RE: 8MP U2VS and M60A3TTS

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RE: 8MP U2VS and M60A3TTS - 3/20/2019 1:09:51 PM

EwaldvonKleist

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I am confused, who is the third?
Nr.1, Generaloberst/Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist
Nr. 2, General-Armii/Marshal of the Soviet Union Ewald von Kleist

Who is the third one? Is there a Western Allies EvK? An Italian one? An admiral for the Japanese Navy?

Great quote

Nasty move of M60/Timoshenko to denounce his loyal subordinate EvK when it was him who secretly worked for the U2.

What is the story behind those weird spaghetti letters?

< Message edited by EwaldvonKleist -- 3/20/2019 1:10:41 PM >

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RE: 8MP U2VS and M60A3TTS - 3/20/2019 3:27:02 PM

Telemecus

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quote:

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
What is the story behind those weird spaghetti letters?

Georgian would have been Stalin's native language - so he would have been signing his name with their squiggly letter alphabet before anything else.

I knew the Caucasus is the home to more languages per area than anywhere else (with the possible exception of New Guinea) - and that when there was a separate language spoken by very few people in a village far from being simpler it makes German look regular. But they did not tell me before hand each language had its own alphabet.

When I was in Yerevan I had to go to the opticians to replace my broken glasses. It was going really well until they held up the card with the letters for the sight reading test. My answers were not "A,B,C.." but "squiggly line, loopey loop, ..." etc with the whole Opticians practice laughing. They tried bringing out the reading test card using the (Russian) Cyrillic alphabet - but that was not much better for me. I can understand why the Soviet trained opticians with their multiple degrees speaking several languages wondered how they ever lost the cold war to barbarians like me.

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< Message edited by Telemecus -- 3/20/2019 3:28:47 PM >

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RE: 8MP U2VS and M60A3TTS - 3/20/2019 3:36:42 PM

EwaldvonKleist

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Thanks

quote:

with the possible exception of New Guinea

Something I learnt through guns, germs and steel!

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8MP Soviet Industry Track - 3/20/2019 4:19:54 PM

Telemecus

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Soviet Industry Track T001-T054

Another one for the nerds! Attached is the spreadsheet we used to track Soviet arms and heavy industry. This includes damage levels due to evacuation and strategic bombing. The calculations for total arms points and supplies produced are using the latest version multipliers. Do let me know of any errors. Before handing over the AAR to Crackaces I will do another post appraising the Strategic Bombing campaign.

Interstingly industrial evacuation has continued in the Soviet Union even in the last few turns with factories being evacuated from Stalingrad, the Caucasus and Gorky. Curiously the same factories at Dzerzhinsk, which would be overun on the way to Gorky and are more susceptible to bombing, were not evacuated.

I hope also developers will take note how painful it is for the Axis side to do this. Having to click on every city each turn to work out if industry has been evacuated to or from them is no fun. Please give us a summary page for this information rather than make us work so hard to get it.

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< Message edited by Telemecus -- 3/20/2019 8:40:44 PM >

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8MP Finnish Strategic Bombing - 3/20/2019 5:15:20 PM

Telemecus

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Finnish Strategic Bombing: Up To Turn 54

Having had so much fun bombing the Soviet air force left in swamp hexes for so many turns, Finnish bomber pilots were slightly bereft when that lark came to an end. Hence to give them something to do they started their own "strategic bombing" campaign. However the box that the Finnish air force is allowed to fly in is largely bereft of significant targets outside of Cherepovets.

So the decision was made to go for the manpower factories everywhere they could bomb them. The above picture shows the damage levels they had built up by turn 54. There are 26 manpower points they could target - which would be equivalent to some divisions over the entirety of the game. With no Soviet air force to oppose them, and little effective ground support/bombing possible in a static north, it seemed to be something to keep them busy. The hope was by the end of summer 42 the damage levels would be built up to where virtually no manpower replacements would come out of the area they could fly in - and their remaining operations would be occasional damage top up bombing raids.

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8MP Village Bombing - The Next Air War Exploit - 3/20/2019 5:17:34 PM

Telemecus

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Village Bombing - The Next Air War Exploit

And yet barely half a dozen turns into the Finnish strategic bombing campaign we started to notice something very curious about the experience and morale levels of the Finnish bomber force. They were tending to max out at 99 experience and 99 morale. Were it not for the lack of Finnish SB2 bombers in the pool and the need to swap one group to another model of bomber, I would have expected all Finnish bomber groups to have reached maximum experience and morale levels soon.

