Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: herwin

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ORIGINAL: JeffK

The Alamein Line Oct 1942

On a 30-35 mile front, the 8th Army had 7 Infantry Divisions, 3 Armoured Divisions & approx 2 Div eqiv in Brigades. This was not a deep formation and had many areas covered by patrol.

On the night of the attack, 4 Infantry Divs & Armoured Units made the major attacks, An Armd Div made a major diversionary attack and the other units made probing attacks.

Maybe someone could find the unit densities of other areas such as Normandy, Op Diadem, The Ardennes or the Soviet attacks into eastern Europe etc

A Western infantry battalion usually attacked a positional defence on a 500-700 meter front. The division usually went in on a 3-5 kilometer front. It defended about 8 kilometers, and could screen twice that frontage.

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ORIGINAL: String

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ORIGINAL: herwin

quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

The Alamein Line Oct 1942

On a 30-35 mile front, the 8th Army had 7 Infantry Divisions, 3 Armoured Divisions & approx 2 Div eqiv in Brigades. This was not a deep formation and had many areas covered by patrol.

On the night of the attack, 4 Infantry Divs & Armoured Units made the major attacks, An Armd Div made a major diversionary attack and the other units made probing attacks.

Maybe someone could find the unit densities of other areas such as Normandy, Op Diadem, The Ardennes or the Soviet attacks into eastern Europe etc

A Western infantry battalion usually attacked a positional defence on a 500-700 meter front. The division usually went in on a 3-5 kilometer front. It defended about 8 kilometers, and could screen twice that frontage.

But that's with average western europe terrain I assume. In forested/mountainous/swampy areas the areas would be different, right?

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ORIGINAL: herwin

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ORIGINAL: String

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ORIGINAL: herwin

quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

The Alamein Line Oct 1942

On a 30-35 mile front, the 8th Army had 7 Infantry Divisions, 3 Armoured Divisions & approx 2 Div eqiv in Brigades. This was not a deep formation and had many areas covered by patrol.

On the night of the attack, 4 Infantry Divs & Armoured Units made the major attacks, An Armd Div made a major diversionary attack and the other units made probing attacks.

Maybe someone could find the unit densities of other areas such as Normandy, Op Diadem, The Ardennes or the Soviet attacks into eastern Europe etc

A Western infantry battalion usually attacked a positional defence on a 500-700 meter front. The division usually went in on a 3-5 kilometer front. It defended about 8 kilometers, and could screen twice that frontage.

But that's with average western europe terrain I assume. In forested/mountainous/swampy areas the areas would be different, right?

There are lots of differences depending on METT. For example, Red Army divisional attacks on German fortified positions were sometimes on a 2 km frontage. Amuse yourself with the Gamer's OCS series if you want to see the range of variation. The Burma game is particularly relevant.

Created by the amazing Dixie

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Chad asked a good question in another thread I am going to answer it hear to try and keep all the answers in one place.

(Actually because of testing for the next few weeks I will only be answering questions in this thread I cannot go through multi threads so if you have a question on land ask it here and if I can I wil answer it)

OK the question chad asked

Stacking levels are seperate for each side.

On the smallest atolls each side may stack 6,000 men without penalty.

so the defender may have 6,000 men behind maximum level 6 forts without penalties.

The attacker may also only use 6,000 men without penalty.

Now both sides may overstack a little without the penalties becoming critical although its easier for the attacker.

The penalties are supply based and also increased disruption/fatigue - basically more supply spoils because not enough space to store it and men get grumpy and cannot remain combat effective because they are all standing on each other !!!

IF an attacker has air and sea superiority he can afford to overstack a little more e.g 12,000 men for a few days to take the base - the penalties especially supply usage are exponential but it can be done BUT to unload that number of men you had better have air and sea superiority as your transports are sitting ducks off shore. A lot more so than stock specifically if a SAG gets in amongst them sitting still unloading it will be nasty.

Basically overstacking can be done to a limited degree - its more difficult for the defender to overstack because the long term impact of overstacking hurts (supplies primarily)

An attacker can also overstack but there is a limit to how effective it will be and if you overcook it you are hurting your adjusted AV because you physically cannot unload enough supplies no matter how many ships you bring to keep the overstacked forces at 100% combat supply.

