New/FitS tank leaders

[plloyd1010]

Particularly toward Matt, but everyone is welcome.
I do like the new tank leader rule. I think it gives some much needed flexibility without excessively expanding their freedom. Tank leader attrition though, seems problematically light. (I am also a little averse to adding more die rolls.) I was with the thinking was that brought about the tank leader lose rule, as it is now.

I would have taken a cumulative lose approach. Roll one die, subtract the number of steps lost, a [net] 0 means a tank leader loss. The lost steps accumulate until a tank leader is lost. This would more closely track the overall probability (considering the radio to tanks ratio) and still revolve around the 1in6 for 1 starting point. Thoughts on that?

[Matt W]

I think that will work for the Western Front and Baltic Front tankers as they were not the cream of the crop. The units in the Southwestern Front were some of the best the Soviets fielded in 1941 and I tried to get the leaders to emulate the performance of those units. For that reason (only) I would hold to the light losses for the FitS scenarios.

I suspect that applying your modification would work very well for other Soviet tank units in '41. I would also suggest using it for RKKA tank units throughout the rest of the war (I always felt that Kursk felt a little clunky with the old tank leader approach).

[plloyd1010]

I never much liked the old tank leader rule, that is why I created the limited intrinsic leader rule for tanks, and other "self motivated" units. The 4th Ed recon activation is rather like it. I also recognized that my rule allowed for too much maneuverability.

When it comes to the attrition rate, here is how the cumulative probability breaks down:

Code:

Die
1     16.67%     16.67%
2     30.56%     44.44%
3     42.13%     72.22%
4     51.77%     90.74%
5     59.81%     98.46%
6     66.51%     100%

The percentage is the chance that a tank leader will be lost by that particular roll. I stopped at 6 because with my mod, a tank leader would always be lost by the 6th die roll. One option would be to say a 1 always kills, and a 6 always saves. Then you could add a training/cohesion modifier.

To your point, the mechanized corps, which were part of the reorganization just before the German invasion, were quite well trained.

Overall I am also thinking how all this would be applied to desert battles AoD, AK, DR, as well as the different periods & forces on the Eastern Front.

[dxdavieau]

My one experience with this was a FitS scenario, I forget which but it was a big tank battle. The russians had a battalion of T-34s and one of BTs, the germans had a passel of PzIIIs & Stugs. The germans had a real tough time with the T-34s so the ran over to the Bts and brewed up the lot of them. All the soviet TLs were eliminated in the process, leaving the t-34s leaderless. Luck WAS a huge factor here but it was an awfully gamey maneuver for him to go out of his way to pick on the crappy tanks in order to eliminate the TLs. It was as though all the russian TLs were assigned to the BTs, which I'd never do using the old TL rules.

This is a one-time result. I'll need to play a bunch more FitS before I'm ready to say good or bad....