chuckfourth
Posts: 222
Joined: 10/26/2011 Status: offline
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Sure, sure, I apologise, sincerely, wholeheartedly and unconditionally. Now back to business It is very simple arithmetic Rommel supplied 3 corps 65 hexes away from his rail head (Tripoli) along one single road with trucks. How much supply did he lose along the way? nearly none. He could do a HQBU at 65 hexes, three times the current 20. WITE starts to penalise supply delivery if the unit is 10 hexes from a rail head,(that's 3 hours in a truck) and stops it at 25 hexes. Clearly the Rommel example shows that the Germans were NOT tied so closely to the rail heads as they are in this game. It was made very clear in Poland France and Yugoslavia/Greece that the German army and its logistics system was absolutely first class. Both the Ardennes and Yugoslavia had narrow underdeveloped roads, it didn't stop them. Germans staff work was brilliant, the suggestion that they hadn't planned Barbarossa to within an inch of its life is revisionist. They knew how far and how fast the armoured spearheads could go and catered accordingly. They had just had 3 large scale, live fire trial runs, Poland, France and Yugoslavia. In Russia they predicted what the fuel needs would be well before they set foot on Russian soil. As the offensive developed they could see what was running low at get it forward in good time, they had radios. The weather beat them, not logistical ineptitude. I guess I am not alone in thinking this and so the HQBU rule has appeared. This is a case of giving with one hand and taking with the other. First the supply of the far away units is severely restricted with the supply rules and then completely unrestricted with HQBU. Clearly the logistics system is trying to get as much supply forward as possible, and in the game if the units are too far away it can't do this fully, but somehow automagically with the pressing of the HQBU button now it can supply them fully. Where do these extra trucks come from? Why aren't the "extra" HQBU trucks just running supply's to the far away units in the first place? It seems an unnecessary complication. Easier to do it this way, remove HQBU and use these supply restrictions. If the units are 5 hexes to the corps and the crops is 15 units to the Panzer Group and the Panzer Group is 45 hexes to the army group then they should be in full supply or nearly so. Note that this adds up to 65 hexes, Rommel's ability to service his army with trucks. Note The Food and Water Rommel had to bring forward is available locally in Russia. OK there are supply glitches, but a whole corps marooned for a week before the Mud arrives? Supply Build up already happens in the local towns? Maybe change pressing the HQBU button to bringing this supply on line? Tweak Soviet Morale to adjust play balance, they were rural men with excellent bushcraft, often poorly led and poorly equipped but undoubtedly brave and stubborn. Remove the Surprise rule. It would be helpful if the people offering Reading material offered some specific relevant quotes as I don't have these books. Of the 3 quotes supplied so far, one is due to mud the other two probably as well, thought context is missing. A quote from the American observer William Shirer on the advance into France "And what a magnificent machine that keeps them running so smoothly. In fact that is the chief impression you get from watching the German army at work. It is a gigantic, impersonal war machine, run as coolly and efficiently, say as our automobile industry in Detroit" I am happy to help with an AAR? These changes I think will force the Russian to feed his units into the mincing machine of the German advance in a desperate attempt to slow him down as the Russian builds his strength, as was the historical reality. Stalin never said everyone pull back, well just let him come up to the gates of Moscow and stop him there because we know he will he out of fuel by then. Also this quote from Glantz. http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2011/03/22/war-in-the-east-sid-meiers-heinz-guderians-railroad-tycoon/ "by 1 July its railroad engineers managed to restore the Brest-Minsk line only as far as Baranovichi, a distance of 300 kilometers, with one track operational on German gauge and the other on wider Russian gauge. Laboring feverishly, the engineers were able to push the latter to Stolbtsy on 3 July and Minsk a day later. " Thats 16 hexes of German guage in 2 turns way ahead of the games possible 8. And of course, a single line will have sidings so trains can pass each other. Just one last point the Baltic rail zone should probably correspond to the state boundaries rather than the current zig zag. Thanks in advance for your attention.
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