GC 76mm (Sov) vs Ketza (Ketza Welcome)

[Manstein63]

Only ever played around with them in the Bagration Scenario against the AI but I didn't think that you could form them before 1943. You can use them offensivley in 2 ways they can attack on their own against units a hex away or as many prefer you can combine their fire power with either hasty or deliberate attacks just make sure that all units belong to the same Army otherwise the negative modifier may apply. As to if you should be building them just yet I wouldn't until the frontline has stabalised. However if you do keep them away from the front line & in refit mode until they have a built up enough TOE. Not sure about their use in defense I think you might be right that you would need to put them into reserve for them to have any effect. but I was under the impression that they were purely for offensive use.
Manstein63

[Klydon]

I would not call myself a Stavka guru, but I agree with many of Manny's points. The front line is pretty fluid in a negative sort of way for the Russians in 1942, so while they could start behind the lines, they could also quickly get smoked. The other thing to consider is I am not sure what shape your factories are in. Are they all back on line and up to speed? To me, the Russians want to concentrate on the basics of getting their rifle strength up and also each unit has a good ToE number on artillery, etc. Trying to form big artillery units like that may put a lot of strain on armaments, etc.

[Pawlock]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

OK, enough of the boring stuff, I though I would give a few comments on my revised plan for 1942. It is only the first real turn of the 1942 campaign, and already my entire 1942 plan is in shreds!

I had planned to hold the south (from Stalino south) strongly, as well as at least the gates of the Crimea, to make it more difficult for him to threaten the south, and to provide a potential launch pad for counter-attacks on the right flank of any attacks he mounted in the center.

So much for that plan, it is pretty much shredded now. At this point it looks like he is making two main thrusts, the one in the south, and one near Smolensk near Moscow. Both of them have serious potential to cause problems; for now I've kept most of my combat power near his southern attack, although I have shifted various units back towards Moscow, and my shift more next turn.

I basically have three objectives at this point, which are contradictory to a certain extent:
1) Keep a few key geographic locations (Moscow, Baku, etc.);
2) Avoid large-scale encirclements; and
3) Pick a spot (soon!) where I can seize the initiative and get him to react. I'm looking at one situation now, but think it is a bit early to do anything, I want him fully committed before I try to do anything.

I thought I'd share one of my more bone-headed decisions in this game. While the results were not catastrophic, they were not good, and probably completely predictable. Anyway, I thought I would start trying to beat up his transports and bomber so that he has less refueling ability if he moves into the steppe. I found one hex with three airbases just stacked with all sorts of aircraft, including bombers and transports. Looked to me like they were parked wingtip-to-wingtip, and I could hardly avoid doing some significant damage. Before ending my turn, I decided to bomb this hex; unfortunately, it was either out of fighter range, or maybe all my fighters had run out of mileage, whatever. So I thought I'd send in the bombers without fighter cover, recognizing and accepting that I'd suffer heavy losses, but figuring that I'd do at least some damage, and he could afford it less than me. Anyway, here were the results:

Ouch! Not pretty at all, but the good news is that this represents less than one week's production of PE-2, so their numbers should bounce back pretty quickly.


That's about it for now, not really looking foward to getting the next turn from Ketza, not sure what he might do.

ROFL,,I used to do that myself, end up sending bombers unescorted. Anyway, not sure if you know but with one of your airbases selected if you hover the mouse over target hex it will tell you in the bottom how many bomber and fighters are in range. It has saved me that embarressment since.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Pawlock
ROFL,,I used to do that myself, end up sending bombers unescorted. Anyway, not sure if you know but with one of your airbases selected if you hover the mouse over target hex it will tell you in the bottom how many bomber and fighters are in range. It has saved me that embarressment since.

Doh, didn't know that, will try to use in the future. Although in this case I shift-clicked on the enemy airbase and knew I wouldn't have any fighter support, just thought the losses would be a bit lighter...

Thanks much for the tips on the arty units, sounds like I should hold off for now.

