Directive 21 playtesters thread

[wmorris]

partially duplicate message deleted

[wmorris]

Thanks, gents.

I got the files from Mr. Fulkerson yesterday and loaded these; all OK. Today I saw your email and replaced the appropriate files. Now I get a message that I am playing with the wrong .eqp files, but the scenario loads and runs OK thereafter.

Is this a prob or do I just have a jealous .sce file?

[larryfulkerson]

Does your file structure look like this picture below ( with "Directive 21" directory inside "graphics" and the two files inside the directive 21 directory? Is everything spelled correctly?

[larryfulkerson]

If everything is working correctly you should see the new equipment at the bottom of the inventory and replacements screen like below in the picture:

[wmorris]

Thats the trick. Changed stuff typed "Directive_21.eqp" to "Directive 21" and its all good.

Thanks. Now off to look at the insides of the design. woowoo.

[wmorris]

You gentlemen are having trouble with the Red Air force right off the bat, I imagine. The replacement rates in the original FITE give the USSR 3 to 4x the number of aircraft actually built during the war, and this is without the increases to production (the "gear ups"). I have greatly decreased the USSR aircraft production numbers in my FITE mod.

The later war antitank capability of infantry on the Axis side has also gotten a lot of discussion in the threads. I was leaning toward the transition of squads originally, but now I like your concept in D21 of using AT teams. This is attractive because it actually goes along more with the paper TOE of infantry for '44 to sub two "projector" platoons in the AT companies for AT guns, leaving just 3 7.5cm guns organic to the regiments. It also provides a little bit of additional infantry to the formations which will have their squad strength waning, which was the intention of the rewrite of the '43-44 KstN's: more firepower with less personnel. It also works well with the minors; giving them AT teams later in the war (thinking mostly about the Finns here) reflects the transfers of Panzerfausts and 'schrecks from the Germans, and therefore the replacement cost comes at the German's expense. I prefer this to designing a "Rifle AT- Sqd Finn" (although I have finally been successful with the ACOW editor!).

Im not in agreement with distributing the german tanks among the KG assignements, though; Klotzen, nicht kleckern. Still, the IDEA of KG distribution is great, I just favor a different distribution, at least early in the war. I'm also clinging to separate German infantry regiments, though the proficiency argument is sobering.

Your map mod is visually easier on the eyes, I cant imagine the work involved.

I have so much time invested in my FITE mod that I'm sticking with it, but Im getting a lot of ideas from looking at D21.

Back to work. I have been putting off my mod of all those Auf and Krad Battalions...

[sPzAbt653]

The replacement rates in the original FITE give the USSR 3 to 4x the number of aircraft actually built during the war

Some of them represent several types of aircraft not represented in the scenario. But even at that the 'on hand' numbers grow like crazy. We knocked the rates down a little recently, and we also have the Soviet Air Shock not reaching 100 until turn 178.

I came up with an early and late version for the recon elements this week, but before I got into modifying the replacements and events, I checked the unit strengths and combat numbers. They were sadly close enough to each other to not make a differance. As Stefan, Doc and Kristen had already been thru this, I decided to leave it as one unit. I did make a few adjustments based on what I had done, and what you had posted here earlier. Here's what I ended up with:

[sPzAbt653]

Klotzen, nicht kleckern

I tried several different variations of the KG organisation in another scenario I am working on, and if one KG is heavy in tanks, it makes it weaker against most targets except those also heavy in tanks. So when I came back to making changes for D21, I went right to three basically even KG's. I understand all the objections to this idea, but from the standpoint of how the units actually function with respect to combat in the scenario, I believe this works best.

That said, I am still not convinced that it is the proper combination of realism and fun. This is why I left the SS formations with my second choice as to how these units should be organised, to see what everybody else thinks. If most of the time those units are being broken down, that's not good. It's just annoying that with the SS units, the recon and pioneer elements don't fit.

[SMK-at-work]

ORIGINAL: wmorris

You gentlemen are having trouble with the Red Air force right off the bat, I imagine. The replacement rates in the original FITE give the USSR 3 to 4x the number of aircraft actually built during the war, and this is without the increases to production (the "gear ups"). I have greatly decreased the USSR aircraft production numbers in my FITE mod.

I'm pretty sure the production rates are set so that the Sov's produce the right number if the historical cities are lost aren't they?

The Sov's DID have a massive number of a/c, but lacked some sophistication in deploying them - air intercept across most of the Eastern front was a matter of patrolling and luck rather than radar and direction....for both sides. The Sov's did get some portable radar from the allies late on, and I think the germans deployed some, but C^3 isn't a factor in the air war as perhaps it needs to be in a game of this scale?

[wmorris]

I tried several different variations of the KG organisation in another scenario I am working on, and if one KG is heavy in tanks, it makes it weaker against most targets except those also heavy in tanks. So when I came back to making changes for D21, I went right to three basically even KG's. I understand all the objections to this idea, but from the standpoint of how the units actually function with respect to combat in the scenario, I believe this works best.

Thinking back to gameplay experience, I think you are right, especially in '41-'42. I still prefer tank concentration in one KG and support it as needed with other arms. I agree that in game terms it is (sadly) probably a matter of taste.

I too have been fooling around with mods to the Auf and and our concepts would roughly agree (and be otherwise undistinguishable in game terms) except that I note that attachment of assault guns was usual, so my Auf transition includes some of the AT Bn's equipment (StuGs and 75 ATG). A common late war usage was for rearguards to draw the bad guys onto Stug/88 ambushments, so I redistribute a couple of the division's 88's as well. I think of this unit as the base of the fourth divisional KG, a recce/screen/economy of force unit. This also has organizational validity since the Auf Bn had a relatively large command/comms capability for a battalion.

