WitE 2

[Kharkov]

Even though I bought WitE I only dabbled in it; the amount of time required to play and amount of counters put me off. However I always thought that instead of taking on the whole German side or Soviet side in the grand campaign, it would be more my playstyle just to control a subset of units, maybe an army or Army Group and letting the AI play the other units on my side. Maybe some objectives could be given to my command based on the overall ambitions of the sides AI.

I'm sure this facility was present in the GG's Pac War game but maybe my memory is getting confused...

[Rongor]

ORIGINAL: Kharkov
However I always thought that instead of taking on the whole German side or Soviet side in the grand campaign, it would be more my playstyle just to control a subset of units, maybe an army or Army Group and letting the AI play the other units on my side.

That would actually be great. Imagine to hand over the control of the adjacent Heeresgruppe to a buddy in Multiplayer.
Imagine 3+ guys sharing the work, each one doing an army or Heeresgruppe or the Air force. And the enemy players doing the same. What a great Multiplayer experience that would be[&o]

[morvael]

I think WitW Torch expansion allows 2 players per side, one doing air, the other doing land. Unfortunately no way to divide land forces between more players.

[Rongor]

yep, that is why we can only hope for future projects like WITE2 to maybe offer something like that. Personally I would prefer sharing land forces so much more than splitting into dedicated players for land and air.

[RedLancer]

Separating OOB command is very difficult.

I'm wondering whether increased MP would be possible/worthwhile not by separating Army Group / Front control but the role of Commander / Chief of Staff / Logistics. Someone does all the OOB tidying and coord, one person is only able to move the counters and then the expert does the logistics.

[Mehring]

A dedicated industry/production/strategy slot would be good in a team game.

[Icier]

A word of advice, play with people you don't know

[IslandInland]

ORIGINAL: Kharkov

Even though I bought WitE I only dabbled in it; the amount of time required to play and amount of counters put me off. However I always thought that instead of taking on the whole German side or Soviet side in the grand campaign, it would be more my playstyle just to control a subset of units, maybe an army or Army Group and letting the AI play the other units on my side. Maybe some objectives could be given to my command based on the overall ambitions of the sides AI.

I'm sure this facility was present in the GG's Pac War game but maybe my memory is getting confused...

I often think this when i'm playing both WITE and WITW. Sometimes I would love to be able to take control of an army or army group and leave the rest to the AI. I would even like to designate a theatre to the AI, such as Italy in WITW.

In Decisive Campaigns The Blitzkrieg From Warsaw To Paris the player can control just an army in some of the scenarios while the AI controls the rest. I would love to see this feature implemented in WITE 2.0.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to the new game and will be buying it on day one of release.

[Mehring]

Along with downgrading at-start Russian leadership and increasing its promotion opportunities, what about introducing leadership penalties for all command transfers? A method that occurred to me is to reduce all leadership modifiers from the new HQ to, say, '3' and increase them each turn, perhaps automatically in increments or, better, by leadership admin modified die roll. That would allow efficient admin HQs to assimilate new subordinates more rapidly than others. If a unit has been transferred up/down a command chain it will still receive HHQ leadership unchanged, if from another AG/Front, assimilation of the new unit will be more difficult or potentially give higher temporary penalties.

This method would allow for a base benefit of a HQ while effectively reducing supplies, mp, combat and other abilities for a variable assimilation period.

[KWG]

Good reading. LOTS I could say but I will keep it to a few.

Even bad ideas can provide insight so here are a few of mine.

Will take the right palette to paint the different combats that took place on the Eastern Front.
Provide the palette, not premixed colors.

Was it the 1st winter that hurt the Germans so bad? Or was it "pressing on" through mud and slush (a unit's track/wheels/horses/men spread out over a 100 miles), exhausted, under-supplied, that set the Germans up for defeat, even in a "normal" winter - if such a thing exists.

One beauty of this series is that combat elements do the fighting. Get all the game elementals right and the molecules will fall into their place.



En passant Combat, the I go/you go Land War needs what was done to the Air War.

[Great_Ajax]

The Germans were completely and utterly spent when the winter blizzard hit. IMO the game system is not assessing nearly enough disabled losses as it should. THe design decision was to use the blizzard to arbitrarily move manpower out of units and into the German disabled pools to get their CVs low enough to allow the Soviets to attack in the winter of 41.


Trey

ORIGINAL: KWG

Good reading. LOTS I could say but I will keep it to a few.

Even bad ideas can provide insight so here are a few of mine.

Will take the right palette to paint the different combats that took place on the Eastern Front.
Provide the palette, not premixed colors.

Was it the 1st winter that hurt the Germans so bad? Or was it "pressing on" through mud and slush (a unit's track/wheels/horses/men spread out over a 100 miles), exhausted, under-supplied, that set the Germans up for defeat, even in a "normal" winter - if such a thing exists.

One beauty of this series is that combat elements do the fighting. Get all the game elementals right and the molecules will fall into their place.



En passant, the I go, you go Land War needs what was done to the Air War.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: el hefe

The Germans were completely and utterly spent when the winter blizzard hit. IMO the game system is not assessing nearly enough disabled losses as it should.

