obat44 - West Germany

[Suurajatollah]

Hi all,

I have found a very good page that informs a lot when it comes to modern armarment of the german army.

http://www.deutschesheer.de/relaunch...829LC297PTILDE

Though it is written in germany...

Anyways, I think I have found few flaws in WG OOB:

*The page informs that Carl Gustav is still in use
*Where is this new Puma IFV
- http://www.army-technology.com/projects/puma_tracked/
*PzH 2000s rate of fire is 4, it should be more than Paladins.
("...Paladin M109A6 achieves a maximum firing rate of up to 8 rounds per minute or 3 rounds per 15 seconds, and a sustained firing rate of 1 round per three minutes...") and ("...This provides rates of fire of 3 rounds in less than 10 seconds...The firing rate of the PzH 2000 was 12 rounds in 59.74 seconds, and 20 rounds in 1 minute 47 seconds...")

Sources:1.) http://www.army-technology.com/projects/pzh2000/
2.) http://www.army-technology.com/projects/paladin/

*Mtn Scouts have no Morale nor Experience mod +3 which is common add on to every scout units
*Ranger units in many (if not every) OOB's have +5 or greater Morale mod and Experience mod. WG do not have.
*Some modern units are missing as the page informs

Should these things be corrected in a future update?

Cheers,
Olli

[Arralen]

Suurajatollah said:
Hi all,
I have found a very good page that informs a lot when it comes to modern armarment of the german army.
http://www.deutschesheer.de/relaunch...829LC297PTILDE
Though it is written in german...

Obviously, it's the official army homepage .. should be written in german, shouldn't it? Sadly, it does not give any information about dates, which is so thoroughly needed.

But there's an english version as well - simply hit the button for the "english version" on the front page. Haven't checked the info provided, though ..
http://www.deutschesheer.de

Anyways, I think I have found few flaws in WG OOB:
*The page informs that Carl Gustav is still in use

Actually, it is not in use as antitank weapon any more. It's says it's only used for illumination purposes.
Our problem here is - noone seems to now when it was officially phased out, and more important,at which point it was practically out of service because of ammo shortage, umwillingness to carry it along/ train with it and maybe even poor maintenance / missing spare parts
The OOB says 12/87 atm, and I tend to agree.

Where is this new Puma IFV

Good question. It is decided it will be build and bought, at last.
The information on that site is outdated, btw.:
Only "Schutzstufe A" and "Schutzstufe C" armor variants will be build (with 32/43 ton weight).
Here are some more pages about Puma:
http://www.freundeskreis-panzergrenadiere.de/87.0.html

So we would only need 2 different versions in the OOB -

• the airlift configuration, with low side armor, resistant to 14,5mm anti-equipment snipers and arty shrapnel; resistant to conventional 30mm AP and RPG-7 from the front and grazing hits on the flanks
• full armor config; 30mm and RPG-7 on 3 sides

Btw., applying those armor kits (9-10 tons!) is definitly not within the time frame of a WinSPMBT battle - in fact, they are still not sure how the grunts are supposed to handle the armor slabs at all

Furthermore, it should have high general survivability, as it is build to soak up mine hits and the enemies' first shot (which he is likely to have in urban environment and peacekeeping missions) and high armor values on the turret, as it is unmanned and sealed vs. the interior.

*Mtn Scouts have no Morale nor Experience mod +3 which is common add on to every scout units
*Ranger units in many (if not every) OOB's have +5 or greater Morale mod and Experience mod. WG do not have.

These are, as well as the various snipers, pretty generic units which do no exists in that form. I'm not sure how to "tie" them to real units, and therefore, which qualitiy to asign to them.
In general, I would leave them as they are and rate the "normal" troops waayyy lower .. a good deal of those conscripts are "Kampftrinker" (does anyone know to translate that?) and the officers jerks, but nothing more.

*Some modern units are missing as the page informs

which ?

