Slitherine

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Well, that's what I mean: you let the player choose the symbolic city or VP location or whatever(and these should always come with a turn limit), and penalise them if they don't capture it and dish out lots of points if they do. I don't think overruling the player is possible, so the game or the designer setting these objectives usually doesn't work out. It would have to work on several levels and in several situation though, which would make it rather hard to come up with a proper working system.

For example at the start of Barbarossa you give the German player several options to choose from, of which one could be to capture Kiev(or Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad or any other city or multiple cities, or objectives in other words) by turn x. The Soviet player gets a whiff of this(or not?) and has to judge if the possible loss of men is worth denying the VPs to Axis...or for example if the Axis don't get the city by turn x they lose a certain amount of VP.

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ORIGINAL: loki100

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ORIGINAL: Northern Star

Is there still a chance to reinforce a particular front in WitE 2.0, for example if I want to take Leningrad before the summer of 41 ends, or heavily reinforce the Army Group South to take the industrial cities (also during the summer of 41) can I still do that?

How much turns does it take to arrive on average for example to take Leningrad, or Moscow, or the industrial cities in the south?

Let me know… I’m so curious!

one big issue is that supply delivery is much more of a challenge. Its hard to explain without the map but the Ukraine basically has one major rail line to Lvov and then that branches out. Rails have capacity so this means you can't support an unlimited number of units.

Bielorrusia to Minsk has 3 major west-east lines and then quite a decent network Minsk to Moscow et al. But Minsk is a bottleneck (till you have the north bank of the Dvina under control). Up to Leningrad is not too bad and the ports help.

If you overload a supply system (combination of rail cap and depot cap), quite simply you will run out of supply/ammo/fuel and/or replacements.

So you could do a WiTE style Pzr focus on the south but they will really struggle - at least till you have the Gomel-Minsk line up and working and running down towards Kursk.

At the moment, I am mostly sticking fairly close to the historical plan. I think I am going to experiment with reinforcing AGN but I'd be very cautious about sending more into the Ukraine till you have taken the eastern end of the Pripyet (and linked up the rails).

Other constraint is with fixed airbases, you simply have to spread out the airforce much more - and getting the short ranged stuff into action can be a struggle. You come to quite like the Me-110s for their range. This affects resupply as the Ju-52s tend to have to stay in German Poland and be a bit spread out - its hard/impossible to concentrate them all to support say AGS.

There are tricks though. Keep a sector static (that reduces demand) - of course you need your friendly Red Army to help you out by not pounding your front line. Be prepared to radically rotate formations. I'll leave infantry corps that bore the brunt of the border battles and pocket clean up back in Poland. They are not pulling supply that is meant for your front lines. You can also do a lot by varying the supply priorities of depots and HQs.

All this is from WiTW as well, but the scale of WiTE2 is cleary very different.

edit: progress rates are all over the place so hard to say. Some early games/builds it was feasible to clear the board. Now I think that Leningrad is going to be very hard to take (map changes) but I think I know how. The issue for the Germans is the historical dilemna - is it worth burning off so many men, supply and ammunition to take? Moscow - not sure, I'm doing a PBEM where I think I'll end up very close but I doubt I'll take it. South, mostly seeing Kharkov-Kursk-Dombas fall.

But at the moment there are enough game systems missing or being refined so don't read too much into this.

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ORIGINAL: Northern Star
...

What happens with the Baltic rail lines? They are the nicest so far... And are there rail lines that go through Romania to supply AGS?

If I will have some day in the future the chance to test WitE 2.0 I'll do what I did in WitE alpha testing years ago... I'll try to optimize what the game mechanics give to me to get what I want... This is the best way to find all weaknesses in my opinion.

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ORIGINAL: Northern Star

Thanks for the explaination! It's nice to know how WitE 2.0 logistics work :)
The quicker air war you write about, how does it work? Now in the first turn I bomb the Soviet air bases like hell and I destroyed on the ground about 5400 planes. What are the current airfield bombing kills in WitE 2.0?
And what do "fixed air bases" mean? I can't imagine my planes staying in Poland while I try to run as fast as possible with the panzers...

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

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ORIGINAL: Capitaine

Fighting for particular territory rather than running away is all a political matter. To simulate this there must be some political component in the game, either supreme leader commands, victory points, a national morale, etc., to make it more compelling to stand rather than incur the resulting penalties. Even if defending is changed to be more effective, that alone won't change the run away strategy to preserve the army, unless the defenders are bolstered so much that the historical pace of Barbarossa is sacrificed. So what would make standing to fight more desirable than losing large portions of the army?

The flipside of that is if the game makes it incapable for the defender to defend, it will be unplayable.

Let's get real here. How on earth does anybody hold on to Kiev until September in vanilla?

It cannot be done. Not with SW Front going up in smoke on turn 1 rather than on turn 12.