Not sure about the factories, how can I even tell, particularly with armaments, should there be spare armament and HI points in the pool?

[Klydon]

You can look at your industry in your cities. If it has percentages next to it (like 63% for instance), then it is not at full capacity yet. If you are starting to accumulate desirable guns in your pool, that is a good thing depending on what they are (anti tank rifles, 45 mm anti tank guns and such are not really desirable in my eyes). I would consider looking over your support units and if you don't have much for sapper regiments, that would be something I would get busy with in preparation for when you get corps, you can look to attach them directly to the corps. Very handy against dug in Axis and it will help beef up your units. I don't know that I would go nuts with tank support units. Their ToE has a lot of worthless light tanks and some T-34's. Eventually, tank regiments will become available (and the battalions will upgrade to those slowly) and are better (I like using them with cav corps for instance).

[76mm]

OK, thanks for the tips, will take a look once I get the turn back. They really need to establish a way for players to look at their last turn once they've sent it.

[Klydon]

One of the many reasons I don't care for server games. 

[76mm]

Other than this one issue, I find the server games very convenient; they need to allow us to save a "dead" copy of the game on our PCs so we can review at our leisure.

[76mm]

I'm still really scratching my head over the air combat results (well, all combat results, really, but I don't really quibble with the casualties associated with most of the land combats).

Look at post 153 above, the last table that I posted. Overall, I had 20x more planes in the air than he did, and he lost 1 plane, while I lost 92. I mean really, WTF is going on?

[Zebedee]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

I'm still really scratching my head over the air combat results (well, all combat results, really, but I don't really quibble with the casualties associated with most of the land combats).

Look at post 153 above, the last table that I posted. Overall, I had 20x more planes in the air than he did, and he lost 1 plane, while I lost 92. I mean really, WTF is going on?

How many of your air losses are from flak 76mm or have you deducted them from your totals already? It's interesting that the only times the Germans seem to lose multiple planes are when one can assume from the numbers that they're providing ground support (battle 12 from your tables is a very interesting one which might be worth studying - what happened there?!).

[76mm]

I don't know how to deduct flak losses, is it possible from the after-battle screen? The battles I am referring to, however, were defensive ground support battles (ie, over my own units), so I would have expected that my losses to flak would have been rather light (although I'm not really sure how it works). In any event I'm not really complaining about my losses (although they seem kinda heavy), I'm really complaining about him suffering almost no losses even though outnumbered 20:1!

Battle 12 in post 150 was an attack on Stalino (or the adjacent city), which was only held by an FZ; I didn't put any AA units in the FZ or in the city, I wonder if the computer put some AA in there (I doubt it)? I had a lot more planes in this battle than he did, but that is also true of many other battles in which he didn't suffer any losses. IIRC, many of those 17 losses were bombers, maybe he was out of fighter range at that point (it was one of the last battles, ie, furthest from his lines).

Battles 12 and 13 in that table are both interesting, because they were both attacks in FZs in cities, and in both battles I had air supremacy (according to my defition (at least 100 more planes than the opponent). My CVs in those battles increased by an average of 48%, rather than the usual decrease. I wish I could figure out what happened in those battles, and repeat! (I also wish I had put at least a brigade in each of those hexes, but that's another matter...)

I hate to harp on about air losses, but to me it looks like losses are OK when both sides commit to GS (ie, the first table), but when only the defender commits GS, and the attacker only commits fighter intercepts (the second two tables), the losses look far too light for the attacker.

[cpt flam]

for air losses you will see in 2 different parts
in the losses screen you will have Flak and Operatinnal losses (total for each)
in the CR concerning air groups you will have the kills [8D]

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: cpt flam

for air losses you will see in 2 different parts
in the losses screen you will have Flak and Operatinnal losses (total for each)

I guess this is in the Losses report, not in the combat results screen, so I can get the flak losses for a whole turn, but not for individual battles, is that correct? This info would still be helpful, so I will take a look next turn, but all of this data analysis is a huge time sink.

