Fire In the East scenario

[jjdenver]

Another couple of things I've noticed but I'm not sure if they are as you intended:

First I don't seem to be able to move SFT's by sea. For example there is a unit on an island north of Norway that I wanted to pull SFT's out of (or pull the entire unit off the island). But I can't figure out how to move the unit or individual SFT's at all. I think I could possibly sail the transport unit up from Germany but it moves very very slowly - it made it about 5 hexes on turn 1 (which represents a week)?

So I guess a second issue(?) is that naval units move extremely slowly.

A third possible issue is that Germany doesn't seem to have rail capacity to move units around. For example I wanted to rail the 900 Lehr regiment to Berlin to become SS. However I see no way to do that. Historically I'm quite sure the Wermacht could rail units around relatively quickly on their own rail gauge but this doesn't seem possible in the game. Perhaps some immobile rail-only units should be in each major Axis city to provide some rail capacity to pull units back from the front or send them east to the front?

A fourth possible issue is that on turn 1 I guess no rail at all is possible since all hexes that Germany occupies are considered captured from the previous turn(?) Is this intentional?

Thanks

[Grymme]

JJdenver.

I think its the last issue you mention. When you play all fronts as one regime then the Axis regime eats upp the other two regimes at the start of the first round. Since ATG doesnt allow strategic transfer in territory the first round in newly conquered territory it means you cannot use strategic movement until round 2. This is not intentional, but its an engine issue that cannot be worked around (as far as i know).

Each round is 4 days. Cargo ships move quite slow in coastal water (12AP cost) but faster in deep sea (8AP). How did you get one of them to only move 5 hexes? And which unit did you move? Another way for faster transport of small units is to use Auxilliary Ships. They move really fast in coastal water (4AP) but really slow in deep sea (20AP). This wouldnt help the Norway unit, but can be used in the coastal areas.

Btw. There can be advantages to have units on garrison in Norway, Greece etc (there are partisans). But the unit on the island in Norway i admit is pretty badly placed.

[Grymme]

Hmm... looking into the issues you were talking about i did stumble on a rather lethal partisans bug.

i will look into the other issues, but this is a gamekiller. So i made a quick patch which i think people should apply. It also includes the "no partisan" scenario option that Edsan asked for. (It might be that this bug is not present in earlier versions, but it was present in v202)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ESVQ1OZB

EDIT. I do think i found one issue with the naval transport thing. It seems that Oslo & Copenhagen were not designated ports. So ships there could not provide NAVAL CAP. But i will deal with this tomorrow.

Will go to bed now, have six trials on schedule tomorrow so i need to get some sleep.

[jjdenver]

To see the naval movement problem try to move cargo ships out of Konigsberg toward Copenhagen. You can make 9 hexes not 5 I guess.
Also try to move Finnish naval units out of Turku toward Hango.  They only go 7 hexes.

[rjh1971]

Grymme your latest update v2.05 of your scenario is bundled with v2.03 of ATG. Any incompatible issues until v1.03 is released as beta when upgrading FitE? Don't think there should be, just asking since I got the warning in the game.

[Grymme]

rjh1971
I loaded the 205 scenario with an old version of ATG and i did not even get an error message. But i dont have the retail version of the game. I have not used any new features added in 103 compared to 102 so i do not think there should be an issue but honestly dont know. Thats more the things Vic knows.

JJdenver. Then it seems the naval units move as intended, with the exception of the issues with Copenhagen & Oslo not being ports (but this will be fixed). You could use NAVAL CAP to move the Norwegian Island port to some other port.

Will hopefully look into some of the smaller issues this weekend.

[jjdenver]

Grymme - pls let us know when you get those issues worked out and where we can get the new version. I'm going to start a ame with rjh I think once the new version is out.

[Grymme]

Updates will be posted in this thread so there is no risk of missing anything

On the to-do list still
- A Engine bug in the OOB window that crashes the game if you click on the LVI Mot Korps HQ under PG4 in AG Nord. I have posted on the AT support forum but cannot do anything myself about this. Waiting for Vics reply. Sollution for now. Dont click on that specific unit in the OOB window, or at least save before you do it.
- The SS-specific Issue. This is low priority and long term, so nothing expected on this.

