Rethinking 41-42 Blizzard

[CarnageINC]

My question is on how long does it take to refit your front.  Will you run out of reserves by the time Summer of 42 arrives?  

[ComradeP]

Bletchley_Geek: how do you measure blizzard losses? You're aware that the post logistics phase losses also include "regular" attrition I assume, so you can't determine with 100% certainty what's caused by the weather and what isn't, especially when the damaged squads end up in the transit pool or might become disabled, at which point it's impossible to see whether the damaged squad that becomes disabled was at one point damaged by the blizzard, or through attrition/combat.

-

I'm not sure what the idea is with turning refit off. You're mistaken if you think that has an effect on replacements going to the front, it just gives certain units priority. The reason replacements build up during the blizzard is because there's a hard coded decrease in the chance that units receive replacements during the blizzard (especially for units not on a functional railhead), it doesn't have anything to do with them being on refit or not.

Pulling back a bit could be a viable strategy provided you're pulling back to a location where >you< planned to go as opposed to a location where your opponent pushed you. Pulling back towards functional rail lines should also result in less damaged squads/more repaired squads due to the overall supply state improving.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
Bletchley_Geek: how do you measure blizzard losses? You're aware that the post logistics phase losses also include "regular" attrition I assume, so you can't determine with 100% certainty what's caused by the weather and what isn't, especially when the damaged squads end up in the transit pool or might become disabled, at which point it's impossible to see whether the damaged squad that becomes disabled was at one point damaged by the blizzard, or through attrition/combat.

Very good point ComradeP - I didn't factor out attrition losses, which also occur during the logistic phase. Regarding the transit pool thing, well, my understanding was that the disabled you see after your opponents' logistic phase are "permanent" disabled, that could be a great factor. Note that these numbers were obtained from 1.03, and there was that bug about stuff supposed to be sent to the transit pool not going there at all.

The method was to substract losses figures snapshots taken at the end of one of my turns and the start of the next one. This is rough, since it includes combat initiated by my opponent (along with attrition). However, my opponent didn't attack much.

I think I will repeat the exercise with another game I have right now, under 1.04 and get more accurate numbers.

[ComradeP]

What I meant with the part in my post about the transit pool: you can't track whether a squad that was damaged by the blizzard becomes disabled at some point. As soon as it's in the pool, it's a damaged squad just like any other, which makes it difficult to track to what extent the disabled of a certain turn are composed of blizzard losses.

There's also something else to keep in mind when preparing for the blizzard, and even though it's really important, not everybody seems to use it to their advantage. Blizzard attrition happens in the form of damaged elements. That's unlike regular attrition, where some elements are killed or disabled. The crucial difference is that you get a (number of)leader roll(s) before the elements might actually become disabled. Admin rolls are the rolls used for fixing damaged elements, and the admin rolls are influenced by the number of support squads compared to the requirement (100% TOE), and of course overloading a HQ will also decrease the chance of the leader successfully making the roll.

If you at least keep your HQ's near functional railheads or in cities, and thus keep them in shape, the leaders will in turn be more likely to make their admin rolls and keep their units in shape. Removing the mediocre leaders prior to the blizzard and replacing them with more capable ones (leaders with an admin rating of at least 6) will help you.

You should also think about which units you absolutely need to keep in an exposed position during the blizzard. I prefer to place air HQ's, army HQ's, Panzer corps HQ's and air bases in cities/population level 4 dot hexes. The Luftwaffe won't fly much in general so keeping some longer ranged fighters near the front is generally enough. The VVS will come out to play, but there isn't a lot you can do about that due to the decreased chance that non-Finnish Axis air missions will fly in the blizzard. I also move the Romanians back to Romania, by rail, regular movement and sea. Should you succeed in capturing Moscow, you'll have a large number of population 4 dot hexes and cities in the area for your non-combat units to hide in, aside from the garrison if it's a city.

Whether you keep the FBD units out in the open is a matter of preference. They have a lot of support squads, but they'll generally be on or adjacent to a functional railhead (the one they converted/fixed in the previous turn) so keeping them in shape should be fairly easy. The amount of supply that actually arrives at the frontline will be small, and I haven't really noticed much of a difference between fixing rail lines during the blizzard or not using FBD units (construction battalions will still fix rail lines) and just waiting until March. You'll still have a fair amount of turns between March and the summer campaign season to convert/fix rail lines. The further you've pressed forwards, the more inclined you'll probably be to use FBD units in the blizzard as losing some support squads is a minimal price to pay for keeping your rail network in good shape. If you've made more limited advances and your FBD units are already at or near the front pre-blizzard, you could move them to winter quarters.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
What I meant with the part in my post about the transit pool: you can't track whether a squad that was damaged by the blizzard becomes disabled at some point. As soon as it's in the pool, it's a damaged squad just like any other, which makes it difficult to track to what extent the disabled of a certain turn are composed of blizzard losses.

