WitE 2

[RedLancer]

IMHO I don't believe that adding Volksturm is likely in an official release.

My biggest regret is the lack of an active scenario design group on this forum. People don't even seem to bounce scenario ideas about. Adding Volksturm is quite possible in the editor - even for the current game. I'm willing to help anyone who wants advice on using the editor.

[Aurelian]

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

I was hoping germany should be able to built units in WITE2.

If it is too powerfull, maybe we may restrict it to Volkstrum support units / volonteer/militia brigades of low quality. But at least give something to the german to play with. Something a little more fun than defense zone.

I'm still waiting for the list of units OKH built I asked about the last time this came up.

What do you want? The list of Axis units in witE2?

No. The list of what OKH actually raised. This came up when some complained because OKH couldn't do what STAVKA could do in WiTE.

[No idea]

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

IMHO I don't believe that adding Volksturm is likely in an official release.

My biggest regret is the lack of an active scenario design group on this forum. People don't even seem to bounce scenario ideas about. Adding Volksturm is quite possible in the editor - even for the current game. I'm willing to help anyone who wants advice on using the editor.

In my experience people play scenarios less often than the big campaign. Perhaps thats the problem. Just as people play multiplayer less than SP but, as multi players tend to stick in the forums more than SPs, the AI doesnt seem to be an issue for many forumnites, while it is a BIG one and should be, imho, a top priority thing for wite 2.

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

My biggest regret is the lack of an active scenario design group on this forum. People don't even seem to bounce scenario ideas about.

Unfortunately, the WITE editor is severely limited, resulting in a very limited editor community (perhaps by design, or not). You can play around with units and TOEs and equipment (but even then, some units are hardcoded into the game), edit a handful in game parameters, and that's it. I compare this primarily to my past experience with the TOAW series editor, which seems to have been far and away the best digital wargame editor ever (with a range of weather, supply, transport, political, AI path programming, etc, and far more unit editing options) resulting in a very strong editor community.

Then again, a game on the scale of TOAW (operational and smaller scale maps, vs much more strategic for WITE) lends itself to more user created scenarios. A 200 square mile map/scenario in WITE (20x20 hexes) is small peanuts and doesn't make much room for manoeuvre/fun, as opposed to the possibility in TOAW to create an 80x80 map at Battalion and Company level in the same 200 sq mile area.

[76mm]

I haven't been following WitE in a long time so missed this thread. I enjoyed the discussion several pages back about how to prevent run-aways, Victory Conditions, etc. Maybe everyone tired of the discussion, but I wanted to add a couple of thoughts:

1) I don't have WitW, but have read the forum a fair bit, and it sounds like the VP structure imposes a fairly tight straighjacket on Allied strategies (at least tighter than I would prefer); it would be good to avoid this in WitE 2 to the extent possible. Generally I don't like hard VP targets, etc. that force players into certain strategies (take Cities X and Y) or encourage gamey behavior; I think the mechanism below might encourage more fluid strategies while helping prevent runaways.

2) While I sympathize with the people that don't like the "Sudden Death" options, in fact I think that Sudden Death is one of the few viable ways prevent runaways, BUT I don't think that the simplistic Sudden Death in WitE 1 is the answer (occupy Cities X, Y & Z, and game over). I think that Sudden Death should work by having a fairly large number of cities (10-12?), that when occupied (or some randomized subset of them) would trigger the possibility (probability settable in game options) of Sudden Death on a per turn basis. Sudden Death would represent Soviet collapse; while in retrospect, I don't think that a Soviet collapse was likely, during the war neither the Germans nor the Sovs knew for sure, and I'm sure Stalin wasn't holding onto Kiev, etc. to save the churches or the populace...

3) Another way to discourage runaways might be via some mechanic involving factory evacutions. Even if WitE 1 it was important to hold on to some extent to evacuate vital factories, although IIRC ultimately it wasn't hard for experienced players to evacuate enough without holding on too long. Perhaps timing of factory evacuations could be used as more of a tool to prevent run-aways? The main problem I see with this approach is achieving proper balance.

