My impression after my first PBEM with Devoncop

[MrLongleg]

I had an interesting game against Devoncop, which I won as the Germans after taking Gorki in early Jan 1940.

I went with follow Hitlers wishes and first was given the task to take Leningrad.

Well, the game started as usual, in the middle there was a wall of units in the Orsha sector and it took me quite some time to make progress there. I was able to encircle a big number of units after swinging 3rd PG north and then cut of the units west of Vitebsk, but still the wall was mighty. In the north I also had a hard time since Devoncop was smart enough to fortify Narva early on. I neded the siege guns to kick him out of it.

In the south I had really made progress. After taking Kiev there was no enemy to be seen until Devoncop built a line from Kharkov to Dnepropetrovsk. But the northern part of AGS was empty land, so I decided to swing 1PG north into the back of the wall. I already did not have a lot of fuel in the south, but enough to move it in the center area. From that moment on I was suddenly swimming in fuel, which is strange, because between the AGC FSB in Minsk and 1PG there were a at least two dozen Russian armies. I still wonder how the fuel trucks made it through to 1PG HQ in Bryansk. I also moved the FSB of AGS from Proskurov to Kursk, which turned out to be a huge mistake, because from that moment on 1PG did not get a single drop of fuel for the rest of the game, which I would regret after ending 1PG back south after victory in the center.

After taking Moscow I sent 3PG north again to finish the business in Leningrad. Of course Hitler changes his mind and wanted Rostov. If I hadn't been able to take Gorki that would have cost me the game, because I got stuck in the South with no fuel and no winter clothing, so my armies lost most of the offensive power.

So there are some obvious problems with the logistics model:
- Fuel needs to be tracked per PG HQ and there actually must be a way for the fuel to get to the PG HQ. In my example the only way was to still draw supply from AGS FSB. But obviously it got magically transported from Misnk to Bryansk without losses or effort, so I could totally smash Devoncop in the center.
- On the other hand the rail gauge conversion system seems to be broken. From August on there was no progress anymore, it got stuck and never improved
- Also if you make huge jumps forward with the FSB you get badly punished for success, no fuel at all for 1PG from August on.

I would argue that no General staff would watch such problems without acting in any way.

I would propose, that there must be a way to at least get some fuel to the PG's and to also progress on rail conversion. No progress for 5 months is not realistic.

Also fuel pipelines must be tracked per PH HQ. Even if you transfer it to another theatre, the system hs to compute a route to get the supplies and fuel to the Panzergroups.

Any similar experiences from other players?

[ChuckBerger]

Sounds like an interesting game, thanks for the report!

I agree with you that tracking fuel by front rather than for each PzG leads to some anomalies. The devs explain the reasoning for this simplification in the manual. Personally I'd prefer something that dealt with fuel separately for each PzG, but I also understand the reasons for simplification. There are some weird effects especially when a PzG is reassigned to another front.

I'm not convinced the rail gauge conversion system doesn't work, though. Perhaps some of your decisions led to reductions in rail conversion rates? With good decisions choices (which cost significant PPs, of course), it is generally possible to maintain rail conversation speed at an average of a hex per turn. Have a look closely through reports to see what's happening and why in the rail conversion calculations. I would say that it would be nice to have a few options to increase rail conversation rates in particular fronts, at a large cost in PPs and/or capacity in other fronts.

Yes, huge leaps forward with the FSB generally won't work, and this is how it should be! Very rapid progress will result in you outstripping the ability of your logistics tail to keep up, just as happened in real life. Just to give one example, Manstein's assault on Sevastopol was delayed by a month or more because his army in the Crimea was just too hard to get adequate supplies of fuel and ammo to launch a prepared assault. In this game, choosing a FSB is a careful balance between not overstretching the truck component on the one hand, and not running too long on Russian gauge rails on the other. Sometimes, especially in AGS, it is just not possible to do, and you have to wait.

A FSB at Kursk probably is not viable until the rail line has been converted all the way to Kiev at least...

[MrLongleg]

Well, at least if I see no progress with rail conversion I should be able to re-assign resources to fix the problem. And that absolutely zero gets through for longer than 3 months??

[ernieschwitz]

You probably had everyone assigned to the front, making POWs do all the work, and those slackers were just reluctant

In all seriousness, nice write-up. Hope Vic and Lancer looks at the issues...