Anthony P.

I checked if there were perhaps some AI plan which was bugged, but there's just the one and that worked when I started it.

I think MikeyD has a point

Yes, but not out of direct support of each other. Usually the platoon would be tasked with a mission which the squads would move and fight in concert with each other to achieve, so the opening post of "Panzergrenadier squads are awkward because a squad can't scout for itself as it moves to contact" means it's handled incorrectly in my opinion. Even if you could detach 2 man scout teams from their squads without lumping the remaining 6 men into a single team, that'd be a poor choice. 2 men scout teams are basically "there's a X% chance that those two will get rinsed by the first shots, but at least that'll give the rest of the unit time to fight back". That's a ratio which makes sense if they're scouting for a whole platoon (or larger units)... but if they're just scouting for their own squad? That means that you're putting 25% of a unit at risk of becoming casualties in the first few seconds to protect the rest of it. I'd say that that's just too large a risk to call sensible: mathematically it would be like using two entire fireteams or an entire squad bunched up in a single action square to scout for a platoon. If those two scouts become casualties and the rest of the squad survives intact (unlikely), that means you're now left with just 6 men to carry on with a mission. That's not effective. I think my main argument is that Panzergrenadiers aren't dismounted infantry. Landsers can have scout teams moving ahead of them into the attack, but Panzergrenadiers should be attacking well established objectives mounted up (preferably alongside Panzers). If something needs scouting in that scenario it should ideally be a platoon/company commander or someone else with shiny things on his shoulder peeking up above that rise before mounting up again. That's quite different from a two man scout team marching ahead of its squad or platoon as it moves to contact and on foot. @Centurian52: true, I rephrased that part to be clearer/more accurate. Ta!

Platoons were typically the smallest unit sent off to achieve anything on its own (there's a reason that radios weren't issued until you hit platoon level) in combat. While squads (and fireteams, if we want to go lower) wouldn't always move and fight in a literal line or always physically in a set other physical formation, they wouldn't move far away from the rest of the platoon, and certainly not away on their own missions. Squads might might have split up to fight in mutual support, but not (far) away from their platoons... especially not the Panzergrenadiers, who were meant to accompany tanks in breakthrough operations (e.g., a scenario in which tanks wouldn't have been sent off on their own either). Panzergrenadiers weren't meant for just any offensive operations, but for breakthroughs with the Panzer divisions. Hence they were quickly worn down in sustained combat, for much the same reason you're hitting upon even on this lower level: they are inherently quite small formations in regards to manpower.

What's "Driver team" (under admin)? I've never seen that one before.

There's no reason not to use scout teams with Panzergrenadiers. If you're sending a single squad off to, sure, you'll have problems... but is lone squads out on their own being vulnerable really a problem unique to Panzergrenadiers? Send a platoon instead and detach a scout team from one of its squads. You mention Normandy and the other Western front scenarios being an issue: true, but I'd say "fair enough" or "realistic". The issue is that in the West and Normandy in particular, the Panzergrenadier divisions were desperately thrown into the line instead of being kept in reserve to make up for the lack of infantry divisions. This wasn't what they were intended for and they suffered in attritional warfare, because manpower wise they were smaller units intended for brief and intense offensive operations, after which they would (read: should) have gone back into reserve to refit. As you've observed, a small eight man squad doesn't cope with losses or sustained infantry on infantry fighting as well as large 10, 12 or even larger men squads do.

I believe that German light infantry guns can also perform indirect fire missions on-map.

I saw this and immediately thought of this thread again: It seems we can actually cite historical precendence for tankers mounting grunts (that came out wrong) on their tanks for spotting!

Bit hard to judge without knowing the ground conditions, innit?

Driver's and bow MG gunner periscopes should provide negligible spotting for any AFV (possible exception for modern AFVs with thermal sights), so I'd say that the only optics which can be relied upon to achieve a spot should be the turret optics: these are the ones which are purpose built for doing more than just seeing what's right in front of the vehicle). So there should be a marked difference in favour of the T-64. But A, that still means that the T-64 ought to spot better, and B, I didn't say that this was a statistically significant result: quite the contrary, I said right away that more testing is needed to verify whether or not it's a fluke or if the anecdotal accounts are correct.

Even "just" normal optics aren't all the same. There's quality differences such as clarity, distortion, magnification, FoV, glare and more. Officiers and officials involved in Lend Lease found massive differences in the quality of T-34 optics compared to Sherman optics, and that was two contemporary tanks, so I can't readily agree that the optics of a T-64 and a Tiger should be assumed to be on par. More tests, agreed. Preferably on realistic terrain, and maybe try adding a target vehicle which has a similar counterpart in the other game (to ensure that they're both looking for a similarly sized target)?

That... doesn't make much sense. Or rather, it's quite skewed statistics. Optics and different kinds of sensors are modelled. A T-64 definitely has better optics than a Tiger 1, so it's not as though they're competing on an equal footing.

There's been a fair few claims and opinions about AFVs in CMCW being significantly worse at spotting than even AFVs from the WW2 titles. It's anecdotal so far, but I'm not dismissing it out of hand. I've gotta dissent and say that reasoning about how and why a Tiger could reasonably have better spotting abilities than a T-64 is approaching mental gymnastics. Yes, five crew versus three. But most crew in the Tiger have no practical optics for target acquisition: the driver and radio operator/bow gunner have very poor vision slits, and the loader has none at all. Compared to the T-64, there's as many eyes in the turret, and it should be safe to assume that the optics of an MBT from more than twenty years after the Tiger should be significantly better. More testing though please. There's actually something to be said for the height of the Tiger in explaining how well the LMG team in the open was spotted (height and spotting a target at a shallow angle is just simple maths: the higher you are, the better the odds of finding it. Bar e.g. thermal sights, there might not be all that much difference in optics for this scenario, especially not if the TCs are turned out). Try some more typical/realistic terrain, with targets on different kinds of elevated terrain (there's not many places on the planet with are completely flat, after all).

Hmm, tried it with Unit Objectives. That way I wound up with 13 points for 5 AFV crew casualties, and 13 for 5 infantry casualties respectively, so that didn't check out. I might be wrong, though I'm positive I read it from some reputable source. Are there other ways casualties can cause scores (apart from the treshold of course, that shouldn't have any effect)?

Source: "read it in a manual/from someone at BFC on the forum years back"