What in the pipeline for new updates?

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
1. Rule addendum and rule change – Units defending in Heavy or Light Urban terrain receive a doubling of their Combat Value when determining the winner and loser of the battle. This doubling is in addition to all other modifiers previously reported. Prior to this version, this doubling also applied to defenders in Swamp, Rough, Mountain and Heavy Forest terrain. This has been removed, so the doubling now only occurs in Heavy or Light Urban terrain.

So if we have a unit with a CV of 1, on a swamp hex with fort level 2, before this patch it would get an effective CV of 1 x (1 + 2 + 2) = 5 when defending. After the patch it will have a CV of 1 x ( 2 + 2 ) = 4 when defending. Units defending on urban hexes will still have their CVs multiplied as in the example show on p. 203 of the manual, right?

Am I reading this correctly? I actually like this change: infantry should have an easier time assaulting swamps and other "complicated" terrain.

[Ketza]

Wow... thats some major changes for the Soviets.

[ComradeP]

One thing we're still talking about (well, I am anyway) is rule change 10, as that will hit the minor Axis harder than the Soviets.

Rule 9 can also possibly put a serious dent in training the minor Axis up, although they can still refit/rest until they're at 50 morale.

[PeeDeeAitch]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

One thing we're still talking about (well, I am anyway) is rule change 10, as that will hit the minor Axis harder than the Soviets.

Rule 9 can also possibly put a serious dent in training the minor Axis up, although they can still refit/rest until they're at 50 morale.

I saw that, no more competant Romanians (nurtured through slow cooperative combat) on the line in 1942 if it goes through. Now they will be fit for garrison duty is about all.

[karonagames]

I saw that, no more competant Romanians (nurtured through slow cooperative combat) on the line in 1942 if it goes through. Now they will be fit for garrison duty is about all.

I think it is a fair exchange for slowing down the growth of an army of Spetsnaz elite combat units!

[Zort]

These look great, thanks for you continued efforts to make this a greater game.

So as I see it, in 41 the soviets will be harder pressed to hold on to territory and have to make the harder decisions.  So the net result should be a smaller and not as powerful soviet army at the blizzard.  I hope this means that the germans have a better chance of holding during the blizzard vice getting pushed back 10-15 hexes. 

[ComradeP]

The inability to merge brigades into divisions also limits Soviet combat power during the blizzard, as you run out of divisional reserves quicker. On the other hand, having the brigades around does make corps creation more efficient in terms of units used as you use one less division than you would use normally if you'd merge the brigades.

I saw that, no more competant Romanians (nurtured through slow cooperative combat) on the line in 1942 if it goes through. Now they will be fit for garrison duty is about all.

My main issue with the rule is that it was inserted after a debate about oviet units getting over 80 experience/morale, but those instances are fairly rare.

I'm not sure whether the consequences for the minor Axis were considered.

The rule currently means most of my Romanian cavalry and the Romanian armoured division have a chance to lose morale each turn. 1/3 of the brigades/divisions will lose a morale point each turn if over 65. Romanian units at 65 experience/65 morale are still fairly decent, but it's now both more difficult to train them up through combat.

The best way to train the infantry with the new rule would seem to be placing them on refit until they get to 50. Even with the previous rule, I don't think I could've gotten all of my active infantry over 50 through combat before winter.

[PeeDeeAitch]

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

I saw that, no more competant Romanians (nurtured through slow cooperative combat) on the line in 1942 if it goes through. Now they will be fit for garrison duty is about all.

I think it is a fair exchange for slowing down the growth of an army of Spetsnaz elite combat units!

[:)] I will miss my str 7 Romanian Guard though!

[ComradeP]

CV 6-7 should still be possible, it will just be more difficult than before.

The Hungarians are also hit fairly hard as their first real infantry units don't activate until 1942, when the fighting will be more difficult than in 1941, whilst many Romanian units can at least fight a few battles in 1941.

[PeeDeeAitch]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
I'm not sure whether the consequences for the minor Axis were considered.

The rule currently means most of my Romanian cavalry and the Romanian armoured division have a chance to lose morale each turn. 1/3 of the brigades/divisions will lose a morale point each turn if over 65. Romanian units at 65 experience/65 morale are still fairly decent, but it's now both more difficult to train them up through combat.

The best way to train the infantry with the new rule would seem to be placing them on refit until they get to 50. Even with the previous rule, I don't think I could've gotten all of my active infantry over 50 through combat before winter.

I was sort of joking - My Romanians mostly do not get to that level through combat in 1941 because they miss out on combat (slow on advance) or they are used rather soon to garrison the Ukraine and let the German Security go north. They winter in lovely cities and urban areas, and then they emerge ready for the spring like the tiger lillys they are.

[Mehring]

So the Russians now have to fight forward in terrain less favourable to defence- and the troops will be moving forward on foot because all the railcap will be used trying unsuccessfully to evacuate industry which doesn't appear to produce anything again untill 100% damage is repaired? So they will win less battles and if that isn't enough, gain less morale from the few they do win.

