1:1 odds, counterattack casualties etc

[ComradeP]

Can you elaborate on the "preperation and planning" if more folks like myself knew how to make this possible then yea we might not need to help the soviets have the chance to do realistic damage they did do to the germans before winter.

Refitting and training are the key. I see a lot of Soviet players throw their divisions into a line or checkerboard after the first few turns. That's not how you create a reserve that can strike back.

For example, in my game with notenome, after his lines on the Dnepr were breached, parts of them could be encircled because there was nothing behind them and the forces that were there were not good enough to remove me (or only did so through the odds bonus, as in the case with Wiking and the attack last turn).

It's perfectly possible to have corps/armies with Rifle divisions with a CV of 3 or 4 after a few turns. 6 of those in a deliberate attack will bump back most German divisions. Stacks are a problem, but they should be. Soviet counterattacks against non-exposed Axis divisions should be very difficult. Why? Because they were very difficult in real life.

The Panzer and motorized division notenome bumped back had a defensive CV of 19 or 20. I see no reason why the Soviets should be able to successfully attack that with mediocre units from three hexsides. They couldn't do so in real life either. The Soviets mostly counterattacked when the Germans were exposed or had just bumped into a strong Soviet line, not when they were holding strong positions.

A problem is that it's now very difficult for the Germans to keep their spearhead in supply. The Soviets often can't get a natural 2:1, but they can get 1:1, so they can isolate your spearhead fairly easily in some cases. The single attack against Wiking bought my opponent a turn's worth of moving troops around below Smolensk and that attack would never have worked without the odds bonus for the units he attacked with.

I believe notenome, with mostly CV 1 or 2 units, has made 6 or so attacks thus far that got a natural 2:1 or higher.

As notenome mentions, currently many German units can be counterattacked due to the odds bonus.

One thing that's easy to forget is that when a CV moves from 1:1 to 2:1, CV is essentially doubled, to give you an indication of how strong such an attack is. The Axis have nothing like it.

I'm also not seeing that supposed tendency for the Axis to double their CV's. My best units assigned to my best leaders are usually fighting at their on-counter CV value, perhaps with some slight improvement.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Can you elaborate on the "preperation and planning" if more folks like myself knew how to make this possible then yea we might not need to help the soviets have the chance to do realistic damage they did do to the germans before winter.

Refitting and training are the key. I see a lot of Soviet players throw their divisions into a line or checkerboard after the first few turns. That's not how you create a reserve that can strike back.

No it isn't. Historically neither could the STAVKA during 1941 and 1942 either on the defensive or the offensive. You've got to hold the line. If no line, or checkerboard, or whatever, it's a free lunch for the Wehrmacht. Soviet doctrine was crystal clear, but they just lacked the means to implement it.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
It's perfectly possible to have corps/armies with Rifle divisions with a CV of 3 or 4 after a few turns. 6 of those in a deliberate attack will bump back most German divisions. Stacks are a problem, but they should be. Soviet counterattacks against non-exposed Axis divisions should be very difficult. Why? Because they were very difficult in real life.

The Panzer and motorized division notenome bumped back had a defensive CV of 19 or 20. I see no reason why the Soviets should be able to successfully attack that with mediocre units from three hexsides. They couldn't do so in real life either. The Soviets mostly counterattacked when the Germans were exposed or had just bumped into a strong Soviet line, not when they were holding strong positions.

EDIT: Ok, I saw the combat report. I count there several units with CV of 20, which translates to an on-map CV of 2. He just attacked you with the kind of strength one can muster on half an Army. He had an advantage of 3:1 on men, 2:1 arty, but you had far more armor and no air support to speak of. Those panzers equalized things, and got the odds to 1.3:1... One Rifle Division less on the attack, and he wouldn't have make it. I think your losses were a bit too high and his were lower than I would expect from a similar attack (I just conducted a similar attack last turn and I got something like 20% losses with similar odds).

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
One thing that's easy to forget is that when a CV moves from 1:1 to 2:1, CV is essentially doubled, to give you an indication of how strong such an attack is. The Axis have nothing like it.

Ok, you have to retreat one miserable hex, after losing a few hundred men and perhaps a dozen afvs, and in exchange for that he gets, what, 6,000 casualties? With victories like that the RKKA is not going to get to Berlin any soon.

EDIT: You got far more losses than I would say it's normal at this stage of the war. I stand corrected.

Now, if the case was that the Soviet player was able to conduct 6 deliberate attacks and inflict 6,000 casualties on the SS Div... well, then I would agree with you that's there something ahistorical going on...

EDIT: Although the comment was way off-topic I still don't see anything ahistorical going on here. Kudos to notenome for being able to muster that strike force on short notice, it isn't easy.

