Lieste
Posts: 1819
Joined: 11/1/2008 Status: offline
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Posting these together as the example occurred with this group of remnant unit(s) after a few days of continuous battle. Terrain is open/heath with modest cover/concealment, and light village with some prominence. There are also additional small-arms armed units in church towers and on nearby ridges. The armoured strength at start was 23 Universal Carriers, within the support and HQ units of a British Infantry Battalion. Player forces: a Battalion of Grenadiers, with 90 Pz Faust Warheads, and 10 mortars (4 12cm, 6 8cm). The U/C mortar platoon was isolated and disbanded itself early on (IMO it was at no risk, and could merely have re-bypassed the Grenadier company, without entering AT range). Apart from these losses (7 U/C with 6 mortars) the entire remaining Carrier force survived until the last days without loss. This despite heavy fighting in built-up-areas in which both sides exhausted all their ammunition and had to break-off for resupply several times. I thought/felt that the enemy casualties became harder to obtain once he was fatigued, even when hitting with fresh troops - is it possible that the fatigue 'owner' is set incorrectly - the last 13 man HQ with 1 U/C remaining survived for 3 days while under fire from 3 companies, all the Hvy weapon direct fire groups, and eventually even the Mortars, brought forward for their direct fire contributions. The enemy was isolated from supply, fatigued at 90+% and had run out of ammunition, yet the morale had increased to 88 several times, and despite burning through 6 or 7 'basic loads' of ammunition I was incapable of pushing it below 76% where it was on mission end. The unit basic stats should have been 50% for unit factors and 50% for leadership without variation in the mission editor. What exactly a 13 man remnant of an entire 750-800 man battalion, out of food/fuel/ammunition and surrounded by 470 very active and hostile infantry with heavy weapons, is doing with morale significantly above the base value is a little oddity all in itself, but I more am interested in why not a single vehicle was knocked out in 90 PzFaust shots*, and many thousands of rounds of HE from 12cm and 8cm mortars. All were captured during routing/rout recovery with the vehicle & crew the last to 'go' in each HQ, and the Carrier platoon being a tough nut, untouched until it finally routed three days after being out of supply. *And how I am looking forward to seeing these generally replenished This very high toughness of open-topped Universal carriers was also apparent in early scenarios with German Tank Bn struggling to kill enough before their AT ammunition ran-out to rout/destroy even a single Mot Infantry Coy, and being thoroughly distracted by these horrid little things that they completely ignored the Challengers working their way around their flanks (if left to their own devices - even overridden, they still preferred firing at the U/C if they could wangle it )
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