Unit Descriptions: Air, Naval, Land

[po8crg]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Very nice, indeed. You asked for comments, these are all about English grammar:

Speaking of which, would a proof-reader/copy-editor be useful, or does Matrix already have one on staff?

[pclem]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Very nice, indeed. You asked for comments, these are all about English grammar:

- one of the ... consequences
- ... which consisted
- B Army was renamed
- .. characteristic was that
- it started incorporating
- ... lack of landing ships made this impossible and it wasn't until the 15th of August 1944 that it happened.
- After much fighting

Aaaarghhhh !!! I have always had much difficulties with the English tenses. And that's without counting the other mistakes already corrected by Capitan! [:(] I will pay more attention to that in the future.

As for the content of the writeup, it is excellent with nice detail and well balanced with a supporting overview of the context of operations overall within which the unit acted. Thank you for your fine contribution.

Thanks. I am glad that you like it. It turned out to be more difficult than expected. But it is certainly a nice way to learn a lot of things !

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: po8crg

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Very nice, indeed. You asked for comments, these are all about English grammar:

Speaking of which, would a proof-reader/copy-editor be useful, or does Matrix already have one on staff?

I would love to have someone (native English speaker preferably) to read through the writeups for simple grammer corrections. There are over 1000 writeups and though I have read them all, I have only proof read about half of them for editing corrections.

Matrix will have a copy-editor go over the Players Manual and other "printed material", but I do not expect them to edit the unit descriptions, tutorials, or any of the in-line help information. However, the last will mostly be taken from the player's manual.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: pclem

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Very nice, indeed. You asked for comments, these are all about English grammar:

- one of the ... consequences
- ... which consisted
- B Army was renamed
- .. characteristic was that
- it started incorporating
- ... lack of landing ships made this impossible and it wasn't until the 15th of August 1944 that it happened.
- After much fighting

Aaaarghhhh !!! I have always had much difficulties with the English tenses. And that's without counting the other mistakes already corrected by Capitan! [:(] I will pay more attention to that in the future.

As for the content of the writeup, it is excellent with nice detail and well balanced with a supporting overview of the context of operations overall within which the unit acted. Thank you for your fine contribution.

Thanks. I am glad that you like it. It turned out to be more difficult than expected. But it is certainly a nice way to learn a lot of things !

My inability to speak any language except English has been proven on many occasions. So I am simply amazed at those who can switch been 2 or more languages whenever necessary. [The French seem to be a very happy people, for whenever I try to speak French, they laugh long, hard, and loud.]

[jesperpehrson]

ORIGINAL: pclem
And that's without counting the other mistakes already corrected by Capitan! [:(]

This could unfortunatly mean that I have made it worse [;)]

[mldtchdog]

I have begun looking at the Russian land units [&:] and would like your thoughts.

ORIGINAL: wusong
Problem is, there's not so much info about Russian Armies and tank/mech corps. Perhaps, best would be just to collect the few available infos right here on the forum in a collective effort.

Not a bad idea.

ORIGINAL: capitan
Since the Russian Army had no corps after the winterwar (source: Anthony Beevors Stalingrad) but only Armies and Divisions that will be a great hurdle for the writeups.

True for a while but by 1943 corps were being reintroduced into the force structure. Unless I am mistaken the Russian units are Army level (except for the specialized troops and the Siberians) so this will not be a problem. I hope.

Original: trees trees
I also think you may have problems trying to do a counter-by-counter writeup of the Russian units. The MECH and ARM units are just numbered sequentially; the first one to appear in the force pool as a white-print becomes the first one designated a 'Guards' unit. I think in real life those designations were earned in combat for a unit that performed well ... it would keep it's original number with the Guards label appended to it. In WiF there are also no "Shock" armies that became the biggest and best Soviet units by the end of the war. The GBA designations are also simply sequential. The initial black-print INF units (and GARR units, requiring another explanation of the WiF design for this type of unit) do use historical designations, so the 62nd Army that initially held the core of Stalingrad is a WiF counter. Another example is the 23rd Army, which held the front northwest of Leningrad. In WiF that is a 3-1 GARR.

The historical Russians fielded, as best as I can tell: 70 field armies, 5 shock armies, 5? tank armies, 11 guards armies, 5? guards tank armies and a costal independant armybut not all at one time. Many of them were reformed several times and changed status during the war. The famed 62nd army (which I do not believe is represented in mwif if I read the master list correctly) became the 8th gds army in april, 1943 (which is in mwif). another example is the 1st tank army which was first formed from the 38th arny but disbanded after two weeks. It was then reformed from the 29th army and became the 1st gds tank army. There are many more examples.

Original: trees trees
A lot of units in WiF don't have a realistic historical designation. Perhaps a majority of them do have one, but plenty don't. In addition to explaining that there was no such unit as the "2nd Guards Garrison Army" (there were a scattering of "Fortress" units in WWII, but not very many officially designated static units), a land unit write-up will have to explain that the "MECH" units are another design innovation of WiF. Aside from German 'Panzergrenadier' regiments I don't think many of the WWII armies used 'armored infantry' units on a large scale, particularly at the corps level. The American army did somewhat with their flexible Combat Commands (Brigades) that could feature two tank+one infantry CC or two infantry+one tank CC in a division. Probably someone else out there would know more about the American OOB than I. But I am fairly sure that some of the German MECH units in WiF have numerical designations that correspond to Panzer corps, in actuality an ARMored corp, so I hope that is mentioned.

The differnece between mot, inf and garr; arm and mech is strictly a choice of the strategic commanders tactical needs. i.e. the combat power and mobility required/ avaliable at the time. garr have fewer men but a higher ratio of maching guns for example. mech has 2 corps rifle troops and 1 tank corps vs arm which is 2 tank, 1 rifle corps. So in my view the russian 1 Gds INF, 1 Gds MOT, 1 GDS GARR all equal for historical refence the 1 Guards Army (which by the way existed in at least three difernt formations during the war).

ORIGINAL: trees trees
People have also pointed out that with the possible exception of the American portion of Operation Market-Garden, there were never any corps-level paradrops in WWII, nor corps level parachute units.

The Russians deployed ten airborne corps, three of which made significant drops (4th, 5th and 10th)

major scources: wikpedia, david Glantz

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Given so many uncertainties, I would suggest starting with the MWIF units which most obviously match historical units. After doing a few of them, it might be possible to mark some of the USSR units as readily doable based on historical units. I would then do those units.

For a second pass on the remaining USSR units in MWIF, some might be overlapping with units already done. If so, simply say that.

In general, the way the USSR created and maintained large units (armies and divisions - a few corps?) doesn't seem to match up very well with the design for land units in WIF. Again, I would recommend simply saying that.

If there are tidbits of good historical stuff not included as part of the obvious units previously written up, then perhaps that could be inserted somewhere with units that would not otherwise have writeups. For example, with the Swiss, a general discussion of what the Swiss had their armed forces doing during the war was more readily available than "action reports" for individual units.

The goal here is to add historical flavor to the game, rather than a doctoral dissertation on unit operations during the war. It is very sweet when a historical unit matches precisely with a MWIF unit, but it certainly doesn't happen very often with the land units.

[jesperpehrson]

An example of Adams Russian write-ups so far:

[Jimm]

I sympathise. At least with the Italians I have some names to work with- (even if they are not necessarily accurate) not just unit numbers!

I reckon generalise where you have to and avoid guesswork wherever possible. As Steve says, it's flavour rather than historical documentation- but anything demonstrably "wrong" will no doubt prompt criticism from some quarters- and there are a lot of experts out there- so some entries will need an element of qualification.

Good writeup fella.

Jimm

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: capitan

An example of Adams Russian write-ups so far:

Yes, this is quite good and more or less ignores the WIF given year of '1941', as it should.

English tenses
3rd paragraph: starts --> started
in overrunning it --> to overrun the German 6th army
in trapping --> to trap

About the 2nd change above, the pronoun 'it' wasn't clear as to what it was referring.

[jesperpehrson]

Good news! Toed (Johan) has finished writing six swedish units so I am going to post one or two of them for your pleasure.

Things are going forward even if not at the pace I would have wished.

- Jesper

[jesperpehrson]

Thanks to Mziln for volounteering to writing more write-ups. He has yet to pick a country but I am sure he will do a good job.

In a month or so I will cleanse the list on page two of people who are no longer active. So if you are on the list and still want to keep doing write-ups and have not mailed me in a long while please communicate your status. I am aware that some people do research and write little by little and that is fine, I just need to know that things are moving forward.

- Jesper

[jesperpehrson]

Forza Mziln! A very nice writeup!

[Mziln]

Don't forget:
 
AOI - Africa Orientale Italiana – Italian East Africa

[jesperpehrson]

Some statistics:

54 allies units have writeups. That is about 11 percent of the total number of allied landunits.

99 axis units have writeups. That is about 30 percent of the total number of axis landunits.

21 neutral units have writeups. That is about 13 percent of the total number of neutral landunits.

In total we have 174 writeups which amounts to about 17 percent of the total of all landunits

[jesperpehrson]

ORIGINAL: Mziln

Don't forget:

AOI - Africa Orientale Italiana – Italian East Africa

Ah I put this in the "header" but I will add it in the actual writeup too.

[Mziln]

The Ethiopian and Eritrea units are also part of Italian East Africa.

Italy conquered and occupied Ethiopia in 1935 and eventually created Italian East Africa out of newly-occupied Ethiopia and the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Italian troops in Italian East Africa numbered about 250,000, most of them Local East African askaris recruited by the Italian Army.

Since all the units are Territorials there is no way to invade British Somaliland with them.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Mziln
The Ethiopian and Eritrea units are also part of Italian East Africa.

Italy conquered and occupied Ethiopia in 1935 and eventually created Italian East Africa out of newly-occupied Ethiopia and the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Italian troops in Italian East Africa numbered about 250,000, most of them Local East African askaris recruited by the Italian Army.

Since all the units are Territorials there is no way to invade British Somaliland with them.

Why is there no way ?
Nothing prevents the Italian Territorials from Italian East Africa to enter British Somaliland.

[Mziln]

I doubt Italy will want to spend the production to take British Somaliland.

Combat

Add 1 to your die roll for a land attack against a hex in which the only defending land units are territorials (in addition to any modifier for face-down units). Subtract 1 from your die roll for a land attack if all attacking units are territorials.

=> ~ +2 Non territorials attacking territorials.
=> ~ -2 Territorials attacking non territorials

Movement

In addition to the restrictions on minor units leaving their home country (see 19.4), territorials may only leave their home country if they are controlled by an active major power. For movement purposes, territorial units treat mountain, forest and jungle terrain in their home country as clear. They pay normal movement costs outside their home country.

19.4 Minor country units

Restrictions on use

Minor country units can move and fight outside their home country. However, you can only move a minor country land or aircraft unit outside the home country controlled by the minor, if half or more of its land and aircraft units are currently inside its home country (exception: Rumania becomes a full Axis ally ~ see 19.6.2).

[Froonp]

Generaly Berbera is empty, so properly placed TERR can just walk in.
This is common practice IMO.
It is sure that if a CW unit defends Berbera, there is pretty much nothing that the Italian TERR can do, especially because there are chances that they are oos.