Game engine and combat ratio need and over haul.

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: Marquo

Operation Bagration was launched on June, 22 1944, just 16 days after D-Day. Army Group Centre was very virtually annhilated, with ~ 400,000 overall casualties. The Soviets did not need the West to win, and had essentially won before the Allied Armies landed in France.

The proAxis numbers and manipulations of data posted here are but vain, wistful attempts by a minority of disgruntled Axis players to deflect attention from poor playing and inability to as of yet find tactics/stratregies to win. This is the mark of a great game: the key to winning is not easily determined.The psychic energy spent bashing this game in frustration could be put to better use: solve the puzzle instead of arguing for changes so one can win without thinking anymore.

BTW, playing many games poorly is not as good as playing a few well.

Happy Holidays,

Marquo

I had to laugh out loud at this series of statements because they are so wrong on so many levels.

Remember, I am not a fanboy of either side: I just want a game that works and has somewhat of a historical feel to it before you go launching about how I am a Axis fanboy.

First up, check the threads in the war room. Most of them revolve around German strategy. The fact is the Russian community here has done very little to work on their strats collectively but seem to call for nerfs on the Germans at every turn despite the huge advantages they have built into the game as it currently is (The Red Airforce able to smash the Luftwaffe in 1941 with ease, the ability to customize your army exactly the way you want it, almost absolutely no negatives to just running as far east as you want in 1941 and even in 1942, yet still be in the game, I could go on, but you get the point). The fact is the Russian players have had it far too easy and have not had to work at all in most of these games for a win, especially before 1.05.

The German side has solved several puzzles early in the game and it has led to repeated screams of nerfing from many in the Russian community. HQ Buildup being one example and the Lvov opening another. The HQ buildup as released was too strong and has been tweaked, but despite this, there still have been calls for further nerfing. I won't go into the screaming over the Lvov opening.

What puzzles have the Russians had to solve to make a game of it?

Next, a veiled shot at Pelton no doubt about playing many AAR's, yet I don't see anyone close to him in either experience or success as a Axis player that posts what he does and is active in the community. He was the only one winning as the Germans under 1.04 that was posting. There are some other excellent Axis players (Q-Ball, Jam, Emir, etc) but they either don't play the Axis full time or have not posted a ton. The other thing with Pelton is that while he speaks frankly and probably grates a lot of people the wrong way, he has also made suggestions to help the Russians to "get the game" right. Right away, he has said he thought the armaments multipler needed to be bumped a bit. He has made some other suggestions as well, but gets hammered as a Axis fanboy interested only in the "I win" button. Many of Pelton's suggestions fall in line with the Russian playtesters that have made suggestions to help the Germans in the past. All involved are interested in the betterment of the game, not the "one side wins" button.

Marquo, you and anyone else who think that the Western Allies did not have a heavy impact on the war in the east (either through lend lease or direct military action) are the ones living the pipe dream. The Russians would have starved in 1944/45 without help. As far as Stalingrad goes, more troops surrendered in Tunisa and while there were two German divisions in Sicily, there were more in mainland Italy. If you don't think the Allied Air campaign didn't have an effect on things, look up how much of Germany's resources were going to flak gun production by 1944.

I don't know if there are any resources on this or not, but many may wonder why if the Red army was so good and so huge by 1945 why they just didn't roll over the rest of Europe and be done with it. I know one reason was likely the Atom Bomb (although the bombs were dropped in August while the war was over in May). Oh, I know.. that biting the hand that is feeding you thing.

[TulliusDetritus]

I agree that there are two sides of the coin here. On one hand we have the ones who falsely minimized the Eastern Front (the Cold War thing aka propaganda) and then the ones who say the USSR would have defeated alone the Germans (in Berlin in may 1945: they would have gotten to the Reich perhaps in 1946, ok). Both are extremists, I guess.

Anyway, people always end up mentioning the famous American trucks. I am not an engineer but I would say that IF you can produce tanks (a sophisticated machine) you CAN produce trucks [;)] In other words, the Soviets could have perfectly produced them. But if the Americans were sending them they could concentrate on tanks. A help? Yes, indeed. But don't make it sound as if these trucks are everything.

Because with that same logic the US could not have won the war er... without the many raw materiels, food, they were importing especially from the Western Hemisphere... ergo, the US would not have won WW2 without the help of let's say Peru [:D] Not to mention the British without the many colonies.