[PlasmaKrab]

*PzH 2000s rate of fire is 4, it should be more than Paladins.
("...Paladin M109A6 achieves a maximum firing rate of up to 8 rounds per minute or 3 rounds per 15 seconds, and a sustained firing rate of 1 round per three minutes...") and ("...This provides rates of fire of 3 rounds in less than 10 seconds...The firing rate of the PzH 2000 was 12 rounds in 59.74 seconds, and 20 rounds in 1 minute 47 seconds...")

Quite off-topic, but he's right.
SP howitzers tend to be strangely rated. PzH 2000 is meant to be fully automated, Crusader-like, so should have better ROF and maybe FC (don't know if FC applies to indirect fire artillery?), maybe also better gun accuracy.
Same with the French AUF-1 GCT. Starts growing old, but it was nevertheless one of the first 155mm SPA with semi-auto loading and 5 rounds ready to fire (kind of autoloader). That should give both of these a huge ROF, and according cost. Gentlemen, in the Iraqi oob, the AUF-1 is even cheaper than the 2S1, which is good quality, but 122mm and 10 years older!

[Mobhack]

FC is worthless for off-map units (it is for direct fire)
RF is ditto worthless for off-map units
ROF is worthwhile for both <g>!

Gun ACC value is not worthwhile other than for direct-fire point-target on table missions, either.

gun ranges >= 200 are really only relevant for counter-battery fire between off-map units. They can fire all over the map if on-table assets. Are irrelevant really to on-map arty.

Burst fires - are not really done by this game system. (If so, then the S-tank and the French FL-series autoloaded turrets would have good initial bursts, but the latter at least required bombing up from a hull store, out of fire - and so no real way to simulate with the current mechanisms - and especially try telling the AI how to reload an AMX-13 ?!?

The Swedish bandkanone, as I recall has a 14 or so ROF - and so should empty its 155mm magazine in 1-2 turns..



Cheers
Andy

[narwan]

One error spotted:
Grenadier units 216, 217 and 218 have 6 HEAT ammo (at PEN 0) for their G3 rifles.

An OOB question:
Why are german regular rangers (unit 423) 19 points per squad (8/89) and the heavy rangers (unit 429) only 15? The only difference I can spot is that the heavy's have a grenade launcher (with 36 rounds) where the regulars have hand grenades (18 only). If anything I'd expect the heavy's to be more expensive. Hand grenades do have double the HE factor but the grenade launcher has double the ammo, a range of 7 and limited AT capability (HEAT 5).

Some questions for general information:
What does the 'MTW' stand for? How are these companies part of larger formations (battalions, brigades, etc)? I suspect they are a heavy inf AT cie for 'Grenadier' battallions or brigades. Can anyone shed some light on that for me? Thanks,

Narwan

[Alpha]

narwan said:

Some questions for general information:
What does the 'MTW' stand for? How are these companies part of larger formations (battalions, brigades, etc)? I suspect they are a heavy inf AT cie for 'Grenadier' battallions or brigades. Can anyone shed some light on that for me? Thanks,

Narwan

narwan, i didn´t do much changes to existing inf + armor formations....so i probably overlooked the errors you mentioned. but i don´t think they are so severe.

MTW = Mannschafts Transportwagen usually this are M113 in the german army or Fuchs, but Fuchs have own formations in the game...

[TheDesertFox]

narwan said:
Some questions for general information:
What does the 'MTW' stand for? How are these companies part of larger formations (battalions, brigades, etc)? I suspect they are a heavy inf AT cie for 'Grenadier' battallions or brigades. Can anyone shed some light on that for me? Thanks,

MTW = Mannschaftstransportwagen M113

In the 80s-90s (Heeresstruktur 4) every PzGrenBtl was structured roughly the following way:

-1st Coy "Staff and Logistics"

-2-3rd Coy "SPz Marder" capable of mounted and dismounted combat

-4rd Coy "MTW M113" capable of dismounted combat only

-5th Coy "PzMrs Coy" Mortar on M113, fire support coy

cheers

[narwan]

Alpha, thanks for the info. I haven't checked out your alternative obat (yet). It's one of many things on my mental 'to do' list!

DesertFox, I typed this reply to Alpha before I properly read yours, thanks!