[notenome]

abulbian, though I understand your frustration I would urge you to reign in on the discourse so as to not start a flame war. Let's keep it civil or all hell breaks loose and nonsense starts to get posted.
 
bwheatly, you have to remember that the majority of Axis casualties in 41 were NCL (non combat losses) of which over 90% returned to their units within a month. Personally I think that non combat losses are not well enough modelled in game. I would like to see atrition doubled, but the trickleback rate raised to 7% (for the Axis, I have no clue about Soviet NCL losses or the Red Army's medical system).
 
ComradeP, Indeed the majority of my counterattacks would have suceeded (sp?) without the 1:1 odds bonus. However the sheer necesity of mainting a line in depth means that only a small minority of soviet units will have the luxury of training up in the rear, regardless of circumstance.
 
Smirfy, though the Wehrmachts performance review of SS units in France and Poland was shocked at the high casualties these units took (relative to their assignments) on the Eastern Front the SS units were more often then not given the harshest assignments, so it is very hard to say they took more casualties then regular Army units precisely because one has to compare casualties relative to the situtation. If not one will reach the same conclusion about the Guards units as well. For example: The 5th Guards Tank Army was horribly maimed at Kursk, though it ultimately suceeded in stopping an Axis breakthrough. Had it been a 'regular' Soviet Tank Army, would the losses have been any lighter?
 
 

[bwheatley]

comrade - Refitting and training are the key. I see a lot of Soviet players throw their divisions into a line or checkerboard after the first few turns. That's not how you create a reserve that can strike back.

For example, in my game with notenome, after his lines on the Dnepr were breached, parts of them could be encircled because there was nothing behind them and the forces that were there were not good enough to remove me (or only did so through the odds bonus, as in the case with Wiking and the attack last turn).

It's perfectly possible to have corps/armies with Rifle divisions with a CV of 3 or 4 after a few turns. 6 of those in a deliberate attack will bump back most German divisions. Stacks are a problem, but they should be. Soviet counterattacks against non-exposed Axis divisions should be very difficult. Why? Because they were very difficult in real life.

The Panzer and motorized division notenome bumped back had a defensive CV of 19 or 20. I see no reason why the Soviets should be able to successfully attack that with mediocre units from three hexsides. They couldn't do so in real life either. The Soviets mostly counterattacked when the Germans were exposed or had just bumped into a strong Soviet line, not when they were holding strong positions.

A problem is that it's now very difficult for the Germans to keep their spearhead in supply. The Soviets often can't get a natural 2:1, but they can get 1:1, so they can isolate your spearhead fairly easily in some cases. The single attack against Wiking bought my opponent a turn's worth of moving troops around below Smolensk and that attack would never have worked without the odds bonus for the units he attacked with.

I believe notenome, with mostly CV 1 or 2 units, has made 6 or so attacks thus far that got a natural 2:1 or higher.

As notenome mentions, currently many German units can be counterattacked due to the odds bonus.

One thing that's easy to forget is that when a CV moves from 1:1 to 2:1, CV is essentially doubled, to give you an indication of how strong such an attack is. The Axis have nothing like it.

I'm also not seeing that supposed tendency for the Axis to double their CV's. My best units assigned to my best leaders are usually fighting at their on-counter CV value, perhaps with some slight improvement.

Oh yea that's how i ran my reinforcements 85% stayed back to build for 2-3 turns before they went into combat. And there were a few times that i did get to smack back an isolated german division. I never had much luck hurting any german corps (stacks) in 41. It wasn't until 41 that i was able to smack a stack.

I would think we could perhaps do away with +1 if we changed isolation not to have units just surrender without a shot fired. Yes i agree that they have crap morale so they should surrender EASILY when attacked. But they should still take some german infantry with them before they finally throw in the towel. Or at least on the same turn a unit is isolated to give them a turn with full or maybe 75% cv to try to break out.

Or in lieu of that perhaps take the +1 away from russia after 41. In 42 i find it very very easy to smack german units around. In 42 the +1 has helped me a lot in smacking around whole german corps (stacks) including german panzer corps. I mean i was hitting them with half of 1:1 and i'd win. Maybe removing +1 in 42 would help keep the soviets from an offensive until the end of 42 which is more historical. I heard talk of soviet combat effectiveness slowly being raised to 100% over time. I'd enjoy if the effectiveness eventually reached 100 either at the end of 42 or early 43. That would allow the germans a little better 42. And it would mean i can feel like i don't have to pull any punches in 42 if i do see a chance to attack and cause some damage.

[PMCN]

I'm going to try this one time more and that is the end for me.

There are lies, there are damned lies and then there is CV.

CV is a purely mathematical number that determined by a combination of TOE of infantry and armoured vehicles and experience (or possibly morale and experience I don't know).

