BletchleyGeek
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Joined: 11/26/2009
From: Living in the fair city of Melbourne, Australia
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Turn 47 – 7 May 1942
After having made a short hiatus with the AAR – work and the lack of anything interesting happening in the game being the causes – I'm back with it.
One of the strangest phases of the game is that of WitE historical weather mechanics for the May – June period. During 10 turns or so, weather will be flipping alternatively between clear and mud. This rapidly changing situation, on the one hand, prevents any kind of sustained offensive operations, but seems to invite the players to maneuver for the most advantageous positions for summer.
Since the Axis goes first, it would seem that he's the one with the initiative. However, the Soviet benefits from first, seeing what the Axis has done and has the opportunity to react accordingly, second, and most important from my point of view, is that whatever the Soviet does – provided he does something – can hardly be countered by the Axis effectively, because of the huge difficulty of doing anything during mud.
Q-Ball has conducted limited operations mainly in two sectors, Rzhev and the lower Don basin. These operations have resulted in 30 battles, of which 26 have turned out to be Axis victories. Q-Ball seems to have dropped Hasty attacks as his preferred mode of operation, and now is relying more on Deliberate attacks, which mean that he's not able to make much progress but also guarantee getting the hexes he wants.
Luftwaffe tactical aviations is still withdrawn, and my previous observations on the air war, especially regarding the fact that the Luftwaffe seems to perform better when it doesn't conduct ground support missions is confirmed. The VVS has lost about 100 planes in air combat, while the Luftwaffe a mere 4. That's what I would certainly deem as “outstanding performance” :)
Operational Situation
Seems that Q-Ball was a bit surprised to find that I wasn't stacking too much in the frontline, having in most sectors one single unit in each hex in contact with him, and asked me if it had caught me flatfooted or something. Not really. I am relying now on a very different strategy, which might need some adjusting, and I will be detailing as I review the situation.
Stopping the Germans right on their start line is something which isn't going to happen unless we're talking about highly fortified cities or riverlines. In consequence, stacking most of my forces on the frontline – as some of the readers have hinted at – serves little or no purpose. Attacked hexes don't get support from neighboring hexes in any way, and the swift mobility of German motorized formations makes common the case that a good number of divisions become isolated after little or no combat. That's certainly something I need to avoid at all costs.
Let's take a look at Rzhev, where Q-Ball has massed two ArmeeKorps against the positions held by Kalinin Front 54th Army southwest to the city
I think it's interesting to show you the details of both attacks, as they will show a couple of things. The north attack was carried by troops coming from four separate commands – including LVII PzKorps – and went pretty badly for 359th Rifle Division
and the south attack involved 332nd Rifle Division, which was assaulted by two German ArmeKorps
In both cases, I lost. But how did I lose? Odds and reported casualty numbers only explain part of the story, and perhaps the least interesting part of it.
In both cases, I got reserves committed, which is the mechanic that allows us to increase the force committed to a particular single hex without sitting in it. This is perhaps one of the least used – judging from how infrequently are they discussed openly - and understood game mechanics. It is chance based, and by looking at the bare chances, seems like something “far fetched” to rely on. I disagree, and my opinion – which is partly proven by the combats this turn – is that if attention is paid to the # of MP's available to Reserve units, placement and leaders, one can get a very high ratio of reserve commitment. Of the 30 battles I had, in about 15 or more there were reserves committed.
Reserve commitment usually results in higher losses for both sides – after all Reserves are attacking into the hex, not taking advantage of terrain defensive bonuses – and this is indeed quite good. What I need to do is to cause as many losses as possible on the Wehrmacht and contest every hex. I don't need to hold very hex. This is a subtle, yet critical issue to consider in order to defend effectively in WitE.
If we remove the ground elements destroyed because of retreat, in both combats, the number of destroyed and damaged elements during Ground combat are actually telling us a lot about what happened. In the northern attack, the Axis lost 41 and 88 were damaged, the Soviets lost 93 and 120 were damaged. This is a 2.5:1 exchange in destroyed elements, and a 1.5:1 exchange in damaged elements. In the southern attack, the Axis lost 167 and 235 were damaged, while the defenders lost 89 and got 148 damaged. That's a 1:2 exchange in destroyed elements, and a 1:1.5 exchange in damaged elements. So while both look as shiny victories for the Axis, the truth is that these were pretty bloody affairs with a substantial price tag attached.
Last but not least: in this way Retreat losses are greatly reduced. Since the Axis is going to win most of the time, it makes little sense – from another perspective – to stack too much in front hexes.
To summarize, by doing this – deploying one unit in the front – stacking two or so behind I achieve several main things: to reduce retreat losses (less units are retreating), increasing chances of Reserves being committed, and having a more flexible stance which makes somewhat more difficult to Axis to bag many units with relatively little effort.
