Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: MengJiao

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ORIGINAL: abulbulian

Well I played about 10 turns in spr 42-sum 42. Here's what I found:

Sov had:

7 million men
defense lines in depth of 3-4 hexes w/fort 3-4 in most
total of about 60 corps units by turn 55

I was not able to make any real breakthroughs in 42. I could fight a few hexes with my infantry (got best units in a few spots for a push). I could force retreats, but my loses even though usually half the sov still drained my inf. Then my opponent could just counter attack my gains (fort 0) and push me back with high loses on both side. Sov player can afford the loses when he has 7 million men.

So if you're expecting to make gains in 42 as axis anything near what was accomplished in 42 historically.. sorry to disappoint you. If you play against AI or maybe your sister (as sov), you could maybe do something in 42.

I was scratching my head in 42 trying to see where any of the axis advantages were?

I've always thougth 1941 would be very hard to simulate. I've also suggested from my very first posts here that Axis players are going to be happy with starting things in 1942. I don't see the problem with starting the campaign in 1942. It guarantees a completely historical 1941 and puts the Axis in a pretty good situation.

Anyway, I'm running my Blau I test using the Blau scenario in the game. I expect the 6th army to get to Voronnezh in about 2-3 weeks and I'll be very surprised if they don't.

Meanwhile, I don't see the point in finding that an ahistorical 1942 results from an ahistorical 1941. If you want a historical 1941, you should start in 1942, which is what I have been doing.

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ORIGINAL: Smirfy

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ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

Hi Smirfy. I'm not sure we are really saying different things, possibly just focusing on different facets of the problem.

Yes, my opponent did divert large forces into the Crimea, but once I spotted his movement I was able to halt it without too much difficulty before the blizzard struck.

He is using a more flexible defence than Hitler, but our losses are on par with history (see my later post) while my gains on the ground are probably about twice what they were historically. His commitment of armour to stop my advance around Lake Ilmen also tells me that he is very stretched, flexible defence or no.

I don't have a million extra men - I have lost almost exactly the historical number, as have the Axis - I just lost them in different ways and in lots and lots of smaller pockets. I do agree that I was able to evade pockets way too easily. When I made this observation 1 day after buying the game I was dismissed in these forums, but every game reconfirms it.

Carnage's result at Leningrad was only historical if you take a snapshot in Nov 41, but it's surely not historical now - he is being pushed steadily away from the city. I don't buy the argument that this is an example of a flexible defence in that sector - Carnage has fought tooth and nail to hold the line there.

Something just doesn't feel right about the balance of forces in Jan '42. I have too many divisions and too many options for manoeuvre, IMO. I don't really mind (it's fun) but unless the Axis turns around and kicks me back to the Volga or Moscow come summer, I will be sorely disappointed.

Enjoying the AAR Red

In diverting forces into the Crimea your opponent wernt putting them somewhere else and with the frontage in the Crimea that kinda of plays to the Russian strength ie zero frontage. My point you cant expect the axis to cover all the bases, 40 miles from Moscow against a player in September is pretty imateriel of what happens through the winter of 41.

As for the million men I'll give you an example from my game I destroyed AGN in 2 weeks surrounded and destroyed say 50-60 divisions. Your million men instead of meekly surrendering took Germans with them. Russian casaulties are horrendus in this game. (I have lost 11,000 T34s of all types by Mud 1944 yet beat up continually on the AI).


I have flagged up the problems numerous times but all I hear is German v Russian when the actual problem is mechanics. Interdiction does not work so airforces cannot be used to induce pockets, CiC is too good so units function too well, logistics are too generous. There are too many sources of supply for units. The mechanics need tightened up its that simple. The player can get himself out of virtually every problem when the reality was so different.

As for 42 like I said if the German player pockets more Russians in 41 less Germans die in the winter its that simple. Logistics should act as a break for both sides and they dont it is a simple as that. At various stages each side has way too much supply and can operate too many offensives.

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ORIGINAL: kirkgregerson

ComradeP you are so correct. We can try and explain to people that haven't played against a human or decent human sov player in the 41-45 campaign, but they will never understand the issues we're tried to convey without 1st hand experience.

I know only of one other game besides yours, abulbulian's which is deep in 41 or start 42. We all seem to agree that problems facing the axis in balance are very real and very substantial.

IMO, the latest changes will help, but not solve the balance problem entirely.

