ways to save trucks for red army general thread

[bigbaba]

hi folks,

i am in a intense match against pelton and in blizzard 41 i have already a truck shortage of 110k which will have a bad effect on unit MP in 42.

now in this game i plan to go to 42 mostly with cavalery corps as mobile units because of their low truck numbers. i think i will skip building tank corps in 42 to save some trucks.

now i would like to know from some pro stavka players which other ways do exist to keep the motor pool in a good condition.

keeping units at railroads, dont move them in mud, disband some tank brigades....come in mind but there are for sure more ways to keep the truck number high or as this is one of THE most important stats for red army between 43-45.

[carlkay58]

Keep all of your airbases on rail lines. Do not move them except by rail. They use up trucks very quickly.

And trucks are the most important resource after the armament point crunch is over in 42.

[schascha]

In my game against STEF 78, I set some units on static.
It's expensive on AP when you want to reactive them but you have some more trucks and AP immediatly for yours actions.
It's depend if you like to live on credit or not.[;)]

[gingerbread]

LB Air Groups can be moved to reserve - they up the required vehicles a lot when on an airbase. Use Il-2's.

Leave room for rail repair - don't stack 3 high on a repair eligible hex (though this comes later in the game when on the offence.

BTW, trucks are a means to an end, not an end in itself. What I mean is: don't go overboard just to build up the pool - no Tank Corps at all would IMO be an example of this. How & when you elect to use your reduced number of Tank Corps is where you weigh in the truck wastage.

[delatbabel]

Just get used to it. You will never have enough trucks except perhaps in late 44. It's your biggest limiting factor after APs in 42 and early 43. Like gingerbread said, not building any tank corps because they use up trucks is cutting your nose off despite your face.

Mech corps use up lots of trucks too but I still build them. So what if your army loses a few MPs in 42? By the time you have a few guards mech corps running around the board the truck shortage will be beginning to ease, and when guards mech corps hit a hole in the line the hole tends to stay hit.

[morvael]

Yes, one can learn to live with 8-12 MP per infantry unit and 35-39 in tank/mech corps. After all you will never replicate German '41 drive on Moscow, because at that time Red Army was a CV 1-2 crap, while you face CV 4-8 infantry divisions in level 3 forts backed by CV 10-30 mobile units.

[bigbaba]

thanks for the feedback so far.

i was just thinking about not building any tank corps in 42 where they are relativly useless (weak TOE). i planed to select enough tank brigades to build lets say a dozend tank corps with them later in 43 and to disband all remaining tank brigades to save trucks.

one think about using Il-2 instead of truck expensive LBA:

how one can use auto commitment to get some IL-2 into a AB instead of LBA?

which "auto commitment setting" do you need to get the Il-2 in your bomber bases?

[gingerbread]

Use schascha's idea to full extent - put the un-needed Tank Brigades on static with the intent to have them that way for the rest of the game. The ones with LL Tanks (Matilda & Val) are prime candidates. Compared to disbanding, this will net some AP and up the Guard quota.

As to auto commit to AB, I have not used it to populate AB:s, just to clear them. I would guess that a ShAD AB with appropriate range setting would populate with Tac, but I would test this out in a sand box game if I intended to use it.

I suggest you bite the bullet and do it manually. The first thing I do in a turn after checking what has happened is moving the low morale Air Groups to reserve (so as to not have them involved in an interdiction) and I do that manually.
Populating AB comes after all movement.

[schascha]

ORIGINAL: gingerbread


I suggest you bite the bullet and do it manually. The first thing I do in a turn after checking what has happened is moving the low morale Air Groups to reserve (so as to not have them involved in an interdiction) and I do that manually.
Populating AB comes after all movement.

I like too the idea of Flavius ( I don't remember exactly where I read it) to moving to reserve the air groups with Morale < Experience + 15. It's a good way to boost up your air force.

[Flaviusx]

Bigbaba, the July 42 TOE is tolerably good, and frankly the sooner you get them trained up and feed them wins the sooner they will be effective.

It is entirely possible to get 9-10 pt CV tank corps by the end of 42 this way. Ultimately, morale and win count matters more than raw TOE. A fresh tank corps is going to be crap no matter with the TOE is. And the truck situation doesn't turn around until well into 1943. You can't wait that long.