If you are trying to say that NO country is self-sufficient, ok, big deal, as this is evident. And true, the two almost self-sufficient states in WW2 were the US and USSR. But they still needed *something from ABROAD*

So if you're going to mention the American help (and British too), mention as well the tiny irrelevant states (colonies or semi-colonies) which HELPED the western allies. The problem is... the latter is almost never mentioned... So again, we minimize the Eastern Front...

[Krec]

http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2 ... roops.html

food for thought

Krec

[Aurelian]

Ahhhh, nvrm

[randallw]

Behind a good man is always a good broad. [:D]

[mmarquo]

"The fact is the Russian players have had it far too easy and have not had to work at all in most of these games for a win, especially before 1.05"

Klydon,

This is as yet the great unknown; for all of the passionate discussions we have yet to see an AAR fought to the bitter end. Who knows whether the Soviets can get to Berlin in time to win, or not. BTW, if you want a challenge as the Soviet, play MichaelT. He has solved the Axis puzzle; I have no doubt that the game is more than winnable as the Axis. Currently I am playing TD as the Axis and every move I find my insights and abilities improve; there is a very steep learning curve for many like me. Others, albeit a blessed few, have seeminlg great insight and in their hands nothing is safe. Interestingly they do not post much.

Marquo

[RCHarmon]

The Soviets won the war.      

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Krec
http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2 ... roops.html

food for thought
Krec

You can prove anything with statistics, but there has to be a difference with 'months in combat' losing and 'months in combat' winning.

I am proud of my country's contribution to WW2, but US involvement was critical to winning, rather than just holding out, and I think that the same applies to the USSR (500,000 lend-lease trucks and jeeps mobilised the Red Army).[:)]

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: Krec

http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2 ... roops.html

food for thought

Krec

Lovely, a Ausse bashing the US. Thanks bud. No one questions the hardship faced by the Commonwealth. They were in the war from the start and were the only ones to go the distance from start to finish. Obviously you are going to take your lumps over nearly 6 years of war.

I particuarly love the idea that the German army in the west had all this high tech equipment and was full of crack formations. Nothing could have been further from the truth with much of the troop strength in the west made up of men that were not suited for the rigors of the East. (stomach divisions, requiring special diets as one example). Some of the units in the west were non German troops equipped with captured French equipment and some Russian equipment. Ammunition was limited to captured stocks. Some of the panzer divisions used rebuilt/converted tanks from the French arsenal and while useful, were not going to get much in the way of material replacements and certainly could not compare to Panthers or even Mk IV's.

While the US Navy was better prepared for war with many ships on the slips when Pearl Harbor happen and while the USAAF also had some good designs (particularly bombers) on the boards and in early production, the US Army was nowhere close to being ready for a war. The largest tank turret mounted gun on a US tank was a 37MM. Many of the components were there for a good tank (suspension, good ideas on tank engines, etc) but the design didn't exist yet and production wasn't set up either. When compared to other countries, the US Army was a joke with even the smallest country having more troops under arms than the US had. (This was the same situation in WW1 when the US had the worlds 21st ranked army and the Germans were trying figure out why they were worried about the US declaring war over submarine warefare). All this took time to fix as far as US forces go.

In many of the Allied formations the author cites, Commonwealth included, the equipment they were using was made in the US. The Sherman equipped far more than the US Army simply because no one else could produce enough tanks to fill the need.

I also have to laugh at the authors comparison of independent UK tank brigades to other countries armored divisions. Umm, if I remember rightly a British tank brigade was roughly equivalent to a US/German regiment. In the US/German army, they generally used a regiment of armor along with a regiment of infantry and the rest of the supporting arms (artillery, AT, AA, etc) to form a armor/panzer division for much of the war. For the UK, they kepted their armored brigades as independent units in many cases and attached them to infantry divisions as needed. The armored brigade had no attached infantry/supporting units, so yeah, while the brigade had as many tanks as a US/German armored/panzer division, it had nothing else.

