41 Grand Campaign Me(sov) vs ComradeP (axis)

[notenome]

Two general comments.
 
In the air my MO has been to send any airgroup with less than 40 morale/% ready/experience to the reserves. I'm not upgrading any of my planes at the momment as I'm trying to burn through the huge stock of obsolete planes I have. Once those are done the (hopefully) more experienced crews will get new toys.
 
A second decision I am starting to regret is that I have in great part fueled the rapid reorganization of the Red Army by setting much of my infantry to static mode (in Southwestern, western and Northern Fronts). This allowed me to restablish almost perfect C & C in 2 turns, but now I am beginning to regret it. Its fine to set infantry near leningrad to static mode, after all they aren't going anywhere and it helps them dig, also I have a truck surplus of 7k. But some 20-30% of my infantry are going to be fatally trapped once von P breaks the riverline near Kiev and Smolensk. Sure I can reactivate them, but that has its own problems and costs 2 APs a pop.

[Flaviusx]

Arrghghghghggh!!!!!!!

Static mode is bad. Just squeeze out the extra APs from the motorized divisions, since they give a good return. (15 APs or so per.)

But otherwise, take a pass. Putting your infantry on static mode on any kind of active front is almost always a bad, bad, bad idea you will wind up regretting.

Mobility is life. A lot of testers got sucked into this honey trap, too. I have always held static mode with the greatest of suspicion and use it minimally. On the Finnish border and the motorized divisions. That's it (in 1941, anyways. In 1942 You can safely shut down larger portions of the front.)

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Arrghghghghggh!!!!!!!

Static mode is bad. Just squeeze out the extra APs from the motorized divisions, since they give a good return. (15 APs or so per.)

But otherwise, take a pass. Putting your infantry on static mode on any kind of active front is almost always a bad, bad, bad idea you will wind up regretting.

Mobility is life. A lot of testers got sucked into this honey trap, too. I have always held static mode with the greatest of suspicion and use it minimally. On the Finnish border and the motorized divisions. That's it (in 1941, anyways. In 1942 You can safely shut down larger portions of the front.)

My sentiments exactly. I use static very sparingly, and as Flavio says, take your motorized and place them in key positions in level 2 forts or better and static those. Since they change over to infantry anyways you don't lose anything from doing it. I don't even use static mode around Leningrad other than the few motorized. I take the units with a high construction value and get them to start digging with ample CB support and once the fort is at level 4 move them to a new spot and let some cheap unit hold the fort until I can get good units into them if they become threatened.

Your defense along the center really needs depth. If his panzers from up north come into reinforce, what you have there won't hold. I typically create about 6 lines of defense running from the Dnepr to Moscow with skirmishers in between the lines.

In the north it looks like you will hold Leningrad for the winter, but he is still in a position to bust right thru what you have if he sends his armor that way.

Down south you look very solid. If he tries to go south of Cherkassy he will run out of gas, but you might in fact be able to push him that way by keeping the defenses along the Dnepr strng. Keep your skirmishers out (checkerboard) to slow him as much as possible. Level 1 and 2 forts are nice behind the river, but won't stand up to a multihex deliberate attack by infantry. Also move your airfields east of Kiev (that belong to that front) no sense in letting them get overrun. He can cut south too towards Odessa trapping units west of there. He has more than enough armor to do that and hit Cherkassy.

Looking pretty good there so far though but i suspect the center may become a decisive focal point real soon since you are the weakest there.

[notenome]

Quick question: I know I should disband most of the batalion-level formations, but I've been looking at the mortar batalions and I see no other formation that uses those 280mm siege mortars, which means if I disband them, I'll have 200 guns gathering dust.

[Flaviusx]

That's Pieter's little bugaboo. I've never disbanded the battalions; neither do I build any of them however. Just roll with the ones you start with and if you lose any...shrug. He also likes to throw away the perfectly good motorcycle regiments, which in my Red Army find a home as attachments to tank corps/mech corps.

There are far more worthy uses of your APs. (Of course, he thinks I'm crazy for disbanding corps HQs.)

