Directive 21 ( mod of FITE )

[Lieste]

150mm fixed guns, 128mm guns and 'invalid movement' suggest it isn't 'exactly like an infantry division'.

[sPzAbt653]

Ok, you caught us being tricky. The 199th Division was a garrison unit stationed in Norway. Obviously if we included it as a regular infantry division, the player would use it in Murmansk (or somewhere else). But we wanted it to be stationed in Norway, so we stuck the equipment in a coast battery unit.

[Panama]

About the artillery/HQ thing. Why not have a separate artillery unit for each division, eliminate the division HQ and use only corp level HQ for supply. It would reduce the counter count (ha ha) and give the corp HQ a reason for living. Personally I'd give the corp HQ one command unit so if it gets killed the whole corp formation is screwed. Make em treat HQ like they should be. YARRR.

[larryfulkerson]

Dave is on vacation and I'm through with Randy's moves so I thought I'd work on D21 and actually finished turn 10. Here's the AAR:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zontdyewy ... urn 10.zip

[sPzAbt653]

ORIGINAL: Panama

About the artillery/HQ thing. Why not have a separate artillery unit for each division, eliminate the division HQ and use only corp level HQ for supply. It would reduce the counter count (ha ha) and give the corp HQ a reason for living. Personally I'd give the corp HQ one command unit so if it gets killed the whole corp formation is screwed. Make em treat HQ like they should be. YARRR.

Well, we don't need the counter count reduced, but eliminating the HQ unit and creating a separate artillery unit doesn't reduce the count anyway. That also wouldn't prevent the player from aggravating himself by piling up multiple artillery units in one area (don't like it? Save yourself the aggravation and don't do it). Giving the corp HQ command squads to increase their vulnerability would only affect a few corp artillery and engineer units, not any type of perceived corp formation as there really aren't any.
If we were dealing with a scenario of smaller scale and time frame, a corp HQ could contain corp artillery and have several divisions attached to it, with the divisional artillery included in the division itself. Such is not the case. I'm all ears for suggestions to increase playablity and realism, but the way it is now is the way it works best for the scenario.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

ORIGINAL: Panama

About the artillery/HQ thing. Why not have a separate artillery unit for each division, eliminate the division HQ and use only corp level HQ for supply. It would reduce the counter count (ha ha) and give the corp HQ a reason for living. Personally I'd give the corp HQ one command unit so if it gets killed the whole corp formation is screwed. Make em treat HQ like they should be. YARRR.

Well, we don't need the counter count reduced, but eliminating the HQ unit and creating a separate artillery unit doesn't reduce the count anyway. That also wouldn't prevent the player from aggravating himself by piling up multiple artillery units in one area (don't like it? Save yourself the aggravation and don't do it). Giving the corp HQ command squads to increase their vulnerability would only affect a few corp artillery and engineer units, not any type of perceived corp formation as there really aren't any.
If we were dealing with a scenario of smaller scale and time frame, a corp HQ could contain corp artillery and have several divisions attached to it, with the divisional artillery included in the division itself. Such is not the case. I'm all ears for suggestions to increase playablity and realism, but the way it is now is the way it works best for the scenario.

Sorry, guess I wasn't clear enough. Corp formations would be made of course. Why else would you bother with a command unit? [;)] And I don't think that any of the major powers in WW2 were above stripping artillery from a unit. Just didn't do it in the scale some players do. Shouldn't prevent them from it though.

Seeing the responses to the different ideas it seems no one really has a problem with people stripping command/control units from formations anyway so why bother to change it. [:D]

[larryfulkerson]

I finished the Axis side of turn 11 and posted the AAR here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dhjjjaiou ... urn 11.zip

Not much happened though.

[larryfulkerson]

I finished turn 12 and published the AAR here :

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zy0yzcyjn ... urn 12.zip

I don't remember a lot happening this turn though.

[larryfulkerson]

I finished Axis turn 13 and posted the AAR here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dkymmymzy ... urn 13.zip

I'm having some modest success north of Leningrad. The peninsula is almost cleared of Soviet troops. I'm sneaking up on Smolensk.

