The Steel Panthers
Illustrated
Strategy & Tactics
Primer: A Player's
Guide to Winning
Tactics
(ASCII version
0.90)
1/15/96
Work in Progress Copyright 1996 Todd David Brady
(Version Notes : This version not intended for
general release, however it may be posted so
long as it is noted that this not considered
the finished version. At this point, only a few
sections need to be added or altered, and I
would like it to be posted if possible to
incite interest in the finished product. All
graphics intended to be associated with the
text have not yet been incorporated by
reference into the text. Asterisks (*) denote
sections not yet started, Pound signs (#)
denote sections under construction. Please give
your thoughts, feedback, submissions, etc. to
EMurrow1@aol.com. The ASCII version is a
reformatted pass of the LWP version. Until the
writing is completed, the spaces you see in the
ASCII version may not correspond to a reference
to a GIF file. Also, the ASCII spacing may not
be optimal in all cases. This version is not
distributed with the graphic files, I am in the
process of discussing copyrights and licenses,
etc., with SSI. I do not anticipate a problem.
Novastar has indicated an interest in including
this Primer as a bonus file with their scenario
disks).
CONTENTS
Introduction
Section 0 - Using the Primer & *Legal Stuff*
(notice!)
Section 1 - Getting to the Battlefield
Section 2 - A General Overview of Tactics
Section 3 - Preparing for War : Choosing a Core
Force
Section 4 - Preparing for Battle: The Mission
Screens
Section 5 - Campaign Considerations
Section 6 - Deploying For Battle
Section 7 - Infantry Tactics
Section 8 - Tank & Armored Fighting Vehicle
(AFV) Tactics
Section 9 - Direct Fire Gunnery and other
Special Units
Section 10 - Combined Arms Doctrine
Section 11 - The Gentle Art of Self-Defense
with Guns (Defense)
Section 12 - The Art of Attack
Section 13 - The Art of Retreat
Section 14 - The Art of Counter-Attack
Section 15 - Rest & Refit
Section 16 - Breakthroughs and Counter-Attacks
Section 17 - Artillery & Air Power (It's
raining lead, hallelujah!)
Section 18 - Fortifications & Mines
Section 19 - Combat Engineers
*Section 20 - City Combat
*Section 21 - Desert Rats (Desert Combat)
*Section 22 - Winter War (Combat during Winter
Months, Russia, etc)
*Section 23 - Bungle in the Jungle (Jungle
Combat)
*Section 24 - River Crossings and Amphibious
Landings
Section 25 - The CPU as a Commander
Section 26 - Nationalities
Section 27 - Marines at War
*Section 28 - The Wehrmacht in Europe
Section 29 - The British in North Africa
#Section 30 - The American Army in Europe
*Section 31 - Questions of Morale
#Section 32 - Commander's Log (Testimonials)
#Section 33 - Epilogue
#Section 34 - Tables and Other Data
INTRODUCTION
Steel Panthers, by Strategic Simulations
Incorporated, is a computer wargame simulating
tactical engagements between various forces in
World War II. It seems a rather bland statement
to describe the game in these terms since, to
wargamers, Steel Panthers is one of the best
games of its type to come along in many years.
It features awesome graphics and sound
capabilities, as well as a very detailed
tactical model. Even more important, it is also
quite fun. Even (or especially) grown-ups, have
been known to get more than a little excited
when their troops are able to kill an enemy
tank or stop an enemy attack in its tracks.
Steel Panthers
provides a
unique blend
of
playability,
detail, and
graphics, and
compromises
almost nothing
with its truly
first-class
simulation
engine.
This text, and its accompanying graphics, are
intended to both entertain and instruct players
of the game in battlefield tactics as they work
in Steel Panthers, so that you can win more
often, suffer fewer casualties in so doing, and
become a first class battlefield commander
yourself. We will take an initial pass over
battlefield tactics; just some general things
to remember before attempting to duke it out
with the blue meanies on the other side. Then
we will move to how the game is actually
organized, what kinds of forces to select, and
how to deploy them. Then we will get into some
really nitty-gritty aspects of combat such as
how to destroy enemy squads with flamethrowers,
morale considerations, and so forth. Finally,
we will put it all together in a comprehensive
look at several games (a day in the life, if
you will). Best of all, unlike other text files
which may be available, this one is accompanied
either by embedded bitmaps (in the LWP
version), or by a set of GIF files with which
you can actually see examples of what we are
talking about.
So, just think of this as your Steel Panthers
Handbook, not unlike the handbooks that many
armies of the day handed out to their junior
officers just starting out on their first
command . . .
Section 0 - Using the Primer & *Legal Stuff*
(notice!)
This Primer is released in both an LWP version
(for OS/2 and IBM Works users) and in an ASCII
text version. The LWP version will have many
embedded graphics right in the document, so
everything is right here. The ASCII version
will have large empty spaces where those
graphics were intended to be placed in the LWP
version, but a reference will be made to the
corresponding GIF file. Each GIF comes with its
own caption and explanations, so it is not
necessary to constantly flip back and forth
between the text and the GIFs, unless you have
a multitasking system capable of doing this. At
present, due to bandwidth limitations (both my
own limited time and the general speeds at
which data transfers occur in cyberspace
presently), the manual in the ASCII version
will have only 10 associated GIF files. The LWP
version will have a few more, some as just nice
backgrounders to the text, so if you see an
empty space in the ASCII version with no
reference to a GIF, it's just a backgrounder
that isn't necessary for the meat of the
Primer. Also, the LWP version will have a few
boxed "TIP" sections which will not show up in
the ASCII version. For esthetic reasons, these
will not be noted in the ASCII version, but if
you are an experienced player, they won't be
necessary. They are intended for novice
players.
Note : This Primer is intended to be a
collaborative effort of all Steel Panther's
players. Future versions will include new
information, updates, tables, explanation of
the latest official version of the game, and
other data. Any reader should feel free to
EMail his or her suggestions, comments,
questions, or submissions to EMurrow1@aol.com.
All submissions become the copyright of Todd
David Brady, with the limitation that where
text or other information is substantially
provided to Todd David Brady by the submitter,
credit to the submitter will be conspicuously
noted if used in this Primer. See
the notice below for further
details.
Legal Notice : This Primer is not
endorsed or supported by
Strategic Simulations,
Incorporated or any of its
affiliates, nor any other
company. The author has received
no compensation for this work,
financial or otherwise. Screen
shots from the game Steel
Panthers are the sole property of Strategic
Simulations, Incorporated. No part of this
manual may be reproduced in any way except for
viewing and reading the text and graphics for
entertainment purposes only, with the exception
that the material may be transmitted and placed
on an electronic service public download
facility. No
part of the text
or other
material
contained herein
which is the
copyright of Todd David Brady may be altered,
edited, abridged, or in any way modified
without the express permission of the author.
No part of the screen shots included or
associated with this Primer may be reproduced,
copied, edited, manipulated, or distributed in
any way without the express permission of
Strategic Simulations, Incorporated. Text
copyright 1996 by Todd David Brady, except
where otherwise noted. Screen shots copyright
Strategic Simulations, Incorporated.
Section 1 - Getting to the Battlefield
There are a number of ways to get to the
battlefield. Steel Panthers features a number
of pre-made scenarios which all purport to
represent actual historical battles (there are
also a couple of might-have-beens). There is
also a Battle Builder which allows you to
rapidly set up different kinds of engagements,
from meeting engagements to an assault of one
side against another's attempt to defend.
Different from the Battle Builder, there is
also a Scenario Editor which allows you to
custom-design scenarios and add your own
description of them. It takes a little longer
to set up battles using the Editor, but in the
Editor you can also define each hex on the map
with terrain of your choosing, and customize
many aspects of the forces -- right down to the
names of the individual squad leaders! The
Editor is ideal for recreating a historical
battle, or for setting up particular
engagements that you just can't find anywhere
else. The last way to start a battle is by
starting a Campaign game. In a Campaign game,
you organize a group of units which stay with
you throughout the campaign (and gain valuable
combat experience along the way -- if they
survive) and fight several separate battles
against one or more foes. The "Long Campaign"
allows you to have a core force throughout the
course of the war, and you can determine your
own time period to start from. A Long Campaign
might involve as many as 30 or 40 separate
engagements throughout the course of World War
II!
This Primer will spread a lot of 'ink' talking
about the Long Campaign. This is because for
many wargamers, and real soldiers, the
opportunity to organize a force of your own
choosing and guide it through many battles,
becoming more experienced and efficient along
the way, is a very appealing aspect of the
game, and it also involves a number of special
considerations which set it
apart from ordinary scenario
play.
Section 2 - A General
Overview of Tactics
In any given battle, you
first need to assess what you are supposed to
accomplish with your force. Second, you need to
assess what possible forces could be present to
deny you those goals. Third, you must then make
a general determination of what it is possible
to accomplish based on what your forces can do
versus the relative capability of the enemy.
Fourth, once you have made these basic
assessments, you need to evaluate all of these
factors and come up with a general plan to
achieve your objectives in the most efficient
way possible.
Whew! That was a very broad statement.
Naturally, making the above calculations will
require some thought on your part, and some
basic knowledge of how the game works. This
primer assumes you have read the manual and
played a few games already (perhaps, quite a
few games) so we leave the scoop on the game
interface and mechanics to those sources.
Unless you are playing one of the ready-made
scenarios, your force will have one of four
basic missions to accomplish: Defend, Delay,
Advance, and Assault. The type of mission you
are given will have a lot to do with what type
of tactics you decide to employ and where you
decide to deploy your forces. Just as
important, however, is the nature of the
terrain you'll be fighting on and the nature of
the enemy you will fight. In Steel Panthers,
the tactics the enemy uses can be as varied as
the terrain, and the computer player typically
adopts tactics that are well suited to the
nationality and mix of forces. Besides the
missions mentioned above, two other kinds of
missions can also occur in a campaign scenario:
River Crossing and Amphibious Assault. These
missions are relatively rare and involve some
very special considerations, so we discuss them
later.
When you are given a certain mission, the enemy
will have a mission and a ratio of force which
corresponds to the opposite of yours according
to the following table:
Table 1.0
Force Ratios by Mission Type
Player's Mission Enemy Mission
Player/Enemy Ratio of Force
Defend Assault 40:100
Delay Advance 50:100
Advance Delay 100:50
Assault Defend 100:40
Thus, on defend missions, you will be at a
greater disadvantage in terms of the amount of
points available to purchase support points
versus what the number of points the enemy has
to purchase units. Following sections will
discuss in detail many aspects of battlefield
tactics, but remembering the above statements,
you should use the mission type as a general
guide to selecting your support units and
deploying all your forces. Though your overall
mission may be of one type or another, you
should be prepared for any eventuality:
Sometimes it will be necessary to attack while
your mission is defensive in nature, and vice
versa. We will go into this in more detail in
later sections. Watch out, though, because
sometimes when you get an Advance mission, the
enemy will launch a counterattack (before the
battle starts) and wind up having more total
points to spend than you! (Remember, we said
that you have to be prepared for any
eventuality!).
Whether you are on attack or defense, you
should remember a few basic rules. First, never
expose your troops to fire without a good
reason. If you must expose them to fire, then
make sure that you have at least as much or,
preferably, more than the enemy can bring to
bear at the given points of attack or defense,
at least during the initial exchanges of fire.
Infantry units which are moving are much more
vulnerable to fire than positioned units, so by
all means if you are exposed to fire move only
if you have too. Vehicles, on the other hand,
are harder to hit if moving, but their accuracy
when firing is also greatly reduced. Finally,
when you do expend copious amount of firepower,
don't waste it firing at targets which are of
little or no consequence to the overall course
of the battle. Don't waste 88s firing at Jeeps.
Second, pay attention to the amount of time the
scenario will last. On attack or defense,
players frequently get caught up in the action
and shed a lot of blood unnecessarily to take
or hold objectives when a little patience (and
a well placed artillery barrage) could do a big
part of the job. If its almost the end of the
scenario in a Long Campaign and you have very
little chance of taking the last objective,
don't rush toward it, sending your troops in
like lambs to the slaughter.
Finally, be aware of something called "Force
Morale." This concept can result in all or most
of enemy force retreating at high speed. This
happens when you've caused so many casualties
to the enemy force that even undamaged enemy
units will begin retreating. It may be that no
matter how bad things seem for you, destroying
just a couple more enemy tanks or squads will
break their Force Morale, and stop their attack
or clear out the last objective without a
fight. This has won more than a few games for
many other daring commanders like yourself. Be
wary, however, since you as a Human player are
not immune from these same effects, and you
could lose control of the battle if you ask
your force to do too much with too little.
Now that you are schooled up on some basic
battle tactics, lets start the process of
becoming an expert commander by figuring out
how to gather together that band of brothers
known in Steel Panthers as the Core Force.
Section 3 - Preparing for War : Choosing a Core
Force
The first step of the game, really, is choosing
a core force. Before you can do that, however,
you have to decide which nationality you want
to be. This is important, because each nation
has different capabilities which actually
change during the course of the war. If you are
not playing a Long Campaign, your capabilities
during the campaign of your choosing should
remain about the same. Finally, the nationality
will have a major impact on the force mix that
will be ideal or optimal for winning battles.
The first thing you should do, after picking a
nationality and starting time, is decide what
type of campaign you will be fighting. Will you
spend most of your time as the Germans on the
Eastern Front against Russia, or will you be a
strong company of US Marines fighting your way
across the Pacific? You need to do this now,
because the type and composition of your core
force should be affected by your idea of when
and where you will be spending most of the war.
After you have chosen your nationality and
starting time, the next thing you must decide
is whether your core units will be Foot
Infantry, Motorized Infantry or Mechanized
Infantry. Be aware that Motorized and
Mechanized infantry are more expensive than the
plain-old ground pounders, with Mechanized
troops being the most expensive. Also, remember
that if you are going to be spending a lot of
time in mosquito-infested jungles with no roads
and lots of swamps, it might be better to have
both feet on the ground and select Foot
Infantry; infantry on foot is much better at
detecting the presence
of enemy troops.
Conversely, if you
campaign plan involves
tromping around the wide
expanses of the Western
Desert, you might want
to consider spending the
extra money for
mechanized or halftrack
transport.
One of the big advantages of Motorized or
Mechanized infantry is that all of your core
force infantry units will come automatically
equipped with the appropriate transport.
Mechanized troops especially have a big
advantage this way because each squad will also
have an affiliated halftrack which is
invariably mounted with a machine gun. This
effectively doubles the firepower of your
troops, and adds a whole lot of extra units on
the map. The game doesn't count the halftrack
as part of the 24-unit limit, so when you total
the infantry squads and the halftracks
together, you actually can actually come out
with more than 24 units in your core force! The
only downside to this is that while you spend
the extra points for the halftracks, the
transport element of each squad cannot be
upgraded later in the game, so far as I know. I
recommend selecting either Foot infantry or
Mechanized infantry and skipping over the
Motorized option: If you're going to pay extra
for the vehicles, you may as well get vehicles
that can actually do some damage to the enemy.
Your next
choice is
whether to
begin at
Green,
Average or
Veteran
experience
levels. The
level of
experience
your troops
have will
affect a lot
of things
that are
going on in the game, such as the effectiveness
of their fire and their ability to sight enemy
units, so the importance of experience cannot
be underestimated. However, like many choices
in the game, there are some costs associated
with selecting a higher experience level. The
higher the experience level you choose, the
less points will be available for the purchase
of your core units. However, higher experience
units are more efficient and have a better
chance of surviving longer than the newbies so
you won't have to replace or rebuild them as
often. If you're efficient on the battlefield
and in the refit area, this will leave with
with more more points to spend on upgrades than
you would if you were just keeping a shattered
rookie force in one piece.
The first thing to know about your core force
is that it can only contain a total of 24
individual squads, tanks, or other kinds of
units, not counting intrinsic infantry
transport vehicles. There is, however, nothing
to prevent you from selecting 24 tanks or 24
anti-tank guns and so forth (not counting
intrinsic transport), but most military experts
agree that combined arms is the best choice.
Your force may be fighting its way through
Europe in dozens of different situations, so
your force should be prepared to meet different
challenges along the way.
There are basically two schools of thought with
respect to choosing a core force. On one hand,
there are those who like to fashion a core
force which more or less corresponds to what a
company commander would have available in a
battlefield situation. This "historical" school
tends to organize infantry companies with some
extra punch like a tank platoon, a mortar
section, or an anti-tank section. The other
school dumps any sentimentality and tries to
select units which will give them the best
chance of winning the most battles. This school
typically has a higher ratio of tanks,
anti-tank
guns and
engineers.
Neither
school is
'correct', it
is really a
matter of
personal
choice. I
like to have
about 4
infantry
platoons, 1
tank platoon,
and one section of either heavy infantry guns
or heavy anti-tank guns. The "win-at-all-costs"
school would probably have just 1 or 2 infantry
platoons, usually engineers, and instead have 2
tank platoons and 2 sections of anti-tanks guns
along with some other units like heavy mortars
or guns. Just remember that the more expensive
your units are, the more expensive it will be
to replace them if they are lost.
One thing you should NOT do is pick
non-essential forces for your core force, such
as that category of militaria known as "prime
movers" or gun transports. Certain types of
guns require motorized transport if they are to
move at all. If you have some of these guns in
your core force, don't add prime movers to your
core force also. Each slot in your core force
is valuable, and should be filled up with units
that are capable of killing the enemy, not just
providing an easy target for them. Besides,
most transport of this type was drawn from a
divisional or regimental motor pool, and was
rarely associated with particular weapons and
crews. If you are worried about how to move
your guns around, just remember to buy prime
movers as support units before each battle.
One thing you definitely should do is fill
every slot in your core forces with something.
You won't get a second chance to add core
forces later, so you have to fill those slots
now. If you find you don't have enough points
to get what you want, you may want to select a
unit type which is cheaper, such as taking a
Panzer I instead of that Panzer III. If you
still don't have enough points and simply must
have a certain mix of forces, then you may need
to start over and ratchet down the experience
levels to "average" or "green." This will give
you more points to purchase the units you think
you need, but they will be less experienced.
Section 4 - Preparing for Battle: The Mission
Screens
After you have selected a core force, you will
be carried to another screen which is identical
to the screen in which you chose your forces,
with one little exception: The Mission Button.
This button tells you what kind of mission your
force now has for its first battle (or your
next battle, if you have already done this and
been there). Each type of Mission will affect
how many points will be available to purchase
support forces (see table 1.0), the placement
of the objectives (on your side or on their
side), and the number and type of certain
support units which might be available.
One thing about which players frequently
complain when preparing for a battle is that
they do not know enough about the terrain
layout or the enemy forces. About the only
things you will know about the upcoming battle
is who you are fighting, where (in a general
sense) you are going to fight, and the time of
year. This may not seem like much, but actually
quite a lot of relevant tactical decisions can
be made on this basis alone! One really
critical fact that is unfortunately left out,
and which can have a huge impact on the battle,
is the battlefield visibility. Choosing support
units consisting of several sections of
long-range anti-tank guns, for example, will be
cause for regret if and when you discover the
visibility is only 14 hexes!
While the player complaints are understandable,
it is equally true that in many real battles
which the game is capable of simulating, real
commanders probably had the same problem.
Visibility could change before the ink was dry
on the warning orders, and the location of the
upcoming battle could change rapidly, making
the neat maps with arrows and notes pretty
irrelevant. In the Steel Panthers arena,
actually, there is much that can be gleaned
from the mission and support force selection
screen that will be critical to your selection
of support forces and your overall deployment.
So let's focus on what we do know.
First, you know what you have as a core force,
that's listed in the right hand column. If your
forces have taken damage from previous battles
which has not been repaired, there will be
small text indicators next to each unit
reporting amount of damage or KO status.
If you've had tanks or other vehicles knocked
out and the crew survived, but you didn't have
the points to replace the vehicle during the
refit phase, you may notice these crews listed
at the bottom of this part of the screen.
Next, you should determine what your mission
actually is by simply clicking on the Mission
button. The mission button tells you a little,
and hints at much more. Not only does it tell
you your mission, but it also tells you where,
when and who you are fighting. But if you
think of this information in context, you can
actually gain a lot more intelligence on the
nature of the battle you are about to fight.
Who you are fighting is probably the single
most important fact. The nationalities vary a
great deal in capability. If you are British
about to engage Italians rather than Germans,
you can heave a huge sigh of relief, and, ahem,
alter your support force composition
accordingly. This will be covered in a separate
section on The Nationalities.
Next up is when. The time of year that you are
fighting has more to do with visibility than
anything else, and this can be important for
support force selection. If it is in the Fall
or Winter months, visibility will tend to be
lower than 45, while summer months typically
have visibility factors much higher, sometimes
in the 80s. At the higher visibility ranges,
tree or forest hexes can actually be seen
through, and smoke is less effective. The lower
the visibility, the less effective will be
long-range guns such as anti-tank guns and
infantry guns, not to mention the guns mounted
in your tanks (and those of the enemy). When is
also very important to determine the
capabilities of the enemy. Nationalities can
have better or worse experience levels and
equipment availability depending on which year
the battle is taking place (the game manual has
more information about this).
Finally, there is the where factor. You already
know that you are in some Theatre of War, like
Eastern Europe, where the terrain can alternate
between flat steppe and hilly knolls. However,
if you see that the location is at a big city
such as Warsaw, Paris, Kharkov, Stalingrad or
Manila, then there is a chance that you will
fighting your way through city streets, rather
than peaceful meadows. This is no guarantee
that you will have an urban combat situation,
but you might want to think about adding a
section or platoon of Engineers, whose
flamethrowers and satchel charges will be
invaluable for blowing up historical and
government buildings of all types.
Even though it may seem like there is very
little information, actually there is quite a
bit. In many cases, you will probably have more
information than real historical commanders did
in most all types of engagements except for
set-piece attacks characterized by the battle
of Kursk.
Now let's look at the mission types one by one.
The Defend mission may seem like the easiest,
because all you have to do is wait for the
enemy to attack and you have the advantage of
being on defense. Translated tactically, your
troops will face abundant opportunities to
bushwhack the enemy. Actually, however, this is
one of the hardest types of missions. First,
you will be heavily outnumbered quantitatively
if not qualitatively. Second, because you have
to defend objectives, you will lose some degree
of tactical mobility. Third, once your forces
become engaged there is a good chance that they
will either be destroyed, rout or hold their
ground, with the latter being somewhat rare
unless you and your troops are very
experienced. Fourth, the enemy will most likely
have plentiful support units in the form of
murderous artillery fire, air attacks, mortar
attacks, and special infantry units. Did I
scare you yet? No? Just wait till you hear the
sound of Katyusha batteries scoring direct hits
on your concealed infantry positions.
You will have some advantages, though, and they
must be used
to the
fullest
extent
possible if
you are to
win. First,
you know
where the
enemy units
are going --
to the
objectives of
course. Once
you do get to
see the
terrain, you
will have be able to discover likely lines of
approach and defend them accordingly. Second,
you don't have to hold all the objectives to
win, only most of them. Third, you may also
have artillery and air support available, and
you may also get those old standbys of
defensive warfare: Bunkers, pillboxes and
landmines. Fourth, all of your units will start
the game in "entrenched" mode, meaning they
will be harder to kill. This won't matter much
when you command squad gets hit with four 155mm
shells in two minutes, but it will provide
better protection against less violent forms of
attack. Last, in the initial rounds of combat
at least, you will be able to pick and choose
high value targets for destruction with
long-range gunnery.
The Delay mission is a variation of Defend. You
are still asked to hold objective, your ratio
of force is slightly improved, but you will
generally get less support points. How does
that work, you might ask? How can I have a
better ratio of force and at the same time
actually get less points to purchase with?
Well, what's happening is that the enemy gets
less overall points, improving your ratio.
Again, this will be of small comfort when one
of your core infantry platoons is defending a
"quiet" sector when two platoons of KV-I
behemoths emerge from the smoke, but generally
your troops will have a somewhat easier time.
On the down side, none of your units will begin
the battle entrenched. This may be because
while you still have to hold the objectives to
win, higher command has already decided that
the sector cannot or should not be held, and
you have not been given enough time or
resources to carry out a preparation of the
defenses. At any rate, your troops will be more
vulnerable to fire than in the Defend mission.
To better understand the ratio of force and
support points question, as well as unit
availability, I have made the following table :
Table 2.0
Mission Specific Variable Estimates
Mission Type Defend Delay
Advance Assault
Ratio of Force 40% 50% 200%
240%
Support Points 180 45-80 50-90
180
Enemy Total Points 450 160 ? ?
Fortifications Yes No No Yes
Landmines Yes No No Yes
Air Power More Less Less
More
Artillery More Less Less
More
Length of Scen. 25 20 20 25
The point totals and turn length estimates are
only general approximations based on what I
know of the game. The actual amount of points
can vary greatly depending on a number of
factors such as Nationality, time period, other
variables and some randomization. Note that the
ratio of force applies only to the point totals
that the enemy will get for support forces; it
does not count what the computer allocates for
a base force. For example, if you are on a
Defend mission and get 180 support points, this
means that your force will have a total point
value of 180 plus the point value of your core
force, which may be from 120-220 points
approximately. Thus, the total point value of
your core force will be in the general range of
your total point value times the force ratio.
This does not mean that there will be less
enemy forces if you buy no support forces; the
computer assumes that you spend all of your
points to purchase support forces (and you
definitely should !)