I'm pretty sure the production rates are set so that the Sov's produce the right number if the historical cities are lost aren't they?

I have not rigorously crunched the numbers on this, but... The USSR player's air production is initially low and gets kicked down further from city losses. Even this level of production, continued to the end of the war, would produce nearly the historically produced number of aircraft. Not long afterward, the two early gear up will put him ahead of historical production with 300+ turns left to go. IMO it results in much larger than historical aircraft production fairly early in the war, and will increase even more with city recovery and the final gear up.

I also took into account the breakout of various types. I counted the Il-10 production as Il-2 in game terms, but all La-5 got counted as La-5FN in compensation. I think I folded in everything but the Pe-8's but allowed a few more Il-4 as compensation for these. I dont believe I left unaccounted any reasonably major combat type. And hey, the Germans have no HE 177's or FW-200's...

I prefer limiting the production of aircraft to jiggering shock, etc.

[SMK-at-work]

If production is correct and the Sov's are too strong then "jiggering shock" is the right approach IMO - I suspect that few people have a good understanding of just how badly outnumbered the LW was in Russia after 1942.

As long as you're getting figures along these lines then production is "accurate" - 35,000 IL-2's + some IL-10's means an average production of 90 per turn, 63,000 or so fighters means 150 or so fighters/turn (total all types), 21,000 other bombers = 50/turn.

[wmorris]

As long as you're getting figures along these lines then production is "accurate" - 35,000 IL-2's + some IL-10's means an average production of 90 per turn, 63,000 or so fighters means 150 or so fighters/turn (total all types), 21,000 other bombers = 50/turn.

Yes.

EX: For IL-2+ IL-10, using my present rate of 120, this will mean that in some early war turns there will be production of 30-ish per turn (maybe even falling into the 20's or teens with city losses), 100-ish after the early "gear ups", and 160+ in the last quarter of the game (using 150, 200, and 150 as the three replacement increases). If you use the original game # of 304 airframes per turn, you will make well over 100,000 airframes during the war.

My revision is based on a compromise of sources that put combined IL-2/IL-10 production at about 51K. that would require an average of about 125/turn. So my 120 might be a shade low, but I dont think I would go above 130.

The low early war # seems correct to me; I recall an episode where Stalin personally got on the phone (or teletype, I forget) to bully some manager into increasing IL-2 production to what seemed to me a very modest number.

I think that an attempt to get production numbers and therefore unit strengths right is preferable to using shock, assuming that proficiencies and combat sim are accurate (wink). I think this will result in the Russians being swept away initially, and then able to mount some challenge in the air locally late in '41.

[MechFO]

Looks good. For what year is this? 42-43?

Why is the Sdkfz 251/16 in the TOE. This is the flamethrower variant. Is this supposed to represent something else?

[sPzAbt653]

ORIGINAL: MechFO

Looks good. For what year is this? 42-43?

Why is the Sdkfz 251/16 in the TOE. This is the flamethrower variant. Is this supposed to represent something else?

Turn 132 is October 1942, if that's what you are asking.

I would guess that the 251/16 is included in order to represent all the various infantry support vehicles that were used by the Germans.

[sPzAbt653]

Does anybody have any info or links about these railroad artillery units? I'd like to organise them a little differently, but I haven't been able to find a list of them anywhere.

[wmorris]

I dont think the 251/16 version was authorized in large numbers and I doubt that many units ever had as many as authorized, even the Pion battalions where you would expect to see more of them. I think that using the 251/16 may be an attempt to give support weapons with less AT capability than the 251/9, for whatever reason (or to standardize, as 653 has indicated).

The 251/9 was the version with the short 7.5cm gun originally on the early Pz Mk IV. This vehicle was included in some numbers in the later war AufKl battalion TOE and may be more correct, although they also were seldom available in the numbers authorized.

[Silvanski]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Does anybody have any info or links about these railroad artillery units? I'd like to organise them a little differently, but I haven't been able to find a list of them anywhere.

About Dora. http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/ ... edora.html

About German railway artillery http://www.one35th.com/model/k5/k5_hist03.htm

[wmorris]

Back to the aircraft production numbers-

Replacement of 130 for IL-2 (IL-10 added in) provides almost exactly the # of historical units produced:

Turn 1-47: 44 per turn- 2068 (replacements x.34 starting turn 1)
Turn 48-77: 88 per turn - 2640 (replacements x2 strating turn 48)
Turn 78-351: 132 per turn - 36036 (replacements x1.5 starting turn 78)
Turn 352-end: 199 per turn- 10291 (replacements x 1.5 staring turn 352)
Total 51291 (my research numbers yielded 52K and 48K so I'm all right with this)

This does not take into account any city losses, nor the '42 increase in production of 15% when the Moscow militia goes back to work. Im wondering if this more or less equals out, but I think I will increase the replacement number to about 135. Note that this is still less than half of the original FITE replacement number of 304. The production of fighters is also overstated- some very badly so, some not, due to interaction between model start/stop dates and the dates of change in production multipliers. No wonder the sky is black with Russki airplanes by '42.

Dont shock it, fix the numbers. Bubi will get tired.

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Does anybody have any info or links about these railroad artillery units? I'd like to organise them a little differently, but I haven't been able to find a list of them anywhere.

Do you speak deutsch?

http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Waf ... chutze.htm

[sPzAbt653]

About German railway artillery http://www.one35th.com/model/k5/k5_hist03.htm

NICE! Thank you very much!