WitE 2

[HMSWarspite]

Ok, so you presumably think that your panzer division should be able to penetrate those positions faster and break out the other side without engaging the enemy in any serious way? Why do you think this?

I don't know of any case where this sort of extremely thin but deep defense was tried in RL and thus am not sure what this would represent in RL. So I think we are short of data here. In effect it must be small detachments of defenders scattered at every tactical blocking point... 30 min delay here, an hour there... Oh, and the 2nd and 3rd examples include river crossings being slower when enemy can interfere (however lightly) than when they are nowhere near.

Having said this, I could penetrate this defense and destroy some units very easily with the two units in your pictures... Just attack the defenders with the first one, and drive through the hole with the second... WitE has no combat delays and it isn't as if we have a separate combat phase. If we did I would be right with you on the game breaking nature of that ZoC situation.

[821Bobo]

The Airborne bgd is 2500 men strong covering some 64km. That makes 1 man for every 25m. Security regiment is half the size so it is 1 man every 50m. Barely a screen without any reserves. With the mobility of Panzer division they would probably even not notice enemy presence.
Just my point of view, obviously I may be wrong.

[Michael T]

WARSPITE you still fail to see the purpose/point of my argument. I think the current zoc costs are fine so long as the units creating the zoc's are divisions or more. The problem is that small (ant size) units exert the same influence as larger full blown formations. I really don't know how many times I need to say it. You keep missing the point.

Can't you see that if a zoc to zoc cost = X for a division that logically, for a regiment/brigade it should be = X/2

Assuming they are both foot units.

[RedLancer]

@Michael, I did expect something a little different as I do understand the rules, however that said it does illustrate the current position for anyone unsure of the case in point.

I make my post without commitment or prejudice (i.e. I promise absolutely nothing!) but I wish to test your argument further:

So if I understand your position you don't think that the rules on entering an enemy ZOC should change. If that is the case can you explain why you believe the same logic shouldn't apply as that for moving between ZOC and ZOC?

Is it only the additional 4 points on moving ZOC to ZOC that you consider excessive when only a Regt is present?

In your screenshot example there is a two hex gap between your static units. If the movement costs were relaxed what costs should apply when a transited hex has more than one enemy unit influencing the ZOC?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

WARSPITE you still fail to see the purpose/point of my argument. I think the current zoc costs are fine so long as the units creating the zoc's are divisions or more. The problem is that small (ant size) units exert the same influence as larger full blown formations. I really don't know how many times I need to say it. You keep missing the point.

Can't you see that if a zoc to zoc cost = X for a division that logically, for a regiment/brigade it should be = X/2

Assuming they are both foot units.

The problem is you are looking at this from a purely game perspective where you know you have a very powerful unit and the opposition couldn't resist if you did attack rather than simply move past them. Lets shift perspective - and take your three instances.

Broadly a Pzr division has been ordered to penetrate quite deep into enemy territory - including crossing an unbridged major river. The divisional commander has been assured by his commanders that there is no organised (ie divisional plus decent artillery) Soviet resistance across his line of march.

So first thing is to push the recon battalion up the road. In each case they brush up against some sort of Soviet presence - Soviet soldiers sleeping off exhaustion at the side of the road, an organised ambush, an accidental clash between patrols. So evidence is sent back (cap badges, papers, rank or unit insignia) and checked. In the meantime, now much more cautiously, the recon bn pushes on - it now is not sure what it is up against, but trusts its orders and its own training. But people are being careful.

Confirmation comes that its a paratroop unit, so tough but lacking heavy weaponry. Units push on, the armoured bns are pretty safe but the HQ and support sections need to be cautious - very vulnerable to ambush?

Its all friction.

Your case C is a nightmare for any unit commander, even if the enemy is weak, a crossing of a major river for a motorised units with no bridge in the face of the enemy. I realise the movement penalty captures some of this, but there is the additional element of nasty uncertainty - again friction.

If WiTE used an order based system (ala Piercing Fortess Europe or the AGE system), I'd be completely with you. But there needs to be something in the game to capture small scale interaction between the moving and passive side?

[RedLancer]

Loki100 - I'm not sure Michael is saying that but need him to confirm. If you are moving ZOC to ZOC you are already adjacent to a unit so should know its strength.

[timmyab]

A simple solution would be to halve the cost of moving into/through ZOC of units below division size.
Not an ideal solution but practical and I would imagine easily implemented.