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ORIGINAL: bwheatley

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ORIGINAL: kirkgregerson

ComradeP you are so correct. We can try and explain to people that haven't played against a human or decent human sov player in the 41-45 campaign, but they will never understand the issues we're tried to convey without 1st hand experience.

I know only of one other game besides yours, abulbulian's which is deep in 41 or start 42. We all seem to agree that problems facing the axis in balance are very real and very substantial.

IMO, the latest changes will help, but not solve the balance problem entirely.

I agree (as the soviet) player who got his butt handed to him in 41 that having 60 rifle corps in 5/42 was odd. :) Satisfying but i wouldn't call it anywhere near what should be happening.

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agree (as the soviet) player who got his butt handed to him in 41 that having 60 rifle corps in 5/42 was odd. :) Satisfying but i wouldn't call it anywhere near what should be happening.

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ORIGINAL: bwheatley

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ORIGINAL: MengJiao

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ORIGINAL: abulbulian

Well I played about 10 turns in spr 42-sum 42. Here's what I found:

Sov had:

7 million men
defense lines in depth of 3-4 hexes w/fort 3-4 in most
total of about 60 corps units by turn 55

I was not able to make any real breakthroughs in 42. I could fight a few hexes with my infantry (got best units in a few spots for a push). I could force retreats, but my loses even though usually half the sov still drained my inf. Then my opponent could just counter attack my gains (fort 0) and push me back with high loses on both side. Sov player can afford the loses when he has 7 million men.

So if you're expecting to make gains in 42 as axis anything near what was accomplished in 42 historically.. sorry to disappoint you. If you play against AI or maybe your sister (as sov), you could maybe do something in 42.

I was scratching my head in 42 trying to see where any of the axis advantages were?

I've always thougth 1941 would be very hard to simulate. I've also suggested from my very first posts here that Axis players are going to be happy with starting things in 1942. I don't see the problem with starting the campaign in 1942. It guarantees a completely historical 1941 and puts the Axis in a pretty good situation.

Anyway, I'm running my Blau I test using the Blau scenario in the game. I expect the 6th army to get to Voronnezh in about 2-3 weeks and I'll be very surprised if they don't.

Meanwhile, I don't see the point in finding that an ahistorical 1942 results from an ahistorical 1941. If you want a historical 1941, you should start in 1942, which is what I have been doing.

I think people appreciate your post now. I remember when you posted it people were picking on you. So i think more might agree with your views on it now.

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

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agree (as the soviet) player who got his butt handed to him in 41 that having 60 rifle corps in 5/42 was odd. :) Satisfying but i wouldn't call it anywhere near what should be happening.

We have been discussing this issue in the development forums, and there are some self balancing factors that need to be taken into account. Firstly, you probably did not play with the amendments to brigade conversions and the increased costs of creating divisions, so there will be fewer divisions available to turn into corps.

Also corps are a double edged sword, in that yes you will have higher troop density for places like Stalingrad, but you will have fewer units to hold the lines, so you will have to get the balance right or risk thinning the line too much especially if the Axis does go for the Caucasus, and you are desperate to man a very extended line.

A change is AP costs for creating corps is being seriously considered.

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ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Certainly, supplies are too forgiving for both sides in terms of the quantities reaching the frontline. In 1941 for the Germans and later in the war for the Soviets.

There are many mechanics that could use some further finetuning, but the developers are aware of that and numerous things are being tested currently. Of course, major changes require a lot of data and a lot of testing.

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ORIGINAL: abulbulian

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ORIGINAL: raizer

the i do this, you need to do that thread

flav says notenome is the first soviet player he has seen on the forums that "gets it" as a soviet pusher...I believe him, and therefore, note is a better player than your competent opponents, its like comparing apples and cashews.

Wrong and very wrong. I can tell you first hand bwheatley gets it too. Play him if you don't believe me.

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ORIGINAL: Jakerson

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ORIGINAL: bwheatley
That is weird. With my game i am having a super easy-ish time of beating back panzer corps with rifle corp & cav corp stacks. Seems almost two easy at times. I wonder if it's just how i played the russians thats different? I cared less about making sure my C&C was right in early 42 and more about getting tank and rifle corps so i horded AP's.

Well it is easy to provide a test soviet 42 attack ability.

Demonstration 8 tank corps and 5 tank brigades (This is something like 20 Tank Divisions) attacking against 2 panzer divisions and 1 motorized division. Soviet have almost 3 times more tanks attacking than Germans have defending. Soviet attacking with 4 full stacks.

German losses 512 men, 16 art, and amazing number of 4 tanks.
Soviet Losses 10592 men, 176 art and amazing number of 448 tanks.

