Quote from: Ithoriel on 06 September 2025, 10:34:11 PMBear in mind that the ?KC series, and Warmaster which inspired them, are not interested in input but in outputs. So, as an entirely fictional example, if doctrine dictates that towed artillery open fire at longer range than tanks and tracked artillery then even though it is the same gun firing exactly the same ammo the stats should be different. One reason, among a myriad of others, that might apply.

In that case the Su-100 should have range 80cm for A-T, as Soviet doctrine for Su-100 was to open fire at 1500m from overwatch positions. German 88mm Flak guns should only have A-T of 35cm in BKC, because doctrine was to wait until tanks were within 700m or so then rapidly fire 2-3 rounds at each.

I haven't yet found doctrine for Cold War Soviet anti-tank guns, other than that they should never engage tanks frontally but only from "defilade"; they were deployed on flanks to protect regiments, and as often as not used as more pre-planned indirect artillery fire. Also they seem to do focus fire, ie, all guns in the battery fire at one target tank, before going onto the next. There is also YT footage of Warpac towed ATG being used in the attack alongside foot infantry, into BUA and villages, being pushed right into the front line to engage targets at point blank. And when not deployed forward the divisional ATG are tasked with guarding the DHQ, and then acting as a DHQ reserve to deploy to where an enemy tank attack is coming.

How you make wargamers apply such doctrine, some of it contradictory, is rather difficult.

The other problem with doctrine is that it usually goes out the window after the first week of a war once its proven to be useless for the grunts in the mud. I cite the Israeli army (which sees IFVs as pointless), the Ukrainian war and James Rouch's Zone series as examples. My own wargaming experience of IFVs is that if the enemy has only one tank left, it's impossible to advance in that sector, or you'll lose most of your infantry. Often it's safer to walk as you'll get closer before being spotted, and use the IFVs as decoys or anti-tank vehicles. But that's not NATO doctrine.....

Infantry firing anti-tank weapons with HEAT warheads at infantry in cover has never been doctrine, the bean-counters that dictate army structures would have a hissy fit, but troops did it anyway once it was realised it was a thing back in 1943ish. And has been ever since, even if effectiveness isn't great. In the 1960s+ manufacturers cashed in on this by offering HEDP rounds for infantry anti-tank weapons. Which is all well and good, but if your squad can only carry 6 bazooka rounds and it is there to protect against tanks, how many HEDP do you leave behind in the depot? In CWC it might make the difference between 1 and 2D6 firing against enemy infantry, but 4D6 versus 2D6 for anti-tank work.

I digress. I've found the easiest way to enforce doctrines is to use the strict Fire Priority system out of Spearhead, which works really well in my wargaming. I'll stick the one we use in the next post

Firing Priorities

All units being assaulted fire at their assaulters.

These are optional rules, but we argue that you should use them, to prevent long range flank shots of opportunity when other enemy are closer and more dangerous.

Where there is a choice of several equal priorities, the nearest must be engaged.

All units must fire at:
   a) enemy within 50m that is facing them.

Tanks and assault guns must fire at:
a) tanks
b) anti-tank guns & AAA used as ATG
c) APCs
d) infantry
e) towed artillery

Infantry must fire at:
a) infantry
b) anti-tank guns & AAA used as ATG
c) APCs
d) towed artillery
e) tanks

Anti-tank guns must fire at:
a) tanks
b) APCs
c) recce
d) infantry
e) other guns

OP directed artillery can choose any target.

Artillery Batteries on table must fire at:
   a) other artillery
   b) infantry
   c) tanks
   d) any others

Artillery assigned to an CHQ follow the fire priority of the CHQ type.

Recce must fire at
a) tanks
b) recce
c) infantry
d) APCs
e) guns

AA guns must fire at
a) aircraft
b) helicopters
c) AFVs
d) towed guns
e) infantry

an optional fire priority we are testing: Infantry Support tanks & assault guns:
a) ATG and AA used as AT
b) Infantry, infantry MG, mortar, Inf guns
c) Artillery, AA guns
d) tanks
e) other AFV

Opportunity Fire - has no fire priority - pre-designate who is opp firing and at what targets before rolling dice.
------------------------------

This might be considered mean: Recce must fire at a) tanks but it is designed to stop you using recce as glory-seeking tank destroyers as too many wargames do, the alternative option of course being not to fire at all and thus give your position away.

