Comprehensive Wishlist

[Panama]

[:D] Without water what good is all the rest? Water was priority numero uno. Without it nothing else mattered. A soldier dead of dehydration fires zero rounds and consumes zero supply.

[Meyer1]

Actually, water was not a big problem. It would have been if the operations moved south to the desert, but that didn't happen. Biggest supply issue was the fuel.

[mike1984]

Back to the wishlist...

Can the Events Editor be revamped? It becomes quite unwieldy when you have hundreds of events to manage. God forbid you have to go find a certain event that you forgot the number to. I have to keep everything written down on a document, which is not horrible, but the game should better accommodate for this.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Panama

I'm not sure if there are very many pure tracked units at battalion level or higher. Even in todays armys. How would you account for all the wheeled vehicles in this 'tracked' unit? They are there so the unit will be able to function properly. Unless you were to eliminate all the wheeled vehicles in a unit. But that wouldn't be at all realistic and isn't that what the idea behind all this is?

It would be determined similarly to how we determine if the unit is to be rated "Motorized" instead of "Mixed" or "Foot". It doesn't require 100% motorized equipment. A predominance of tracked vehicles would justify the rating. And, some wheeled vehicles could warrant the rating, too - if they were three or four axel with all-wheel drive. You just want to avoid giving the ability to standard issue trucks - like the ones carrying supply.

Disembarked? Most of the scenarios are ten or more kilometers/miles per hex. How far would you have a motorized unit walk? Wouldn't an Army commander love it when his corp commander makes his motorized highly mobile unit dismount to do something an infantry unit could have done? How about we keep the game operational instead of tactical/grand tactical?

It's a serious issue. Take the Commonwealth in the desert - mostly motorized infantry. Vs. the Italians - mostly foot infantry. The Italians dig in on a dune or badland hex. All a motorized infantry unit can do is stare at it. You can provide the Commonwealth with a few foot units to address this, but it's absurd that the motorized infantry can't deal with them instead. Let them convert to a foot unit long enough to do so.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Panama

Have any of you seen the SPI North African Campaign game where the logistics is very very detailed? Almost down to the jerry can. I have a friend that has it. We messed around with it for a bit once. It didn't take long to realize the main item of supply isn't fuel or ammo. It's water. And those jerry cans lose alot until they get improved. So now, whenever someone speaks of the Italians in North Africa I have to chuckle. Their main food ration was...pasta. [:D]

Exactly the game that my CFNA scenarios were based upon, and the Nofi article came from.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Meyer1

Actually, water was not a big problem. It would have been if the operations moved south to the desert, but that didn't happen. Biggest supply issue was the fuel.

Clearly, water is only going to be an issue in a desert scenario, and even then it doesn't come from a factory in the homeland, but from a local well source.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Meyer1

That Rommel did not activate this line when he captured nearly 300 miles of it in mid-1942 is indicative of his lack of ability as a logistician.

Interesting reading, except for this part [8|], which is dead wrong. They did activate that rail line, starting in august 1942.

I'm finding this very hard to believe. Nor have I ever heard it from any other source. If Rommel was being supplied by rail at El Alamein, why was he in such worse supply condition than he was after he captured Tobruk?

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: mike1984

Back to the wishlist...

Can the Events Editor be revamped? It becomes quite unwieldy when you have hundreds of events to manage. God forbid you have to go find a certain event that you forgot the number to. I have to keep everything written down on a document, which is not horrible, but the game should better accommodate for this.

Have you tried exporting the events using the F6/F7 keys? Then you can work on the events in an XML editor like XMLPAD. (Note that there may be some issues with this that got addressed in 3.4).

[Curtis Lemay]

Time to list the sequence of supply mods that I'm pushing for, in order of priority:

1. Item 5.9 (Over-Extended Supply State). This would end infinite length supply lines and model offensives running out of steam while defenses fall back on a full supply net. It has subtlety that allows players to make command decisions about whether they want to risk it and press on, Rommel-like, or slow down enough to avoid desertions. High prof forces would be better able to press on.

2. Item 5.6 (Mobile Supply Points). This would be the first step towards discrete/tonnage supply. It would allow crude modeling of sea supply. It would exploit the new “Variable” supply feature, so that the amount of supply delivered would depend on the losses suffered by the mobile supply point if intercepted in any fashion. While the supplies would be moved around under this feature, there would not be any provision for them to be consumed. That would be added in step four.

