FITE Fungwu vs Karri

[Karri]

If I recall correctly, you only attacked my aircraft on turn 1. Then on turn 2, 3 etc. I moved all aircraft to safety. Not much casualties...plus the US aircraft is a nice addition. Fungwu then took his aircraft of the air for a few turns, in which time the units recovered from reorganisation, this turn the air superiority was down to 30. The production is massive indeed, I have several thousand aircraft on pool ready to be used as replacements.

[SMK-at-work]

the Soviets have huge reserves of Yak-1's - over 1000 right from teh start - you can never shoot enough of them down and the limit on having them at hte front is the number of units!
 
How come Karri is limited to 6000 rail?
 
The soviets used a huge amount of rail capacity to shift fatories east - I think I remember somewhere that one of the factories at Kharkov (or it may have been the whole of Kharkov?) took 8000 trains, and LW recce pilots reported long strings of carriages. 
 
Soviet rail could arguably increase once that process has finished - about November 41 IIRC, but 12000 vs 8000 for the Axis is a pretty good ratio already.

[Karri]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

How come Karri is limited to 6000 rail?

Because the fascist stole the other 6000 by capturing Moscow.

[Karri]

I've been thinking of another way to deal with shock. I assume Event Engine Variable is not used for anything right now in the scenario.

So, assume that the EEV starts at 100 on turn 1. It decreases by certain events and/or by turn. It can be increased by capturing cities.
So we would simply assign a soviet shock value for each EEV value. Or perhaps an Axis shock value(increases shock naturally)?

The problem is however mud period, offensives, other events etc. we would need a way around those.

Now the point would be to force the Soviets to defend forward, or at least use far more 'speed bumps'...for example early capture of Kiev would cause shock penalties for Soviets. Right now the Soviets can simply abandon everything west of Leningrad-Smolensk-Dnepropetroskov -line without worrying about anything.

Or perhaps tie it down to production, ie. not all factories were evacuated...?

[SMK-at-work]

ORIGINAL: Karri

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

How come Karri is limited to 6000 rail?

Because the fascist stole the other 6000 by capturing Moscow.

Oh - so self inflicted through incompetence then!! [:D]

[Fungwu]

ORIGINAL: Karri

I've been thinking of another way to deal with shock. I assume Event Engine Variable is not used for anything right now in the scenario.

So, assume that the EEV starts at 100 on turn 1. It decreases by certain events and/or by turn. It can be increased by capturing cities.
So we would simply assign a soviet shock value for each EEV value. Or perhaps an Axis shock value(increases shock naturally)?

The problem is however mud period, offensives, other events etc. we would need a way around those.

Now the point would be to force the Soviets to defend forward, or at least use far more 'speed bumps'...for example early capture of Kiev would cause shock penalties for Soviets. Right now the Soviets can simply abandon everything west of Leningrad-Smolensk-Dnepropetroskov -line without worrying about anything.

Or perhaps tie it down to production, ie. not all factories were evacuated...?

This is the EEV system from DNO: (For those who don't know Drang Nach Osten, same map same scenario, but only goes till FEB 1942)


3.1 Escalating German Momentum
• The Event Engine Variable (EEV) is essentially an abstract expression of Soviet morale. A high EEV can cause Soviet shock penalties as well as increase the possibility of sudden death if Moscow falls; as well, possible Turkish intervention is keyed to EEV levels as detailed below. The EEV level at the start is zero.
• The loss of specific key cities will increase the EEV variable by a range of percentages, usually expressed as three possible integers. Essentially: the faster the Germans take one of these locations, the higher the EEV increase.
• Every city which figures into this complex matrix has an asterisk (*) after its name on the map and is listed below for reference.
• A possible German sudden-death victory at the time Moscow is captured has its % chance of happening directly keyed to the EEV level at that moment in time. Whenever the Kremlin falls to German forces the month this occurs in is compared with the EEV level to generate a probability roll for sudden death. In other words: the higher the EEV percentage, and the sooner the capture of Moscow, the more likely the Soviet state will collapse. Secondly, if the EEV level reaches 100 there are Soviet shock and pestilence effects detailed below.
• Soviet EEV cities are listed with the turn for capture from left to right indicating 12%/8%/4% increases; for example, capture of Minsk on turn 6 will give the Axis an 8% EEV increase:

