Telemecus
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Spurred on by Stelteck's suggestion I was going to make some broader suggestions about how we play as a team. I am thinking we should make a new team protocol or other changes at the same time. All of these would be in the new phase for the Battle for Moscow - would it be too soon to call this Operation Typhoon?
Before that a word of caution. I would give the fall of Leningrad as the start date for these changes. While it is looking very good of course we are not there yet. There can always be a rabbit pulled out of the hat or some new eventuality. But for these purposes let us assume we do it.
There are a few things which I think are not working well or not useful. There are some areas where I would be interested in your views. Some of the ideas on how to work as a team were based on the issue of how to allocate resources between competing needs - South, Centre or North. But if every commander is thinking about how the team does rather than just looking narrowly at their area this probem does not arise. So
i) What is the use of allocating points to each commander each turn given that most points go on buildups? We have had quite a few times when commanders have gone way over the number of points they should have used, and many times way under. Looking back every time it seems to me to have been the right decision. Because buildups are so granular, you are either spending about 20 points per buildup or nothing, what point is there in saying each army group gets a dozen points every turn. Would it make more sense to give just a pot of points to each army group only for things other than HQ buildups and consider whatever is left as a pot of points for everyone to use for buildups. Or give up on allocating points totally.
ii) Are boundary maps useful? Given how messy and unpredictable it is, would just general descriptions like "push this boundary northwards" or "push it southwards" be enough
iii) Are we using SUs in the right way? Currently they are either directly assigned or moving up the chain of command to OKH. OKH now has a transport cost of 50,000 - the size of a field army. That is great to save on trucks for supply and movement. But do you feel you can call down SUs when you do need them for a tough battle?
iv) I have been making tables of SUs that withdraw soon and would like to prioritise their use (as we lose them anyway) - is there any way to make this easier to do?
v) Currently the use of airpower consists of bombing air bases at the beginning (to use the 33% allowance first), then ground support/ ground bombing and city bombing at the end. Is this the right way?
vi) There are airbases that are empty (or just light rec aircraft) that can be used as staging bases - using them in particular means airgroups fly far fewer miles (miles flown to staging base is a quarter of what is flown then to final destination). Are they useful to you? Ideally they should be moved up with the frontline as you advance as always to reduce airgroup miles flown. But I notice this is something never done until it is back with me. Is there a better way of doing this.
vii) Very often at the beginning I wish I could move some of the front units forward a few hexes to flip control of a few hexes to move staging bases forward a few hexes before air operations start. This is particularly true in the South, this turn for instance a lot of airmiles could have been saved by moving staging bases into the empty hexes between where our forces are and where they are. Is there any good way that I could move a very few ground units at the beginning which would not create problem for your operations afterwards?
viii) Are you getting the right kinds of air support?
ix) Should we change the way rail repair is managed?
x) Most things are being copied to all or to the dropbox so everyone can see/comment if they want to - is this good or information overload?
xi) We started with ideas of drawing maps and sharing ideas on the campaign, but right now seem to be just concentrating on our respective areas. Is this because everyone is happy with the general strategy and is happy just to do their bit of it. Or should we be talking more?
xii) Does the listing out of who has what commands, and which exceptions to command are made for others to control, make sense anymore?
Are there any other areas you think we can improve or change?
I was going to suggest that in the new phase after Leningrad falls we have just two objectives - Moscow (the big one) and also the industry/manpower in and around Stalino (the little one). Other things until then are either nice to haves or only things on the way to our objectives. We should abandon boundary maps for general boundary movement descriptions, we consider buildups to be extra to our individual points allocations and make any other changes/improvements that we can. Each army group commander should submit proposals on how/what they can do to get them - and we can check afterwards they do not conflict. We start the race for Moscow - with an "explanation" to the fuhrer for whoever comes last, and a night out in Berlins cabaret for the winner.
I suggest we go with Stelteck's suggestion that we remain with a command and control structure of one panzer group to North and South each and two to Centre. However could I suggest three modifications that might address some of my concerns.
i) We could change the panzer groups each commander controls. So if 4 panzer group can most quickly be redeployed to the march on Moscow by railing it to Smolensk say, then 4 panzer group would be controlled by centre and 3 panzer group by North - historically 4panzer was the middle of three panzer groups advancing on Moscow. A lot will depend on how we redeploy after Leningrad falls, but without this flexibility you could end up with North controlling the Panzer group in the centre and infantry in the north while centre has the converse. (A more radical suggestion might be to have zonal control of panzer groups. Whichever zone a panzer/motorised unit ends up is which commander will control it that turn regardless of chain of command? But that would break Stelteck's suggestion)
ii) Each commander has some discretion to use a few units from neighbouring commanders on the borders if that makes sense - or delegate control for that turn to a neighbouring commander.
iii) Generally centre goes first, unless exceptionally we choose a different order.
How does this sound?
< Message edited by Telemecus -- 7/31/2017 6:29:20 PM >
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