Having played both sides in PBEM and a handful vs AI, I can see what the Russians can become in a few months if they're allowed to build up. But then no aggressive German player will let them. An aggressive German will wipe the floor with Russia by October, no? And one of the reason's they are able is that rail is re guaged artificially fast. In which case, the rule changes would seem to compensate the German for faulty tactics. Maybe I've been playing the wrong opponent, I'd love to play a Russian who can prove me wrong, but in the meantime, could we please have the option of bug fixes without the rule changes?

[Joel Billings]

We never wanted Axis Allied units to be able to get to the high experience/morale levels that some have reported, so the new rule is having a desired effect by keeping all low morale units from too easily getting too high.

The way the swamp was working before was the CV in a fort 2 was getting multiplied by 5 (1+2+2) and then being multiplied again by 2, so a net of 10 (5x2). In the future, it will not get this final doubling, so it would just be x5.

Mehring, the playtesters that had done well as Germans were the ones that had always kept pressing the Soviets and never let them get set up in 41. However, even these testers were beginning to see that things had gotten too difficult for the Germans in the final release version. A very good German player can do much better than an average player, so it's a tough thing to balance. I suggest you take on one of the better Soviet players and see how it goes. Most of the rule changes are simply fixing things that didn't work as we wanted them too. The only change that comes to mind that is a "balancing" change is the reduction if the Soviet manpower multiplier, but this change feels totally justified based on the results we have been seeing. Remember that one month of release provides more "testing" than all of the testing we do before release, so we have to be prepared to react to what we see. I wish we could say that everything is perfectly balanced upon release, but with games of this size it's just not possible. We try hard not to overreact, but will continue to work on improving the game.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: Mehring
So the Russians now have to fight forward in terrain less favourable to defence- and the troops will be moving forward on foot because all the railcap will be used trying unsuccessfully to evacuate industry which doesn't appear to produce anything again untill 100% damage is repaired? So they will win less battles and if that isn't enough, gain less morale from the few they do win.

Factories are turned back on-line when their damage drops below 50%. AFV and airplane factories usually get damage enough to get them offline for 6 to 10 turns (as far as I've seen on my games and depending on the kind of factory).

EDIT: Just saw Joel post answering to my question. I didn't read that the x2 multiplier was applied at the end of combat. Hmmmm.

[karonagames]

People expecting to steamroll infantry deployed on swamps assaulting with tank formations won't be having much more success than they have had so far, I think.

Tanks and swamps don't mix. Simples.[:)]

[Mehring]

Factories are turned back on-line when their damage drops below 50%. AFV and airplane factories usually get damage enough to get them offline for 6 to 10 turns (as far as I've seen on my games and depending on the kind of factory).

That's what I thought, but the rules are ambivalent and obsevations of T-34 and KV1 factories over 3 weeks seem to show different.

I monitored tank production and found that with no supply shortages of any kind, my 100% moved T-34 and KV plants were not producing, even with only 20- 30% damage. I conclude ths by noting that increases in the 'Produced' column corresponded exactly to capacity of the unmoved factories, minus the expansion rate. At the same time I was receiving a number of tank brigades with a few of these types so I don't know if tanks were being produced and not showing up on the lists, but on the lists they were definitely not.


Thanks Joel, I appreciate the difficulty of getting this balanced right. I'll look for an experienced opponent and, errrr, hope to get clobbered once in a while at least.

[Joel Billings]

The way it should work, is once a factory is below 50%, the chance it will produce on any given turn is equal to:

100-current damage

So a 30 damaged factory has an 70% chance of producing in any given turn.

[Mehring]

The way it should work, is once a factory is below 50%, the chance it will produce on any given turn is equal to:

100-current damage

So a 30 damaged factory has an 70% chance of producing in any given turn.

So I'm either suffering from appalling luck over 3 weeks or something's awry. I'll monitor this more closely and keep some saves in case.

[PeeDeeAitch]

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

People expecting to steamroll infantry deployed on swamps assaulting with tank formations won't be having much more success than they have had so far, I think.

Tanks and swamps don't mix. Simples.[:)]

Sure they do! In some cases, once a tank is in there, it will never separate from the swamp again.

[Klydon]

Wow.. lot of changes in this one and I will be very interested to see how their impact affects the game, although it looks like it will be in a mostly positive way.

It is not just swamps that make a difference; rough is very nasty to kick someone out of and also fixing heavy woods makes the right hook for Leningrad tougher for the Russians to stop if the Germans put some serious effort behind it.

Not being able to rail routed units is big. (I have done this at times to get them away so they can go someplace and rest up).

I don't know if doubling the amount of rail needed to move industry is the solution as it seems like I can send half the Red Army on a nice train ride around the country side, but something needed to be done because the Russians really did not have to make any tough decisions on what to do with their rail cap from one turn to the next when it came to moving troops around and evacuating industry. Also not being able to move industry on the first turn will now add pressure in the following turns in the decision process on what to move.

Looking forward to this becoming available. Thanks for the snapshot look. [:)]

[randallw]

Minsk industry is doomed.