Besides that, I adopted a three tiered deployment – where terrain and troop availability allows – consisting in frontline armies, operational reserve armies and strategic reserves. I try to place operational reserves at about 4 hexes max from the front line. These are the guys who are meant to plug gaps and make difficult for Q-Ball to move so freely when he achieves a breakthrogh. In the picture above 54th Army isn't really complying with this policy. I'm a big believer in terrain, so I ditched the rule here :)
In the picture you can see only one real strategic Reserve: 39th Army. Strategic reserves are much deeper and I prioritize having them near or in railroads. To the south lies 52nd Army, which is actually the operational reserve for the Mozhaisk sector defended by Western Front 20th Army.
So I'm trying to play this flexible. Q-Ball will gain land, but he should have trouble inflicting massive losses without incurring in heavy losses of his own.
In the South Q-Ball seems to be better prepared for offensive operations, or at least, he had a clear goal to pursue
that of expanding his bridgehead over the Don. I certainly need to further reinforce this sector: one Army is already on its way, and the troops I'm taking from the Crimea will help as well. I have at least two or three armies more available which I'm still doubting about committing. I don't want to encourage him to changes his plans – whatever they are – since they seem to be going in the direction I was expecting. This crossing is going to be contested, and I do really plan to make it difficult for him to further expand it.
Most worrying that his ops around Rostov, is his insistence in broadening a bulge in the Starobelsk region. That's a signal that he's not doing that just for the sake of killing Soviets.
Logistics & Organization
Time to consolidate the Rifle Brigades into Divisions... something I desperately need to do. Of the two choices available – form up nearly 100% TOE divisions with three brigades or to form up about 66% TOE divisions with just two brigades – I go for the latter. I really need to cover the losses I had during March in terms of counters, and I certainly do share Flavio's view that it's the most efficient thing to do in the long run. A total of 51 divisions are built in this way. I'm sparing a few brigades and especially Naval Rifle Brigades, which I find to be a pretty good asset.
This turn I've taken yet another look at production, and decided to make monthly summaries detailing what has been built, and what percentage of manpower of resources each item is consuming. The results for the last four turns are quite interesting. I see that I've put into “built” units, about 400,000 men and 245,000 armaments points. So while I'm using up 100% of my manpower production, armament production is clearly well over the needs of the Red Army (more so since I still have most Artillery SU's at 50% Max TOE, with the exception of Guards units). Manpower is really the key to everything in this game, not supplies nor armament points.
Another interesting thing to look is the proportion of men used to furnish Support squads vs. Rifle squads. I see that Support squad production has gobbled a 34% of all the manpower available, which I think it's a big figure, but now I'm not sure it's that much of an issue. 54% of the manpower, and 51% of the armaments, have gone into Rifle Squad production. Anybody interested in checking these number themselves, are invited to look them up in the game's spreadsheet.
Operations
The defense in depth doctrine that I'm applying – and still developing, would be nice to have some discussion about this – entails two other “bonuses”.
One is that I'm inviting Q-Ball to attack. This is important, since as we've seen, things can be rigged so that what looks as the Germans mopping the floor, becomes actually a pretty grim battle of attrition. This attacking also diverts Q-Ball attention from what I can do on his troops.
Second, and probably most important, now I have substantial forces placed to move and attack Q-Ball where his line isn't as strong as it could be. Yes guys, I mean to be attacking as much as possible on every spot that looks to me as particularly weak.
The above translates into 8 combats, all of them have ended up being victories. I've attacked the weakest Romanian divisions in the front – I think German infantry is a bit overstretched since Q-Ball decided to relieve the Finns in the north – and weak German infantry divisions occupying barely fortified hexes. One thing I've looked after is to get as many Tank Corps involved in these local attacks, thus harvesting “victories”
such as the one above. I think I really hit hard this Romanian division, perhaps one of the best in the whole Romanian Army. Note the proportion between Destroyed and Damaged ground elements during Ground combat: it's similar to the figures I discussed above, but swapping roles. Tank Corps mobility allows them to strike and then retreat behind my infantry... mimicking to some extent what Q-Ball has been doing for some time now in those sectors where he's been wary of my strength.
Most relevant of all the attacks are the ones I've done on the flanks of the Don bridgehead
east of Rostov. He's really got there a lot of strength, and I had troubles to muster the forces to counterattack, having to forgo the attack on the 9-9 Motorized Division next to Rostov. This narrow corridor – and the upcoming mud – under ZOC and across a major river, should entail very little supply arriving to these units. If I see Q-Ball fueling his Panzers here with planes, then this will be right. If he doesn't have problems supplying and fueling these units without relying to air transport... well, that sort of speaks volumes of the problems with logistics modeling in WitE.
Q-Ball has also been adjusting his tactics in the air, from what I see. He seems to have set Ground Support off for his forces, while setting high levels of Interdiction, meaning that my movement was hindered by 8 interdicition attacks. Certainly the Luftwaffe tends to suffer less losses doing this than on a Ground Support role. The air war raged during my turn, and 45 Axis airplanes were downed for about 54 Soviet airplanes. It seems to me this isn't really an effective way of curbing Soviet air power. But I really wonder if there exists an effective way at all...
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RE: Clash of Steel: 1941-1945: Q-Ball vs Bletchley_Geek - 
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