Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesertedFox

I am seeing under the latest patch very few casualties for the Germans and it's much much harder playing the Russians now than previously.

There is no doubt in my mind the Germans were not performing well enough in combat previously and needed a boost but I think the pendulum has swung a little too far and is a tad over the "balance" mark, but not by much.

Mine is just one game but I'll provide some rough statistics for turn 10.

The Germans are ahead of ground gained everywhere except in the north where they are about a week behind. In the south, they are way way ahead of the historical dates.

Casualties adjusted for time were historically 500,000 Germans (not Axis) and in my game (one week short of the time for the historical casualties given), is 215,000 including Axis allies. So they are well ahead of the stats there.

German casualties in combat previously were about 40% to 50% too much, now they are way under imho.

The Russians, allowing for my expected casualties to the end of Sept were historically 2.8 million, and mine will come out at about 3 million, so very close. However, there has been no "Kiev" pocket with 550,000 captured. Only a few divs lost surrounded after the first couple of turns.

Given the beating the Russians are now taking in combat, one large pocket after the historical Minsk pocket, and it's most likely game over for the Russians.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sir.Arnold

You also know that this is an urban battle, and most WITE battles do not take place in urban

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gunnulf

50mm mortars looking particularly deadly, even more so that MG34s and Maxims. Must be why both sides stopped using light mortars through the war in order to play fair...
I seem to remember this getting mentioned before (maybe in WITW) looks like is still a weird thing. The damage per barrel versus 81mm seems pretty insane and I think some assumptions about RoF are way way exceeding the ability of the platoon teams that carried them by hand to actually have ammo for these things, which as much as anything were often there as much for smoke as HE as well. Much as I agree with the deadly effect, and proportion of casualties caused by indirect fire in WW2 the main culprit was not 50mm mortar fire.

The step change between the bomb size/deadly effect to 81mm, plus the effectiveness of proper Mortar fire control, observer teams, plotted marked targets, proper resupply of ammo (often but not always by vehicle of some sort) of mortar platoons versus a couple of dudes in an infantry platoon with a sachel of 50mm bombs winging it over open sights from the bottom of their foxhole is like Pro footballers versus sunday league weekend warrior amateurs. Ivan or Hans with not much training been told to carry the heavy pipe thing today and give it a good guess. I think there is a real issue driven by paper stats and numbers versus reality. Simply nerfing the RoF to reflect practical restraints of being able to effectively find/engage targets (very particularly in urban!) and the ability/availability of ammo will quickly make 50mm mortar numbers much more realistic. My credentials being as an Infantry platoon commander at a time when 51mm mortars where still an asset, and subsequently an 81mm mortar platoon commander. While 51mm is a nice toy to have, its really night and day in terms of effectiveness for the reasons above.

Also as a final point when we talk about overall casualties from indirect fire most of the deadly effect is usually the first round on target before the enemy takes proper cover. For that reason it should be remembered that overall many of the casualties in game would be from attrition calculations of units stuck on the front line week after week exposed to random stonks catching people out in the dinner queue just as much as well as actual battles where minds were more focused on making friends with a hole.

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesertedFox

The Russians, allowing for my expected casualties to the end of Sept were historically 2.8 million, and mine will come out at about 3 million, so very close.

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Thanks for all the testing and feedback on this. The next public beta (hopefully out today) will include some adjustments in this area and Joel and Gary are continuing to investigate and adjust based on what we've seen from games with the previous public betas.

Regards,

- Erik

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ORIGINAL: IDGBIA

Arty disrupting entire divisions worth of men is pretty common to me it seems and the only way to save yourself is to be in a lv3 fort. also I think the bombardment phase should perhaps work differently when defending, as soviets right now you get your entire offensive force disrupted by German guns magically joining as soon as the attack begins and bombarding an entire rifle division worth of men into just sitting this one out, maybe give Germans worse chances later in the game for support unit checks to simulate soviet deception. This is sort of just soviet whining but disruption and routing units could maybe be lowered also, its not uncommon to see a div have all its elements disrupted by arty and then rout and lose all its men due to either the massive odds difference or the disruption itself I'm not exactly sure how its calculated

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sauron_II

quote:

ORIGINAL: IDGBIA

Arty disrupting entire divisions worth of men is pretty common to me it seems and the only way to save yourself is to be in a lv3 fort. also I think the bombardment phase should perhaps work differently when defending, as soviets right now you get your entire offensive force disrupted by German guns magically joining as soon as the attack begins and bombarding an entire rifle division worth of men into just sitting this one out, maybe give Germans worse chances later in the game for support unit checks to simulate soviet deception. This is sort of just soviet whining but disruption and routing units could maybe be lowered also, its not uncommon to see a div have all its elements disrupted by arty and then rout and lose all its men due to either the massive odds difference or the disruption itself I'm not exactly sure how its calculated

I think some of the disruption concern are a result of confusion from the manual and depiction in the UI, versus how they are actually being reported.

With multiple disruptions counted per element, it makes it appear that whole divisions are being disrupted.

When what is actually taking place, you have various elements that are absorbing the disruption results for others.

So whatever is currently being reported in the game Combat Result General Tab is overstating the number of elements actually disrupted. Some of these numbers come from the same element disrupted multiple times.

Of what value this provides now, I have no idea.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sir.Arnold
...

How do you explain that the Soviet CV fell by more than 90%

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ORIGINAL: loki100

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sir.Arnold
...

How do you explain that the Soviet CV fell by more than 90%

disruptions - remember that disrupted elements don't count for the final cv
failed leadership rolls

in combination, sounds correct

quote:

ORIGINAL: Great_Ajax

As a retir3d US Army Field Artillery Officer, we always called the artillery "King of Battle". The infantry is the Queen of Battle.