Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Denniss
They are penalized because they are in an isolated zone. You may reduce this penalty by flying supply to an airbase inside the isolated tone - some units may then counted as having air (beach) head supply with reduced penalties.

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ORIGINAL: delatbabel

The air head supply will move your units out of isolated status but generally speaking, unless you devote the entire luftwaffe or VVS to it and don't meet any enemy fighter opposition, will not increase your CVs above 1 for a large pocket. So it doesn't increase the chance that the pocket will be cleared out with all units surrendering the next turn. You're just wasting a lot of valuable transports attempting it.

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ORIGINAL: elmo3

Not all pockets are created equal. Obviously the OP created a situation very favorable to making his point. Now picture a couple of divisions in the middle of nowhere, not dug in, that had minimal supplies to begin with being pocketed by an Army during a blizzard where they can hear but not even see tanks closing in on them only a few hundred meters away, and they have no idea where their comrades are now located. What do you think would happen to their enthusiasm under those conditions? Point being it's just not practical to try to create unique rules to cover these two vastly different pockets or a multitude of other pocket variations.

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Now, my troops didn't fight, they are just waiting in the trenches

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ORIGINAL: wulfgar

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Now, my troops didn't fight, they are just waiting in the trenches

The problem is the Germans fight dirty, penetrate the front in narrow sectors and attack your trenches from the rear. Other lines that don't see any Germans are ordered to pull back and form new lines. During that process supplies are dislocated.

In the game the pockets look very neat, but they are frozen in a moment of time during the week. In actual fact German mobile units have assaulted rear supply centers and damaged lines of communication.

Later in the war the blitzkrieg tactic began to fail when the front line defenders merely closed the breach behind the penetrating forces.

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ORIGINAL: fbs

Bataan lasted 92 days, or 13 game turns, with no external supplies.

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ORIGINAL: darbymcd

Well, I think your example actually points to a better fix. There should be a morale hit to isolated units, just like there is in RL. But the problem is the current system used their supply level as a modifier, but that doesn't make so much sense because that is already a modifier. Being isolated doesn't make your weapons less effective, it makes you more scared. It also means you can't resupply, which hits you later with larger supply modifiers, but that is already subsumed into the normal game mechanism; ie the next turn your supply level will be even lower so will generate worse modifier. I also don't like the current system as far too punishing. Just wack the units with something like -20 morale and let the supply system just do its normal thing. Bad units will surrender, starving units will disintegrate, but highly motivated and supplied units can last for a considerable time....

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ORIGINAL: fbs

Bataan lasted 92 days, or 13 game turns, with no external supplies.

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ORIGINAL: redmarkus4

Many Soviet pockets lasted much longer in real life than they do in the game.

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ORIGINAL: wulfgar

The trick is not losing your supplies in the first place. In the case of Bataan good order was maintained and they retreated into a natural fort that couldn't be out flanked. Their front line got to defend against those attacking from the front.

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That's correct, but they hadn't access to supplies. The rule in the game is that if you can't path to a supply source in under 100 MP, you're isolated (doesn't require an actual encirclement). Bataan peninsula was not a supply source (they were low on supplies from day 1), so from the game's rules they should be a wash-up in 1 or 2 weeks. Instead, as you perfectly explained, in real life it's not lack of access to a supply source that makes troops a wash-up.

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ORIGINAL:  redmarkus4
A big part of the problem is the fact that in WitE cities don't seem to generate supply.  If a surrounded city generated slowly reducing amounts of supply each turn, then:
1. You'd be more likely to defend them.
2. The enemy would be more likely to attack them.
3. Pockets around a major city would hold for longer.
4. The overall realism of the game would be enhanced.

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ORIGINAL: Paul McNeely

The city doesn't even need to generate supply it just needs to send out that supply to the units in the pocket.

The Germans were routinely pocketed in the winter. This is how they stopped the 41-42 offensive, by turtling up in any place that offered shelter from the weather. Atomic Games Veliki Luki game mentions that they had fortified the city in prepartion for the winter and included supply stockpiling.

I'm not convinced the CV reduction means diddly but there is no need for it. A unit in a pocket should simply be cut off from supply and the normal rules for lack fo supply should take effect. There was no indication of mass panic by either side due to being cut off. The whole Minsk pocket was a nightmare for the germans in 41 as the screen of panzer forces were routinely getting assaulted by scratch forces of the exfiltrating russians. How long any particular pocket lasted in week long game turns is hard to say but most probably lasted 1-2 weeks...but they also would have been attacked in that time, not just some weak probe by a bde or something. Otherwise its not like the shoot their guns into the air in celebration every night or something.

A city with supply in the city should become the supply source for all units in the pocket. When that runs out then things should go rather quickly but otherwise it should take combat to reduce the pocket. Though in 41, a typical low morale, crap experience rifle division isn't going to put up a fight anyway. But it would stop people doing crazy stuff like exposing all of southern germany and whatever because they know the russians can't do anything.

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ORIGINAL: AFV

The only pockets I see last longer is when its mud, or perhaps the first turn. Otherwise, in my experience, they do not last longer than 1 turn. Is this not the experience others have?

This certainly hits the nail on the head:

quote:

ORIGINAL:  redmarkus4
A big part of the problem is the fact that in WitE cities don't seem to generate supply.  If a surrounded city generated slowly reducing amounts of supply each turn, then:
1. You'd be more likely to defend them.
2. The enemy would be more likely to attack them.
3. Pockets around a major city would hold for longer.
4. The overall realism of the game would be enhanced.

1-2 turns max is my experience, except vs. the AI (on AI 110%, Human 100%) when it sometimes ignores a few pocketed units and moves on.

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ORIGINAL: fbs

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ORIGINAL: wulfgar

The trick is not losing your supplies in the first place. In the case of Bataan good order was maintained and they retreated into a natural fort that couldn't be out flanked. Their front line got to defend against those attacking from the front.

That's correct, but they hadn't access to supplies. The rule in the game is that if you can't path to a supply source in under 100 MP, you're isolated (doesn't require an actual encirclement). Bataan peninsula was not a supply source (they were low on supplies from day 1), so from the game's rules they should be a wash-up in 1 or 2 weeks. Instead, as you perfectly explained, in real life it's not lack of access to a supply source that makes troops a wash-up.

This is from James Dunningan, "How to Make War", p. 460. "A nonmechanized army requires only 15 to 30 pounds of supply per man per day. Every 1,000 tons of supply keeps 100,000 men in combat for a day. If one rail or road enters an area occupied by 100,000 troops, it must be cut for more than 95 percent of the time to have any effect. And it must be cut for a sustained period, because military forces stockpile supplies when they have a chance... Units without supplies can still fight, but at greater cost in casualties. As the Chinese in Korea and the North Vietnamese in Vietnam demonstrated, it is possible to take more casualties in lieu of using ammunition and still stand off a better-supplied force. In Korea it was found that with twice the manpower taking twice the casualties, the Chinese were able to match better-armed and better-supplied UN units... The key point is that adverse effects of reduced or no supply are gradual. Troops can continue to operate in those conditions for weeks or months. How is this so? Call it the Use What You Got rule of supply: when troops are well supplied they profligate. When times are lean so are expenditures. When supply dries out for any reason, expedient methods are found to get by with less. History is full of examples."

I think the most immediate factor in an encirclement is really morale.