[Zebedee]

Appreciate the tables and effort you put into them - wouldn't regard them as 'harping on' but as a player providing some hard numbers and asking questions. They've certainly got me thinking about the air war more as those CV swings are fairly dramatic. Far more so than I'd have suspected (obviously lots of factors going in, but there does seem to be strong causality with the air combat - perhaps because of its impact at the very start of the ground combat rounds?).

The system in WitE reminds me a lot of WitP. A lot of the same basic factors are there. One thing which would always cause losses to sky rocket in WitP was using overly fatigued and/or under-experienced air units. The ops losses would be quite dramatic in either case and compounded if both were true.

Started up a new AI 41 GC and am seeing perhaps the same thing. The Soviet op losses are quite something given that I'm barely through the first stage of bombing their airfields on turn 1 - of course they're dwarfed by the losses on the ground but approaching 70 ops losses in a week already is quite something. German ops losses are also high (especially so as a proportion of total losses - something approaching 2/3) as I've dialled down the requirement to fly in order to hit as much as I can. The units taking the worst of the losses seem to be those with 30+ fatigue (a familiar statement for those who have played WitP and UV) and/or flying at max range.

Guess what I'm trying to understand is whether or not you're seeing abnormally high losses in aircombat or whether you're seeing relatively low experience pilots flying at max range etc. crashing into telephone poles returning to base. Mehring's made some interesting points elsewhere on how you can attrit the LW as the SU by attriting them through waves of attacks. Your initial losses will hurt but the dynamic seems very similar to the WitP one - one side has a limited number of high skill units which will degrade from attrition and who also benefit from 'better' equipment, the other a lot of low skilled units who can be trained up and whose equipment will improve over time.

Anyways, really just wanted to say appreciate you looking to the skies in your AAR and to wish you the best against your opponent.

[kirkgregerson]

I'm not going to go into lots of detail and will try and post my results. But what I've been seeing in my AI and human games vs Soviets is almost the opposite of what you've been seeing with combat results. Nothing even resembling the kind of battle results you've posted. I've been taking lots of loses against much smaller Soviet forces. Yes, I can get them to retreat but at a high cost to troops and arty. So something is very odd with your game IMO, because I don't even come close to that and in my AI game I've run some turns over and over and seen the same results to prove there's no fluky stuff going on.

What version did you start the game with (my games started with first version of v1.04)?

[76mm]

Zebedee, thanks for the comments. I have to confess that until the last couple of turns I have almost completely ignored the air war, but partly that is because I've tried to bomb units and air bases, and either got virtually no result or lost a bunch of planes. I also read Mehring's comment and have to wonder if my air force was simply improperly deployed at that point. For instance, it sure looks like you need to have decent fighter cover!

At this point I have not really looked at air attrition losses vs combat, I guess I will try to do so. I think I've mentioned that I don't really pay attention to morale/experience when I assign air units from the NR--in my airforce, if it flys and has 10 or more aircraft, it's ready to fight (although perhaps not very well).

As far as losses, I've pretty much posted what I've seen; the only air battles I have not posted are my interdiction battles, which are pretty much identical to the last table I posted: a handful of German fighters opposing a couple/several dozen of my planes and shooting down a bunch of them without any losses. This fits into the same pattern I've described above.

I'll try to post some screenies showing the morale/experience of units in the relevant air bases next turn, if I get a chance. All of this reporting crap is starting to take more time than the game!

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: kirkgregerson

...what I've been seeing in my AI and human games vs Soviets is almost the opposite of what you've been seeing with combat results. Nothing even resembling the kind of battle results you've posted. I've been taking lots of loses against much smaller Soviet forces. Yes, I can get them to retreat but at a high cost to troops and arty. So something is very odd with your game IMO, because I don't even come close to that and in my AI game I've run some turns over and over and seen the same results to prove there's no fluky stuff going on.

What version did you start the game with (my games started with first version of v1.04)?