So this whole talk about VPs and politics or whatever is just vaporware. You can't even begin to be serious about this stuff unless the other game systems make it feasible. And at present they do not. Runaways are dictated by present game mechanics.

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ORIGINAL: loki100

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ORIGINAL: Northern Star

Thanks for the explaination! It's nice to know how WitE 2.0 logistics work :)
The quicker air war you write about, how does it work? Now in the first turn I bomb the Soviet air bases like hell and I destroyed on the ground about 5400 planes. What are the current airfield bombing kills in WitE 2.0?
And what do "fixed air bases" mean? I can't imagine my planes staying in Poland while I try to run as fast as possible with the panzers...

You set air orders using 'directives' (have a look at the WiTW AARs for some idea how this works). You can assign planes to directly support a HQ (anything from an entire Army Group or single Corps), or to operate independently (here they can bomb road communications, rail links, directly hit ground units or directly hit airbases), its no bad idea to keep some fighters unassigned (they will then fly interception in your turn). Other missions include recon (for specialist planes only), naval interdiction or strategic bombing.

Given that you do not have the Western Allied airforces of 1944, I tend to prioritise interdiction missions - these extract a steady toll on units moving through affected hexes (incl if advancing to attack or retreating from combat) and direct ground support.

Setting up missions is a bit fiddly at first, but after T2 I tend to simply revise targets and plane allocations. Find it takes me about 15 mins to set up and 2-4 mins to run.

Once you have the missions set up, there is a separate phase where all missions (apart from direct ground support) are carried out - after that there is no need/ability to do any more air missions (apart from rebase and supply drops). Its a huge time saving over the micro-management in WiTE.

Air bases are now on the map, not as counters. And come in 3 sizes. A small soviet hard packed airfield will struggle to handle that many planes. So the capture of airbases and getting them set up (ground crews, supplies etc) for your own aircraft is very important. At start there are areas on the map that lack many (NW of Moscow for eg).

This affects the T1 cull. For a starter your airforce is more dispersed (and stays that way). Second you have a hard choice - use the Luftwaffe to support operations or to bomb airfields (you can order both but the result is a lack of effectiveness in either role). Depending on how I balance interdiction/air field bombing I reckon on destroying 1100-1400 on the ground. You'll then get another 400 or so as you overrun airbases (damaged planes are much easier to destroy this way than in WiTE). Still feeling my way as to the best set up for T1 and whether you gain more by hammering the VVS or cutting up retreating Soviet ground units.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Capitaine, my entire point here is that present game mechanics do not allow the Soviets to do what they did historically.

It is absurd to expect the Soviets to hold on to historical objectives with a system that produces ahistorical results operationally. There is nothing at all historical about SW Front disappearing in one big gulp on turn 1.

That problem, at least, appears solved in WITE2.

That aside, I've never taken VPs in this game very seriously at all outside of scenarios. This was was going to end in either Berlin or the Urals, and nothing short of that really matters. That seems to be a minority opinion, especially among Axis players who want short cuts and quickie surrenders from the Soviet Union (and yet insist that the Soviets must take Berlin instead of calling it a game at the Vistula.)

This was war to the knife. An existential fight.

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Not unless the new system is such that renders runaways unnecessary.

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ORIGINAL: rainman2015

What about ground unit bombings in WITE2? I use them a LOT and do it all manually. Any hex i really want to take gets hit 2 times prior to the attack to get all the disrupted troops.

Sounds like you are not doing this manually right before each battle in the new system.

Randy
:)

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Seems to prevent runaways you need either to have victory tied to giving up ground too quickly somehow or you have to have high command stand fast rules that kick in at times

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ORIGINAL: Northern Star

To give only directives is not very good for me... I never trusted the AI to do any kind of air missions. It's too weak in my opinion. All my air missions were all controlled by me (except for ground support and interdiction). Anyway I'm curious to see how it will go...

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ORIGINAL: Michael T

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Seems to prevent runaways you need either to have victory tied to giving up ground too quickly somehow or you have to have high command stand fast rules that kick in at times

Personally, I will be happy if we have the Sudden Death Scenario from WITE 1.0 transposed in to WITE 2.0. It puts a dampener on the run away strategy. It just needs some numbers for SD checks in the middle and late summer of 41.

EDIT. Needless to say really, but as an additional CG scenario.

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ORIGINAL: Michael T

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Seems to prevent runaways you need either to have victory tied to giving up ground too quickly somehow or you have to have high command stand fast rules that kick in at times

Personally, I will be happy if we have the Sudden Death Scenario from WITE 1.0 transposed in to WITE 2.0. It puts a dampener on the run away strategy. It just needs some numbers for SD checks in the middle and late summer of 41.

EDIT. Needless to say really, but as an additional CG scenario.

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Yuck. Not signed.

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ORIGINAL: loki100

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ORIGINAL: rainman2015

What about ground unit bombings in WITE2? I use them a LOT and do it all manually. Any hex i really want to take gets hit 2 times prior to the attack to get all the disrupted troops.