Mark your taget priories are incorrect. For instance the 66Law (M72), was reissued in the early 00's for attacking Afgan infantry positions. WWII firing distances were much lower than gamers think, average engagement range was 750m across all theatres. To an extent the ammunition load out was role specific - if your tank was tasked to support infnatry you would carry more HE as that was what would be needed.

Bear in mind that the 1st round hit chance at 750m was roughly 25% before taking into account target cover, movement, and all the other factors....

No they are not. 
I'm talking Cold War and WW2, not counter-insurgencies. Anyway it would come under
Anti-tank guns must fire at:
a) tanks
b) APCs
c) recce
d) infantry
e) other guns
because how often did the Taliban field tanks, APCs and scout trucks? Looking at MicroMark List AS42M, only a third of their infantry were in vehicles, there is only 3 recce vehicles per 9 companies of infantry within a brigade, and tanks are independent of divisions. So odds-on the M72 LAWs were unlikely to encounter anything other than dismounted infantry. You can bet your bottom dollar if such a thing as a vehicle did turn up, the LAWs would have been used against them if that's all they had to hand.

I do agree on the 750m average engagement ranges, those wargames rules that allow tank battles to become pointblank range dogfights, like ancients with tanks, are just silly. I've found the correct use of artillery. plenty of terrain, command activations and morale rules tends to create the effect of keeping tanks at distance. Knowing the enemy infantry might have decent anti-tank weapons helps too.

Agreed too, that % hit chances on the battlefield are much less than theoretical tables imply. Mainly because on the range where these things are worked out, no one is shooting back, it's not pouring down with rain or blowing a gale, and smoke from burning wrecks and artillery bursts is not obscuring vision.

I was just using an example, most of the post covers WWII and weapons use. Bear in mind that the average ranges and hit probability are well known, and ignored by all most all rules writers.

https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2023/06/24/the-t-34-in-somalia

This might be useful info for the Somali and Ethiopian lists

The challenge we have with Soviet era MBT and gun ranges are as follows:

1). if we blindly follow the information provided by the manufacturers (as some rules do) you end up with MBT gun ranges that are often well in excess of NATO ranges. This tends to lead to Soviet players standing back and playing a shooting game - which is both unrealistic and also not much fun for anybody.
Also, as we know from the 1991 Gulf War, where a British Challenger I tank - in ideal situations - managed to hit and destroy a Soviet made Iraqi tank, at a range of 5,100 meters (about 3.17 miles). If you applied that range to all Challenger I's you'd need to play on a much, much bigger table, and you'd also have a lot fewer Challenger I's.

2). if we were to stick with applying the above (manufacturers ranges) - it also makes a lot of the Soviet tanks significantly more expensive, points wise, than the majority of their NATO opposite numbers - which defeats the game-balance concept within CWC, that the Warsaw Pact forces generally should outnumber their NATO opponents.

3). Tank gun ranges are actually only a relatively small part of the overall factors that go to create a CWC hit factor. What little we actually know about Warsaw Pact tank doctrine, coupled with the known inferiority (when compared to NATO) of crew training, ammunition quality, stabilization, ranging equipment etc. etc. all generally leads us towards a much lower 'effective' range for Warsaw Pact tanks (more of a 'shoot when you see the whites of their eyes' approach). This then leads through to a lower points cost and therefore more Soviet made tanks on the table (for armies with Soviet/Warsaw Pact or Communist Chinese MBTs).

4). In reality - we should probably also be applying the effect of tank crew training and doctrine, to those non-Soviet armies (Arabs and Africa primarily) where Soviet trained crews were also using Western equipment (French or British in particular). But as this creates a bit of a nightmare from an army list POV and these armies very often relatively few 'western' MBTs, and have poorer command and control, I've taken the view that it's not worth making these changes.

5). What we know (and again there is relatively little by way of reliable data) about Soviet/Warsaw Pact AT guns and their tactical doctrine, is that they were fired at a longer range. This was also facilitated by not being fired on the move, by different crew training and more of a tank-hunter type of doctrine. Whether an SU-100 adopted the same approach as a towed AT gun is (TBF) unknown, but it seems a logical deduction, where it is used in an AT role (rather than an infantry support role).

6) Also, if we move into the era of the Soviet MT-12 100mm anti-tank gun, with its 9M117 Bastion anti-tank guided missiles you end up with an AT gun being deliberately deployed at maximum AT gun range, simply so that it can make optimum use of the ATGW missile.