While the Finnish bombers have had the luxury of unintercepted daylight bombing, that has also been true of the Luftwaffe and other allied air forces. What has been unusual about the Finnish village bombing campaign has been the number of successful bombing raids a turn. Rather than having to bomb an aircraft factory far behind enemy lines, they have been bombing villages a few hexes away. Hence every turn they have conducted many times the number of successful bombing raids as any other type of mission would have allowed them to. Hence why I believe they had this amazing spurt in statistics.

For reasons I will post in a separate post, small village bombing will be more effective than bombing large cities when it comes to reducing Soviet manpower. But it seems to me there is a greater possible exploit. In future Axis air commanders will be able to send their bombers up to a quiet part of the front to spend half a dozen turns training them through village bombing to super high levels of experience and morale before turning them on the front. So I soon expect to see several AARs of other players to use this exploit before Morvael nerfs it in a future version change. Or alternatively Morvael may nerf it in V11.04 if he reads this post.

Will Village Bombing be the next "thing" - after all Spam Recon is now so 2018!

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8MP Rumanian Strategic Bombing: Up To Turn 54 - 3/20/2019 6:26:31 PM

Telemecus

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Rumanian Strategic Bombing: Up To Turn 54

Similarly the Rumanians bombers have been used for strategic bombing in the Caucasus in the last few turns. The bomber groups with the least experience and morale where given the shortest range bombers - and attacked manpower targets from out of Crimea. The bomber groups with better stats were given the long range bomber models such as the PZL, and targeted railyards in the Eastern Caucasus and on the Volga.

A surprise, now that we are experimenting with railyard bombing, is how flaky they have been. Unlike other strategic bombing targets they seem to take enormous damage with very little bombing at all.

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RE: 8MP Rumanian Strategic Bombing: Up To Turn 54 - 3/20/2019 6:27:18 PM

Telemecus

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Rumanian Level Bombers Training Up: Up To Turn 54
Again the short range bombers, who have been conducting more successful bombing raids per turn through village bombing, are now climbing up the experience table to overtake the others. Soon we will have to manually swap them to again have our best bomber groups with the longest range bombers.

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8MP - The Many EvK - 3/20/2019 6:30:01 PM

Telemecus

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quote:

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

I am confused, who is the third?
Nr.1, Generaloberst/Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist
Nr. 2, General-Armii/Marshal of the Soviet Union Ewald von Kleist

Who is the third one? Is there a Western Allies EvK? An Italian one? An admiral for the Japanese Navy?

Because you are many.

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RE: 8MP T49 - 3/20/2019 6:52:34 PM

Telemecus

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Turn 49 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 49.

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RE: 8MP T50 - 3/20/2019 6:54:47 PM

Telemecus

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Turn 50 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 50.

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RE: 8MP T51 - 3/20/2019 6:57:19 PM

Telemecus

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Turn 51 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 51.

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RE: 8MP T52 - 3/20/2019 6:59:08 PM

Telemecus

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Turn 52 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 52.

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RE: 8MP T53 - 3/20/2019 7:01:30 PM

Telemecus

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Turn 53 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 53.

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RE: 8MP T54 - 3/20/2019 7:03:19 PM

Telemecus

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Turn 54 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 54.

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8MP T55 - 3/20/2019 7:05:52 PM

Telemecus

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Turn 55 DRAFT Allocations
For information only - DRAFT team allocations for turn 55.

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8MP T52 - team Boundaries - 3/20/2019 7:24:25 PM

Telemecus

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T52 - Lessons on Team Boundaries

For those who do actually read those detailed allocations, quite a radical change will have become apparent on turn 52. The boundary between South and Centre changed!

From the start of the game it became natural for units in Army Group South to belong to the South commander, units in Army Group Centre belong to the Centre commander and so on. With the split of Army Group South the south commander carried on in charge of its successor army groups A and B. Allocations would occasionally make some exceptions, but the rule by and large was correct.

In recent turns this was becoming increasingly cumbersome. The two hotspots of action are marked by the red stars. The old boundary in effect meant that centre had to co-ordinate much of their action in an area which was secondary to the interests in the south. And the more co-ordination that was needed, the more opportunities there were for errors. A large amount of inefficiency, from lost rail cap to admin points resulted. By turn 52 as supreme commander I decided to split Army Group B between South and Centre. In effect Centre then became solely in charge of one hotspot and South could concentrate on their main interest. However commands no longer normally followed army group boundaries.

I wish I had done this sooner. The amount of time needed for co-ordination reduced drastically. Inefficiencies in resource use also shrank. The lesson I would give for future allocators in these situations is first allocate the jobs to be done to the commanders in question, and then allocate the forces each one has to do it with rather than start of with the reverse.

