WAW update and notes

[SMK-at-work]

I note that Lend LEase to the USSR only passes through Murmansk - in fact Murmansk only handled about 25% of LL tonnage.  Another 25% came through Persia, and 50% came from the US West Coast via Vladivostok and Siberia. 

The Pacific route mainly handled non-military supplies tho, due to its vulnerability if Japan declared war on the USSR - it was serviced by an air-bridge through Alaska for aircraft, and US ships given to the USSR and crewed and flagged by them for the rest.

Persia actually handled over 50% of the military supplies.

So some provision should be made for those routes.

Also I'm pretty sure the "Murmansk" route was not closed by ice in the winter months - the actual port of Murmansk was closed by ice, but the Sov's kept a channel open to Archangel and convoys were delivered to there instead.

[freeboy]

good points
'

[xBoroNx]

Started Barbarossa now in April 1942. Could have easily delayed it as long as i want, but this would be too unfair imho.

I am not waging Barbarossa in the classical axis blitzkrieg way though but rather american attrition style. Not shown in the Screenshot are 7 lost soviet scouts.

The first turn thus killed 71600 russian production points at an axis loss of 1300. Russia only has 28k production power + 6k resources. I think i can keep killing about 50k russian material each turn.

[xBoroNx]

Since freeboy loves raiding and paratroopers and strategic bombing i am holding back about 40% of the german military to guard the reich and the west vs. british operations.
Territorial gains are basically not made, the german army consists mostly of infantry divisions. Also i lack some engineers and freeboy blew almost all bridges.

Forces currently assigned to barbarossa:
~60 Artillery II, ~1800 Rifle II, ~70 Divebomber II and ~50 Fighter IV. My techs are rather low, i plan to eventually upgrade Rifles and Artillery and Divebombers. "Wasted" at least 100 PP and if i count the production also rather 200-300 for armor lvl 2. The plan was to use tank destroyers heavily, but they performed badly in the french campaign, so i abandonded this idea.

I am very curious if freeboy manages to find a countermeasure for my excentric approach. At least i follow the historic archetype, currently i am way too confident of victory

[freeboy]

Operation Patton, as in history, succeeds as much of the German army is withheld and the sovs retreat in order to prepared possitions after gaurding hte front and avoiding uber rsurprise.
A small raid on Athens is a mild success and a multi formation, can u say HUGE air war was held over france as over 100 total formations from each side battled for supremacy. The vaunted LW retreated unable to reach the level bombers that then leveled Paris in this first test of Lord Boo Boo big wing theory.
In the Far East Japan does not awaken the sleeping giant, instead kills off some Chineese peasents,and maims one city.. that is not good. Large JAp air formation seen in China forbodes bitter struggle their( note we now know ther is a bug and JApan area will go "cold" as game will misfire after a bit.
 
In the Barberossa front mighty german formation inched forward , While the reds retreated to fixed possitions and requested the west open a second front, there is rumers Chirchill was heard laughing at Stalins request. A large red air formation of early war fighters and tactical bombers attacked in Finnland where massed German forces combinned with the Finnish army North of Lenningrad. What will we see this summer, will the rivers be crossed? will riga be taken? Smolensk Kiev? we will see, and we await the actual plan Mountgomery to see where we shall attack!

[freeboy]

! 1800 rifle sft? That must be a missprint cries Stalin.. reaserves are mobilized and plans to upgrade forces are re evaluated...
Next ?, how does he feed them all and what is the troop limit?

turn sent fyi

[xBoroNx]

Hm in total according to the stats my 3 army groups vs. russia have 1750 rifle units. And the fins have ~200.

This turn russian material worth 57850 production is wiped out. Fresh engineers are deployed to the front, so next turn we can cross those rivers and advance a bit into russia. Germany lost units worth 1400 production.

The air battle was indeed impressive, i did not think that the west has so many planes. The Reich deploys their strategic reserve to the west and might need to deploy some fighters from the east front maybe too .