Air power and artillery will not always be
available, again this varies with a number of
factors. Generally, there is less chance of
availability of this kind of support in the
Delay and Advance missions. Airpower has an
additional limitation and that is after
choosing one or more airstrikes, the airstrike
unit selection button will disappear, meaning
that you simply cannot get anymore, no matter
that you have the points to do it.
Now, lets move to the offensive missions.
First, there is the Advance mission. Here,
force density will be lower than in the
Defend/Assault missions, but you will have less
time to accomplish your objectives. Because of
the lower overall point totals, the computer
tends to buy a lot of infantry and cheap guns,
rather than high value units like tanks. So,
you may not notice the "force density" is lower
per se, just that the enemy units are easier to
deal with.
Obviously, the character of your tactics are
entirely different in offensive missions such
as this. Your troops generally have to move
more, and they usually move towards the enemy.
This means that detecting the enemy is critical
to your success. If you can get Airstrikes, you
can not only rain death from above on the
enemy, but your planes can actually spot
concentrations of enemy forces much in advance
of your ground troops. Without this nifty bit
of 20th Century technology, you'll be limited
to your eyes. Another tactic is that even if
you can't see the enemy but suspect he is
there, you can use some of your troops to fire
into empty hexes with the "Z" key. When you
fire into a hex this way, you percent chance to
hit is greatly reduced. However, its much
better than zero, which is what it would be if
you didn't fire at all because you don't see
the stealthy, hidden enemy units. A couple of
really damaging hits will flush out weaker
troops.
The Assault mission is quite difficult for the
novice player. Many more hazards abound in the
form of mines and artillery, as well as bunkers
and pillboxes. Not only do you have to advance
and take objectives, but you have to do it
while the enemy calls down artillery fire. The
pace of your advance will be much slower than
in the Advance mission, not only because of the
Artillery and other hazards, but also because
of the danger of mines. Force densities will be
high, and the enemy will have more high value
units with which to surprise you.
The biggest problem players have when on either
an Advance or Assault mission is dealing with
an enemy counter-attack from unexpected
quarters. The computer player frequently hides
units in out-of-the-way places, and they will
activate and move toward any objective which
you have just taken. More often then not, you
will either not see them coming, or the forces
you left at one objective, such as an infantry
platoon, will not be able to handle the
appearance of fresh, high-value enemy forces.
Many players take the first objective they can
and then hold their ground awaiting the
inevitable enemy counter-attack, deal with it,
decimate the enemy counter-attacking forces,
and then easily capture the remaining
objectives. This doesn't always work, but it is
one way of dealing with these troublesome
computer tactics.
Section 5 - Campaign Considerations
Before we actually set out to engage in our
first battle of the campaign, there are a few
things you need to remember. First, remember
that your performance in the campaign will be
most affected by how long your core units
survive before they are destroyed and their
places taken by replacements, and how much
experience they have overall. Therefore, when
involved in a battle, you should try to give
your core forces experience before letting
support units get it. Units get experience by
making kills. A kill is credited when the
firing unit scores a hit which destroys the
enemy unit.
In other words, use your support forces only to
make kills when absolutely necessary (such as
eliminating a few of the 12 T-34/85s bearing
down on your headquarters squad). If an enemy
infantry unit is reduced to a couple of men,
let the nearest core unit get the credit for
the kill. However, don't use the intrinsic
transport of core units, like halftracks, get
the kills either. Intrinsic transport does not
retain kill credits (the drivers aren't really
keen on becoming known as real soldiers). A
good tactic here is to use the intrinsic
transport in a perpetual support role for the
unit(s) they are assigned to. I like to have my
halftracks placed behind the associated
infantry and only rarely use them to fire
during my fire phase. When enemy infantry pops
up and starts to fire at friendly infantry, the
halftrack's machine guns fire back at the
firing enemy units, suppressing and killing
them, reducing their accuracy, and saving the
lives of my core infantry. On most Defend
missions, however, you'll take about any kill
you can get so on this mission don't bother too
much about this policy.
Yet another way to get experience is by
accepting the opportunity for a breakthrough
attack, or defeating an enemy counter-attack.
The manual and the README.TXT file, which is
part of the standard Steel Panthers install,
mentions this. When and where you should
actually accept the challenge of a breakthrough
will be discussed here later (Note that you
will not have the option of accepting or
declining a counter-attack by the enemy, except
to go back to your last save -- but, hey,
that's cheating!).
Remember to upgrade your units with the latest
possible weaponry. This is fairly easy to do
with respect to tank units, but also keep in
mind that infantry units of various types can
also be upgraded. Around 1943, infantry units
of many nations upgrade their squads to include
an anti-tank weapon such as the Panzerfaust or
Bazooka. Your core units will not be upgraded
automatically! Unless you check to see what is
available and compare that with what your
troops actually have, you could lose an
opportunity to make your infantry much more
able to deal with enemy tanks. Unfortunately,
the only way to make this comparison is to
check your units out during a scenario, and
then check what is available at the next refit
opportunity. In addition to the anti-tank
capability, some types of squads get newer
weaponry or an additional squad automatic
weapon.
Use support units to detect enemy lines of
advance or defense points. Discovering the
location of the enemy is a hazardous occupation
which is best left to men who will be leaving
when the
battle is
over, and not
to the men
who will be
encamped near
your HQ for
most of the
war. It just
doesn't make
sense to use
core units in
a first line
or
reconnaissance
role when
you know that there is a much higher likelihood
that they will not only take heavy casualties,
but may even get wiped out. Of course, this is
not a rule, just a policy. Sometimes you have
to reconnoiter with core units, and sometimes
you want to bunch up everyone into a powerful
defense line. Anti-tank guns, in particular,
whether they are core or support, are best left
behind infantry anyway.
If several of your core units are of really
inferior quality, don't hesitate to kill them
off. Core units, if they survive, will improve
over time. With some core units, however, this
may take most of the war -- assuming they make
it! Sometimes you get stuck with core units
that, for lack of a better word, suck. Rather
than start the whole game over, convert them to
suicide units and hope for better replacements.
More than once I have seen even relatively
efficient core units get wasted, only to find
that the replacement units have much better
experience and rally ratings.
Retreat off the map if things are going badly.
No matter how good you think you are, there may
be times when discretion is the better part of
valor. Even if you are pretty sure you can win,
it may not be worth the expenditure of life
(especially in the core units). It's better to
suffer minor losses and live to fight another
day, than to lose half your force and win the
battle. If you've wound up in a position where
after a battle or two, you can't even replace
your losses, then your should opt for
retreating even more readily. At times, I have
even deployed my entire force along the edge of
the map and retreated en masse in the first
turn, just because my core force was depleted
(you still get rebuild points if you lose).
Section 6 - Deploying For Battle
In this section, we'll retain a 'mission'
focus. However, regardless of what you think
your mission is, it might be different than the
one reported to you!! The very first thing you
should do when you get to the deploy screen is
to check out the location of the objectives. If
you are on a Defend or Delay mission, the
objectives will always be on your side of the
map. If you are supposed to be on an Advance or
Assault mission, the objectives should be on
the enemy's side of the map. However, if you
see that one or more of the objectives is on
your side of the map, or not where it is
supposed to be, get ready! The enemy's mission
has just changed from Defend/Delay to either
Assault/Advance, and High Command hasn't told
you yet! This will drastically alter the way
you deploy your forces. You'll get a nice
animation screen after you deploy informing you
of this change of events, but its much more
useful to have that info when you'll assigning
platoons to move forward or hold a piece of
ground.
You may also see that one objective is not in
your deployment zone and yet is considered
under your control. What will happen now is
that the enemy will set up for attack, and move
toward the nearest objective that is reported
as under your control, and that will usually be
the one that you can't even set up on because
it is outside your deployment zone. If you are
on the Advance or Assault mission and one of
the objectives is on your side of the map, you
want to consider some defensive deployment
tactics. This really depends on the quality,
quantity and relative speed of your forces
versus those of the enemy. If you think you can
get to the nearest objective outside your
deployment zone before the enemy, you might
want to do that instead of just defending the
one objective which is on your side.
Another thing that can happen is that the
objectives, instead of having nice national
flags, have a funky "V" symbol. This is a
telegraph to you that this battle will be a
meeting engagement. Everyone will be moving
towards objectives and in this case the old
American Rule of "He who gets there fustest
with the mostest" will be the order of the day.
The great thing about this battle is that
because the enemy will take some of the
objective hexes before you even see them,
you'll get to ascertain their main
concentrations in advance of your preparation
for firefights.
The illustration at right (GIF file : SPPILL7a)
shows what can happen when your mission
changes. As the caption explains, the British
player was originally assigned an Advance
mission, but on the deployment screen he noted
that one objective was in his deployment zone.
This indicated that an enemy counter-attack was
about to occur. Realizing that his slow force,
consisting primarily of infantry, would be
unable to get to the nearest hill before the
German attack arrived in force, the set up was
for point defense on open ground of the sole
objective in the British deployment area.
Though the defense was successful, as shown, it
not until the they got practically to the
infantry lines were many Panzers knocked out.
It could have easily gone the other way, and
the British position might have collapsed.
When deploying for defense, you'll want to see
how the terrain relates to the objectives.
Sometimes, the objectives will be spread out
from north to south, making defense appear to
be difficult. Other times, the objectives will
be in a line from east to west or west to east,
suggesting that the first target of the enemy
attack will be the one objective closest to the
extreme edge of the deployment area.
Generally, the main rule for defensive
deployment is to deploy in cover on the higher
elevations. If LOS is important, as it always
is for tanks and AT-guns, make sure to check
the unit's LOS before deciding this is a good
location. Trees and buildings on lower
elevations can sometimes block what would
otherwise be an excellent firing position. Make
sure that your units are not so close together
that many of them will get plastered by
artillery fire (if on a Defend mission
particularly), but not so far apart as to be
unable to support each other. Remember that
Tanks and AT-Guns will almost always need some
infantry to guard against an infantry assault.
At the same time, infantry will need some of
the big boys if a force of enemy tanks show up.
A good thing to remember about defensive
deployment is the concept of interlacing fields
of fire. Rather than have everybody facing in
one direction and setting up for a linear
defense, have some groups face obliquely to the
front. It is ideal for each unit to have
support from other friendly units capable of
hitting enemy attacks at an angle. This will
expose an attacking enemy to fire from two or
three directions no matter where they come
from, and sometimes result in a good chance for
flank shots.
Another thing to concern yourself with is the
placement of your command unit. Any other unit
within 5 hexes of the command unit will get an
additional chance to rally. This can sometimes
make the difference between whether the
position holds, or your troops decide to head
for the rear. Also, whether or not a unit is
considered "in contact" with a command unit
will have an effect on things like accuracy of
fire. Note that units can respond to rally
attempts from up to three command units, that
of their immediate squad leader, then their
section or platoon commander, and finally the
overall command unit (you!). Placing command
units nearby gains you, for the most part, the
best chance of minimizing the hidden negatives
of low accuracy and suppression vulnerability.
Lastly, on defense don't just deploy in static
positions all the time and await the enemy. If
you have a mobile force, you might want to
think about deploying them away from the main
line ready to counter-attack. As the enemy
moves forward, taking objectives and firing at
the units you throw in front of him, he will
tend to become disorganized. If you've managed
to hold a reserve in the rear or on his flanks,
the enemy may be ripe for a riposte. In fact,
sometimes the AI will capture an objective and
move on to the next one, without leaving
ANYTHING AT ALL TO DEFEND IT! If you other
positions come under heavy pressure, taking the
objective back will send his forces into
confusion! The AI will detach some or all of
his units back to the objective you reoccupied,
relieving your other forces. If done well, this
can result in the attacking enemy being caught
in a pincers and cut to pieces.
While it would be nice to defend every
objective, sometimes you just can't do it.
Sometimes, you don't always receive a number of
support points which is adequate. Other times,
you'll actually want to leave an objective
unoccupied (especially against the AI), because
this makes the enemy's path of attack more
predictable. So, don't feel compelled to place
units around every objective, let your
judgement and determination control the battle,
not the AI or the presence of some objective.
The screen shot at right is an illustration of
a couple of tactics of defensive deployment.
(GIF file SPPILL2a.GIF). First, note that one
objective is totally undefended. This makes the
likely path of the enemy easier to predict.
Second, on the northern edge of the map, the
defender has placed a platoon of tanks which
will either flank a direct attack on the
northern objective, or which could
counter-attack and swing down to reoccupy the
northern objective if it is taken. Third,
though it may be difficult to see, any direct
approach on the center objective will result in
flank shots by AT-guns and one pillbox
stationed on the northern side of the center
hill. This is a lesser version of the
interlacing fields of fire concept discussed
earlier. Later screen shots of this game will
show exactly what happened.
On attack, there are a couple of basic
deployment methods. First, determine whether
your forces are capable of operating in groups.
Ask the question of yourself: Can my forces
operate in cohesive groups each with a specific
objective? Each group should have a degree of
firepower and mobility related to its mission.
Some groups you may wish to give multiple
missions or hold in reserve to exploit
weaknesses in the enemy defenses. Generally,
only higher morale armies with good equipment
can form tactical groups in this manner. If
your core force is inexperienced, and you are
playing with one of the lesser quality armies
(such as the early Russians or Americans) you
may not be able to form cohesive attacking
groups because your troops will become
suppressed and rout too easily. In such a case
it is best to gather your force together in one
big group and try to take each objective one by
one.
Next, you need to figure out how to approach
the task of taking the objectives. Should you
simply attack them directly, flank them, or,
instead, concentrate on killing enemy units and
hope that this causes his force morale to
break? Direct lines of approach are sure-fire
ways of detecting the enemy, which is good if
you are confident that your forces will prevail
in a firefight. Indirect lines of approach are
good if your object is to minimize casualties
and have plenty of time to accomplish the
mission (relatively speaking). An indirect
approach will not work, in most cases, if the
map terrain is predominately flat and
featureless. The enemy will see you coming and
start causing losses at a distance. However,
you may want to nevertheless position your
forces so that you come in range of as few
defenders as necessary to take the objective.
Initial placement of forces on attack consists
primarily of organizing the attack forces into
groups and putting them in places that are good
starting points for the intended line of march,
keeping all the above factors in mind. In some
cases, you will be fortunate to have a
combination of terrain features on your side of
the map and visibility which allow you an
excellent view of the possible enemy positions
before you even move into no man's land. In
this case, you may want to place some heavy
guns (if you have them) or your command squad
at this point, so that you can take advantage
of your force commander's (you!) usually
excellent Artillery Command ratings to call
down artillery barrages on the enemy.
A typical attack group is a combined arms
killing machine. First, each group should have
someone doing reconnaissance. There may be only
one dedicated reconnaissance force available to
do this for all the groups, but in some cases
you may want to provide this capability to the
individual attack group. If you have armor,
place your highest frontal armor rated armored
units ahead of the weaker units, unless those
weaker units are low value reconnaissance
units. The enemy will tend to fire at the
nearest high value unit it can, and there is no
sense in letting this be one of your weakly
armored albeit high-value tanks.
Some armies can get away with having very
little or no infantry in some of the attack
groups. The Germans in particular excel in this
area. However, if your armor is to be moving
around, even in open terrain, where enemy
infantry are as numerous as ants, this can be
very dangerous! Here it might be a good idea to
dismount some of your infantry from their
intrinsic carriers and mount them directly on
the tanks. Beware, however, if the tank comes
under fire and a hit is scored -- it may not
damage the
tank but the
riders can
lose men and
become
slightly less
comfortable.
Mounting your
infantry on
tanks is a
good way to
protect them
from infantry
assaults.
However, it
is not a sure
fire
guarantee of protection. If a tank comes under
assault from two different enemy units in a
single turn, the riders will only 'absorb' the
first assault (and they may take casualties in
so doing). The second assault can still damage
the tank.
Section 7 - Infantry Tactics
Infantry has often been called the Queen of the
Battlefield. In Steel Panthers, the infantry
squad is the one unit that is capable of doing
everything. Infantry can kill enemy infantry
and tanks, clear mines, assault fortifications,
hide in ambush, lay smoke and generally make
life difficult for the enemy. They are also
very vulnerable to kinetic energy in the form
of bullets and explosions. Though the game is
called Steel Panthers, any force without
infantry is likely to get ambushed and
destroyed fairly quickly.
The main strength of infantry is the ability to
spot enemy units, as well as remaining hidden
when they open up with their relatively meager
weaponry. The ability of units to spot and hide
is directly related to their experience level.
Their ability to kill units is based on their
skill level and that of their commander.
Infantry have two basic missions in the game :
killing enemy infantry and crews, and slowing
attacks by other types of forces (read: tanks)
until anti-tank forces can be deployed to deal
with them.
The single most important factor for your
infantry's effectiveness is, in my opinion, is
whether they are moving when they fire or are
fired at. Infantry is most effective and deadly
to enemy infantry at ranges between 1-6 hexes
when they are 'positioned' (not moving). Their
effectiveness is doubled if the target unit is
enemy infantry which is classified as 'moving
fast'. Correspondingly, when your infantry is
moving, it is much less accurate at hitting the
enemy, and much more vulnerable to fire. If
your infantry is classified as 'moving fast'
and gets hit by fire at close range from
positioned enemy infantry, most of that squad
will buy the farm.
This leads us to a couple of simple rules.
First, always seek cover. Whether you are
moving fast or just moving, head for trees,
holes, and other cover. Second, when cover
isn't available, move slow. Don't order your
troops to run around at maximum movement every
turn, they're bound to get ambushed and laid
low. Move a maximum of two hexes per turn,
which classifies them as 'moving', and not
'moving fast', when enemy infantry or tanks are
within 10 hexes. 'Moving' units are still
fairly effective at firing back, and they're
not quite as likely to get cut up when the
enemy opens up.
When moving infantry around, there is also a
tactic known as bounding overwatch which is
used by most modern armies today in one form or
another. If you have a four-squad platoon, move
only two squads at a time, leaving the other to
in 'positioned' status. If enemy infantry is
detected, the positioned troops will be more
effective at suppressing them than the movers.
Three-squad platoons use the 1-2-1 bounding
method (moving first one squad, then two, then
one again). Even when your moving troops have
completed their move and you think it is safe
to now move up the positioned squads, think
twice about it. If the enemy pops up during
their turn and starts firing, you may have no
units in positioned status who can return fire
with optimal effectiveness.
When you come up against a position that is too
strong, either bring up reinforcements or
support, or lay smoke and back off. If you hang
around too long, your troops might get pinned
and you won't be able to get them out unless
they retreat or rout away (in which case they
will take heavy casualties).
The other important factor in infantry
effectiveness and survivability is their
ability to detect enemy infantry which is
moving towards them or waiting for them, and
their ability to react fire during the enemy's
phase. These factors are directly related to
their experience and their commander's skill
levels. Less experience and skill means the
enemy will creep up on you undetected, more
means that you will do that to him. You may
notice that when you are moving, you will
sometimes detect enemy infantry and they will
turn and fire on you. Other times, you may see
them, and they don't react. Assuming the enemy
still has units left for react fire, they
probably didn't see you. This all has to do
with a comparison of their experience and skill
versus your experience ratings and skill, and
whether they or you are moving or not. You may
need to adjust your tactics slightly depending
on what you have determined to be the
relativity of these factors. British versus
Italian equals no problemo, your troops will
usually spot first. British versus German
equals mucho problemo, your troops will get
spotted first.
If you are dealing with a situation where your
infantry are relatively less experienced and
skilled, then you will have to move slower, and
even use sacrificial support infantry to detect
the enemy. Even on a static defense, the enemy
can creep up to your positions and start firing
before your greenhorns even know what's
happening. This is a particular problem when
fighting the Japanese, who seem to be most
adept at remaining undetected. Using snipers is
an excellent detection method, so are mines and
machine gun teams. Just place a few of these
low-value units in front of your rookie core
units and they will at least have some warning.
Mechanized infantry is much more effective than
regular foot infantry at just about everything.
They have that cool half-track vehicle which is
known as a Bren Carrier to the British,
Sd-something (for the Germans), Halftrack (for
the Americans), and several other official and
unprintable unofficial names in various armies.
A rose by any other name is just as well-armed.
The halftracks make it easy to get around
almost any terrain with ease, and they come
with that extra added-bonus machine-gun. I like
to have the halftracks follow the infantry
during advances in enemy territory and not fire
them at all, they will tend to react to enemy
fire and suppress them, enhancing the
survivability of my guys.
The really big danger of mechanized infantry is
the temptation to stay mounted and move around
quickly. Halftracks which get hit by anything
bigger than a rifle bullet are liable to become
smoking clods of useless junk, taking out the
riders in the process. Never, never, never
mount your infantry in an area where the enemy
is putting up an active resistance and may have
any direct-fire gun weapons such as tanks and
AT-guns. Even small-caliber artillery can
flatten an infantry carrier and scramble the
riders inside like an egg yoke. However, if
enemy resistance is broken and only a few
routing squads are about, mech inf excels at
mopping up operations. When they move near a
unit and dismount to begin firing, they are
classed as positioned, so their fire is more
effective than ordinary infantry who had to jog
up to that position. Again, though, make sure
that your squads get the credit for the kills,
not the transport units. This is why I don't
make a big point about firing the transport
units; I want my squads to get the experience,
not the driver and the driver's flunky.
However, even a routing machinegun crew can
suddenly turn around and assault the halftrack,
destroying it and contents, so be cautious even
when in cleanup mode.
If you are moving around the battlefield while
mounted, be sure to dismount at the end of each
move. Sometimes, this alone will reveal the
presence of enemy infantry just a few hexes
away, or even adjacent to you, which would not
have been otherwise detected. There is a small
danger in doing this in that when you dismount
the riders, the halftrack is vulnerable to
assault and destruction. Also, the act of
dismounting may cause the enemy to react fire
on the newly dismounted infantry, who are
classed as positioned. This is a small price to
pay in comparison to losing both vehicle and
rider. The newer versions of SP dismount riders
from halftracks automatically, but not from
tanks. This may or may not be what you want to
happen, so just keep a watch on things. It's
your job. You are the commander, right?
The last thing you need to do with infantry
units is pay attention to which squad in each
platoon is the one with the platoon leader. On
the Unit Roster, this squad is the one with the
'H' next to it. This is usually the first unit
in the platoon, unless your leader bit the dust
in an earlier scenario, in which case the new
leader will be assigned to the most experienced
squad (I think!). This is important because the
performance of the whole platoon can depend on
the existence and proximity of the leader. I
have noticed that when the leader's squad gets
heavily suppressed or killed, the performance
of the whole squad tends to degrade. You'll
want to expose the leader's squad to fire from
the enemy less frequently than you do the
others.
The armies of some nations have excellently
equipped infantry squads. The better
nationalities arm them with plenty of
firepower, usually including a squad automatic
weapon or two. The wanna-bees of the war
usually have only rifles for the grunts. In
addition to your usually better experience and
morale ratings, your infantry will have a
distinct firepower advantage. The squad
automatic weapons are effective even at the
longer ranges of 6-10 hexes. In fact at those
ranges, the SAR can be responsible for many
more casualties among the enemy targets than
your rifles. In such a case, you may want to
keep your distance from the lower quality
enemy, especially if you are trying to keep
your own casualties to a minimum. At the same
time, if your are commanding some of the poorly
equipped squads, you might want to think about
waiting to fire until the enemy gets really
close, where your guys at least have a fighting
chance to hit something with their rifles.
There's always a risk, however, against good
troops that your lowlies (who aren't all that
good at hiding, anyway) will get spotted before
they can ambush the enemy, so you'll want to
open up at the 3-4 hex range. Sometimes, they
won't even detect them! ("Dmitri? Will you stop
smoking that cigarette? The Germanskii are
getting close to the barn. Dmitri?"; "Hands up,
drop your weapons."; "Ah, yes, the great
comrade Germanskii soldiers have arrived
already. I've been expecting you.")
Dealing with enemy tanks is very difficult for
any group of infantry. Even after the infantry
of the major armies get upgraded to the squad
anti-tank weaponry, these weapons don't have
much penetration power, though they can still
waste the big tanks with a lucky shot. You can
use these weapons from a one or two hex range.
From a two hex range, its considered a ranged
weapon, and fired like the rifles. From a one
hex range, it may be part and parcel of an
assault.
Assaulting tanks is done during your phase by
selecting the infantry unit you wish to assault
and then using normal targeting to target the
tank. After you execute the targeting, several
things can happen. First, your assault will go
forward and destroy the enemy hulk. Right.
Second, your assault will go forward and not
destroy the enemy tank. Figures. Third, your
assault will not go forward and instead the
troops decide to fire their rifles and other
small arms and muss up the tank's paint job.
Good move, boys! Fourth, your assault will not
go forward and nothing will happen. What?
Fifth, your assault will not go forward and
your troops will either become pinned (Hey!),
retreat (Hey, wait!), or rout (Hey, wait for
me!). What is happening here?
Well, I don't really know. Troops with a
suppression level of 6 or less will generally
go forward with the assault. The success of the
assault appears to have much to do with both
the kinds of weapons the squad has (if they
have satchel charges, they are much more
effective), and the quality of the troops and
leadership. As for the other results, where the
troops get pinned or rout, this is probably
because there is some morale check coded into
the assault routines. The morale check is
probably also situationally-based. That is, if
the enemy tank is a monster, the troops will
figure that this is a hopeless attempt and
bail. Or, if their side is really hurting or
the squad itself has taken casualties and is in
a bad spot their morale will (of course) fail.
