Slitherine

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With regard to the fort issue, I still believe that the most elegant solution to this problem is to restrict the ability to transition from level 2 > level 3 fort to those hexes that have a FZ, FR, City, or Urban terrain feature present in the hex. This would be the simplest to code.

For the Soviets in 1941/1942, it would create some tough decisions as to how they should allocate their precious AP pool. Early on, it would force a decision between setting up some prime rear area locations (Leningrad's "backdoor", Perekop Isthmus, etc.) for Level 3+ building, and the creation of the "Soviet All-Stars command reshuffle, and the typical restoring of the C&C disaster in the first few turns. Later on, it will create AP spending tension for setting up good belts around important locations, and the need to conserve APs for the transition to the more "modern" Soviet Army structure. At present, there is little in the way of resource spending tension in these crucial points in time, as the Soviets (as demonstrated) can simply carpet their rear areas and have 50-70 mile thick bands of level 3-4 forts across virtually the entire front by the time Summer 42 rolls around.

The argument that the mid-to-late war Axis *needs* to be able to build high level forts is not negated by this proposed change and indeed, the Axis really have little to spend their APs on in that period. Requiring them to build the FZs to break the Level 3 threshold will be most felt in the need for replacements to go into the FZs (at least temporarily) as they are built, reducing the manpower and armaments to flesh out their army. However, this is still, in my opinion, a more realistic condition, reflecting the redirection of resources on their side.

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ORIGINAL: Ketza

Its not the extra forts near the cities that are an issue. The fact that civilians helped build them is both historical and makes sense. Its the blankets of level 3 and 4 forts in the middle of nowhere that are impacting the game is a very strategic way.

There currently is no real price to pay on either side for these types of defenses. Let the players decide if they want guns or cement and let them live with their choice.

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ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

Off topic on forts, but the other 1942 problem is the condition of the Wehrmacht. Forts is just one element. To me, any winter morale penalties should be gone at the end of Blizzard, or maybe they shouldn't be there in the first place. The CV penalty serves to knock the Germans down for the Blizzard. Either way, the Wehrmacht needs to be 70-ish morale at least, with Panzers able to push that up a bit more.

The other thing would be to give the Germans a one-time drop into their Manpower pool during the spring, to help flesh-out formations, and represent the mobilization for Fall Blau

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ORIGINAL: Ketza

Its not the extra forts near the cities that are an issue. The fact that civilians helped build them is both historical and makes sense. Its the blankets of level 3 and 4 forts in the middle of nowhere that are impacting the game is a very strategic way.

There currently is no real price to pay on either side for these types of defenses. Let the players decide if they want guns or cement and let them live with their choice.

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The argument that the mid-to-late war Axis *needs* to be able to build high level forts is not negated by this proposed change and indeed, the Axis really have little to spend their APs on in that period. Requiring them to build the FZs to break the Level 3 threshold will be most felt in the need for replacements to go into the FZs (at least temporarily) as they are built, reducing the manpower and armaments to flesh out their army. However, this is still, in my opinion, a more realistic condition, reflecting the redirection of resources on their side.

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ORIGINAL: Mynok

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The argument that the mid-to-late war Axis *needs* to be able to build high level forts is not negated by this proposed change and indeed, the Axis really have little to spend their APs on in that period. Requiring them to build the FZs to break the Level 3 threshold will be most felt in the need for replacements to go into the FZs (at least temporarily) as they are built, reducing the manpower and armaments to flesh out their army. However, this is still, in my opinion, a more realistic condition, reflecting the redirection of resources on their side.

FZs require something the Germans are extremely short of in the later war: manpower. They cannot keep their infantry at decent TOEs as it is. Making FZs the only way to build 3+ forts will make the German demise even faster. One German div even at 100% TOE in level 2 forts is dead meat in 43. Dead meat.

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ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

Myself I think the Soviets are too strong, and get too strong too early. I have a couple of suggestions.

* Let it take longer for evacuated factories to come on line.

* Let it take longer for new Soviet formations to become fleshed out, and make it even slower unless they are say 12 hexes from the front. Historically the Soviets had reserve armies sitting around far behind the front for a large part of the 1942 campaign, while players will put everything in the carpet.

