The Cobra vs the Mongoose

[larryfulkerson]

Ken Fortune wants to play the Soviet side of this FITE2 game and I'm going to give
the Axis side a try. This scenario is way bigger than any other scenario I've played
and I'm still trying to find my way around. This is what it looks like at game start.
Ken wants to play with partisans so this should be interesting. We're going to use FITE2
version 1.9

[larryfulkerson]

I worked on my first turn moves until the we hours of the morning and quit about 03:20 and got some sleep. I'm up again
now [10:07], got my cup of day-old coffee and I'm ready to go again. I estimate that I'm about 10% done with my moves.
The first turn moves are a bear for the Axis player as you may already know. I just thought you'd like to be kept in my
loop.

[larryfulkerson]

So there I was moving units and now I've come to the 10th Panzer formation.
I don't know where to send it. It's close to the Prypett Marshes but I don't
want to send them into rough terrain. They are motorized so some flat clear
terrain would be best for them. I'm leaning toward sending them to Kiev or at
least the southern front might be able to use them to great advantage.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the first combat round combat results list. Most of my attacks worked fine but
there were a couple that didn't go anywhere and one where I lost 12% of my force. But
on the other hand I evaporated about half a dozen Soviet aircraft units.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the equipment I lost during the first combat round. My losses were
extremely light IMHO. I notice that the Ju-88A has a fighter icon. I may
have to look into that to see if I can fix it somehow.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on in the north. I have recon units out front and I'm worried that
I may have pushed them too far north so that they are effectively without support now.
This is the start of round two and 80% of the turn remains. About half of my units
have expended their MP's and that means I have only the remainder to move yet.
90% of my aircraft are resting because of the massive number of airfield
strikes I executed. The Soviet air shock is 5% so it was a no brainer that I
needed to try to ground the entire Soviet air force while I have such an advantage.
My air shock is 150%.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looks like around Brest right now. I've bypassed a lot of
Soviet units to get further to the east while it's possible and use some of the
follow on units to deal with the Soviet remnants. I'm concentrating on following the
roads and rails to go further faster. So far so good.

The RR arty units have a substantial range and several of them are below 50% in supply
already so I've parked them in a high supply hex so they can rest and rearm.

In this scenario the Corps HQ units don't have any organic arty and in fact consist
of a command group and some support squads and that's it. I'm going to have to depend
on the MP units to provide them some security. I've been using the Security units to
convert hexes but I'm going to have to dedicate them to dealing with partisans pretty
soon.

[larryfulkerson]

I didn't crop this image very well and I apologize for that. This is what's going on
down south right now. I'm slowly making some headway. It looks like there's a lot of
Soviet units that are going to be able to escape and there's not a whole lot I can down
about that. I would apply a substantial INT force but my bombers are resting instead.

[larryfulkerson]

The losses I had in the first combat round are on the right and the losses so far
after combat round two are on the left and you can see which equipment type that
is experiencing heavier losses. I'm going to have to study this bad boy and see
if I can figure out what I need to change if anything.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a zoomed out view of what's going on in the north right now.

[larryfulkerson]

It's 14:06 and I just now sent my moves to Ken. I have no idea when I'll get a reply.
For those of you who want to watch my playback I've posted the file I sent to Ken
here below. Use any password you'd like.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the front lines looked like at the end of the turn.

[larryfulkerson]

I looked through all the attacks and found a case where I used an HQ unit to bombard that had a command group
and some support squads in it and that's what caused a loss of a support squad. I'll have to keep that in
mind for the rest of the game I guess. I'll have to be careful what I bombard with those HQ units.

[larryfulkerson]

I've spent some time studying the results of the turn and I've found a weak spot down
south. I'm trying to contain some Soviet units but there are only weak units holding
the Soviet units back so they will probably successfully break out and retreat and I'll
have to start all over with my surround moves. Most of these Soviet units will have
no trouble retreating from my advance during the Soviet half of the turn.

[larryfulkerson]

Ken Fortune sent me an email this morning and he explained that while he was away from his computer [ walking his dog ]
his computer battery failed and he lost 5 hours of work on his moves. He says it's going to be another couple of days
before he can send me his moves because he has to recreate all those moves. I know what that feels like.

[Hellen_slith]

Hey Larry, Ken is definitely a tough and bruising player (at least when I played him) and he had the Germans that time and simply wiped me out. Incredible lengthy moves of 20,000 plus German movements, 200 plus battles .... turn after turn after turn. I was no match for him and suicided Stalin around move 20 or 25 I think.

Anyway, one of the ways Mr. D and I are dealing with the immensity of the OOBs is, we are both turning one move per day (we're both retired so plenty of time) and when the time comes to send our moves, resolve battles and hope for the best! Each of us is taking about five or so hours per turn -- and neither of us can possibly move ALL units so our "time limits" serve to force us to develop a plan and carry it out and turn it around quick. Well, that routing seems to be working well for us, but of course YMMV.