In any event, the result reflects real world
considerations in my opinion, and in the real
world assaulting tanks takes competence and
leadership. Even if your squad's morale fails
and you become pinned, you can still attack the
hex using either the Z key or normal firing
with the Target Button, and if you have satchel
charges, flamethrowers, or the squad anti-tank
weapon (later in the war) this can still result
in the enemy tank getting destroyed. You might
want to manually rally the troops first, since
their accuracy is impacted by suppression.
Sometimes, too, an assault will expend all of
the squad's remaining firepower, while at other
times the assault will be astoundingly
successful and expend only one unit of fire,
leaving you with the ability to assault other
tanks nearby or move around. Again, this is
probably based on morale, experience and
leadership factors. Regardless of the outcome
of the assault, in most cases the squad will
have more suppression than it did before --
much more if the assault failed and a humongous
amount if the assault failed and the tank
returned fire on the assaulters.
Your troops will also assault enemy vehicles
which move adjacent to them if their
suppression levels are low. If you see a group
of enemy tanks moving towards an infantry
position which has not been spotted by the
enemy, or which will not be spotted by the tank
before it pulls up alongside, make sure that,
before you end your turn, the unit's
suppression levels are as low as can be. If
there is a risk of the infantry becoming
spotted, lay some smoke in front of them. (Be
careful, though, because laying smoke is
considered firing and can actually result in
your infantry unit becoming spotted. This is an
especial risk if visibility is high and one
lousy smoke grenade does not actually totally
block visibility through the hex. To check
this, at some point during the scenario, you
should attempt to check your LOS through a
smoked hex yourself and determine if a newly
smoked hex does in fact totally block
visibility. Generally, visibility ranges of 60
or greater mean that one smoke hex will not
block visibility).
One tactic that your infantry will greatly
appreciate if you order them to assault a
vehicle is to direct fire against the target
tank with other units before going forward with
the assault. This will cause suppression on the
target tank. The target may fire back at the
units causing the suppression, but this will
only help your infantry when they go into
assault mode because the tank will have
expended all of its defensive fire against
those other units, leaving your infantry
unhindered in the assault, and negating the
risk of casualties from the tank's return fire
on the assaulting squad. On very rare
occasions, the assaulting unit can provide the
suppression
fire itself.
If your unit
is unspotted,
you will get
to fire at
least once
before being
spotted. So,
you could
fire with the
assaulting
unit first,
move adjacent
and then
assault. I
don't
recommend this as a standard tactic, however,
since your movement will usually result in the
tank seeing you and opening fire. However, if
the battle has already been going on for some
time and the target tank has fired and been
fired on a great deal already, this one last
bit of suppression may be all that is needed to
completely suppress the crewman and save you
from their return fire.
The illustration at right (GIF file
SPPILL5b.gif) shows one example of how infantry
assaults can work. A platoon of Tiger Is was
spotted approaching across a flat expanse of
desert in Tunisia. Fortunately, they were
heading directly towards a river line position
occupied by experienced and
satchel-charge-armed British Commandos. Prior
to arriving at the position, the Tigers had
fired on some British tanks about 1000 meters
to the rear of the Commando's positions. Also,
a platoon of Valentines had fired on the
approaching Tigers from the flank, immobilizing
one. Finally, the Commandos laid smoke to their
front, to insure that they would not be seen by
the Tiger crews until they were adjacent. Sure
enough, the three remaining Tigers attempted to
cross the stream and were instantly assaulted
by several Commando squads at once. Two were
destroyed immediately, the third was hit by the
Commandos again during the British phase. The
Commandos sustained no casualties in this
engagement.
Section 8 - Tank & Armored Fighting Vehicle
(AFV) Tactics
Infantry may be the Queen of the Battlefield,
but Armor is King, at least, so say most tank
crewmen. Most of us grunts looking down the
Long 88 barrel of a King Tiger would agree.
Most of the major armies have tanks, but only
two armies really have the best: The Germans
(of course) and the Russians. The Allies are in
the second category, with everyone else falling
behind them. The Japanese are in a category all
by themselves with respect to tanks, and this
is known as "bad," but then, they don't really
need them.
Tanks come in a number of different
configurations to numerous to detail here. For
the moment, lets just categorize them according
to their mission. The hard part is figuring out
just which tank is the right tank for the right
job. In most cases, the tanks in Steel Panthers
are armed and armored with what they actually
had in the real war. The design, planning and
General Staffs could get just as confused about
what role a particular AFV was to play as you
will be.
To clear up some of the confusion, there is a
table that comes with the game called
README.txt, which generally denotes the role of
all the major tanks in the game. There is also
a penetration table, available in SSI's
software library on America Online and
elsewhere, called SPWPNS.DOC which provides
further detail on this subject.
One helpful item of historical and military
knowledge which may help you in this task is
knowing what things like 75L31 and 88L51 mean.
Most players are aware that the first set of
numbers refer to the diameter of the gun tube,
and that the second number generally stands for
the length of the tube. The "L" number stands
for calibers. The figure after the L is
determined (by engineers and designers and so
forth) by dividing the total length of the
barrel by the diameter of the tube. So a 75L31
means that it is a 75mm gun, which is the
length of 31 diameters of that tube. Generally
speaking, any gun in which the calibers are at
least one-half of the diameter is probably will
have excellent muzzle velocity and penetration
values. Note the difference between the German
50L42, max penetration 8, and and the 50L60,
max penetration 9. Same diameter, better
penetration. Even more enlightening, the German
20L55, with a penetration of 6, versus the
Soviet 152L32, penetration only 3! The Soviet
gun is over 7 times the diameter of the small
20mm, but it's poor length to diameter ratio
means that it cannot reliably penetrate much
more than a reconnaissance vehicle, while the
20mm can penetrate even medium-class tanks on a
daily basis! Calibers do not explain
everything, like they cannot account for
special rounds (like tungsten-carbide cores),
the general efficiency of the crews, or blind
luck, but it is at least one way to determine
the tank's role.
The number one role of the tank is to kill
other tanks, but some types of weapons mixes
are better than others. If a tank has a large
gun with AP rounds, that's a tank-killer. If a
tank has a large gun with both AP and HE
rounds, that's more of a multi-purpose tank. If
a tank has a gun with only HE rounds, that's a
support tank. If a tank has very heavy armor,
it will be able to stand up to other tanks
better, making it more on the order of a
tank-killer. Thinner armor means it might be
better suited to infantry support or
reconnaissance roles. It's really a matter of
judgement. Be guided by but not ruled by what
the armies of the day called their tanks.
Sometimes the Combat Support tanks (so-called)
were the only thing that could really stand up
to enemy tank forces! Sometimes the "Pursuit",
"Cruiser", or "Crusader" tanks were better at
scouting than their intended role of engaging
enemy tanks. Check out how much firepower the
tank can throw at enemy infantry, too. Some
tanks are very light in this category, some
have no anti-infantry capability at all!
If you have one of those tanks with two large
guns, like the Lee tank with a 37mm turret gun
and a 75mm hull mounted gun, to get maximum
effect you should re-align the whole tank
towards the enemy if it isn't already. I've
seen the percentage chance to hit rise
significantly after I've done this but before
firing my first round. That's because the
computer calculates the basic percentage based
the likelihood that a hit will be obtained if
all weapons capable of firing and hitting the
target actually fire. If you have 2 guns firing
as opposed to 1, you percent chance to hit will
rise accordingly.
These same issues apply to Assault Guns. This
species of the Armored Fighting Vehicle is
basically a tank with no turret, and the gun
mounted in the hull. Usually, these guns had
the capability to traverse several degrees in
either direction so that the hull didn't always
have to point directly at the enemy to get off
a shot, and some target-tracking could be done.
Some assault guns are excellent tank killers,
such as the JagdPanther and JagdTiger, while
some are relegated to infantry support such as
the Brumbar or SU-152. The advantage of assault
guns is that they may be harder to hit and have
excellent armor. The negative is that they tend
to have low rates of fire (less times to shoot
per turn) and appear to be vulnerable to losing
the main gun to a non-penetrating enemy hit on
the front hull. For assaults, assault guns are
the right choice. They are fairly cheap and
have good armor, and can withstand a fair
number of hits without shirking. They are ideal
for leading other troops into the teeth of
heavy resistance, because of their relatively
cheap expense combined with good armor and
relatively good firepower. Don't expect them to
stand up to a strong tank force, however.
Whatever type of tank force you have, a prime
method of increasing it's effectiveness is to
shoot at the enemy from higher elevations. This
is because, if the firing tank is at a higher
elevation than the target tank, there is a
chance that the round will hit the top of the
turret or hull area, resulting in what the game
calls a "top hit". Top hits are much more
likely to penetrate and kill the target. Even
the heaviest tanks in the game, like the Tiger
or the Panther, can be vulnerable to
destruction via top hit. This is one reason why
elevations are so critical. If you find
yourself at a disadvantageous elevation, try to
prioritize those enemy units at the higher
elevations which might be able to get a top hit
against you, unless you could easily kill off
the lower creatures and cause some morale
effects among the enemy commands.
There are some mistakes that players can make
in both their play and conceptualization of the
game with respect to tanks and their weaponry.
One is believing that, since your tank has the
best gun and the best armor on the map that you
are basically invulnerable. No tank, no matter
how well armed and armored, can traverse the
battleground like a King. On the one hand,
every tank is vulnerable to infantry assaults,
and, take it from a tanker, its almost
impossible to see all infantry threats from
inside a tank. Even infantry units walk into
ambushes all the time in the real world, and
sometimes they still can't figure out where the
enemy is even after they've been shot at for
several minutes. A tank crew has only about
1/10th the degree of visibility that regular
ground soldiers have. On the other hand, even
if the enemy's guns can't even theoretically
penetrate your rear armor, in the real world
tanks are full of weaknesses and flaws that
even small guns can exploit. Don't be surprised
if some lowly 37mm was able to hit your Tiger
tank and immobilize or even kill it. It's very
unlikely, but in the real world as well as
Steel Panthers, it can happen.
Section 9 - Direct Fire Gunnery and other
Special Units
Occasionally, you will have the fortune to have
some crew-served or self-propelled artillery
with your force. Crew-served guns come in two
flavors : anti-tank guns and infantry guns.
Using anti-tank guns effectively is an
essential component of winning. Often, the
anti-tank guns are the same type as those
mounted in your tanks, sometimes they are much
better than what is available in your tanks
(like the German 88, which was available
throughout the war years, but only mounted in
tanks in late 1942, when the war was more than
half over).
The important thing to remember about anti-tank
guns is that they are support forces. They can
rarely hold a position all by themselves. They
are vulnerable to infantry, artillery and other
tanks. In fact, anti-tank guns, while thought
of as a defensive weapon, actually have little
or no inherent defensive capability (except by
firing their guns and destroying the units that
are within range).
Because they are so vulnerable, it is usually
best to deploy them behind a line of friendly
infantry or tanks. Their survivability will
also be enhanced by minefields which can stop
or slow enemy tanks and infantry at some
distance from their position (remember that
most infantry ranges are 10 or less hexes).
When anti-tank guns fire for the first time,
their accuracy is good, but usually not good
enough to insure clean kills of all the enemy
in range. Within one or two turns, any
artillery that the enemy has available will
come raining down on their position and tear
them asunder. At best, then, anti-tank guns
have only a few turns of effectiveness, unless
the enemy can be killed, retreat or the guns
can be moved to new positions rapidly (which
requires a Prime Mover). Even if the enemy
retreats out of sight, the artillery will still
fall in their area, but with less accuracy.
Because of all of the above factors, anti-tank
guns are best used in something akin to an
ambush mode. You should use the Set Range
button to cause them to hold fire, and only
open up when your guns and any other forces in
the area can cause maximum damage to the enemy
in the shortest period of time. The enemy will
either be killed completely (rare) or retreat
out of LOS of the guns (less rare), and you
will then have time to get out of the way of an
impeding barrage if you have the requisite
transport (actually more common than rare). Of
course, if you don't really care about whether
the gunners survive, this makes the calculation
quite simple. Just wait till your guns have the
best chance of hitting them without being
killed by the immediate return fire, open up
and hope for the best. In any event, if the
enemy gets to within 6-10 hexes, your guns
won't last more than a couple of minutes
without some really good luck.
Another useful tactic with AT-guns is what I
call oblique positioning. Here, you place the
guns behind a hill facing in an oblique
direction (northwest, southwest, northeast,
southeast). The trick is to have each gun cover
the front of the other like a lattice-work. It
is kind of like interlacing fields, but in this
case your guns are placed not on the crest,
where they have a wide view, but on the reverse
slope where their effective LOS is angular to
the front. Done properly, this will have
several effects. First, any enemy tanks moving
laterally across the map will come into range
of at least two anti-tanks positions, and both
of them will usually have a flank shot. Second,
because the enemy will not see the guns until
he enters the fields of fire, your guns are
better protected. In the desert, I have seen
oblique positioning of 88s wipe out attacks by
British tanks all by themselves, with most of
the fire occurring during the enemy's phase
(the 88s were merely reacting). Ideal positions
for oblique placement are out of the likely
enemy path of advance, behind a heavy line of
infantry who will give warning in case the hill
itself is in danger of being occupied.
Anti-tank guns can also be used during attack
missions. They will need transport to get into
position in most cases, but in some scenarios
it may be the only way to do some serious
damage to enemy tanks. They can also be
somewhat effective against enemy bunkers and
pillboxes. Again, the same principles apply:
Keep them out of sight until needed, open up at
an optimal range (10-25 hexes, tending towards
the long end of this scale), and then get out
of Dodge.
Infantry guns are a different breed designed
specifically to kill enemy infantry. They are
very good at it. It is not uncommon to see the
heavier caliber guns kill half or more of an
approaching enemy squad with one hit. Moreover,
though their chance to hit appears quite low,
they actually cause damage much more
frequently. In my experience, if there is less
than a 10% chance to hit, there is actually
about a 50% chance of inflicting at least one
casualty. These gun types are also the ideal
weapon to deal with bunkers and pillboxes.
Against these targets, you don't actually have
to hit to cause damage. Most bunker and pillbox
crews will bail out if they start to get shot
at by heavy caliber infantry guns (sooner if
they've already lost a couple of guys to the
'concussion' effect).
The big tubes can also be used against enemy
armor. While they can get a kill with a top hit
(or any kind of hit against lightly armored
units) their prime effectiveness against armor
is in suppression and immobilization. Any
tanker will tell you that in a world of clangs,
dings, pings and bings, a large KA-BOOM coupled
with massive vibration and uncontrolled
movement is really disconcerting. ("What was
that!?!?!", "What did you say? I can't hear
you, my ears are bleeding", "My arm is
broken!", "What?!?!?!").
Section 10 - Combined Arms Doctrine
While every army has units of different types
in different categories, putting them all
together into a coherent combined arms force is
more of a necessity than an interesting
challenge. Moreover, at times the AI does not
pay enough attention to the combined arms
concept so, if you're playing against the
computer and you can master the tactics of
combined arms combat, you will have yet another
advantage.
You may be asking yourself (and me): What is
combined arms? Combined arms is the art of
utilizing the individual strengths of each type
of unit in such as way as to provide your force
with the best possible methods of dealing with
enemy threats at all times. To put it another
way, you don't want your tanks rolling through
forests without infantry protection, and you
don't want your infantry crossing that
2-mile-wide meadowland without some armor
support.
Let me give you an example. Let's say your
mission is to attack, and the main enemy
position has tanks, anti-tank guns, entrenched
infantry and some bunkers and pillboxes. Would
you just roll up with a platoon of tanks? Or
run towards the position with a company of
infantry alone? Of course, you wouldn't. The
strength of infantry is to deal with other
infantry, right? So you'll want to have some
infantry to go in. There are better infantry
killers out there, like direct-fire infantry
guns, but they are naked and defenseless by
themselves. If the infantry units can get close
to the hill, they can allow a section of
infantry guns to pound away at the more
resilient defenders, like the bunkers. But what
about the enemy tanks up there? Neither my
infantry or the guns can adequately deal with
the tanks. So, naturally, you'll decide that
you've got to have some anti-tank capability in
your attack force. Because you're attacking,
tanks would be the best choice, but if you
don't have any you may be able to transport
some AT-guns within range to deal with this
threat. If you have some other, general purpose
firepower like artillery and airstrikes to keep
all the threats suppressed, this will make your
attacking force's job that much easier.
In the combined arms equation, infantry and
armor are the two most important factors. Tanks
can usually deal with most hard targets, while
the infantry has some degree of capability
against unarmored or soft targets. Exceptions
are fortifications and mines, which only
artillery, big direct fire guns and Engineers
can deal with adequately. Other problems
include small, fast-moving armored vehicles
which tanks can't hit too easily and which your
infantry can't deal with at all unless they get
close enough.
Does this mean that your tactical group(s)
always have to have a mix of forces? No. It
means that whatever threat you encounter, you
will be able to bring up the best capability
you possess to deal with it in the shortest
period of time if it is necessary for your
mission. Armor, for example, frequently
operates independent of any infantry, but they
can move in and out of situations rapidly. If
your armored force stumbles on a strong
anti-tank position, you could just scamper away
and bring in some infantry support. If your
infantry are facing an armored threat, your
tanks should be able to come to the rescue in
time to avert disaster. There are cases where
you'll want these elements to work closely
together, but there are also cases where you'll
want them to be operating as separate teams in
your combined arms attack or defense plan. What
you want to avoid is the frustration of having
your force capabilities so widely separated
that each cannot support one another or deal
with a truly combined arms threat they may
encounter.
In the game, the easiest way to insure that you
have some combined arms capability is to have
some infantry elements operating near your
armored forces, or to just mount infantry on
the tanks directly (if you are on the
offensive). This will keep your tanks protected
to a large extent from the unexpected assault
from hidden enemy infantry, and keep your tanks
free to deal with enemy tank forces, instead of
expending most of their firepower fighting off
infantry.
At close ranges, infantry are a deadly threat
to armor, especially in the later war years
when many of them are carrying anti-tank
rocketry of one form or another. Even if they
don't kill the tank, enough rifle and machine
gun fire can suppress even the most experienced
crew in the best tank and leave them wide open
to an attack by enemy tank and anti-tank
forces. In fact, this is a useful tactic for
your infantry forces if a few enemy tanks are
rolling up. Tanks are vulnerable to suppression
from all kinds of fire, even fire that can't
but once in a million times do any damage. Your
infantry can suppress them simply by expending
an enormous amount of rifle and machinegun fire
against the hull, suppressing them to oblivion,
and then, if you have some anti-tank forces,
they will be able to fire without so much as a
whisper of bad language from the enemy. This
tactic can only work against a limited number
of enemy tanks at at time, simply because, in
most cases, it requires so much firepower to
suppress a tank. Some players have complained
that this aspect of the game is unrealistic,
but I disagree. As a tanker I can tell you that
there is no way to determine where all this
fire is coming from, and you get mighty nervous
about the possibility that it may be from a
gaggle of angry young men just a few yards
away. If anything, this is a weakness of the
AI, since frequently tanks controlled by the
CPU do come a-rolling up on your combined arms
positions without infantry support, and the AI
tends not to shoot at enemy tanks with their
infantry squads unless there is some
probability of a kill. If you're playing
against a human who won't make these kind of
mistakes (after they've read this Primer)
you'll have only yourself to blame if you've
forgotten the Combined Arms Doctrine in the
heat of battle.
A Combined Arms force consists of a dedicated
source of reconnaissance information, an
infantry capability, an anti-tank capability, a
mobile offense or counter-attack capability,
and a general source of support suppression
firepower such as artillery, airstrikes or
heavy direct-fire guns, as well as a command
infrastructure. A threat which includes mines
or fortifications or both will also benefit
greatly from an Engineer capability. Defensive
operations are less complex, so reconnaissance
and offensive capability is not as important
but still valuable. Sometimes, certain elements
of the Combined Arms force may have multiple
missions so that each part of the Combined Arms
Doctrine has some degree of resources committed
to it (just not dedicated all the time). You
may, for example, frequently have some lead
infantry elements performing the reconnaissance
duty as well as the infantry capability.
Dedicated reconnaissance forces may also have
to provide reconnaissance capability to several
different tactical groups, and may at some
point be converted to a support role once the
enemy's main positions are located.
What does all of this mean in game terms? I
really hate to give hard and fast rules here,
because everyone has their own ideas about what
works best, and many of them are the right idea
for the particular situation. However, since
you insist, here are a few pointers and
suggestions:
1. Keep your armor within 1 or 2 turns of
movement from a substantial (platoon-sized)
force of infantry. On defense, position the
armor in such a way as to insure that friendly
infantry will be able to detect advancing
infantry and protect your tanks from infantry
assaults, or such that your armor can move
rapidly to an enclave or line protected by
infantry.
2. Anti-Tank guns are excellent supports of
both infantry-based and armor-based forces.
However, because they are so vulnerable to
fire, they should be kept behind other forces
most of the time unless there is an excellent
flanking position away from expected direct
lines of enemy approach.
3. Consider purchasing dedicated
reconnaissance elements, or assigning some core
forces to this mission. Even on defense, these
will be invaluable in determining the enemy's
choice of routes to the objectives.
4. Consider also allocating some resources
to the general support and suppression
category. This may be as easy as buying
artillery, but when resources are scarce small
infantry guns, mortars and even machinegun
sections can fulfill this role. Machinegun
teams on defense are useful either ahead of
your infantry, partially providing some
reconnaissance, or behind where their weapons
can easily suppress enemy units which get close
to your main line.
5. Don't lose sight of your goals. Remember
the goal is to win, and this is done primarily
by taking the objectives. When you are moving
or firing a unit, ask yourself if it
contributes to the mission goals. This applies
both to your mission as commander and that of
winning the scenario, but also to the combined
arms elements of your forces. Don't start using
your reconnaissance forces as infantry killers
just because you can, relate the use of your
forces to the overall goals and the unit's
assigned part of the overall goals.
Section 11 - The Gentle Art of Self-Defense
with Guns (Defense)
Regardless of how much like Patton or Rommel
you think you are, there are occasions when a
good grounding in defensive tactics will be a
lifesaver. Patton has been credited with saying
that "the only good defense is a good offense,"
and he was absolutely correct. It is the
interpretation of that statement by the rest of
us that causes confusion about the value of
defensive tactics. If you think of "offense" as
having more than enough firepower to defeat any
threat if that firepower is properly and
efficiently applied, you'll have no trouble
absorbing and folding defensive tactics into
your approaches to tactical problems.
Deploying for defense is a little different
than that of attack. Since your forces will not
be moving around as much, you do not need to
group them into teams as much. Instead, you'll
want to cover the obvious approaches to your
positions with fields of observation and fire
that will allow you to detect the enemy, engage
the enemy, and ultimately defeat the enemy.
Also, don't deploy units in heavy concentration
in areas where the enemy will likely plaster
with artillery, this will only cause you the
aggravation of casualties and having to move
out of your wonderful defensive positions if
your troops are to be at all effective. The
illustration at right (GIF file: SPPILL3a.gif)
shows how to place units to defend an objective
and nevertheless avoid initial barrages. This
is the second graphic from a single game (the
first was GIF file SPPILL2a.gif, above), with
the finale appearing in the section entitled
"Art of the Counter-Attack." Note that the
British suffered only one casualty from the
enemy's initial (heavy!) barrage.
Detecting enemy attacks can be more difficult
than you think. Unless the enemy army is very
poor in experience, even moving troops and
tanks will not always be seen. The first thing
you need to do is make sure that you have the
widest possible view of the battlefield.
Infantry and snipers are the best spotters.
You'll need to carefully look over the terrain
and select positions which give these spotting
units excellent fields of vision. A spotter is
no good if they get killed before accomplishing
their mission, so placing spotting units along
direct lines of march is not advised. Also, you
may want to use the "Set Range" button to set
their range to 3 or less, so they don't give
themselves away.
When playing against the computer, be aware
that the AI tends to send its forces along
general paths of approach to the target. If a
road is 5 hexes south of this approach, they
will not automatically go on the road to move.
They will follow their line of approach, but
within a few hexes in either direction, they
will take the easiest route in terms of
movement points. Rough terrain, in this game,
is a real stopper-upper. Tanks can only move
one or two hexes through rough terrain, so
movement paths tend to swing around it. Heavily
forested areas sometimes have long lines of
cleared areas, which will also be used by the
enemy to move rapidly through
these bush. Its these areas that you'll want to
have covered with spotters.
Frequently, the enemy will use smoke to mask
their approach. In which case your cleverly
placed spotters who are not on the line of
march will have a difficult time seeing them.
Defeating this tactic is a matter of having
several key observation points which can see
all of the possible or major lines of approach
from several different angles. You'll also want
to consider deploying some very low value units
very forward and very much in the way of the
advancing enemy, to insure that even if they
are completely cocooned in smoke, these brave
lads will still be able to keep tabs on them.
Usually, the first significant firefights occur
with long-range gunnery from tanks, AT-guns and
infantry guns. Frequently, he who can make this
first exchange of fire decisive will come out
ahead when the scenario is tallied. You'll want
to be the first one to fire, thus choosing the
time and place of the initial engagement,
rather than letting the enemy decide. The key
to gaining a decisive advantage during this
initial round is to insure that the enemy is
hit from as many sides as possible with as much
firepower as possible, and loses as many
vehicles and men as possible in the shortest
amount of time. To do this, you need to
determine an optimal engagement range for you
defenses, and use the "Set Range" button to
control the time at which everyone opens fire.