If this is result from 4 full Soviet stacks attacking I would like to know how many full Soviet Stacks I need to beat those German Stacks back easily?

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ORIGINAL: Jakerson

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ORIGINAL: randallw

You are taking the term Tank Corps and assuming it's really the size of a corps; the 42a Corps is certainly not even close to it.  It's about 6k men and about 160 tanks, maxed out.  That's not even the size of a full division.  The whole force is about the value of 6-10 tank divisions, not 20.  Also the corps may have absorbed the 25% experience drop from formation; the experience difference between the Germans and Russians may be huge.

I also notice a 70% modifier, apparently from the Russians being from mixed commands.  All this adds up to a slaughter.

In this demo it is 15 Soviet tank corps against 3 German panzer divisions. All soviet troops in same command now. This is deliberate attack of 5 stacks soviet tank corps. Soviet got lucky and was able to destroy 24 German tanks and 1000 men.

I mean this is supposed to be a counter attack of 1600 soviet tanks. Soviet lost third of their assault forces and this is 541 tanks and 15k men. I could keep up attacking 6 full stacks of soviet tank corps but that doesn’t chance result much. In this game 6 full stacks of Soviet tanks corps this is largest force that soviet can use in counter attack even in theory but in practical even 5 full stacks of tank corps in counter attack is maybe too much.

Soviet have zero counter attack ability against these German uber panzer stacks at 1942 it doesn’t matter if Soviet deploy largest number of tank corps that stack rules allow that is 18 tank corps in the counter attack or have that +1 bonus what some people complain.

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ORIGINAL: Mynok

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include some mobile units in support of an infantry heavy assault

What do you mean by "in support"? Are you saying reserves will join an assault...on the attack?

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ORIGINAL: raizer

I have harped about the ability of the soviet player to use rail mode to move fresh units up right into fighting positions, into swamps, rough, detrain them and BAM! they are ready to fight.  You can even rail units up one hex from the enemy, detrain them and move them the one hex into the zoc of the enemy-and you can move fresh units up along the same rails that you are evac'ing other units/factories.  And the smaller scenarios this is even more powerful because who cares about evac'ing an armaments factory in a 10-17 turn game.  And with the fewer units and smaller distances in the small games, rail turns the soviets into a truly mobile fighting force in 41.  In 2 pbem games-small scenarios, Ive run out of rail capacity in only one turn...you can zing units all over the map-and I have never had anyone in rail get hit with interdiction, thou I have had interdiction hit normally moving ground guys several times

and yah I complained about it and was told to stop complaining and play russians if I dont like-so thats what Im doing

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

quote:

agree (as the soviet) player who got his butt handed to him in 41 that having 60 rifle corps in 5/42 was odd. :) Satisfying but i wouldn't call it anywhere near what should be happening.

We have been discussing this issue in the development forums, and there are some self balancing factors that need to be taken into account. Firstly, you probably did not play with the amendments to brigade conversions and the increased costs of creating divisions, so there will be fewer divisions available to turn into corps.

Also corps are a double edged sword, in that yes you will have higher troop density for places like Stalingrad, but you will have fewer units to hold the lines, so you will have to get the balance right or risk thinning the line too much especially if the Axis does go for the Caucasus, and you are desperate to man a very extended line.

A change is AP costs for creating corps is being seriously considered.

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ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

quote:

agree (as the soviet) player who got his butt handed to him in 41 that having 60 rifle corps in 5/42 was odd. :) Satisfying but i wouldn't call it anywhere near what should be happening.

We have been discussing this issue in the development forums, and there are some self balancing factors that need to be taken into account. Firstly, you probably did not play with the amendments to brigade conversions and the increased costs of creating divisions, so there will be fewer divisions available to turn into corps.

Also corps are a double edged sword, in that yes you will have higher troop density for places like Stalingrad, but you will have fewer units to hold the lines, so you will have to get the balance right or risk thinning the line too much especially if the Axis does go for the Caucasus, and you are desperate to man a very extended line.

A change is AP costs for creating corps is being seriously considered.

I am slightly sceptical about this because I feel that I am already too powerful as the Soviets in Jan '42, long before I start creating Corps units. However, I really need to see how summer '42 pans out before I can make truly sensible remarks. Maybe I will get kicked off the map come June... I really hope I do :)

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

Well, we have data that proves experience and morale and manpower numbers are not what that should be. If you have good data that proves your points, then you have my e-mail address, and I'll pass it on to Joel.

edit: 4. Cities generate manpower, so if you don't capture enough, Soviet manpower gets out of control - hardly limited impact.