All CV is not equal.  A unit's CV can be inflated by simply maxing out its TOE but as this automatically reduces the experience the units combat performance is lowered, if it doesn't get a chance to work up the new recruits they evaporate in the first battle.  Also since it counts only numbers the CV of Russian Tank divisions early war is utterly at odds to their combat power.  150 BT2 tanks won't survive long enough to contribute to the end CV calculation to determine if the ground is held or not.  Your T26 tanks will simply not be there at the end of the battle defend or attack.

CV comes from both experience (possibly morale dunno Joel would have to comment here) or numbers of devices.  So when looking at the number on the counter it is always relative.  A Pz division has a CV between 18-20 at full strength from what I have observed.  If you see one with a CV of 9, that means it is down to half strength or reduced strength and high fatigue poor supply etc.  A full strength German Infantrie division has a CV of 12, again compared to that you can judge the state of the unit.  That is about the only value the CV on the counter has, you can use it compare to what a full strength unit normally is.  For the axis player given the fact that the counter is likely to display a 1 for virtually every soviet unit it is even more of crap shoot what that one means since rounding is in full play here.

Also CV does not account for artillery.  And a good chunk of the battle damage is from artillery.  Combat goes like: 
1. long range artillery (guns) fire
2. medium range artillery (Hwz and 120 mm mortar) fire/guns fire again
3. medium and heavy mortars fire and possibly a second barrage from Hwz's depending on experience level
4. HMGs fire/Long Range Rifle Fire/Medium mortars fire/Tanks fire(?)/AT guns and rifles fire at tanks
5. Short range Artillery (infantry guns, AT guns) fire/short range mortars fire/Long and medium range Mortars fire
6. Tanks/Squad Weapons Fire (tank fire seems to come later than I thought it would but I'm not sure how much this is a function of experience*)

*German tanks seem to fire earlier and there is a greater volume of fire from a smaller number of tanks.

This isn't exact since I am unsure the exact range when things like IG's fire, or when tanks fire and there may be finer steps etc but the above is pretty close to what I see the engine doing.  What kills the Soviet in 41 is that on an an attack they get the first step with the German although their long range fire is anemic in effect, then they have to undergo all the other fire steps without being able to respond (due to lack of experience) and only get their mortar fire for example when their squads hit the enemy so barely a third of what they should have had.  In 42 the reason the German casualty levels spike upwards is that the soviet artillery crews are more experienced and the fire is an exchange in steps 1, 2, 3 and you even see the occasional long range rifle fire and HMG fire.  This makes a world of freak'n difference as units destroyed in this exchange don't contribute to the pain the assault troops are suffering under.  Also the 120 mm mortars that the russians have liberally distributed to their divisions can account for over 100 men and several artillery pieces loss alone.  That is more the Germans suffer typically in an attack in 41...just from this one device.

Now the question is how long this continues from the point of view of the attacker is something I can't pin down.  The attacker will take everything the defender can throw at him, but the defender will pike off at some point.  This looks more like a morale failure then the attacker fire is done and we calculate odds thing since I have seen a German Rgt retreat after a single rifle shot (they have to stay till then but how long after the troops start over running the fox holes I can't say).  What I see is that at about 10% casualties in terms of men the enemy breaks and withdraws usually.  With some considerable plus variance on that 10% and not a lot of minus.  At this point the odds are calculated to determine the effect of the retreat.

I believe this is why when a unit hold position it often suffers high casualties as it withstands the full brunt of the attackers fire.  In the case of failed attack usually nothing survives to fire on the enemy so that is why the soviets take 4000 men losses and inflict only 200 men on the Germans on failed attacks, nothing much hits them in the squad fire phase and in 41 the only other fire they suffered from the attackers was some fairly anemic long range artillery bombardments.

The final CV calculation includes only those devices not disrupted, damaged or destroyed.  Losses shown in the display also show retreat losses if you didn't watch the fight.  The losses in battle are often wildly different from the retreat losses you see if you are watching under level 3 or lower.

CV is not like the strength of a unit printed on a counter in a board game.  It is in a lot of way divorced from the actual fire power a unit may posses since that depends a huge degree on the artillery it has and artillery isn't a factor in the CV value.  That is why you suffer high losses (1000 men or so) attacking a german security division.  It has a reasonable amount of mortars and machine guns plus a small artillery battalion.  Even machine guns...and they will inflict a lot of damage on the attacker don't count for that much in the CV calculation.

The defensive CV multiplier is also extremely misleading.  It is multiplicative so this means as your strength drops due to disruption, damage and destruction of your squads, and tanks the effect of the defensive multiplier drops.  If pretty much nothing survives the attackers fire it doesn't matter what the multiplier is.  A weak attack strength/high defense strength unit can be blown out simply by smashing down its men...also if you inflict a lot of damage with your air support that counts towards that.

