416 points

Those are just a few examples but yes roughly a company of infantry is equal to a MBT now. The difference in pricing structure between WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT is because we fine tuned the price calc when we released the last version of WinSPWW2 and this release catches MBT up with that. The patch for WW2 that will be out in a couple months will bring WW2 in sync with the improvements made to WinSPMBTv3 and then both games will be in sync

Don

[Uncle_Joe]

OK, I've been playing with V3.0 a bit and I think the 'problem' is still present.

What I see is integral to the issue is the 'stealthiness' of AT assets. ATGMs and RR teams etc are almost impossible to spot until they have fired a few times (often even for Infantry and especially if they have even a point of suppression). This greatly magnifies their effects and renders most lighter vehicles/APCs not worth their cost in the face of massed dismounts.

I've been playing a lot of small point meeting engagements (1990, Sov vs WGerm). I tend to buy a nice little combined arms force (Coy of Mech Infantry, a few tanks, some mortars or arty) while the AI usually buys a horde of dismounted troops (with a good group of AT assets like RRs and ATGM teams).

And the result is generally the same. I can take control of key areas and whittle down the initial attacks, but then eventually get overrun in a flood of infantry. Yes, they suffer 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 losses in manpower, but that is irrelevant since they are resiliant enough to keep on attacking. Vehicles are nearly useless in any form of European terrain in situations like this. All it takes is one misstep and a 99% chance ATGM smokes your AFV. Even if its just a glimpse for a half of a second in LOS, that ATGM has a 99% chance of a hit (which I also find very odd).

Once up close, nearly every squad has the capacity to kill light armor and APCs out to 400/500m. Again, it takes turns and turns of pounding to knock out a platoon of infantry costing around 65-70 points, a but single ~40 point APC is annihilated almost instantly by infantry.

The fact that the AT teams are 'stealthy' doesnt help the situation IMO. Its makes it quite possible for those teams to move across fields or other light terrain and get multiple shots off before drawing return fire. Finally, add in the fact that especially in smaller battles, there are considerably less pre-plotted arty points (a good change overall IMO). So, arty is FAR less responsive now at routing out infantry or reacting to the changing battle.

Note that if I go with an Infantry-heavy force, its still extremely easy to defeat similar enemy forces. With a BN and change of infantry vice a company of mech infantry, its usually a cake-walk to win.

I dont know what to say in terms of point cost and whatnot, but to me, its still pretty clear that all things equal (ie, not needing to cover huge stretches of ground) that massed dismounts will tend to win out over a more balanced force for cost.

[wulfir]

Uncle_Joe said:
I've been playing a lot of small point meeting engagements (1990, Sov vs WGerm).

Uncle,

what kind of settings are you using for your MEs?
Map size, build points...?