Changes.
- Made Copenhagen & Oslo ports
- Motorized all SS mot bdes properly.
- Fixed a strange hex bug in one specific hex that made the hex look like plains when it was hills.
- Changed chance of Greek partisans appearing down because they were appearing to often.
- Changed Bulgarians fighting mod vs allies from 60% to 30% & changed it back to 60% when Bulgaria goes to war (Bulgarians really should only be used as an occupying force).

None of these changes are critical. So no need to stop any ongoing games.

Here is a link to download of v205b
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EW6BPVGL

JJdenver & Rjh. Have fun.


I wanted to write something about the balance in this scenario. A scenario like this will always be difficult to balance. What i did was compare balance of this scenario (production and forces) with a couple of other AT scenarios on the same subject. I compared balance with GPW, Ostfront and Russia41

FITE
Axis production 114,3 (60% of SU) Soviet Production 189

GPW
Axis production 46,7 (58%) Soviet Production 80,3

Ostfront
Axis production 62,5 (55,4%) Sovier Production 112,7

Russia41
Axis production 65 (56%) Soviet Production 115

I did similar tests when it came to starting force strength.

So, in my scenario Axis production is quite similar to the other scenarios, but slightly higher. Now there are some things that compensate for this. Primarily the fact that you can evacuate factories in my scenario and the rules for Lend Lease which is not included at all. So will the scenario ultimatly be balanced. Who knows, but i have tried as much as possible to ensure that is the case.

[jjdenver]

Hi Grymme, I'm glad to hear you tried to balance. Starting force strength might be another metric you'd want to look at. I'll say that I've got experience with GPW - have played a few games although none ever reached 1942. In all of them the Soviet absolutely crushed the Axis in 1941 so I don't think it was balanced - perhaps things have changed in the latest release(s) of it though?

[Grymme]

JJdenver.

I did the same thing with starting force strength. But there are much more variables there. For example the soviets have huge amounts of obsolete fighters that are next to useless (you will see). How do you account for that, tank differences etc. But i did compare scenarios. But when it comes to starting forces there is also the issue of historical accuracy. If the axis forces had ca 3 400 tanks then there should be ca 340 tanks ingame and so on.

So i did work on that but the true test is people playing it. That being said i dont think even playing a scenario a couple of times nescessary says much about balance in AT. Its such a skill game that certain people can win against really bad odds. Lunaticus for example can easily beat me in a scenario, i will say its unbalanced, then he beats me just as easily from the other side

[jjdenver]

Hi Grymme - thanks for the update.

Is it intentional that Axis starts with so many 1941 techs unresearched but SU has them all researched already? Essentially it appears that SU tech is ahead of Axis tech in all areas. Is this right?

Also the Soviet production seems already skewed to the east. I counted up production as follows:
Initial areas that Axis grab quickly incl Kiev/Odessa/Minsk/Smolensk/Baltics: 14k
Far East (Gorkiy and east of there): 98k
Leningrad Axis (incl navy prod): 16k
Moskva Axis: 34k
Stalingrad Axis (incl Sevastopol): 10k
Caucasus: 18k

So it seems like Far East production already outnumbers all other production 98k to 92k even before any factories move.

For example Kharkov was a very big industrial city for USSR (if I remember correctly it was 3rd behind Moskva and Leningrad) but it is only 2k production in the game compared to 10k for a relatively small producer like Perm or Chelyabinsk.

Cities like Rostov have no production and even if you assess that there was little industry in the Don Basin - at least there was lots of mining and men to recruit for the Red Army.

Usually the area from Kiev to Kharkov to Rostov is considered a very important region for industry, raw materials, and population, but in the FITE scenario there is only Kiev(2k), Kharkov (2k) and that's all until you reach Stalingrad (4k). This huge area of Kiev to Stalingrad is outproduced by Akmolinsk 10k to 8k (?!), and by Perm(10k), Sverdlovsk (10k), Omsk (10k), Chelabinsk (10), Gorky (4k+6k), Magnitogorks(10k), Yaroslavl (6k+4k), and nearly equalled by a city like PetroPavlovsk(5k).