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ORIGINAL: bwheatley

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ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

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agree (as the soviet) player who got his butt handed to him in 41 that having 60 rifle corps in 5/42 was odd. :) Satisfying but i wouldn't call it anywhere near what should be happening.

We have been discussing this issue in the development forums, and there are some self balancing factors that need to be taken into account. Firstly, you probably did not play with the amendments to brigade conversions and the increased costs of creating divisions, so there will be fewer divisions available to turn into corps.

Also corps are a double edged sword, in that yes you will have higher troop density for places like Stalingrad, but you will have fewer units to hold the lines, so you will have to get the balance right or risk thinning the line too much especially if the Axis does go for the Caucasus, and you are desperate to man a very extended line.

A change is AP costs for creating corps is being seriously considered.

I am slightly sceptical about this because I feel that I am already too powerful as the Soviets in Jan '42, long before I start creating Corps units. However, I really need to see how summer '42 pans out before I can make truly sensible remarks. Maybe I will get kicked off the map come June... I really hope I do :)

I think you might get kicked a bit. Eventually ara encircled 2 armies. I don't think he really appreciated how my troops were still pretty warn out. He was very cautious i think he could have pushed more. But we are playing now where i'm falling back to rostov etc just to give him a chance at more country.

So it should at least make for a fun 43.

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ORIGINAL: abulbulian

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ORIGINAL: bwheatley

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ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

quote:

agree (as the soviet) player who got his butt handed to him in 41 that having 60 rifle corps in 5/42 was odd. :) Satisfying but i wouldn't call it anywhere near what should be happening.

We have been discussing this issue in the development forums, and there are some self balancing factors that need to be taken into account. Firstly, you probably did not play with the amendments to brigade conversions and the increased costs of creating divisions, so there will be fewer divisions available to turn into corps.

Also corps are a double edged sword, in that yes you will have higher troop density for places like Stalingrad, but you will have fewer units to hold the lines, so you will have to get the balance right or risk thinning the line too much especially if the Axis does go for the Caucasus, and you are desperate to man a very extended line.

A change is AP costs for creating corps is being seriously considered.

I am slightly sceptical about this because I feel that I am already too powerful as the Soviets in Jan '42, long before I start creating Corps units. However, I really need to see how summer '42 pans out before I can make truly sensible remarks. Maybe I will get kicked off the map come June... I really hope I do :)

I think you might get kicked a bit. Eventually ara encircled 2 armies. I don't think he really appreciated how my troops were still pretty warn out. He was very cautious i think he could have pushed more. But we are playing now where i'm falling back to rostov etc just to give him a chance at more country.

So it should at least make for a fun 43.

Well my reason for not pushing is I was trying to hold the Leningrad and later the large Smolensk pocket. My troops were fatigued. You have to play axis to understand the idea of a continual push every turn is a fantasy. You'll run across fatigued troops, loses to tanks (moving mobile units far will cause many damaged vehicles, a portion of which will become destroyed in later phase). Not to mention stretched supply lines. When we started our game there was a bug in flying transports to supply units. That hurt my ability to send supplies to my penetrating mobile unit hqs.

I held that pocket and let most of your units surrender. My hope was to go into winter with a strong, rested, and entrenched line. It was my mistake to think it would make any difference in blizzard... as it did not.

Not sure how the axis can handle the current blizzard. Some say just move back and not let the sov player make deliberate attacks... well I tried that and it just means the sov player makes hasty attacks which seems to work just fine in most cases. I gave a lot of ground in those 13 blizzard turns and lost 1.2 million men.

So hindsight maybe I would have pushed more, but my opponent still had a solid line in front and it wasn't like I could push much before mud. I almost got into a lot of trouble with an operation to take Kharkov in Oct when the mud set in. Mud was almost as brutal as blizzard. I'm not happy with the def CV in mud for units dropping so low if not in direct supply. Attacking and movement of units should have dire consequences. But I had units in good supply/ammo that could defend worth crap when mud hit and they were say 1 hex from being in supply range.

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ORIGINAL: Jalla

bwheatley,

Keep in mind that a division would need more than a train to move, more like 50 for a full strength infantry division and at least 300 for an armoured division.

A division should be able to detrain and fight in about a day or two if the railroad is able to deliver all the trains to a general area within a day or so. Detraining a single train should take no more than a few hours at the most.