Hi to everyone.
As I promised here are results of my modeling of Soviet production. For those who are not willing to go through all of these numbers, short summary is: forget about crippling Soviet production by reducing industry! Only reasonable way to hurt Soviet war machine is by reducing it's manpower.This is somewhat different conclusion comparing to
Klydon's analysis.
First, please note that I didn't take into account AFV, aircraft and rail yard production. Competent Soviet player will not let AFV and aircraft factories to fall into German hands anyway. Maybe I will some day extend this analysis to include these type of factories also. Right now, I have focused primarily on armament industry and manpower. Although, you can see numbers for resources (RES), heavy industry (HI) and vehicles I didn't analyzed this in more details. My conclusion regarding HI, RES and Vehicle production, although anecdotal, is same as Klydon's. Simply, I haven't seen a game where Soviets have difficulties with HI and RES production. So let's back to armament and manpower.
Primary goal of this analysis is to put into perspective soviet mobilization efforts together with production of different equipment required by typical Soviet rifle division (RD). Why RD is important? Because RD is backbone of Soviet Army. At the beginning of operation Fall Blau (27.06.1942) RDs (together with Rifle Brigades) amounted 59% of all soldiers in Red Army (game data). This analysis will help you to get answer to questions such: How much did I hurt Soviets if I advanced that far on map in '41? What can I expect in summer '42? How much is Moscow important as source of manpower? Etc.
As you can read from my previous post (#6) I have divided map into three zones. Each zone represent area which can be taken by German player at some tempo. I have chosen equally spaced intervals of eight turns for each zone, so Germans will, at beginning of turn 25 (first blizzard turn), have all three zones in their hands. Exact zone boundaries are presented at the map (post #6) and in
table 1.
In
table 2 you can see production numbers for each zone.
Table 3 represent reduction in Soviet production after fall of each zone. Here are first assumptions which I needed to make:
1.) I have no idea how much population will migrate from cities. My best conservative guess is 30%. So if I get this number far off reality please let me know and I will correct figures.
2.) Numbers in table 3 represent case of no industry evacuation. Scenario 2 will correct this (see
table 6).
3.) Evacuated manpower factories are not damaged and are operational immediately after evacuation. This will not be a case in real game but I don't think numbers will be significantly different. In my ongoing PBEM game I managed to take a lot of territory, but at start of blizzard Soviets don't have significant number of damaged factories (see post #1).
To get more realistic numbers I have calculated average production in each zone during this hypothetical scenarios (
table 4). For example, it is more realistic to assume that Zone 1 will produce materials and manpower until it is completely taken, then that it will produce at 100% capacity for eight turns and on turn 9 it's production to drop to zero.
Table 5 provides final production results (mens, tons, etc.) instead of production points. Table 5 figures are based on non-evacuation of Soviet industry (worst case scenario).
Table 6 shows results of hypothetical scenario where Soviet player managed to relocate 50% of his industry.
Finally, in
table 7 we have comparison between historical start of 1942 campaign and hypothetical worst case scenario for Soviets. Scenario assumes that there is no fighting between turn 24 and turn 54 and hence no Soviet losses in that period. To see full effect of Soviet worst case scenario we should subtract Soviet losses in men between turns 25-54 from number of recruited soldiers. What are typical Soviet losses in that period anyway? I'm inviting other players to feed some numbers from their own experience.
Also, previous numbers (
table 5) are adjusted to take into account that most of soviet men and armament points (59%) will be used for making rifle divisions up to 70% TOE (which is historic average by game data). Rest of 41% will be used for something else (support units...).
In above scenario, Soviets will have enough armaments points to equip 985 Rifle Divisions with 70% TOE, but men for only 407 RD. Even worst case scenario, lost of all armament points west of maximum possible German line of advance in '41 (61,4% of total armament factories), will not cripple Soviet armament production. In such case they will be able to produce enough equipment for 545 rifle divisions (70% TOE). Bottleneck is manpower but not armament industry.
Number of 407 divisions is really huge one. For example, from northern edge of map to Rostov there is 123 hexes. That means that Soviets can put three hexes deep belt of Rifle Division from North to Rostov and they will still have around 30 divisions in reserve. If we take into account Soviet losses, for example of additional 1 million men only in RD's during first half of '42, we would still have enough men for 236 Rifle Divisions. Now compare this number to average of 120 to 200 destroyed rifle divisions in initial German attack (first 24 turns).
We can adjust numbers above by taking out factories from different areas from initial calculation. For example, if German player don't manage to take Moscow area, that will result in additional numbers of rifle divisions until 27.06.1942. Soviets will have additional 15 rifle divisions and much more armament points.
I hope that I made all calculations right and that I haven't made any major oversights. In attachment you can find excel file with all formulas (just change .txt to .xls extension after download). All you need is to feed some numbers or coefficients to create your own "what if" scenarios.
Comments, questions and discussion are welcome.