You might have your AT and infantry guns set to
open up at 16 hexes, your tanks at 12, your MGs
at 6, your infantry AT-teams at 4, and your
infantry at 1 or 2. Done properly, before
everyone is spotted, the enemy will be
overwhelmed with firepower the minute they come
within the engagement range. Most likely, your
units will open fire during the enemy phase. If
you are uncomfortable with this, you can set
the ranges down even lower so that when the
shooting starts, its during your phase. You
need to caution yourself against setting the
ranges too low, however, against highly
experienced troops who will spot your forward
positions at a 3 or 4 hex range, and start
firing on them before your troops have orders
to react. You may also need to play with the
range buttons since, after 9 hexes, you can
only set to 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and maximum. Note
that the maximum key is just to re-set the unit
after it has been toggled down.
If you can get good at setting engagement
ranges to match the capabilities of your force
and get many kills in just one or two turns,
you'll see the effects of morale in spades. If
a platoon loses five of its three vehicles in
one turn, the rest will frequently rout. If
those three kills are spread out over the
course of five turns, instead of happening all
at once, there is less likelihood of morale
effects (though the probability is still good).
When you are setting up for the initial
exchanges of fire, try to keep in mind that the
first turn will not always be the decisive
turn. The next couple of turns, after your
units have acquired their targets and have good
hit probabilities, will be the time that the
majority of kills occur. And, you should strive
for this to happen.
I can't confirm whether the following tactic
improves the hit probability or not, but you
can also use the Target button to acquire a
target, and then re-set the range back down to
a lower value. Even if the enemy still does not
enter the engagement range, your targeting unit
will still have the same enemy unit targeted.
Whether or not it improves the hit probability,
it is also useful in keeping track of the
relative hit probabilities for your units, and
may help you in determining the optimal
engagement range.
Setting range is important if the enemy has
superior long-range engagement capabilities.
You may want to artificially lower the
engagement range in order to overcome some
deficiency of this character. If your units
don't stand a ghost of a chance at 25 hexes,
but at 12 hexes they have not only a good hit
probability but a good penetration value, while
at the same time the enemy's long range
capability is decent at the 25 hex distance,
then obviously you should choose to keep your
unit's ranges set lower so that the engagement
begins at a range where your relative
capabilities are more evenly matched.
With respect to targeting, keep in mind that
your units will frequently target enemy units
on their own initiative and fire at them. When
you begin your turn, it may be that several of
your own units have already acquired and fired
at target, and now have very good hit
probabilities against this acquired target. If
you change the target, you'll be throwing away
a good chance to hit. Use the targeting arrow
selector to see the best probabilities you have
and take the best chance to hit that shows up.
Also keep in mind that the best chance to hit
is not the best chance to kill. It is better to
take a 25% to hit probability with a 50% chance
to kill if the round hits, than a 50% chance to
hit probability with only a 5% chance to kill.
If the enemy is superior to you in a number of
categories, or you are outnumbered too heavily,
another useful tactic for the defense is what I
call "wearing". No, not the "wierding way,"
from Dune, but "wearing." Wearing is effective
because it is based on the built in
game-concept of "shots available." Let me
explain. An ordinary unit has between 4-6 shots
available at the start of any scenario. The
more shots you take in one turn, even if you
aren't fired upon by the enemy, the less shots
you'll have the next. If you start with 6 shots
available and fire 4 shots in one turn, you'll
have two less the next. Fire 4 again, and next
turn you'll start out with only 2 or 3
available. Fire your maximum shots available
each turn, and your unit will have only 1 or 2
shots available for several turns. Wearing
consists of causing the enemy to expend maximum
shots each turn, as they continue to advance.
The goal is to have them reach your main line
in a state of complete exhaustion, so they
won't be able to react to your now-overwhelming
firepower. Wearing can be effected in a number
of ways, but usually putting infantry sections
or platoons supported by a couple of tanks, all
way out in front of your main position, holding
up the enemy's advance, is the best way to do
it. Each turn you fire at his lead elements a
few times, cause them to react fire and then
retreat to the next good firing position down
the road.
Using little tactical groups like this for
wearing, can also be used for the tactic I call
"leading." The AI (and some humans) will tend
to pursue sighted enemy units. You can use the
ambush and retreat tactic to draw them away
from critical ground, or right into a kill
zone. If you draw the enemy away from your
objectives, they can usually be caught in the
middle of nowhere, pinned down by fire from the
objective and from your "leading" defenders.
Speaking of "kill zones" what are they? I've
mentioned them a few times, but perhaps we need
to have a clearer idea of what they are. Kill
zones are areas where the enemy comes in, but
doesn't come out. They can be difficult to
create because you've got to concentrate a lot
of your critical firepower into a small area,
and concentrating is the one thing that is
difficult for the defense. If you have a fair
idea of the routes the enemy might take, you
might chance to roll the dice and set up a kill
zone. A typical kill zone has clean fields of
fire covered by several high-powered anti-tank
guns, are painted with mines, and have
entrenched or hidden infantry and machineguns
at the edges, and sometimes by tanks on the
surrounding elevations. Any enemy entering the
kill zone will come under fire from the front
and both flanks. You may also have an infantry
platoon, a tank section, or a recon section
capable of moving into the rear of the enemy
advancers and cutting off their retreat.
"Leading" tactics can be used to draw the enemy
in, and mines (covered below) can also channel
the enemy attack into one of these areas.
On defense, it is critical to remember two
things. The enemy has to come to the objectives
in order to win, and you only need hold the
majority of objective hexes to win. You don't
need to defend every objective to win, and even
if the enemy has captured one and you've
stopped the attack, you do not need to suddenly
go over to the attack and retake the objectives
the enemy managed to occupy. Even an objective
are which is partially occupied can be left as
is if it is too dangerous to try to recover the
lost hexes, so long as you hold, in total, the
majority of objective hexes on the map.
One final word about the tactics of defense,
which is particularly valuable if you are
playing against a human opponent. One or two
squad infantry ambushes are really annoying to
the attacker, especially if they result in a
tank exploding or a fast-moving infantry unit
cut to pieces. If you are on the attack and
this happens to you a couple of times, you'll
start getting real cautious about moving
around. There may be some places you just won't
want to go because you don't want to have to
deal with the stupid little infantry guys
lurking about. As the defender, at times you'll
gain immensely if you can induce caution into
the enemy's ways. Setting up a couple of cheap,
expendable infantry units in hexes where they
can only be seen from adjacent hexes is a
tactic that will cause any attacker to be much
more cautious. This could buy you valuable
time. If you do this, I recommend setting up at
least two 1 or 2 squad ambushes like this,
along likely lines of march. Write these boys
off, though, if they radio back "We've got 15
tanks coming down the road and . . . "
Section 12 - The Art of Attack
We've already covered how to deploy your forces
for the attack, and how to group them into
combined arms teams with a specific mission and
objective. Now, what do we do when we actually
start to move out?
Good question. A lot depends on the composition
of your force and the availability of
resources. If you have artillery, you should
have plotted some bombardments or smoke screens
during the deploy phase. Airpower, if you have
it, can also be very useful in the prelim phase
since it can detect some enemy units (depending
on how well they are hidden), and give your
attacking forces some idea of what to expect.
Moreover, after you've spotted the enemy in
this way, you can now call down some artillery
(again, if you have it) and cause those
unfortunates even more grief.
As you start to move forward, remember that
probably no enemy infantry will be detected in
the first 10 hexes beyond the limit of your
deployment area. Most campaign scenarios that I
know of usually have a "no-man's land" where no
one can deploy. However, this is not an excuse
to go gallivanting around. If the visibility is
high, your troops can still come under long
range fire from guns and tanks, which will be
quite effective against infantry units classed
as 'moving fast'.
The big issue here is how do you plan to win.
Obviously, taking the objectives is paramount
to the score, but there are a number of ways to
do this. If the enemy has weak morale levels,
concentrating on killing everything you see
will reap the benefits of negative morale
effects on the enemy. In such a case, you might
actually want to detect large concentrations of
easy-to-destroy units and, well, destroy them.
Done enough times, this will later cause the
undamaged enemy units to rout, in some cases
leaving the objectives poorly defended or
unoccupied. Against most first-class armies,
however, the search-and-destroy method won't
work very well. It'll just wear out your
attacking forces before they even get to the
objectives.
One of the first choices you'll make is whether
to try to take more than one objective at the
same time, or to focus on one objective at a
time. Usually, your forces won't be strong
enough to advance against more than 2 of the 3
objective areas in any one scenario. If one
objective area is widely separated from two
others, that might present an opportunity for
you to concentrate your forces and drive off
the defenders with ease. Remember the basic
battle tactic of trying to have as much or more
firepower than the enemy at the given points of
attack or defense? Concentrating your forces
against one objective at a time will insure
that you will. Heavy artillery from the defense
(which is likely on Defend missions) will make
this proposition problematic, but the general
rule still applies. One reason you might want
to go after 2 objectives at once isn't actually
to take both of them at the same time, but to
pin down the units on the other objectives that
could provide long range support to their
compadres at the target objective.
Once you've decided on a battle plan and method
for carrying it out, you need, above all, to
examine the terrain features and determine how
they will either help you or hurt you. If your
forces have superior equipment, you might want
to get into view as soon as possible in order
to start dukeing it out. If your equipment is
more or less the equal of the enemy, you'll
want to occupy some advantageous ground and
position some units with long range capability
to hold the attention of the defenders, while
other units continue to move closer. If your
forces lack something on the equipment side,
you may want to use intervening terrain to hide
your troops from the enemy until you can get
close enough to do some real damage.
If you are short on time or mobility and you
need to get to the objective areas quickly,
you'll need to concentrate on clearing paths
which give you the highest probability of
getting to the objective in the shortest period
of time with the least amount of casualties.
Whether you are heading in one big group for
the nearest objective, or in several tactical
teams for a couple, there are a few tactics of
moving forward which may aid you. First, you
don't always have to complete the move of the
currently selected unit. Many players move one
unit its full movement (or as much of it as
they envision using this turn) and then just go
on to the next one. This may be convenient, but
its not very safe. You can, and in many cases
should, move only one hex at a time, select
another unit and move it one hex, and so forth.
This gives you the least risk of walking into a
buzzsaw, and insures that in the event the
enemy is detected, you will have plenty of
units to pin the enemy down.
Another mistake that can be made in all the
excitement is that when the enemy is detected,
players will use the detecting unit to fire at
the newly-discovered unit. If the enemy's
positions are relatively untouched, this can be
very dicey for the attacking unit. Use units
that have the best probability to suppress or
kill detected enemies, not just the nearest one
or the detecting one. When firing, remember
that every time you fire, this is one less unit
of fire that you will have available to react
with. I like to expend my fire in groups of
twos; from 6 to 4, and from 4 to 2. Try to keep
as many units as possible with the ability to
react fire. Don't just grab the nearest really
neato unit and get happy until the shots left
indicator reads zero. Use your forces as a
team, cover each other, and reserve a powerful
ability to react during the enemy's phase, when
you aren't in control. This is not to say that
there aren't times when killing the enemy now
with that one handy unit will be necessary,
just don't make it your default setting.
On the attack, your units will frequently have
superior fire capabilities to whatever enemies
are detected. Your units are concentrated, the
enemy is dispersed and defending a long line.
On occasion, the "swarming" technique can
result in an utter rout. Let's say you've got a
tactical team together moving across the fields
and you encounter an infantry platoon in a
woods line. If you use several of your units to
pin the enemy down, they may run out of react
fire. You'll notice this if you fire at one
unit a couple of times and the enemy doesn't
react when they clearly could have. Now, direct
your fire (with some other of your units)
against the enemy positions which you suspect
could still react. After you've gone through
this drill a couple of times, the enemy will be
completely exhausted. Now you can roll up that
fresh Engineer section, or recon element, and
grind them to dust. Mech inf, with their extra
halftrack, also excel in the swarming tactic
since their vehicles can usually suppress the
enemy, and then they just mount up the squad,
take a jaunt over to the enemy positions,
dismount and proceed to accept the enemy's
surrender. Swarming consists of using your
forces efficiently to wear out their react
capability, and then just roll in with
everything you've got. This has its risks, of
course, but it can also greatly speed up the
pace of an attack. Swarming also works well
against fortifications and heavy tanks, but
there is always the danger that what you've
accomplished during the all the firing is
suppressed only those enemy units you could
see. There may be others waiting who are
totally unsuppressed and will have a nice
reception for your over-exuberant troops.
If your tactics are good and even-handed,
you'll have little trouble getting close to the
first objective. Now, you need to be aware of
the AI's tendency to counter-attack. In many
cases, the AI will send almost everyone to
attack the very first objective that you take.
All those enemy units that you didn't spot will
now be easy to spot heading for the objective
you took. The only problem is, now you're
outnumbered! Seriously, the counter-attack
tendency of the AI is easy to deal with if
you're just aware of it to begin with. As I
said before, many players utilize this tendency
to their advantage and bypass a lot of enemy
forces on their way to the objective, just so
they will have an easier time killing them
during the AI's counter-attack. When you reach
the first objective, but before you actually
occupy the hexes, start thinking about how
you'll need to position your forces to defeat
the counterattack. When you do occupy the
hexes, take them all at once, don't just take
one and then the rest on the next turn, the AI
will start moving into the attack when you take
the first hex.
If you have a couple of groups rather than just
one, you may have one group which has taken an
objective while the other is still in reserve
or fighting it out somewhere else on the map.
Once an objective is taken the group which is
still in the rear or fighting it out on the
front line will start finding itself with fewer
and fewer enemies. Some players, again, use
this tactic against the enemy in this way: They
assemble one strong group to take the first
objective and hold it. Then they have one or
more other groups which remain uncommitted.
After the objective is taken, the uncommitted
or slowly moving groups are in an excellent
position to make a mad dash for the other
objectives, or slaughter the now moving enemy
forces in open ground.
An important tactic of attack is masking off
those enemy defenses that can harass your line
of march. Frequently, masking is the only way
to approach a position with some degree of
cohesion, or to preserve a force which is
having a tough time fighting forward. Masking
is most commonly done with smoke, a combination
of smoke and terrain, or just terrain. Masking
allows you to deal with only a section of enemy
defenses at a time, rather than everyone who
can get you in their sights. In addition to the
standard methods of artillery smokescreens and
smoke grenades thrown by your infantry, don't
forget that a lot of tanks come with smoke
rounds. If your crew is lucky or good, you may
be able to dish up a serving of smoke to the
direct front of that pesky AT crew. Masking is
useful even if you don't know the enemy's
position and do not need to know exactly at
that particular moment. Of course, if you can
kill the enemy position without a big scene
then do that; masking is an alternative mode to
killing outright. However, masking may be
preferable to killing if the enemy has lots of
artillery and lots of spotters. In that case,
your masks will be close to your forces so that
they will be unspotted, rather than sealing off
only portions of the enemy forces from view.
The battle will end when you capture all
objectives and the enemy's morale is broken, or
when the maximum number of turns is reached, or
when all of your own forces have been destroyed
(which should never happen, by the way). When
you are on an assault mission, you will usually
have to deal with enemy artillery, sometimes in
very heavy doses. In cases where you've already
broken the enemy's back and have only a few
remaining objectives to take, you might want to
hustle it up a little and take some risks that
you wouldn't normally. These risks are
preferable to a more cautious approach which
will take many more turns longer, turns in
which your troops will continue to suffer the
bombardments. You may lose actually fewer men
by taking more risks on the ground and getting
the scenario overwith sooner. Again, however,
this is only advisable on a good assessment on
the balance between the risks to your forces
and the amount of enemy artillery coming down.
Section 13 - The Art of Retreat
"We like to think we can get out of situations
quicker than we get into 'em"
Oddball,
from the movie "Kelly's Heroes,"
referring to the fact that his tanks
go faster in reverse than forward.
Oddball is one commander who has his head on
straight when it comes to the Art of Retreat.
Thinking about backing out of a battle
gracefully may be distasteful, but it must
always be on your mind as a competent
commander. Because Steel Panthers uses "fog of
war" to a greater extent than many games in the
past, you really don't know a whole lot about
what is happening on the "other side of the
hill" unless your forces are simply dominating
the whole flow of the battle. For this reason,
the situation as you know it can rapidly change
from being one in which you think you are
winning, to one in which you wonder what hit
you so fast, and who it was that slapped you
upside the head in the last five minutes.
The Art of Retreat consists of having some idea
that your forces will be unable to continue to
fight effectively under current or
soon-to-be-developed situations, and engaging
in withdrawal operations with a minimum of
loss. This concept applies to individual
elements of your force as well as your entire
force. Just because you've won the last six
battles does not mean that this is the one
where the enemy will ultimately triumph to the
utter devastation of the men who were depending
on your good judgment. And, if you think that
you can just end the game and go back to your
last save with some foreknowledge of what to
expect, go right ahead and do it. That will not
teach you the Art of Retreat, though. If you
are playing the game just to win, then this
section isn't for you. If you love Steel
Panthers because you know that the decisions
you make will have long-term consequences that
you have to live with in your campaign game,
then you're the kind of player that will find
this section of some value. You'll probably
enjoy the game a lot more than the "other
guys."
There are basically two levels to retreating.
The lower level involves a retreat of part of
your force to better positions, or just getting
away from a bad situation. The higher level is
more serious, and that is extricating your
whole force from a battle which you have
ascertained that you either cannot win at all,
or cannot win without prohibitive cost. The Art
lies in making these determinations before you
lose complete control of the situation. If you
can get out of a losing battle before suffering
prohibitive casualties, then you have won. If
you fail to make the judgment call on time, you
will not only lose the battle, but your core
force will be seriously compromised for some
time to come.
At the tactical level, parts of your forces may
get into firefights which are untenable. You'll
start noticing this when you units become
suppressed and pinned, or retreating and
routing. One thing you can do to unsuppress
them is blind the enemy, usually with smoke.
This will give your troops a turn or two's
respite from the constant fire. Note that even
pinned units can fire, and in the case of a
necessary retreat, you can still lay smoke if
they have smoke grenades. If you have support
units nearby capable of firing HE rounds, fire
a few into buildings and woods hexes the enemy
is located in, these can catch fire and reduce
the enemy's effectiveness. If some of your
units can move move them into positions which
can cover the retreat of the units which are
routing or retreating. Engineers are excellent
in aiding retreats, since they can easily set
fire to adjacent hexes with their
flamethrowers. Any unit which remains in a hex
which is on fire will become progressively
suppressed, making their fire inaccurate and,
if they stay, cause them to retreat or rout.
Tactical retreats of parts of your forces are
essentially a bounding overwatch in reverse.
When you need to retreat, its usually because
you've lost or are about to lose control of the
battle (at least in that area). This means that
all your guys just can't up and run the other
way, because the enemy will have the
opportunity to cut them down, like shooting
fish in a barrel. Instead, if some of your
still active units remain positioned or move
only slowly backwards, they'll be in a position
to return fire during the enemy's turn, greatly
reducing the enemy's accuracy and
effectiveness. Positioned and firing units will
bear the brunt of the enemy's pressure,
allowing your other crumbling, routing units
time to get away. Support forces, naturlich,
are best for this purpose since they aren't
part of your core force! After most of your
routing and retreating forces have gotten out
of range, then its time to start taking the
remaining guys out, sort of reducing the
bounding teams until there everyone is out.
Another reason it seems to work better if you
think of it this way is because bounding teams
will not surrender or collapse as quickly as,
say, the lone support rifle platoon you left
behind. The purpose is to delay the enemy, and
this won't happen if the rear guard collapses
in one turn.
There may come what is known as the point of
crisis in the battle. This is where your entire
force and it's position is compromised. Perhaps
the enemy has already broken into the rear, or
has gotten strong forces into a flanking
position. Actually, though, the crisis of
command occurs just before the time when it is
already obvious that you've lost. You must,
repeat must, always be aware of the possibility
that things aren't developing in such as way as
to permit a draw or a victory, and keep open
your lines of possible retreat. If you can
detect the crisis point a few turns in advance
and begin the retreat before it is well-neigh
impossible, then you've learned the Art, and
saved many lives in your core forces in the
process.
If you've determined that you can no longer
maintain a viable position because you've
spotted several force groupings that cannot be
dealt with by any combination of your available
forces, then the crisis of command has been
reached and you need to consider whether to
retreat or fight it out. If the former, then
you need to select teams of units which can be
easily positioned to intercept the enemy
advance and buy the rest of your men time to
get away. Once you've made the decision to
abandon your positions, you need to consider
this your over-arching goal. Every movement
should be directed to either delaying the enemy
or moving to the appropriate mapedge. I usually
divide my rearguards up into two basic teams,
the forward element and the sheepherder
element. The forward element engages those
enemy forces for the purpose of delay, while
the sheepherder element usually provides a last
bit of protection for the retreating main
forces. The sheepherders usually lay a lot of
smoke, to keep the retreating units out of
sight.
Section 14 - The Art of Counter-Attack
A well-timed and placed counter-attack can make
the difference between winning and losing. You
can get into situations where you have a
counter-attack chance whether you are on attack
or defense. However, the Art of Counter-Attack,
in Steel Panthers, is most common when your
mission is defensive in nature.
The Art of Counter-Attack consists primarily of
holding a mobile force in reserve, and using it
at a time when the enemy has exposed themselves
to attack by exhausting their own units, or
moving them into bad positions, or are just so
disorganized that they cannot provide adequate
support to each other. The appearance of your
fresh, coordinated counter-attack force will
eliminate their weaker units, strip their
strong units of support, and restore a position
of yours which may have been threatened.
Counter-attack reserves should be centrally
placed if you are unsure of the enemy's line of
advance, or placed in positions out of view on
their flanks if your have some degree of
certainty that they will come from a certain
direction.
It takes discipline to pull a mobile force off
the frontline and put them in some area where
they won't be able to add their firepower to a
kill zone you want to set up, or to a main
defense line. But they can be more effective
than these other methods for two reasons: You
may enter the fray from an unexpected angle,
giving you flank or rear shots against their
vehicles, and you will arrive fresh and fit
while the enemy has already expended themselves
against a different defending force. Let me put
it to you this way: Would you rather have 4
Tigers with only 2 shots available each against
a position held by some infantry squads and a
couple of anti-tank guns, or would you rather
have 4 Shermans with 6 shots available each
firing on the flank and rear of those same
worn-out Tigers. I know its a tough call (after
all, we're talking about Tigers, here), but in
most cases the Shermans will probably prevail.
If you had left the Shermans up on the hill
with your main force, some of them would
already be bar-b-queued, and those remaining,
if they weren't routing, would be in sorry
shape.
It is not uncommon to place tanks and other
vehicles behind crests, so that they will be
fresh at the proper time. Doing things like
this are all well and good, but it won't matter
if the enemy hasn't been engaged at all at the
time you counter-attack. Essential to a good
counter-attack is that the enemy has already
been engaged against another group of
defenders, become somewhat worn down, and
possibly maneuvered to expose their vehicles to
flank, rear or top hits.
The illustration at right shows the effects of
a successful counter attack, and is the last
installment of the series of three GIF files
from one game (current GIF file : SPILL4a --
previous files were SPILL2a.gif and
SPILL3a.gif). In this game, the Lee tanks
deployed in the extreme north eventually
launched a counter-attack after the German
attack of Panzer IVs and Engineers had passed
through the objective area on the northern
hill. As the northern German force engaged the
defending British on the north face of the
center hill, the Lees appeared on the northern
hill, virtually surrounding the German force.
The illustration shows all the Panzer IVs
knocked out and the enemy infantry nowhere to
be seen at this point. This counter-attack
allowed the southern part of the defending
British force to deal with the main German
attack, as shown.
The tactics of counter-attack can even be taken
to an extreme and yet be successful. I've
witnessed defenses with NO objectives defended,
not even the most remote one. In such a case,
the entire defending force becomes a
counter-attack force, and they set up a kill
zone completely covering the most remote
objective hexes. When the enemy enters,
especially the AI enemy, they'll take all the
objectives and basically stop moving. This
means that only a small portion of their total
force is at the final objective, while you,
secretly, have massed your entire force within
just a few hexes of the area. Suddenly, the
trap springs and your whole force moves into
counter-attack, retaking objective after
objective. The enemy is usually too
disorganized and your forces moving too fast
for him to react with a cohesive defense.
Section 15 - Rest & Refit
When you get to the end of the battle, you'll
usually be carried to the Refit screen (unless
the enemy has a counter-attack or you accept a
chance for a breakthrough -- see below). Refit
is for the most part pretty straightforward,
and most times you just click on the "Fix All"
button.
If you are thinking about upgrading, however,
note that you do not have to "fix" a unit
before you can simply change it into a better
one. Before you fix anyone, if you want to
upgrade, you should change the selection tool
to "fix" and pick the unit that you want to
upgrade. This will save you many points over
the course of the campaign.
Problems can crop up if you don't have enough
points to rebuild your entire force. Hitting
the "fix all" button will fix your units from
the top of the roster towards the bottom, which
may not be the order of priority that you need
units repaired. Infantry squads will still do
fine if they are missing a couple of guys, so
you can save a couple of points there. Your
tanks, even the cheap ones, should be fixed,
unless you have enough support points to
upgrade one and want to upgrade instead of just
fixing it.