[randallw]

The morale of air units affects how many miles they can fly in a whole turn, but that may be only critically important for the missions where you can fly them more than once per turn ( such as daylight AF attacks, and you won't be doing that as the Sov player in 1941. )
 
What i've done, vs the computer, is to position my airfields beyond 20 hex range of The Front, with range set to under 20 ( so fighters will defend the bases but avoid tangling with lots of Bf 109s, which are kind of short range ).  Bombers are set to night time raids, and I harass the Axis ground units; each attack is supposed to decrease morale by 1 point.
 
If you are deeply worried about holding The Front, you may want to send the shell rifle divisions to ring Moscow, with forts built there too; they'll help dig in, then you can disband them to free up a spot in the hex once they've done their business.  If you start now, they'll be ready before the panzers arrive, that frees up one worry.
 
A word to the wise about air units: they don't seem to rest up in the national reserve, though the morale and repair fix works in the 1.02 patch/update.  You may have to send tired groups just to the rear.

[notenome]

Since nothing major occured this turn I'm not going to do many screenshots. In the deep south 2000 Romanians aren't going to see their families again as the cavalry army retreats two divisions. Forgot to take a screenshot of that.

I can't be sure what von P's supply situation looks like so I'm not sure if he's planning on pausing next turn before he attempts to cross the Dnepr in the North and South. I've concentrated close to where his mobile units are as that's where I expect him to make his moves. The goal isn't to prevent a bridgehead, but to prevent exploitation of a bridgehead, so I can sling them across the river with my mobile reserves during my turn.







Here's a picture of the OOB screen. The Red Army has recovered nicely from ComradeP's turn 1 moves. I think its easy to forget how badly ComradeP mauled me in July. Pretty much all of western, southwestern and northernwestern fronts were encircled on turn 1, and that led me to loose close to 100 divisions on the first two turns. That's why I haven't been able to defend in depth on western front, because I had to send pretty much everything flying down south to hold the Panzer wreckingball. It's basically been economy of force for the last 6 turns.



And lastly, a bizarre curiosity. It seams the U2Vs biplane is so beloved by the VVS that this damn thing is going to be in production forever??? 4 factories, no upgrade path, no enddate? Really????

[Flaviusx]

Sovs were in love with the silly things. You'll be drowning in biplane spam in due course. I've had as many as 100 groups flying around by 42.

The transport and recon versions at least have utility and production of the more modern types is very limited. The night bomber version (U2VS) I convert over to shturmoviks as production and APs allow (and this is virtually the only air conversion I do, since the conversion will never happen otherwise. You really don't want to be throwing APs away on the Red Air force and the automatic upgrade system does a reasonable job keeping your other airframes up to speed.) You can eventually field a truly monstrous number of shturmovik regiments by doing this, once their production ramps up.

[comsolut]

I thought I read somewhere, that Russian players were suggesting to turn automatic upgrade off for all planes on T1. Are you suggesting that your experience has been acceptable (and less costly in AP's) by leaving automatic upgrade on?

Appreciate your opinion.

[Flaviusx]

This is the single exception for automatic upgrades for me. And even with this single exception I don't start spending APs to switch over the U2s until winter of 1941.

It's about a 30 AP investment for the entire GC. You need only do this once for the U2Vs, once they switch over to any kind of shturmovik model they'll continue to upgrade automatically to new sorts of shturmoviks.

But otherwise, I go full autoupgrades. The Red Air Force is too big, APs are too precious, for you to micromanage upgrades. The Red Air Force is an absolute last priority for me in terms of APs, there's far more important things to worry about. You could throw away hundreds of APs on the Red Air Force on upgrades...APs I'd much rather spend on the Red Army. The Soviet Union is far too stressed on APs to be doing this. The German is in a much better position to micromanage the Luftwaffe.

[raizer]

so flav-there are about 30 air units at various airbases to look out for to convert?  I agree...leave it on auto and use APs for corps and later on, the real nasties

[comsolut]

Thanks. I will adjust my notes accordingly.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: raizer

so flav-there are about 30 air units at various airbases to look out for to convert?  I agree...leave it on auto and use APs for corps and later on, the real nasties

It could be more than that, the AI loves to spam new U2V groups. But you don't necessarily want to convert each and every one of these to a shturmovik group because of production limitations. (Although shturmovik production becomes very large in time.) You kinda have to eyeball your factory situation here, losses, and make a judgment call as to how many you want to flip over.

