Hex size, marching speed, and week long turns

[Parkkicks]

07

I Thought I would ask this question.

It seems that I can only move infantry regiments ~40 miles per week in the north. That seems like a lot to me, however I am reading that the Wehrmacht for marching speed in good conditions was ~18 miles/day, (30-40km) and that 18x7 is 126.

Clarification?

Thanks

[Bamilus]

Turn 1 Axis get movement bonuses in north. For other turns it depends on type of terrain, so it's hard to say unless you can provide a specific example. There's also other MP adjustments based on CPP rolls, initiative rolls (I think), and supply levels of the unit. Then you also have to take into account converting enemy hexes and being in enemy ZOC's costs even more MP. Furthermore some of these adjustments are then adjusted again based on road level in a hex or morale of the unit.

So, all being said it's really hard to just state something without providing an example. There's definitely times you'll be able to move infantry quicker or slower historically based on above levels. I can say that playing against AI on normal it is not that difficult to achieve a historical or faster than historical rate of advance, so I'm not too concerned that the levels in the game are modeled incorrectly, to a material degree that would impact decision making/historical realism. But this is anecdotal, I haven't actually done any rigorous tests.

[GloriousRuse]

It’s worth noting that marching speeds from manuals are probably best reflected in admin movement (and the issue of division “length” when marching in such a manner, which the game is forgiving on - a division in march column can easily go above ten miles long also means man speed and unit speed are different). Marching a division along a road that is mostly secure with no contact expected is a very different proposition than a division deployed two up one back moving its frontage forward, expecting contact, bounding its artillery to cover the moves, etc. In one case 18 miles is a tiring walk. In the other 18 miles is a whole lot of work.

[Nix77]

Infantry can march 16 hexes (160 miles) per week in optimal conditions, I'd say that's a pretty good approximation.

If you're marching in the middle of a swamp in enemy territory, low on supplies, I'd say 40 miles per week is a good guess.

[Bamilus]

Yes, most movement in the game (and any wargame) is actually abstracting smaller battles and security sweeps that are below the scope of the game. This is obviously abstracted in the MP calculations and ZOC's, but it's easy to forget since it's not directly visible.

[Parkkicks]

Thanks for the reply,

yes to all of that, but it's just that it seems to me, the difference between 40 miles per week and 140 miles per week is quite a lot, regardless of adjustments. I can understand scale, means, and sums, but while playing, my meager 7 miles per day calculated basically by hex length x hexes is no good for my noggin.

As I narrate, as such; unit x marches 40 miles before the end of 7 days time lapse. I also find it difficult to immerse myself when there is no info on length of battles other than depletion of movement points. a 3 hour long engagement with a mg fort shouldn't take up half my marching time deliberate or not.

If 7 miles/day is what could be managed historically then I'm just fine with that, but would also like to mention engagement times. Cheers.

[Parkkicks]

ORIGINAL: GloriousRuse

It’s worth noting that marching speeds from manuals are probably best reflected in admin movement (and the issue of division “length” when marching in such a manner, which the game is forgiving on - a division in march column can easily go above ten miles long also means man speed and unit speed are different). Marching a division along a road that is mostly secure with no contact expected is a very different proposition than a division deployed two up one back moving its frontage forward, expecting contact, bounding its artillery to cover the moves, etc. In one case 18 miles is a tiring walk. In the other 18 miles is a whole lot of work.

got it. Thanks!

[Bamilus]

ORIGINAL: Parkkicks

Thanks for the reply,

yes to all of that, but it's just that it seems to me, the difference between 40 miles per week and 140 miles per week is quite a lot, regardless of adjustments. I can understand scale, means, and sums, but while playing, my meager 7 miles per day calculated basically by hex length x hexes is no good for my noggin.

As I narrate, as such; unit x marches 40 miles before the end of 7 days time lapse. I also find it difficult to immerse myself when there is no info on length of battles other than depletion of movement points. a 3 hour long engagement with a mg fort shouldn't take up half my marching time deliberate or not.

If 7 miles/day is what could be managed historically then I'm just fine with that, but would also like to mention engagement times. Cheers.

