Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: pompack

Support units help only combat units attached directly to the same HQ.

Quick and dirty approach to cheaply (relatively) getting support units where you want them. The following is written around the Russians organization, but the same principle applies to the Germans

1. Set STAVKA level to 9
2. Set all Front levels to 1 (otherwise SUs will not flow through them either up or down
3. Set all army levels to 1 and all corps levels to 0
4. Go back and set only the armies that you want to support with SUs to 3 (Note that if you wish to keep any corps active you can set them to 3 as well)
5. Run three to five turns (This allows SUs from unsupported HQs to flow up to STAVKA and then down to the ones you wish to support; the longer you wait the fewer you have to move manually and pay APs but you may be in a hurry to get support to where you need it)
6. Lock the armies (or corps if you wish) you want to support and manually add any additional SUs that did not flow naturally
7. Lock all fronts containing supported armies. Set all other fronts (and inactive armies) to 0. Add construction units to supported Fronts as desired.

As the Germans, you would want to flow everything down to the corps level instead of the army level.

quote:

Also, I'd consider when attacking, panzer/motorized units will often be more than 5 hexes away from their corps hq. This has 2 main ramifications regarding SU's and mobile units:
1. If you want to make sure SU's are available to your panzers, you'll need to directly attach them. This trades flexibility for certainty.
2. You might want to consider reversing the support levels of Infantry and Panzer corps. If your panzer divisions are >5 hexes away from HQ, no amount of artillery in the Panzer corps hq will do you any good (you can't attach artillery SU's to divisions). You might as well put them where they can be used, supporting the infantry.

Besides, most of your deliberate attacking will be by your infantry, and the panzer/mot divs used for exploitation.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nikolaj

This sounds pretty good. I'm a bit unsure about one point, though. I though that all HQ's would adapt to the support level immediately after the turn where I changed it. I sounds like I have to wait for a number of turns for it to really kick in, though. Is this because support units only move one "step" (from one HQ to the next in line) per turn? Also, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by keeping corps active, that you mention in point 4. Is this specifically for the Soviet side?

quote:

ORIGINAL: pompack
Sorry, sloppy wording. The Russians have a bunch more armies than they can use at first. By "active" I just meant it is one I attached combat units to instead of setting it on a rail line out of the way somewhere a long distance from the front.

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ORIGINAL: Nikolaj
You're right that infantry divisions do more deliberate attacks. Are HQ support units only sent to deliberate attacks, though?

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ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

I have a new question on this topic. I've read on this Forum that as the Russian Player it is a good idea to build some Sapper Regiments and Independent Tank Battalions to add to your Cavalry Corps when they become available in December 41. Since it takes time for these support units to gain strength, experience and morale I understand that you are supposed to start building them early. My question is, what HQ unit should be used to build them?

So far I have been building them with the STAVKA HQ as I figured this way I could then assign them to the Cavalry Corps without paying any AP costs. However, to prevent them from being auto-assigned to other HQs further down the chain of command I have had to "Lock" STAVKA. As I understand it "Locking" STAVKA effectively prevents any support units from moving anywhere, is that right? If so this means that I have to manually move all my support units around which costs APs. It also means that I have to put STAVKA on a train and move it from Front to Front via rail in order to manually move the other new support units that STAVKA auto-builds on its own (at the moment mainly Howitzer units) to my Army HQs; I was really hoping to avoid this micro-management.

The other option I suppose would be to use one of those otherwise unused Army HQs to build the support units and then just "Lock" it. But then I would have to pay APs to transfer the support units to the Cavalry Corps.

Have I missed something? Is there another way to do this? What do other people do?

EdIT: Nikolaj, sorry about adding my question to your post, I just felt this was the best place to ask as the questions are related. But if you think I'm hijacking your thread I'll move it?

quote:

ORIGINAL: pompack


Unfortunately you cannot move units FROM an HQ TO a combat unit; you can only pull into a combat unit which alway takes 1 AP

So in answer to your question, in order to prevent having to pay twice (since you can only PULL from a HQ in your chain-of-command) you should build them in STAVKA. As you noted, you should either lock STAVKA or lock or everything else to zero to keep them from flowing out as soon as you build them. Now note that I build 2-3 in every front-line Army HQ early to use for digging; when I get around to building corps I will always end up with at least one or two in each major (colored) Army HQ.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

quote:

ORIGINAL: pompack


Unfortunately you cannot move units FROM an HQ TO a combat unit; you can only pull into a combat unit which alway takes 1 AP

So in answer to your question, in order to prevent having to pay twice (since you can only PULL from a HQ in your chain-of-command) you should build them in STAVKA. As you noted, you should either lock STAVKA or lock or everything else to zero to keep them from flowing out as soon as you build them. Now note that I build 2-3 in every front-line Army HQ early to use for digging; when I get around to building corps I will always end up with at least one or two in each major (colored) Army HQ.

Thank you. I didn't build any Sapper Regiments early as I built construction battalions and RR Brigades instead. Perhaps next game I'll build the Sapper Regiments instead. How are they for digging in compared with the construction units?

quote:

ORIGINAL: unikey


" you should either lock STAVKA or lock or everything else to zero to keep them from flowing out as soon as you build them"
When using manual SU movement, if you choose to build a lot of SUs in STAVKA and then let them sit there to fill out before you move them manually, you must do something to keep them from moving automatically.

"Set all Front levels to 1 (otherwise SUs will not flow through them either up or down"
This refers to using the automatic allocation option. SUs will not flow through an intermediate HQ (like a front) if the level is set to zero.

I'm confused

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support being 3 mean that it will try to have 3 of each type

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For me SU’s are just turbo button that can be turned ON or OFF to boosts some parts of the front if I want it.   Still there are some thumb rules for using SU’s armies that defend urban hexes should always have a lot of SU as game mechanics give them ability to commit more SU’s in combat than when combatting in other hexes. There is sense to use this rule of extra SU’s in urban combat if you are sure that your opponent frontal assault against Urban hexes.