ORIGINAL: Wild
But in this case nobody responds to the Axis players concerns except to deny that there is any validity to our complaints.
Because not even amongst the Axis players, there is agreement that these are truly concerns. I am predominantly an Axis player, and although Pelton and Heliodrus do have an occasional point, I see things often in much more favorable light and disagree with many of their opinions. However, the way Pelton and Helio state things, especially this time, really hurts the cause.
Having a game option to play with fixed production or allow players on both sides to manipulate factories, and R&D as done in WitP/AE for the Japanese would add a huge factor to the game, and something I dearly miss from old WiR or AE. It allows more reason/fun for the German player to hang on, either just for playing with new toys, or hoping (in futility) to change something to prevent the outcome. I believe this is a key why many players in WitP play the Japanese side, although they know that they still will be whipped in almost every case -- it is a different sort of fun, derived from the way, rather than the goal of the game. Hopefully future titles in this series will start to introduce this, until hopefully one day a War in Europe will really be done that gives a full production system on par with AE.
A lot of all the discussions about Axis versus Soviet benefits are based on opinions and expectations. For example the "C&C benefits". What do exactly you expect, how should "superior C&C" manifest?
AP cost for reassigning divisions is a paper act, and could ideally be cheap for both sides. But administration is something that the Germans did not really excel in. Yet it is what Helio is upset about. What is missing is the consequences from reassigning, that for a turn or so the administrative machine or reserve functions don't run as smoothly anymore until all the new communications are worked out and extra penalties apply to supply etc. Here the Germans could even be a little better off. However, that whole area is not implemented.
This does not mean that German C&C is worse, or that they have been given a disadvantage, but administration is made more difficult (although even for that a good argument was made). The devs could lower that, but then also the AP pools should be lowered to adjust to a corresponding level -- and I prefer it the way it actually is as I will have more flexibility/AP for other jobs (fort zone building, HQ build-up, motorization, support unit shuffling, etc.). However, fairer would likely be adjusting it down, which would unfortunately mean removing one Axis benefit.
What is implemented very definitely is superior German generalship, manifesting in some 10-20% better dice rolls on average (see the thread by... a short while ago). And that is what is claimed historically; although there is of course no direct way to project the soft claim of "better generalship and C&C" onto exact quantifiers (say Gen'ls ratings from 1-10) that then again must be converted by some function into specific effects, be it in linear or exponential or whatever fashion. You can design such a function so that a just 1 pt./10% better leader rating leads to no benefit at all, or amplifies all benefits by an order of magnitude. For example those ~15% better chances for successful dice rolls apply to so many areas, from supply to combat, that the effect adds up to a significant benefit beyond these 15% (i.e. it is a non-linear problem). I think they are clearly visible looking at average MP or combat bonuses.
But what exactly is your expectation of "better" here? Do you expect a third world army that will start running at the sight of a grey uniform? Or were the Russians perhaps in their core, despite the Stalinist cleansing of the officers corps, an organized, professional army that was just caught off-balance in the initial phase? As such, I believe, the benefits are there, and they are very reasonable. The Germans were no supermans after all, and neither were the Russians absolute starters in this business.
It would also be an added-value to be allowed to create some corps HQ, support units and maybe even some divs as German, or prevent the auto-rebuild of destroyed ones (the latter is indeed a source of gamey-ness as I believe Pelton correctly identified). Also things like the changing of slots for tanks and equipment, like it is already implemented for planes, would be a nice features. If I understand the production model correctly, average rates have been implemented in this game. Then one catch would be the relationship to real-life rates, that probably peaked or steadily rose to plateau levels. So initially, the "averaged model" must produce more, and later lower numbers, meaning that initially the pool will for a while have tanks that shouldn't be there IRL. So maybe the true underlying problem may not be having tanks in the pools we cannot assign, but the fact that those tanks don't even belong there that early.
Seems like some things in this game in this game, such as production model, supply treatment, or the lack of reaction mechanics for the defender, are just very crude compared to the love to detail represented in the combat engine and in so many other aspects, and that of course forms a stark and annoying contrast. On the other hand, this is a niche game and as such it will already have to be more expensive even at identical quality compared to a mass-market title; asking for a state-of-the-art gem like AE to be produced in one shot would probably mean having to abide with a price that would be a factor higher. So for a reasonable cost, I feel this product provides a reasonable value.