Sounds like you are not doing this manually right before each battle in the new system.

Randy
:)

as with my comments above to Northern Star - I'd suggest a wander over to the WiTW AAR forum - there are quite a lot of detailed descriptions of how to use the air directives and their flexibility.

At its core, you open your turn and need to set them up as at this stage you can't move ground units but you can do admin things like set up depots, re-assign commanders and support units and so on (I tend to do these at this stage as I'm less likely to forget).

If we ignore specialist missions like naval interdiction, strategic bombing and recon, in WiTE2 you'll find the bulk of your airforce is doing one of three basic missions:

a) ground support. You assign the air units to a HQ and then they are used in the actual combat phase - so very close to the current WiTE mission;
b) air superiority. This really comes in two forms. An active mission is where you give your fighters a geographical area to patrol and go and do that. There are some nasty tricks here, like you can opt do this only in your opponents part of the turn (which can really catch out someone a bit lax about escorting their bombers) or a night fighter mission where they sit around known airbases waiting for units to return. The alternative is simply not to give a fighter unit any orders. They will then only fly interception in your own airspace - this is quite efficient as they don't use fuel or take operational losses unless they are actually called on;
c) ground attack. This is probably your default mission but comes with different options.

c1) First you draw a target area (there are some really nice on map visual aids to help you do this - it can get quite obsessional making sure you have just the pattern you need. The target area can range from 0 hexes (ie you tell it to go and bomb just one hexes) to 9 hexes (you tell it to operate within 9 hexes of a designated central hex). I usually find I am using 1-3 as my rule here.
c2) You then allocate planes to the mission. These can be a mixture of active planes (bombers) and escorts (fighters) - note that some fighters can operate in a bombing role but are less effective (again as per WitE)
c3) you chose the sort of mission via 'target priority' - options are airfield (bomb enemy planes); unit (directly bomb an enemy unit); railway (concentrate on hitting rail lines and movement - very good for supply interdiction); port/ferry (probably rare in WiTE2 but you concentrate on hitting port infrastructure or river movement); interdict (more below) or railyard (you bomb railyards - good as it degrades overall rail capacity and the ability to unload units and freight)
---- interdiction is probably the default mission. You do two things with this. Some (limited) direct damage to units in the area chosen and substantial losses if a unit moves in an area (this includes retreating), this also interdicts tactical supply (ie truck movements) so can be very effective at plastering the rear area. Edit - units can have more than one priority, so you can tell it to say do an interdiction mission but allocate some planes to airfield bombing, or to hit both port infrastructure and the railyards and so on.

d) for all missions, you can dig deep into the details. Planes have different load outs (simple eg drop tanks give extra range but at a cost in combat efficiency), some bombers can shift between a few heavy bombs and lots of light ones. The altitude can be set - want to bring in your Sturmoviks at 1,000m here is where to do it, the number of days per week, intensity of commitment, tolerance for bad weather etc,

So to your answer, if you really want to bomb a hex, gather an appropriate set of air units, tell then ground attack-unit-hex and they will do the mission you use in WiTE. As an eg, in WiTE2 I tend to place some stukas into a specialist mission to directly bomb Brest-Litovsk on T1 - makes it so much easier to take. You can then allocate some specialist support to the corps/army you have making the attack so you get more support at the moment of combat.

The distinction unit bombing-interdiction is subtle. I regard the first as costly for my airframes as you are telling them to go and bomb a relatively fixed space and to risk flak etc. The second gives more indirect effects, the enemy will degrade but over time but on the other hand your planes can operate longer (they are hunting roads and obvious communication channels).

edit - but apart from ground support all this is done before the land movement/combat phase. So you do need to think about air allocation and plan it. Its less problematic than it sounds but perhaps is why I tend to have each axis air corps on interdiction and hitting a 1-2 hex zone rather than broken down into lots of small targetted missions - the latter is more an indulgence for the Western Allies over France in 1944.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

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ORIGINAL: Michael T

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Seems to prevent runaways you need either to have victory tied to giving up ground too quickly somehow or you have to have high command stand fast rules that kick in at times

Personally, I will be happy if we have the Sudden Death Scenario from WITE 1.0 transposed in to WITE 2.0. It puts a dampener on the run away strategy. It just needs some numbers for SD checks in the middle and late summer of 41.

EDIT. Needless to say really, but as an additional CG scenario.

Yuck. Not signed.

Allow me to propose an alternative. Something like the DC3 political point system where early seizure of enemy objectives gives the Axis points to spend on goodies. (In a WITE context, maybe that means bonus APs?) That recognizes an advantage and gives the Axis player a tangible benefit. Or conversely some ephemeral penalties to the Soviet. (To be determined. Again, APs suggest themselves as a currency here.) Incentives are good.

Calling a vastly premature end to the game on account of reaching some arbitrary phase line? Not so much. The war doesn't end in August 1941 just because the Axis gets to Leningrad and Kiev early or whatever.