Finding that sweet spot well thats going to be your pleasure just like in real life fair warning the first idiot that brings 100,000 men to invade a flea speck atoll will need more than the entire US Merchant Marine in WW2 to keep em supplied - yes its that exponential !!!.

Now the question may be asked well how do you taske atolls with lvl 6 forts well the answer to that is

Be prepared
Make sure you have naval support
Make sure you have air superiorty

And hope to god the defenders have a few non combatants.

6,000 SNLF troops against 6,000 dug in marines is a BAAAD proposition

as is

6,000 Marines against 6,000 IJA Infantry

those same troops with CAS and NGS doable if the forts are not to nasty and you have time.

without CAS or NGS or the defender being all support troops.....

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Sorry I answer what I see when I can if I miss it keep asking !!!

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Chad asked a good question in another thread I am going to answer it hear to try and keep all the answers in one place.

. . .

Be prepared
Make sure you have naval support
Make sure you have air superiorty

. . .

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

p.s. as I appear to be the designated Q&A guy on the AI I will answer any questions I can on that subject in this thread as well but fair warning that is still being worked on.

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ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Chad asked a good question in another thread I am going to answer it hear to try and keep all the answers in one place.

. . .

Be prepared
Make sure you have naval support
Make sure you have air superiorty

. . .

Thanks for answering Andy.

This may have already been answered, but will naval and air support play a bigger role in amphib operations this time around?

In stock WitP, air support simply meant that they could fly ground attack missions against usually a single unit. Is AE going to take their overwhelming presense further than that? Somehow factor their constant presense (again assuming complete air supperiority) into the land combat routines outside of their actual ground attacks against a single unit?

So in other words, will AE represent the ability of all those Marines to have 200 Helldivers and Avengers from all those carriers on call? That would have a huge impact on combat, especially against an enemy in little/no fortifications.

The same goes for overwhelming naval support. Will their support be limited to bombardment mission, or the game factor into the land combat routines the overwhelming presense of all those big ships with big guns which are on call?

Thanks in advance

Chad

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ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

p.s. as I appear to be the designated Q&A guy on the AI I will answer any questions I can on that subject in this thread as well but fair warning that is still being worked on.

I will shoot out a quick and simple question regarding the planned state of the AI:

Will it be a viable opponent past the end of 1942?

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

The penalties are supply based and also increased disruption/fatigue - basically more supply spoils because not enough space to store it and men get grumpy and cannot remain combat effective because they are all standing on each other !!!

Created by the amazing Dixie

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Play the game 'in the box' and I think the AI will give a good game at least as good and hopefully better than stock (Joe will shoot me now for saying this) into and beyond 43 but the truth will be in the testing I hope it will give a good game.

Play the game out of the box and as long as my sick and twisted mind has pre empted you - you may get a nasty suprise (if you don't look at the AI file) - I have set up certain traps for folks who try to 'break the AI' paradigm for either side.

If you come up with something I haven't thought of or prepped the AI for then the results will be unpredictable and there is a limit to what I can do in this area....

I honestly believe the AI will give a decent game or I and others would not have been working on it for over a year - but I cannot tell what you lot will come up with that I have't thought of.

Andy

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ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

This is interesting Andy. Thanks. What determines supply upper limitations (the level where it begins to spoil)? Is it the facility level (like WitP) or troop levels now?

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ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Play the game 'in the box' and I think the AI will give a good game at least as good and hopefully better than stock (Joe will shoot me now for saying this) into and beyond 43 but the truth will be in the testing I hope it will give a good game.

Play the game out of the box and as long as my sick and twisted mind has pre empted you - you may get a nasty suprise (if you don't look at the AI file) - I have set up certain traps for folks who try to 'break the AI' paradigm for either side.

If you come up with something I haven't thought of or prepped the AI for then the results will be unpredictable and there is a limit to what I can do in this area....

I honestly believe the AI will give a decent game or I and others would not have been working on it for over a year - but I cannot tell what you lot will come up with that I have't thought of.

Andy

I assume this is the case, but just to be sure . . .

The new AI will have scripted events/reactions to draw from for the duration of the war correct? And there will be multiple reactions it can choose from correct?