I just thought I'd point this out.

Cheers

[Grymme]

JJDenver. The scenario doesnt use the normal research. Instead it uses the research branches described in the Briefing named something41,42 and so on. What you are seing are most likely the old research. I did not delete them because i was afraid of bugs. But they have no importance for gameplay.

[jjdenver]

ORIGINAL: Grymme
JJDenver. The scenario doesnt use the normal research. Instead it uses the research branches described in the Briefing named something41,42 and so on. What you are seing are most likely the old research. I did not delete them because i was afraid of bugs. But they have no importance for gameplay.

I don't understand. The scenario briefing says those techs have to be researched but USSR already has them all researched when scenrio begins while Germany does not. (see screenshot)

From briefing:
"(95-98) Infantry 41,42,43,44
(99-100)Light Infantry 41, 43
(101-104)Antitank Guns 41,42,43,44
(105-108)Tanks 41,42,43,44
(91-94)Self propellered guns & Artillery 41,42,43,44
(109-112)AFVs 41,42,43,44

At the start of each year the researches of that year will become available to research (if you have researched the previous years research of that branch).

Each branch of research will initially cost 100PP to research. The cost of researching will then become lower by 2 for each round (but can never go below 2). For each front that is asleep the research will go down another 1 per round."

[Grymme]

Yep, that is a bug. Good catch.

It does not affect games with separate AG regimes.

Here is a fast patch

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QA5NXX4S

I hope you guys will be patient with me, with a scenario like this there will likely be more bugs. I try to take care of the bigger ones as fast as possible.

[jjdenver]

It's no problem Grymme. Thanks for fixing. Did you read my note about 4 up in the thread about production? It may be WAD (Working As Designed) but I'm not sure. I edited the post so you might not have read it since it might have been edited to show all of that analysis about production after you read it once. Thx

[Grymme]

JJdenver. Actually the production is as intended. I did not want the Axis advancing to historical limits causing a dent in Soviet production so large that it changes the essential balance of the game. Should the Axis advance beoyond historical borders the balance could swing pretty quickly though (Leningrad/Moscow). One bit to weigh in here is that the AI cannot really handle factory evacuation (i have scripted it but it doesnt work as it does for the human player).

The far east is a little bit of a misnomer because it really was the whole inerior of the country. Also Chelyabinsk might not be so large, but productionwise it was huge. It was actually called Tankograd and a large part of the soviet tanks were produced there.

Anyway. This is one area were i had to compromize a little with historic accuracy because of above stated reasons, but also because i need the game to be playable even if for example the south and middle fronts are sleeping (so i placed 30% of production in the north even though in reality maybe less were there).

That being said i am not commited to having it as it is now. Things might be changed in the future, but that is on longer perspective.

[jjdenver]

Ok I understand about production. I see a bitter end for Axis in this one though. I doubt they have much chance w/ how huge Soviet production and army is.

I'm not able to DL the latest update - says file unavailable - can you check it?

Thanks

[jjdenver]

Hi Grymme, the SU doesn't have any research avail to do when game starts but GE has a bunch left to do including all planes and flak. Is this what you intended? (I'm using latest patch 2.06)

[Grymme]

JJdenver.
 
Does it look like this
Destroyer
Divebomber
Fighter
Flak
Levelbomber
Paratrooper
Submarine
Transporter
 
If that is the case then you can just ignore it. Those researches are leftovers from the original masterfile and does not enable purchase of other units. I will clean up this in the next version, they should not be enabled.
 
have you and Rhj started playing yet? How is it going. I am playing a game against Soviet AI+ but i am having some trouble finding the time. I am almost done with round2.
 
 

[jjdenver]

I see. thx for explanation Grymme.

I started twice but had to restart for bugs. I haven't got the 3rd start going yet as I had visitors this weekend.

The scenario is absolutely huge - and we are discussing finding another player for each side to make it 2v2 or 3v3.

It looks fun but daunting. We both wanted to play the Sovs as I think it looks like they will have a pretty easy time of it but we'll see.....