ORIGINAL: Marquo

"The fact is the Russian players have had it far too easy and have not had to work at all in most of these games for a win, especially before 1.05"

Klydon,

This is as yet the great unknown; for all of the passionate discussions we have yet to see an AAR fought to the bitter end. Who knows whether the Soviets can get to Berlin in time to win, or not. BTW, if you want a challenge as the Soviet, play MichaelT. He has solved the Axis puzzle; I have no doubt that the game is more than winnable as the Axis. Currently I am playing TD as the Axis and every move I find my insights and abilities improve; there is a very steep learning curve for many like me. Others, albeit a blessed few, have seeminlg great insight and in their hands nothing is safe. Interestingly they do not post much.

Marquo

No game between players has been run to public conclusion for either side as far as I know simply because the outcome is already known to both parties and one side or the other doesn't care to waste the amount of time to confirm their feeling. To run one of these games to conclusion would require a ton of time investment; something players seem to be more willing to invest in a new game. It would take a close game where both sides feel they have a chance to "win" all the way through and that will be tough considering how little is known about 1944 at this point and for many Germans, they are not interested in playing a game to "win" by holding Berlin past a certain date. I don't like that myself, but I see too many games end after it becomes clear the Germans can't win outright. The other part of this mix is the steady stream of patches that fix this issue or change things to the point that players want to start over, etc.

I also did not say there are not good Russian players out there; in fact, there are several good/excellent Russians, but by and large, the community of players that make up the Russian side spend more time screaming for nerfs when the Germans come up with something instead of working on counter strategies.

[Flaviusx]

There's a lot of screaming going on in this forum, but it's mostly Axis screaming, Klydon.

[Mehring]

There's a lot of often spurious 'facts' demagogicly presented as proof of something to which they may in reality have no, little, or an opposite relation to that intended to be demonstrated. I don't think this advances anybody's understanding of the game or of history.

If we want to find out how the game can simulate historical reality why not set up some games between a handful of each side's heavyweights, and see who comes out tops, how soon and how much it costs them?

[BletchleyGeek]

Collecting accurate losses figures to compare against, say, Krivosheen, are at best a very difficult proposition and require to spend some time collecting data... and the "right" data at that.

I disregard completely the losses numbers... right now I'm counting "ground elements" split into destroyed and damaged. The figures are highly misleading since they amalgamete permanent and "temporary" losses. And these "temporary" losses are buffered and produce a trickle of "permanent" casualties when damaged elements become destroyed during the corresponding Logistics phase.

This explained the 90-10 "law" I was seeing for KIA vs Disabled in my game against Q-Ball. I eventually figured out that those immediate figures where correlated with the number of destroyed ground elements (immediate permanent losses). Germans seem to have a 70-30 law, basically because their ground elements are prone to be damaged rather than destroyed. This I think is in part because the role experience checks play in many combat-related mechanics (such as retreats) and the varying degrees of TOE% for Support squads.

There are a LOT of things which need to be revised in WitE Tactical Combat system... but drawing people to that conclusion by comparing the wrong numbers against the quite unreliable ones presented by Pelton is "forum demagogy". People should try to understand game mechanics first, then to try to figure out where exactly they're - or are not - derailing WitE w.r.t. history, and last, make their case without screaming at all.

Klydon has a very good point though... but I've come to realize that WitE engine really gives a lot of tools to the attacking side, while the defender has to make do with placement and reserve mechanics... to delay the attacker the enough so a credible counterattacking force can be assembled. Strategy discussions analogous to those done on Axis topics won't go very far... since the phasing player - if in the attack - has everything within reach to make a fool proof attack plan. The non-phasing players has very limited say on matters. And in the defence and being the phasing player, what I just said before, if you f*ck up with placement or don't use reserves at all, you can well press F12 and expect that your opponent has mercy.

In other words: the defender gameplay is very shallow, in my opinion, especially when compared with many other operational-level wargames.

[randallw]

Part of the reason why there is debating on Axis strategy and less on Soviet is the 1941 campaign begins with the Axis having the initiative; much of the Soviet strategy for 1941 is reacting, running around plugging fingers into dykes.
Axis strategy has many knowns to begin with: where to head to, what units are available, and some idea of the Soviet OOB, that sort of thing.  By the time the Soviet side has a monster ready to attack, who knows what specific month it is, the regions where the fighting is going on, and where the Germans are.

[mmarquo]

"No game between players has been run to public conclusion for either side as far as I know simply because the outcome is already known to both parties and one side or the other doesn't care to waste the amount of time to confirm their feeling. To run one of these games to conclusion would require a ton of time investment; something players seem to be more willing to invest in a new game."