City Turns
12% / 8% / 4% --EEV increase

Minsk (67,95): <3 / 4-8 / >8
Kiev (83,134): <19 / 19-27 / >27
Odessa (84,175): <17 / 17-25 / >25
Smolensk (101,88): <10 / 10-15 / >15
Dneprpetrovsk (120,156) <26 / 26-32 / >32
Kharkov (129,140): <29 / 29-36 / >36
Orel (129,109): <26 / 26-32 / >32
Tula (140,94): <31 / 31-39/ >39

Leningrad (93,32): 30% at all times
Sevastopol (106,198): 15% at all times

3.2 German Victory
• Capture of Moscow prior to turn 30 results in a German sudden-death victory under all conditions. Capture of Moscow after turn 55 (1942) has no effect for sudden-death purposes.
• The following table lays out the probability-roll used at the moment the Germans capture Moscow from turn 30 to turn 55. The columns fall into two groups along the top representing an early capture of Moscow (turns 30-43), and a late capture (turns 44-55). The vertical list to the left is the EEV level used at the moment of capture to generate the probability:

EEV turns 30-43 turns 44-55

50 20% 10%
60 30% 15%
70 40% 20%
80 50% 25%
90 60% 30%
100 70% 35%

• NOTE: If a probability sudden death occurs the game will not end. The Axis will receive a Theatre Option indicating Stalin has offered peace terms. It is up to the players to negotiate whether they wish to ignore this and continue at this point. At the very least the Axis player can copy the result in the Recent News as proof of his decisive victory; however, it is finally the German player’s call in this event: he earned it, and can flip the switch to end it if he so chooses.
• After the fall of Moscow there is a variable turn delay before the sudden-death roll and results: this is to prevent unscrupulous Axis players from restarting saved games endlessly to attain the result. Anyone who attempts this is not worthy of this project and should command nothing more than a punitive battalion (!).

3.3 Fall of Moscow with No Sudden-Death
• In addition to the above, in the event of a failed sudden-death roll with the capture of Moscow at any point, or if the players decide to keep playing anyway, there is a sliding scale of possible pestilence and shock which will affect the Soviets for 6-10 turns (variable) following capture of Moscow. Percentage after the figure indicates the probability of that event happening.

Turn Pestilence level/% Shock /%

30-40 3/80 90/80
41-50 3/60 90/60
51-60 3/40 90/40
61+ nil nil

• Note: Pestilence is a percentage of available equipment that is subtracted from every weapons category, in every unit, every turn. In this case it represents disintegrating Soviet command control and increased desertions. Thus the capture of Moscow on October 31, which FAILS to result in sudden death, will mean there is an 80% chance of 3% pestilence and 90% shock (each odds-roll done separately).
• To sum up: the fall of Moscow from turns 30-55 in the game initiates three separate rolls for effects: 1) sudden-death; 2) pestilence; 3) shock penalty.

3.4 EEV Level of 100 Causing Soviet Shock & Pestilence
• If the EEV level reaches 100 Soviet forces will suffer 90% shock for 5-15 turns variable; Soviet forces will also suffer 4% pestilence for 5-15 turns variable. Both items are implemented separately.

[Fungwu]

For soviet production system:

I don't know how accurate the current production model of FITE is. For instance in real life the soviets had to evacuate Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Zarporzhze, Dneprovotsk, Stalino, Rostov, Voroshilograd, Sevastopol, minsk, Smolensk, Bryansk, Orel, Kransnodar, Maykop, and&nbsp; Vorozneh

Leningrad and Stalingrad were not captured, but were pretty much anhilated as cities.
That is 13 5% cities and 4 10% cities either captured or devasted. Maybe someone can do the math and figure out in game terms how low that would take soviet production, but I think it would probably be devasting. Yet in real life, even with all the losses they managed to produce a ton of men, tanks, planes, etc.