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8MP Allocations - 3/20/2019 7:39:49 PM

Telemecus

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The Allocations Process

Allocations for all turns of the team game have been uploaded to this AAR. They are not meant to be part of the narrative for the casual reader, but will be of interest to the nerdier types, such as myself, interested in the nuts and bolts of how the game worked. I hope it can be a useful resource for those who seek to emulate it.

The allocations process was first described in post 11 of this AAR. Together with the team protocol for every turn, the allocations for each turn were meant to be the SINGLE, TRUSTED source for everything a team member needed to know to do their turn. If done well a team player could get on with their turn without having to constantly refer back for decisions, guidance or committee meetings. Where teams were distributed around the world it was important that they could do this to keep the time to do a turn to a manageable period. If you wanted to spend points, use units, expend rail cap or anything else, the allocations were the place to see if you could. If you did it and it was not in allocations, it was your fault. If it was not described in allocations, it was the Supreme Commanders fault. Whatever else was written down in any emails or scattered documents anywhere, if it was not in allocations it was not confirmed. As such the job of Supreme Commander almost boiled down to being the guy who wrote the team allocations each turn.

As such allocations was meant to help the team work. At first some found it too cumbersome and some work went in to making it simpler and less detailed. But over time if anything the requests for team players has come to want more not less. Allocations became the bible every turn that they looked at to see what their boundaries where in every facet for the team. As such this has come to be a success

The first allocations each turn were draft - the first draft was usually written by me as soon as the previous turn was ended and sent off. As such you can see the first draft allocations for turn 55. This was meant to give a chance for team members to challenge or request alterations as part of the planning while the turn was with the other team. In this respect the allocations process was not such a success. I do not think I ever received a request to alter the details of allocations while it was in draft. In time use of other communications tools, which we did not have when this team game began, replaced this aspect of team decision making anyway.

< Message edited by Telemecus -- 4/15/2019 3:15:34 PM >

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8MP Team Protocol - 3/20/2019 8:00:20 PM

Telemecus

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For information only - attached was the final version of the team protocol used by the 8MP Axis team. As first described in post 11 of this AAR.

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RE: 8MP U2VS and M60A3TTS - 3/20/2019 8:13:30 PM

Telemecus

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Comrade Stalin - having become aware of M60A3TTS' previous fat finger mistakes with the U2VS factories - has ordered that M60A3TTS be placed on a special exercise regime.

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8MP Pre-Treppenwitz - 3/21/2019 11:39:54 AM

Telemecus

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Pre-Treppenwitz

Now with the summer starting would be the official launch of Operation Treppenwitz - our 1942 summer operational name. Adele's Skyfall would be the official theme tune. With Crackaces taking on the Axis side the analysis and plans have been handed over to them for them to either follow, adapt or ignore. But I hope the team plan as it was can be uploaded and described at the end of the summer campaign - perhaps to be contrasted with what did happen.

However during the alternating mud and clear period of weather we were able to carry out early the first stages of Treppenwitz. So it is worth describing what did happen in what can be described as "Pre-Treppenwitz"

The first phase of Treppenwitz was to capture three key rail junctions at Gryazi, Svoboda and Likhovskoy. As we go further east the Soviet rail network becomes much less dense. As a result by capturing these three rail junctions we will be able to deny our opponents large parts of the lateral rail network now being using to transport units and keep their formations in supply. For example Soviet units now in the Don bend will have the nearest rail line behind them go through Stalingrad. Transporting units from near the front at Voronezh to Rostov would first mean having to go east to the Volga. Soviet units at the front will then be far from supply.

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RE: 8MP Pre-Treppenwitz - 3/21/2019 11:50:15 AM

Telemecus

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Pre-Treppenwitz: Strategic Ground Situation

By turn 49 we had captured Likhovskoy, would be able to ZOC Svoboda from the other side of the major river which would cut the rail route just as well, and were a couple of turns away from capturing Gryazi.

The weather until then had left the south static, but given the centre a chance to lunge a long way forward from their blizzard start lines. Our Soviet opponents reacted seemingly by moving all of their best units to oppose us there.

But with turn 49 the weather changed and we were to have several turns of good weather for the south while the centre faced mud. This left us with the strategic situation pictured below.

All the good Soviet stuff was stuck in the centre of all the mud. Meanwhile the south was able to surge ahead advancing between large clusters of Soviet units and their only rail line to escape while being trapped to the North by mud.

Strategically we thought we were in a really good situation with our Soviet opponents completely off balance.

Looking further south there was a conspicuous lack of Soviet units in the Caucasus. Recon had grown used to finding lines of Soviet units digging in second, third and more lines of defence between Voronezh and the Volga. But looking to the Caucasus, where we would have expected some units preparing back-lines of defence - NOTHING.

