War in the East Beta Update 1.11.03

[morvael]

I think it's impossible to have escort in night missions. Night fighters are only for interception / CAP.

[Mamluke]

ho, OK I guess that is fair enough. Is that a design Choice or a historical-ish decision?

[Denniss]

Both

[M60A3TTS]

I do appreciate the fact that once the previous patch came out and the VVS national morale had been severely nerfed, that it did not take long to make an adjustment following the forum discussion.

As to the whole day/night bombing thing, my one issue is the battle results never reveal which type of mission was flown by an opponent. So a guessing game ensues as to who needs to fly day or night missions, that become more problematic with BOTH no longer an option for intercepting air units.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

I do appreciate the fact that once the previous patch came out and the VVS national morale had been severely nerfed, that it did not take long to make an adjustment following the forum discussion.

As to the whole day/night bombing thing, my one issue is the battle results never reveal which type of mission was flown by an opponent. So a guessing game ensues as to who needs to fly day or night missions, that become more problematic with BOTH no longer an option for intercepting air units.

I have to echoe M60s statement here that it would be really nice to know what was flown. Either day or a night mission by your opponent. Although some are obvious this would take out the ambiguity of the situation.

[Aufklaerungs]

In land battles, in which the attacker lost, there will be no morale changes for either attacker or defender.

Is that fair ?

_____________________________

Don't know about fair, but pretty realistic. Attacker has to sustain morale, despite setbacks, to eventually reach his goal. If an attacker becomes increasingly demoralized by each & every failure, final failure is a virtual certainty. Defender often can lose tactical skirmishes to draw an attacker into the depth of his defenses. His morale remains undiminished as each tactical "defeat" lures his attackers deeper into a prepared killing zone;

[chaos45]

so is the factory bug only affecting Molotov? just want to be sure so I dont move factories to it in my game if this is an issue....guess I need to start noting my industry each turn.

[chaos45]

Also just noticed Sapper regiments downgrade to a much smaller Sapper BN in OCT 1941....when was that change....as that basically means any sapper regiments you build early on are a waste of AP now. Since they downgrade to a unit 1/3rd the size in OCT 1941.

Another massive soviet nerf....I swear you guys need to stop drinking the Germans need buffs cool-aid.

German players just need to learn the opening and learn how to manage fuel logistics is a big part of why Germans do poorly in alot of games. Face a player that understands the game as the Germans and the first 20 turns are super stressful as the soviets.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Chaos, you only ever list the Axis nerfs/Soviet buffs.
What about buffed Soviet AA guns? If you deattach them for cheap from cities when Axis is close you have quite nice SUs that weren't there before. Soviet gun numbers in recent versions are as high as never before. Not to mention that 1941 air supply has been nerfed because air bases nearby give no longer support when nearby.

What about fixed bug with cosntruction units not helping digging? Massively icreased HQBU cost and reducing rail modifier and minimally possible rail modifier?
From my exp so far the so called nerf of Soviet air force is not really one, exp gain seems as before so far, will wait how things develop over next turns in game vs. S-T though.

"Just learn the opening and learn how to manage fuel logistics" will not be sufficient IMO, a victory in 1941 requires a combination of many more factors.
Also, designing an optimised opening is not easy. If the Axis player invests 10 hours and more into developing an opening, the Soviet player has to answer with a similar commitment.
I can really recommend you to try and play the Axis side under a version with nerfed logistics vs. a strong Soviet player.

In addition, the key metric should be if and when Soviets can get to Berlin. From AARs Soviet players seem to be able to survive the fall of Leningrad/Moscow and take over the initiative.

[mrblonde1]

Also air transport of supplies through air bases is nerfed in 1941.

[chaos45]

the AA guns work for both sides....so its been a buff for both and yes I have reported in PM to morveal earlier today in fact....example 120 soviet level bombers, no german fighters 60 shot down by only 100x 88mm german AA.

So flak is even more massively effective for germans than soviets because germans have higher EXP.

like I said in a another post today---many changes may be seen as a nerf to one side but actually nerf both which is then a net loss for the soviets usually since german units, leadership, and everything is so much better in the early game.

Play soviets against a good german panzer pusher and tell me the game is fair? when they are driving way faster than historical and you cant get factories out in time or even put up a defense before they reach critical areas.

[EwaldvonKleist]

@Chaos:
JFYI, Axis OOB is quiate a bit lower now, you can look at both initial OOB between 1.11.01 or individual categories (German inf, arm+mot, HQs) and each area has lost a few %.
Another Axis nerf.

[xhoel]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

@Chaos:
JFYI, Axis OOB is quiate a bit lower now, you can look at both initial OOB between 1.11.01 or individual categories (German inf, arm+mot, HQs) and each area has lost a few %.
Another Axis nerf.

+1

[chaos45]

Im not a spreadsheet counter, but I know soviets have had numbers nerfed as well over the last several patches, starting with the massive HQ numbers nerf several patches ago.


Not having tracked exact soviet numbers each patch though I cant really comment- but the sapper nerf from what used to be almost 1k men a unit to less than 400 is more a CV nerf than any small 1% reduction in germans….as it effectively removes something like 1,000 combat squads(100,000 men) from the soviet OOB or about 100 CV in total not to mention the construction capability. As it disincentives soviet players to not even bother building them now.

So with that in mind not such a small nerf after all was it?

That coupled with experience gain having been disabled has probably reduced Soviet CV by at least 10-20% in the early game as just a rough estimate. Which is also my guess as to why moscow falls almost every game now and it didnt used to.

Im going to step back now, and let the patch team decide what they want to do, but I think the results have shown their is a balance issue when players are well matched.

