heliodorus04
Posts: 1647
Joined: 11/1/2008
From: Nashville TN
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
Helio, it's not an apology. Plain fact of the matter is Soviet rifle divisions on average were half the strength of German ones, had very limited combat support elements, and were designed to be easy to control by stripping them down to the bone. They weren't strong units with a highly articulated force structure. The Soviets tended to centralize engineering, artillery and other such assets, too.
So it's a perfectly valid design decisions to discount their reassignment costs. They were, in western terms, demidivisions, glorified brigades.
The true counterpart in the Red Army for western divisions was the corps, although when up to strength they were even stronger than a western division. (Usually they weren't up to strength.) Hence the higher reassignment costs.
You and I don't agree on what a fact is, so we can't have an informed discussion. My "fact" is that Soviet C2 in WitE is the equivalent of 1986 NATO capability while the Germans have 1986 WarsawPact capability. Both are 45 years ahead of their time based on the freedom the engine gives players, but one of them has the good leadership efficiency (Soviet) compared to his opponent Germany, does not (we can leave the minors out of it entirely).
Soviet divisions were, in theory, manageable. In practice in 1941, the Red Army purges were so devastating that Soviet C2 was FUBAR for all intents and purposes throughout 1941 and 1942 until Uranus/Mars (and even then, Mars was an utter failure and Uranus lead to 3rd Kharkov and the destruction of several more armies).
WitE COULD implement a design decision (cheap re-assignment for German, expensive reassignment for Soviet) that takes a step toward the C2 realism of 1941/42 (and a step, I might emphasize, that would not cost Soviet players any movement autonomy so they would still have full control of the ability to run away). Instead it makes things far easier on the Soviet player while making things harder comparatively on the German.
The German army through 1942 was the quintessential example of effective C2 being their battlefield differentiator. Does WitE reflect this at all to you, Flavius? To me, it's an utter failure in this regard. Soviets get the same AP as Germany throughout the game, and their divisions are cheaper to re-assign.
I defy anyone to give me examples that demonstrate how Soviet ineffectiveness of command and control is reflected in this game, and I further defy anyone to demonstrate how WitE German command & control is superior to WitE Soviet C2 in meaningful game terms (in other words, stuff the German can do in the C2 arena that the Soviet cannot do equally well).
It's an absurdity to argue that this isn't a significant problem in play-balancing WitE.
What's more, an adjustment to the C2 costs of switching divisions (down for Germany, up for Soviet) would have immediate realism effects in that routing far away from your HQs would have an efficiency impact against the Soviet that would further penalize routing. Right now, when Soviet divisions route so far away from an HQ that they're inefficiency rises to the level of hopelessness, the Soviet can pay 1 or 2 points (rarely 3) and reassign to the closest HQ around without worrying about being over-command (because Soviet leadership is so bad it's irrelevant when they're over-loaded).
The WitE Soviet-side-only players' community does not have much of a clue of the synergies that come together to make the 1941/42 red army far more efficient than it had any basis in fact being.
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Fall 2021-Playing: Stalingrad'42 (GMT); Advanced Squad Leader,
Reading: Masters of the Air (GREAT BOOK!)
Rulebooks: ASL (always ASL), Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game
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