[larryfulkerson]

So um......I had some free time on my hands and thought I'd do some D21 work.  Here's the AARs for those turns that I've finished so far:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/rejmw12uy ... urn 14.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2mankunyi ... 15 AAR.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/oja5mjfem ... 16 AAR.zip

[larryfulkerson]

I've finished Axis turn 17 and published the AAR here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/e0mlmtqyw ... 17 AAR.zip

[larryfulkerson]

I've finished turn 18 and published the AAR here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3zigrmzzo ... 18 AAR.zip

I'm sneaking up on Smolensk.

[larryfulkerson]

I've finished turn 19 and published the AAR here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2ygwokmyn ... 19 AAR.zip

[Ribak]

Hows the AI doin in your opinion (i mean i can see the maps ...) - not that bad in d.21, huh?
(At least better than in FITE)

EDIT: By the way, I forgot to ask how you usually progress: Movement and then launch the attacks, or do you split it up in as many possible turns per round as possible (so that would be: a little movement, then attack and on and on)?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Ribak
Hows the AI doing in your opinion?

The AI doesn't think things through before moving I don't believe. Sometimes it moves into pockets that are shrinking and makes 'impossible' attacks and I've seen some AI moves that a human would NEVER do like moving out of supply into rough terrain just to gain a worthless hex. In short, it's fun playing against the AI because sometimes it's easier to defeat.

ORIGINAL: Ribak
EDIT: By the way, I forgot to ask how you usually progress: Movement and then launch the attacks, or do you split it up in as many possible turns per round as possible (so that would be: a little movement, then attack and on and on)?

I usually move just enough to set up some round 1 attacks, attack, then move just enough to follow up on the attack, attack again, then move a little bit again, attack etc. Rinse and repeat. I usually get more than one combat round doing this and it's working pretty well for me. But your milage may vary. I usually attack at minimize losses settings to get as many combat rounds as possible. Sometimes I have turn left over and no attacks left to do and I just end the turn then. Too many rounds in one turn tends to wear your aircraft down though so I usually rest 1/3 of them until the halfway point of the turn and then 'turn them on' to do CS. Combat Support makes a difference and it's valuable to my attack plans and I'd rather not have to play without it. I'm told that after about turn 30 or so the Soviet airforce starts to gain air supremacy and the Axis air power starts to suffer major losses and the only way in D21 to 'turn off' the Soviet air power is to capture all the airfields on the map. This happens because the production rate for Soviet aircraft is high and the number of Soviet planes skyrockets.

I've never played D21 this far ( turn 19 or so ) before so I'm not sure what happens but I follow the AARs and threads for D21 and have picked up a lot of useful information about gameplay and so far it's been fun to defeat the AI in the little battles that occur by surrounding and destroying the little groups that come at me. Later in the game when the Soviets can actually build a front line and he has lots of units in reserve the story will change.

Thanks for keeping up with this AAR. I do my D21 work when I don't have any moves from my PBEM opponents so it's slow going so far. Sorry about that.

[Ribak]

Interesting, thanks for writing - always good to learn something new.

I dont have time to play PBEM in big scenarios, so I play against the AI. Much more fun, because one can forget about micromanagement and just storm into the east [:D]

By the way: Could you upload the save from the beginning of turn 7 (the second run with the new version - if you still have it)?
Want to look at something suspicous ...

Thx,
Ribak

[larryfulkerson]

I'm not sure what you wanted to check out so I uploaded the two closest files to the beginning of turn 7.  T6 R5 is round 5 of turn 6 just before the combats and T7 R1 is round 1 just before the combats of round 1.  At least that's my recollection of the events.  Your mileage may vary.  If these two files don't have what you want I can upload a bunch more files.  I'm trying to save the important stuff....I don't know why.  Maybe I'm a packrat.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mgm1m11dm ... T6 R5.sal

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zmhlvejvy ... T7 R1.sal

[Ribak]

Great, thx for the fast upload.
Everything in order, I made a mistake^^

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Ribak
Great, thx for the fast upload.
Everything in order, I made a mistake^^

No problemo. Oh, and thanks for your link in the PM you sent. It sounds like a good idea. I'll try it.

[Ribak]

I have a question considering the D21-Mod:

How the heck am I supposed to get some troops up to Murmansk - especially to defend Petsamo, because I dont want to loose 5% of my production.
And why the devil is there a ID in and northeast of Narvik which "activates" on turn 500 - which is about 100 turns after May 45' [:D]. I mean, are they activated if the Soviets advance or what?
Can I activate them?

Thanks for answering.