What is ZiS?

[malthaussen]

The Mius demo continues to puzzle me in the way certain situations are resolved.

Having set up a lovely kill zone with three battalions of ZiS-3 76mm AT guns, I watched gleefully as a company of 16th PzG Pz-IIIs waltzed right into the trap. Which turned out to be no trap at all: 3 shots each from each of three battalions did not kill a single enemy tank. 108 shots downrange and they don't scratch the paint on the PzIIIs? When their Hard attack strength is twice the armor rate of the target? Come on, even Soviet recruits aren't that bad. I'll note that the guns were perfectly fresh and undisrupted, and thus should have been at maximum kill potential.

Now, what's up with that? Their raison d'etre is to kill tanks, it's kinda right in the name: anti-tank gun. If they can't do that job, why are they even in the OOB? And how, pray, is one supposed to stop any tanks at all if the AT guns don't do their job? I was so dumbfounded at this result that I save-scummed it several times, and I was lucky to get any kills at all in repeated attempts, in a situation which should be a nightmare for a tank commander.

German doctrine at the time was pretty clear about the rock-paper-scissors of mechanized combat: tanks kill infantry, AT guns kill tanks, and artillery kills AT guns (and infantry, artillery is a two-fer). The standard solution when meeting enemy tanks was to lure them onto the AT line, where they would be shot to pieces. This worked quite well in the actual war: one would think in something that professes to simulate that war, it would work equally well.

An occasional bad roll of the dice is to be expected, it is these kinds of unanticipated results that make things interesting. But this is not a case where the RNG done me wrong, this seems to be a case where the simulation fails to simulate. Though it appears to handle infantry combat well enough (although certain results leave me puzzled: a full battalion of infantry assaulting an unsupported battery of artillery for two straight hours should produce a result a bit bloodier than "4 Men/1 Gun!"), and artillery v infantry seems fair-ish. But artillery v artillery, especially v AT guns, is less satisfactory. Again, the doctrine is "artillery kills AT guns," not "Artillery gets No Effect or Fatigued against AT guns." That, presumably, could be adjusted by lowering the defense factor of AT guns and artillery, but what to do about AT guns being as effective as shooting spitballs? At this point, I have better results throwing a battalion of infantry into an assault against tanks, then I seem to usually get at least one kill!

-- Mal

[Verdun1916]

ZiS = Zavod imeni Stalina, the honorary name for artillery factory nr. 96 which saw the initial production of the gun

To be fair a 76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3) isn't actually an AT-gun, it was a field artillery piece. It did have AT capability given it had the right ammunition for the job. And it was widely used as an AT-gun during the war.

So with that in mind, have you checked the command menu and looked if there is any alternative fire or ammo option were you specifically has to choose AT ammunition for them to be effective in the AT role?

Haven't tried Mius personally so I'm not sure if there are such options in the game.

[letarsier59]

AT guns usually fare better in defensive fire rather than anything else. IMO, "Let them come" is usually the safest choice.

[Carlos]

As far as I know the PzC system is not heavy on role differentiation and does not grant any special bonus to Anti-Tank guns, except for the fact that towed and fixed AT guns firing on a hard target will cause twice the chance of disruption. Being on the attack or defending grants no special bonus either (unlike other games like Panzer General/Corps).

In the example provided, those ZiS guns have a HA value of 17, and the PzIII's defense is 11. So once the calculations are computed we see that 12 guns firing on a group of PzIII will result in a fire value of 150 (with no other modifier applied) which isn't enough to cause 10 losses = 1 vehicle kill.

This means that the guns will get a chance of inflicting at most 1 casualty on the target based on the fractional chance (e.g. if they cause 8 losses, they'll have an 80% chance of getting a kill on the PzIII).

[RickyB]

Keep in mind that in a historical fight, the AT guns aren't lined up and all able to fire at once, or even over the 2 hours, while the tanks are sitting in the open.