When you upgrade a unit, it loses some
experience. This is no problem with infantry
units, who rarely need to be upgraded or
changed. However, new models of tanks are
always coming out. You'll need to refrain from
the temptation to always equip your tanks with
the very latest technology, because actually
you can wind up hurting their experience levels
so much that they actually perform worse with
better equipment.
Finally, note that some units can be switched
from Armor to Infantry and back and forth.
You'll almost never do this, but there might be
some case where a really experienced infantry
unit actually has better Armor Command ratings
than the latest batch of Panzertruppen.
Sometimes players do switch the command unit to
a tank, but if so you better make it a really
well armored tank or a recon vehicle which can
move very fast. It is rather useful to have a
command unit which can move at the speed of
lightening, and it is very comforting to know,
on the other hand, that your commander is
protected by 80mm of armor. The middle ground
of a medium tank is to be avoided unless there
is no other choice.
Its possible to accumulate points to expend at
a later time. On the other hand, its possible
to be in a point "crunch" where at each refit
screen there doesn't seem to be enough to go
around to fix everybody, much less upgrade. To
remedy this situation, when times are good, try
to maintain a reserve. Don't spend all your
points to outfit everybody with Flame-Tanks. If
the good times are over, then you may have to
be extremely cautious about casualties and
retreat off the map if things get too hot, even
if you know you could win! When you are down
like this, your first priority should be
getting your core force into tip-top shape, not
trying to win every battle like it's your last.
Section 16 - Breakthroughs and Counter-Attacks
One of the neat tricks of the game which keeps
us campaigners on our toes is the
counter-attack and breakthrough mechanism. This
happens when, at the end of a hard-fought
scenario, a special "message from headquarters"
arrives informing you of either and enemy
counter-attack or an opportunity for a
breakthrough.
An enemy counter-attack can also occur at the
beginning of a scenario, after you've deployed
but before the shooting starts. This type of
counter-attack is really just letting you know
that the enemy had more points to spend that
usual, and their mission has changed from
defensive to offensive. We discussed that
before. In any event, whether before or after a
scenario, a counter-attack will mean the enemy
will be tougher than usual, and you won't have
a choice either way to accept or decline. If it
happens at the end of a scenario, you might get
a chance to buy support units or you might not.
If you do, you'll notice that you have about
half the number of support points that you
would normally have on a defense or delay
mission. This will make your job even harder.
The breakthrough is an optional mission,
leading to either an assault or advance
mission. If you get to buy support units at
all, again, you'll get fewer points to do it.
If your force has been badly scrapped out by
the previous battle, then you should probably
decline the breakthrough. In fact, you may be
asking yourself why take it at all? The manual
states that both breakthroughs and
counter-attacks will result in higher
experience for your units, but there is some
debate among the players as to whether the net
result means that your troops actually get more
experience for participating in a breakthrough
than they would if they just fought two normal
battles. Because of this uncertainty at this
point, I tend to decline the breakthrough
unless my core force is virtually unhurt from
the previous engagement. In future versions,
the Primer will investigate the veracity of the
player's concerns in this area.
One other caution about breakthroughs. It has
happened that after accepting and winning a
breakthrough, the enemy can counter attack.
This means that you fought one normal battle,
didn't refit, accepted a breakthrough, didn't
refit and were counterattacked! That would be
entering your third consecutive battle without
a refit. The enemy can also launch into
counter-attack mode during the breakthrough
scenario. These are scary thoughts and one
more thing to be aware of then faced with that
breakthrough option.
Section 17 - Artillery & Air Power (It's
raining lead, hallelujah!)
Death from above can win battles and save you
long casualty lists, if your side is dropping
it. It can also stop you dead in your tracks,
pin down your men, and give you and extree long
list of KOs and -9s if you're receiving it.
The only problem with artillery is that you can
never have enough of it on your team. Artillery
is expensive, and most players are comfortable
with only one battery during campaign
scenarios. Occasionally, your confidence in
your core force is such that you can spring for
two, but that's about it. Even a lowly 75
battery (which doesn't even make pretty holes
in the ground) can cost around 60 points! When
choosing artillery, you'll want to tailor the
tubes for your mission and likely enemies. If
you expect a lot of tanks in positions that you
need to take, remember the larger calibers are
better at causing damaging hits. Rocket
artillery is not as effective at hitting
armored targets. If you're short on time in the
upcoming scenario (or expect to be) Rockets and
the larger calibers are good because you'll
have a limited amount of ammo anyway.
The process of using artillery involves
selecting a spotting unit, and hitting the B
key. You'll go to the artillery screen, and the
LOS of the spotting unit will be highlighted.
You can select any hex on the map for the
barrage, but artillery that is plotted to a
spotted hex will be more accurate (the spread
pattern will be low). Preliminary bombardments,
those that occur before the start of the
scenario, are always as accurate as spotted
attacks (representing planned strikes against
known coordinates). Remember that the spotting
unit can move, but whether the strike is
accurate is determined by whether the spotting
unit can see the target hex when the shells
start to impact (the turn that the barrage
begins). Your spotter's artillery command
rating will also impact accuracy.
On the attack, you'll want to use artillery to
hit enemy positions that you can't reach
effectively with your ground forces, to hit
areas in advance of your ground forces where
the enemy may be laying in ambush, deal with
those nasty anti-tank positions and to lay
smoke to cover your advance. The biggest
problem with artillery when on an attack
mission is spotting the enemy, otherwise your
shells may hit nothing except the ground. You
at least know that the computer will have some
units in and around the objective hexes, so
this is an obvious target. As for other
targets, well, do we have any volunteers for
spotting? Private Brady? -but- Pack up your
gear and get out in the field pronto. Don't
forget the radio.
Seriously, you'll have to reconnoiter the enemy
to find out where they are. If you don't have
any "volunteers" or aren't willing to sacrifice
a necessary support unit to do the job, buy a
platoon of reconnaissance vehicles along with
the artillery battery, and dedicate them to
spotting. Alternatively, you can plot
airstrikes over suspected enemy positions.
These will also spot enemy concentrations, but
the artillery strikes will still be less
effective unless a ground unit is in LOS of the
barrage area. Note that spotting does not have
to be a sacrifice, its just more often than not
the spotting unit will themselves be spotted
and suffer the vengeance of guys that he's
raining death upon. Also, there is a difference
between spotting the enemy, and spotting for
the artillery. One unit can reveal the presence
of an enemy unit that you'd like to paste with
artillery shells, while another one actually
calls down the artillery. So long as the one
calling down the artillery has an LOS to the
newly-revealed enemy position, your artillery
fire will be (insert musical tune here) all
that it can be.
Don't forget that artillery comes down in two
consecutive turns. Sometimes players, including
myself, are just outside the barrage area when
the shells start to impact and see that the
enemy is decimated by the first blast. Then,
you forget that one more turn of hell is on the
way and move in to mop up without calling off
the guns. Then it's your guys who suffer the
shrapnel and concussions. When you plan
artillery, make sure you check it every turn to
make sure your troops aren't the victims of
friendly fire. You can always cancel a barrage
in progress. In fact, sometimes this is a good
idea if the enemy has moved and your guns need
to save ammo.
Even if you don't move into the impact zone,
the impact zone may come to you. Artillery can
miss, sometimes by as much as 5-10 hexes. When
you have troops this close to the impact area,
you need to be extra cautious to make sure that
your spotter can see the target hex, and that
the spotter has the best artillery rating
available.
On the defense, artillery placement is a little
more difficult, since the enemy will be moving.
However, the fact that they are moving makes
them very easy to see. If you can stop them
from moving or slow them down, this will make
your artillery that much more effective. Mines
and lots of direct fire are good for this.
Airstrikes are also good at spotting the enemy
before they move into sight. This might be
handy if visibility is low and you want to
breakup enemy concentrations before they come
into view. However, there is a risk your planes
won't see anything because, after all, you are
just guessing yourself when you plot the
airstrike.
Yet another defensive use for artillery which
few players take advantage of is using the
bombardments to rip holes along the roads that
the enemy could use to move rapidly towards
your positions. Artillery which is larger than
around 75mm will make pretty holes in the
ground. A hole in a road hex immediately
reduces the class of that road hex to a hole
hex, meaning that enemy units will not be able
to zip along at the road movement rate. Along a
long enough stretch of road, this can actually
slow the enemy down by more than a few turns.
Road intersections and bridges are ideal
targets for this kind of bombardment, but just
about any area which is going to be used as a
path is also a possibility. Just don't do it
too close to your own forces for the obvious
reasons, and also because holes constitute a
form of cover (which I presume you do not want
the enemy to have, correct?). In military
lingo, this is known as "interdiction fire".
You could also use artillery to convert an
otherwise flat, pancake-like surface to one as
full of holes as Swiss cheese, if your forces
are going to need some cover at the base of the
hill they need to assault.
If you're on the receiving end of a barrage,
there are only two and a half things you can
do. One, get out of the area. Send your troops
into as wide a dispersal pattern as possible
away from the impact zone. Note that the
computer centers the map when a barrage begins
over the targeted hex, but the rounds don't
always land near that hex. It's that targeted
hex you'll want to get away from. Two, sit
tight and ride out the storm. If you're
entrenched or in good cover, this isn't such a
bad idea because your troops will probably take
a lot more casualties getting outside the
impact zone than they would if they just
hunkered down. If you're in the open, on the
other hand, it's probably a bad idea. In any
case, when you're under a barrage your troops
will still suffer more casualties if they are
classed as moving, so if you have to move, do
so only to make some necessary attack or get
out of the area. The last half thing you can do
is try to kill or blind the spotter. You have
no way of knowing who's doing the spotting
(sometimes, you cannot even see the spotter),
so killing the spotter is not a solution likely
to be effected in time to make any difference.
Blinding the spotter is a lot easier. Just have
your troops lay smoke all around themselves and
hope that this will work. If it works, of
course, the barrage will still come down, it
just won't be as accurate.
If the enemy has plenty of bothersome artillery
that is starting to really impact your ability
to get the job done, you'll have to take the
objectives or leave the map. Nothing is quite
so frustrating as spending turn after turn
under a murderous barrage. The only way to
really stop it is to win the scenario as
quickly as possible. Artillery is the AI's way
of saying "I'm just not going to let you sit
there and concentrate your forces for an attack
that I can't hope to stop." You'll have to keep
moving forward, ever forward, and, if you just
can't take the objectives, backward, ever
backward. The only good news is that the larger
calibers tend to run out of ammo around turn
20, and the Rocket Batteries even sooner. So if
its later in the scenario and you think you
just can't stand one more barrage, be hopeful,
you may get the answer to your prayers.
One huge player gripe (sort of) about artillery
is that it is not effective enough against
infantry "in the open". I realize that if I am
on an airbase tarmac somewhere getting hit with
155s I probably won't survive a whole lot of
direct hits. However, it is my feeling that
what we see on the screen as 'clear' terrain is
really just normal terrain without any
outstanding or salient covering features. That
doesn't mean that there isn't a pile of big
logs there, or a small gulch, or a declivity
low enough to hide my hide from the whizzers.
Really flat, featureless, pancake-like terrain
is actually something of a rarity. Go out
yourself and drive a couple hundred miles to
the nearest undeveloped area that's marked on a
map as being 'clear terrain.' Find a few places
where you can hide from an imaginary artillery
barrage. See what I mean? OK, now you can come
back.
Airpower is an altogether different breed of
the same species. It's called down much the
same way, but the effect can be varied. Some
aircraft are good at attacking infantry and
powerless against tanks and vice versa.
Generally, only aircraft with 20mm or larger
cannons, or 250lb or larger bombs are adequate
to deal with medium to heavy tanks.
Wing-mounted rockets are not as effective tank
killers as are the well-placed bomb.
Just as artillery can miss and hit your own
men, aircraft can mistake your men for those of
the enemy, and unload with everything they've
got. This usually causes a re-evaluation of
your immediate tactical situation. In fact,
aircraft generally hit the first thing they see
that is within about 5-6 hexes of the radioed
target hex, and they appear to have a limited
prioritizing mechanism. Anyone who thinks
friendly fire from aircraft is unrealistic
ought to check out the history of the Army Air
Corps in World War II. In Sicily, nervous
American AA gunners killed almost 500 of our
own paratroopers by shooting down the transport
aircraft. One year later, in Normandy, the Air
Corps as part of Operation Cobra dropped a
small percentage of the total bombload about
1500 yards short and hit assembly areas of the
Cobra attack forces, killing a similar number.
Just imagine what it was like for the intended
targets: the German forces. In Steel Panthers,
a friendly air unit which misidentifies can
sometimes, but not always, actually strike
friendly forces and then correct itself and go
after the real enemies. This, in my opinion, is
a very nice touch on the programming side.
One other danger of aircraft is that they can
get themselves shot down. This is no big deal
if they already hit the target, unless they are
on a glide path right into your own troops.
Generally the climb-away path should be towards
the enemy side of the map, but you can't
control that -- it's up to the pilot. Once a
plane is in the crash phase of 'crash and burn'
and heading for your troops, there's nothing
you can do. It's just one more thing to be
aware of when plotting the strike.
A single plane can come back for another
strike. What appears to be happening in the
game is that if a plane conducts a strike an
sustains no damage from ground fire, the plane
may hang around and wait for additional strike
requests. If the plane has already dropped
whatever bombs it has, it won't have any more,
but things like rockets, cannons and ordinary
machine guns seem to have a fairly unlimited
supply. Don't hesitate to keep bringing the
flyboys back to do some more work for you.
If your pilots have to brave an area where
there is a lot of AA (which is almost always
true against the German, British or American
forces), you'll want to bring your strikes down
in big waves. The reason for this is that the
AA will tend to shoot it's bolt against the
first or second aircraft that swoops down,
leaving the subsequent strikes to come in,
choose their target and unload without too much
harassment from the poor, dumb enemy troops on
the ground. This is true even against human
players! Some players don't like this fact, but
I challenge you to be a ground commander and
tell your troops not to shoot at the first
plane that comes streaking in from above!
Sometimes, it may even be worth your while to
consider using your own ground forces to
suppress or destroy heavy enemy AA positions,
so that your planes have an even easier time.
Artillery is ideal for this. A simple rule of
thumb is if enemy AA is dense, overload the
defense.
By the way, if you've plotted several strikes
with airplanes or artillery and you need to
cancel the mission, clicking on the unit name
of the artillery or air unit in the indirect
fire screen will center the map on the target
hex which is associated with the unit. This
way, you'll only cancel the strikes you don't
need anymore, not the ones that you still want
to go forward.
Section 18 - Fortifications & Mines
Fortifications, in their Steel Panthers form of
Bunkers and Pillboxes, are as old as war
itself. Most military theoreticians in this
century discount fixed fortifications as
outmoded relics of the past. However, most of
them have never been pinned down in the middle
of a valley by a few guys in a big strong
cement box firing rifles and guns at them.
Placing fortifications on defense is not
exactly easy, though. Unlike most other units
in the game, these babys have a fixed facing.
Once you place them and face them in a
direction, they can't swing around to hit that
Tiger tank 50 meters to their rear. Again,
you'll want to examine likely avenues of attack
and place them to defeat that attack.
Sometimes, this means putting them on line
oblique to the objective, sometimes this means
placing them all around the objective for
direct defense. If you get more than one, make
it so they have interlocking fields of fire and
can cover each other's butt. Also, keep in mind
that not only are they vulnerable to assault by
enemy infantry, they aren't very good at
detecting enemy infantry even if they are
advancing in the line of fire. Your infantry
may need to help out with this task.
Dealing with pillboxes and bunkers is
difficult, but its supposed to be. If it were
too easy, we'd mistake them for outhouses or
really cool tents with guns. Number one
solution is to plaster the position with all
kinds of fire, basically everything that can
possibly hit it, from rifle and machinegun
fire, to Rocket Artillery and Battleship guns.
If you hit it enough times, the crew will get
nervous and bail out, at which point the
incoming fire will make their remains
unrecognizable and lead us to believe that the
guys inside were kind of dumb. Even if they
don't head for the nearest exit point, remember
that just because it's a pillbox doesn't mean
the guys inside cannot take casualties. Even
pithy little rifles and 37mm guns have been
known to cause "1 man killed." On the other
hand, an occasional direct hit from something
like a 155mm shell or a tank gun has been known
to destroy them in a half-second.
A second way of dealing with fortifications is
to just avoid them. They can't turn to face
you, so when you see one, get out of the line
of fire. Another method is to drop smoke right
in front of the little observation holes,
rendering them totally blind. Just don't forget
to do it again when the smoke starts thinning
out.
The last method is the terror of pillbox and
bunker crews : The direct assault. When all
else fails, placing a satchel charge or two on,
near, around or at the door of a pillbox is
likely to make it difficult for the guys inside
to listen to Mozart. Engineers and Commandos
are best at this. The simple way is to just
blind the strongpoint with smoke and creep up
from behind and assault. Assaults of this type
frequently fail, after all you're dealing with
a couple of feet of cement or sandbags here,
but they succeed about 25% of the time. The
experience and infantry command ratings of your
troops can vary this percentage, as can their
level of suppression. But, there is another way
which takes a little longer, but is guaranteed
to cause the guys inside to come out. When you
get next to the bunker with Engineers, hit the
Z key and attack the hex! If the satchel charge
doesn't reduce it to rubble, the flamethrower
might, and even if the bunker isn't ruined, the
fire raging all over the place is sure to
suppress the crew to the point of irrelevance
within a few turns. Keep in mind that any
infantry can assault a bunker, and some are
better than others (like the Japanese, for some
reason).
Even more frightening for the static
strongpoint crews is the sight of an
approaching Flame Tank. Unlike Engineers, these
tanks are almost immune to the strongpoint's
weapons, so they don't waste time zig-zagging
around and laying smoke to approach with
caution. They just come right up and proceed to
instant pyromania from a 2-hex range. This is
why it's a good idea to support your
strongpoints with some anti-tank weapons, tanks
and infantry.
Mines are a dirt cheap but powerful element of
your arsenal. They are only available to you on
Defend missions, and you can only buy a limited
number of them (130 is the maximum I have
seen). Moreover, there is an undocumented but
nevertheless present limit on the number of
hexes which can contain mines on the map,
around 80. If you have a lot of mines and while
placing them you notice that the mine you
placed just previously jumps to the current
placement hex, you've maxed out. From now on,
you have to place mines in hexes already
containing mines (doubling up) or remove some.
Thoughtful placement of mines can make the
difference between winning and losing more
often than not. Roads are an obvious place for
them, but the AI has been known to completely
avoid roads during Assault missions (presumably
because it was so obvious to the programmers).
You can place as many mines in one hex as you
want, but beyond three or four you don't gain
any additional destructive power. It will take
engineers longer to remove them, though. Beyond
that, the AI (in version 1.1 and up) will try
to avoid mine hexes once discovered. This nice
bit of coding can also work against the
computer, since you can use the mines to
'channel' the attack right into a kill zone.
The key to good placement of mines (and your
defending troops!) is examine the map and look
for likely lines of approach. Road
intersections are always a good idea,
regardless of whether they are on a line of
approach. Typical employment is to place them
at the forward edge of your optimal engagement
range, and also about 3-4 hexes away from your
defending troops. The goals here can be to
either channel the attack into a kill zone,
force the enemy to stop movement at a distance
from your troops where they (the enemy!) can be
easily destroyed, or simply to protect your own
positions.
If you have anti-tank guns and expect an armor
attack, place some lines of mines about 10-12
hexes away from them along the expected path of
attack. This will cause enemy tanks to either
blow up on the mine, or get stuck at a range
where their machine guns can't hit the gunners
or a broad side of a barn.
If you have both mines and fortifications,
another good tactic is to place mines right
next to the bunkers or pillboxes which are out
of the line of fire of the fort. This will
cause any brave engineer or infantry unit that
decides to assault the bunker to either move
into the line of fire, or trod over dangerously
mined ground. A chain of bunkers, pillboxes and
interspersed mines can be death to all who
enter there.
Another nasty tactic is to place mines on
objective hexes. This may seem kinda
counterproductive at first, after all, if an
enemy moves onto the objective and doesn't get
clobbered by the mine, that means at some point
if you want to take it back, you've got to
scrounge around for a mine-happy unit to do it.
On second glance, however, this can be a
powerful tactic. You know the AI (and possibly
human opponents) will move there so what better
place? If the objective doesn't get taken,
you've got nothing to worry about anyway. If
the enemy, however, sends a large force to take
the objective (and they find a curious lack of
resistance on your part there, ahem) they'll
probably never go anywhere else ever again! If
you wind up having to take it back, just bring
along some engineers and/or some really cheap
units like trucks or AT-teams to recapture this
killing field.
As British, I once place three successive lines
of mines about 15 hexes in length in front of a
hilltop position containing three tanks, a
platoon of infantry, one pillbox and one
bunker. The position was attacked by about 20
tanks and 2 platoons of combat engineers. More
than half of the German vehicles were destroyed
or immobilized on the mines, the rest were
(slowly) picked off by the pillbox and the
tanks. Crews from the leading tanks bailed out,
headed for the rear and blew up on the mines
they had already passed up in their vehicles.
In a word, the entire attack was completely
broken up. Only some of the engineers and one
Panzer were able to make it on to the hill. The
Panzer was destroyed immediately, and though my
infantry had trouble dealing with the
engineers, even they eventually were forced
back.
While the above scenario is an example of how
mines can be really effective, at bottom mines
are basically a gamble. No amount of mines can
cover the entire front enough to stop an
attack. However you decide to place your mines,
remember the enemy can always avoid them
entirely. You should too. When on the attack,
you should try to clear or avoid mines in your
path, and completely avoid dealing with mines
which will not hamper your optimal attack
paths.
Section 19 - Combat Engineers
When it comes to down and dirty, hand-to-hand,
in-your-face firepower, no one is better than
Combat Engineers. Against regular infantry at
point blank range, the technicals will cream
the grunts first with satchel charges, then
with flamethrowers (if you use the Z key). In
many cases, its actually better to use the Z
key against enemy infantry because they have a
tendency to run away from Engineers at the
first burst from their rifles. The Z key hits
them with everything before they can scamper
away. A new version due out from SSI (currently
under construction as version 1.1x, to become
version 1.2) has a selective fire feature which
is ideal for Engineers since their main problem
is not in getting good body counts, but having
enough satchel charges and flamethrower fuel to
keep going. The Z key in the older versions is
wasteful because you used everything in one
attack: Rifles, satchel charges and the
flamethrower. With selective fire, you can
choose just to Shake 'em (use the satchel
charge) or Bake 'em (use the flamethrower), or
just revert to the old method of Shake and Bake
by hitting Z. It's nice to see just how many
kills you can get with just the flamethrower,
and its only possible to see this effect using
selective fire. Remember also that sometimes
you don't want to use up your precious Shake
and Bake supply, even at close range, so just
use normal targeting when you deem that
adequate to the situation. However good your
Engineers may be at point blank range, it may
be pertinant to note here that at longer
ranges, they will usually be at a distinct
firepower disadvantage.
Not only do Engineers excel at smearing
infantry and fortifications all over the
ground, they are also pretty effective
tank-killers. For many armies in the early
years, Combat Engineers are the only relatively
effective way for infantry to deal with the
heavier tanks. Later, when the grunts get
bazookas, Piats, and Panzerfausts, even they
can stand up to tanks for a little while, so
Engineers become less popular for this purpose.
But in those Blitzkrieg years, Engineers are
the infantrymen's answer to the tank. However,
the big limitation is range. It is one hex.
Your engineers are just regular guys in the
sights of the nearest enemy tank -- unless they
get too close.
Everyone has seen tanks get blown up by satchel
charges, what is less well known is that the
flamethrower can also destroy tanks. Of course,
unless you have the new version with selective
fire, you have to waste a satchel charge to get
this effect (which you may never see anyway,
thankfully, if the satchel charge sends the
tank's turret spinning into the air).
Another neat tactic with Combat Engineers is to
mount them onto a Flame Tank. Yes, that's
right, this awesome combination will hit any
approaching infantry with all the fire the tank
can muster, plus the tank's flamethrower (which
has a range of 2 hexes), plus the Engineer's
rifle fire, satchel charge and, you guessed it,
the Engineer's flamethrower (if you are
attacking). If you plan to send your tanks
rumbling through enemy infested cities, woods
or jungles, mounting an Engineer section on a
Flame Tank is a great way to lead your troops
to the fight. I have never seen an enemy
infantry survive this combination, though I
have seen the Flame Tank get destroyed by the
assault of a second enemy squad after the
Engineers have dismounted to deal with the
first. Of course, the second squad didn't
survive either, but I was pretty angry about
the loss of my expensive Flame Tank. Another
risk, particularly in cities, is that your tank
will get hit with anti-tank fire and cause
casualties among the riders. Sometimes the
Engineer squad just disappears leaving you
wondering if you need to write their families.
Check the unit list to see if they indeed, got
wasted.
Yet another particularly effective tactic at
which Engineers excel is that of
bridge-blowing. While any large shell can do
the job, an Engineer attacking a bridge hex
with the Z key will almost certainly result in
the collapse of the bridge. If there happens to
be an enemy tank or squad on the bridge,
they'll be sent plummeting down to the river or
stream, resulting in an instant (and pretty
darn cool) kill. If you're on defense and there
is a bridge hex where enemy vehicles are likely
to use to head to your objectives, placing an
Engineer unit or two adjacent to the bridge is
a great way to defend it and bloody the nose of
an overzealous enemy. This works especially
well if there is covering terrain next to the
bridge, since your Engineer will have less
likelihood of being spotted.
