Attrition

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Attrition - 4/27/2021 3:26:14 AM

Simon Edmonds

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I was looking through the manual for Attrition. I see that the Attrition Divider determines the lethality of combat. Was determines the attrition that comes from two opposing units simply being adjacent to each other.

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 9:07:10 AM

golden delicious

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Simon Edmonds

Was determines the attrition that comes from two opposing units simply being adjacent to each other.

In TOAW, there is no such effect. Off the top of my head, these are the ways a unit can take losses (whether to the pool or permanent loss):

1) Combat, including sea interception/interdiction
2) Air interdiction of land units
3) Disengagement
4) Pestilence
5) Movement
6) Dismounting

If the unit doesn't move or fight and pestilence is zero, it should not lose any equipment.

In the real world, two units in close contact may exchange a certain amount of low level casualties from raids, sniper fire etc., however I think in the grand scheme of things this wouldn't make a major difference to the way the game plays.

< Message edited by golden delicious -- 4/27/2021 9:09:05 AM >

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 9:42:51 AM

Simon Edmonds

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I was thinking with regards to Fite 2. In 1941 the Soviets were counterattacking incessantly on a local basis causing attrition that burnt out units in no time. With Hitlers obsession with advancing rather than fortifying there was significant attrition to the Germans as well which in the end bled them dry. After Kiev, Vyazma and Bryansk the Soviets lost so much equipment that in the short term they had nothing to attack with. As soon as they did they started local counterattacks again.
As the Soviet player this is just wasting units and resources in sub 1:1 attacks. You just aren't going to do it. As the German player if you stop advancing for any reason you start fortifying.
Now I dislike anything that prevents freedom of play from either side. But this was a core underlying driving force for the two sides. This Germans to try to keep moving at all costs and the Soviets to push back at all costs. Perhaps "pestilence" could be modified and applied in such a manner to mimic this.
If the Germans stop advancing they start bleeding. The Soviets cant build three deep lines of resistance because they are two busy trying to replace burnt out units. Also it inherently makes the Soviet player keep his reserve units close to the front to replace these units.
Just a thought

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 10:54:43 AM

golden delicious

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From what I've read about FITE I wouldn't worry too much about realism. Aren't there massive, swinging shock effects to force either side to attack or retreat according to the official schedule?

It might be reasonable to have a Force Pestilence effect for the German player in the winter months anyway, the difficulty is this would affect units whether they were on the line or not; the only way to spare them would be to rail them south out of the cold weather, and even then it just reduces the effect rather than eliminating it.

< Message edited by golden delicious -- 4/27/2021 10:56:28 AM >

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 12:12:56 PM

Lobster

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A pestilence for both sides would be appropriate. Non combat casualties were not insignificant.

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 12:39:36 PM

golden delicious

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Lobster

A pestilence for both sides would be appropriate. Non combat casualties were not insignificant.

Perhaps; the question would be what effect would this have on how the scenario actually plays? If you have a continuous pestilence effect for both sides then the relative strength of all units will remain the same. I suppose because pestilence disproportionately affects "soft" equipment like squads (as vehicles are sent back to the pool rather than lost), the net effect will be to make that equipment less important. This is perhaps problematic given the effect of cold weather conditions on German vehicles in particular.

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 3:10:58 PM

Lobster

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Using a dummy unit to soak up equipment is the typical way of getting around the way equipment is never lost due to pestilence. It's a good way to model the terrible condition of Soviet tank retrieval and maintenance in 1941 too. Been looking for ways to fix the silliness of over extended but have yet to find a way that will affect only the over extended unit.

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 5:21:49 PM

76mm

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Lobster
Using a dummy unit to soak up equipment is the typical way of getting around the way equipment is never lost due to pestilence. It's a good way to model the terrible condition of Soviet tank retrieval and maintenance in 1941 too.

Sorry, how do you do this? I don't get it...

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 5:24:52 PM

golden delicious

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quote:

ORIGINAL: 76mm

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lobster
Using a dummy unit to soak up equipment is the typical way of getting around the way equipment is never lost due to pestilence. It's a good way to model the terrible condition of Soviet tank retrieval and maintenance in 1941 too.

Sorry, how do you do this? I don't get it...

When your tank brigade moves or fights, some proportion of the T-26 go to replacements. Under normal circumstances, they go right back to the tank brigade in the replacements calc, and the circle of life continues.

However, you can set up a unit in a blocked off corner of the map with 1/5000 T-26 and replacement priority set to "very high". Then, the majority of those T-26 will get sucked up by this unit and never see the light of day again.

< Message edited by golden delicious -- 4/27/2021 5:25:24 PM >

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 7:01:32 PM

76mm

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OK, thanks. But it sounds like then that none of the broken down tanks get back to the parent unit, which I guess is fine for June 41 but otherwise seems like a bit much.

