T110-The long road to Berlin - hooooper welcome

[Priapus1]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

ORIGINAL: rmonical

Holy smokes. Is it normal for an Axis player to have 870 operational tanks at this stage of the game?

This is also a side effective of the replacement AI insisting on buying cavalry and motorcycle squads in preference to rifle and motorized squads even though armaments are low. You get 5.5 motorized rifle squads for each motorcycle squad. You get 8 rifle squads for each cavalry squad. Discussed at length here: tm.asp?m=3495133.


So the manpower pool built up to 400,000 because of the sub optimum production choices of the replacement AI. This leads to lower combat strength and higher casualties in the remaining elements on the front - perpetuating a vicious spiral. Realize that 400,000 missing men were not spread evenly across the front - they were concentrated in the most heavily engaged units. In the absence of morvael's .14 fix, we have to change the scenarios per my recommendation here: tm.asp?m=3513228. Recommendations 1-3 are critical and should be non-controversial as they better reflect history. Some folks continue to be passionate about keeping German tank strength low and will fight the last 4 recommendations.

In this game I developed a refit rhythm that had only a few units on refit at a time:
-- Turn 1 move the units to be refit back and put them in refit mode. The CV is 1 or 2. These are the only units on refit.
-- Turn 2 the AI build motorcycle or cavalry squads depending on what was on refit. CV does not change or bumps 1. Leave these same units on refit.
-- Turn 3 the AI will build some rifle squads and bring the division up to a CV of 3 or 4. Send it back into action or leave it on refit for another turn.
-- Turn 4: leaving the division on refit for another turn takes the CV up to 5-7.

Withdrawing units throw a wrench into this because they will preferentially build out their most expensive element types sucking up all of the armaments points.

The Germans should have armaments AND manpower problems in 1942. This situation bears no resemblance to any possible historical result.

This game is in an epic failure as can clearly be seen. The coding simply does not work and the game crashes in 1943/early 1944, but the coding disaster starts in the summer of 1941 with 1v1=2v1.

How this could not be seen by the dev's is a complete mystery to me and most of others that have played for years and
repeatedly posted this for yrs.

The game simply is not properly coded as can be seen by AAR after AAR.

How's WitW looking?

[rmonical]

Comparing our game to the '43 Campaign Game. I have seen a lot of comments about a million extra men for the Germans. This analysis shows that of the 920,000 extra men on the German OOB, 897,000 of them end up in support squads. Roughly 65,000 made it into rifle squads. I know the numbers don't add but I'm not going to hunt for those men. What this dies suggest is the replacement AI places a higher priority on keeping support squad strength up than was historically the case. So if my Army was a 900K men smaller, riflemen would be a more scarce than in the '43 scenario. I need another stretch of mud for AFVs to recover any more. Medium tanks are very scarce.

The highlighted issue with 75mm AT guns is discussed at length here with a proposed scenario solution that seems to work with my limited test.: tm.asp?m=3510792

One other difference is the '43 scenario starts with Panzerfausts widely distributed. They did not hit the front until August, so not too bad an inaccuracy. In my game, they will likely never get wide distribution because of the swap issues. So overall, my German antitank capability is very significantly weaker than in the '43 scenario.

The Germans have thousands of aircraft of all types in the pool. I still have not figured out what I am doing wrong here. AC losses are 10206/43833. German trucks are 240K/124K verses 81K on the 43 CG!?!?! The demotorization of 14 and 36.ID is painful. Especially since the Germans have 96 Stugs in the pool that could be in those divisions as PG. The Germans have over 150 Stuh42s in the pool and only 4 43b Stug battalions. '43 CG has 9 43b Stug battalions which is about the only way to get those Stuh42s into play. There are 156 Tigers in the pool and fewer in play because one of the heavy battalions has not upgraded to the '43 TOE. Never being able to get all of the Stugs in play really bugs me because I have focused all along on keeping the Stug battalions fully engaged. Overall, the '43 scenario has three additional Stug Bns.

[rmonical]

Continuing the comparison this view shows the strongest infantry divisions and all of the mobile divisions in the respective scenarios.

[rmonical]

Discussion. This overlays our relatively straight front line over the 43 CG line. The Axis hold Leningrad and the Soviets hold more of the Ukraine. This makes sense in terms of my priorities in 41 (Leningrad) and my inability to get a strategic breakthrough in '42.

[Priapus1]

In many TOE's there are too many support squads, often more than is actually required (despite later german TOE's reducing combat units due to historic manpower shortages). It smacks of lazy design tbh.

[Walloc]

Rmonical do u have any save from around turn 55?