[Michael T]

John what penalty is there for simply entering a zoc? Unless crossing a river? I don't know of any. Its only the case when entering a zoc while crossing a river where you incur an extra penalty. Which is shown in one of the examples.

I have played numerous other operational PC war games and board games. More than 40 years worth. The vast majority of those operational games will differentiate the zoc to zoc costs between what a division exerts and what we term 'ants' (other small units, much smaller than divisions i.e. regiments/brigades).

Most of these other games simply have rules like, that 'ants' exert no zoc to zoc penalty at all. In this respect WITE is on its own. It makes no difference what kind of combat unit is in a hex, ant or division. The zoc to zoc costs are the same.

IMO, to avoid too much added complexity to code, and while offering a marked improvement to operational realism over the existing model, I would simply stick to current conventions used by other games. That being, anything smaller than a division exerts no added MP cost for zoc to zoc movement, or for units crossing a river in to said ant zoc's. I would like to go further but I fear the extra complexity would not get past the coders.

But to be totally frank, anything that the coders could come up with would be an improvement over the existing model. Because the existing model treats all units as having exactly the same stickiness/glue in these circumstances described and shown in the examples.

Lets face it. The game was released in 2010. Looks like WITE 2.0 might be released around 2018? (just a guess). Surely, we can add just a little improvement/accuracy in this one area of operational maneuver.

[Michael T]

A zoc represents a units partial presence or it's ability to disrupt movement through a hex that is both adjacent to it and devoid of other units.

A division or corp will exert much more presence or disruption to movement in said hex than a regiment or brigade. It's that simple.

All I am asking for is that we see a reduction in MP costs for units moving thru said hexes where the adjacent units are ants.

Why is this concept so difficult to comprehend for some people?

Try this, if walking down the street and a light breeze is blowing in my face my speed of movement will be not be reduced. However if a gale is blowing in to my face I will slow down. In WITE world it matters not that a gale or a light breeze is blowing, my speed is reduced by the same amount.

[Michael T]

I agree Timmy. But the solution is not the problem here. The problem here is that a few posters don't see any problem at all.

But I think on the whole we have enough who actually do understand to make a case to the devs. In the end it's up to them.

We only aim to improve and evolve the game and bring it a little closer to reality in one small way, nothing more.

[RedLancer]

Michael

Remember we are on WitW ruleset as a starter (see screenshot). I'm having deja vu from an earlier discussion with Pelton. We are now past the 'Houston we have a problem' stage. I accept and recognise your point of view. I am now testing the scope of your argument (scientific meaning not angry confrontation).

My questions still stand:

- Do you envisage changes for ZOC to ZOC only.
- If yes - why the difference?
- Do you envisage differing rules if more than one adjacent hex is occupied?

[sillyflower]

Whilst I think Michael has a good general point (see my earlier posts a few days ago), I'm not sure that there the MP costs in his screenshots are that unreasonable. We are talking about crossing major rivers here - and those Russian jor rivers are huge. Getting a panzer div over one was a massive undertaking because there were few places where they could be bridged, and bridges were serious bits of engineering that could take many months to repair. Getting a troops over in rubber dinghies then later on on rafts etc was very difficult even in peacetime. Even the sort of opposition that light forces could provide would potentially cause heavy casualties and very significant delay. Furthermore, IRL a serious crossing attempt would attract more support for the defenders.

I doubt that the ZOC rules exaggerate the delay, and the move is all done without losing a man unless the defending bit of cardboard is adjacent to the river - and then the losses will still be very light even with a 'held' result. In Wite, follow on units can currently cross the river at little cost without any delay or ZOC factor.

My conclusion is that any reduction in ZOC costs needs to be balanced by increased MP cost of entering enemy held terrain and for river crossings.

Another related factor when comparing wite and witw is that difficult terrain in Russia is much more so than its western counterpart. Where I live the Loire is rightly considered a major river in witw. However the difficulties in crossing it other than by bridge is very minor to those accounts I have read and pictures I have seen of crossing the major rivers in Russia. For some months last year, the Loire around Tours/Samaur looked as if one could drive a tank straight across it.

I know I have somewhat strayed from the pure ZOC point, but I don't see how it can be solved in isolation.The more open the terrain, the more I agree with Michael, but IRL smaller units have much better ZOCs in defensive terrain - taking ZOC to mean the ability to impose delay/friction on the enemy.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

..

All I am asking for is that we see a reduction in MP costs for units moving thru said hexes where the adjacent units are ants.

