Soviet Ski Battalion TOE late 1941

[Wiedrock]

The Text is from the Soviet Army Handbook.
They name it as being a actual TOE, so I assume it is what they say.
They mention several times that the Battalions were all different but a TOE is a TOE.
Here some try by me to correct the current TOE.

Ski Battalion_TOE1941.png (378.74 KiB) Viewed 501 times

In the following quote one may see that the Platoons were equipped differently, so overall one could also come up with some mixed usage of Rifle+SMG+Labour+Rifle(-)-Squads to get to that 27 Squads. Maybe those 9xRifle Squad (-) were an attempt to do so, or they are....something else which I can't see/mayb have overlooked. They may also be related to some mentionings of a Ski Platoon having 3 OR 4 Squads, but using this as a general Rule (not in the "official" TOE in the Book) while not increasing the Support Squads proportionally seems weird (ignoring that they are too low to begin with).

Ordinary soldier S.A. Styazhkin of the 7th LB 283 ski regiment, which fought near Moscow in the winter of 1941–42, says: “They dressed us well: a cotton jacket, warm underwear, skis, a pick, a shovel, camouflage white coats. I was a machine gunner, and I also had a light machine gun. Carry it however you want, it was given to you, so carry it. I had to carry a light machine gun, a machine gun, a duffel bag, and a bag with grenades (two anti-tank, two small).”
It's hard to imagine what it was like to ski with such weapons. This required people with good physical characteristics, willpower and strong character. After all, even an athlete finds it difficult to move on virgin snow, off-road with full combat gear, sometimes for days without sleep or rest.
However, not everyone was equipped this way. This is what Siberian A. A. Tereshchenko, who fought in the 117th OLB of the 50th Army of General P. A. Belov, recalls. “We had 3 companies in our battalion. The first was armed with PPSh machine guns, the second with rifles with ammunition from 3 to 9 rounds of ammunition for each shooter, the third with militias without weapons. The commander told them: “Your weapon is on the battlefield.”

If something is too good to be true or too bad, people see it but many don't want to dig or figure out where the issue is located. 432 guys only having 20 guys as support is far from being funny. Same goes for 80% Support Manpower (Alpini). All this without compensation other than "Soviet Guns get less Ammo and therefore Units shoot less". This is literally Conquistadores against Maya.

From: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6&t=400286

They are actually one of the most manpower-efficient units in the game, because they have basically 0 support squads. So everything goes directly into combat elements, basically.

IIRC they also get a special bonus in winter combat, but even when it is not winter, they are very good due to that manpower efficiency.

Ski brigades, however, are even better than ski battalions, because they are also manpower-efficient (not many support squads, but they have about as much infantry as a rifle brigade, just without the extra guns that a rifle brigade has). But they are also larger than ski battalions, that is to say that ski brigades have a bigger number than ski battalions (whether the number is CV or men).

Big number > little number, so ski brigades are better.

But you should also always max out ski battalions as well. Their manpower efficiency also makes them great for theater boxes as well, so if you have more than your divisions can use, just send some to theater boxes until you have more divisions/corps that can use them.

[...]

So we have:

Ski battalion: .13 CV from 452 men
Rifle division: 2.37 CV from 11878 men

452/.13 = ~3477 men required to provide 1 CV
11878/2.37 = ~5011 men required to provide 1 CV

So the ski battalion is about 50% more efficient at providing CV/TB value than the rifle division, even despite the fact that it has lower experience (which will equalize with time).

And the ski battalion also does not require any guns, so that means more guns are available for your on-map infantry divisions/corps.

The reason why the ski units (both battalions and brigades) are so efficient is that they have virtually 0 support squads, whereas rifle divisions waste a bunch of men on useless support squads.



In other words, ski units are basically the polar opposite of Italian Alpini units.

Italian Alpini units are basically pure support with hardly any combat elements, which makes them pretty much useless for anything other than wasting freight and thereby helping the Soviets.

Whereas Soviet Ski units are basically pure combat elements with hardly any support elements, making them ubermensch.

[Beethoven1]

Noooooooooooooooo don't nerf my precious ski battalions.

Don't listen to Wiedrock. Please remove the 1 single support element from the ski battalions instead so they will be even more OP. Do not give them any more support elements. Every element must be a combat element.

Unsupported meat wave assaults are the way of the future, the Soviets pioneered these innovative battle tactics and army organization methods with their ski battalions consisting only of raw human flesh and mosin-nagants.

[Wiedrock]

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[Wiedrock]

Edited. If you find errors, let me know.