thedoctorking
Posts: 2297
Joined: 4/29/2017 Status: offline
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I'm anything but an expert, but I will try to answer some of your questions. If I understand correctly, question one is how to repair rail lines? You have a special type of rail repair HQ, called an FBD if you are the Axis and NKPS if you are the Soviets. These units repair rail lines by moving into the first broken hex (starting from a connected rail line) and then clicking on the repair button on the unit detail pane. Repairing costs one movement point (typically, sometimes more if you are low on supply, in difficult terrain, or have fewer than the optimal number of rail repair units attached to the HQ because of combat damage). Then you move on into the next hex, etc. Rail repair units attached directly to other HQ's will repair rail hexes more or less at random within the command range of their HQ, with a bigger range for higher-level HQ's. So if you leave your rail repair brigades/regiments attached to your supreme HQ, they will just go anywhere on the map looking for rail hexes to repair, again starting from a connected rail hex. They will prefer to work on the rail lines closest to your national supply source, so for the Axis, they start from the Soviet border and work east. To focus on a particular region, assign rail repair units to a corps or army HQ and then they will work in the vicinity of that corps or army. But they will still start from the area closest to your national supply source, so you will end up repairing a lot of rail hexes you probably don't care much about. Moving to and from theater boxes is the way you position your forces in other parts of your empire than the front where you are fighting the fascist invaders/communist swine. Moving units to a theater box requires them to be a certain distance - 8 hexes for the Soviets, don't remember for the Axis - from the nearest enemy unit. You open up the unit detail window and there is a "transfer unit" command in the upper right hand corner, select it and you will have the choice of which box you want to send the unit to and how long it will take to get there. If you open the theater box display, you can right-click on units in there and - if you are using player control of theater boxes - you can move units from those boxes to the map or other boxes. The Reserve boxes are where you send units that have been beaten up in combat so they can get replacements, recover morale, gain experience up to your national morale, and generally get ready to get the s&*t kicked out of them again. You can also use the Commander's Report window to select units in your Strategic Reserve or other theater boxes and transfer them, though in this case the only option is to transfer to or from the Strategic Reserve. Ground Support missions are assigned to air components during the Air Operations phase. You can assign air units to any HQ and if I understand correctly they will fly GS missions in support of combats involving that HQ's units or those of any HQ subordinate to it (so if you have an air group assigned to an Axis Army or Soviet Front, it will support all that Army's Corps or Front's Armies). So normally for the Soviets you assign each Air Army/Air Command to support its associated Front. You may want to assign an air army to support a particularly ground Army if it will be conducting a crucial attack or defending a crucial position, but this is unusual for the Soviets. For the Axis, on the other hand, it is quite common to assign air fleets to support specific armies, particularly the Panzer Gruppe/Armies when you are conducting offensive operations. Another thing to think about is that ground support is often pretty expensive in planes, so you might only want to have it turned on when you really need it. If you have GS turned off, your fighters will still come up to defend anybody in the vicinity on interception missions, which aren't governed by the air mission assignment process. The only way to prevent your fighters from coming out to fight is to have them based too far from the front or putting them on Rest.
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