The reason is the factories of all those cities were not in them when they were captured, so overall production capacity was delayed, but not destroyed. I think in FITE it should be that every appropriate city has a factory unit in it that stays in garrison status until turn 8 or 10. After turn 8 it is activated and can be carried by railroad beyond the urals. If the germans get to the city before turn 8, the factory can be destroyed and soviet production goes down correspondly. If the germans capture the city after the factory leaves then soviet production goes down 5% or whatever, but when the soviets gear up their economy in dec 41 and in 42 then the production goes up to the same number it would have whether the city was captured or not.

So for example: If Kiev is captured on turn 7 then its factory is destroyed and soviet production goes down 5%. When Dec. 1941 comes around soviet production goes up 285% instead of 300%.
If kiev holds out, and the soviet player can evacuate his factories, then when it is captured production goes down 5%, but when dec 1941 comes around production goes up 300%.

This way soviet player has to stay forward to defend his factories, but doesn't have such a stiff penalty for losing cities that were lost historically.

[SMK-at-work]

Tehre seems to be little detailed information in English about the evacuation of hte factories - 1 snippet I found at http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weapons/afv_production.htm&nbsp;is the monthly production of tanks at various plants, including Factory 183 which was evacuated from Kharkov to the Urals in late 41, with essentially the loss of 3 months production.
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The tank factories at Lenningrad were actually evacuated - even tho the city never fell, while famously the tank plant at Stalingrad was not, and so&nbsp; it's produciton just disappears in late 1942!
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the trouble with historical factory evacuation is that the German is not forced to conduct a historical campaign - eg IMO it is trivially easy for the Germans to capture Dneprpetrovsk and Kiev before the historical dates if they want to - so ideally the Soviet player would be able to divert resources to prioritise the evacuation of threatened cities.

[Fungwu]

"the trouble with historical factory evacuation is that the German is not forced to conduct a historical campaign - eg IMO it is trivially easy for the Germans to capture Dneprpetrovsk and Kiev before the historical dates if they want to - so ideally the Soviet player would be able to divert resources to prioritise the evacuation of threatened cities."

Well it doesn't have to be 100% historical, just tweak the scenario and put a big enough penalty for an early fall that the Soviet player has to defend those cities with everything he's got. Maybe you could compensate by putting in some shock or supply event that would slow down a german advance.



http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weapons/afv_production.htm
That is an interesting site. I think this graph proves the point I was trying to make. You can see T34 production in July when the soviets had only lost Minsk compared to November when the soviets had lost Minsk, Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov, Zarhpozhe, Dneprovotsk, Bryansk, Orel, Smolensk, Stalino, Kalinin, Rostov, and Sevastopol and Leningrad were surrounded.

In july t34 production was 302 in november 253 or about 85% So the loss of 10 5% cities and the loss or encirclement of 3 10% cities only affected T34 production 15%, and within a month there is no more decrease. You can see in october where T34 production went to 185, which is still more than 50% of what was made in July. So I think that taking production cities in FITE should definately not have such a big effect on production that they do now. Only causing a temporary dip like you see in october.

EDIT: The graph didn't quite make it.
(1941)July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
T34: 302 421 398 185 253 327

[SMK-at-work]

the oinly T34 plant affected in that time frame was Kharkov - which was being evacuated - all those other cities did not produce any T34's - therewere surprisingly few factories that did - the msot at aony one time was in 1942 before Stalingrad with 6 - after the STZ plant at Stalingrad was reduced to rubble there were only 5 - but 3 new plants replaced that, and the 183 from Kharkov had almsot tripled its production by then too.
&nbsp;
so in fact T34 production didn't suffer AT ALL from city capture in 1941 - only from factory evacuation of the Kharkov plant.
&nbsp;
Unfortunately TOAW can't do this via the replacement system - it can only change replacements globally - ie all or none, not individual line items.
&nbsp;
IIRC it's on the wish list though![:)]
&nbsp;
the DNO scenario has some tricky stuff with reinforcement units to cover this that I used to understand, but it's been a while since I looked at it so I don't really recall how it works.