I've seen your posts in other threads and wanted to respond. Hmmm, more data, this might get interesting. One thing I've noticed about Ketza's spearhead units is that he has lots of pioneer and arty units participating in his battles. Between that and the air support, I think that accounts for most of his success.

Any games you're playing against the AI would not show this, because the AI is not too bright and does not assign arty, pioneers, or air properly. In a game I'm playing against the AI, by Feb 1942 I have massive air and arty superiority in almost every battle, where it is very different in this game.

Next turn, I will try to count arty (I can't bear to count pioneers too, but trust me, he's got at least two units participating in most of these attacks).

As for versions, I think we started under 1.02, and have patched regularly; I am currently on 1.16 (or whatever the current patch is).

EDIT: Just re-read my post and realized that my argument is backwards, since the AI sucks at assigning SU and air, you should be really beating it up. I therefore see two possible conclusions:
1) You are not paying sufficient attention to air, arty, and pioneer resources; or
2) the combat model is simply a bigger, blacker box that anyone has hitherto suspected.

Pls let us know!

[76mm]

I was confused with the patch numbering, I guess we started with 1.02 and I'm now using 1.04 beta 16 (I think).

I got the turn from Ketza this morning, will try to post some screenies, analysis, and commentary tonight.

[76mm]

Here is the beginning of Turn 55:

First, I took a quick look to see if any fresh disasters had befallen me, and luckily, nothing too disasterous. Here are the two main areas:
Smolensk:

He didn't get very far with these attacks, I will have to look at them more closely...

South:


I also noted that I had seven interdiction attacks, which sounds OK until you realize that I have interdiction set to 300% in the air doctrines settings. Maybe I should bump it up to 400%, especially in light of the relatively light losses:


I'm sure there is some lonely soul out there who is pining for a look at my air units' morale and experience levels, so I thought I would oblige you for the Western Front, SW Front, and Transcaucuses Front, which are the three defending against Ketza's attacks right now:
Western Front:


SW Front:


Transcaucuses Front:


Hey, it's not the Luftwaffe, but they're doing OK...

Someone had asked my about flak losses, so I looked at the air losses screen for the first time:

These current turn losses are presumably only those from his turn, from GS, fighter intercept, etc. No flak losses for either side. Overall, I was shocked by the number of operational losses for both sides--25% for the Sovs and a whopping 33% for the Germans! Sounds like a better maintenance program is in order! And I lost 25 recon planes? WTF?! We'll take a more detailed look at some of the air losses for the GS battles as we go.


I also looked at my production, and everything is basically at 100% except for the stuff that I moved out of Moscow in the last few weeks when I got scared. Also, I noticed that I have more than 800k armament points in the pool, is that good? I think I need to start building arty SUs, so that is the plan unless someone tells me it is a mistake.

[76mm]

Here's a quick look at the Smolensk battle results:

A couple of interesting points:
1) Standard pattern repeated--his CVs inflated by 38%, mine deflated by 62%. Ho hum...
2) He had NO pioneers in these battles, so they should not be the decisive factor in these results. Likewise, I had air supremecy in almost all of the battles, so air does not seem to be the decisive factor.
3) So what does that leave? Orcs, of course! No, actually, artillery: He outnumbered my artillery by almost 4.5:1. (kind of embarrassing for a Sov player actually, that needs to be rectified!).
4) Look at the air sorties and losses: my aircraft outnumbered his by more than 31 times, and yet I took 10x more losses than he did. In fact, other than in one battle where he lost six planes, he didn't suffer ANY losses, while I lost more than sixty aircraft. I'm sorry, this is just wrong...he was outnumbered more than thirty times for chrissake! Devs, please acknowledge that we've got a problem here...
5) Note that he had some powerful stacks involved here--37 CVs, which I think is the strongest I've seen. BTW, my defenders were generally single brigades, a couple of single divisions). His panzers attacked here, but weren't on the front line at the end of the turn, more on that later.