Finally, lets not forget that Engineer's main
job: Finding mines. Engineers can detect mines
better than anything. Preceding an advance into
mine country is a sure way to minimize
casualties, at least among your regular troops.
Engineers will nearly always see a minefield
before it does them any damage, and immediately
commence to clearing it. Engineers can either
be on or adjacent to a hex to clear the mines.
Regular infantry can also clear mines, but
they're much worse at it, and they usually find
the minefield by stepping on a couple of them
first.
Mine-clearing is a hard job, but its much
harder when there are other guys with rifles
and guns trying to kill you at the same time.
Engineers and other units engaged in
mine-clearing will do so much more quickly if
they aren't under fire, suppressed, or firing
back at the harassers.. Therefore, when you
find a minefield and decide you need to clear
it, lay some smoke first so you can do your job
without the hindrance of someone sending a
hailstorm of aimed fire into your area. If
you're on the defense, keep those Engineers
pinned down with fire.
At right is an illustration of a typical
mine-clearing operation, this one in the
relatively open expanses of the desert (GIF
File SPILL6a.gif). The engineers have moved two
hexes a turn, and laid smoke three hexes to
their front for about 4 turns at the time of
this screen shot. Suddenly, all four detect a
minefield (without suffering any casualties),
and the most northern Engineer unit has also
detected a repositioned British infantry squad
without been seen by them. This is another
example of how sometimes smoke hexes are not
total blocks to LOS. Note that following
closely behind the Engineers are a platoon of
Assault Guns, and the Engineer's intrinsic
halftrack transport. If the British infantry
squad had detected the Engineers and attempted
to fire, they would have suffered the wrath of
all of these supporting units, and probably not
survived. In any event, now, the minefield line
has been detected and will be cleared, allowing
the main assault force, following directly
behind this team off the screen, to continue to
move into position to attack the main British
positions to the northeast and southeast of
this area. For insurance, the main forces to
the rear have also laid smoke to screen those
main positions, the edge of the smokescreen
being just visible in the top right-hand side
of the graphic.
Section 20 - City Combat
[to be completed in a future version]
Section 21 - Desert Rats (Desert Combat)
[to be completed in a future version]
Section 22 - Winter War (Combat during Winter
Months, Russia, etc)
[to be completed in a future version]
Section 23 - Bungle in the Jungle (Jungle
Combat)
[to be completed in a future version]
Section 24 - River Crossings and Amphibious
Landings
At this writing, there is still a problem with
the SP engine and the set-up of Amphibious
Landing and River Crossing scenarios. Though
you can still get a valid scenario of this type
in a pre-made scenario (or one of your own
making) we'll hold off to a future version the
discussion of these types of operations.
Section 25 - The CPU as a Commander
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Steel
Panthers is generally agreed to be the one of
the best, if not the best, ever put together
for a commercially available wargame. The
computer is capable of flank attacks, frontal
attacks, oblique attacks, zig-zags, and reserve
placement, movement and commitment.
Those of us who have been playing computer
wargames for, oh, a few months now have learned
to disdain the AI. This is a mistake in Steel
Panthers. The programmers appear to have coded
in a very good general logic engine with some
specific situational templates. I have observed
entire tank companies and platoons placed along
the edge of the map where they would likely
remain undetected until my troops captured one
objective. Then the go hell on wheels to the
place and wreak havoc. I have seen crews rout
halfway across the map, only to come back and
re-man the Tiger tank that I thought I had
destroyed. I have seen the computer call down
artillery barrages on it's own positions which
were being attacked by my troops, but only when
there really wasn't any other way to defend the
position. I have seen combined arms attacks by
the computer against what I thought were
impregnable positions succeed and cause my own
personal morale to fail. I have seen stars on
fire off the shoulders of Orion . . . no, no,
wait, that's a different manual, er, game, er,
movie.
The point is if you are accustomed to winning
all the time against AI once you 'get to know
the interface' you won't be nearly as
successful this time. Unlike many other games,
defeating the AI requires time-tested real
world tactics, rather than planning for the
expected.
I have seen some players complain that the AI's
strategy on Attack or Advance missions to be
"hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle." I
couldn't disagree more. The center of the map,
say the ten hexes to either north or south of
dead center, will nearly always have some enemy
units assaulting through it. However, the AI is
capable of strengthening the flanks and
sustaining pincer movements. If you are finding
the enemy's tactics predictable, its probably
you've been fighting the same enemy too long.
Attack planning is factored for national
characteristics and force mixes. The Russians,
now they do come right up the middle. The
Germans, well, they tend to organize combat
teams to head for all the objectives
simultaneously, with some teams stronger than
others. The Japanese tend to assault in waves:
the first wave dies, but reveals your
positions; the second wave dies but weakens
you; the third wave, if it doesn't die, kills
you instead.
One major weakness of the AI is the placement
of units on defend or delay missions. There
will almost always be some units placed
directly on or near the objective hexes. This
knowledge gives human players and advantage
when planning pre-battle bombardments and air
strikes. On one occasion, in Poland, my
pre-battle bombardment and Heinkel air strikes
were so effective that two objectives were
completely abandoned by enemy forces on the
first turn of the scenario. Don't hesitate to
use this knowledge to your advantage.
Correspondingly, the AI tends to allocate
preparation bombardments either around the
objective hexes, or to lay smoke along the
intended lines of advance. In the former case,
you will have the advantage of taking
relatively few casualties from the preparatory
bombardment because you had the wisdom not to
concentrate your forces around the objective
hexes. In the latter, the smoke screens signal
the course that advancing enemy forces will
take, allowing you to do some repositioning,
range-setting or other adjustments to cause
maximum damage to the enemy.
A last glaring weakness of the AI has to do
with the movement of forces vis-a-vis the
objectives. Enemy groups which take objectives
nearly always head for the next nearest
objective. Once a given objective is taken, all
units which were heading for it immediately
turn and head for the next nearest one. This
makes it somewhat easy to plan an ambush for
them. This is also why the tactic of leaving
one objective undefended can be so effective.
However, it doesn't always work as planned. If
a group is dispersed and heading for an
objective from an indirect path (that is,
oblique to the objective), the objective hexes
may be occupied by some fast moving elements
before the rest get there. At the instant all
objective hexes targeted by the moving group
are occupied, they will all turn and head for
the next one. If the leading elements are 10 or
20 hexes ahead of the main force, the path they
take to the next one may be unpredictable from
a planning standpoint. Of course, you can
always place some units there to slow up the
lead elements so everyone arrives at more or
less the same time, so your pre-positioned
ambushers will still have a purpose in life.
Section 26 - Nationalities
The Germans are the dominant army in the game.
By and large, the Germans can accomplish more
with less resources than any other army. The
reason for this is simple, moderate to
excellent equipment combined with the best
overall experience, reaction and leadership
ratings of any army.
Playing the Germans, however, is no cakewalk
(at least most of the time). Assuming you are
playing a long campaign, in the early stages of
the war you have two handicaps : 1) you need to
take as little casualties as possible and 2)
their tanks are relatively inferior to those
fielded by their enemies. The Germans
compensated for their inferior tanks with their
excellent tactics and efficiency, but this is
largely a matter of tactical command ability.
That is, it's up to you to use what you have
wisely and effectively.
In the later stages of the war, the Germans had
much better equipment, but by that time they
were badly outnumbered most of the time. You
will have the same problem. You will begin to
notice two things, the amount of points you get
for support starts to drop in 1943 and the
quality of replacements will start to fall
also, though not as dramatically until 1944.
This is when all the lives you saved in the
early years will make the difference. Arriving
in the late years with a highly experienced
force will make the later battles a little
easier.
One final word about the Germans:
Eighty-eights. These awesome weapons can kill
tanks at long ranges better than any other
crew-served weapon in the game. Just a section
or two can make a huge difference in the
outcome of a battle. Actually, they kill
infantry better than anything else too
(including artillery) because of their range
and accuracy.
The British are a good match for any army.
There is no lack of support points for the
British in all but the very early stages of the
war, and their quality ratings are first-class.
Their equipment is generally good, but tactics
need to be reflective it's strength and
limitations.
In the early stages of the war, playing the
British is harder than you might expect. The
main reason for this is the lack of any
dominating anti-tank weaponry. While there
doesn't appear to be a problem dealing with the
Italians, their 2-Pounder gun can penetrate
German tanks only at relatively close ranges.
Moreover, the British have a problem defeating
anti-tank elements of enemy armies, because
most of their tanks have to close within 4
hexes in order to fire their machine guns.
Their main gun, the 2-Pounder, can't even fire
at infantry units at all (they have no HE
rounds). Thus, whether on attack or defense,
British tanks will often operate with infantry
close by, to deal with other infantry and
crew-served weapons. When they become
available, always buy 1 or 2 sections of the
Close Support tanks, the Crusader-CS and
Matilda-CS, to alleviate the problem of dealing
with enemy troops at long range.
In the later stages of the war, the British
finally get some good tanks from the Americans,
and the guns on British-made tanks get upgraded
to the 6-Pounder, which can fire at both
infantry and tanks at longer ranges. Support
point totals continue to rise, and airpower is
available frequently. The only thing to watch
out for at this point are, of course, heavy
German tanks, and the low quality of your
replacements. You will not be able to suffer
heavy casualties battle after battle and expect
your replacement troops to perform up to
standard. So, be careful with your loss rates
(as you should always be, anyway).
The Russians start off the war pretty badly,
but they finish off with a big bang. By the end
of the war, it's the Russians with the great
tanks and massive artillery, and it's the
Russians who will be attacking most of the
time. In the early years, the Russians suffer
from extremely poor quality equipment and
general leadership and experience ratings.
Often, just a few key losses will send their
whole force reeling in retreat. Interestingly,
though they rout fairly easily, routing Russian
infantry is more apt to turn around, fire
and/or assault if you move next to them than
most other nationalities. In the newer versions
of the game, each Russian infantry squad has 13
men, not 10 as in most other armies, making
them just a little harder to kill off.
After you plough through hundreds of BT-5's and
T-26's, the Russians start getting some really
good armor. If you're Russian, the biggest
threat to your predominate armor in the late
1941-late 1942 period is German infantry and
the unexpected anti-tank gun. If you're German,
about the only way to stop a Russian attack is
with the venerable 88s or by some really
desperate maneuvering with your tanks. Airpower
can help too, but the larger Russian tanks can
take a direct hit even from a 500lb bomb
without so much as a mussed 'do. For the
German, combined arms is a necessity during
this period. The T-34's are vulnerable to rear
hits at close range, and of course to top hits
if you have the courage to stand on a crest and
hit shoot at them long enough for a top hit to
happen. The hardest nut to crack are the KV
class tanks, named after Klimenti Voroshilov,
the top Soviet General who, ironically, was
completely discredited by Stalin for the poor
performance of the Red Army in Finland in
1939-40, before the Germans launched
Barbarossa. The KV tanks are much better than
their namesake. Even 88s have a problem with
them. The best you can do is hope for an
immobilization hit. If you can afford it,
another way of dealing with these huge hunks of
Russian metal is to buy an Engineer platoon and
place them in spots where you think the enemy
will go. In fact, 88s work best in combination
with the Engineer tactics since the Russian
tanks will spend most of their shots dealing
with the nearby infantry threat rather than
sending your gun chassis spiralling into the
air. You'll need to time your gun's entry into
the fray for about the same turn as the enemy
hits your Engineer line.
Later in the war, the Russians will have plenty
of support in the form of devastating airpower,
plentiful artillery and rocket batteries, and
excellent tanks. Though lack of good experience
and leadership ratings continue to be a problem
even to 1943, the declining quality of the
Germans more than makes up for this deficiency.
The Russians tend to attack in giant waves.
Even if you are playing the Russians, this is a
fairly good tactic since it will compensate to
some extent for your relatively weak leadership
and morale factors. Russian equipment, while
good, is still not as good as the Tiger or
Panther tank for example, but chances are
you'll have many more tanks than the enemy.
You'll be able to afford to lose a few to get
close enough to blast the Germans all the way
to France if you have to.
Section 27 - Marines at War
To anyone who has played the Marines in the
Pacific in this game, you know what I mean when
I say that those Japanese are vicious,
tenacious, well, er, you know what I mean. I'll
never forget my first encounter with the
Japanese. I'd already wiped out about a dozen
squads and thought the rest of the battle would
just be dealing with some isolated attack by
some guys who hadn't quite 'gotten the word.'
My chain of bunkers was still intact and
everything! But they just kept coming and
coming, right into the center of my position.
It was all I could do just to get out!
Dealing with the Japanese requires no subtlety
whatsoever, just lots and lots of heavy
firepower. These guys just don't give up. Right
up until you eliminate the last platoon, you'll
think you are under heavy attack from all
directions. If you have to attack their
positions, which I dread, lots of tanks with
infantry squads riding are essential.
The main difference in this theatre is that the
Japanese are extremely hard to detect, and they
do not suffer from morale effects hardly at
all. Even if they do, you can be sure that
they'll turn around and continue to give you a
problem to the last man. Though they do not
surrender, they are vulnerable to suppression
and this is a key point in your tactics. Your
forces will wind up being in more concentrated
groups than in other theatres because once you
encounter the enemy, you will need every ounce
of gunpowder you can muster, in whatever form
you can throw at them, just to stay alive. Your
core forces will probably greatly benefit from
Flame Tanks, since these marshmallow roasters
can put whole squads to the infernal reaches
with one or two shots. On the attack, having
some snipers or Rangers out in front will get
the Japanese to give up the ghost, and if you
have a couple of Sherman Flames with Engineer
riders right behind, you can just blow(torch)
your way right past them.
In nearly every scenario, the Japanese will
have their full complement of 48 units, so be
prepared for long battles. Though it is usually
difficult, avoiding their infantry means that
your men can make it to the objectives that
much quicker, but since they don't consider
force morale, be prepared for a massive counter
attack lasting almost to the last turn. The
good news is that the Japanese have very poor
anti-tank capability and a very poor tank
force. But, with infantry like this, who needs
tanks?
Section 28 - The Wehrmacht in Europe
[to be completed in a future version]
Section 29 - The British in North Africa
This is a popular subject for campaign since,
basically, it was the only front for the forces
of Britain and, later, the Allies for about two
and a half years. The exploits of Rommel are
well known, and to some, the process of
stopping the Deutschland Afrika Korps holds a
mystifying fascination. After all, who knows
how the war may have turned out if German
troops had managed to reach the Suez Canal?
The British face some particular problems on
this front. Here, even the Italian forces can
be troublesome. The lack of a good, long-range
anti-tank capability is especially exposed on
these flat, sandy expanses. The 2-Pounder gun
is the main anti-tank armament until mid-1942,
and this weapon is very ineffective against
German tanks unless they are less than 500
yards away. On the other hand, you cannot let
the Panzers get too close, lest they spot you
and shoot to kill. Only by using higher
elevations and/or flank shots do the British
troops have any hope of stopping the German
Panzers. Finally, the British will often be
grossly outnumbered in tanks and support units,
again until about mid-1942.
Many a player has found themselves in 1941
suffering defeat after defeat against German
forces, and usually, but not always, getting a
victory against the Italians only at some cost.
There are a few things you can do to rectify
this situation.
First, know your limits. Don't position your
forces to duke it out with the Germans at long
ranges. They will win. If you are firing at the
Panzers at ranges of greater than 500 yards,
chances are slim that you will even hit them,
much less penetrate. On defense, position your
forces instead for flank shots, and let the
enemy take one or two objectives so that you
will know where they will generally go on the
map (they have to take objectives).
Attacking German positions is a nearly
insoluble problem, especially if the Germans
have 88s. You simply will not be able to attack
frontally unless you have plenty of artillery
and plenty of smoke (which you usually won't).
Even British airpower is woefully ineffective
in the early years, since there is not much of
it and the Hurricane IIs carry only one 500lb
bomb. Instead, try for flank attacks using any
intervening terrain you can for cover
(especially from those dreaded 88s). Use smoke
to cover your flank.
Another problem with the British tanks in the
early years is lack of any anti-infantry shell
for their guns. If you are approaching a
position bristling with anti-tank guns, you
will be sorely disappointed to discover that
your tanks have to close within 4 or 5 hexes to
use their machine gun, instead of simply
popping off a few main gun rounds. This is even
more frustrating if you have already defended
against the Germans, who do have an HE round,
and who most likely were able to deal with your
anti-tank guns rather easily. Most of the time,
your tanks will never get close enough to such
a position. The solution is to have infantry in
front of the tanks, dropping smoke and
approaching the positions in bounds. When they
get to within 10 hexes, you can start hitting
them with the Squad LMG, 2 inch mortar (if they
are Heavy Weapons squads), and your rifles.
Even if you don't kill anybody, remember that
the gunners are becoming progressively
suppressed and will be less accurate. When you
get Combat support tanks (CS-tanks), buy a
section or two. These babys can fire HE at
anti-tank positions, and they can also fire
smoke rounds at a distance, which is very handy
for blinding that 88 position which has already
capped a couple of your tanks. The AI, though,
treats CS-tanks as a priority target (now there
is some good programming!), so try not to get
too close and stay out of sight as much as
possible.
Later in the war, the Grant and Churchill tanks
appear, and you will immediately notice a
difference if you get some. These tanks have a
built-in, hull-mounted anti-infantry gun on the
order of 75mm, which has also been known to
kill as many or more tanks than the main,
turret-mounted gun! Upgrade some of the tanks
in your core force to one or the other of these
types as soon as possible. A few months after
you get this upgrade, you might notice that the
German tanks also seem harder to kill and are
more effective at killing your tanks. This is
because they get the Panzer IIIh and IIIj
models. The J mounts a 50L60 gun, which is
quite deadly against your more thinly armored
tanks, and also very good at killing the
heavier armored tanks like the Churchill. Keep
them at least 10 or more hexes away from your
front or you'll start to see your tanks explode
like Roman candles on the Fourth of July. In
1943 they get Tigers and Panthers, which no
Allied tank was able to deal with reliably to
the end of the war. By then however, you should
be 'Out of Africa' and supported by plenty of
airpower and new-fangled tank destroyers.
One final word about the Italians in North
Africa. When playing the British, one tends to
discount them for obvious historical reasons.
Don't. Their tanks aren't all that good but
they will have more than you do. One
particularly annoying little vehicle in the
early years is the CV-33, which is a tiny
tankette mouting machine guns. These
insect-like excuses for a real tank will roam
all over the battlefield, usually in front of
the main Italian force. The blood-boiling
aspect of these things is that at something
like 4 hexes (200 yards!), you get an
astounding sure-to-kill hit probability of
about 6 percent! The small size of these
mosquitos makes it hard to hit them, and your
infantry is very vulnerable to their fire. I
like to concentrate about half my anti-tank
fire on these guys, just to protect my
infantry, while the other half hits their
tanks. (By the way, the size factor is a
relevant consideration when you are upgrading
your own tanks. All things being equal, choose
the smaller size tank -- it will survive
longer).
Yet another Italian gem is the Semovente 90. To
the British player, these vehicles are about as
hard to kill as the CV-33, except that they
mount a 90 millimeter AA gun. That's right, I
said a NINTEY MILLIMETER!!! If they hit your
tanks, your tanks start a-smokin'. If they hit
your infantry, they start a-fallin'. And all at
long ranges! I classify these as the highest
priority target when I see them. They are at
least vulnerable to any type of gun and to
artillery, but most kills come from direct
fire. Fortunately, you won't have to deal with
the Semovente until early 1942 (the year before
the year the Italians surrender ).
Section 30 - The American Army in Europe
"We're not the American Army, we're just a
private enterprise operation"
Kelly,
From the movie "Kelly's Heroes"
when challenged by the local
German / SS bad guy.
And that pretty much sums up the whole American
strategy. The Americans spent about five times
as much money on the war effort than any of
their opponents, and wound up with fewer
casualties and the most heavily-laden supply
train of any major army in the world up to that
time. The Germans referred to the American
tactics as the tactics of "materielschlagt" or
material battle, in which the Americans relied
on prodigious amounts of indirect fire from
artillery and airplanes to cause casualties
among them, rather than old-fashioned military
ardor, elan, leadership and raw courage. This
is of course not to say that the Americans were
lacking in these things, just that they for the
most part, and wisely, wished to spare the
lives of their soldiers and would much prefer
to kill the enemy with low-risk and
low-casualty methods rather than, say the
German or Russian way, of disregarding the cost
of life in attaining tactical military goals.
Steel Panthers reflects this aspect of the real
war. The Americans are supposed to have the
highest number of support points of any army
for each mission, and artillery and aircraft
are usually in good supply. On the other hand,
particularly in the early war, the Americans
are very easy to suppress and cause to rout.
However, if you start out as the Americans in a
Long Campaign early in the war, say in
December, 1941, you might find that the going
is pretty tough at first. Departing from my
ordinary style here, I let you hear what some
other players have had to say on this subject :
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>Subj: Re:AI overbias
Date: 96-01-16 01:12:03 EST
From: WBKOly
I haven't read all the following messages on
this subject yet, so forgive me if someone else
has already made this point, but i also suffer
from frustration when playing an American
campaign.
>Subj: G.I. hotshots sought
Date: 96-01-16 15:45:31 EST
From: AlKharizm
So, who has been winning with the Amis in the
long campaign? We the suffering would like to
hear from you, and this should be included in
the upcoming FAQ release. I've read the other
posts on the subject here--some nice pointers.
But we'd all like to hear of the best US vs.
German record in a long campaign on the "hard"
setting, and then hear how it was done. It's
much more challenging than playing as German or
Russian.
See, i came out of two long campaigns with all
decisive victories on the Eastern Front with
green troops on "hard" setting. i've played
Panzerblitz and ASL since nine years old. But i
am GETTING THRASHED as the U.S. player in the
long campaign vs. krauts. My engineers (green)
and Stuarts were blown to bits, rolled over,
and spat upon by the Afrika Korps near Fondouk.
ok, fine...they had Tigers and plenty of arty.
best thing to do was run. I've managed draws at
Syracuse and Salerno. But at Salerno, the
krauts had more than two dozen tanks, and
plenty of infantry. they're getting better buys
for their construction points by quite a
margin. Well, i love a good challenge, and this
is it. Time to upgrade my skills. Help!
>Subj: Re:Getting crushed!!!
Date: 96-01-16 19:42:31 EST
From: RAGNAR8224
I'm a far cry from a hot shot but I'm finally
starting to see some moderate success with my
Americans against Germans in the long campaign.
(Of course I've lost 5 battles because
everything I do is an amphi assault and I
started out in the water without landing craft
- didn't take casualities anyway).These are
some general things that have work for me.
From a game standpoint I've had to run to the
Pacific theatre to win easier victories (the
Japanese have nasty infantry but no armor
usually) to rebuild before returning to Europe.
I also buy mechanized infantry so I can
sacrifice the half tracks to get close or team
up 8 of them to machine gun a german tank into
retreating. In the desert I still get my butt
kicked, but in other terrain if I run my tanks
in to basically point blank range I score
kills. The tricky part is getting that close.
This usually involves running around the map to
attack from the least likely direction. The AI
germans will often sit still elsewhere while I
overrun one victory area. Wolverines are a bit
fragile but in the first half of the war they
are the only thing I could hurt Panthers with.
The AA halftrack is actually handy to have
around for running off infantry but if a tank
gets it sighted it's history. Lately I've been
able to take advantage of the fact that the
German AI units will attack to retake a victory
area near the last 5 turns or so. Then the
engineers can hide and try to jump them.
(Engineers are the only infantry unit I bother
with these days). I'll have to check on my
current long campaign attempt, I might still be
on the moderate difficulty setting.8 in guns
from cruisers are really cool when available.
They have scored the only indirect arty kills
on enemy tanks that I have had.
Bottom line is I take heavy casualties, many of
them coming right at the end of the scenario in
the German counter attacks. I'd like to hear
what works (or not) for others so I can send a
few more boys home walking rather than laying
down.
------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
---------------------
Other players have made similar "complaints."
While I haven't played the Americans in a Long
Campaign myself (in Europe), it would seem from
the above that unless the American forces have
tremendous numerical superiority early on, they
will have a difficult time prevailing against
German forces which include heavy armor. This
is about right, as I read the historical
situation. Every time the Americans were faced
with superior numbers of German troops, even
into 1944, they had a very hard time and had to
rely on airpower and artillery to even the
score. Remove airpower from the equation, and
you had things like Kasserine. It wasn't until
the Bulge campaign that the Americans could
engage the Germans in situations of numerical
inferiority without air support and
nevertheless prevail.
If you want to play the Americans and plan to
start in the earlier phases of the war, just
being aware of the inability of your forces to
deal with the Germans may save you some lives
and frustration. Instead of relying on tanks,
artillery and airpower, or other weapons of
offense, you may want to invest heavily in a
whole bunch of defensive weaponry such as
AT-guns, mines, pillboxes and bunkers for
support when on defense. If you are on the
attack, you'll need plenty of tanks, artillery
and airpower, but if you don't have enough keep
your goals limited and above all be prepared
for the German counterattacks.
Section 31 - Questions of Morale
[to be completed in a future version]
Section 32 - Commander's Log (Testimonials)
Introduction
There is no substitute for combat experience.
Since Steel Panthers is just a game, that is
something SSI doesn't include in the box.