[Fungwu]

"Unfortunately TOAW can't do this via the replacement system - it can only change replacements globally - ie all or none, not individual line items."

Sure you can.
Step 1: set t34 production rate to 0.
Step 2: Every 4 months (or whatever) have a unit appear in the correct factory with that factory's production of tanks over those 4 months. Then the player disbands the unit putting the tanks into his pool. (note: you would have to subtract the tanks that already appear in units from the factory's production) If the factory's location is overrun, then obviosly the unit won't appear and production will have been stopped.

[SMK-at-work]

Which is what DNO does more or less...trouble is you can't do this for everythign that needs it or you run out of units in a big game like FITE....the 2000 unit limit comes very, very quickly - the Sov's are at it already hence they don't get to break down units at all.

[Fungwu]

Get rid of all those crappy Russian military police units. That is like 30 units right there.

[desert]

Step 2: Every 4 months (or whatever) have a unit appear in the correct factory with that factory's production of tanks over those 4 months. Then the player disbands the unit putting the tanks into his pool. (note: you would have to subtract the tanks that already appear in units from the factory's production) If the factory's location is overrun, then obviosly the unit won't appear and production will have been stopped.

&nbsp;
Did you get this from our PBEM?

[SMK-at-work]

There's a lot of "ants" that could arguably be removed.....but what are you going to take off the Axis to keep the game balanced?
&nbsp;
IIRC 30 units wouldn't be enough anyway.....to do accurate production you should be getting a "production unit" for every city every turn.......I don't know off hand how many cities that would be but you've got 8 listed above & I can think of Moscow, Kalin, Gorki, Astrakhan, Stalingrad, Saratov (?), Murmansk/Archangelsk off the top of my head....so that's 15 - times how many moves? 400?&nbsp; that's 6000 units you need.......

[Fungwu]

"Did you get this from our PBEM? "

NO! I thought it up all by myself, I swear it!

Hey wait, a minute shouldn't you be working on your turn instead of posting gossip in the forums !?


Well I think I am getting off track here.

My point was the Soviets lost a whole bunch of production cities in real life, and their production was still huge, because it wasn't the cities that did the producing, it was the factories, and the factories were mostly evacuated. So I would think Soviet production should not be tied to what cities they hold, excepting maybe some of the big cities that they historically did not lose, Baku, Moscow, Gorky, etc.

[SMK-at-work]

Russian manpower was tied to cities tho - and the areas around them.&nbsp; In one of Glantz's books he notes that the Red Army press-ganged remaining males in areas they liberated from Axis control - sometimes literally just shoving a rifle in their hands and marching them to the front.
&nbsp;
also there was at least some industry in cities that didnt' have big tank or artillery factories.&nbsp; info on artillery and aircraft factories seems to be very scarce, but I guess small arms can probably be made almost anywhere.&nbsp; Truck production is on the RKKA site too, but unfortunately not in so much detail as tank production.

[desert]

Yeah...
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Well, the PBEM is making my mouse act screwy for some reason, so it might take a little while, sahib.

[Fungwu]

"IIRC 30 units wouldn't be enough anyway.....to do accurate production you should be getting a "production unit" for every city every turn.......I don't know off hand how many cities that would be but you've got 8 listed above & I can think of Moscow, Kalin, Gorki, Astrakhan, Stalingrad, Saratov (?), Murmansk/Archangelsk off the top of my head....so that's 15 - times how many moves? 400?&nbsp; that's 6000 units you need......."

