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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/11/2013 9:57:12 PM

SigUp

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I estimate Soviet manpower to be running at about half of its historical level in game. You cannot afford anything like historical losses with the existing manpower provided.

The Soviets called up 5 million men to the colors in July of 1941 alone -- although admittedly some of this is shown in game as reinforcements not replacements. In game you get somewhere around 3 million replacements in all of 1941.

Indeed, the replacements are too low. In 1941 it balances out with the losses to provide a good OOB in most cases. But when the Red Army goes to the offensive the OOB will outrun historical numbers. 8-10 million men are no rarity, which is much higher than what the Red Army at its height possessed.

< Message edited by SigUp -- 12/11/2013 10:59:43 PM >

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/11/2013 10:02:39 PM

Flaviusx

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SigUp, the way the Red Army can blow up in some games is something I attribute to the combat system. Attacker casualties being as low as they are and all. Once the Red Army swings to the offensive permanently it just keeps growing and growing because its own losses drop fairly dramatically, well below replacement level. They can easily afford a couple of dozen sizable ground combats each turn, if they are the ones attacking. At the same time, German attacks decreases.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/11/2013 10:16:24 PM

SigUp

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

SigUp, the way the Red Army can blow up in some games is something I attribute to the combat system. Attacker casualties being as low as they are and all. Once the Red Army swings to the offensive permanently it just keeps growing and growing because its own losses drop fairly dramatically, well below replacement level. They can easily afford a couple of dozen sizable ground combats each turn, if they are the ones attacking. At the same time, German attacks decreases.

Yes, I know. The combat system itself is problematic, though it isn't something that can be changed for the current version. It is kind of strange to see that whoever attacks suffers fewer casualties than if that same side is on the defence. Similarly to the Soviet losses dropping, once the Germans are getting pushed back they suffer much higher casualties than in 1941. I have no problem with German infantry divisions having TOEs of lower than 50% in 1944, because that's how weak they were back then. It becomes a problem, however, when the Soviet rifle corps are not as understrength as they were, but rather running around with 80%+ TOE.

< Message edited by SigUp -- 12/11/2013 11:19:31 PM >

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/11/2013 10:41:20 PM

Flaviusx

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If it were up to me, I'd just about double the attacker's loss rate across the board from where it stands now. That's very rough and ready but it would be interesting to see how it plays out.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/11/2013 11:47:54 PM

Schmart

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I'm all for accuracy.

One of the major difficulties especially with the Russian manpower issue, is that players don't waste away as many troops as the Russians historically did in useless attacks and operations. Personally, I think Russian C&C in 41 and 42 is far better in WITE than it should be. I think this is because players (myself included) tend to spend Admin Pts more on C&C than unit creation. In fact, given the amount of Admin Pts, it's virtually impossible to build and manage a historical Russian army. I think the balance and structure of the Admin Pt system directs Russian players away from building a historically large army, not necessarily in terms of men, tanks, and guns but more in terms of numbers of units. Regular comments in the forums elude to "I never build that unit type" or "I disband all of such and such type". Less use of Admin Pts on building means more on C&C, and thus we get a smaller more efficient (and historically inaccurate) Russian army, and thus fewer losses requiring fewer replacements.

I think a move towards higher Russian combat engine losses AND away from a user created army (having a historical reinforcement schedule and auto rebuild of most units), would make a big difference for accuracy on the Russian side. Much lower Admin Pts for the Russians would also give a more realistic C&C difficulty, IMHO. It feels too easy to minimize unit creation in favour of C&C.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 1:21:33 AM

Flaviusx

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Y'know, when people say that Soviet command and control is better in this game than in real life, I struggle to understand what, exactly Soviet command should look like. From my perspective, Soviet command is pretty awful and ahistorically so. Armies have been shrunk to 18 cap, which is crap and way too small. (Open any late war scenario and marvel at the many overloaded armies!)

Fronts are notoriously overloaded. Soviet leadership is quite unspectacular. The Soviet Union has to build an army and manage it with a ridiculously small AP budget, so small in fact, that one of the best ways to throttle the Sovs is indeed to push it into the well known AP crunch. This budget is hardly any larger than the Axis budget, and tasked to do a great deal more.

Have veteran players learned how to optimize all this for best results? Sure. But there's no free lunches here for the Red Army.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 8:08:37 AM

Gabriel B.

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quote:

ORIGINAL: SigUp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I estimate Soviet manpower to be running at about half of its historical level in game. You cannot afford anything like historical losses with the existing manpower provided.

The Soviets called up 5 million men to the colors in July of 1941 alone -- although admittedly some of this is shown in game as reinforcements not replacements. In game you get somewhere around 3 million replacements in all of 1941.