And that's the flip to Pelton's argument. Both sides too often quickly end up with OOBs wildly in excess of the historical, even with intense fighting. Loss calculation needs addressing badly. When I was was playing Russian a lot, some patches ago,I used to have to cycle troops to and from front all the time to keep them at strength (which I suspect drew on an exaggerated manpower pool). Is this still the case?

[morvael]

It was only because they didn't refill at front, not because resources were lacking. With I go you go turns it was putting withdrawing side at severe disadvantage. Advancing side was free to refill, then they advanced and blocked the same for withdrawing side.

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: Rongor

ORIGINAL: Kharkov
However I always thought that instead of taking on the whole German side or Soviet side in the grand campaign, it would be more my playstyle just to control a subset of units, maybe an army or Army Group and letting the AI play the other units on my side.

That would actually be great. Imagine to hand over the control of the adjacent Heeresgruppe to a buddy in Multiplayer.
Imagine 3+ guys sharing the work, each one doing an army or Heeresgruppe or the Air force. And the enemy players doing the same. What a great Multiplayer experience that would be[&o]

You can do this already in multiplayer as long as you use the PBEM system not the servers. Most of my games have involved playing Russians jointly with Belphegor who lives 7 time zones away. We split the map in half. I did most of the strategic stuff such as factory evac, allocating reinforcements and buying new units, and he took the airforce. It was more flexible in real life but that was more or less the plan. Only once did we play multiple opponents tho' and the disappeared in Jan '42

[KWG]

Is it true that in both WitW and WitE replacements move straight from the pool to the units in one turn, as freight?

Maybe there should be more than one type freight, and all should move along the supply chain per the physical world. Priority levels could be given to each type of freight.


Combat losses
Played some Red Thunder this summer. Sometimes the challenge was not the 30 mins of combat, but in the 1hr of regrouping getting - to the friendly wounded soldiers and disabled vehicles.

Some things I noticed:

Whether on offense/defense/meeting enagement

1- One side overwhelms the other - Advances or stops advance
2- Advancing side "spent and licking wounds" - Advances at cost
3- Both sides "spent and licking wounds" - Advances or stops advance
4- Both sides light/moderate losses - Cautious advance or cautious withdraw

[Mehring]

Reduce Russian Airborne HQ command capacity to 4. Disband them when their subordinate brigades are either destroyed/re-assigned out of the corps HQ or consolidated as guards divisions. These HQs are used in a really gamey way by some players.

[Mehring]

I know this has been mentioned elsewhere but I was wondering if a unit renaming ability was to be introduced. Also both sides I think, should have the ability to create historical units. Between renaming and the ability to create new units, anomalies such as the non-exhaustive examples below should be accounted for-

From 1942 scenario there is a Latvian SS motorised brigade which never appears in 1941 scenario, the Russians have AA DD airbases. In 1943 Axis have several Field Training Infantry Divisions, an Aunus Finnish army HQ, Russians have an SAK Airbase. In 44 scenario AGN has a Narva Detachment Army HQ which I don't recall in the 1941 game at any time, also numerous air HQs have been renamed/redesignated.

I'm personally not in favour of automatic location designations such as Voronezh Front. Perhaps such new units could have their historical names appear as default with a renaming option. As for non-locational designations, they might be implemented automatically. Perhaps the various ad hoc units and HQs created by the Axis could be listed, along with an AP cost to build them and any situational prerequisites.

[loki100]

picking up on this, and I realise this is purely flavour. Being able to rename Soviet fronts would be nice, to reflect their location during the period to late 43 when they were named geographically and then after the renumbering to Baltic/Bielorussian/Ukrainian.

[Great_Ajax]

Good points. Some of this will be fixed with the standardized unit list that I am developing to make sure that units are consistent from campaign to campaign. Renaming of units is problematic because the AI uses those names to formulate its strategy. Another good point about the situational HQs and I am not sure what we are going to do about that. The field training divisions offer another dilemma because they were training units whose primary purpose was to provide trained replacements for the field army but they also ended up fighting.

Trey

ORIGINAL: Mehring

I know this has been mentioned elsewhere but I was wondering if a unit renaming ability was to be introduced. Also both sides I think, should have the ability to create historical units. Between renaming and the ability to create new units, anomalies such as the non-exhaustive examples below should be accounted for-

From 1942 scenario there is a Latvian SS motorised brigade which never appears in 1941 scenario, the Russians have AA DD airbases. In 1943 Axis have several Field Training Infantry Divisions, an Aunus Finnish army HQ, Russians have an SAK Airbase. In 44 scenario AGN has a Narva Detachment Army HQ which I don't recall in the 1941 game at any time, also numerous air HQs have been renamed/redesignated.

I'm personally not in favour of automatic location designations such as Voronezh Front. Perhaps such new units could have their historical names appear as default with a renaming option. As for non-locational designations, they might be implemented automatically. Perhaps the various ad hoc units and HQs created by the Axis could be listed, along with an AP cost to build them and any situational prerequisites.

[Mehring]

If the AI is an issue, would it be possible to uncouple solo from H2H code for renaming purposes?