Edit: Turn sent, and the russians lost slightly less, ~55000 powerpoints, the rest were british engineer losses which reconaissance aircraft killed.

[freeboy]

This turn things are tough over europe with nearly 200 fighters and bombers fighting for control of the skies, about ten % of the bombers where knowcked down and nearly 25 german interceptors and 21 Aliied  more or less. The totals where about even in losses with another targer errased from the map. LEvel four B 29's now rolling off the factory lines.

Athens is shells and China losses some more peasants.

Russian forces shell Finnish held territory, and continue to wait for german to blitz forward... no word from Churchill regarding the second front .
turn sent fyi

[rowdied1]

Downloaded v27 but need a password to open it and it only shows a txt file not a pt file?

[Vic]

@rowdied,
 
Are you trying to unzip a .pt2 file? please do not.
 
kind regards,
vic

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: Vic

@rowdied,

Are you trying to unzip a .pt2 file? please do not.

kind regards,
vic

I found some time ago that pt files where in fact "hidden" zipped txt files (some softwares find the zip signature and open the file with Winzip). It's password protected so you can't unzip them, but I'd be curious to see their innards [:)]

[xBoroNx]

3rd turn of Barbarossa played. German troops continue the attrition war. This turn the desired 50000 are not reached, Russians worth 47660 production are eliminated. German troops worth 1300 production points also die.

Freeboys bombing campaign is not unsuccessful. But the blood toll is high also. The round before he killed iirc 12 german fighters and lost 10, this turn he lost 23 fighters and 2 level bombers, i lost 24 fighters.
Since he bombed down paris and düsseldorf to 0 production it is still a minor victory for him and more importantly it ties up resources which would help to speed up the attrition war in russia.

Japan meanwhile prepares for pearl harbour. Currently the plan is to do pearl harbor in 2 turns. Attached a screen showing the eastern front at the end of my turn. This is probably the slowest barbarossa ever but it doesn't matter since i take virtually no losses while the russians lost each turn so far stuff worth ~2 month of production.

[xBoroNx]

Hm the japanese are really weak . I have been bombing China since Barbarossa and this turn chinese fighters showed up and gained air superiority lol.

Japan is really simply embarrassing. I think i crippled them already with lots of faults. On the other hand, more land for germany to conquer then .

[xBoroNx]

Here is the china front. Japan has so huge supply problems that i can't even build engineers to rebuild the blown up bridges currently. Guess i'll follow my tradition of hating to have to play japan. Hated them in Hoi, Hoi2, Gary Grigsby's WAW, even in Victoria and Eu2/3. I just suck with sea powers [:D]

[rowdied1]

I downloaded the zip and it asks for a password to extract the file. I've downloaded other scenarios and the beta patch and it opened with winrar no problem. It has also shown the pt file before when I extracted other scenarios, so I'm at a loss as to why it's behaving this way.

[Barthheart]

It's not a .zip file, you don't have to extract anything. Just download it into your scenario directory, start AT and load the scensario. No extracting.

[rowdied1]

Me again, I just noticed that it is the pt2 file and not a winzip like the others. It's weird how it shows it automatically as a winrar file and not as the standard pt2 file. I did try to open it to drag the file to the desktop, but couldn't guess the password, sorry Vic. I'll try it again, thanks. 

edit: I just noticed that thanks Barthheart, in the process of loading it up now
edit2: I had to rename the file to pt2 as my computer decided it was a zip file and aptly named it, but all is well now...

[Barthheart]

Glad you got it working, it's a fun scenario.

[tweber]

I would also be interested to know if you think the game favors the Axis or the Allies.

[freeboy]

I have played several players of different skill levels and find player skill the deciding factor, BUT the new games in vs 27 have no yet really gotten going.. I will introduce a ca reduced power mod to illiminate the silliness of naval units unafraid of air.