Indeed, the replacements are too low. In 1941 it balances out with the losses to provide a good OOB in most cases. But when the Red Army goes to the offensive the OOB will outrun historical numbers. 8-10 million men are no rarity, which is much higher than what the Red Army at its height possessed.

They had more than 10 milion but the game does not include disabled or forces in the far east .

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=83300&start=45

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< Message edited by Gabriel B. -- 12/12/2013 9:17:56 AM >

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 8:25:26 AM

SigUp

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Gabriel B.

They had more than 10 milion but the game does not include disabled or forces in the far east .

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=83300&start=45

That's what I meant. It is no secret that Soviet frontline units in 1944-45 were chronically understrength, something that isn't reflected well in the game. Therefore it is a problem for the German player when his infantry divisions due to whatever reasons (losses, swap logic) drop below 50% TOE, when the Red Army frontline corps are still at 80-100%. That's why I also (albeit grudgingly) accept the need for the German player to fort spam from 1943 onwards. Otherwise the divisions are just getting pulverized while not being able to deliver any damage to the red steamroller.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 10:26:52 AM

carlkay58

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Part of the historical Soviet manpower problems was the number of formations. They had a lot more divisions/corps than they are able to build in the game. If you count the number of new formations in 1942 that were formed by the Soviets and transferred that into AP costs, the Soviets are roughly 50 APs short - and that is the ENTIRE WitE 1942 AP income for the Soviets. There are no APs in that calculation for any other AP costs from the game. So all of the switching of commanders (Zhukov alone held over 10 commands during the year - roughly 80 or so APs right there) that were done historically are not included in the costs. Let alone all of the units switching from one army to another, etc. 1943 and on show even more drastic short falls in the AP count.

That is why I wonder about the decision to allow the Soviet player to control their own OB. It is nice so that the player can play with how the Soviet forces are formed and find good combinations, but they are the only nation able to do this and they pay for it with the AP crunch strategy able to be used against them. I am not sure that WitE 2 will help in this regard or not.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 1:36:19 PM

gingerbread

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Frankly, I prefer the cons, crunch and all, since I prefer the pro, namely control. Now if there is to be meddling with the control as in: 'You can't attach 3 Sapper Reg to each Corps' OR 'You must build historical number of MG Bat even if they are crap' then I would change my mind. The freedom to optimize is what counterweights the AP crunch and the other cons.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 3:36:32 PM

Flaviusx

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I'd rather have historical reinforcements and free rebuilds from the deadpile...saving APs to do only the stuff that it does for the Axis. The AP budget cannot possibly cover unit management and production at the same time and the traffic is much too large to bear as a design choice anyways. APs are being asked to do too many incommensurate things for the Soviets and it's very messy. Yet if you actually gave them budget to do this properly, it'd be huge and subject to abuse.

As much as Axis players complain about lacking build choices and whatnot, it is they who got the better, more elegant and sensible design here. Turning APs into a sort of universal currency that does everything (for the Sovs at least) was a mistake.

If you are going to have player controlled builds, then this needs to be decoupled entirely from army management. They are apples and oranges and shouldn't share a currency. Unit production ought to have its own separate currency if it's going to be under player control...or no currency at all if it is not under player control.

< Message edited by Flaviusx -- 12/12/2013 4:54:24 PM >

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 10:42:34 PM

carlkay58

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I tend to agree with Flav over gingerbread. I think that WitE 2 will see some changes as the way that AP works and is used in WitW has changed greatly. If this carries over into WitE 2 then it will be interesting to see what the unit creation costs will be.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/12/2013 11:54:30 PM

Michael T

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Historical OOB for both sides is my preference. Always has been.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 2:46:04 AM

hfarrish

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Unlike many grongards I find the force structure optimization process extremely tedious and would prefer historical OOB as well...and God forbid we have to get into production optimization on top of that (as so many seem to want)!

The army build out really gets beyond the operational scope of the game - I understand why it was included for the Red Army (players can find themselves in wildly different situations based on 41/42 and accordingly different needs) but I think the benefit is pretty marginal for the time cost.

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 7:26:28 AM

RedLancer

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Michael T
Historical OOB for both sides is my preference. Always has been.

I would agree completely if I wasn't a scenario designer. When I wrote Winter 42/43 and StoB entering the data for the Red Army took about 3 months of work and I had Trey's Red Army Resurgent as a firm basis for almost half already. Having to add to that the arrival dates of each individual Soviet unit would be mind boggling as would the need to balance production as arriving units are free. Imagine trying to do that for the entire war. I'm not saying that it isn't possible but having the player create their own units does have its advantages. At least for the Soviets we won't have the endless 'units destroyed at Stalingrad debate' although I would expect that WitE 2 would have a West Front Control Box like WitW has for the East and the issue will be dead.