Ok, now I got it. In my current 1.04 game, my opponent hasn't conducted any attack for five turns (since Blizzard started). Seeing how disabled numbers grow during the Axis turn and factoring out attrition losses should give us some figures. Mediated, of course, by the effect of successful leader checks and nature of the German deployment. In those figures there'll be some baseline noise from damaged elements lingering from my opponent November offensives, though.

[BletchleyGeek]

Well, it seems that I lost the screenshots of the relevant screens after my moves for all but the last two turns T28 & 29 :/

Let's see the data, for the turn 28, before Soviet Moves

KIA POW WIA
349,035 22,667 790,063

and after soviet moves:

KIA POW WIA
353,300 25,043 806,297

Accumulated attrition was 100,844 for the Axis, as reported at the end of the Logistics Report.

Turn 29, before Soviet moves:

KIA POW WIA
357,536 25,413 871,750

Accumulated attrition is 105,445.

Losses suffered by the Axis due to Soviet action and its consequences would then be:

KIA POW WIA
4,265 2,376 16,234

Losses suffered by the Axis during his turn (no attacks, movement, attrition, blizzard):

KIA POW WIA
4,236 370 65,453

The attrition losses increase is 4,601, almost the sum of Axis turn KIAs and POWs, so now I start to thing that Attrition tally in the Logistics Report is either incomplete, or KIAs are being generated by some mean I don't know about.

Even considering those 4,601 to be all disabled, that leaves us with about 60,000 casualties being generated. Probably, most of them due to blizzard effects. Let's be conservative and put the number at 45,000. That's almost 3 times the number of disabled men during Soviet combat.

In my next GC I will take more careful bookkeeping (and perhaps we'll get some more detailed statistics in our reports [;)] in the meantime).

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

The reason replacements build up during the blizzard is because there's a hard coded decrease in the chance that units receive replacements during the blizzard (especially for units not on a functional railhead), it doesn't have anything to do with them being on refit or not.

Not true at all, with replasement left on you get a build-up of 350,000 mybee. With replasements off you can easly reach 650,000. I have hit 800,000 once.

[ComradeP]

Contrary to what I initially thought, generally only about 1/2 to 2/3 of logistics phase losses are actual disabled/KIA from attrition, the rest of the figure seems to be composed of damaged squads (including fatiged elements becoming damaged), so attrition isn't always as high as it seems. 100.000 attrition losses is pretty serious though, I normally had around 50.000-60.000, a ~20.000 increase due to the blizzard.

Not true at all, with replasement left on you get a build-up of 350,000 mybee. With replasements off you can easly reach 650,000. I have hit 800,000 once.

I don't place units on refit, and unless I use the TOE% settings to make sure all units are higher than their TOE% so absolutely no replacements arrive, there's still a large surplus of replacements at the end of the blizzard/winter both due to damaged elements in the pool and replacements not arriving.

Again, you can insist that what you say is right or you can believe me. Whether something is true or not doesn't depend on how many people believe it.

[larryfulkerson]

I can't imagine why in the world a person might want to turn replacements "off".&nbsp; What good does a pool build-up do?&nbsp; Are there long-term benefits to holding off on the deployment of replacements?&nbsp; Short-term it seems turning off replacements would just make your armies weaker.......a detrement.

[ComradeP]

Well, you are avoiding some blizzard losses that way as fewer elements can be damaged, but I see no reason to mess with the TOE% settings so no replacements arrive either. A few hundred thousand men tend to accumulate in any case, due to the hard coded limitations.

[Peltonx]

The numbers are generally 65k a turn, when your fighting and not just sitting for 5 turns in good positions.

In my game vs Kamil the average turn losses are 96k of which about 65k are from general winter.

In my games that have made it through winter my losses all 4 times from turn 1 to the end of blizzard was 1,500,000 +/- 100,000.

Which is amazing interseting because of who I thought did great or bad ect. Plus some games I only took 600,000 loses before winter, but by the end of blizzard I had 1,400,000 losses.

Another game I had 800,000 summer losses got kick around good during blizzard an the total was 1.6.

Basicly do the general things and winter will not be that bad.

Pelton

[ComradeP]

In my last blizzard, against the AI so with just a handful of successful Soviet attacks, I lost 504.375 men from turn 25 to after the logistics phase of turn 38. 93.022 KIA, 3136 POW, 408.217 disabled. As it was the AI, I launched about 20-30 or so successful attacks each turn, especially after the first reduction in blizzard penalties in January.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
Contrary to what I initially thought, generally only about 1/2 to 2/3 of logistics phase losses are actual disabled/KIA from attrition, the rest of the figure seems to be composed of damaged squads (including fatiged elements becoming damaged), so attrition isn't always as high as it seems. 100.000 attrition losses is pretty serious though, I normally had around 50.000-60.000, a ~20.000 increase due to the blizzard.

Well, those attrition losses - if I got right the meaning of the numbers in the Logistic Report - have been accumulated during 29 turns. That gives an average of 3,400 casualties per turn since the game started. The attrition total increase observed in turn 28 to 29 is a 50% higher than this average. Surely because of the higher overall fatigue of Axis units due to Blizzard supply reductions.