I mean at some point you need to have abstraction, which the game does between MP costs and the variety of factors. For just an entertainment standpoint, sure it'd be cool to figure out how "long" an engagement took, but for game purposes it would do nothing. The game already models these things to a much greater complexity than the vast majority of computer and board wargames, and the last thing the game needs is to start breaking down weekly moves in hourly/daily chunks and doing calculations on that. Would be insane to code and balance.

TOAW tried to do something like that and while its somewhat successful, it's also insanely complicated and very hard to learn. WITE2 I think has the best of both worlds with the multiple calculations impacting MP (abstraction) plus the combat delay, rather than going full TOAW where you have all multiple delays with different units/hexes at different time and it's constantly figuring out what the average length is, etc. I get what TOAW is trying to do, but it's best done with real-time plausible games a la Hearts of Iron, versus a turn based hex wargame where it just adds an insane amount of complexity.

[Hanny]

A 1941 Russian Inf Div required 27 klm of road space at rest, if it wanted to move along a road net, lets say a good road to a distance of 60klm away, typicaly its lead elements arrive after 30 hours, but its rear elements, dont arrive till 48+hours, in that time the road net is entirley full of the marching Div elements making it impossible to use for any other purpose, in the same period of time 3 Tank corps, each requiring 75klm of road space, could move the same distance.

German manovering was far more effiecent as it was directed by air to ground comms via radio and SU was not in 41, a German Inf Div required 40klm of road space, a Pzr 95klm and simply moved more quicker over the same road net.

From the German planning, a sustianed 20klm was planned for and actually executed in the initial stages, oddly later on Napoleon had reached quicker than did the Heer.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a491685.pdf
The strength of the first attack wave was limited by the relatively small number of through roads. At most, two division-size units could advance abreast on any one road. The bulk of the infantry with its horse-drawn vehicles would have to march on such side roads as were available. As a result, all units would have to deployed in great depth.

From the German manual, through human history trained armies have always achieved c 20 mpd as anormal march, the human stride has not changed, if you want more you have to force march, and thats unsustaianble in the long term
c. MARCH DISTANCES. The infantry division normally can march about 20 miles in a day; under adverse weather or road conditions the rate of march may fall to 10 miles a day. The motorized division can maintain an average daily march of between 90 and 150 miles; the armored division from 60 to 90 miles a day. In the near vicinity of the combat zone, road movements without motor transport average 10 to 15 miles a day, while movements by motor transport approximate 30 miles a day.

[GloriousRuse]

Regarding deliberate attacks, the majority of it’s deliberateness is spent in planning, coordinating, assembling the full force rather than just feeding it in from the march, setting the supporting pieces in place, rehearsing, etc. with the actual shooting taking up much less time. As a bit of an extreme case from the west for examples sake, the American 28th ID was given 10 days notice to conduct their attack into the Hurtgen, receiving the full Corps order 6 days before jumping off for objectives that in game terms were in the adjacent hex. Different context for sure, but the time to put that attack together was somewhere in the range of 1-2 turns...

A hasty attack represents more impromptu attack to maintain momentum or take advantage of an opportunity. This is actually one of the reasons I think adding units beyond the first to a hasty should impose additional MP/Delay costs...no three divisions ever made conducted a simultaneous “hasty” attack without incurring some delays just to deal with the friction of that much combat power and three separate division commanders and staffs. Maybe not as much as detailed plan, but something...

[Hanny]

ORIGINAL: GloriousRuse

Regarding deliberate attacks, the majority of it’s deliberateness is spent in planning, coordinating, assembling the full force rather than just feeding it in from the march, setting the supporting pieces in place, rehearsing, etc. with the actual shooting taking up much less time. As a bit of an extreme case from the west for examples sake, the American 28th ID was given 10 days notice to conduct their attack into the Hurtgen, receiving the full Corps order 6 days before jumping off for objectives that in game terms were in the adjacent hex. Different context for sure, but the time to put that attack together was somewhere in the range of 1-2 turns...