So ... to look at stats alone will give you an approach that just doesn't work out from an overall game-play perspective. Unfortunately, experiance has shown that if we give the Soviet MBTs the optimum gun ranges that their manufacturers claim, players will not follow Soviet doctrine of massed tank attacks. It's really as simple as that.

You also end up with a similar issue with AA guns.
You need a realistic range and hit factor to allow them to cover the battlefield to a reasonable distance, when undertaking their core anti-aircraft function and to actually act as a significant deterrent to enemy aircraft. However, players being players, this has be turned into an unrealistic table-top advantage when the same AA gun systems are turned on ground targets. So, there is an errata under test, that should stop this imbalance - as even target priority systems wont stop the deliberate engineering of potential 'abuse' situations.   

Hopefully, that is helpful.
Thanks
Mark

PLEASE NOTE:
I'm not intending to reply to each of the detailed observations being put forward on a 1 by 1 basis, as the time taken to do so, is the time it takes me to log the corrections.

What would be most helpful is that if you spot an errata - please state clearly which list the errata applies to, against each point you raise.
If the point is a general one - like the air-portability of the PT76* (for example) that applies across many lists - if you can register it against its core manufacturer list (Soviet) then it will get picked up across all lists. (NB* the air portability issue is a 'hang-over' from the lists originally going up to 2020 - and some of the carrying capacity of later post Soviet Russian transport aircraft - but it's easily removed).

Many thanks
Mark

Quote from: flamingpig0 on 09 September 2025, 02:50:24 PMhttps://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2023/06/24/the-t-34-in-somalia

This might be useful info for the Somali and Ethiopian lists

many thanks 

Quote from: Big Insect on 10 September 2025, 10:57:16 AMThe challenge we have with Soviet era MBT and gun ranges are as follows:

SNIP
5). What we know (and again there is relatively little by way of reliable data) about Soviet/Warsaw Pact AT guns and their tactical doctrine, is that they were fired at a longer range. This was also facilitated by not being fired on the move, by different crew training and more of a tank-hunter type of doctrine. Whether an SU-100 adopted the same approach as a towed AT gun is (TBF) unknown, but it seems a logical deduction, where it is used in an AT role (rather than an infantry support role).

SNIP
Hopefully, that is helpful.
Thanks
Mark

I did not know the highlighted about Soviet/Warsaw Pact anti-tank gun doctrine.  Could you post the reference for this, please?  I'd be interested to read it.

My copy of Isby, "Weapons & Tactics of the Soviet Army" (1988 fully revised 2nd edition) is my bible to date and it has this to say..."Anti-tank weapons form a mutually supporting system at each level of organisation...the slow-firing but accurate ATGMs provide long-range fire, starting at a range of 3-4,000m. At 1,500m, when volume of fire is more important than individual accuracy, tanks and towed anti-tank guns will open fire..."

Hence, my earlier suggestion that, if you're going doctrinally, the ranges allocated to tanks and equivalent AT guns should be similar.

QuoteYou also end up with a similar issue with AA guns.
You need a realistic range and hit factor to allow them to cover the battlefield to a reasonable distance, when undertaking their core anti-aircraft function and to actually act as a significant deterrent to enemy aircraft. However, players being players, this has be turned into an unrealistic table-top advantage when the same AA gun systems are turned on ground targets. So, there is an errata under test, that should stop this imbalance - as even target priority systems wont stop the deliberate engineering of potential 'abuse' situations. 

A standard line-of-site limit for Western Europe is 400 yards.  We used to use 800 but think this is too limiting so have upped it to 1,200.  Of course the sky lacks LoS obstacles.  Hence AAA weapons pointed at the sky horizon would not need limiting whereas for ground use terrain limits would be applicable.

My comments on the list "2025ColdWarBundeswehr1955-1990".

1. Under "Recce", is the M8 Scott really a "recce" vehicle? - I'd call it a fire support or maybe in rules terms a recce support vehicle. I'm also not sure why the Scott is singled out for inclusion - the Germans used a whole lot of Allied vehicles early on for recce - Bren Carriers, Ferrets, etc, even EBR-75s were in test use.

2. Under "Recce", the SPz Kurz 11-2 IFV served in panzer recce units until 1982.

3. Under "Recce", it isn't clear why the M41A3 Walker Bulldog listed here has an AP factor of 3/100 whereas the identical M41A3 listed under "Armour" has an AP factor of 3/110. Presumably they should be the same.

