Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Michael T
Half way thru my T55, finished my attacks. 35K of hun sent to the dead pile for 70K of Sov's. Excellent. Boy I am loving these INF Corp. 3 Sapper Reg each they eat krauts and their forts. The pattern is 3 or 4 waves of 6 X Divisional attacks, then hit em with the big boys.

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ORIGINAL: carlkay58

I tried a game with Logistics set to 50% and it does not do what you would think it does. From the manual:

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Logistics Level: Impacts the formulas that determine the amount of supply and replacements a unit receives based on its supply trace, the amount of attrition a unit suffers due to movement, the amount of fatigue added or removed from a unit during a turn, and the amount of fuel expended by generic vehicles. This level also affects the ability of leaders to conduct successful admin checks.

We were looking to test something with lower supply production and the Logistics setting changed much more than that. Also note that if you reduce the supply production, it shorts the production side of the equation before the combat units see less supply. So we were unable to find a way to reduce the amount of supplies going to the troops without decimating the production system.

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ORIGINAL: Pelton


if the Germans win 82% of the defensive battles the combat ratio should not be 2.6 to 1. Thats insanely low and not close to the historical average for 1942. Which was atleast 5 to 1 by most historians, that does not include surrenders. I am talking German vs Russian no minor allies.

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ORIGINAL: Michael T

I am opening this up to Pelton. It no longer matters what he sees here now as the updates will be delayed and to be honest I am so far in front it is of no consequence.

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ORIGINAL: Pelton
The way the combat ratio was nerfed many moons ago you dont need to build a single SU of anything really. I beleive the first turn u started attacking you went 5 wins and 25 loses and my OOB dropped 40,000 in a single turn. Some of the battles I "won" I lost more men and equipement then you did. You can exploit the off ratio as you have by attacking the same hex 3 to 6 times. Several hexs I won all 4 or 5 battles, but suffered 4 to 6 k in losses. So as SHC you only need to attack, winning is not nessasary.

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ORIGINAL: Michael T

I am bleeding you Pelton because I have the men and Arm to do so. If your 41 campaign had been like it was in your other games and you had fought thru the blizzard there is no way I could be doing what I am now. You gave me initiative and the manpower to do it. Also since there is no AP crunch I can build many Corp.

You can't make a judgement about the games (WITE) state from this game because its so left of centre. But the boring days will be gone come 43, then you will see some real death for Germany

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If your 41 campaign had been like it was in your other games

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Pelton, the basic problem here is and always has been your strategy. It's a disaster. You made a terrible mistake on staking it all on the right hook when it was clear that Michael knew you were going there and threw everything he had at stopping this. Then you compounded that error by running away to Poland and removing any pressure at all on Michael's replacement situation. Everything that has happened in this game was completely predictable and was in fact predicted.

The real surprise would have been if what you did worked.

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ORIGINAL: janh

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ORIGINAL: Pelton
The way the combat ratio was nerfed many moons ago you dont need to build a single SU of anything really. I beleive the first turn u started attacking you went 5 wins and 25 loses and my OOB dropped 40,000 in a single turn. Some of the battles I "won" I lost more men and equipement then you did. You can exploit the off ratio as you have by attacking the same hex 3 to 6 times. Several hexs I won all 4 or 5 battles, but suffered 4 to 6 k in losses. So as SHC you only need to attack, winning is not nessasary.

Yes, Pelton, Michael is correct: You shouldn't put much weight in the numbers in this game, your situation and the chance Michael got to gring away like this are home-baked. Had Michael suffered an "average" 1941 defeat, cutting him to 4M to 5M men, and pushing him much further back, he simply couldn't afford this.

This game is just quite far outside the norm and should indeed have ended with major victory in March. At least in the case that one fails to reduce the Soviets by blizzard to that rough number, a withdrawal to Poland will only speed up disaster -- I think that's pretty obvious now.

The grinding with numerous stacks is something you exploit as well, just to note. Everyone needing to open LG's backdoor for example surely has to do it. It is not a specific side's advantage, thought the way and benefits Michael pulls from it sounds like something that should be more typical for 1944. It simply comes down to I-Go-U-Go, this kind of system is not very surprisingly strongly in favor of the one with the initiate/turn, aka the attacker. In reality, if the Germans take a day to switch out assault columns, so the defenders ought to be able to shuffle reinforcements. The reserve mode kind of gets that, but is far to unreliable compared to yourself selecting and moving units.