A hasty attack represents more impromptu attack to maintain momentum or take advantage of an opportunity. This is actually one of the reasons I think adding units beyond the first to a hasty should impose additional MP/Delay costs...no three divisions ever made conducted a simultaneous “hasty” attack without incurring some delays just to deal with the friction of that much combat power and three separate division commanders and staffs. Maybe not as much as detailed plan, but something...

Soviets were known for there powerful deliberate attacks, which could be interfered with by countermeasures, for instance a Rifle Corps took 2 to 3 days to pre register it’s Art pieces for a planned attack, so the Germans were able to move back in time to offset its effects on the front line posistions, field phones and runners were not as effective as German radio coms. A hasty German Attack could also disrupt SU planned attacks as the SU was like an orchestra, once you knew the rhythm, you could disrupt it as it was lock stepped in.

Your point about delay by increasing the formations in a hasty attack has merit.

[carlkay58]

Yes GloriousRuse is right about the additional MP/Delay costs for a Hasty Attack by a stack. The best argument for this penalty is the amount of road space a division uses in moving and a Hasty Attack is an attack from a moving command. There are few places in the Soviet Union where multiple avenues with the capacity for divisions to move in contact could launch an attack together.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: GloriousRuse
A hasty attack represents more impromptu attack to maintain momentum or take advantage of an opportunity. This is actually one of the reasons I think adding units beyond the first to a hasty should impose additional MP/Delay costs...no three divisions ever made conducted a simultaneous “hasty” attack without incurring some delays just to deal with the friction of that much combat power and three separate division commanders and staffs. Maybe not as much as detailed plan, but something...

I would disable multiple unit hasty attacks outright. IMO it disables the deliberate/hasty tradeoff calculation to a fair extent for motorized units.

[Joel Billings]

So for uber complexity make the number of units that can be in a hasty attack depend on the road quality of the attacker's hex:
Poor - 1
Average - 2
Good - 3

[:)]

[GloriousRuse]

Oooh...that actually has a lot of appeal. It would reinforce the value of roads to a motorized attack for sure...

[Hanny]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

So for uber complexity make the number of units that can be in a hasty attack depend on the road quality of the attacker's hex:
Poor - 1
Average - 2
Good - 3

[:)]

Elegant solution.

[Parkkicks]

Thanks for all this fellas. I'm trying to play realistically and to get away from the mindset of ramming stacks of units against each other. The other thing that I would mention might be an option to hide CV values, so that I'm positioning troops and making coordinating attack decisions based on observed unit type/size instead of a force calculation where it's easy/gamey to move troops to just slightly weaker areas. How do you vets do attacks mentally/narratively. I want to get away from stacking units against the weakest section of line, as it just takes me out of the game I typically take the number of rifles in a unit (1k-3k) and sort of imagine those companies across 10 miles of terrain, although when faced with 50-100k troops along a 30-40 mile section of space I kind of think... Jeeze with all that artillery whats the point?[:D]

[GloriousRuse]

If you go to preferences, you can change it from displayed numbers to just displaying names of formations. Admittedly this isn’t perfect as you can still roll over, but it’s not unreasonable to believe your intel folks could figure out that even though it’s nominally the 123 division across from them, patrols only report the equivalent of a regiment (hence, low CV)

[Kel]

generally speaking more fog of war on the frontline would be great, to improve operational surprise.
That said, a step has been made since WiTE 1 where recon assets were all-powerful and almost nothing could be concealed, even far away from the frontlines (and certainly not the motorized formations), even in bad weather. From all that I have read on the eastern front, opacity beyond the line of contact was a very real problem for both sides, and recon could easily lose track of divisional formations for several days. With and advantage for air recon on the german side and an edge for army intel on the soviet side.

[Parkkicks]

That's kind what I'm getting at. I would think that it would take very little for instance, to completely not ever know the size of the formation your going against, when planning attacks, with the small exception of recon photos, that can be outdated in a day, and make you hit a wall when you thought it was the broad side of a barn. (or a brigade size force)

While that step has been made, I was posting about cv fow hours ago, and while it is the closest thing to interpreting recon and front line data we have, making decisions about it is still what happens to my game, where decisions on what acreage to attack are based upon perceived weaknesses, instead of the reality of "I have no Idea at this point. Let's go eat sausages"