* More penalties to manpower and production for losing cities. All industry couldn't be packed up and moved just like that. This would also give the Soviets more incentive to not give up ground.

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* Let it take longer for new Soviet formations to become fleshed out, and make it even slower unless they are say 12 hexes from the front. Historically the Soviets had reserve armies sitting around far behind the front for a large part of the 1942 campaign, while players will put everything in the carpet.

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+1 on this. The Germans recovered quite a bit of morale compared to the blizzard period as the weather improved. Perhaps a boost at some point with a cap not going over national moral.

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ORIGINAL: BletchleyGeek

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ORIGINAL: Ketza

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
I dislike anything that mixes forts and APs. I think this game relies too much as it is on APs to solve everything, and this just leads to a lot of accounting trickery with APs.

There's got to be a better way than that.

I think the AP system has a lot of potential to make the game better.

I look at APs as a sort of national "logistics pool". You could potentially give the players a lot of flexibility by using them for various things to make the game more interesting. You can also utilize them in a system that restricts players from overdoing things that work too well. This is done with HQ buildups and it works fine in its latest variation in my opinion. To me fort construction after level 2 should fall into this category. I think its much more realistic and will make the game more interesting if both sides have to decide where the forts go and how much effort will be put into them. Your not taking them away your just making players invest something into them other then a few brigades out of the line for awhile.

Rather than AP's, I would set limits to the reachable Fortification level depending on the construction value of the units in the hex. SU's would only speed up the process, but not count towards this limit. Same thing for keeping the forts: you need some minimum level of construction points in the hex to avoid it to decay.

My guess is that someone has already thought of something like this.

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ORIGINAL: BletchleyGeek

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
I've suggested decay mechanisms, yes. With decay penalties increasing dramatically as you get farther away from the front.

I've even suggested placing hard caps on fort levels, again depending on distance from the front. So you cannot just drop a 4 strength fort line 10 hexes in the rear.

These would be far easier from an adminsitrative standpoint than APs. APs get gamed, and the more duties get offloaded on APs, the more they get gamed.

Tying fort cap and decay to the number of construction points in hex would account for distance from the front in an indirect way. Say you need to stack the equivalent of 3 rifle divisions to reach level 2. No level 4 lines 10 hexes in the rear, and it wouldn't be very intelligent to pile up 45 divisionsto get a 15-hex line 10 hexes in the rear just for the sake of it - such an amount of force would be possibly be needed at the front, or elsewhere.

However, this would totally gimp Germany in 1943. No forts, no chance of stopping - or at least damaging - the incoming blows. A possible counter for this could be to dramatically increase attacker casualties unless a certain ratio between fort level (defender) and engineer support level (attacker) is met. Something like the "extra free shots on attacking russians" the axis get. Perhaps this is already accounted for in the tactical combat simulation model, I can't say.

A global element is also missing. Hard caps/level decay linked to the amount of construction points in the hex doesn't introduce any kind of global limiting factor. One option would be to impose a "hard" limiting factor, a "build" pool very much like the motor pool is regarding logistics and general combat efficiency, which would influence how fast can forts be improved or improved at all. But this mechanism would probably add a lot of complexity to logistics phase computation and, more grievously, the player wouldn't have control over what hexes get build first (which is of the utmost importance).

An option would be to make FZ's the key for achieving really high fort levels (3, 4, 5). This would require AP expenditure, but one which I don't think it would be easy to game away. These units would tie TOE elements, vehicles and supplies for extended periods of time. If want to build you have to concentrate your forces and/or tie substantial amounts of resources to the land.

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ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

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ORIGINAL: Mynok

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The argument that the mid-to-late war Axis *needs* to be able to build high level forts is not negated by this proposed change and indeed, the Axis really have little to spend their APs on in that period. Requiring them to build the FZs to break the Level 3 threshold will be most felt in the need for replacements to go into the FZs (at least temporarily) as they are built, reducing the manpower and armaments to flesh out their army. However, this is still, in my opinion, a more realistic condition, reflecting the redirection of resources on their side.