Also, just my two cents: I abhor dividing units in this scene. There are MORE than enough chits to move each turn without creating even MORE little sub-units to struggle with. And the Soviet air -- OMG, what a struggle with that, over 300 chits for me just Sov air, and moving those eastward from the Urals to replace losses each turn ... What a BEAST. But at least now I have a routine of doing that quickly.

Well, anyway, GL in this one w/ Ken! Looking forward to following the action!

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Hellen_slith

Hey Larry, Ken is definitely a tough and bruising player (at least when I played him) and he had the Germans that time and simply wiped me out. Incredible lengthy moves of 20,000 plus German movements, 200 plus battles .... turn after turn after turn. I was no match for him and suicided Stalin around move 20 or 25 I think.

Anyway, one of the ways Mr. D and I are dealing with the immensity of the OOBs is, we are both turning one move per day (we're both retired so plenty of time) and when the time comes to send our moves, resolve battles and hope for the best! Each of us is taking about five or so hours per turn -- and neither of us can possibly move ALL units so our "time limits" serve to force us to develop a plan and carry it out and turn it around quick. Well, that routing seems to be working well for us, but of course YMMV.

Also, just my two cents: I abhor dividing units in this scene. There are MORE than enough chits to move each turn without creating even MORE little sub-units to struggle with. And the Soviet air -- OMG, what a struggle with that, over 300 chits for me just Sov[iet] air, and moving those eastward from the Urals to replace losses each turn ... What a BEAST. But at least now I have a routine of doing that quickly.

Well, anyway, GL in this one w/ Ken! Looking forward to following the action!

I cannot thank you enough for this indepth report. Really...thank you. Yeah, I knew I had the fight of my life on my hands when I saw his resume. Wow. This Ken Fortune is worth his weight in gold.

So I received his first turn moves as the Soviet player just now and I'm posting it here below so you guys can watch the playback the same time as I'm watching it. I've started it already but I'm pausing it so I can post this file below. My password is "test" without the quotes. That's the password beta testers are supposed to use so that the developer can debug our saved game files more easily. From what I've watched of his playback so far he's just moving aircraft around. That's what I would do too so we're both on the same page so far.

Well, I gotta go watch the rest of the playback and start moving units around. I'll keep you guys posted on what happens.

[larryfulkerson]

[ 12:50 Tucson time ] I have paused the playback at 1205 moves to report that so far Ken has moved 6 aircraft from the front lines area to rear areas. The difference between Axis air shock and Soviet air shock makes it imperative that I try to destroy as many of his aircraft as I can in the early turns. Ken is saving as many of his aircraft as he can by moving them far to the rear. It's a good move and one that I would have done as well.

I'll edit this post to keep adding more intelligence info as it happens during the playback.

EDIT: [ 12:58 ] we're on event 1812 and Ken is still busy moving aircraft to the rear. How many aircraft does he have you ask. I've heard a report that he has about 300+ or so. So I expect to see a lot more aircraft moving in the very near future.

EDIT: [ 13:46 ] we're on event 9472 and Ken is STILL busy moving aircraft to the rear. They have all been either VVS types or PVO types. I've lost count of the number of aircraft moved already but I estimate it at about 50+ so far.

EDIT: [ 14:56 ] we're up to event 22453 and Ken has finally started moving his non-aircraft units. I estimate that he moved about 200+ aircraft during the early part of his turn. I'm hoping that there were some aircraft that were in reorg and couldn't be moved. That will give me a shot at them in my coming turn.

EDIT: [ 15:08 ] we're up to event 24229 and Ken started moving his RR engineers to strategic places and now he's moving his arty units via rail toward the forward areas.

EDIT: [ 17:20 ] we're up to event 51203 and we've finally reached the end of the playback. It took quite a while to watch the whole thing but I got a lot of good intel from watching it.

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

EDIT: [ 13:46 ] we're on event 9472 . . .

Hope you have "Caps Lock" on. Sounds like a big number, but just remember that aircraft units move individually and each one probably adds 100+ moves to the total count.

Edit
Oops, I must have been thinking about a different big East scenario. Air units in this one have a max range of about 30.

Regards

[larryfulkerson]

:RhinoBones Hope you have "Caps Lock" on. Sounds like a big number, but just remember that aircraft units move individually and each one probably adds 100+ moves to the total count.

Actually that's not a bad idea to get the units to move faster. I wish I had thought of that.

:RhinoBones
Edit
Oops, I must have been thinking about a different big East scenario. Air units in this one have a max range of about 30.

I know, right? It's difficult to keep the various scenarios separate in your head when you know a lot of them. Keep in mind that I've never won an East Front scenario against a human player, and I've played both sides.

Here's my personal secretary Charlotte. She can't type but she CAN answer the phone. I also use her to interface with the media. And she can make coffee like nobody's business. And yes, they are natural.