However, as noted based on the math that the game uses, the results tend toward an average, and on average losses seem too high, over the course of days. The trade off is the extreme in losses, where quite a few tanks may get knocked out, suffers. Wittman's exploits won't happen, except through an assault on a tank unit that can't retreat and loses half it strength. Things like that help with the extremes, but you won't see 10, or even 5, tanks knocked out even by the vaunted 88s, as an example. That is a weakness probably, but I have seen players unhappy the more the results vary, too.

Still, in a test game of Rumyantsev, playing as German I destroyed upward of 500 tanks, mostly T34s, in about a day and a half, against a human player. And very few kills were by 88s, whether 88 ATs, or Tiger guns.

[ChrisAd]

1. ZIS-3 76.2 was quite capble AT gun and that is why it was so widespreadly used by ze Germans.
2. AT guns main success came from the element of surprise. In Normandy for example, thanks to the terrain, most of the US and British tanks were actually knocked out by AT guns. However in steppe like Ukraine the AT guns didn't have that much success.
3. You have amassed over 100 guns in a tight space. To hide them from the enemy would be hard. I think that that line salvo consisted of more than few guns.
4. This is problem with boardgames. It's so absurdly artificial that you get such absurd situations and results.

[RobearGWJ]

So, what would be the best approach here? Should the AT guns be mixed in with infantry?

[LordDeadwood]

Don't forget that unit quality/morale plays into the fire results as well. Most Soviet units are C or D quality. If these particular AT units were D quality (a good possibility), it would have reduced the fire values by 20%. So 12 D quality guns (12*17)*0.8 = 163.2. Then there is the Armor Effectiveness modifier (p. 56 in the PzC User Manual). Using the explanation there, the fire value of 163.2 is modified by 1/SqRt(H/D) or 1/SqRt(17/11) = 0.80, so this brings it down to 131.28. All this is assuming the firing units were not fatigued, lower in elevation, disrupted, low on ammo, etc., all of which would further reduce the fire value. And don't forget terrain modifiers! Fire results are fairly complex calculations and a situation that seems like an obvious kill often has other factors that are overlooked.

[malthaussen]

Thanks for the responses. So, it appears the engine is working as intended.

This leads to the question, then, that if in the game the AT guns are actually rather ineffective, what is the best in-game method of employing them, and how does one best destroy enemy tanks?

--- Mal

[Verdun1916]

Thanks for the responses. So, it appears the engine is working as intended.

This leads to the question, then, that if in the game the AT guns are actually rather ineffective, what is the best in-game method of employing them, and how does one best destroy enemy tanks?

--- Mal

I always deploy my AT-guns defensively and as far a possible together with infantry or engineers if I have no infantry unit avalible. Remember they don't have to kill super numbers of tanks to be effective. As long as you can get the enemy units disrupted it's a win.
People tend to get hung up on kills, that is tanks getting completely knocked out by exploding or brewing up. In reality as long as you could get enough hits to shake up the crew inside, causing them to either pull back or even bail out, knock off a tread or damage the suspension, road wheels, drive sprocket, cause a fuel leak, jam the turret, injure or kill individual crew members, damage sights or vision ports/blocks etc. on enough enemy vehicles the enemy attack would usually be beaten back. Getting your enemy to disrupt, I guess, simulates this.
Once you have gotten your enemy tank unit disrupted it can no longer attack, and it's fire will be reduced. And so will it's mobility. That means the enemy unit will be more likely to be forced back, or even eliminated when attacked. Or it will become broken if you continue to fire on it or attack it, and flee.

Offensively I feel the best way to deal with enemy tanks is with tanks and tank destroyers. Either superior vehicles or superior numbers of them. And it never hurts to soften them up with artillery and air-strikes either.

EDIT: and don't forget to dig in! Your AT-guns always stands a better chance of repelling enemy tanks when they are dug in. Same with your infantry and engineers. The Red Army was famous for their ability to dig in deep and fast, even on the offense.