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RE: 8MP Pre-Treppenwitz - 3/21/2019 2:11:36 PM

Telemecus

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Pre-Treppenwitz: An Active North

Unusually for games in this period our North has remained relatively active - with our mud warfare expert timmyab always looking for opportunities to nab a hex here or there. The picture below shows some of the their ideas for the North on turn 34. Two or three mobile units have been kept in the North to support this. We believe that this has paid dividends in that the Soviet side has disproportionately had to react with sending more units there than they would have wanted to.

As a team we speculated on whether the Soviet side would have been better off withdrawing to a line between Lake Onega and Lake Rybinsk. The territory which would have been given up had nothing of any importance. But our North commander estimated it would have released a dozen or more divisions for other more important areas of the front.

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RE: 8MP Pre-Treppenwitz - 3/21/2019 3:25:15 PM

Telemecus

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OOB End of Axis Turn 54

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RE: 8MP Pre-Treppenwitz - 3/21/2019 3:26:07 PM

Telemecus

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Ground Losses - End of Axis Turn 54

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RE: 8MP Village Bombing - The Next Air War Exploit - 3/21/2019 9:57:22 PM

BrianG

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quote:

For reasons I will post in a seperate post, small village bombing will be more effective than bombing large cities when it comes to reducing Soviet manpower. But it seems to me there is a greater possible exploit. In future Axis air commanders will be able to send their bombers up to a quiet part of the front to spend half a dozen turns training them through village bombing to super high levels of experience and morale before turning them on the front. So I soon expect to see several AARs of other players to use this exploit before Morvael nerfs it in a future version change. Or alternatively Morvael may nerf it in V11.04 if he reads this post.

Maybe not so nerf: The Russian air power here is decimated. If both air forces were more normally equal, then the Russians can clearly build plenty of spread out fighter bases. Thus this simple tactic could prove costly in German air losses if air defenders emerge. And it might enhance the use of air bases in spread formation instead of in clumps.

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RE: 8MP Village Bombing - The Next Air War Exploit - 3/22/2019 2:42:19 PM

Telemecus

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quote:

ORIGINAL: BrianG
Maybe not so nerf: The Russian air power here is decimated. If both air forces were more normally equal, then the Russians can clearly build plenty of spread out fighter bases. Thus this simple tactic could prove costly in German air losses if air defenders emerge. And it might enhance the use of air bases in spread formation instead of in clumps.

Actually it is a good point and betrays my own lazy language. Here in 8MP we have had actual strategic bombing, whereas I think the norm would actually be each side threatens strategic bombing and each side prepares defences against it so that actually not much of it ever really happens. Ironically having lots of fighters spread out actually defending the Soviet Union rather than clumped together near the front would be more historical.

I think the comments are still valid though in as much as strat bombing is a potential threat that must be deterred. And village bombing would need an even more extensive spread of fighters than other types of potential threats.

< Message edited by Telemecus -- 3/22/2019 2:43:28 PM >

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8MP Air War Review - 3/23/2019 3:20:24 PM

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Air War Review

My final set of posts as a player of this game will be a review of what did and did not happen in the air war of this game. I also promised in another thread to add some notes on good airbase placement at the end of this AAR, I think it was a commitment to Nix77 but I cannot find that thread now. (Edit: found it - http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4371349&mpage=2 ). As for me this is the end I will incorporate that into this my final series of player AAR posts.

Because of the particular need to combine ground with air operations on turn one the air war then was largely left to the ground commanders - my role as air commander was relegated to only the frozen Rumanian area. There are other good guides to the turn 1 air war so I will not comment on it here as I have little to add. But it is worth pointing out that the Soviet air losses at the end of Axis turn 1 were 4954 - good but not the 7000+ that top players can achieve. Indeed the Soviet losses did not top 7,000 until turn 5, so at least early turns Soviet losses cannot be said to have been exceptional.

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RE: 8MP Air War Review - 3/23/2019 3:23:26 PM

Telemecus

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Phase I Turns 2+: Staging the Kabuki

Convention at the time was to push airbases along slightly behind the ground forces. This meant typically airgroups used upwards of 20% of their air miles in ground movement at the start of each turn just to keep up with the front lines and enemy air forces - two thirds of the air miles they could have flown on airbase bombing say which meant really they were a ground force and not an air force. Also typically they would be well ahead of the repaired rail line and so would have a large logistical cost including accumulating damaged vehicles which exacerbated the shortage during the blizzard. Thus the wisdom of the time that the air war did not matter was on that basis correct. It could not deliver much and was costly to do. Thus most other AARs at the time had a mostly passive air war with missions being largely left to the AI.

