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heliodorus04 -> RE: The most important thing to fix WitE's playability (6/24/2011 7:11:17 PM)
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ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus
Heliodorus, as a matter of fact, digging [Soviet side] IS only an issue in 1942. That year and only that year [;)] In 1941 it's a luxury you simply cannot afford. You need everyone to stop the fascist tide. And 1943, Soviet Corps, etc...
I tend to agree - the digging in is only a problem from Spring 42 to Summer 43. There ought to be some restrictions on it until that point, IMO.
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Where's the "a-historic" advantage in 1942? [&:] Each German player is free to attack wherever he wants. Not scrypted. Maybe you will strike in the north, or the center or the south. So?
This isn't the advantage I'm referring to, and I get your point about freedom of action benefiting both sides, probably equally. This isn't the a-historic advantage that I'm referring to.
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I would say fortifying some (or many) places behind your rear IS a basic, elementary military principle that any corporal has to know.
No rocket science. And you say "get rid of that"? This might make sense in a rather rudimentary tactical game. But this is a very complex and sophisticated OPERATIONAL game (à la WitP of course). If these deep defensive lines and strongpoints existed in the real life (see again my corporal analogy) I WANT them in the game. Period.
Okay, first, this is NOT an operational game, nor is it an operational simulation. The fact that you and I don't have to move artillery shells from a stockpile in the rear to a stockpile in the front completely nullifies the idea that this is an operational game. This may be an arbitrary definition, but operational warfare involves the hard math of logistical operations, and this game ain't got none of that (that the player need concern himself with), so it fails by my definition (and by the standard military meaning of the term operational warfare). What logistics are done by abstraction are unrealistic, I think logisticians here would agree.
Second, your ideal everyman corporal also knows that he digs in to face a particular avenue of approach, and if he's got time and materials, then he digs additional trenches and hull-down positions to face at most a 180-degree threat. I say again: Well-read and experienced Grognards need to be consistent in what they argue feel is tactical and common sense. 360-degree forts are neither tactical, operational, nor common sense. Even the Maginot Line faced only certain directions...
Third, any given brigade commander who was ordered to slow down a 1941 German panzer division with his 1500 men and 42 tanks would know that he was doomed unless he did not engage - his goal would be not to get fixed in position (or launch a suicide attack that would last about a day). Yet the model in this game enables him to successfully slow a force 10 times his size in men, and 3 to 4 times his size in tanks while taking minimal losses.
Even in the winter of 42/43, Manstein and the SS Panzerkorps were able to maul such units over and over, despite their tenuous supply situation, fatigue, mechanical breakdown of equipment and weather conditions for a month (February/March 43), rendering those brigades combat ineffective for the remainder of the operation.
Fourth, a real Soviet army or front commander would not be able to abandon important population centers until after the NKVD had gone in and rounded up all the useful stockpiles of food, fuel, and able-bodied men & women who could either hold a rifle (or, alternately, 5 rounds of ammo) or are able to hobble around an assembly line enough to build T-34s and 122mm guns. But in WitE, all you need to do is wait for the Germans to arrive and all of that stuff magically enters teleporters and ends up in the Urals, where, next week, they are issued rifles and grease guns and they go to work as normal. A real Soviet commander would have to care about evacuating everything in as good an order as possible, and this would affect operations as well.
So please, spare me the idea that these things are realistic. The game is an algorithm of abstractions, and some of the abstractions are ideal, and some of them were thought to be good at release, but clearly they can be readily exploited to unrealistic advantage. MOST of the abstractions are a-historic, whether they work ideally or not. It's the exploitable ones that create grossly inaccurate leverage that I concern myself about, and the ones that are fun-sucks because they force the player to wait on the algorithm to get its **** together (I'm specifically thinking of the PzkwIV N models lying in the motor pool doing nothing, or the BF109s going to Romania when you damn well need them in the Luftwaffe) that need to be addressed.
Hopefully that helps you better understand where I'm coming from.
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