Soviet Vehicle Situation 1941 & Onwards ?

[c00per]

I just started a game in 1941 playing the soviets and noticed they are in a massive deficit with vehicles even before shipping the facilities to the east. I have found myself disbanding motorised, armour, air field HQ, corp HQ (which yes I know get removed later) and moving a lot of aircraft especially bombers to reserve. Is this as intended for the game design as soviets ?

[Lobster]

Stalin had it in his head that there would be a two week opportunity to mobilize before Germany attacked. As his proof he held up what had happened previously in Poland and the other nations Germany occupied without a fight. He would make demands. Set deadlines. Then if the demands were not met, invade. This is what Stalin thought would happen in a Germany vs Soviet scenario. Which at face value was a stupid thing to think. Why would Hitler give a nation as large as the Soviet Union two weeks to mobilize?

In this two week period of mobilization civilian transport was to be doled out to the military to motorize and mechanize the mobile formations and allow artillery units to have a means to move. This plan was trash as soon as the Germans crossed the border. Not only was there no time to send trucks and tractors to military formations, much of it was lost almost immediately, having been over run by fast moving German formations. So no, you will never have enough to mobilize everything the Soviets wanted to mobilize. They were too busy trying to replace what was lost in the first two weeks of the war while attempting to slow down the Germans.

I believe that the Soviets would have built more transport for themselves if there had been no lend lease agreement. But even before lend lease there was a pre lend lease aid to the Soviets that began as soon as the war with Germany began that was paid for in gold and other minerals. Since the first protocol began in October I would think the Soviets understood they would not have to build as much transport and could instead concentrate on vehicles of a more offensive nature.

The bottom line is, you will have to use horses the entire war. There should never be enough motorized transport for the Soviets. It's not really a game design, it's history.

[chaos45]

Basically you will start the game short....become flush with trucks from mobilization right before winter 1941 then be low by the end of the winter and should be just short or around there for most of 1942 then over the winter of 1942 you will become extremely short of trucks...then Lend-lease really kicks in, in 1943 and your truck siutation slowly starts to improve.

You will really have to watch how many Mobile Corps and units you build you build in 1943 though.

[Gabriel B.]

It is because of the the mechanised corps .

at full toe 30 mot div =63,130 vehicles
90 tank divisions= 221,220 vehicles

that is more than the entire vehicle park of soviet army prior to mobilisation .

Even thou some tank div lack armor , they need about 1400 vehicles each .

you can see this, if you atempt to temporary motorize a rifle or mountain division .

Edit . small corection , the armor divisions number is 61 (149,938 vehicles).

[Denniss]

One should never disband mot or tank divs as they downgrade to rifle divs or tank brigades. They may have some use as fire brigades early on but most keep them in the rear training.