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 3:58:15 PM

Schmart

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Y'know, when people say that Soviet command and control is better in this game than in real life, I struggle to understand what, exactly Soviet command should look like. From my perspective, Soviet command is pretty awful and ahistorically so. Armies have been shrunk to 18 cap, which is crap and way too small. (Open any late war scenario and marvel at the many overloaded armies!)

I look at it from an entire game balance perspective, in that both sides are relatively overpowered. Is dumbing down Russian C&C by itself a solution? No. But in combination with reducing logistics, unrealistic deep Panzer strikes, etc, I think it will help to add realism. To me, it's more so revamping the whole notion of Admin Points and removing the unit creation element. As it stands, the Russian player can create a smaller more efficient Army than was historically plausible, and in game terms this appears to be the optimal player strategy. How can one re-create the Russian front with essentially a fantasy Russian Army?

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 4:05:00 PM

Schmart

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

quote:

ORIGINAL: Michael T
Historical OOB for both sides is my preference. Always has been.

I would agree completely if I wasn't a scenario designer. When I wrote Winter 42/43 and StoB entering the data for the Red Army took about 3 months of work and I had Trey's Red Army Resurgent as a firm basis for almost half already. Having to add to that the arrival dates of each individual Soviet unit would be mind boggling as would the need to balance production as arriving units are free. Imagine trying to do that for the entire war. I'm not saying that it isn't possible but having the player create their own units does have its advantages. At least for the Soviets we won't have the endless 'units destroyed at Stalingrad debate' although I would expect that WitE 2 would have a West Front Control Box like WitW has for the East and the issue will be dead.

Yes, the smaller scenarios are much more difficult to build with historical Russian OOBs. I think the Grand Campaigns can be done fairly easily with historical reinforcement schedules. The on map units certainly, and while support units might need a little bit of abstracting, all in all it's doable.

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 6:16:54 PM

carlkay58

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Try finding the 'definitive' Soviet WWII OOB! It changes on a day to day basis - even among the same researchers.

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 6:34:25 PM

Michael T

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A few Historical glitches are acceptable IMO compared to the current mechanic.

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 7:08:01 PM

RedLancer

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Michael T

A few Historical glitches are acceptable IMO compared to the current mechanic.

If only everyone was so understanding

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 8:02:07 PM

Flaviusx

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Just go to Charles Sharp for your Soviet OB needs and call it a day. But this could be expensive and difficult to track down.

He ought to bundle all those volumes and put them up for sale on Amazon.

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 8:44:06 PM

Great_Ajax

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Just to be clear, the Soviets get all combat Divisions and Brigades (Tank, Mech, Rifle, Mountain and Cavalry) either at start or when they were historically sent to the East Front. I see Soviet reinforcements that arrive as late as 1943. What the Soviet player has to spend APs on are combining the brigades and divisions into Rifle and Tank/Mech Corps and any additional support units.

Sharp doesn't have all of those support units accounted for but I have learned to read the STAVKA monthly reports (in Russian) enough to discern a list of the support units and when they arrived. In order to avoid a timely review of production, all additional units would have to arrive as shells and then be filled out by the existing production system. It could be done but would take a lot of work.

Trey

quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Just go to Charles Sharp for your Soviet OB needs and call it a day. But this could be expensive and difficult to track down.

He ought to bundle all those volumes and put them up for sale on Amazon.

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/13/2013 10:00:00 PM

Schmart

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quote:

ORIGINAL: el hefe

Just to be clear, the Soviets get all combat Divisions and Brigades (Tank, Mech, Rifle, Mountain and Cavalry) either at start or when they were historically sent to the East Front. I see Soviet reinforcements that arrive as late as 1943. What the Soviet player has to spend APs on are combining the brigades and divisions into Rifle and Tank/Mech Corps and any additional support units.

There's a few elements missing though, such as the on map Artillery units and the Mech Bdes, and there aren't enough Tank Bdes provided to create historical numbers of Tank Corps while maintaining historical numbers of independent Tank Bdes. While the Artillery Divs are relatively easy to handle, the Artillery Bdes are tougher since many were created by merging existing Regts, and that's a step not easily handled in game.

The difficulty is in getting the right setup for some of the units, which would involve specific programming. Armies changing type/names, Tank Corps becoming Mech Corps, Tank Bdes and Regts converting to SPG Regts, auto disbanding of units, auto rebuilding of many but not certain units (or auto rebuilding only during a specific time period for specific units), etc. Most of the historical reinforcements (even for Tank Bdes/Corps, and Mech Bde/Corps) can be done in the editor to get maybe 70-80% of the way there. Fine tuning some of the unique situations would require some extra programming input that the editor can't do. Even just adding auto-rebuild to Russian units for the whole game would make a big difference in allowing things to be setup simply in the editor. Or at least a toggle option for individual units (like in TOAW).