I don't know if the morale check failure withdraw is in the game engine, there is no way I can tell.  What I can say is that in many cases the enemy pikes off well before my troops have had a chance to shoot at them...the most glaring case was after the first engineer squad fire a rifle attack.  This is also a reason why attacker loses can seem a bit out of whack.  But I launched two sequential attacks in the blizzard the failed, they were frankly not likely to have suceeded but it was critical I move out those defenders.  I suffered 10,000 men lost for at most 500 Germans.  If successful Russian attacks are bad for losses, failed ones are appalling.

Bottom line: CV is not like the numbers printed on counter in board games and treating it like it is will lead you astray.  At this point you will run into the fact the game is not meeting your expectations.  But your expectations are based on a false assumption of what the CV value means, not that the game is doing something funky so far as I can tell.

[ComradeP]

OF course, you're right that CV isn't everything, but it is the thing that matters for the eventual type of result from a battle.

Casualties can also be rather variable, such as the odd situation where a failed Soviet attack leads to something like 1:10 losses, whilst a successful one is much closer to 1:1. I'm pretty sure in the attacks where notenome caused 2000-3000 losses, I only suffered a few hundred from the actual battle, and around 2000 from the retreat result.

[PMCN]

He had to have inflicted at least 10% losses for you to retreat, and if you are talking panzer divisions it is worth keeping in mind that you have only 4 battalions of infantry in that unit.  It is not very strong on the defense for that reason alone.  I force the surrender of a panzer division in turn 2 using 8 divisions (2-3 Tank, 2 Motorized, rest Rifle).

If you had a total loss of say 3000 men, likely you suffered 1000-1500 in the attack and 1500-2000 in the retreat but to do that he would have had to throw the kitchen sink at you, or else there were other contributing factors.  Was the unit low on Ammo for example?

Also it is possible your leader failed his retreat check as I rarely see German units suffer significantly in retreats, even when I forced a Panzer division backwards over a river I don't think it took that much in the way of losses.

Also what determines if the battle is won or lost is firepower.  How many men, guns and tanks both sides have and how experienced they are.  CV is just used to calculate odds nothing more.  If the enemy hits you with enough men, guns and tanks to cause a lot of damage and disruption you loose, if you rout, shatter or retreat depends on how much survives the battle in what sort of shape.  The final battle CV is also determined a lot by the effect of leader rolls even if you have yet to experience this.  But even if they double it can be a case of double nothing is still nothing.

Also it very much looks like the game engine determines the unit will retreat and then calculates the "final" odd value and from that determines if the retreat is a retreat or a rout or what not.  This is absolutely something that Joel or Gary need to comment on, trying to disentangle how the computer determines at what point to stop the process of device fire is something I can't figure out from looking at battles.  Even the 10% rule isn't that solid...I've seen units hang around upwards of 20% before they pike and do so at around 5% if the unit over all is fairly small, but why a unit hangs in to the point it does that I can't determine.

You are correct that CV determines the end result of the battle...but you are also wrong about that.  The final CV is largely determined by the battle itself, and that is determined as I say by the fire between the devices, and the surviving ones make up that final CV that is used to determine in part how bad the battle results are for the defender if they were forced to retreat.  I'm not sure if the point I am trying to make is coming across since we are basically talking about a feedback loop.

Added in Edit: to my way of thinking the +1 bonus reflects the fact that what can the axis do when at the end of the fire, there are still russians equal in combat power to their formation standing on the battlefield? If they want to stop the russian attack they need to break it by destroying them on their advance, if at the end of that period they haven't accomplished this they have no choice but to retreat. That is my read on the point of the bonus.

On the particular combat with the Panzer divison I don't know what to say, as I don't have enough details but it is worth considering that "Quantity has a qualitly of its own" and "Artillery is the God of War" both sounded like they were applicable. In reality I don't think the soviets ever launched an attack of two Rifle Corps against a single german panzer division in 41. Given the fact that their officers had hellish times getting a division to function properly since they had neither the training nor the experience to do so (Stalin's purge can be thanked for that), I can't imagine a dual Corps attack being anything but an unmitigated organizational disaster.

It is hard to say if it makes sense to give them a penalty over what they get now from the fact their divisions are populated by people who barely know how to shoot. Is more necessary? A penalty to russian CV when more than 2 divisions attack? I'm not sure personally, it was hard to shove back CV 3 Rumanian Infantry divisions, that took 4-5 divisions and I took 4000 men casaulties. I failed to shove back a CV4 German Infantry division even when I hit it with I think 4 Rifle divisions. The time I shoved back that Panzer division I had Eremenko in command of the 51st and hit it with 9 units in what was frankly a hail mary charge. Successful counter attacks are possible but they aren't a dime a dozen +1 odds bonus or no +1 odds bonus. And if they fail you loose a lot of your front line infantry strength plus to execute them you have to hold your line in place thus risking encirclement.