Innovations in this game were to use the Kabuki Dance and Staging Bases intensively compared to other AARs at the time.

Outside of these forums it had been drilled into me to use staging bases for all air missions wherever I can and to place staging airbases where the AI was likely to use them for auto missions. Indeed for these turns I mistakenly believed that staging bases reduced miles flown as the first stage flight to the staging base was treated like an air transfer (i.e. ten miles flown per hex) and only after the staging base as a combat missions (multiplies of ten miles per hex), indeed the colour codes for the flight paths in the game would indicate that, but testing by EwaldvonKleist has since shown this is not true in the latest versions of the game. Nevertheless staging bases allow combat missions (other than interceptions) to be conducted at ranges 50% further than their radius (thanks to Mamluke for working out this exact number). This meant for example that a Ju87B dive bomber with a radius of 11 could be placed on an airbase 16 hexes away from the front lines and still provide ground support so long as there was a suitable staging base in the middle. This meant 5 hexes closer to a repaired rail line and 5 hexes less of the rail supply modifier. It also meant the airbase was out of range of many Soviet aircraft such as the many short range fighters they start the war with in 1941. In theory the Bf109 fighter (except the E3) could be based outside of Soviet fighter range while still in range for interception over the front lines and escort well to the rear of enemy lines. This would make them (almost) impregnable to Soviet airbase bombing.

The term "Kabuki" dance was only coined much later by Crackaces but the idea existed before. The principle for Axis airgroups is that they should not move to more easterly airbasing by ground movement but instead use air transfers, which used very few airmiles, or by going into and out of National Reserve which had no logistical or fatigue effects. HardLuckYetAgain wrote earlier posts on keeping airbases empty to air transfer airgroups to - although if left empty during logistics they would not be suitable for bombers that need a lot of fuel and ammo. This could be partially relieved by air transferring to another air base and then air transferring back to the same airbase if the first air transfer was to an airbase in the same hex with a larger ID number. 56Ajax (AKA johntml) posted on how airgroups could go in and out of National Reserve on the same turn (i.e. by not going through transit) by using the auto-commitment system which provided another way to move airgroups in the same turn without fatigue and over infinite ranges although arriving with all air miles spent. By moving airgroups with air transfers however they would typically arrive with only 1% or 2% of their air miles flown - leaving them with three times as many miles for airbase bombing as the conventional method.

My estimate is that in 8MP we probably flew twice as many air base bombing missions for the same amount of airgroup miles/fatigue as in conventional games and used the further miles gained from the Kabuki in flying missions over longer ranges by staging bases compared to conventional games. This change in the relative costs and benefits of airbase bombing meant it made sense to keep doing it and not stop in turn 1 as was conventional. I contend this was the key reason why the air war was successful for these turns of the game.

Our Soviet opponents, not aware of this innovation, would assume we were making a terrible mistake and would soon regret overusing airbase bombing as was the normal belief at the time. Overall they did not use staging bases, which would have benefited them even more than the Axis air forces. They did not commit to any aggressive air action. On one turn I completely forgot to provide fighter cover to a cluster of airbases full of heavy bombers. I was convinced the turn would return with hundreds of bombers destroyed on the ground - a similar mistake had just appeared in an AAR of the air war of Dinglir versus Hermann ( http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4266269 ) at the same time and I was convinced I was going to be po faced at a similar humiliation. But it never came.

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RE: 8MP Air War Review - 3/23/2019 3:35:36 PM

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Phase I Turns 2+: Airbase movement

The picture shows airbases in the North and part of centre on turn 6. Airbases with the heaviest aircraft with the longest ranges were placed on the furthest repaired rail hexes east which meant usually one turn of rail repair behind the FBDs. Usually the Luftflotte HQ would be with them as the Luftflotte range can impact air ratings, and here they would be closest to the greatest concentration of airgroups under them. Each turn they would be Kabuki danced up to where the FBD was at the start of the turn. Shorter range aircraft like fighters and dive bombers which did not have the range to operate from repaired rail hexes could be placed on airbases closer to the front, but still as close to the repaired rail line as was possible. Finally staging airbases with no airgroups in them were placed near to the front lines.

This set up provides the most optimised logistics for the airgroups while still allowing them to perform their missions. However if our Soviet opponents had known this they would then have known every turn exactly where most of our airgroups were based without needing any reconnaissance.

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< Message edited by Telemecus -- 4/15/2019 3:18:06 PM >

(in reply to Telemecus)

Post #: 930