The 1 mio men more was compared to the 42 OOB, not as in ur case u dont see overinflated OOBs later u do. When I compared my 2 games to the 42 OOB i had respctivly 485k and 460k more Manpower in rifle/mot squads out of around 900k ish more OOB strength.
The is a natual limit as in Hiwi only go in support. So that part of the manpower that comes extra, will naturally only go support squads.

Will be interresting too se some stats on ppl commign out of the reduced blizzard and see what teh results are there.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

[rmonical]

Rmonical do u have any save from around turn 55?

Server game so no saves.

This was a regular blizzard game. German manpower T55 was 3.6 million. IMHO, reasonable because I ran like hell in the south and had the Finns and Valdai in the north. At T55, my on map manpower and rifle squad counts were already falling as documented here: tm.asp?m=3495133.

I started counting on map rifle squads at T80 and there were almost 30K. In 42' CG, there are slightly over 30K at T55. Between T55 and T80, on map manpower dropped from 3.5 million to 3.2 million. I suspect rifle squad counts at T55 were roughly consistent with the different tempo of this game.

Once we started recovering at T78, over the next 15 turns 340k of the 400K built up in the manpower pool went into support squads. Looking at this, it appears to me there was a shortfall of about 7700 rifle squads and then support unit production kicked in.

[Walloc]

Its been a while since my games. I Wonder if changing stuff about upgraded and such if there has been doen some thing to the rule/sytem where support squads can get converted into rifle squads. I saw frequently such messaages in the log.

Do u see such?

Rasmus

[rmonical]

Not yet. Except for the LW field divisions, support TOE% is even or slightly behind rifle squad. I suspect this will change as hooooper picks up the pace of his attacks.

[Walloc]

I saw such alrdy in 42 so if u dont see that now, it suggest some thing has changed, either by choice or inadvertedly.

Rasmus

[rmonical]

This is the situation as of T109. Soviet attacks have been steadily increasing in scope and effectiveness. OKH is not able to counterattack them all.

[rmonical]

There was a decent breakthrough T109 that was bottled up and a tank corps surrounded.

[rmonical]

Relatively low risk to leaving artillery exposed. Roughly 8% casualties.

[rmonical]

T111 An example of the back and forth the Wehrmacht can still create when the Soviets move out of their forts. Medium tanks are very rare. Totenkopf is the unlabeled unit below.

[rmonical]

T111 stats. Rifle squads are maintaining at higher than historical. AFVs continue at 1000 below historical. 75mm AT guns remain a staggering 80% or 2500 below historical with no recovery in sight. The Luftwaffe is roughly at historical numbers. The Soviets air force is running 200% of historical. With this 6x disparity in numbers, the Luftwaffe is starting to take much heavier casualties. Maybe it will start to eat into that 4700 aircraft surplus.

[Disgruntled Veteran]

ORIGINAL: rmonical

T111 stats. Rifle squads are maintaining at higher than historical. AFVs continue at 1000 below historical. 75mm AT guns remain a staggering 80% or 2500 below historical with no recovery in sight. The Luftwaffe is roughly at historical numbers. The Soviets air force is running 200% of historical. With this 6x disparity in numbers, the Luftwaffe is starting to take much heavier casualties. Maybe it will start to eat into that 4700 aircraft surplus.

RMonical,

How do you factor in all the other 75mm guns in comparison? There is like 3-4 variations of the 75mm gun: Field gun, infantry gun, AT gun, and maybe one more. Did the Heer actually have 3 different 75mm guns or does this represent different training with the same type of gun? If so does this fill the void of 75mm gun production? Just wondering.

[rmonical]

How do you factor in all the other 75mm guns in comparison? There is like 3-4 variations of the 75mm gun: Field gun, infantry gun, AT gun, and maybe one more. Did the Heer actually have 3 different 75mm guns or does this represent different training with the same type of gun? If so does this fill the void of 75mm gun production? Just wondering.

this is the AT gun, the others do not address this need. See tm.asp?m=3510792

[rmonical]

T113 - Axis strength is falling and Soviet is stable. The front is slowly moving West but the Axis have not broken anywhere yet. The Soviets are making greater gains, but they are coming at a cost as the units are more exposed. Both those pockets were decisively broken. Still a lot of back and forth. One nice thing for the German is the results in 1943 are very consistent. I don't think I lost a battle this turn. 2-1 CV seems to produce very consistent results. In 1941, the results are all over the map.

[rmonical]

T113 - battle reports. A lot of back and forth. The hold results for Hooooper are misleading because he does a lot of low odds attacks. He has manpower to spare.

[rmonical]

T114 - partisan war update