West Front Wish List

[Hoplite1963]

While West Front II is not due out for some years. (it looks like Winter 2021-2022 at the moment) I thought it might perhaps not be too early to make some suggestions has to what might go into the base game.

Here I would suggest that perhaps less should be more here with the coverage of the original base title being confined to North West Europe and Scandinavia between January 1939 and December 1940. In regard to the nations fielded the German and Polish OOB’s will by then be available to convert for this time period from East Front III. In regard to new nations I would suggest adding Denmark Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, France & the UK.

The first DLC could then cover the Mediterranean, North African & Middle Eastern theatres down to December 1942 with Italian (which might have already had quite a lot of work done on it for the first of the EFIII DOC) Greek, Yugoslav, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Bulgarian and Free French nations slots being added in at the same time. For the invasion of Yugoslavia Romanian and Hungarian formations, (already partly created for this period for the EFIII game) could also be added if desired.

This would set you up to have the second DLC adding the war years from January 1943 to December 1945 (or whenever you wanted to finish) along with the pre war years from January 1935 to December 1938.

Nation wise this DLC could introduce the US and Canadian armies along with Pro Axis nations such as Spain, Iraq & Iran, late comers to the allied cause such as Brazil and Italy as well as for the first time introducing neutral nations such as Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland for those what if scenarios (operations Weserübung, Tannenbaum & Green along with the Turks who could have always chosen to take either side well before their eventual joining of the allied cause in February 1945.

At this point to cover pre-war conflicts OOB’s for Nationalist Spain and Italy could be extended back to 1935 and Ethiopians & Spanish Republicans could also be added.

In respect of the WF II base game as this will cover the 1940 invasion of France it might also be worth giving some thought in advance to how the fortifications of the Maginot Line are going to be handled.

Here its worth having a look at the 3rd party add on created by Greg Moore for the Avalon Hill 1970’s board game “Panzer Leader”. A full PDF set of which can be downloaded from the following dropbox link below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlh4qqhs3vrkq ... .zipx?dl=0

Here you will see that Mr Moore has categorised all of the various types of fixed and traversing weapons mounts that existed in the Maginot Line and created what are essentially fixed combat units for them very much in the style of the Pantherturn turrets that exist in the current JTS West Front and East Front games.

Further information on the layout and workings of the various types of weapons stations emplaced in the Maginot Line is also given in the 2 Osprey titles “The Maginot Line 1928-45 (Fortress)” and “Maginot Line Gun Turrets: And French gun turret development 1880–1940. (New Vanguard)” The second of these is particularly good at explaining how the French had created an innovative target information management system to get the very best out of their 75mm Maginot Line Gun Turrets and other fortress weapon systems.

No doubt the new “underground” terrain layer introduced for CSVN will also be useful for modelling French and Belgium fortifications in 1940? Finally in the same regard if the West Front II base game could introduce an alternative 125 or 83.33 meters to the hex scale this might also help here for fortification related scenarios.

Kind regards
Ian

[Jason Petho]

Great idea to start the thread!

[MrRoadrunner]

I kinda like the ideas.
Except ... scale. [:-]
Please don't mess with scale.

RR

[Jason Petho]

Map scale won’t change.

Keep in mind, the scenario designer can still have their own unique map scale and change the unit files accordingly to match, but that would require a completely separate MOD.

[Hoplite1963]

Thanks Jason, in this context what is an MOD ?

[Jason Petho]

A MOD is something you would add with the JSGME.exe tool that we provide in our installations, allowing you to modify the main game to have the data function as you wish, but without impacting the main game.

In your case, you would be using a theoretical map size, so you'd have to modify the weapon file for every unit in order to adjust for those new hex size ranges.

If you are happy with the MOD, you can share it to other users.

[Hoplite1963]

Thanks Jason this sounds like a lot of work but it would only need to be done once for each desired ground scale. Also as you say once the MOB was made it could be shared to allow the creation of a whole host of community created scenarios.

More generally I entirely appreciate that 250 meters per hex is the right scale for the campaign series 95% of the time. I do however think that there is a case to be made for exceptions that proves the rule. I think an alternative ground scale would serve the game well in situations where there was an much higher than normal troop density with platoons attacking and defending much lower unit frontages. 2 examples that come to mind here apart from my aspirations for West Front II are.

1.Combat in built up areas = such as Stalingrad.
2.Fighting for the Pacific Islands in WW2 = Here I thinks it is worth having a look at the “Banzai Blitz” scenarios covering Iwo Jima that have been done for JTCS Rising Sun to see the full implications of the troop density issue here.

However quite apart from going down the MOD route If you don’t want to alter the ground scale for CS games, another way to address the high unit density issue, could be expanding the availability of units in a Nation’s “platoon file” that are larger than 6 to 8 strengths in the game.

Not much publicity has been given to this but with the current JTCS WW2 games and in CSME we already have company size (10 strength point) tank units in some of the nations platoon folders. As far as I can see these are either for Soviet/Russian units in the JTCS WW2 games or Egypt in CSME.

I also understand that at present in the scenario editor while you can adjust the strength points in a deployed unit up or down that it cannot be increased above the original total strength points that particular unit had before it was moved from left to right in the order of battle editor.

Rather than increase the number of units in a given nation’s platoon file why not scrap this restriction in the scenario editor on the upper current limit in strength points to which a deployed unit can be increased to and set a new across the board one of say 24 strength points.

Most of the time what people would probably do with this is choose to field the infantry component of a company as a single 18 to 24 SP unit very much in the way as is done with the JTS Panzer Battles games.

At a stroke this would create the possibility of reducing by up to 2/3 the number of infantry platoon units on the map and thus considerably reduce unit density. As the game is already set up to cope with the 10 SP tank units my guess is that it could cope with additional 18 or 24 SP infantry units as well.

You would probably want to add a “health warning” to scenario designers notes on the implications of oversized platoon units but I don’t see this as a big deal.

Kind regards
Ian

[Big Ivan]

Yes Ian the "health warning" would be a good idea with infantry and maybe armor. But with artillery one has to be real
careful. In the old JTCS most of the howitzers, big mortars and guns have strength points of 2-4 and a couple go to 6. Attacks to a hex
involving Indirect Fire units factor in strength points directly in the calculation with delivered firepower based on range.
So having a battery of 10-12 or larger strength points might get a bit awkward and artillery might become dominant in a particular situation.

However, you have some pretty cool ideas for a MOD![:)]

Thanks
John

[Jason Petho]

There are consequences of having 18-24 SP units. From the OOB design point of view, they take valuable ID's.

Primarily the amount of SP's allowed per hex. Which is only 24.

This means that it is unlikely that a unit will retreat, as it cannot due to the SP's available. This means that you'll be stuck in a set firing engagement unit one company destroys the other.

Of course, as suggested above, you can do this easily with a MOD. The platoon files are all moddable.

[Hoplite1963]

Hi Jason
Thanks for that take your point about not using up scarce platoon slots, which is why I suggested just lifting the ceiling for increasing the number of strength points in the editor rather than having specific larger units.

On the issue of stacking limitations leading to 24 strength point units being eliminated if they had to retreat into a hex where they would violate the stacking limit (which to be honest I had not considered here) how about if you allowed a scenario designer to increase all units in the editor to a maximum of 12 strength points but no further ?

Kind regards
Ian

[dxdavieau]

I'd like to see the Denmark OB return for April 1940....they were once in my WF but now they're gone