janh
Posts: 1216
Joined: 6/12/2007 Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Pelton quote:
ORIGINAL: Flaviusx If I knew the Red Army could fight forward and afford the losses, I would do so, rules or no rules. The reason I run (in the south anyways, not up north) is precisely because this isn't possible. Running away, for me anyways, is purely an artifact of the Lvov opener (people are still underestimating how much this is distorting the game) and the fragility of the replacement situation. You would fight forward we know, but most would just take the extra troops and send them up north. There would need to be something to give people a reason to fight forward other then there word heheh. I am for and have been tweaking the lvov pocket, but there has to be a trade off or it will be impossible to get over rivers. So far we have seen a few games, where SHC fell back or was forcefully pushed back too far East, loosing LG, Moscow, Voronesh, Rostov and a lot more up to the Saransk area and Chererovpets. Yet I can't remember any SHC player that was at this line by late 42 or still in 43 getting anywhere close to Berlin again, aka. of the ongoing AARs there is indication that they won't be fast enough (e.g. Tulius or Terje's AARs) -- independent of whether he retreated so far because SHC got trashed (and weak/er after), or voluntarily (in which case SHC should be much stronger, and more likely to regain something). With a German player skilled and disciplined on the defense, making no major mistakes and knowing when to switch to a holding stance, the going for in 43-45 is going to be slow. No 10 hex deep breakthrus with pockets like Axis in 41, maybe at best now and then a 3-4 hex breakthru or a 1-2 hex pocket. It still looks like retreating beyond the line where terrain would allow fighting (Landbridge, Pskov, Vyasma-Rshev...) is likely to surrendering any chance of a late victory. So does it really need more rules except the knowledge that every hex lost in 41-42 will be much much harder to regain after? I concur that upping the manpower pools, either by an injection at the game start, or by the multiplier would be one thing. Yet without increasing the combat effectiveness, aka morale/experience, or respectively how the latter parameters figure in the combat engine, you'd only set up more bowling pins. But not get to the kind of fighting to death, counterattacking, desperately defending rivers etc. all of us probably would prefer. My impression with the combat engine is that forces with a strong disparity often lead to results, in which one side losses 100s- some 3000-400s men, but the opponent losses 0 (aside from FoW) -- like in the case of highly experiences Axis divisions fighting off a SHC infantry attack with low experience units. It rather expect the defender to loose a few dozen to 100 men disabled as well, which in effect would rate the SHC more combat worthy, increase Axis losses/attrition and make fighting tougher, and progress slower/costlier. Maybe that would be better than to increase morale/experience, because that carries the risk that Axis may get stuck with some SHC moves: e.g. if you'd forgo Lvov voluntarily, and wanted to fight it out with AGS, you might well see the SHC withdraw behind the Djenpr or run all the way to Stalino/Kursk (since this open terrain would by the books not be a wise choice to contest), and just as presently transfer all the spare forces to LG and Moscow -- Axis would probably still overrun the south, but might not even get near LG or Moscow. You would sort of have to require an SHC player to loose two huge 700k+ pockets like Kiev and Wjasma-Brjansk (and perhaps waste a few 100k men and tanks in futile counterattacks), else the balance may have shifted to far toward SHC. The ground to get a campaign that is fluid and reaches a high-water mark at LG-Moscow-Rostov, where both sides have some chance to either take or hold it, appears very small for this war.
|