However, what we can do in this Primer is give
you a little taste of how some real battles (in
Steel Panthers) went from the perspective of
the guys that had to do the job on the ground
which, to you, look like cool little green,
brown or gray graphics representing a single
soldier. Future versions will include screen
shots of a turn of the game the subject of the
testimonials. If you would like to submit a
testimonial, please do so in ASCII format, and
include either a screen shot or a save game
file of the turn you want made into a screen
shot, with a description of the events
happening during that turn and how they relate
to the testimonial.
Sergeant Mickey Anderson's log. 323 Combat
Engineers.
by Frank Radoslovich
[FrankRado@aol.com]
Lieutenant Morgan deployed our squad
behind a small rise, and the whole platoon dug
in side-by-side. The sand was hard and the
ground was rocky, so it was tough going for a
while. However, the weather was crisp and cool,
and I could have sworn there was an ocean
breeze, although we were miles from the ocean.
The guys had all grown used to the idea
that it would be hot all the time, like some
French Legionnaire movie, and it had been hot
sometimes, but not today.
We looked out over the rise. About a
mile away, across flat desert, was a small
hill, and we had a strong hunch that the
Germans were on it, although we hadn't been
told that yet. Division wanted the hill, and
two others nearby, to sight artillery. Most of
the squad was really pissed off at the idea
that we'd have to walk across that flat desert,
but we were
Engineers, and we knew when the assault came we
had to go in front to look for mines. We
couldn't see many places to hide, just a few
scrubs and some small dips in the ground. The
rest of the company was a couple hundred yards
to the rear with some tanks, and would follow
us in once we jumped off.
I could hear the tanks moving around
back where the company was, and they were
kicking lots of dust into the air. I knew the
Germans could see that, and were probably
sighting their 88s right on us. The Lieutenant
had told me that Division had given us a lot of
artillery, so we were going to plaster that
hill for awhile before we went over. While
waiting around, I ate. I wasn't brave or
anything, and my stomach was nervous and upset
like the other guys, but I still felt like
eating. It was crazy. So I had some chocolate
and hoped my hole was big enough. The Germans
probably had artillery, too. This was probably
the tenth damn hole I had dug in 3 days, and I
hadn't been shot at yet. None of us had, if you
don't count the few potshots the French took at
us on the beaches. Cripes, their resistance was
a rumor.
The Artillery was set to go in a few
minutes, and I told the guys to hunker down in
case some of the rounds were too short or in
case the Krauts threw something back at us.
Most of these guys hadn't even heard a lot of
artillery going off at once before. They'd get
a show. I was on the landing ships, and I
remember how loud the battle wagons were. I
remember thinking that I probably wouldn't hear
the guns, because they were far in our rear. I
crapped my pants just hearing the whining of
the rounds.
The basic plan, near as I could figure,
was to plaster the hell out of the little hill
with artillery, and run like hell. We were
supposed to stop about a thousand yards from
their lines and search for mines, and cut a
path through for the Rifle Company bringing up
the rear. Its at that point I knew I would get
real scared, because we were pretty and bare at
that time, mostly bare, and the Germans could
cut us up pretty bad.
Hopefully, the artillery would do what it was
told and fire a lot of smoke rounds so the
Germans would not see us.
[more on plan]
At about 0700 our guns opened up, mostly
155s and mortars. Our objective disappeared in
a cloud of smoke. Round after round hit the
hill. Some of the guys looked out of their
holes, fascinated by the sight. I told them to
keep their heads down. One of the shells must
have hit some ammo, because a small ball of
orange flame flashed for an instant on the
hill. I borrowed the LT's glasses, but I
couldn't see much. But at least I knew they
were up there waiting for us.
Suddenly about a hundred guys screamed
Incoming! and with a tremendous screech we were
clobbered by an enemy barrage. Most of the
rounds landed to our rear where the Rifle
Company was dug in. Although we were most
exposed, the rounds didn't hit us. About a
hundred yards to our left there was a chorus of
screams followed one of the shell crashes. I
found out later that Sergeant Leonard from
North Carolina and his gun crew took a direct
hit, wiping them out to the man.
The artillery duel lasted about ten or
fifteen minutes. The German shells kept landing
behind us, and we kept clobbering their hill.
They were not really doing much to us, and we
just rode it out. A thought crossed my mind
that we probably were not doing much to the
Germans either, and they would just be sitting
there waiting for us when our shelling stopped.
Through all the shelling I heard the
loud drone of aircraft engines and looked up to
see a couple of our B-26s fly over my hole.
They dropped several bombs on the enemy hill.
The lieutenant looked over the hole and told me
he thought he saw German bunkers on the western
face, which means the bunkers would pointing
right at us.
Our artillery let up for a couple of
minutes. I knew this meant that we were getting
ready to move out. Lt. Morgan told me to get
ready, and I passed it down the men.
As I was standing and barking at the men, the
Germans got our range. One shell came down
about twenty yards from me, into the hole
occupied by Private Wright and Private Means.
Means began screaming and shouting and I ran
over them to shut him up. When I got there, I
saw that Private Wright had no head and no
right arm. I don't know how Means survived, but
I grabbed his arm and dragged him over to my
hole. I had to carry his weapons because he was
blubbering all over the place. When we got back
to the hole, the rest of the platoon had
already went over, and we had to sprint a few
yards to catch up. Major Navarro had come down
to our position, and was cursing a blue storm
to get us moving. Means seemed to pull himself
together fine, but he looked all gray and
stupid, which is not a good state to be in when
you got to look for mines.
While pulling Means along I saw the rest
of the company about two hundred yards behind
us coming out of their holes and stepping over
our hill, with about a half a dozen tanks and
tank destroyers. At that moment, I saw the
German shells come down on what I later found
out was Third Platoon. I saw one round hit and
about five guys disappear
in a cloud of smoke and body parts. Most of the
shells were landing harmlessly to the left
flank of the company line, but Third Platoon
probably lost about eight men. I saw a couple
other guys stay to tend the wounded. I turned
around and pressed on. We had a fine view
of our own shells landing on the German
position, but we had no idea if they were
hitting anything. The Lieutenant was straining
his eyes through his glasses, and saying over
and over, "Get that damn bunker, get that damn
bunker".
The mortars and tanks began to pump
smoke rounds around the enemy hill. The
Lieutenant was shouting at everyone to spread
out, and we began moving off to the left to
move ourselves away from second and third
squad, who were bunching up too much. The
Lieutenant went over there and screamed at the
squad leaders, who began to spread out.
We were string out in an irregular line about
two hundred yards wide, about thirty of us. We
would have to clear and mark paths for the
tanks through any mines we saw. The tanks, who
were now only about fifty yards or so behind
us, were to follow us slowly and were going to
give us cover fire. I felt better knowing they
were there. I looked back
at one of the Shermans, and the commander must
have read my mind, because he gave me a "thumbs
up" sign, which I returned. As I looked, I
could see a couple of shells hit Major
Navarro's position, and the company HQ went to
ground. One of our SP howitzers also got hit,
and I could see the crew getting out and what
must have been the Commander staring at his
treads. He appeared to be cursing a blue storm,
too. In fact, everyone seemed to be cursing
everything.
We had advanced about 500 yards. The
Germans shells kept coming, and kept landing to
the rear. The German guns were working over the
Rifle Company, and I got worried that they
might pin them all down on this plain and pick
them off one by one, and leave us Engineers
without support. The HQ got hit again, and 1st
Platoon looked like they were taking losses,
too. I could see bodies falling or blowing
apart, and medics running among the wounded.
The shells
weren't hitting our platoon or the other
engineers. They just kept falling behind us and
hitting the Rifle Company.
There was a small ridge ahead which would
afford us some cover if we needed it. The
objective was still obscured by clouds and
about 800 yards to our front. The tanks had
must have been spotted because they rapidly
began firing towards another hill about a
thousand yards to our left. I saw a white flash
which appeared to be return fire from
a German position, but I couldn't tell what was
firing. The tanks were very concerned and
firing rapidly and moving ahead in fits and
starts. An M-10 must have suffered a close call
because it started to move back and forth and
twisting rapidly, as if to present a difficult
target. Meanwhile, another B-26 showed up and
dropped its bombs on our objective, which
caused a massive explosion which shot debris a
hundred feet in the air, followed by an orange
plume of flame.
We still had not seen any mines.
We got to the ridge and we all paused to
regroup. Most of the Rifle Company had slipped
though the German artillery, and the shells
were falling behind them. Our tanks kept
exchanging fire with some unknown enemy
position, and I heard a large WHANG! of a
German round hitting one of the Shermans, which
stopped suddenly, kicking up a great volume of
dust as it did so. Our smoke rounds were
landing everywhere, and there was a thick
curtain of smoke to our front, about 150 yards
away. The Lieutenant screamed at everyone to
keep moving.
We got up and sprinted over the ridge.
The German artillery got our range again, and a
few rounds landed right along our line, but no
one was injured. However, I learned later that
3rd Platon, 2nd squad was all but wiped out by
this barrage. We ran into the smoke cover, and
I knew we were only a few hundred yards from
our objective. Again, no mines. But we couldn't
see too far in the smoke. We knew the Germans
were there, however.
We went forward for about fifty more
yards when Merski in 3d Squad off to our right
screamed "Mines!" At that moment Means also
noticed mines, and the whole platoon froze. The
Germans had laid strong barrier mines along our
front. We immediately began clearing
them away, while the tanks crawled up behind
us. I was scared that the tanks would just roll
right over us in the smoke, but I dispatched
Corporal Algini and Pvt Blanchard to slow them
up. The rest of the Rifle Company bunched up
behind us, and their officers were yelling at
the riflemen, telling them to stay down and
keep their intervals. The German artillery had
found us, and I knew a rain of shells would
come down on us and probably kill us all. I saw
Major Navarro and what was left of Company HQ
crammed on a jeep, and the Major began to walk
up and down the line shouting obscenities at
the greenhorns and commanding them to sit tight
and ride it out while we cleared the mines.
Seconds later, the jeep was blown to
smithereens by a German gun position, but I
couldn't see where it came from.
We worked fast in clearing the mines.
Second squad managed to cut a path pretty
quick, but shells began falling all around my
squad, so we were having difficulty.
I knew a few more guys got hit, because I heard
their screams behind me. Our Medic, Ramirez,
went to the rear to the help with the wounded,
and he told me he'd come right back, but I
barely heard it. An M-10 was idling behind
us, and the commander was shouting at us to
hurry up, or we all be killed on this spot. I
flipped him the bird.
The Lieutenant said "We gotta get
moving sergeant. 2d Squad's already through.
Lets move it". I glanced over to my right, and
I saw second squad move forward, waiving the
infantry to follow. We were slower going
because of the artillery. The tanks and
riflemen behind us were yelling at us at the
top of their lungs.
A long burst of machine gun fire
erupted about a 100 yards to our right, and
slashes of tracer fire began to come from the
hill. It looked as though 2d squad was taking
fire, and the riflemen following behind them
all went to the ground, and it seemed like none
of them were firing their weapons. A small
sergeant was bravely standing up
and barking orders at the terrified men,
telling them to "shoot your
weapons and get those ." but most of
the men were hugging their weapons and not
firing a shot. The sergeant began to open up
with his Thompson, and a few took his lead and
began shooting at the tracer fire. Through the
smoke it looked like several men were hit, and
the tracer fire kept coming, kicking up sand
wisps and causing a few guys to bury themselves
in the sand like a bunch of halibuts.
We finally cut a path through, and
frantically I waived a Sherman forward, and it
picked up speed and drove right through our
position, nearly clobbering Blanchard. The M-10
also sped by, followed by an M7 Priest, the
latter of which went off the path we cleared,
and immediately hit a mine, blowing pieces of
its track up into the air and
lurching to a noisy halt. A burst of machine
gun fire opened up from an enemy bunker, and I
could hear the bullets smack a against the
armor of the Sherman. The commander hastily
dropped back in the turret, closing his hatch
with a loud clang.
An German anti-tank gun opened up from
somewhere, and there was a loud WHANG sound
again as a round bounced off the Sherman.. Had
we lead the way, we would have been creamed.
Tracer fire began to zip through our squad, and
we crawled forward towards the tank. A rifle
platoon followed close to our rear, and a few
men began firing their rifles, although I still
could not see anything to shoot at.
The Sherman fired a round, but I now
saw that there were a line of German bunkers
about 100 yards in front of us, and it looked
like about three machine guns and three
anti-tank guns all opened up at the Sherman,
and two anti-tank shells hit it. The Sherman
stopped dead in its tracks, but it didn't look
damaged. I yelled "SMOKE!" and a couple
of our squad began to pop smoke grenades to
screen us from the bunkers. Then there was a
tremendous explosion, and another tank to our
right blew up, its turret doing spins in mid
air. By some miracle, I saw a tanker climb out
of the hole where the turret was, and he begin
running wildly toward the rear, his left boot
on fire. However, three
other tanks and a halftrack drove right past
the wreck and roared up the hill and around the
left flank of the German bunker line. The tanks
began to slam rounds into the German bunkers at
point blank range, and the halftrack let them
have it with its quad-mounted 50-cals. Fire
from the bunkers ceased. Another quad-50 pulled
up about 30 yards way from me, and began raking
the enemy positions ahead of our squad with
heavy machine gun fire. The M-10 also began
firing rounds at the German bunkers. Through
the wild noise the Lieutenant was ordering us
to prep our demo charges and get ready to move.
The German artillery then hit us with
vengeance, falling all along the base of the
hill where most of the Company and us Engineers
were pinned down.
Several rounds fell among third squad -- and no
one survived. The whole squad just evaporated.
Second squad also got hit severely, and it
looked like they only had about three men who
could stand. There were now probably about a
dozen effectives left in our platoon:
The rest were obliterated or maimed by the
artillery.
Through the smoke ahead and I saw a about
twenty Germans fleeing from the tank onslaught.
They were outflanked by the tankers, and were
running away right along the front of our
position along the crest of the hill, and could
be seen like silhouettes or ducks at a carnival
shooting gallery. The tanks let them have it
with their machineguns
and enemy bodies fell like like shirts blown
from a clothesline. A few put there hands up
and one of the tankers gestured to them to walk
to the rear, and the prisoners walked right
past me, looking like sheepish schoolboys with
their hands on their helmets. Means yelled
"Look!" and pointed to my left, and I saw two
more Germans fleeing down
the hill about 80 yards away. We opened up
with our rifles and one fell hard, never to get
up. The other made it a few more yards, but
one of the tanks got him with a long stream of
50 caliber fire.
When the rest of the company saw that the
Germans were running, they gave a tremendous
shout and charged up the hill. Our tanks were
already there waiting for us, exchanging fire
with a German gun position to the North. The
hill was ours, at the cost of most of my
platoon, and about 80 other men who made that
deadly walk in Farouk.
However, this particular hill was now ours.
Postscript :
The log ends here. However, reports indicated
that just after occupying the hill, Anderson
and the other Americans came under a heavy
counter-attack by a platoon of Stug-IIIs and
other German forces. The Americans were forced
off the hill with heavy casualties, including
the loss of many of the remaining American
tanks. Sgt Anderson is missing and presumed
dead. (Frank Radoslovich)
Log of Sgt James Thatcher Sparks,
1st Coldstream Guards Battalion
by Todd David Brady (EMurrow1@aol.com)
Cassino, May, 1944
Cassino. We'd all grown to dislike the place.
In fact, none of us cared too much for all of
Italy at this point. At least the weather was
improving, indeed, it was a bit hot for some of
the lads who'd joined up since we'd come over
to Macaroni Land from the Island in September.
The word had come down that we were to attack
once again. Attack again that place which had
become synonymous with fortress, with immovable
object, with impregnable. The German
propagandists were alive with tawdry criticisms
of our inability to break their line. What the
jolly rogers back home in England and Scotland
didn't know was that things were much worse
than that. Only a month ago, one of our own
Guards battalions had been given an attack
order, but the jerrys launched an immediate
counter-attack and surrounded them. I'd heard
some of them, those that had survived, talk
about how they'd started out along a tree-lined
road, and within minutes half a dozen Panthers
on each side had them pinned down, while their
infantrymen kept pushing on down the road
against them. The Panthers crossed a stream and
took the village they'd started from. It was
only with some difficulty that other elements
of the Regiment had gotten them out. Most of
the poor boys needed a bit of rest after that.
So today came another attack order. We wondered
amongst ourselves what the jerrys had in store
for us this time. Colonel FitzGibbon, however,
exuded confidence in the days before. Our
battalion would not get stuck on some pitiful
Italian road, he said. We would go forward in
the grand style, and drive them once and for
all away from that dreadful monastery. Indeed,
he said, our whole force would be attacking all
along the line, and we were to play a critical
part in the whole operation. Not only our own
countrymen, but all the Allied armies in Italy
would be depending on how our battalion
performed today.
We marvelled too at the equipment which seemed
to be ready for us. Our two engineer sections
were given the new Kangaroo, which was an
infantry carrier like our Bren Carrier but
which was really just a Sherman without a
turret, and therefore very well armored.
Division, per course, allotted the attack force
our usual, dedicated heavy tank platoon and
infantry-tank support platoon (Churchill IVs
and Valentine XIs, respectively). They added
this time a Sherman platoon, which we in the
ranks could not but appreciate. With the
weather clearing, we were also promised several
airstrikes, though we'd learned not to depend
on this sort of thing too heavily.
My task was the command of my tank, a Valentine
XI, part of the dedicated infantry-support tank
platoon for A Company. With all due modesty, I
had only previously been given the Battalion
Expert Badge, having received credit for over
50 kills with my vehicle. I'd been with the
Battalion since France, when the jerrys overran
the place, but that time and place was now only
a distant memory.
Colonel FitzGibbon, we called him Fitz for
short, divided our attack force into three
teams. The Northern Group would attempt to work
around the extreme northern edge of the enemy's
defenses, through rough terrain but devoid of
cover for the last 1000 meters. This group
would consist of the Commando platoon supported
by one section of Engineers in their new 'Roos.
The Centre group would consist of One Platoon,
a section of Engineers in 'Roos, and the Heavy
Tank platoon, and their job was to support the
Northern group and tie down any German fire
from the centre. The Southern Group, where I
was assigned, was strongest. In addition to my
tank platoon, we had the Shermans, and 2nd
Platoon mounted in BC's. We were to work our
way around the edge of the enemy's line and
then proceed along their flank to the centre,
where we would be aided and perhaps joined by
Centre Group. Then, whomever could continue
would aid and assist Northern Group if needed
to take the northern positions. Fitz wanted all
of our force active and engaging the enemy from
the start.
We moved into position just before dawn, every
Group behind some hill or treeline, out of
sight. At first light, we heard the sound of
planes, and to the surprise of some of us, it
turned out to be the air support we had been
promised! 4 Beaufighters came down to attack
the jerrys. We couldn't see what happened. We
heard a good deal of jerry AA fire, but we also
heard the distinctive blast of bombs. On the
radio, I heard the pilots chattering away with
Fitz, and he sounded a bit disappointed by
their reports. I kept this bit of news to
myself. Wouldn't want to upset the lads.
Eventually, the ADC radioed to my platoon, and
to me, that a bunker had been spotted on the
southern position. He continued by telling us
the pilots had spotted a couple of 20mm AA
positions in the centre (of no concern to us at
the moment), but that a good deal of MG fire
had been reported from approximately 1000
metres to our side of the jerry line. Not good
news at all. The ADC also told us that we were
to move out in a few minutes, as would everyone
else.
Number 2 platoon mounted the BC's and started
to roll out, just behind the Humbers, which I
of course forgot to mention earlier. Anyway, we
were very pleased indeed to have the
reconnaissance troop with us, since that would
lessen the possibilty that the nasty jerry
panzerfausts would be able to get close enough
for a shot or two. We moved out in bounds, each
platoon keeping close to whatever cover would
hide us from the main jerry line some 1800
metres to the west. Just ahead was a large hill
with, in typical Italian style, a sorrowful
village on the crest probably left over from
Roman times. The BC's went just south of the
hamlet while the
Shermans went directly in. There were no Itais
there anymore, they'd long since left for more
peaceable climes, also in typical Italian
style.
While we were enroute, we heard another wave of
our planes come in. This time it was a pair of
Typhoons. Above all the clatter our tin boxes
were making, we could still hear the whoosh of
their rockets firing. I didn't have the time to
hear Fitz conversing with the pilots at just
this moment, but I certainly didn't hear him
say "jolly good" as he was wont when one of our
RAF boys hit something of interest on the
ground. Nevertheless, I certainly hoped that
they were keeping the jerry's tea boiling hot.
Suddenly, the lads in the Shermans lost a
little composure on the radio. Some half-baked
jerrys had started firing at them, fortunately
with little effect. The silly buggers had just
started shooting at the first thing they saw
with the first weapon they could get their
slimy Hun hands on, which happened to be some
MG-34s. Number 2 platoon also came under light
MG fire from another position, but no one was
hurt, thank God. Leftenant Vincent was the
commander of our
Group, and he reacted to this news with the
calm determination of most of the officers of
our Regiment. He immediately ordered the
Shermans to continue firing and gain the
village, whilst 2 platoon was to dismount and
move from south to north into the village to
provide infantry support.
Within just a few minutes, we had spotted the
enemy positions, two of them, on the reverse
side of the slope. Sergeant Keyworth, of the
Sherman platoon, swung around one of the larger
buildings in the village to gain a better
firing position and ran straight into a squad
of jerry infantry. The Huns reacted quickly and
got off a panzerfaust shot, and Keyworth could
be heard yelling "bloody hell" for probably a
mile when the shot blew off his portside track.
The jerrys were quite sorry after that, of
course, since Keyworth is one man no one in the
Regiment likes to anger. He destroyed the
German half-track and sent a few Hun souls to
their ultimate destination, more out of his bad
disposition at that point than any sense of
duty. His mates in the other Shermans did the
same to another jerry position on the northern
side of the little hill.
2 platoon, the tommys coming up from the south,
had no trouble at all with the Germans nearby,
doing much the same as Keyworth's platoon. In
the end, three half-tracks were blown up and
the jerrys sent reeling. Other than Keyworth's
bad luck, no one had been hurt.
As for myself, I saw none of this good show. My
Valentine platoon was still clambering up the
eastern face of the hill, out of sight. The
terrain was very broken up and full of huge
boulders, making our passage a bit slow. By the
time we'd reached the village, the show was
nearly over, though we knew the jerry infantry
was just the otherside of some smoke grenades
they had thrown. Most probably, they didn't
want to invite us down for a chat. Leftenant
Vincent ordered
our group to extend an invitation to them.
Yet another jerry position opened up on
Keyworth's vehicle, changing his face from
bright red to lavender, as his crew swung the
turret around and poured fire into their
position. Actually, Keyworth couldn't see very
much, none of us could, but we had the jerry's
bearing, and that was enough. Vincent and I got
to the top of the hill, and he ordered my
vehicle to swing around to the north so as to
support Keyworth, while he ordered 2 platoon to
mount up and come up round the west face of the
hill with godspeed. While my gunner kept the
jerrys heads down, 2 platoon worked a marvel of
efficiency, riding in to the midst of the
Germans in their Brens, cutting them
down. A Humber or two came along for the ride,
lending their 15mm machinegun to the symphony.
Overhead now, we could hear another section of
Typhoons dive down, this time directly
attacking the AA positions in the jerry centre.
I heard Fitz over the radio say "jolly good
show" as both of the pilots reported direct
hits. And above all that came down our four and
a half inchers. Fitz was pounding the jerry
southern position for us, so that when we
finally swept up
these ragamuffins and proceeded thence, we'd
have an easier time of it. I overheard him
talking to Leftenant McEwen of Centre group,
apparently they'd found a jerry infantry
platoon north of
the road which was putting up a good fight in
which a few of our lads wouldn't see much more
of the war if it went on too long.
Vincent and I had a good view of the two-step
proceeding to our front, but it wasn't long
before we had a dozen German prisoners, and the
firing died down. Whether he knew it or not,
and of course he wouldn't tell, Vincent had
done an excellent job in this first little
brush with the jerrys, as we had suffered no
casualties and had only Keyworth's vehicle
corked up. We proceeded to reorganize ourselves
for the next big push. Vincent reported the
situation to Fitz, who said we'd done "a fine
bit."
Fitz said everything was going well, but that
Centre Group had been held up a bit by an
infantry platoon in a strong position. Just as
he was giving us a report, we heard yet more MG
fire to our
north. Vincent said that he had to investigate
the situation and would get back to the Colonel
presently. Sure enough another jerry platoon
was directly north of the Huns we had just
bagged. The jerrys had been watching Sgt
Ricketts squad, and had opened up from 100
metres. fortunately, only one man was injured.
Lt. Vincent asked me over to his tank to
discuss the situation. I dashed over, and he
quickly explained that it appeared that the
Germans had lined virtually the whole front of
our battalion
attack zone with infantry platoons in good
positions, but thatour boys would have no
trouble dealing with them, provided the tanks
closely supported the infantry. The problem was
that
Southern Group didn't have the time to waste
clearing the front, we had to get to the first
objective posthaste. I told him that we ought
to get Ricketts out of the spot he was in, and
that at any rate the next up jerry platoon
would give us something to think about if we
moved against the southern objective without
taking their accounts.
Vincent then ordered half the remaining
Shermans to move into position on the western
face of the hill and start firing on the bunker
which was some 1200 meters out. He then told me
to take the rest of the Shermans and most of my
platoon, and one squad from number 2 platoon to
direct our efforts north and get Ricketts out
of the jam. I dashed back to my tank, climbed
aboard and immediately informed the others of
our task. We moved out, and while I lent cover
fire to Sgt. Astin's Sherman, he took a direct
hit from another Panzerfaust shot, though his
tin can didn't seem to be affected. At any
rate, my little group destroyed all four
halftracks, while Ricketts got his men out of
the mess without further adieu.