I think no matter which way it gets done, historical reinforcements for the Russians will be somewhat abstracted for simplicity's sake. Getting the rest of the on map units done and a good chunk of the support units would be close enough, as the remaining is going to have only a minimal effect on game play and overall outcome.

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/16/2013 9:37:48 PM

vinnie71

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I think that its very difficult to come up with real OOB for both sides. For example, although we know which divisions etc arrived for the Axis in the Eastern Front, its very difficult to mimic their ability to combine units into larger units or expand such units. For example, several SS and independent regiments and brigades (like the Croatian one) eventually expanded into full scale divisions. For some reason, before it was possible but now such a move is impossible - regiments are withdrawn and then replaced by complete divisions. They essentially remained in theatre and expanded as the GrossDeutshland does in game.

Furthermore, there are a lot of units on the Axis side that do not feature at all. These are mostly HQs - one only sees them when s/he plays the scenarios. I'm guessing that such HQs were left out given that they were put in place to counter a certain contingency. I'm referring to such HQs as LW Flak divisions or Operational Groups and so on. Although this may have been a design decision to avoid complications (ex not everyone is going to commit WWII mistakes willingly)so such units will not feature in the Grand Campaign.

Another number of small units that are absent are the many local defence forces raised especially in the Ukraine and Baltic States. Most would end up being little more than SUs given that they were normally battalion sized units, but if added to security formations, could actually solve some of the garrisoning issues. Admittedly, it would be hard to synchronize their appearance on the map with what was happening on the ground (I mean the fall of Vilnius or Kiev could be the catalyst for the creation of such formations).

Obviously, the portrayal of all the units that took part in such a titanic struggle in such a game is impossible and given the scale of the game, quite pointless

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RE: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/16/2013 11:46:01 PM

rmonical

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The problem with historical production is you invariably end up with a-historical results. In WITE - it is the buildup of thousands of unused elements in the pools.

Part of the AP issue is they are used for too many completely different purposes. It is fundamentally different event to change the leader of a unit and starting a new combat unit in production.

IMHO, leaders are entirely too important in WITE. My understanding is the wide variation in leader effects has been toned down in WITE. Leaders are important, but they only function in the presence of effective staffs. I mentioned this earlier and someone dismissed the comment by saying leaders take their staffs with them. In fact, other than a few key people, they do not.
Take two Soviet armies. One fights the Western battles, Smolensk, counter attacks in August September, fights the Battle for Moscow and fights in the winter counterattacks. The other sits in reserve until June 42. Move a single leader, and the second army is as or more effective as the first.

It did not work that way.

Combat unit production should have costs associated with the "value" of the personnel added to the unit. Maybe AP is the way to do that. If true, then "production" AP would start low and improve as the training establishment grows. Leader change AP is a different thing and has appropriately been eliminated in WITW.

< Message edited by rmonical -- 12/17/2013 12:46:45 AM >

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/17/2013 12:39:41 AM

rmonical

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quote:

Y'know, when people say that Soviet command and control is better in this game than in real life, I struggle to understand what, exactly Soviet command should look like. From my perspective, Soviet command is pretty awful and ahistorically so.

IMHO, there should be an enormous improvement in Soviet C&C between '41 and '43. There is not and Soviet C&C in '43 seems to be good enough ergo Soviet C&C in 1941 is too good. This analysis must, of course, be taken in the context of all of the game mechanics

quote:

Armies have been shrunk to 18 cap, which is crap and way too small. (Open any late war scenario and marvel at the many overloaded armies!)

Which would be less of an issue if leader checks were not so important (QED).

My take is the current game mechanics grew around early design decisions which IMHO, will make the 39-41 game an interesting design challenge.
-- Morale vis-a-vis experience
-- Leader vis-a-vis staff. Some of this is apparently fixed in WITW.
-- Production mechanics.
-- Combat mechanics which seem to have achieved a general consensus that attacking is overly important.
-- Pocket mechanics especially as to its impact on the "AP crunch AKA production mechanics". I hope to write a detailed AAR of my fascinating summer of '42 with hoooper which we have spent pocketing, breaking and repocketing large contingents of troops.

And Morvael confirms the code is not as modular as this 30 year software professional would like

.

< Message edited by rmonical -- 12/17/2013 1:41:04 AM >

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RE: Re: Historical Accuracy posts - 12/17/2013 12:43:52 AM

rmonical

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quote:

Armies have been shrunk to 18 cap, which is crap and way too small. (Open any late war scenario and marvel at the many overloaded armies!)

Which can rapidly be improved by merging the many under strength units. It would be nice is stacking and leader control could be more related to element count than units. For example, from a logistics management perspective, there is a big difference between full strength and 60% strength rifle corps.

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