BletchleyGeek
Posts: 4713
Joined: 11/26/2009
From: Living in the fair city of Melbourne, Australia
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: neuromancer
- The Soviets were not magically better at warfare than the Germans and thus able to beat them easier. In fact it could be argued that the opposite was true. Even once pushed back to Rumania and Poland the Germans were making the Soviets pay for land (assuming they could mount a credible defence) and luring them into traps. So Pelton definitely has a point that the silly rule should go. It may not solve all the problems, but it would be a start, and should be a start.
Not magically, but by way of raising experience and morale by winning battles. The 1:1 rule should definitely go away from summer 1943 onwards, if not perhaps, entirely.
quote:
ORIGINAL: neuromancer
- Logistics and supply are completely wacked. There is too much available, but it moves very inefficiently. This has the effect of everybody having enough supply to be annoying (i.e. attacks all along the front), but not enough focused supply to allow for proper major offensives, particularly of mobile formations.
The HQ Build-up function tries to simulate focusing supply in key areas, but the thing is that, as you say, it tends to be too much available for starters (especially if you're Russian), so it is not necessary to use it.
quote:
ORIGINAL: neuromancer
Major offensives took a LOT of planning, it wasn't a case of "hey, look, the enemy is weak there, lets pour 200,000 men and a few thousand tanks and guns into the gap!" Its hard to organize that much manpower and equipment on short notice. APs should be used to focus the supplies to appropriate units for an attack, and would also represent the effort spent planning the offensive.
They take a lot of planning. Another completely different thing is that people try to play the game like you say: "hey, there's a row of weak units there, let's stack a bunch of Rifle Corps/Panzer Divisions/whatever there and punch a hole". That hardly happens: usually one needs to concentrate the attack force first. Then, you might perhaps want to assign key leaders, well-groomed combat units and support units to the HQ's involved. That costs time and AP's.
Anything that goes beyond the: "oh, my opponent forgot to relieve a infantry unit that has been too long on the front and it's understrength, let's clobber it with all units available within 3 hexes" will cost significant time and AP. The thing is that it is very possible to win the game just by doing that, by wearing down the Germans nibbling a few divisions each turn. It just takes some patience.
quote:
ORIGINAL: neuromancer
- The winter of '41-'42 was damn cold, this was a problem. Sure, no argument. The Germans were unprepared, and even the Soviets were less than thrilled (it was really cold). Lots of casualties to frost bite and equipment failure to the extreme cold - to be honest, the Soviets should take some attrition to the cold as well. But the entire German army wasn't suddenly turned to a boy scout troop! A 10 CV unit suddenly becomes a 1? Really? A 5 I could accept, plus the attrition, but to reduce effectiveness to between 10% and 20% normal seems excessive. Seriously, reduce the loss of effectiveness the Axis suffers in that winter.
You should check the 1.04 rules better. Rather than discussing the CV drop, which is just and approximation that doesn't have to do that much with actual combat power in an startling number of cases, I would discuss logistics and the problems ComradeP has described very precisely about combat and "ant units". December 1941 wasn't precisely the German Army finest hour: it actually did very badly. Problem is that in current games, the Soviets get to the blizzard much stronger than historical. And that's more of a problem with what Germans do during Summer and Autumn than a problem with the game system.
Then a disturbingly high number of people playing as the Germans throw rationality out of the window and cling to unsustainable positions (in game and historically). Axis players that use hindisight, plan to build a line of forts, anchored on key cities, that allow him to shelter the German Army during the worst of blizzard. The ones who don't do that, or just plainly refuse to give up land, suffer. My opinion is that this behavior is motivated because it's just too easy for the Soviets to turn the matter into a "Verdun in the East".
quote:
ORIGINAL: neuromancer
- Level 1 and 2 forts, are relatively easy to make (foxholes, some entrenchments, sand bags, etc.). But at the same time, once you leave, you are going to lose track of most of those things. A 100 square kilometres is a lot of space, even with a whole bunch of foxholes. Oh... and if the mud is THAT severe (and it was), just how well do you think those earthen entrenchments are going to hold up? Those forts short degrade very quickly when occupied, and should suffer damage in a mud turn even if unoccupied!
- Level 3 and 4 forts would be more like constructing actual buildings, whether wood and sandbags, or concrete. This is a more complex process and should be much harder to construct - requiring supplies, and unless actually trained in construction (e.g. engineers) should be really slow. On the other hand, they shouldn't detonate very quickly.
- Units building forts should suffer fatigue, at least beyond level 1 forts.
I mostly agree. Joel Billings made a statement a month or so ago on these forums acknowledging the issue and assuring people that they would look into the matter.
quote:
ORIGINAL: neuromancer
- A unit that is routed that suddenly finds itself in contact with the enemy again should at the very least Shatter. They are already fleeing as fast as their legs can carry them, and... "Oh crap! The enemy! Head for the hills!" At that point they should run in every darn direction, leaving their equipment where it is (rifles and helmets and such are heavy and slow you down when you are running like a madman). And of course they would take casualties and some would surrender. None of this magically teleporting away from the enemy crap.
'Displacement'... looks more like magic to me.
As a few people have remarked on the past, the way to understand the "routing" mechanism is that routed units aren't really on the map as organized forces, but rather they model many scattered groups or columns of forces in retreat. When a routed unit is displaced, it suffers additional attrition (whether it's too little might be debated). And units which are routed while encircled should definitely shatter, rather than rout, especially if there are enemy combat units forming a ring around it (not just hexes whose ownership was just flipped or ZOCs).
_____________________________
|
Printable Version
RE: Toss us a bone - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread