OT New Eastern Front Game - Whole war Divisional level , 10 mile hexes - weekly turns

[Cavalry Corp]

Now that would be interesting and its not happening I am tired of waiting . I had WIR had some good ideas but its torture to work with and look at .Ihad all the board games and there is a host of information avaialble .

So ...

I run a company around 2M STG turnover always looking for new ideas to invest in so I do not hand over all my cash to the tax man . I am no computer expert but have a fair knowledge of military matters and know what I want to see.

How difficult is it to make a game worthy of my name

Nice map , nice counters for serious wargamers not a graphics fest ( I know its not that difficult - look at the new mod for GOA ) .

Full Eastern front game involving "semi" production, industrial relocation , strategic initative switches , politics , loss effects on national morale . leaders from Corps upwards ( lots of info on thise ) , training , amphib ops , seige , weather effects , extraction and explotation leading to more partisans etc etc etc .
Could include balkans - race to finish before starting Barbarossa - quicker its finished the more time you get - lots of ideas

Full OOB for every unit ( plenty of info around ) with the base unit as a division ( made up of Regiments ) including air and Naval units

Ideas please . If you can write the program you will be in the royalties. It would be better if you were in the UK !
Even Better if we could sell it to Matrix as publisher

Michael

[Jeffrey H.]

Oh boy, this could get interesting.....I'll have to post on my own time, I'm at work now. I will get back to you.

[Jeffrey H.]

I was thinking out loud about this to myself and I began compiling a list of features I wanted to see in a new East Front computer game, here is that list:
 
[font="courier new"]New East Front Game Requirements[/font]
[font="courier new"] [/font]
[font="courier new"]1.[/font]    [font="courier new"]Must have accurate OB.[/font]

[font="courier new"]Must have unit attrition tied into supply, time spent continuously in combat, (units need rest and refit time).[/font]
[font="courier new"]Must have supply tier layer.[/font]
[font="courier new"]Must have accurate weather effects.[/font]
[font="courier new"]Must have good combat model, with reasonable interaction of arms.[/font]
[font="courier new"]Must have air power that can be used to support combat or interdict supply or to resupply units.[/font]
[font="courier new"]Must have unit morale and unit esprit de corps.[/font]
[font="courier new"]Must establish a new paradigm over the hex and counter games:[/font]

[font="courier new"]Area movement[/font]
[font="courier new"]ZoC must be fluid and consistent with unit deployment[/font]
[font="courier new"]Offensive, transport, defensive, assault, withdraw modes of deployment[/font]
[font="courier new"]ZoC extends into areas relative to deployment mode and resistance and time[/font]
[font="courier new"]HQ forms the “unit center”[/font]
[font="courier new"]Combat occurs in various forms of intensity, relative to deployment mode.[/font][/ol][/ol]
[font="courier new"] It was just a start. I don't like strateigic directives 'hardwired' into a game. It always seems like a crutch for one thing or another. I also like the game system in COTA quite a bit in fact this list was more or less what COTA ended up being. [/font]
[font="courier new"][/font] 
[font="courier new"]Weather played a huge role but it was variable. What if the Winter of '41 was very mild and short ? Lots of variables to deal with. What if the German commnaders are given the option of slowing down and preparing for Winter rather than dashing forward until the blizzards hit ?[/font]
[font="courier new"][/font] 
[font="courier new"]Don't make me take Leningrad and Moscow and Stalingrad or even any combination of the above. Evalaute VC's every turn. [/font]
[font="courier new"][/font] 
[font="courier new"]Good point about production, why can't I manage production on a macro level...'Strategic Command' allowed this and it was simple and effective. [/font]
[font="courier new"][/font] 
[font="courier new"]Just brainstorming....[/font]

[Silvanski]

http://www.ac-smolf.dk/fite/

[Silvanski]

No disrespect to WiR... far from that cuz I enjoyed many hours directing my Panzers across it's map but there is a game capable of many of the things you mentioned...

The Operational Art Of War, better known as TOAWIII from Matrix Games has 100's of scenarios... one of them called Fire In The East which recreates the Eastern Front 1941-1945... it's huge with 10 KM hexes and 1000's of units...

[Cavalry Corp]

Thanks for joining the post

Sounds VERY interesting BUT
I had the old version of TOAW and its well away from combined arms tactic that I read about belive in or see in other games . Armour seemed quite ineffectice and I had WW2 games lloking more like WW1 .

I am interested BUT what has improved over the version i have COW edition - now discarded ?

Michael

[Cavalry Corp]

All ideas are welcome but someone has to be capable of putting it all together
 
M

[JagdFlanker]

the basic setup of WiR is already a near perfect blend of playability and reality -

- the hex size/scale (a finer scale is detail for the sake of detail and takes away from playability/fun from most people except grognards - plus every other east front game has a finer scale so why be like every other east front game? and the 1 week turns allows the whole campaign to proceed at a reasonable pace so it doesn't take 5 years to finish it)

- the size of units (div's in corps, dealing only w/corps but being allowed to fill them with whatever div's you want)

- the basic way airpower is used (all the air units in HQ's so no need to mess with individual airbases)

- and by FAR AND AWAY THE MOST IMPORTANT PART - dealing with producing and deploying the real tanks and aircraft. i love the east front, and although i don't play WiR because i agree the actual gameplay really stinks, i still play with it because i love the fact the units have real Bns of tanks and airgroups have real planes in them and i can "optimize" production to produce my fav tanks and planes, and then distribute them to whatever units i want.

the way WiR is layed out (in basic terms) is near perfect (yes it could be organized better and the info easier to access), but the way it plays is all wrong. the combat/game engine stinks and the actual way production is implemented stinks (the 'prices' for producing certain units make them either un-producible or too good not to produce, there is no penalty for constantly changing your production around)


of course when everybody thinks of improving a a game the first thing added is detail, but in a basic sense adding detail sucks out the fun of playing - it's nice to have a huge detailed map, but is it fun scrolling around a huge map for 4 hours manipulating 1000's of units doing a 1 day turn in a 2000 turn war? is it fun spending years debugging a game which has so much detail it takes forever to iron out the bugs? there's already a couple 'detailed' games out that take it down to division and lower levels, but i personally don't even want to look at them because i don't want to spend 10 years playing 1 game, and in spite of the better unit detail the armour and aircraft are abstracted so you don't even get to deploy your fav tanks in these smaller units.

i'm just throwing this out there to get a broad scope worked out before working out the details - comments?

[Cavalry Corp]

I played WIR once but suffered permanent unhappiness with the horrible map
YES the basic idea and playability were there and I agree with your comments in general

In fact in my proposal I was thinking of having every unit in one stack represented by one counter to make it much easier and a 10 mile hex seemed to be about the right frontage for a corp in attack or a spread out Division on defence .

Alloacation of produced units - fine excellent but then you need the intereation of those units - in particular armour v armour . On the East Front the key was mobility for the Axis, once lost ( Stalingrad and Kursk ) attrition will defeat them . Later its the otherway round but Germany was too weak to cancel the Russian mobilty BUT of coarse individual tank types were important .

regards
Michael

[Silvanski]

ORIGINAL: cavalry
I had the old version of TOAW .../... what has improved over the version i have COW edition - now discarded ?

Michael

OK you know the game and you're right about the 'combined arms' matter
I never owned COW, but from what I've read the improvements have been substantial.
There's a thriving forum here at Matrix

[Cavalry Corp]

So I see
the temptation of FIE is too much so I am downloading it even as I write this

M

[Silvanski]

ORIGINAL: cavalry

So I see
the temptation of FIE is too much so I am downloading it even as I write this

M

Note that the TOAWIII version of the scenario will not play in COW

[JagdFlanker]

ORIGINAL: cavalry

I played WIR once but suffered permanent unhappiness with the horrible map
YES the basic idea and playability were there and I agree with your comments in general

in principle i agree with you here, but the 1 thing i do like about the map is it's straightforwardness in it's presentation and the fact that it's not too big so you can get used to it's size rather quickly. i guess 10mile hexes wouldn't be so bad, as long as it was presented in an "easy to read" format

[JagdFlanker]

ORIGINAL: cavalry

In fact in my proposal I was thinking of having every unit in one stack represented by one counter to make it much easier and a 10 mile hex seemed to be about the right frontage for a corp in attack or a spread out Division on defence .

regards
Michael

well, if you want to use a 10mi hex you might have to split up the basic corps level counter and reduce unit size to division level - in WiR a corps contains at MINIMUM 3 DIVISIONs which seems like a LOT of infantry for 10mi hexes

The Infantry division in 1939-41 averaged 16,860 men.
http://www.dasheer.org.uk/german_infantry_division.htm

so in this case we are talking about almost 50k men in a 10mi hex/front = 3 people per yard = 1 person per yard per div

sov armies (oops - had div) contain 5 inf div's - that's even more men per yard!

all i'm suggesting is that even though 10mi/hex seems like a reasonable scale, in reality units on the eastern front were spread out more thinly than this and 20mi hexes isn't all that unreasonable

i'm not against 10mi hexes, i'm just taking the other side of the argument and suggesting that what looks good might not be necessary for simplicity's sake

[Jeffrey H.]