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 9:30:15 PM

rhinobones

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When it is no longer needed you can always use an event to disband the dummy unit.

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 9:49:27 PM

Lobster

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No, it's fine for all of 1941. That's why they ran out of tanks. Do you really believe the Germans destroyed over 20,000 tanks in six months?

It was even worse for the aircraft. Well over 50% were operational losses after the initial onslaught.

< Message edited by Lobster -- 4/27/2021 9:50:45 PM >

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 10:43:14 PM

76mm

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Well, by November they weren't retreating much, so much lower tank losses. AFAIK most of the tank losses came during the initial weeks (instead of June '41 I should have said first month of the war) and then during the huge subsequent encirclements, not just via "standard" attrition by breaking down on the side of the road, etc. The number of vehicles captured in the Kiev & Typhoon encirclements, etc. was colossal...since most of the encircled vehicles presumably eventually ran out of fuel, etc., I guess you could consider that a kind of attrition, I would think that these losses would be treated under the out-of-supply rules rather than standard attrition.

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RE: Attrition - 4/27/2021 11:56:20 PM

Lobster

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By November there were precious few tanks left.

To add to this, the Soviet losses due to non combat reasons in 1941 was 5.4%. Disease, accidents, frostbite, etc. These are irrecoverable losses. They didn't come back to fight. So to model this in TOAW you would have to set Soviet attrition to 10 or round it up to 11 if I recall correctly. Half come back, half don't. Unfortunately the game doesn't separate people from equipment so that would be terribly wrong to do.

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RE: Attrition - 4/28/2021 9:25:12 AM

golden delicious

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quote:

ORIGINAL: 76mm

OK, thanks. But it sounds like then that none of the broken down tanks get back to the parent unit, which I guess is fine for June 41 but otherwise seems like a bit much.

Some would. You can adjust the size of the dummy unit and the replacement priority until the effect is just how you want. Anyway, units only lose so-so much of their equipment through movement and combat. It would take a while for the tanks to disappear altogether.

In fact you could fine tune the effect by having a series of these dummy units appear or disappear over time to reflect variable rates of attrition. Maybe your high replacement priority unit gets withdrawn in August and replaced by one with a lower priority? Then anything still on the map is more likely to go back into action.

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RE: Attrition - 4/28/2021 11:21:23 AM

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Interesting, thanks.

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RE: Attrition - 4/28/2021 4:45:51 PM

gliz2

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It's not about retreating but about operational maintenance, which for Soviet Army was almost non existent till end of war. Once the unit run out of equipment it was merged with others or reconstituted.
Both sides suffered substantial losses on the march. There are various examples of units literally evaporating because of vehicles breakdowns. There was even a whole battalion of Tigers which was moved constantly from one place to another during Bagration and lost almost all tanks because of malfunctions.
During '41 and '42 Soviet operational losses in some cases average over 80% of AFV because for loads of AFV there were no spare parts (T-26, BT-5, BT-7). Once an AFV broke down that was the end of it.
Same fate was plaguing Germans from late '44. Although their operational losses were no one near as bad as Soviet.

PS. Contrary to the common perception the Germans were well prepared for russian winter. However they ignored their own Meteo Army unit report about major possibility of harsher winter and did not distribute the winter equipment to the troops (initial ambition of finalising operation before winter and then announcing of winning the war in October).

< Message edited by gliz2 -- 4/28/2021 5:11:10 PM >

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RE: Attrition - 5/7/2021 4:50:15 PM

governato

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I use both pestilence for squad attrition and sink units for equipment. They are decent workarounds!

1) Pestilence is absolutely necessary to simulate low intensity combat and non combat losses.
It is also great used in conjunction with replacement priorities. So If I set AGN units on low priority then pestilence events make sure they don't slowly fill up their equipment slots, instead a fraction of their equipment gets sent to the replacement pool and then ends up in units with high replacement priority in AGS, which is a good way to simulate 'stripping' of units. Then if the priority for replacements was a scenario variable that'd be great...

2) sink units are great, I set them at a high priority level for replacements. They also help remove obsolete equipment, for example: every time a PzKpfw I gets sent to the pool after summer 41..it ends up in the sink unit that arrives in September in a non playable hex :).
Modeling equipment attrition is hard but what I usually do is to set the the sink slot size for a specific equipment equal to the fraction lost to attrition. So if I get 1000 tanks and attrition is 10% I put a 100 tanks slot in the `sink unit'.

In both instances I withdraw the sink unit after a while and replace it with a new one as necessary.

Question: in the eqp file I seem to remember that there is a variable that models a unit resilience to multiple non deadly hits..one could use that to model attrition..does any remember what I am talking about?

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