I honestly don't see the +1 bonus as overpowered, or for that matter as anything useful except on fairly rare occasions but then again I'm not a min-max munchin rules lawyer type who seeks to break games by exploiting weakness in the design to the maximum (not pointing fingers here just stating I am not this). In that sense I fail in "testing." I play the game as if it were real. So before I launch an attack I try to make the situation such that it should succeed. I only push the envelope when the situation demands that sort of thing. It is possible it is more open to abuse then seems apparent to me.

[ComradeP]

He had to have inflicted at least 10% losses for you to retreat, and if you are talking panzer divisions it is worth keeping in mind that you have only 4 battalions of infantry in that unit. It is not very strong on the defense for that reason alone.

The attackers had minimal mobility. Historically, it was a rarity for a Panzer division to just hang around and get clobbered by a mob of infantry. Mobility means that mob of infantry won't be able to do much, as when things don't look good, you move out at a speed that the attackers can't match. It also means that retreat losses should be far less severe, but that's not the case.

Considering that the Soviet infantry could never have caught up to my mobile losses as they started to withdraw, what would cause the significant retreat losses?

There is currently hardly any bonus for a mobile unit being mobile, aside from it having higher MP's. It doesn't really seem to matter much at all in battle. Most units seem to fight like it's WWI, and sit in place until they decide to retreat, rout or hold the attack.

I'm not seeing any tactical or operational flexibility effects at all. What I am seeing is the best mobile units the Germans being clobbered by a force primarily composed of untrained conscripts.

He had to have inflicted at least 10% losses for you to retreat

Where did you see that rule? A defender retreats if the CV result is 2:1, the manual doesn't specify any required casualty percentage.

You are correct that CV determines the end result of the battle...but you are also wrong about that.

Now I'm not. Modified CV determines the final odds and thus the result (the odds modifier increases the Soviet result if above 1:1).

Also it is possible your leader failed his retreat check as I rarely see German units suffer significantly in retreats, even when I forced a Panzer division backwards over a river I don't think it took that much in the way of losses.

I believe every good counterattack notenome made against a division or more than one division caused over 2000 losses. It seems statistically highly unlikely that all of my leaders failed their checks, if it influences things.

[kirkgregerson]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

ORIGINAL: abulbulian
I tried to post this and a bunch of rabbit vultures did all they could to refute this and make comments that were insulting to anybody that has done research into the east front conflict. Other less intelligent replies would have nothing to do with the issue trying to be discussed and resolved. Ignoring these people is a nice feature.

It would be rude of me to say 'NOW WHAT YOU GOT TO SAY' to all these haters, so I will refrain.
Doesn't matter because my post about German elite Pz units vs sov 42 inf was right on the money. So I'll just let it go and be happy changes are on the way.

I hate to burst your bubble, but actually as far as I know the changes have to do with defenders in "dense" terrain (swamp, rough, etc.), not clear terrain, so have nothing to do with your complaint about the results of a single battle in clear terrain.

Nothing to burst, you don't know what is being discussed high up the chain is what I think abulbulian is talking about. When they decide to make change you will know. I believe change will come, but I'm perfectly happy to play sov and continue to smack people are with the combat mechanics as is. At this point I could care less about peoples forum post that obviously haven't understand anything they've read about this east front conflict or just have issues with reading comprehension. Not my problem.

The main point is the group of people that kept going on with their imbecilic banter about "nothing is wrong, no changes to make regarding play balance" ... well they can now deal with it. Maybe if they had EVER posting anything to the contrary of all the balancing issues that caused a realistic 42 for the axis.. they wouldn't have to be crying now.

[kirkgregerson]

ORIGINAL: notenome

abulbian, though I understand your frustration I would urge you to reign in on the discourse so as to not start a flame war. Let's keep it civil or all hell breaks loose and nonsense starts to get posted.

bwheatly, you have to remember that the majority of Axis casualties in 41 were NCL (non combat losses) of which over 90% returned to their units within a month. Personally I think that non combat losses are not well enough modelled in game. I would like to see atrition doubled, but the trickleback rate raised to 7% (for the Axis, I have no clue about Soviet NCL losses or the Red Army's medical system).

ComradeP, Indeed the majority of my counterattacks would have suceeded (sp?) without the 1:1 odds bonus. However the sheer necesity of mainting a line in depth means that only a small minority of soviet units will have the luxury of training up in the rear, regardless of circumstance.