Why is this concept so difficult to comprehend for some people?

... .

In the abstract I agree with you - although I do think there should be friction (which is what you are saying?). My concern is that you looking at this from one side only.

When I first took the gamble of buying WiTE what attracted me most was it seemed to be an electronic reworking of the GDW classics (I think this is wrong in that I seem to recall reading the developers were more inspired by SPI's War in Europe series?).

Anyway. Now I have long since lost my copy but if I recall a motorised unit had around 16MP and the potential to expand around 24 (the second movement phase was reduced?) across a turn - and the combat phase didn't cost movement points. In the WiTE/WiTW/WiTE2 universe it is easy to get a motorised unit up to 40+ (my experience with both the later games is the most you need to do is rest a unit for a turn or so). Now in the context of an igo-ugo game design that is a huge capacity for the moving side and one that the defending side can't react against.

so it maybe that an imperfect zoc rule is actually the best balance solution for allowing the sort of movement capacity denied in many older operational games? Especially if I am right in my suspicion that independent brigades on map will be less of an issue in WiTE2 (of course you could be perfectly right in your suspicion that this is the 'best' option and the one that most Soviet players will pursue)?

[Michael T]

John, I have answered those questions several times over.

zoc to zoc, yes change from +4 to zero if the only unit(s) exerting the zoc are reg/brigades.

Also when crossing a river (major or minor) in to a zoc OR from zoc to zoc reduce the MP cost if the unit(s) are reg/brigades. Reduced to 50% of current costs.

Look, I don't know what the most optimal solution is. But I do think that the costs for entering a zoc when crossing a river should be reduced if the zoc is produced by a reg/brigade.

Guys, and this is to all those who are fighting this request for a change here.

Why is it, that you think a regiment should exert the same strength of zoc as an entire stack of divisions. Because that is what you are defending. That is what you are saying is ok, and does not require any improvement.

This is the key point here. Not what the solution is.

I say there should be a difference in zoc costs between ants and big formations.

You guys are saying no there should not be. So you are saying the power of the unit exerting the zoc has no relevance to the MP penalty to cross it's zoc. Why is that? Why do you think that?

I am tired of this thing. Totally. Some people get it. Great. Others don't. Well fine. I really can't add anymore.

But I am curious why you thing reg/brigades would have the same degree of stickiness as a fully staked hex of divisions or corps for that matter.

You are saying that a security regiment with maybe on 700 men with rifles has the same zoc power as 3 tank corps with 30000 men and 600 tanks.

[notenome]

I think that there is a level of abstraction here that is causing some problems. Bc of the hex scale, the WITE decided to not simulate roads (which was the right decision) but this in turn has produced a few consequences.

Mechanized or not, panzer divisions are road bound when it comes to movement. Even if the tanks can go offroad, the constant supply of fuel they need to operate dictates that straying too far from the road network will cause them great dificulties. This feeds into the utility of blocking detachments, no matter how small (see Rauss's KV example I gave above). On the other hand, choosing alternative roads was a strategy the Germans frequently took in order to bypass blocks. Guderian gives an example of this in his book: in order to bypass a blocking detachment on the road to Minsk his spearhead took a secondary road.

Because the game doesn't simulate roads (which is the right thing to do), we have to abstract. ZOC costs aren't necessarily direct interference from a unit (they can be that as well) but also an abstraction of the costs of taking sub-par roads and routes instead of the best/most direct path.

That said I still do largely agree with the penalty being variable based on unit size, but not stricly determined by it. It seems a check may actually be the solution.

[Dinglir]

As I see it the movement costs of moving in the vicinity an enemy unit is (or rather "should be") based on several diffenrent factors:

1) The size of the enemy unit. A full division will have more long range artillery to engage, even at long distances. You wouldn't want to start moving your trucks to much if the enemy is able to quickly bring a lot of 152mm artillery pieces to bear on them. Rather than an automatic MP cost, this may be handled as an automatic "artillery interdiction attack" that may cost MP's if succesfull.

2) The status of enemy air presence and doctrine in the area. If my enemy has air presence in the area, he can observe my movement and report that to his air forces (even if this was before the proper use of Forward Air Controller's). In fact, movement should often lead to an automatic interdiction attack by enemy airpower, costing me even more MP's. Some nations should obviously be better at this than others.

I think that handling the above situations as "automatic interdiction attacks" could be handled well by the programming.