How can the unknown be known before it is known? [:)] Just because a player has a "feeling" or "knows" does not mean that it is certain until at least a few have played to the end.

Marquo

[56ajax]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

German population 80 million Russian population 180 million or 2.4 to 1

I think it is misleading to just compare population numbers as the Russians used many women as combat troops. It is also important to check the numbers aged from 16 to 50 in the population; I believe the Russians had the equivalent of a baby boom in the 20's which caused a spike in the numbers of military age just when they needed them.

The only thing that saved Russia was Overlord.

Wow. Can't agree with that. Your bound to loose with an incompetent high command.

[Redmarkus5]

ORIGINAL: randallw

All of this goes back to the old question that may never be answered to everyone's agreement: are results supposed to be close to historical, even if the players don't play the game like the real leaders did?

The results need to be feasible and credible, based on the historical realities and the decisions taken by the players. A reasonably well read and intelligent person should be able to look at the outcome, even with major deviations from the historical track, and say, "Yes, that could have happened if those changes were made or those conditions were met."

[randallw]

I wonder how far that can be taken.  One book I have on the war gives the opinion that if Soviets done a better job in the fall of 1941 that would have been the death of major German offensives for the rest of the war.  Who's going to want to play the Axis side with a lacking fun-factor like that?

[DrewMatrix]

Collecting accurate losses figures to compare against, say, Krivosheen, are at best a very difficult proposition and require to spend some time collecting data

I happened to be at a History Dept Alumni dinner last year where the speaker was a faculty member whose area of research is losses (civilian and military) of the Soviet Union in WWII and the effect this had on the Soviet economy and social norms (they had so few men after the war).

This is her life's work. She's a PhD in history, about 50 years old and spends a lot of time now and particularly just post Glasnost rooting in the Soviet archives over there. That's "some time collecting data" to put it mildly.

I asked her a pretty specific question about military losses in one situation and she said "The answer isn't known, almost certainly will never be known and probably wasn't known even at the time."


The father of a friend of mine had been in the Soviet Army as an officer. He was a Jew but the Sov's were desperate for officers and used him. Pulled him out of a camp and made him an officer. He was less than enthusiastic in his fervor for Stalin and Mother Russia, though, to say the least.

He pulled his entire unit (men, trucks etc) out during a battle and they "vanished into the steppes" (and eventually got to their families and then to the west).

The situation he describes (this desertion was in late '44) was unbelievably chaotic. Do you think these guys counted as casualties? Or as "we are too busy to do a roll call just now and who knows how many people who we can't find at the moment went"? They just disappeared as far as the Soviet command ever knew.

I'm amazed there are any sort of stats.

Drew S.

[T-28A]

I'm amazed there are any sort of stats.

Working with German and Soviet archival stuff for nearly 10 years now, I can assure you that Soviet combat statistics (when preserved in archives) is often a paradigm of level of details and precision, comparing to German one [;)]
BTW, there is online database of Russian ministry of defense, covering some 30 millions of records for about 8-9 millions of Soviet KIA, MIA, prisoners of war etc from various sources (one man could be listed 2-5 times there, because he could be mentioned in several documents). There are some gaps for sure, but the vast majority of enlisted men and women is covered there, often with the description of where and how he/she was killed or died - at least I found all my KIA kinsmen there. Out of curiosity, if you tell me your friend's father's name and birth year, and if he has really deserted before the end of war, then there's good chance we could find out something about him there.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: Beezle

Collecting accurate losses figures to compare against, say, Krivosheen, are at best a very difficult proposition and require to spend some time collecting data

I happened to be at a History Dept Alumni dinner last year where the speaker was a faculty member whose area of research is losses (civilian and military) of the Soviet Union in WWII and the effect this had on the Soviet economy and social norms (they had so few men after the war).

Soviet Union victory was very expensive, much more than people in the West realize.

ORIGINAL: Beezle
This is her life's work. She's a PhD in history, about 50 years old and spends a lot of time now and particularly just post Glasnost rooting in the Soviet archives over there. That's "some time collecting data" to put it mildly.

What your friend is doing is REAL data collection I was speaking about comparing WitE losses "data" with well-known sources, such as Krivosheen Very interesting work, do you happen to have a pointer to it?