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ORIGINAL: Pelton
2. The game is really normal as far as numbers go. IF I had stayed to take a beating during Blizzard I would have simply been 100-150 miles to east. Summer of 1942 would have been static other then SHC attacking about 15 times as Hoooper/Kamil and TDV have done in past to keep GHC OOB static.

3. Staying or running to Poland does not change the end date is what I predict to be true. I from exp already know the results of staying. I am not guessing I have far more exp in post 41 games then anyone playing. Its not even close.

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ORIGINAL: janh

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ORIGINAL: Pelton
2. The game is really normal as far as numbers go. IF I had stayed to take a beating during Blizzard I would have simply been 100-150 miles to east. Summer of 1942 would have been static other then SHC attacking about 15 times as Hoooper/Kamil and TDV have done in past to keep GHC OOB static.

3. Staying or running to Poland does not change the end date is what I predict to be true. I from exp already know the results of staying. I am not guessing I have far more exp in post 41 games then anyone playing. Its not even close.

Fighting it out for every yard during blizzard probably would have been worse. You are certainly right there. But if you had done the slow 1-2 hex withdrawals per turn of the earlier games, you would have denied Michael a lot of terrain and also manpower centers. I all the time thought this match was very "un-Peltonish", if you understand what I meant -- you kind of bend all the rules you yourself set up earlier, like the importance of manpower centers.

Don't feel attacked, I have no intention so. Sitting outside and watching both sides of the coin, it is easy to say things -- which may be totally off. I wouldn't want to have been in your shoes that moment that our big Panzerfist got stuck in the Valdai hills. It could have worked, and maybe next time it will again. Just an experiment gone wrong. I only don't think you really can draw too many conclusions from this number wise. It is too unusual, and it sure looks more like a 1944 situation with 1942 technology but still poorly experienced Russians than a typical 1942 game.

PS. I am not sure yet that Michaels way into Berlin will be an easy and quick one given your unit morale, and the possibility to disband many LW units, or Security divisions to bump your manpower pools given that you have short lines and nothing much to garrison presently. Might be a long walk into Berlin, evening with successful attrition tactics.

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ORIGINAL: sillyflower

Russian morale drop is not a problem as long as you can afford to rotate units to recover. Doesn't help to get guards tho' if you lose 80% of your attacks

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ORIGINAL: Michael T

This is very simple Pelton. I receive 120,000 plus troops per turn thanks to all the extra Manpower you gave me. I have so many units that I have the equivalent of 2 complete Fronts in reserve. So I simply attack to inflict losses on you. I don't care what happens in relation to whether I win or lose, whether you have reserve commitment of not. All I care is that I kill Axis troops at a ratio of 1:5 or better or you retreat. So far its averaging less than 1:3. Hooray! So you see even if I lost 120,000 men a turn I am happy if I killed 25,000 of the hun. But my worst turn so far was losing 78,000 for 30,000 hun. Still very happy with that.

When a front gets burned out thru morale loss because of defeats I rotate in a new fresh front to keep the grind going. Meanwhile, since there is no pressure on AP I am steadily building INF and ARM Corp. My truck pool is even increasing! If I think a victory in combat is possible I attack with the INF Corp after your troops have been bloodied by the waves of multi divisional attacks I throw at you. So my Corp units are building morale and experience for 43. In 1943 your losses will be horrendous. My replacement rate will fall to around 95,000 but my killing power and battle win to loss ratio will be much higher. You can do nothing to prevent it. You lost the game in 1941. Flavius is correct in that I am learning a great deal about playing the Soviets post blizzard 41/42.

The power that I will be able to wield in 1944 will be just unstoppable. Even if your OOB was hitting 4 million plus it won't help you. You are 3.7 million now and heading south. Your OOB has peaked at 3.8 million. The only way you can increase it again is to retreat. But this would only be a temporary respite and just take me closer to Berlin, again a happy uncle Joe.

You cannot not draw or win. It’s a futile effort. But somewhat humorous to watch it unfold. My boredom has been due to an unrealized expectation of how the game would progress beyond the summer of 41. But I have to admit that I am beginning to find a perverse pleasure in playing the role of Stalin. Pity Paris is not on the map….

I must admit though, I am now even more fearful of what Russia can do if she survives 1941/42 in any kind of competitive state. My thinking at this point is that the best form of defence is just keep attacking and hold the initiative for as long as you can. As soon as Germany goes turtle she is doomed if its before 1943.