Smirfy, though the Wehrmachts performance review of SS units in France and Poland was shocked at the high casualties these units took (relative to their assignments) on the Eastern Front the SS units were more often then not given the harshest assignments, so it is very hard to say they took more casualties then regular Army units precisely because one has to compare casualties relative to the situtation. If not one will reach the same conclusion about the Guards units as well. For example: The 5th Guards Tank Army was horribly maimed at Kursk, though it ultimately suceeded in stopping an Axis breakthrough. Had it been a 'regular' Soviet Tank Army, would the losses have been any lighter?

I don't think he is causing a flame war. What I saw was people attacking his post about a real game concern and their comments were insulting and had no historical references to back them up. He's just stating that now that somebody like ComradeP is suggestion these issue in combat mechanics that favor the sov, they should back off and maybe take a more objective approach.

There is definitely this camp of players(sov) that are more than happy to keep these issues 'as is' because they are not looking at what is good for the game, but rather their play style. I don't think that is a helpful approach to what some of these threads are trying to accomplish. If you can't supply some game data or historical references, don't just add personal stupidity comments to dilute a post and take a anti-axis approach to the game.

[kirkgregerson]

As Comrade has already mention in his game, I've seen the same thing with my stacks of mobile units in spring 42. I had a stack of 2 Pz Div and an SS Mot Div with a display CV def of 56. Here's some details of the defenders and attackers:


Defender (averages across 3 units)
Moral : 85
Exp (lower cause TOE bug): 75
fatigue: 35
fort level: 0
about 60k men and 350 afv?

Attacker:
4 sov rifle corps w/some art su and sappers
about 120,00 men

*air was about even

My German defenders we're displaced with about 7k loses and the attack had 9k loses. I'm just not buying that would have been realistic. Part of my issues is that large scale operations carried out by the sov in early 42 were always a disaster. The C&C issue with these sov large scale operations were very real and still existed even later in the war.

I think any intrinsic advantages that the German units (especially mobile units) with exp and training and operations planning/execution are negated already in 42. So then if it comes down to just the troop #'s game. Sov will always have the edge in 42. Also, with all the fort levels 3-4 and deep lines are created through the spring mud turns, the axis player is faced with an impossible task to do much of anything as far as a breakthrough.

Only few games (current release) of PBEM human vs human go this far into 42 have shown exactly this fact. So somebody tell me of a HUMAN vs HUMAN game were the axis have had any sort limited success in 42? I think ComradeP and notename's game is getting closer to spring 42. It sounds like he'll be facing the same problems. Does anybody have a game (after release to public) that can show something different? waiting...

[MengJiao]

ORIGINAL: kirkgregerson

ORIGINAL: notenome

abulbian, though I understand your frustration I would urge you to reign in on the discourse so as to not start a flame war. Let's keep it civil or all hell breaks loose and nonsense starts to get posted.

bwheatly, you have to remember that the majority of Axis casualties in 41 were NCL (non combat losses) of which over 90% returned to their units within a month. Personally I think that non combat losses are not well enough modelled in game. I would like to see atrition doubled, but the trickleback rate raised to 7% (for the Axis, I have no clue about Soviet NCL losses or the Red Army's medical system).

ComradeP, Indeed the majority of my counterattacks would have suceeded (sp?) without the 1:1 odds bonus. However the sheer necesity of mainting a line in depth means that only a small minority of soviet units will have the luxury of training up in the rear, regardless of circumstance.

Smirfy, though the Wehrmachts performance review of SS units in France and Poland was shocked at the high casualties these units took (relative to their assignments) on the Eastern Front the SS units were more often then not given the harshest assignments, so it is very hard to say they took more casualties then regular Army units precisely because one has to compare casualties relative to the situtation. If not one will reach the same conclusion about the Guards units as well. For example: The 5th Guards Tank Army was horribly maimed at Kursk, though it ultimately suceeded in stopping an Axis breakthrough. Had it been a 'regular' Soviet Tank Army, would the losses have been any lighter?

I don't think he is causing a flame war. What I saw was people attacking his post about a real game concern and their comments were insulting and had no historical references to back them up. He's just stating that now that somebody like ComradeP is suggestion these issue in combat mechanics that favor the sov, they should back off and maybe take a more objective approach.

There is definitely this camp of players(sov) that are more than happy to keep these issues 'as is' because they are not looking at what is good for the game, but rather their play style. I don't think that is a helpful approach to what some of these threads are trying to accomplish. If you can't supply some game data or historical references, don't just add personal stupidity comments to dilute a post and take a anti-axis approach to the game.

as the most pro-axis person there has ever been, let me just add a few important notes about the axis:
1) the Soviets pounded them to a pulp systematically for years
2) the axis lost WWII so completely as to almost redefine the notion of getting totally defeated into a whole
new mode of getting pounded to a pulp for years
3) most of the Axis defeat was on the East Front

Other than that, the Axis where totally elite and almost superhuman and Hitler was much more fastidious than Stalin.