I also see other factors that will impact the MP cost:

3) The type of enemy unit. Assume I'm Soviet moving next to a german unit. I'd be a lot more careful if this unit is a panzer unit than I would if it is a static division without any transport. The reason for this is that the panzers are quickly able to "countermove" and create some very nasty responses to my movement.

4) The amount of information (ie detection level) I have on the enemy. If I don't know what I'm facing, I'm not able to prepare properly for what might happen. Consequently, I need to be a lot more careful.

Point 3) and 4) would add up to a cost based on a combination of my detection level and the type of enemy unit.

The total MP loss would then be automatically calculated when moving your unit in the enemy zoc.

But I guess it's up to the programmers to make a decision on what is possible without causing to much lag.

[MechFO]

A foot mobile brigades/regiments sphere of influence is maybe 7-8 km across at maximum, at least if it wants to maintain ANY defensive capability (which unit commanders normally want to do).

It has neither the mobility nor the means to reach out any further. Neither does it have the ability to push much more than a company or 2 forward into the surrounding 600km2 (or 300km2 if taking into account only most likely axis of advance), and if they are pushed forward vs. an enemy with superior mobility they are at risk if being lost or bypassed. Those companies spheres are maybe 1km2, max.

In combat order that brigade/regiment will advance maybe 2-3 km/hour (being generous), ample time for any reaction, especially by a mechanized force, and very vulnerable to counter attack or artillery.

Them being able to influence movement so far away does not make sense.

The unit setup that michael shows above does not make sense in any kind of real world situation, yet makes perfect sense in WITE, which should indicate that something fundamental is wrong with the ZOC mechanic.

ZOC mobility costs can f.e. be because of:

- use of alternative roads
- necessity of screening + having reserves or extra tasking of reserve function to transiting units
- increased readiness or combat order instead of march order
etc.

However all of the above will be made due to threat assessment, and a foot mobile company stranded somewhere is not going to send anybody into big bursts of activity.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

Michael

Remember we are on WitW ruleset as a starter (see screenshot). I'm having deja vu from an earlier discussion with Pelton. We are now past the 'Houston we have a problem' stage. I accept and recognise your point of view. I am now testing the scope of your argument (scientific meaning not angry confrontation).

My questions still stand:

- Do you envisage changes for ZOC to ZOC only.
- If yes - why the difference?
- Do you envisage differing rules if more than one adjacent hex is occupied?

Easiest would be to just take ZOC away from non-Mot Brigades/Regiments. Since HQ do not exert ZOC, there must be a toggle somewhere. Or even just make the toggle accessible in the Editor.

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

This is the key point here. Not what the solution is.

...but for the Devs the solution is everything. Asking for a change is quite acceptable. Expecting the risk inherent with such a change to be accepted off pat is not. I'm sure that the solution suggested by MechFO is the easiest but any change impacts all that we know about game balance. Any change has to be thought through to the finish.

[HMSWarspite]

But lets get back to my issue. What do we expect a Panzer div to be able to do in these situations? It is easy to say that an anomaly exists when a regt imposes a similar delay to a division (same ZOC rules) but how much of an issue is it at game scale? Lets take the first example in Michael T's pictures (this avoids the extra issue of a river crossing close to the enemy). The Panzer division crosses a river (and drives 10 miles), and then drives 20 miles further. It then penetrates a (very light) defensive belt, for a further 30 miles, crossing a minor river in the process. And in fact it is this minor river than halts further movement as it would be home free without this if I can count, and able to go another 10-20 miles. So, 60 miles into enemy territory, half of which has some troops in, and crosses 2 rivers in a week, and with a unit that is not absolutely at full supply (47 vs 50MP). What examples have we got of that in RL, and how short of distance are we? Do we want to go through that belt as if it isn't there?

It is worth noting that, yes the para Bde probably only present on 1/4 or 1/3 of the frontage it covers. However no one has mentioned that the Panzer div has a frontage and a volume as well. It also has second echelon frorces, Btn HQs, supply trucks, soft skin vehicles etc. Now, it could squeeze itself through gaps on a 1 btn front (in which case it becomes very long and thin). The game doesnt allow the division the change shape like that, ad so we need to be ever so carefully allowing massive moves through zones like this.

However, my opinion isnt worth anything in this debate. What historical evidence is there - either doctrinal, or real war, that says what should happen in this case? I have not got time to research at the moment, but I think the fastest 'normal' sustained advance in WW2 was about 30 miles a day, without major geographic obstacles or enemy resistance. Maybe opening of Barbarossa was faster?