[loki100]

2 I think the key here is that the Soviet regime would have survived even worse losses than happened. Stalin was more worried about his own situation. My view is that a very odd psychological contract had grown up between senior figures and Stalin post 1938. Crudely we accept all the brutality as that is the only means to save the user. The blows of 1941 weakened this and it got worse in summer 1942 but never quite snapped.

3 don't forget the rails are v diff in wite2. Each hex has a natural capacit (i.e. it functions efficiently) and an absolute capacity. So in one direction the Soviets are bringing up supplies and poss New units, in the other are going the factories etc. This may create more need to stand, or simply, leave units to their fate than in wite2

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: Schmart

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

My biggest regret is the lack of an active scenario design group on this forum. People don't even seem to bounce scenario ideas about.

Unfortunately, the WITE editor is severely limited, resulting in a very limited editor community (perhaps by design, or not). You can play around with units and TOEs and equipment (but even then, some units are hardcoded into the game), edit a handful in game parameters, and that's it. I compare this primarily to my past experience with the TOAW series editor, which seems to have been far and away the best digital wargame editor ever (with a range of weather, supply, transport, political, AI path programming, etc, and far more unit editing options) resulting in a very strong editor community.

Then again, a game on the scale of TOAW (operational and smaller scale maps, vs much more strategic for WITE) lends itself to more user created scenarios. A 200 square mile map/scenario in WITE (20x20 hexes) is small peanuts and doesn't make much room for manoeuvre/fun, as opposed to the possibility in TOAW to create an 80x80 map at Battalion and Company level in the same 200 sq mile area.

All the official scenarios are created using the very same editor as that released with the game.

[RedLancer]

@ Aurelian - http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/ is an excellent source and much easier if you speak german. With a bit of effort I could show the arrivals in WitE2 - now we have theatre boxes all the key units are in play at the start even if not on map.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: loki100
2 I think the key here is that the Soviet regime would have survived even worse losses than happened.

Sure, I agree, but we have the advantage of hindsight. The fact is that no one--German or Soviet--in 1941 knew how far the Sovs could be pushed before a collapse ensued. Therefore, in my view for both players to play as if a Sov collapse is completely impossible is ahistorical. The weakness of the current Sudden Death rules in my view is that collapse (ie, Sudden Death) is guaranteed if X, Y, and Z happen.

ORIGINAL: loki100
3 don't forget the rails are v diff in wite2. Each hex has a natural capacit (i.e. it functions efficiently) and an absolute capacity. So in one direction the Soviets are bringing up supplies and poss New units, in the other are going the factories etc. This may create more need to stand, or simply, leave units to their fate than in wite2

I think that this change alone will have a significant impact on run-away strategies, although you sound unsure ("...may create more need to stand...")--I guess it is early for much play-testing to have been done at this point?

[821Bobo]

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

@ Aurelian - http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/ is an excellent source and much easier if you speak german. With a bit of effort I could show the arrivals in WitE2 - now we have theatre boxes all the key units are in play at the start even if not on map.

Maybe I'm wrong but wasn't Aurelian actually sarcastic here? Because if we take it from the other side then Soviet fan boys can also come up with ideas like why there is not present every useless Soviet militia raised in factory 123. Never mind there were annihilated to the last man few minutes after Germans made contact, they existed therefore must be represented in the game.

[RedLancer]

That's worrying - if as a Brit I've failed to recognise sarcasm I'll never live it down.

[ncc1701e]

Does all the bug fixes, equipment fixes and TO&E fixes done inside WITE patches will be automatically reported day one in WITE2?

Thanks

[821Bobo]

Its not the same game thus bugs could not have been imported from WitE.

[ncc1701e]

Are they rewriting the code entirely? Even for the equipment and the TO&E?

[821Bobo]

In this post is some explanation fb.asp?m=4173812

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

The first thing to highlight is that the origins of the WitE2 code started when WitW split from the original WitE code. I guess that this was probably 2 years before morvael began his changes. This means that morvael’s changes have had no direct impact on WitE2. This may fill you with horror but many of the changes and bug fixes that morvael has made were never required as the code had already moved on. There is a view that WitW was just WitE in the west and WitE2 will be WitW in the east. Nothing is further from the truth. The games are evolutionary.

