mundane tasks

[Germanshep]

I have many wargames which I enjoy playing. I have most of GG games including WitE, WitW and all of the Decisive Battles games. I am thinking of passing on WitE2 because of all the micro management. Rail repair needs to be better automated. The two or three units which you repair manually with are just a grind each turn to mess with. The units which are numerous and repair the rails by themselves do a horrible job of getting things going after conquering parts of Russia. Also partisans wreck everything after the first six months of the campaign. I know this is realistic but its just not enjoyable. I know I am not alone in feeling this way. Am I missing anything here? I enjoy the East Front series no matter who the developer is. I love the Warplan game just because repairs are automated and I can just enjoy playing. Thanks for listening and any feedback would be appreciated. I buy from Matrix but this is my first post. Sorry to complain.

[First_Contact_Gamer]

You have nothing to be sorry about and I don’t believe this is complaining on your part. I think what you are witnessing is the balance of games between the two extremes of “Simulation” and “5 Minute Match” games. I am not suggesting that because you have this feeling you are now labeled a beer and pretzel gamer who should stick to simpler games, your list of games you play proves this simulation genre is for you.

However I think the simulation genre that WITE2 falls in has a wide variety of options. If WITE2 moved 1% closer to full on simulation and it feels a bit too much now that’s fair criticism and when this feedback is taken in aggregate I have faith in these development teams, most of the time, to take that and improve with future titles and updates with iterative changes. The AI and depot assist are great examples of such improvements.

The issues you point out regarding rail repair are fair. They are trying to simulate the difficulty that was presented in the historical context however perhaps there are automation or Ui opportunities? I don’t have the answer because I don’t know that this can be "solved" in isolation.

Anyways, again, I don’t see your post as complaining and would encourage you to keep sharing that type of feedback because it is how as a community we move the genre forward.

Cheers!

*Edit* - Thank you to Loki for contributing some great tips to help address some of OP's concerns where as I chose to just babble philosophically.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Germanshep

I have many wargames which I enjoy playing. I have most of GG games including WitE, WitW and all of the Decisive Battles games. I am thinking of passing on WitE2 because of all the micro management. Rail repair needs to be better automated. The two or three units which you repair manually with are just a grind each turn to mess with. The units which are numerous and repair the rails by themselves do a horrible job of getting things going after conquering parts of Russia. Also partisans wreck everything after the first six months of the campaign. I know this is realistic but its just not enjoyable. I know I am not alone in feeling this way. Am I missing anything here? I enjoy the East Front series no matter who the developer is. I love the Warplan game just because repairs are automated and I can just enjoy playing. Thanks for listening and any feedback would be appreciated. I buy from Matrix but this is my first post. Sorry to complain.

Hi

well yes there is a lot to do, but how much is up to you.

In WiTE2 you can automate the air war (just set some key criteria), automate the creation and revision of your depot network and automate the allocation of support units.

In addition a lot of work went into the UI to try and make stuff as easy to do as possible.

As the German player in 1941 you have 5 (drops to 4 later in 1941) manually controlled rail repair formations. Since these both define the key thrust for your offensive and allow you to strongly influence the supply network you really want to retain manual control.

Partisans are highly abstracted. By T6, an off-map Theatre opens up with the axis security formations. These suppress Soviet partisans. The partisan effort is shown by low level interdiction that increases movement costs in poor terrain/poor weather, so its very unlikely to wreck the campaign.

If you're not sure the manual sections are available on the forum, maybe read the player's notes and see if that re-assures you?

[Germanshep]

I want to thank everyone for their replies so far. In WitE partisans pop up everywhere after awhile. They are constantly disrupting rail and supply lines. If this is abstracted in WitE2 then that would be a great help for me. I can direct the air war in both WitE and WitW myself and do enjoy that. Every turn in WitE requires checking the whole map area carefully to find and repair broken rail lines. That drives me crazy. My reading of WitE2 looks to be similar to WitW with its automated air campaign.

Because of the great help from this community I will go ahead and purchase WitE2. I love the subject and want to support the series along with the Warplan series. It seems there is a great hope for a total War in Europe with both East and West games rolled into one. That would be a huge undertaking but it would help with letting the player decided which units to pull from East to West theatres. Nothing worse than losing panzer divisions when they were historically taken out of the line and transferred.

Again thanks for the help I was reluctant to say anything as it is probably my inability to comprehend these games due to my lack of brain power.

[Rosencrantus]

If you're worried about the rail repair units being a grind, let me tell you they really aren't. You can do the manual repairs really quickly by just moving one hex and then pressing "r" to repair move to the next hex press "r" again, which I find quite satisfying. More time is spent thinking which rail line to repair than the actual action of repairing itself.

[Germanshep]

The actual repairing of the rails is not the problem as just hitting the repair button is easy enough. What is a nightmare is losing supplies to the front due to some partisans way back along the track somewhere. Then searching where the break in the line is. I was just hoping the manual repair units which are good at repairing the rails could be automated somehow. The automated repair units seem to just sit there forever and never get anything done.

In Warplan its somehow automated which allows me to focus on strategy and not micromanagement. I know Warplan is a simpler wargame and I am just being lazy by not looking at every hex every turn. I love WithE and WithW very much. I am sure I will love WithE2 also. I almost wish for the days of GG Germany turns East where you could set armies a location to advance to and just give the HQ orders. I miss that in WithE.

For some reason that grand campaign style did not last long with GG. Wouldnt it be nice to just order armies to locations to secure and let the generals get it done. Playing the part of Hitler or Stalin is great fun. Now here I go telling my age!!!

[carlkay58]

Partisans now do low level interdiction, they no longer cause rail cuts. This means that the Axis rail repair is much like the Western Allies in WitW. You no longer have to worry about troublesome rail cuts in the rear that need repair.

[Rusty1961]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

Partisans now do low level interdiction, they no longer cause rail cuts. This means that the Axis rail repair is much like the Western Allies in WitW. You no longer have to worry about troublesome rail cuts in the rear that need repair.

Why would they not do rail cuts? That defies logic.

[GloriousRuse]

What they do is provide Interdiction, which represents assorted small scale actions that generally disrupt administrative movement and supply coming up. Rather than say “they did so much damage only an entire rail repair brigade for a week could possibly solve it”, which is patently absurd, this represents the effect of min or actions and repair efforts along the line by increasing movement costs. It’s not “partisans don’t effect rails” it’s “how partisans effect rails is not the same as a division overrunning them”