[mrblonde1]

Can you give an example of a game with well matched players that shows tha balance issue?

[Aufklaerungs]

Also just noticed Sapper regiments downgrade to a much smaller Sapper BN in OCT 1941....when was that change....as that basically means any sapper regiments you build early on are a waste of AP now. Since they downgrade to a unit 1/3rd the size in OCT 1941.

This dog don't hunt. This topic has been covered in minutia ad nauseam. Suggest you search & review the many, many posts and replies from moderators and players that have gone into the weeds on Soviet sapper unit revisions based on strength, organization, capabilities and limitations relative to the historic 41-42 timeline that have regularly appeared on this forum for at least the past year.

[chaos45]

mrblonde- you will prolly be seeing some soon....plus Ive been chatting a lot with players via discord and PM....its become very apparent that when German players use certain tactics the game is virtually an auto soviet loss right now in 1941. These issues have been in a game for over a year now and this patch did nothing to fix them.

As to soviet sappers- yes it was discussed, and I argued against it then to. Frankly real world OOB/ToE went out the window a long time ago when trying to make this game fully playable. Yes the OOB is somewhat close to actual units but the soviet army is much smaller in 1941/42 than historical when do the numbers and that was with the sapper regiments adding to the soviet units numbers...which now wont be build due to being worthless.

Its like I told the patch team...okay if soviets used them in Brigades then give the soviets Sapper brigades as support units...not on map units they are still completely useless. The game mechanics is what makes what was a real life units worthless in the game so as a patch team/game designer you have to find a way to make the units work with the game system that is in use. Another work around would be to allow attachements to soviet divisions instead of just corps...then I could stack it with 3 sapper battalions and get some use out of them...its about how the game works.


They added a new construction BDE at some point--an utterly useless unit in the game. It wont be able to get trained and even contribute to construction values until 1942....and well its the same cost as a railroad BDE...so people will only build RR BDEs.....its called game design and having things work within the game design correctly.

I know I like to speak up and im rather blunt at times, but its very obvious the game has some issues at the moment and most were due to some poor patch decisions over the last year or two.

[thedoctorking]

In a game that went pretty well for me as the USSR, on the 5-7-1942 turn I have a deployed total of 6,906,120 compared with a historical total of a little under 6 million at that point. Germans have 4,025,930 (plus the usual suspects of a million or so for the Axis allies). This was a historical 1941, with the difference that the Germans captured Leningrad but did not get into the Donbass (they did capture Kharkov but not the Stalino region). They got nowhere close to Moscow. This game started under 1.11.00 and finished up under 1.11.01.

Contrawise, in a game that went quite badly for the Soviets, on the 12-11-1941 turn we have 4,547,199 deployed as against 3,527,256 Germans. In this game, the Germans captured both Leningrad and Moscow and swallowed up huge numbers of Soviet divisions. This game also started under 1.11.00 and is still under way.

All in all, this doesn't seem like a remarkably smaller Soviet army than historically. So I'm not sure what posters in this thread meant by saying that the Red Army was smaller than historical. Perhaps in terms of combat effectiveness? Or later? I have only ever played the USSR through the first winter - everybody quits on me!

[chaos45]

neither side takes historical losses for the most part.....with that in mind the soviet army should be many times larger. However the Soviets have a reduced replacement rate compared to historical. Which is why you can't afford to take historical losses as the soviets and stay in the game.

Its a very weird game compared to historical where the soviet players has to try and save every single division they can in the first 15 turns or most likely lose the game....unlike historical where they frequently lose entire armies.

That why I discuss the army sizes. As well most players wont simply wave attack the Germans turn after turn burning up men like Stavka/Stalin did in 1941/42 (Although Hardluck is trying this tactic in his newest game lol)....However to give the germans a much greater than historical chance of winning the game the german army is kept with all of its intrinsic bonuses and the soviet army is given a reduced manpower replacement rate meaning the soviets end up desperate for men against a competent German player...a German player that does not reach Stalino is not doing well at all as the south is extremely easy for the germans to take in current version of the game.

[thedoctorking]

That's a really good point, chaos 45, I hadn't thought of it in that way. Obviously, I took much fewer losses as the USSR in the first game (though perhaps not in the second). The Red Army enlisted 29,500,000 men during the course of the war in addition to the nearly 5,000,000 who were in service on 22 June 1941. There's 202 turns from 22 June 1941 to 8 May 1945, that works out to an average of about 149,000 a turn.

In game terms, the USSR has 3936 manpower centers at start. I estimate that historically they lost about 600 of those. I don't know what proportion of the manpower of captured cities is saved through evacuation to the east, but in my game that had the most historical 1941, I have 3009 manpower centers in spring 1942. The current manpower production multipliers by year are 50 (1941), 40 (42), 35 (43), 30 (44), and 15 (45). There are 29 turns in 1941, 52 each in 1942-44, and 19 in 1945. So based on 3000 manpower centers, the USSR in game terms will produce 4,350,000 men in 1941, 6,240,000 in 1942, 5,460,000 in 1943, 4,680,000 in 1944, and 855,000 in 1945. Actually, there would probably be some manpower centers rejoining the homeland of world socialism (TM) as the Red Army advances, but we'll take this as a conservative estimate. That's a total of 21,585,000.

Running through the list of reinforcement units, there's about 1,100,000 men in those units, though at least some of them (about 300,000) are transfers from the Siberian front who would have been counted among the original 5,000,000. There's still about 7 million Soviet soldiers who just vanished into thin air.

I suspect an uncharacteristically inefficient intervention by Thanos.