[notenome]

Slight delay this turn as ComradeP didn't send me an email telling me he'd sent the turn.

Only three areas of interest as far as fascist activity goes. In the North ComradeP has advanced nada, but in the Northeast he's gone straight past Velkie Luki. This is now a top priority full-alert crisis. Everything that can be spared and all reinforcements are going here. ComradeP has 10 turns of good weather, and if he's planning on bludgeoning it to Moscow things are going to get real interesting real fast.



On the Smolensk front von P has gained a bridgehead over the Dnepr, and its not getting beat back. With a defensive value of 70 it would take half the red army to send them packing, and half the Red Army may very well be needed to defend Moscow. Thankfully his lack of armor and single bridgehead make large scale encirclements dificult, so any sort of breakout should be hard to achieve.



On the Southern Front von P has really sent the panzers south! Southern Front takes a pounding (indeed southern front HQ is trapped and will have to dislocate, and unless von P is using HQ build up I can't for the life of me understand how he's gonna keep those panzers running. I'm gonna have to use all availabe infantry to extend the line and make a checkerboard with cavalry.



And finally, Western Front musical chairs continues, Shaposhikov gets the call from uncle Joe and a new commander takes his place. As long as Zhukov doesn't get shot I'm happy.

[randallw]

Is he having to airdrop supplies to forward units pushed really hard forward?  You might try recon tflights to find those transport airgroups and smack 'em with night bombing raids.

[notenome]

Me and ComradeP established a house rule of no target bombing, that's why I had to put Operation Vengeance on indefinite hold

[randallw]

No target bombing? Humpf! [:D]

[notenome]

Sending Turn 7 in a few minutes, here's an overview:

90 000 comrade's went to the great collective farm in the sky last turn, continuing a trend of falling Soviet casualties. Von P has become ever more conservative, destroying only 7 soviet formations last turn. In comparison with our losses, 225,473 men were added to our frontline units in refit mode and 29,360 men were added during normal replacements, for a total of 254,833 replacements. When compared to our losses, the Red Army grew in strength during the last week of July by about 160,000 men.

The Red Army now outnumbers the Wehrmacht by 1 million men. If we include Axis allies we do not have absolute numerical superiority. But unless von P pulls off some major encirclements the Red Army will be monstrous come winter.



In the South we have extended the river defence line and created a large checkerboard to buy them some time to dig in.



To the north von P has concentrated infantry and I expect he will start moving towards Gomel, to stress the defences of Kiev. However, without armor, even if he is succesful with all his attacks, it will take a long time before this force can seriously compromise Kiev's defence.



On the Smolensk Front, we have laid down a vast carpet of Red Army troops around the bridgehead. The goal isn't to stop the panzers, just prevent a breakthrough and/or large scale encirclement. For every hex of depth von P achieves he'll have to make 3 attacks to have some freedom of movement. Regardless, we expect the western front to heat up now that von P has abandoned a motorized drive on Leningrad.



Finally we have von Ps surprise lunge at Velkie Luki. My only consolation here is that those panzers are going to be in an awful suplly situation. We have pulled the armies back and created lines, probably a stupid idea as a checkerboard would probably have been more appropriate. It is still possible that von P will strike south and attempt to flank Smolensk's defences. Notice I've pretty much left the northern flank open. That's because the least scary scenario here is for von P to strike north towards Leningrad which has an enormous force, multiple defensive lines, bad terrain and great forts (most are getting up to level 3 by now)

http://i754.photobucket.com/albums/xx18 ... lkie-1.jpg

Finally we have started on the beginnings of a defensive line stretching from Vyazima to Rzhev. All future depleted divisions go here to dig, and depending on von P's maneuvering, we can strech the line to Kaluga and/or Kalinin. This will be the Soviet Alamo.



Lastly, any advice on how to best utilize the Reserve Front? Its just standing there at the moment.

[randallw]

Unless you've taken huge division losses you'll need the Reserve Front to help take the load off some current front.

[randallw]

Remember that swamps are your defensive friends; your 2nd D line in some of your pics can use them.  Three spots east of Gomel, two in the Rhzev/Yyazma area.