"Depth" of Chain of Command

[FredSanford3]

Pavel had this to say in a thread in Tech Support concerning defense in swamps:

- Not using the whole HQ chain is not good idea as well (white counters). You may have those "independant" corps and Armies, but you just limiting the chances for your leaders rolls, and this is DECISIVE factor in influencing modified CV. In the future having "unalighned" HQ structure may punish you even more.

So having independent units hurts the number of chances for leader die rolls, since whichever command echelons you've 'skipped' don't get a chance to take the die rolls. Ok, I get that, but my question is: If you have an 'independent' army- say a STAVKA reserve, but you put a high-rated leader in charge that's likely to pass his die rolls, would that make the 'skipped' Front command less critical?

For example, say I put Zhukov in charge of an Army (not that I'd put him there) that was directly attached to STAVKA. Wouldn't the high quality leader make the 'missing' die roll chance from a Front commander relatively unimportant? The way I understand it, the higher echelon command provides 'backup' in case the lower echelon commander misses his die roll. If the lower echelon commander makes his die rolls, then the higher echelon commander isn't involved. Is that correct?

In principle is the concept "you should minimize independent commands, BUT if you do have them, having superior leaders in the independent command will mitigate the lack of command depth" correct?


edit: oops, meant to start this in the war room

[Helpless]

You are right, Frank.

But you don't have Zhukov for every Army or Front. And even high rating leader can fail, and amount of leader rolls in the battle is VERY high. So that is why even slight chance to increase them can be visible.

But in general you are correct.

(Joel or Andy, can you move it to the War Room?)

[carnifex]

That's all great advice from Pavel, but I have to cover a front from Leningrad all the way to Sevastopol and the amount of Fronts is completely insufficient. Should I overload my Fronts by 100% or even 150%? Would that be a better deal than keeping some formations attached to STAVKA instead?

[Helpless]

Absolutely. There is no optimal solution which would fit all the cases

[bevans]

Not so much a hijacking of this thread as a natural thread extension (IMO). My reading of the rules indicates that each pass up the chain of command comes with a(n additional) negative modifier for leader rolls - so where is the best place to 'park' someone like Manstein? I will assume Corps is too low but Army (Pz Army for sure) or AG? Which will actually end up with more interventions: AG obviously has more base opportunities but there is one extra layer to get there - and the modifier at AG level makes even a Manstein an iffy proposition. I have just assumed that it is best to have generals at their historic levels - but am very dubious that the actual underlying math will make that correct.

[SgtKachalin]

ORIGINAL: Helpless
... And even high rating leader can fail, and amount of leader rolls in the battle is VERY high. ...

When (if ever... ) can the common folk get a hold of what exactly those rolls are? Not meaning seeing the rolls in game (Message Level 1,000? [:D]), but the "CRT" and "LRT" (Leadership Results Table...) and all the other virtual tables that exist in the engine.

Not even all... but something. The swings in values/results of pretty much everything from movement and how many planes fly to combat and retreats seem reasonable to me. But having little/no idea of what is REALLY influencing them (besides "more/higher is better") on the leadership front may get old after a bit.

[Skanvak]

This is true. The distance to the superior HQ for the re-roll does count. If Stavka is in Moscow and my other army are in stalingrad, STAVKA leader re-roll are 0, so what is the real effect of having good leader at far from the front HQ?

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Skanvak

This is true. The distance to the superior HQ for the re-roll does count. If Stavka is in Moscow and my other army are in stalingrad, STAVKA leader re-roll are 0, so what is the real effect of having good leader at far from the front HQ?

Well, the last time I looked, Stalingrad is well within STAVKA range (58/90) if STAVKA is in Moscow. So it can do a great deal of good.

[Skanvak]

Yes, but 58/4 (about +14) will be added to the test. I wonder how important is it to most test...?

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Skanvak

Yes, but 58/4 (about +14) will be added to the test. I wonder how important is it to most test...?

Well, if STAVKA is in Moscow and the leader has a value of 7 (for example), then you have 7/34 as the probablilty of passing. OTOH, if STAVKA is adjacent to the unit then you have 7/21 as the probability of passing. So the distance itself has reduced the probability from about 0.3 to 0.2 or 30%. In any case, I would consider a 20% success rate to be far better than nothing which was part of the original question.

So back to that question, if you have a leader of value 5 at STAVKA in Moscow you have about a 14% POS on the roll while if you use a 7 leader instead the POS would be 20% or a 45% improvement.

Now, I have to caveat all this with the fact that I am really, really confused about the leader roll probabilities so I wish that someone who really understands would check my numbers [8D]

[Skanvak]

Would be fine, but if your number are exact (I am a bit confused about that too) then the +14 is less important than I thought (I believed it was added to the dice roll and then reduced to 0 the STAVKA intervention).

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Skanvak

Would be fine, but if your number are exact (I am a bit confused about that too) then the +14 is less important than I thought (I believed it was added to the dice roll and then reduced to 0 the STAVKA intervention.

I have to admit [:(] that I thought the same thing for all of my Road games and my initial GC. With that misconception, it seemed clearly irrelevent who led AGC since it was so overloaded you could never pass the roll anyway [8|]. Eventually (on about the fourth reading of that section of the rules) I finally realized that the range and load penalties extended the span of the RV rather than added to the result. Among other things, this made the thread debates about where to put super leaders in the chain of command go from a head-scratcher ("this is a no-brainer, why is everybody talking about this") to a really difficult trade study.