[DrewMatrix]

In the Ancients and in the Napoleonics miniatures games I play the rabble units tend either not to close or to break and run early with few casualties. You may be able to run them down after they are broken but they take few casualties in the intial battle and actually, because of their tendency to run, can be difficult to exterminate. So the Soviets running instead of dying in place sounds reasonable to me. You have to catch them in a pocket to eliminate them.

[PMCN]

Your truck mounted infantry isn't that much more mobile once battle is joined as they fight on foot anyway. But yes this is true they should be able to withdraw rather than get over run by the oncoming infantry horde. If you retreated before engaging, otherwise you would have needed to counter attack to get your infantry breathing space to mount up and leave. You have only 7 combat battalions even faced with a purely infantry attack you might not be able to bugger off when you want to, as you want to, if you hang around to do major damage to the enemy. Operationally these battles would play out a lot differently then the game does them. But if you did this, the losses on the russian side would have been minimal mainly long range artillery fire and some tank shots. You got your infantry fire power in the battle so they got engaged.

The 10% bit isn't a rule, its observation. The manual makes it look like the battle plays out and then the odds get calculated. That happens but it is not as often as I would think and seem to be only when an attack fails or the defender holds in the face of the full brunt of the attackers fire power. Most of the time the units stay until about 10% of its men show up as losses then pikes, at that point the game calculates the odds and gives a result is what seems to occur. This is, as I said repeatedly, is what I have seen watching the fight, there seems to be a morale failure situation. In the worst case attacking the 369 Rgt (the number is probably wrong but it seems an independant Rgt in the German OOB) only one shot with a rifle was fired then the battle was over. On many occasions I have not seen anywhere near as much fire as should be before the battle is over, for example: I attacked the 1st Rumanian Armour after I forced it to retreat, got my tank bdes clobbered by a mixed flak battalion then had some infantry fire then the battle was over, my surving 60 tanks never shot at all. There is something else shortening the amount of fire the defender is subjected to before a retreat occurs. From observation it is rare for a unit to stand in place after it takes 10% of its "men" value in losses...with, as I said before, variance in the plus a lot more than in the minus.

Also 10% casaulties to a units total strength in men is a lot higher fraction of their front line infantry losses. A unit with 300 Rifle and 300 Support squads had 9000 men, 900 men losses is 90 rifle squads destroyed (and in reality more like 60 destroyed and another 60 damaged)...that is either 90/300 or 30% front line infantry casaulties or 120/300 or 40% front line infantry casaulties. Nothing to sneaze at.

Modified CV is determined by what you have left over at the end of the battle that isn't disrupted, damaged or destroyed. It is calculated based on the results of the firepower applied. That CV is then compared to render odds, but so far as I can by that point it is more about determining the effect of the retreat then about if there will be a retreat in a large number of cases. Frankly since the fire seems truncated there looks to be something else going on in a lot of the cases I've watched. Again as I said before this is something I can't pin down exactly and the only people who know for sure are the people who wrote the code. I freely admit this could be a misunderstanding of mine, but if it is I quite honestly don't know how to explain a lot of the retreat results I saw. In the case of my attacks I did not see anywhere near enough fire to account for all my units shooting.

2000 losses against a german division in non-blizzard weather seem excessive. I am dubious I see that much routinely. But again it depends on the exact situation so I can't comment blindly. The units may be standing their ground which can push up losses in combat, but even when the 18th Motorized with a CV of 3 blundered into a stack of 3 strong rifle divisions in a good entrenchment it suffered only 1800 men losses on a failed attack while it inflicted about 1000 on the divisons in question. I can only agree it seems a lot more than I would expect.

[Klydon]

Just a note on "elite" units.

Guards are guards units because they actually proved something on the battlefield. IE, they have excellent experience and moral.

Early SS units were long on moral and short on experience/training. Both the SS and Luftwaffe ground formations took a lot of casualties because they had little or no experience/training when it came to fighting since both were outside of the German Army. SS casualties were nasty due to their high moral and poor training/experience (too gungho to not stop attacking or give up a position and too stupid to know when to stop the attack or when to retreat). Over time the SS got better at their craft, but they generally got outfought by Heer units in most cases (Kursk and Battle of the Bulge are two big examples I have seen quoted). Most of the Luftwaffe field formations (not the paratroopers or parachute infantry formations) had no clue and pretty much didn't last real long when fighting despite having good manpower material and equipment.

[Smirfy]

Thanks Paul for going into greater detail much appreciated.

I'm not really sure why given you can choose the method of attack the player is not given a choice of how tenacious he would order his defence to be.

