Disbanding artillery and AA units - is this really how things should be?

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: squatter
But sadly no player with any knowledge of the game will use Fortified Zones in the line - he will use them for digging, and then disband before the Russians can 'unwrap' them.

I think my opponent learnt well the lesson. The point is that surrender/shattered results seem to me to be the ones that provide with the highest probability of capturing equipment. I would be very surprised that an average Axis player doesn't find by October 1941 that he's captured a huge pile of Soviet equipment.

[squatter]

"I think my opponent learnt well the lesson. The point is that surrender/shattered results seem to me to be the ones that provide with the highest probability of capturing equipment."

that is true, but it still doesn't tend to yield results like you've posted. Surrenders usually yield in the region of, say, 8 or 10 pieces of captured equipment per division, in my experience.

[Lrfss]

ORIGINAL: Brad Hunter

ORIGINAL: Klydon

I will disband units for both sides. A lot of what I do is to have fewer, but better support units. For the Russians, I typically will disband battalions because they are not as effective as regiments. Would you rather have 2 battalions of sappers or 1 regiment? I want the regiment. AA units. Is a 20 mm AA unit really that effective? I would rather have the available resources/manpower going into something more effective. If I had my choice, I would not be wasting my time on anti-tank rifles. Give me regular rifles or machine guns.

I can't remember which ratio went to what, but in 1944, the Germans were using ridiculous amounts of materials and industrial capacity to produce AA guns. Keep in mind that AA guns rarely caused casualties of more thank 5% on any given raid, etc and you wonder what the Germans were thinking of. It was the desire to have something, anything to fight back with that led to this, even if it was not that effective. Part of it was the fuel situation as well of course.

Hitler was also very reluctant to disband units to bring others up to strength. He would rather have 3 divisions at 33% and treat them as "divisions" than to disband 2 divisions to bring the one remaining division up to strength. Disbanding Luftwaffe field units was unthinkable, but at least the Germans have the option to do that in this game. Having more units is not necessarily a good thing if they are all understrength and all those units are looking for replacements and equipment. IMO in this game, the German has to work hard at keeping his army "right sized" and that includes disbanding units so that the remaining units are stronger and less manpower is tied up in support elements. 

Keep in mind that German doctrine allowed for engaging ground targets with the smaller AA guns - the 2 cm Fla was particularly useful.

I have'nt looked at the combat messages beyond a few times in extreme detail level, however does the game take this fact into account and are AA weapons used to modify the ground fight? Not just speaking of Dual Purpose weapons like some of the 88's and nothing related to the AA aspect of modification but the ground combat modification/value?

[Mynok]

I know they fire in ground combat. How much they affect it is a different question.

[Sabre21]

I don't disband anything as the Germans. I know Pieter likes disanding arty units, but I don't. I consider them too important to do so, and now even more with some of the changes in the numbers and priority that su's can be committed once 1.04 comes out.
 
Andy

[ComradeP]

And so we can again see that everybody has his own strategy. I prefer concentration of forces in the smallest number of units possible, other prefer to keep more support units around.

[Mynok]

Well, in the game against Oleg, I've done some tweaking of support units into danger zones and will see what the results are. I'm especially interested in seeing how many guns I lose in battles where he brings the tube farm.

[squatter]

Mynok: Unless directly attached to your divisions, you may find much of your SU force is useless in your game against Oleg until the 1.04 patch sorts out the defensive SU commitment bug.

[Mynok]

Sure, but the bug doesn't bite all the time as I've seen support units on defense. I did go through and push a bunch of non-artillery down the chain however. [:'(]

[Aditia]

I don't see SU benefiting from forts nor terrain anyway

[Mynok]

Yes, that is mentioned in the 1.04 list of changes. Don't recall the details now. I was referring to the defensive support bug.