And these are limited to 'If allies invade XXX within dates YYY and ZZZ, react with either: move units AAAA to defend BBBB or attack with units CCCC at location DDDD' type scenarios right?

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ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

The penalties are supply based and also increased disruption/fatigue - basically more supply spoils because not enough space to store it and men get grumpy and cannot remain combat effective because they are all standing on each other !!!

This is interesting Andy. Thanks. What determines supply upper limitations (the level where it begins to spoil)? Is it the facility level (like WitP) or troop levels now?

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Taking the fifth on that one for now sorry Chad will try to answer whn I can

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ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

As always, no problem. Its a work in progress, we know. Just drop us a tidbit when you get a chance.

(in reply to Andy Mac)

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The stickied threads have become so large, and the search feature is buggy at best, that I am starting to forget what was actually said about AE a year ago and what I have imagined (is this a common problem as you get older and have more kids??)

One thing that I am unsure about is I *think* that I recall it being said that the number of aviation support squads in base forces were going to be tweaked to a smaller amount. Is this correct?

If this is correct, can we get a typical idea of what *full* strength base forces will have as far as avaition support squads? And dare I ask, perhaps even an OOB for a typical American and Japanease base force? I would also be curious to see how they look in AE (currently atleast).

In vanilla WitP, it was 30 aviation support for the typical base forces, and the large (for lack of better words) base forces were split between an aviation regiment with 270 support and an oversized base force with 90 support.

I have to admit my ignorance on this subject as it relates to reality. I have no idea how they worked it out in real life.

Thanks in advance.

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Oh now msieving1 you just hit upon an issue that we went round and round and round and round on in the land team CW Av support !!!

Lots of debate on this one

I ended up for CW as opposed to US and Japanese with a 4 level Aviation Support system.

Lvl 1 and biggest Air Group Base Forces combined arms units with AA (equivalent to a LAA and HAA Regt in each one), radar , garrison, RE field park coy, support etc etc for each CW 'Group' HQ you get 1 central Base Force with 75 AV Support (or it could be 90 I would need to go check) - I think RAF gets 6 of these, RAAF 2 and RNZAF 1 basically bases designed to act as nodes for operations of a series of subsidiary fields

Lvl 2 a series of historical RAF, RAAF and RNZAF Wings each with 75 Av Support and NO support or other units - these replace the old Aviation Regts in CW terms they are significanlty smaller 75 v 250 AV Support but you get more of them (I assumed 4 RAF Sqns plus a recon or transport flight per Wing).

Lvl 3 Normal base forces with 16 or 32 AV Support (1 or 2 Sqns) and with a small garrison, support and AA echelon - broadly these forces are 1/3 or less than the Group base forces especially in AA assets these are the most common base force type in mid war and are general purpose 'utility' base forces.

Lvl 4 What I call outpost base forces a few AAMG's if they are lucky, a platoon of ISF troopers/Dutch Militia/NZ Can or Aus Militia  enough AV support to cope with a flight of planes from a dirt strip - these vary a lot and are by far the most common base force type at start there are about 25 in India, 10 or so in Burma and most of the DEI, Malaya base forces are of this type each with bespoke addons where appropriate (there is one lvl 4 base force in one of the Dutch islands with 2 attached improvised AFV's (trucks with a bit of metal stuck on front and an LMG on top) where I have the data to give these small units non TOE addons I have done so.

Typically the lvl 4's will be destroyed in the Japanese advance or can amalgamte to form lvl 3's but the sheer number of new bases requiring a little av support in a rear area will I think mean that a lot of these small detachments will persist for a while.

Just so I am clear lets take 221 Group RAF it will have a Group HQ, a Group Base Force and 2 - 5 Aviation Wings plus it may have attached 1 or 2 small type 3 or 4 Base Forces for smaller strips it may also have attached AA Regts .

Whereas 9 RAAF Gp will have fewer aviation wings but it has a few more small base forces and  several construction squadrons attached.

Andy

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ORIGINAL: Blackhorse

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At the beginning of the war, there were battalion-sized US Navy civilian contractor base forces (mostly engineers, but small air support as well) on several Pacific islands. These are included in AE. They disband in a few months.