I did find out though how the MTW cie fits into the scheme of things. I remembered a tabletop wargame magazine my brother has with a NATO v WP game in it and lots of (very good) back ground articles. One of those goes into great detail on the german armed forces organisation.

The MTW cie is part of a regular panzergrenadier brigade. In wartime the brigade goes into a 4 manouvre battallion organisation: 1 with 3 tank cie's, 1 mixed with 2 mech cie's (IFV's) and 1 tank cie, 2 with 2 mech cie's (IFV's) and 1 mech cie (APC).
The MTW cie is the mech cie with APC's (M113's whereas the other ones have Marder IFV's). It's probably heavy on the ATGM's because it's parent battallion is lacking MBT's (and hence it's medium-long range antitank capability).

Another interesting tidbit was the fact that upon mobilization 2 'light' infantry battallions are attached to each division HQ. From the stats and description I gather those must be the 'Jaeger' formations in the game.

By far the best stuff though is the descriptions of the units of the german territorial army, which included 6 heavy (2 tank, 2 inf batt's) and 6 light brigades (1 tank, 2 inf batt's).
I'll go and check to see if these are in the game too. I can't remember spotting any 'Heimatschutzen' companies though.

Narwan

[Suurajatollah]

Thanks for clearing things!

Heh! I tried that English page but it didn't work properly. I don't know much German so I tried to figure those missing units from the German pages. Which was difficult!

http://www.deutschesheer.de/relaunch...829LC297PTILDE

These are, as well as the various snipers, pretty generic units which do no exists in that form. I'm not sure how to "tie" them to real units, and therefore, which quality to asign to them.
In general, I would leave them as they are and rate the "normal" troops waayyy lower .. a good deal of those conscripts are "Kampftrinker" (does anyone know to translate that?) and the officers jerks, but nothing more.

I have served in Finnish defense forces for six months and I must say that if Finlands base experience is 75 so should be Germanys too! Still I disagree with you that those experience and morale mods should be untouched. In general scouts have those 3 and so should mountains scouts have. And in general rangers have 5 - 15 and so should WGs mountain troops have. WG is the only country I've found that doesn't have it. Although haven't espesially looked for it.

Back to those missing units. I feel that following units are missing:

* Leichter Transporthubschrauber UH-1D
http://www.deutschesheer.de/C1256B6C...8CH9Q307SWINDE
* Mehrzweckhubschrauber NH90
http://www.deutschesheer.de/C1256B6C...8CGMJ417SWINDE
* There are 4 different trucks: 5t, 7t,10t and 15t
*Motorcycle scouts??
http://www.deutschesheer.de/C1256B6C...8CH26459SWINDE
*Mungo??
http://www.deutschesheer.de/C1256B6C...VNFEY332RHAHDE

I searched all these in that page I mentioned... with my poor German.

BTW are those Para ATVs really expired after year 2005?

[PlasmaKrab]

A few points I came across through the German OOB:

Fennek first:

Isn't 1998 quite early for a service date?
From the official BW site, I'd tend to say 2001 at first.

Furthermore, it seems that a FO version (VB) is planned for the near future. Sensor suite stays the same, armament is changed to a MG3 AAMG.

I am searching for an official source about this, but to no avail yet. Here are some pics:
http://www.primeportal.net/apc/fennek.htm
And I got a source from the German publication "Soldat und Technik", April 2003: "Die modernste Artillerie der Welt und ihre Defizite", stating that as of 2002, 38 Fennek VB were due to be fielded by January 2004.

And what about the designation?
I heard something about "SpPz-2" (Spähpanzer, armored scout vehicle), but the official seems to be still "Spähwagen leicht 4 Rad FENNEK", which is quite hard to sum up.


Other matter is the Wiesel:

AFAIK the MK in "Wiesel MK" stands for "MaschinenKanone", that is, Autocannon.
In that perspective the current "Wiesel 1 MK TOW" in the game sounds strange?
I am pretty sure about this, but surely there are German veterans around here with better info on this.

Cheers all,

Plasma