3. Item 5.14 (Component Supply). This would split supply up into fuel and ammo at the unit. It would allow players to move their units without blowing off ammo, and fight with their units without blowing off all their fuel. New equations for Combat Strength and Movement Allowance could then be more severe at the 1% fuel/ammo level than can be justified at 1% supply now.

4. Item 5.13 or 5.15 (Volume/Discrete Supply). This would expand on the mobile supply points to add consumption of the supply delivered in some fashion. The easier of 5.13 or 5.15 would be determined and implemented.

5. Item 5.11 (Allow Supply Units to combine their effects). This would give more “prioritization” ability to players.

Hopefully, we could get one or two done per update. (Note that three items: 5.2, 5.5, and 5.8, were done in 3.4). Obviously, we can't just focus on supply, since there are so many other demands (many of which impact on supply anyway - such as mobility and lift issues).

[Meyer1]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: Meyer1

Actually, water was not a big problem. It would have been if the operations moved south to the desert, but that didn't happen. Biggest supply issue was the fuel.

Clearly, water is only going to be an issue in a desert scenario, and even then it doesn't come from a factory in the homeland, but from a local well source.

Oh, I was talking about Africa, and said "desert" as opposed to the coastal area. Here's what Generalmajor A.Toppe said about this issue, in his study of the N. Africa campaign:

The water supply for the German troops in Africa was never a troublesome problem; therefore, it did not influence or hamper operational decisions. The chief reason for this was that there were always enough wells available.

In all combat operations, our chief concern was about motor fuel and not about the water supply. Only the garrison of Halfaya suffered severely from the lack of water after its well had been destroyed by gunfire.

He even said that getting water was easier than Africa compared with the non-cultivated areas in the Russian steppes.

[Meyer1]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: Meyer1

That Rommel did not activate this line when he captured nearly 300 miles of it in mid-1942 is indicative of his lack of ability as a logistician.

Interesting reading, except for this part [8|], which is dead wrong. They did activate that rail line, starting in august 1942.

I'm finding this very hard to believe. Nor have I ever heard it from any other source. If Rommel was being supplied by rail at El Alamein, why was he in such worse supply condition than he was after he captured Tobruk?

Because he was being supplied by rail from Tobruk, so, at best, his supply condition at El Alamein would be almost equal than in Tobruk. But, then, the situation with sea traffic from Italy got worst, the RAF got stronger relative to the axis air forces, the rail line capacity was not very high (only 300 tons per day) and even that figure was not reached (I guess the main cause was RAF interdiction)
Ten german locomotives were shipped to Tobruk beetwen august-october 1942 (all arrived)

This is the first Tobruk-El alamein front train, august 8:



This is what Rommel got from rail supply (daily average):

august: 151 tons
september: 211 tons
october: 134 tons
november: 122 tons

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Meyer1

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: Meyer1



Interesting reading, except for this part [8|], which is dead wrong. They did activate that rail line, starting in august 1942.

I'm finding this very hard to believe. Nor have I ever heard it from any other source. If Rommel was being supplied by rail at El Alamein, why was he in such worse supply condition than he was after he captured Tobruk?

Because he was being supplied by rail from Tobruk, so, at best, his supply condition at El Alamein would be almost equal than in Tobruk. But, then, the situation with sea traffic from Italy got worst, the RAF got stronger relative to the axis air forces, the rail line capacity was not very high (only 300 tons per day) and even that figure was not reached (I guess the main cause was RAF interdiction)
Ten german locomotives were shipped to Tobruk beetwen august-october 1942 (all arrived)

This is the first Tobruk-El alamein front train, august 8:



This is what Rommel got from rail supply (daily average):

august: 151 tons
september: 211 tons
october: 134 tons
november: 122 tons

I was somewhat surprised to read that by the time he was up at El Alamein, a large proportion of Rommel's supplies were simply coming direct from Greece/Crete via Ju-52 airlines.

Of course, this is probably more testimony to how completely his other supply services had broken down than to the sufficiency of Ju-52's for supporting a Panzer Army.