You don't need to go crazy in 42 building tank corps, 6-12. Find places where they can get easy victories. Don't let them get decisively engaged with a panzer army. They need to either hit and run with spoiling attacks, or take shots at minors or areas of the front lacking a mobile German presence. What's going to stop the panzer ball is defenses in depth with your rifle formations, not tank corps.

If anything needs to wait, it's the mech corps. Those things are the real truck hogs and I don't think it's worth building them before 1943. You can get two tank corps for the amount of vehicles necessary to to equip a single mech corps.

[Ketza]

The best way to handle Tank corps is to farm morale.

If you save your 50+ tank brigades after Blizzard and park them on refit you can use them to build 50+ tank corps.

After building them look for weaknesses in the Axis lines during 1942. Stack them up and have them participate in attacks that have a very good chance of success. After a win scoot them to the rear for safety. Rinse and repeat.

This is a much better solution then not building them at all. By the end of 1942 you should have a very nice core group of guards and higher CV tank corps. You then build a few more then stack them with your core units to farm more morale. Sometime in 1943 your tank corps will be a force that can do more then shoot and scoot.

[Gabriel B.]

If there is any consolation to you , the soviets lost about 160,000 trucks in 1941 .

you should not put up building tank corps because of it.

by the looks of it, most trucks are in units that are safely in the rear and you can protect .

Airbases : 400 -800 vehicles each , roughly 35,000.
Air Armies: 500 each , about 12,000.
Army HQ: 500 each , roughly 27,500.
Front/MD HQ : 1000 each , about 13,000.

perhaps some 70-75 % TOE setings can tone that down.

[Klydon]

To me, truck management starts the moment the Russians get their first turn and it will last most of the game.

In addition to some of the excellent comments made by others, I also will look at the 1941 Russian tank/motor divisions. They will vary wildly in the number of trucks they have. Those that are loaded, I have a tendency to shuffle off to the rear, not to save the armor, but I want to save the trucks in the unit. Units that don't have a lot of trucks (either by enemy action or by low ToE to start the game) I will use for speed bumps, etc and make sure I never have them on refit. If I think a unit loaded with trucks is about to get surrounded or otherwise smoked and I can't get it out, I will consider disbanding precisely to save the trucks. There is a price to pay for this however and that is units disbanded do not come back for free. When a tank division gets wrecked or otherwise destroyed, it comes back later as a tank brigade. Motor divisions come back as infantry divisions. While it is nice to have the "free" unit, you still lose all those trucks.

I also agree with Flav and Ketza about farming victories with your tank corps. Hit and run. Russian 1942 tank corps are good for 1-3 attacks before their CV drops down really low and you need to pull them out of the line anyway. Your goal is to get as many to guards status as possible and also to increase their experience and moral as much as possible. That really starts with the winter offensive where Russians should try to strive to get as many tank brigades to guard status as well. It takes far fewer victories to reach guard status as a brigade than a corps, but then brigades don't have a lot of punch on their own. Of course, the status of the game is such that not a lot of fighting really takes place during winter, so the point may be moot anyway. Just be aware that if you can swing it, you should be looking to run up the score as much as possible for some of your tank brigades.

Russian mech units are a far tougher prospect. The mech corps takes a pile of vehicles and again since it is a corps, it takes a lot of victories to achieve guards status. I have sort of taken the approach of forming some brigades, which don't take a ton of vehicles, and scoring as many cheap victories as I can. Unit hits guard status, it is safely stashed away from the front. Later on, I can form up mech corps and don't have to worry about trying to get them guards status. I can do this as the truck situation permits and go from there.

Lastly, if you really want to go crazy with truck stuff, you can check the ToE of regiments and battalions. Some do use a fair number of trucks, yet are perhaps not that effective or efficient. (Motorcycle regiments have over 100 I believe and are the poster child for the type of unit I am talking about). Hard to go wrong with lots of sapper regiments and tank regiments as time allows in addition to the artillery.

Speaking of the artillery, careful on the formation of a lot of big artillery units. I believe they all use a pile of trucks, so keep them on the rail lines and don't necessarily go off the deep end on what you are building.