FZs require something the Germans are extremely short of in the later war: manpower. They cannot keep their infantry at decent TOEs as it is. Making FZs the only way to build 3+ forts will make the German demise even faster. One German div even at 100% TOE in level 2 forts is dead meat in 43. Dead meat.

The Germans used impressed or more or less volontary civilian labor to build fortification lines. Maybe German FZs could require less manpower than at present, as civilians would make a contribution too.

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ORIGINAL: JAMiAM
With regard to the fort issue, I still believe that the most elegant solution to this problem is to restrict the ability to transition from level 2 > level 3 fort to those hexes that have a FZ, FR, City, or Urban terrain feature present in the hex. This would be the simplest to code.

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ORIGINAL: Mynok
FZs require something the Germans are extremely short of in the later war: manpower. They cannot keep their infantry at decent TOEs as it is. Making FZs the only way to build 3+ forts will make the German demise even faster. One German div even at 100% TOE in level 2 forts is dead meat in 43. Dead meat.

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ORIGINAL: Pelton
2. New VP system so poeple have a reason to fight during 42. I know this be a pain in the ass for devs, but in long run be worth it an allot more fun because the players would be fighting over meaningless citys every turn.

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ORIGINAL: timmyab
VP's would also allow for sudden death victory conditions throughout the game, avoiding the need to waste hundreds of hours playing a game that is already won.

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ORIGINAL: neuromancer

But level 3 and 4 is where you start to get complicated. There you start building serious walls, tank traps, dragon's teeth, digging in to the point you are digging trench works and bunkers not foxholes. Level 4 probably involves serious concrete work.

I think any professional military unit with enough manpower should be able to - with time - set up Level 2 entrenchments. But they should be below a certain fatigue level (its hard work), shouldn't be in Refit, and unit morale and experience should affect how quickly they work (it may already be affected by those, but if it isn't, it should).

Level 3 and 4 should require several things - an AP expenditure for each level (even one is something, there is some planning to be done there), supply for each level (they are using up 'stuff' to make these more involved entrenchments), and a construction unit to provide specialized heavier equipment that military units don't usually carry with them (I suppose a regular unit could still do it without a construction unit in their immediate HQ SU pool, or in the same hex, but it would be much slower as they make do without the proper tools). And they still can't be on refit, below a certain fatigue, and the speed is affected by morale and experience. Obviously an 'entrench' toggle (probably on the same button as Reserve and Refit) would be necessary for these higher ranking forts. Could even turn it on for the lower ranking forts to indicate they are digging more quickly - but a unit entrenching isn't going to recover fatigue, and in fact will probably build it up.

Did I mention that it's hard work?

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ORIGINAL: Encircled

1)Specialised construction units called something like "Heavy Construction Battalions". If you haven't got one in your army or Corp, you don't build above level 2.

2)RR Construction brigades for the Russian can only do railways and not help in fort construction after November '41

3)A massive pain in the backside for the programmers, but make lvl 3 and lvl 4 take a chunk out of the Arm production of both the Axis and the Allies

4)Only allow fortifications of lvl 3/4 in cities, everywhere else has to be lvl 2

Not easy, as nerfing the fortifications in '41 kills the Russians, and nerfing them after '42 kills the Germans

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ORIGINAL: olivier34

Interesting discussion about fort levels and morale issue. I have open up the 42 GC. Is the order of battle of this scenario enough accurate ? If yes, we should have seen some situation like that in some AARs by now. Or I never seen both players using the static mode as it is in this scenario. I have never seen such saliants in the front line and if we look at the forts levels of the soviets : Except around moscou and in the area of Leningrad, it's only the main line wich is fortified at level 3(stack of more than one unit)and in the south, only at level 1 or 2 ! And I repeat myself, both players have a large amount of units in static modes.
I suspect that to create a very strong fortification line, it should cost a lot of APs. To launch a major offensive, it should cost a lot of them too (we would not seen anymore the entire soviet front counter attacking during the blizzard) and isolated units in level three forts should be abble to resist from an encirclement more than a week.