Anyway, you're right about the railway. I've read about it as well.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


3. Item 5.14 (Component Supply). This would split supply up into fuel and ammo at the unit. It would allow players to move their units without blowing off ammo, and fight with their units without blowing off all their fuel. New equations for Combat Strength and Movement Allowance could then be more severe at the 1% fuel/ammo level than can be justified at 1% supply now.

God help us. Couldn't you at least stick to proposals that you approve of and the rest of us do as well? For example, the rest of the ideas are okay. They continue to attempt to ignore the central problem and fix the supply issue with band-aids -- but they'll be better than nothing. But the fuel/ammo thing...

Where are your sources for units commonly being without fuel but having plenty of ammo or vice-versa? When was this a problem? Once?

If an army isn't primarily mechanized, fuel is not a big issue in the first place. If it is mechanized, then fuel is necessary to distribute the ammo. I'm very skeptical that it was especially common for there to be plenty of ammo but a crying shortage of fuel, or for there to be a shortage of ammo but plenty of fuel.

You've displayed remarkable faith in the abilities of quartermasters in the past -- in your book, they can simply magically generate whatever tonnage is needed.

I wouldn't go that far myself, but they can at least correctly apportion fuel and ammo. They are really very similar. They've both commodities that usually can't be found locally, are needed in large volume, and have to be brought up to the front. If there's no fuel, the ammo can't be brought up, so any fundamental shortage of fuel but not ammo is moot. Ammo that can't be distributed might as well not exist.

So why -- and where -- would one be short but not the other? If the army's driving but not fighting, the quartermasters will automatically start shipping more fuel and less ammo. If it's fighting but not driving, the ratio will reverse. This is not a necessary change. It's not even an advantageous one. It's just going to introduce a complication that probably usually wasn't there in the first place.

You're a big fan of the 'not in most scenarios' argument as well. Even if you do have some instance of a force chronically being short of ammo but not fuel or vice-versa, can you really say this was a common problem? Given that quartermasters do have brains if not magical powers, I doubt if it was.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: mike1984

Back to the wishlist...

Can the Events Editor be revamped? It becomes quite unwieldy when you have hundreds of events to manage. God forbid you have to go find a certain event that you forgot the number to. I have to keep everything written down on a document, which is not horrible, but the game should better accommodate for this.

If you head the event news item with 'debug' the news item won't show up in play.

I habitually use this to tag all events so I know what the hell they refer to when I'm trying to track down a problem. Like 'debug trigger for Littorio supply sequence' or whatever. Anything that isn't mind-numbingly obvious gets a tag. In fact, it usually gets a tag even if it is mind-numbingly obvious.

Then too, SStevens' design utility for TOAW has something to check the event list for glitches. I never found it particularly useful, but then, I may not have given it a fair trial.

In any event, I usually keep the event list downloaded in a document. That helps too. Easier to look for the magic word...if there is one.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


It's a serious issue. Take the Commonwealth in the desert - mostly motorized infantry. Vs. the Italians - mostly foot infantry. The Italians dig in on a dune or badland hex. All a motorized infantry unit can do is stare at it. You can provide the Commonwealth with a few foot units to address this, but it's absurd that the motorized infantry can't deal with them instead. Let them convert to a foot unit long enough to do so.

There really was a difference between panzergrenadiers/motor rifle battalions and ordinary leg infantry that happened to be getting a ride in trucks. The former had organic transportation that stayed with them; the latter didn't.

Rather than screwing around with units that transform, I'd go with one of two solutions. Either...

(1) Truck 'carrier' units that can transport non-armoured units in the same way that aircraft carriers carry aircraft.

or...

(2) Something similar to rail capacity that allows non-armored units to 'entrain' and go galloping off. As noted, this can already be set up to some extent with a work-around, and it works surprisingly well.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Then too, SStevens' design utility for TOAW

You mean ODD? That was Curt Chambers.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Then too, SStevens' design utility for TOAW

You mean ODD? That was Curt Chambers.

Quite right. My mistake.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Quite right. My mistake.

I think you have the wrong thread. Here, when someone corrects you on a simple statement of fact, you're supposed to outright deny it so that we can argue for eight pages.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Quite right. My mistake.

I think you have the wrong thread. Here, when someone corrects you on a simple statement of fact, you're supposed to outright deny it so that we can argue for eight pages.

That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. Are you brain-dead or just retarded?

[desert]

Keep up the good work guys. This entire thread is gold. [8D]