Okay well I guess I don't really think we need production units after all, I just wanted a way to decouple production from the current production cities. But if someone was interested in this idea here is how it could work.

First of all why would you need one unit every turn? The turns are half week.&nbsp; I don't think we need to model every 3 and 1/2 days of production. I think once every four months would be plenty. Start with a big pool to cover the first four months, just as thats running dry another production run of weapons comes up. A big portion of weapons already come in as part of units, so tanks in tank brigades etc. Your production is only for your on hand pool, so a big batch every 4 months should keep you supplied, unless you are really getting hammered.

2nd. You need one unit to represent Siberian production, which as I understand it was the majority of Russian production. So one unit every 4 months, equals 12 units to do all siberian production. Right now taking Minsk, or Odessa, or whatever drops the rate tank production, when really a whole bunch of cities fell and tank production only went up and up. So by having all your tanks enter either in their historical units, or in one big unit in Siberia that can be disbanded into the ready pool you can achieve historical tank production even after losing cities that affect general replacements.

Next you would have to model cities that produced tanks and could be captured by Germans.
Looking at the website you gave me there are only 2 major cities, Stalingrad and Gorky.

For stalingrad give one unit modelling all 1941 production apearing at the end of 1941. It shouldn't fall before then so no need to divy it up. Then give it one unit every 4 months until the historical capture. That way if the germans capture Stalingrad earlier than they did the soviets get a hit to tank production because their production unit doesn't show up. Since Stalingrad tank factories were destroyed at the end of 1942, a capture after that won't affect overall tank production.
So that is 4 units for Stalingrad production. 1 for 1941, and 3 for 1942.

The other city is Gorky. Start with one unit covering the first 12 months Since Gorky shouldn't fall till then. Then have a unit every 6 months since if Gorky falls Soviets are screwed anyway, so not a real need to model its tank production too closely. So for gorky 7 units.

THat is 12 units for Siberia, 4 for Stalingrad, 7 for Gorky. This models all tank production for the war. 23 units. That still leaves you with about half of the NKVD MP units.&nbsp; Siberian production units could also model all plane, artillery, etc production that wouldn't be effected by taking the current production cities. The only other units you would need would be if there was some city on the map that wasn't captured, or like Stalingrad wasn't destroyed until later in the war and had a big production of planes or artillery or something.

To rexplain the point of all this, Right now you can lose a bunch of replacement cities and your tank production plummets, but in real life all those cities were lost and tank production skyrocketed. Using these 23 production units could lose those cities and have an effect on manpower, like rifle squads, but tank production would be seperate and kept historical.

&nbsp;For the few cities that the germans could actually capture (IE not in Siberia) you could model the tank losses losing those cities (Gorky and Stalingrad) would result in, or in the case of Stalingrad, the result of an early capture. As I outlined above all this would take 23 units.

[SMK-at-work]

Kharkov and Leningrad too if the Germans get to them early - both were evacuated, but they might not have been quick enough in an alternate history.

4 months is terribly granular - tanks (or anything else) didn't arrive in big batches every 4 months - they arrived more or less as they were built.  With 4-monthly production you'll get all units getting a rush of replacements 3 times a year and then slowly weakening as they lose equipment with less replacement...that's not how it happened (at least AFAIK)

I'd say monthly would be as granular as I'd ever like to see, but ideally as often as possible. For lend lease we could even plot the actual arrival dates of convoys for Murmansk..and have them arrive a turn or 2 later at Archanglensk if Murmansk is taken.

You're right about Siberia being able to be represented by a single production point/unit, but none of the cities I mentioned were actually in Siberia, and as I said there were factories producing all sorts of things all across the map. There might not have been any tank factories in Moscow, but there were certainly aircraft factories, and they have the same kind of characteristics - they can be captured or evacuated.

And as a complete aside from production issues...IMO Turkey should just be removed from the game altogether...it was never going to enter the war on the Axis side, despite having tolerably friendly relationship with them for the first half of it.