ORIGINAL: Flanker Leader

ORIGINAL: cavalry

In fact in my proposal I was thinking of having every unit in one stack represented by one counter to make it much easier and a 10 mile hex seemed to be about the right frontage for a corp in attack or a spread out Division on defence .

regards
Michael

well, if you want to use a 10mi hex you might have to split up the basic corps level counter and reduce unit size to division level - in WiR a corps contains at MINIMUM 3 DIVISIONs which seems like a LOT of infantry for 10mi hexes

The Infantry division in 1939-41 averaged 16,860 men.
http://www.dasheer.org.uk/german_infantry_division.htm

so in this case we are talking about almost 50k men in a 10mi hex/front = 3 people per yard = 1 person per yard per div

sov div's contain 5 inf div's - that's even more men per yard!

all i'm suggesting is that even though 10mi/hex seems like a reasonable scale, in reality units on the eastern front were spread out more thinly than this and 20mi hexes isn't all that unreasonable

i'm not against 10mi hexes, i'm just taking the other side of the argument and suggesting that what looks good might not be necessary for simplicity's sake

Good point, that's a very dense force level. I doubt that kind of force density ever really existed. Not for long anyways. So, what is a practical force density ?

[Cavalry Corp]

I thought on ovensives the Germans looked at putting 1 PZD per 3km ( I could stand to becorrected ) . I use about this for offensivs in PZC . I realise this is luxury

M

[SMK-at-work]

You could look at funding Frank Hunter to develop GOA for WW2...he's done some work on it already....although it's corps scale rather than division.
 
FITE does not fit the bill because the strategic elements are lacking - there are some damned clever ways of fudging production done by the FITE designers and also for the DNO scenario, but ultimately TOAW doesn't do things like production nd national morale very well at all.
 
However I do still love hte game - I am playng 2 PBEM games of FITE at the moment!!

[Jeffrey H.]

2x3 Was tasked with this very thing, I'd imagine some incentive for them would help speed things along.

[DeadInThrench]

Being the amount of games out there already on the Eastern Front... I would think... what we would like to see..... 2x3 updating WiR.... so it runs under Windows, improving the combat engine (if that is a problem) adding up-to-date graphics and addressing all he 'little things' that have come up over time.

THEN... they should do the same thing with Western Front.... and THEN..... another game covering the war from the invasion of Poland to the start of the Russian campaign.... and also DAK, etc, up to the point where Western Front starts.

THEN.... or possibly as part of this..... make it so all three of these would tie together for a massive corps level / weekly turns game. Would be the definitive corps level / weekly turn game on this subject.

Yeah... could even update PacWar and allow that to tie in.... would then cover the entire war at this level. All would be weekly turn games.

Converting WiR to run under Windows.... is not difficult (I have done this a number of times myself)... but then there is the artwork, the overall layout, and any enhancements needed to the game system as it now stands. So.... would be a project that is for sure.

DiT

[Cavalry Corp]

I assume the new game mentioned will build on WIR , there seems to be clear ideas on the OOB and production in that game and somthing like FITE . Credit to all invilved in that .
Actually a good job was done on WITP BUT the land combat in that game is a bit iffy - I wonder if these guys are up to doing it well .

The Eastern front is not just about how many Tigers you can get in play ... examples

How about rules to determine occupational governments to determine raisng say more than 2 Divisions from Estonia etc etc . As a military commander you can choose policies to bring the people onto yourside ( or trigger events by your success or failure ) the computer would replace your nominated people with political animals who will work against you - all stuff like this I want to see .

Losses effecting say your Rumainians staying in the War , Finish rules covering their political objectives which were not the same as the Germans - Unless perhaps collapse of Russia is immenient ( Fall of Lenningrad ) ?? Usually controllred by house rules in most games .

Leaders at Corp level must be shown , some are better defenders , some get fired , some may get killed .

Events in the rest at random and unknown dates . Russia should not plan for events that happen at fixed dates - landings in Italy and the coarse of the war in the West must be unsecure as they were .

Michael

Michael