[ComradeP]

Early war SS quality is seriously overestimated/overhyped in many wargames, and it's also often forgotten that (as has been mentioned here) the SS often took higher losses (and not just because or riskier mission in some cases) but the effects of that were not clear because the SS got replacements fairly quickly (to my surprise, the SS seems to have gotten reasonably decent amounts of replacements even during the late winter/early spring operations in Hungary in 1945). There were also fairly few good SS divisions compared to the Wehrmacht as a whole, and many people also don't know much about the non-elite SS divisions.

Your truck mounted infantry isn't that much more mobile once battle is joined as they fight on foot anyway.

I agree completely with your point about mobile units being short on infantry and thus on staying power, but that's also why some mechanism that lowers their losses against an infantry only force might be preferable for both sides. It's not like a mobile unit would normally hang around until a wall of infantry swept over it, if it had the chance to relocate.

[kirkgregerson]

ORIGINAL: Klydon

Just a note on "elite" units.

Guards are guards units because they actually proved something on the battlefield. IE, they have excellent experience and moral.

Early SS units were long on moral and short on experience/training. Both the SS and Luftwaffe ground formations took a lot of casualties because they had little or no experience/training when it came to fighting since both were outside of the German Army. SS casualties were nasty due to their high moral and poor training/experience (too gungho to not stop attacking or give up a position and too stupid to know when to stop the attack or when to retreat). Over time the SS got better at their craft, but they generally got outfought by Heer units in most cases (Kursk and Battle of the Bulge are two big examples I have seen quoted). Most of the Luftwaffe field formations (not the paratroopers or parachute infantry formations) had no clue and pretty much didn't last real long when fighting despite having good manpower material and equipment.

You are wrong and have to realize that early for axis was in Polish campaign. A lot of you are forgetting that the units or cadres of units gained a lot of experience from the Polish, French, and Balkan campaigns. The SS units as they grew later in the war were probably less experienced.. sure. But the SS units that were used in 41 and 42 on the eastern front were more that just high moral. Most, if not all, had experience from other campaigns. So once agian somebody is posting nonsense or something out of context. My unit in that battle was the 5th SS Wiking. For those that don't know, this unit fought with distinction in Aug 41 holding off several determined Sov attacks along Dniepr river.

So if you want to make vague statements about SS units not distinguishing themselves with more than just moral in 41-42, you'll just be support my view that you know nothing about the battles which were fought in that time period. I'm not any type of Nazi sympathizer, I just care about the facts and how the combat for these units should be considered and modeled in WitE.

[bwheatley]

ORIGINAL: Paul McNeely

I'm going to try this one time more and that is the end for me.

There are lies, there are damned lies and then there is CV.

CV is a purely mathematical number that determined by a combination of TOE of infantry and armoured vehicles and experience (or possibly morale and experience I don't know).

All CV is not equal.  A unit's CV can be inflated by simply maxing out its TOE but as this automatically reduces the experience the units combat performance is lowered, if it doesn't get a chance to work up the new recruits they evaporate in the first battle.  Also since it counts only numbers the CV of Russian Tank divisions early war is utterly at odds to their combat power.  150 BT2 tanks won't survive long enough to contribute to the end CV calculation to determine if the ground is held or not.  Your T26 tanks will simply not be there at the end of the battle defend or attack.

I also like the idea of CV taking the TYPE and quality of tank into account for cv as well.

[bwheatley]

ORIGINAL: Paul McNeely

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

I don't tend to win a lot of battles at 2.1:1 when it comes down to it. I pushed hard in the blizzard and won a few that way but mostly either you have a lot more than 2:1 or else you loose. But given the losses you take, you buy your +1 it isn't a free bonus. I don't see it as an issue for that very reason.

Very well reasoned Paul.As a tester I try to remain neutral and just analyse results. I have been on the end of plenty of "+1" beatings, and I can understand how Pieter feels, receiving his baptism of fire, but the more analysis I do of relative combat effectiveness and CVs in 1942, the more I feel the SU needs the +1 to stand any chance of taking back the territory they lose in 1942, particularly as their artillery force is under-developed compared to mid-1943 onwards, when Artillery becomes a real force-multiplier for the Soviets.

Thank you for the comment. In a shameless plug, if someone wants data, there is a lot of it in my AAR. I have the full details of the combats, only the odds are missing since it would be "out of character" for the narrator to mention them.

Frankly I find the axis tendency to double their final CV value more of an issue then the +1 the soviets get. That has made far more marginal attacks successful to wildly successful then the +1 did. I must admit there were a few times the +1 figured into my thinking pre-attack but these were attacks I felt I must make even though the forces I had to do them were "marginal."

I would also think that any battle you win due to the +1 is going to be a Pyrrhic victory. Your losses are probably such that the units that participated need to fall back and rebuild for a few weeks, unless you went in at near 100% TOE and in that case I suspect they got cut down to a more normal value.

Pyr

That is the truth Those units as typically toast after a big attack and can't really sustain an offensive.