Meanwhile, Fitz had ordered some reconnaissance
by our Humbers even further north, as Centre
group was taking still taking fire from the
south and could not get a view of the
redoubtable jerrys there. I listened to the
radio and sure enough, just like Lt Vincent had
thought, the Humber
ran straightaway into another German platoon
midway between Southern and Centre groups. They
got out of that situation without delay, though
we didn't hear much from them the rest of the
day.
It seemed to me we had a good book on the whole
of the jerry position now, at any rate of the
jerry front. Aside from the bunkers and AA
positions which our RAF boys had seen from the
air, though, the jerry main position was
something of a mystery to us. At least, I
thought, we hadn't run into anything serious
like a Panther or a Tiger. And, our Group,
despite everything, had dished out a large
dollop of punishment to the Germans without so
much as a scratch (except, of
course, for Ricketts' men).
Vincent radioed me and said that he'd chatted
with Fitz about things, and that they'd decided
to ignore all remaining enemy positions and get
Southern Group moving towards the first
objective.
I told him I thought this was a good idea,
since Ricketts was out of trouble and the
jerrys further north wouldn't be of much
account to our impending advance. However, even
if it was only that one bunker at the
objective, we'd still have to cross about a
kilometer of open terrain. Vincent said he'd
like me to accompany the whole of the advance,
and to bring the rest of my lads along too. He
said the Shermans would stay on the western
face of this hill and provide cover fire
against the bunker position.
Just then, we heard another section of our RAF
come down, this time in the twin-engined
Mosquitos. I was a little let down that they
didn't come in against the southern objective,
but
Fitz had his own ideas. They went in against
the German centre, and the pilot reported
they'd spotted a German tank up there, but most
likely just tank-destroyer. Fitz didn't seem too
concerned about it. I found out why a few
minutes later when Sgt Murray, of the heavies,
calmly reported : "Colonel, one Marder II
destroyed." Apparently, Fitz had already had
the sardine can under the gun.
We all felt a lot better after Murray's report.
Even better news came in as Vincent radioed
that the jerrys in the bunker appeared to be
making it for Dutchland. They'd had a little
too much of
four and a half inches and our Shermans taking
potshots at them. He said he was sending the
Shermans and two Humbers to gallop across the
valley, so that I could use my group to attack
the
northern German platoon, although, he said I
had to "be quick about it." Fitz was already
informed and had approved. Centre Group was
engaging the last remaining jerry platoon on
the front, so it looked like we would clear
them out after all.
Gardner's squad and my three Valentines XI's
(one was helping out the Shermans) maneuvered
around into excellent firing positions, and we
were able to send a third German platoon
reeling back, without their halftracks. Another
Marder opened up on the Shermans as they
started out across the valley, but we didn't
have to wait long until Murray gave yet another
monotone report to Fitz on the radio : "Second
Marder II destroyed, Colonel." If Murray kept
at it, I'd have to do some extra duty to keep
my Battalion Expert Badge (he had over 30 kill
to his credit since Egypt).
Fitz was in a jolly mood thereafter. He felt
that we'd really broken the German back, and he
ordered everyone to start making it for their
objectives without further delay. He said he'd
be joining Centre Group in a few minutes, since
there wasn't much left to spot for the redlegs
and the airmen. My little group spent a few
more minutes dodging in and out of burning
German positions, just to make sure they were
clear. By this time, Southern Group had
probably taken
upwards of 20 prisoners.
When my group emerged from the smoke, we found
that we were actually closer to Centre Group
than the bulk of Southern Group, so I radioed
the Colonel myself and asked him if he wanted
me up there, or back down with Vincent. I could
see some of Centre group's boys advancing here
and there in fits. Just as the Colonel was
responding, his truck came under long range
fire from a pillbox far to the north - one the
Commandos were supposed to have been
assaulting. Gads! I'd forgotten all about those
men! They hadn't used the radio for
communication (something about using "dash" and
"speed" to accomplish their objectives). Fitz
was able to hop out of his truck, along with
the radio man, and asked Lt Peirse, the
Commando leader, for a report. He said that his
platoon had "encountered and destroyed" three
pillboxes already, and were under fire from at
least two others and two bunkers, in addition
to those AA crews. "Several of our boys have
suffered gravely, I'm afraid, sir," was the
last sentence. I later learned that the
Commandos destroyed 5 fortified enemy
positions, mostly while under heavy fire, and
both of their 'Roos were KO'd. It was almost as
if, Peirse said later, the jerrys had known
they were coming. When Fitz did not order
Peirse to take out the pillbox that had just
upset his truck, I knew that the Commando men
must have been under very heavy pressure.
Finally, he rang back to me and said that
Centre Group had just cleared out a minefield
along the road, so that it would be a good
route for my platoon to take to follow them in.
I started moving out the platoon northwards to
the road to join up with Fitz. Within a minute
or so, Sgt Thompson's Valentine hit a mine and
was stuck for good. With my two remaining tanks
and the one squad from number 2 platoon, I
tried an alternate route, but then both tanks
hit mines almost simultaneously. What a rut!!!
I told Gardner, the squad leader of the
infantry unit with us, to take known routes
back south to join up with Vincent, as the
route north was obviously unmarked and
hazardous. My whole platoon was rotted out on
mines! The only good bit was that we had very
good fields of view from where we were. I could
see the pillbox that had fired on Fitz, and at
the other end I could see the boys in Southern
group, who were already at the southern
objective.
My view of this magnificent panorama was
interrupted by a gypsy German squad in a
halftrack barrelling out of the smoke behind us
a full speed! He obviously didn't expect us to
be there. Some of my platoon had already
started to send some long range shells to hit
the pillboxes and bunkers we could see, so I
swung the turret around and brought the sardine
can to a no doubt unexpected stop. The jerrys
bailed out and continued moving west as fast as
their legs could carry them. They also didn't
see Gardner, who was directly in their path.
Without putting out his cigarette, he kept a
steady fire on them from the BC, and kept
moving south to join Vincent.
I spent the rest of the time directing the fire
of my platoon, and some of the boys began
referring to themselves as the "localized
artillery battery" in the radio chatter. I
heard and partially saw events as Centre Group
crept up to the centre objective area,
discovering a bunker which they dispatched.
Some of the Centre men had come under fire from
pillboxes on the main centre ridge, but slowly
and surely I could see the men who did get
through, along with the heavies, take them out
one by one. Even Fitz's command squad, led by
the redoubtable Sgt Spears, who had been with
Fitz since 1940, participated in a pillbox
assault. All of Centre Group could be heard
giving three cheers!
Postscript : The battalion's attack of that day
was mentioned in 5th Allied Army dispatches.
Sgt Murray was later given a field commission
and promoted to command the Heavy Tank Platoon.
Sgt J.T. Sparks, VC, was later killed during an
attack near Eindhoven, Holland, during
Operation Market-Garden. His Valentine was
spotted and fired on by two Panthers at long
range. Though he was able to destroy one, his
vehicle was first immobilized and then killed
when the remaining Panther scored a direct hit.
Section 33 - Epilogue
While I have tried my best to give a good
introduction to some winning tactics, it will
be inevitable that not only have I missed some
essential components, but that I made outright
mistakes. This Primer will be upgraded about
every 2-3 months, or sooner if players send me
boatloads of data. If you have some thoughtful
criticisms or insight, or would like to add a
testimonial, a table of useful data, some
graphics, give a scenario evaluation and tips,
or write an entire section on tactics that you
think would be of value to other Players,
please contact the author. Ideas I have for
expansion include the following :
A dedicated FAQ section
Inclusion of various forms which players
could use to track their forces
A word on the standardization of methods
for comparing campaign scores
A Q & A with the designers
A side-by-side blow-by-blow description of
a battle fought between two humans.
A listing of Opponents Wanted
More testimonials
A known Bug listing
A dedicated Steel Panthers Web Page, with
the Primer in HTML-hyperlinked format,
with links to other sites and resources,
including historical resources.
If you want to contact me in the more
traditional fashion, my current address is
Todd David Brady
5800 Fair Oaks Blvd., #8
Carmichael, CA 95608
(916) 971-3023
Section 34 - Tables and Other Data
Experience Table,
Uploaded by Arnaud Bouis :
Here are the morale and experience tables of
Steel Panthers for each nationality and year of
the war. Courtesy of Jim Wirth.
They require a few explanations:
This is the _base_ experience/morale. To this
base is added a random number
between 0 and 20 for each unit. 10 is then
added if the force is elite,
and substracted if green. This yields your
final experience and morale.
EXPERIENCE TABLE
NATIONALITY 1939 1940 1941 1942
1943 1944 1945
GERMAN 65 70 75 70
65 60 50
FINNISH 70 70 70 65
65 60 55
ITALIAN 35 35 40 40
30 30 30
RUMANIAN 35 35 35 35
30 25 25
HUNGARIAN 35 35 35 35
30 30 30
JAPANESE 70 70 70 70
65 65 60
FRENCH 45 45 50 55
50 55 55
BRITISH 50 50 50 55
55 55 55
GREEK 45 45 45 50
55 55 55
BELGIAN 45 45 45 45
45 45 45
DUTCH 45 45 45 45
45 45 45
NORWEGIAN 45 45 45 45
45 45 45
POLISH 45 45 50 55
55 55 55
YUGO-SLAV 45 45 45 40
45 50 55
SOVIET 35 40 45 50
55 60 55
US ARMY 40 40 45 45
50 55 60
US MARINE 55 55 55 60
65 70 70
CHINESE 30 30 30 35
40 40 40
MORALE TABLE
NATIONALITY 1939 1940 1941 1942
1943 1944 1945
GERMAN 70 70 70 70
70 65 55
FINNISH 70 70 70 65
65 60 55
ITALIAN 30 30 30 30
25 25 25
RUMANIAN 25 25 25 25
25 25 25
HUNGARIAN 30 30 30 30
25 25 25
JAPANESE 70 70 70 70
70 70 70
FRENCH 45 45 55 60
55 60 55
BRITISH 60 60 60 60
60 60 55
GREEK 60 60 60 60
60 60 60
BELGIAN 45 45 45 45
45 45 45
DUTCH 45 45 45 45
45 45 45
NORWEGIAN 45 45 45 45
45 45 45
POLISH 60 55 60 60
60 65 60
YUGO-SLAV 45 45 45 50
55 60 65
SOVIET 35 40 45 50
55 60 65
US ARMY 40 40 45 50
55 55 60
US MARINE 65 65 65 70
70 70 70
CHINESE 35 35 35 40
40 40 40
-------------------------------------This was
posted by Arnaud
Bouis---------------------------------------
Steel Panthers Tank Chart,
From the Steel Panthers Readme.TXT file
Copyright 1995, Strategic Simulations,
Incorporated.
Ratings Key:
A= Excellent tank with very good armor and
weapons. Keep this tank.
B= Good tank with above average armor and
weapons. Ok for now.
C= Average tank with average to below average
armor and weapons.
May want to consider upgrading the tank.
D= Poor tank with poor armor and under gunned.
Should replace tank with newer model otherwise
crew will have short
and violent lives.
- = Tank not available at this time.
Max Pen = Max unmodified AP round penetration
for this weapon.
Rang = Max range in hexes for this weapon.
Roles:
Inf Support= This means that the tank is design
to kill soft targets only.
Not very useful against tanks.
Anti-tank= This means that the tank is
designed to kill tanks or hard
targets. It has limited use against infantry or
soft targets.
SPA= This tank is a self propelled artillery
tank. Mobile artillery,
useful against soft targets only.
AA= This tank is designed to shoot at aircraft.
Recon= This tank or vehicle is design to scout
and look around the
battlefield. Not intended to shoot it out with
the enemy.
German Tanks
Year Ratings
Name: 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Gun
MaxPen Rng Role Cost
Pz-Ib C D MG's
0 10 Inf Support 3
Pz-IIc B C D 20L55
6 20 Anti-tank 5
Pz-IIL - C C D 20L55
6 20 Recon 6
Pz-IIIE A B C D 37L46
7 30 Anti-tank 9
Pz-IIIG - A B D 50L42
8 30 Anti-tank 10
Pz-IIIH - A B C D 50L42
8 30 Anti-tank 11
Pz-IIIJ - - A B D 50L60
9 30 Anti-tank 12
Pz-IIIM - - - B C 50L60
9 30 Anti-tank 13
Pz-IIIN - - - B C 75L24
6 30 Inf Support 10
Pz-38t B B C D 37L46
7 30 Anti-tank 7
Pz-35(t) B C D 37L40
5 30 Anti-tank 7
Pz-IVc B B C C 75L24
6 30 Inf Support 8
Pz-IVe - B B C 75L24
6 30 Inf Support 9
Pz-IVf2 - - - B C 75L43
13 50 Anti-tank 14
Pz-IVg - - - - B B C 75L48
14 50 Anti-tank 13
Pz-IVh - - - - - B B 75L48
14 50 Anti-tank 15
Panther - - - - A A B 75L70
19 60 Anti-tank 25
Tiger - - - A A A B 88L56
17 60 Anti-tank 30
King Tiger - - - - - A A 88L71
22 60 Anti-tank 50
Brumbar - - - - A A A 150L10
0 50 Inf Support 15
Stug-IIIb B B C D 75L24
6 30 Inf Support 8
Stug-H42 - - - A B B B 105L30
0 40 Inf Support 13
Stug-IIIg - - - - B B C 75L48
14 50 Anti-tank 11
Stug-IV - - - - B B C 75L48
14 50 Anti-tank 12
Jpz-I - C D 47L43
8 30 Anti-tank 7
PzJagd-38 - - - C C 76L51
13 50 Anti-tank 11
Marder - - - B C D 76L51
13 50 Anti-tank 10
Marder II - - - B B D 75L48
14 50 Anti-tank 11
Maeder III - - - - C D 75L48
14 50 Anti-tank 9
Nashorn - - - - B B B 88L71
22 60 Anti-tank 16
Hetzer - - - - A B B 75L48
14 50 Anti-tank 10
JPZ-IV/70 - - - - - A B 75L70
19 60 Anti-tank 15
Jagdpanther - - - - A A 88L71
22 60 Anti-tank 35
Elefant - - - - B B 88L71
22 60 Anti-tank 40
Jagdtiger - - - - - - A 128L58
22 80 Anti-tank 60
Sig33 - - - C C C 150L10
3 50 Inf Support 9
Wespe - - B B C C C 105mm
0 40 SPA 12
Hummel - - - B B B B 150mm
2 50 SPA 15
Lorraine - B B C C C C 150mm
3 130 SPA 15
Wirblewind - - - - - A A 20mm
3 30 AA 11
Ostwind - - - - - B B 37mm
6 40 AA 12
Gw-38t - B B C 150L10
3 50 Inf Support 10
Sdk-221 C C D MG's
0 10 Recon 3
Sdk-222 B C D 20L55
6 20 Recon 5
Sdk-231 B B C C - - - 20L55
6 20 Recon 5
Sdk-234 - - B B C C 20L55
6 20 Recon 6
Puma - - - - B C D 50L60
9 30 Recon 9
Sdk-234/3 - - B C C C 75L24
6 30 Recon 10
Sdk-234/4 - - - - - C C 75L48
14 50 Recon 12
Russian Tanks
Year Ratings
Name: 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Gun
Max Pen Rng Role Cost
BT-5 C C D 45L46
7 25 Anti-tank 5
BT-7 B C C D 45L46
7 25 Anti-tank 6
BT-7A B B C D 76L26
5 30 Anti-tank 7
T-26S B C D D 45L46
7 25 Anti-tank 5
T-60 - - C D D 20L55
6 20 Recon 6
T-70 - - - C C D D 45L46
7 25 Recon 8
T-28C B B C D 76L26
5 30 Anti-tank 12
T-35 B B B C 76L16
6 30 Anti-tank 25
KV-1 A A B C 76L35
8 30 Anti-tank 15
KV-1C - A A B 76L41
9 40 Anti-tank 18
KV-85 - - - - B B 85L53
13 50 Anti-tank 20
KV-IIA A A B 152L20
0 50 Inf Support 20
JS-II - - - - - A B 122L43
20 60 Anti-tank 25
JS-III - - - - - - A 122L43
20 60 Anti-tank 30
T-34/76A - A A B C 76L35
8 30 Anti-tank 12
T-34/76B - - A B C 76L41
9 40 Anti-tank 12
T-34/76C - - A B C D 76L41
9 40 Anti-tank 11
T-34/85 - - - - B B C 85L53
13 50 Anti-tank 14
SU-45 C C D 45L46
7 25 Anti-tank 6
SU-76 - B C D 76L41
9 40 Anti-tank 8
SU-85 - - - - B B 85L53
13 50 Anti-tank 12
SU-100 - - - - - A B 100L60
21 60 Anti-tank 20
JSU-122 - - - - - A B 122L43
20 60 Anti-tank 20
SU-122 - - - - A A B 122L22
6 40 Inf Support 13
SU-152 - - - - A A B 152L32
3 50 Inf Support 15
JSU-152 - - - - - A A 152L32
3 50 Inf Support 16
BA-10 C C D 45L46
7 25 Recon 8
BA-64 - C C C D D D 20L55
6 20 Recon 6
American Tanks
Year Ratings
Name: 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Gun
Max Pen Rng Role Cost
M2A4 - C C D 37L53
9 30 Recon 8
M3 Stuart - - B C D 37L53
9 30 Recon 9
M5 Stuart - - - B B C D 37L53
9 30 Recon 9
M24 - - - - - B C 75L38
10 40 Recon 10
M3A1 Lee - - - B C 37L53
9 30 Anti-tank 11
M4A1 Sher - - - B C D 75L38
10 40 Anti-tank 11
M4A3 Sher - - - B C D D 75L38
10 40 Anti-tank 11
M4A3E8 - - - - - B C 76L54
12 50 Anti-tank 12
Jumbo - - - - - B B 75L38
10 40 Anti-tank 18
T26 Persh - - - - - - A 90L50
16 60 Anti-tank 24
M10 Wolv - - - B C C D 76L54
12 50 Anti-tank 12
M18 Hell - - - - B C D 76L54
12 50 Anti-tank 11
M36 Jack - - - - - B B 90L50
16 60 Anti-tank 14
Sherman FLame - - B B C C Flame
0 2 Inf Support 20
Sherman 105 - - B B C C 105L30
0 50 Inf Support 13
M7 Preist - - - B B C C 105mm
0 130 SPA 9
M12 GMC - - - - B B B 155mm
3 130 SPA 15
M8 Grayhnd - - - B B C D 37L53
9 30 Recon 7
M20 - - C C D D .50 MG
3 20 Recon 5
Steel Panthers Weapons List
From the Steel Panthers Readme.txt file
Copyright 1995, Strategic Simulations, Inc.
Note: This is not a full comphrehensive list of
all weapons in Steel
Panthers. This list covers most of the weapons
used in the game.
Key:
HE= High Explosive value, used to determine HE
attacks against
soft targets like infantry.
AP Pen.= Max unmodified penetration for the AP
round.
HVAP Pen.= Max unmodified penetration for the
HVAP round.
HEAT= Max unmodified High Explosive Anti-tank
penetration.
Range= Max range for the weapon, in hexes.
Accuracy= Number of hexes the weapon will have
an unmodified 50% chance to
hit its target. Example= Accuracy is 8, this
means the weapon will have
from 1 to 8 hexes, a unmodified base hit chance
of 50%. Note this number
can go up or down due to various modifiers in
the game.
SMG= Sub machine gun
LMG= Light machine gun
MMG= Medium machine gun
HMG= Heavy machine gun
FH= Field howitzer
AA= Anti-aircraft
AT= Anti-tank
BAR= Browning Automatic Rifle
Rkt= Rocket
Mtr= Mortar
Infantry Weapons:
Name HE AP Pen. HVAP Pen. HEAT
Range Accuracy
Rifle 1 0 0 0
10 4
Semi Rifle 2 0 0 0
10 5
BAR 4 0 0 0
10 8
Carbine 3 0 0 0
6 3
Pistol 2 0 0 0
2 1
SMG 4 0 0 0
2 4
MG-34 LMG 8 0 0 0
10 8
MG-34 MMG 14 0 0 0
18 12
MG-42 MMG 16 0 0 0
18 12
Breda LMG 4 0 0 0
10 6
Breda HMG 9 0 0 0
16 10
FM LMG 6 0 0 0
10 8
Lahti LMG 6 0 0 0
10 8
Bren LMG 6 0 0 0
10 9
DP LMG 6 0 0 0
10 8
HotchkissMG 10 0 0 0
16 10
.30 CAL MMG 12 0 0 0
16 10
.30 CAL HMG 16 0 0 0
18 12
.50 CAL HMG 14 3 0 0
20 15
Maxim HMG 14 0 0 0
18 12
Maxim AAMG 14 0 0 0
14 8
Dshk HMG 14 3 0 0
20 15
Vickers HMG 14 0 0 0
18 12
Tashio LMG 5 0 0 0
10 6
Type 96 LMG 6 0 0 0
10 7
Type 92 HMG 10 0 0 0
16 10
Flamethrwr 10 0 0 14
1 0
Satchel Ch 12 2 0 15
1 0
Molotov 0 0 0 9
1 0
Anti-tank 0 0 0 20
1 0
Hnd Grend 4 0 0 0
1 0
AT Rifle 0 3 0 13
10 4
PzFaust 0 0 0 20
2 1
PIAT 0 0 0 11
2 1
Bazooka 4 0 0 14
6 2
PzSchreck 0 0 0 15
4 2
Rifle Grnd 0 0 0 7
3 2
Artillery & Mortars:
Name HE AP Pen. HVAP Pen. HEAT
Range Accuracy
60mm Mtr 5 0 0 0
40 5
75mm FH 6 1 0 0
130 5
76mm FH 6 1 0 0
130 5
2IN Mtr 4 0 0 0
10 4
3IN How 6 0 0 0
30 4
3IN Mtr 6 0 0 0
50 5
4.2IN Mtr 9 0 0 0
70 5
4.5IN FH 10 2 0 0
130 5
8IN How 18 10 0 0
130 5
49mm Mtr 4 0 0 0
10 5
50mm Mtr 4 0 0 0
10 4
81mm Mtr 7 0 0 0
55 5
82mm Mtr 7 0 0 0
50 5
100mm FH 9 0 0 0
130 5
105mm FH 9 0 0 12
130 5
120mm Mtr 10 0 0 0
130 5
122mm FH 10 7 0 0
130 5
149mm FH 11 2 0 0
130 5
150mm FH 12 3 0 0
130 5
152mm FH 12 2 0 0
130 5
155mm Gun 13 4 0 0
130 5
155mm FH 12 3 0 0
130 5
132mm Rkt 13 0 0 0
130 5
150mm Rkt 15 0 0 0
130 5
4.6IN Rkt 10 1 0 0
130 5
290mm Spig 25 0 0 0
2 0
Main guns & anti-tank guns:
Name HE AP Pen. HVAP Pen. HEAT
Range Accuracy
20mm Quad 18 3 0 0
30 10
20L55 2 6 0 0
20 5
25L72 0 5 0 0
25 6
28L61 0 9 0 0
15 5
37mm Flak 10 6 0 0
40 9
37L21 2 5 0 0
20 3
37L33 2 5 0 0
25 5
37L40 2 5 0 0
30 6
37L46 2 7 0 0
30 7
37L53 4 9 0 0
30 9
40mm Flak 11 7 0 0
50 10
45L46 3 7 0 0
25 6
45L66 3 8 0 0
30 9
2Lb 0 8 0 0
30 8
47L32 3 5 0 0
30 5
47L34 3 6 0 0
30 7
47L40 3 7 0 0
30 8
47L43 3 8 0 0
30 9
50L42 3 8 0 0
30 8
50L60 3 9 13 0
30 10
57L52 0 11 0 0
40 11
57L73 4 12 0 0
40 12
6Lb 0 11 0 0
40 11
75L12 6 0 0 0
30 3
17Lb 6 17 22 0
50 14
75L24 6 6 0 9
30 4
75L31 6 9 0 0
40 8
75L34 6 10 0 0
40 8
75L38 6 10 0 0
40 9
75L43 6 13 19 0
50 11
75L48 6 14 0 0
50 14
75L52 6 10 0 0
40 10
75L70 6 19 0 0
60 19
76L26 6 5 0 0
30 4
76L35 6 8 0 0
30 8
76L41 6 9 12 0
40 10
76L51 6 13 19 0
50 11
76L54 6 12 18 0
50 12
77L49 6 14 17 0
50 13
75L36 6 8 0 0
30 8
85L53 7 13 17 0
50 12
88MM FLAK 7 15 0 0
80 20
88L56 7 17 0 0
60 15
88L71 7 22 0 0
60 20
25LB 8 6 0 0
130 5
90L50 8 16 25 0
60 15
90L53 8 15 0 0
60 12
152L20 12 4 0 0
30 4
95L22 8 3 0 11
40 5
105L30 9 3 0 12
40 5
100L60 9 21 0 0
60 13
122L43 10 20 0 0
60 8
122L22 10 6 0 0
40 4
128L58 10 22 0 0
80 15
150L10 12 2 0 0
80 15
152L32 12 3 0 0
50 5