4. Under "Recce", German panzer recce battalions heavily used the M48A2C from 1966 until the 1980s. It isn't listed here as an option.

5. Under "Recce", in the 1980s panzer recce battalions had a company in Fuchs wheeled vehicles, plus some more Fuchs with RASIT radars. Fuchs is not an option here.

6.  Under "Support", why is it the 2cm guns on the Kraka and Wiesel are only rated AP=2/60 and AT=1/30 whereas the 2cm guns on vehicles elsewhere in the list are consistently rated as AP=2/100 and AT=2/80?

7. Under "Armour", the Luchs is incorrectly given in-service dates 1968-1975. The correct date is given in the Recce section.

8. Under "Armour", the first Marder was accepted for service in 1971. The designations given to the various Marder here are wonky.  The original Marder 1 was just called that. From 1977 it was fitted with the Milan 1 (losing one dismount in the process). The first true modernisation effort was carried out between 1979 and 1982 with the designation Marder A1. However, not all received the full modernisation and only those with all features were called Marder A1A. A further 674 additionally received passive night sights and were called Marder A1 (+). Between 1983 and 1991 a second modernisation programme resulted in the Marder 1A2 (which had the external rear MG removed and TI vision systems fitted). The third modernisation was carried out between 1989 and 1998 and resulted in the Marder 1A3 (which had additional protection against the Soviet 30mm on the frontal arc - not reflected in the stats given in this list).

9. Under "Armour", did in fact the M26 or the M46 serve with the Bundeswehr?

10. Under "Armour", the last M41 Walker Bulldog left German service in 1969.

11. Under "Armour", the last M47 left German service in 1968.

12. Under "Armour", the first M48A1 was received by German panzer divisions in 1957. In 1990 all stored early M48s with the 90mm gun were scrapped.

13. Under "Armour", the first M48A2GA2 was received in 1978. In 1991 all M48A2GA2 with the 105mm gun were scrapped.

14. Under "Armour", why is the 105mm gun on the M48A2GA2 given an AP factor of 5/150 when the very same 105mm gun mounted on the Leopard 1 series is given an AP factor of 4/120?

15. Under "Armour", the Leopard 1A2 was delivered from 1972.

16. Under "Armour", the Leopard 1A3 was delivered from 1973.

17. Under "Armour", it is not credible that the Leopard 2/2A1 has exactly the same surviviability (5 hits, saving on a 4) as the Leopard 1A1A1 or the M48A1. Something has gone badly wrong with the rating system.

18.  Under "Anti-tank [Dedicated]", the Kanonenjagdpanzer was not fitted with IR night vision until the early 1970s. Small Target maybe?

19. Under "Anti tank [Dedicated] the Raketenjagdpanzer 1 seems to be missing entirely (introduced from 1961).  The Raketenjagdpanzer 2 was not introduced until 1967.

20. Under "Anti tank [Dedicated], the HOT, Jaguar 1 was not introduced until 1978.

21. Under "Anti tank [Dedicated]", the I-TOW, Jaguar 2 is incorrect.  The original Jaguar 2 introduced from 1983 had the standard TOW missile. It was not until 1989 that the Germans began receiving the I-TOW for the Jaguar 2. All were retired by 1999.

22. Under "Air Defence [Dedicated]", the M42 Duster was introduced from 1956, and the M16 MGMC was removed from service by 1958.

23. Under "Air Defence [Dedicated], the Flakpanzer Gepard entered service from 1976.

24. Under "Air Defence [Dedicated], the Roland entered service from 1981.

25. Under "Transport & Vehicles", it isn't clear why the M113GA1 has survivability of 4 hits saving on a 6.  It isn't significantly more heavily armoured than the 120mm mortar M113A1G which is only given 3 hits saving on a 6 in the "Support" section of the list. Furthermore, the M113GA1 APC typically carried a 7.62mm MG (1/50 AP) rather than a .50cal (2/50).

26. Under "Armour" compared with under "Support" it isn't clear why the Milan 1 is 6/100 when on a Marder but 4/100 when dismounted.  Nor is it clear why the Milan 2 is 8/100 when mounted on the Marder but 6/100 when dismounted.

27. Under "Transport & Vehicles", it isn't clear why the 20mm gun on the Schutzenpanzer Lang HS.30 is given such different AP and AT stats from the 20mm main guns on other German vehicles.

28. Under "Artillery [off table]", the MLRS actually only entered service with the Germans from 1987.