[Denniss]

If data/equipment/TOE issues are found/reported for WitE 1.08 these will always be crosschecked with WitW/WitE2 (and vice versa).
Issues in the executable are unlikely to reproduce in WitW/WitE2 unless this specific code element was unchanged (highly unlikely).

[shermanny]

Here's a thought about "sudden death".

Let's take it as a given that the Soviet Union wasn't going to collapse unless the Germans got to, oh, say, Gorki. And probably not even then.

Stalin couldn't be sure of that, and Hitler was hoping for a collapse. This means that in order for play to proceed along tracks that might have materialized, players have to have an incentive to try and provoke/avoid events they might have hoped/feared would bring on a collapse.

But we don't want those events to literally be "game over". So why not factor them into the victory levels? A player can boost their victory level by one or even two notches by achieving some sudden-death-like condition.

Some of those could be probabilistic. Players should be informed of the odds and which events trigger a sudden-victory-level die roll, but one couldn't be sure if the event would trigger. Maybe tie such an event to a morale level hit to the adversely impacted side.

On the topic of realism, the most badly needed game change is that the current combat system doesn't permit events such as the Battle of the Bulge (in the West) or Bagration (in the East.)

An attacker who has a considerable superiority of force and plenty of ammo and who is willing to take casualties ought to be able to make some impressive gains at the outset, at least if the defense doesn't have too much in the way of reserves immediately available.

Another nice-to-have change would be if motorized units set to "reserve" status were configured so that they simply couldn't be surrounded. If they found themselves on the brink of being surrounded, in my design they'd intervene on their own behalf, touching off a battle in the hex that was set to flip control. If they won, they'd displace then and there to that hex. If they lost, they'd rout. This could go on and on during the turn And once routed, they'd rout again rather than get pocketed. In such pocketing reserve self-interventions, they'd count as the defenders so they wouldn't need heavy odds to prevail.

They would intervene in any movement of combat that occurred along their own line of supply and communication to Army Group HQ, say. That way we have some concrete, programmable criterion, and the motorized reserves don't wait to the last moment and then try to block some cleverly delayed attack against a marsh hex that represents their last tenuous connection to home.

Reserve status would remain intact for purposes of this rule even if the unit came in contact with enemy units.

Again and again, in both the East and the West, mobile units (especially German and Soviet) fought their way out of apparently hopeless situations, emerging maybe badly damaged but still with some fighting elements and much of the command cadre.

The effect would be that Panzer divisions, or Tank or Mech Corps, that began the turn out of contact and in reserve mode, would react in the game like they mostly did in the real war, and twist and slip free of encirclement.

There'd have to be an exception for early Soviet mobile formations. For one thing, early model T34s weren't very roadworthy. Maybe just have cavalry corps enjoy this capability until late 1942.

[RedLancer]

Just to add to Denniss's comments, as he is the resident data guru, I would highlight that WitE2 is also benefiting from the ground element data review conducted as part of the development of the tactical level Steel Tigers game. For those who don't know Steel Tigers is the new version of Steel Panthers that Gary is working on.

[ncc1701e]

Thank you, I should have read the thread entirely. Will do it. I am catching up not playing WITE since a while since my old PC was so slow to run this game. Running WITE on my new PC to retry, this is another game. I do not know if this is multicore or more powerful CPU but the AI turn is must faster.

WITE2 plus a tactical module based on Steel Tigers to resolve the battle. A wargamer's dream that come true. But, a game that will never end also. [:D]

[Cavalry Corp]

I would like to see chances of surrender ( or coup against Stalin) in say 41 and 42 if certain cities are taken - tested say once - say 5% for Leningrad 10% for Moscow etc. A coup chance may happen every 500k casualties or something - these could be optional rules. This could be higher or lower as time goes on so players are not sure. Also oil centres etc may come into play in a similar way.

Another thing we could see is leaders dismissl costs going up and down depending how they are getting politically not just military reasons. This would make some leaders very much more difficult to change as time goes on. Just some thoughts to add more spice as it were.