Feeding the March East - carlkay58 vs Soviet AI

[carlkay58]

T04 Freight:

The Axis are currently sitting at +7K Received vs Need. The longer this kind of surplus can be stretched out for, the better.

[carlkay58]

T04 Trucks:

You can see that the number of unit trucks being used for supplies is very high. This will reduce the MPs available in those units. Captured Soviets trucks sit at 8.5K, hopefully this will continue to increase with the pockets being formed and then reduced.

[carlkay58]

T04 Air Phase:

I had to temporarily suspend one of my RECON directives because the AOG is too far back for any type of RECON. I could have moved it forward at the start of the air phase, but I do not have any supplied forward airbases. I could fly a supply transport mission to supply and airbase to use, but I decided to rest the AOG instead this turn. 34 recon aircraft are lost - mostly to flak - this phase for 1100 sorties so a 3.1% loss rate which seems about right to me.

[carlkay58]

T04 Supply Net North:

Note that Riga is a rail supply source now as it is connected to the rail net AND is only priority 3 so it is sending out supplies to other depots. It still receives some freight by sea too. The AGN supply net is actually supplying PG 2 and 3 more than AGN. So AGN is getting their supplies from the Baltic ports and the double rail line going to Vilnius. That leaves the double rail from Brest Litovsk towards Minsk supplying only 2nd and 4th Armies in the main.

[carlkay58]

T04 Supply Net South:

The supply net in the south is still not advancing far. You can also see the long routes in Hungary and Rumania where the frozen units are needing trucks to deliver supply. I will have to address that soon.

[carlkay58]

T04 Supply Details:

The NSS supplies show 96.5K from Berlin, 24.1K from Prague, and 51.7K from Vienna for a total of 172.3K freight moving out.

L'vov has received 8.8K, the leading AGS depot (Kamenka-Bugskaya) received 1.2K, the leading PG 2 FBD depot (Baranovichi) received 5.7K, leading PG 3 FBD depot (Molodechno) received 1.3K, and the leading PG 4 FBD depot (Rezekne) received 6.9K. The Daugavpils is at a crossroads with rails from Riga and Vilnius fully connected received 5.6K.

I honestly don't know how useful the individual depot info is at this time. Once Minsk and a few other major railyards are connected and start being part of the supply net those will probably tell us more about how the supply net is functioning.

[carlkay58]

T04 AGN:

This is my last turn I can capture Baltic rails intact. I rush units forward to grab as many as possible along the route to the Gulf of Finland and cut off Talinin from ground supply. 4th PG continues to push forward near Pskov and almost forms a pocket to the south of the city. Note that the 4th PG FBD has taken an eastern route from Daugavapils towards Polotsk since the rail was captured almost intact towards Pskov. You can also see where I created new depots along the captured rail to help supply the airbases in the area.

[carlkay58]

T04 AGC:

Minsk is now connected through both Brest-Litovsk and Vilinius. 3rd PG forms some better pockets while 2nd PG has formed the Smolensk pocket. 3rd PG also managed to penetrate to and capture Velikie Luki this turn as the Soviets did not garrison the city. 2nd, 4th, and 9th Armies are rushing their infantry to the front lines as fast as they can but panzer forces are being forced to form and hold the advanced pockets until the infantry arrives to reduce them.

[carlkay58]

T04 AGS:

The area already captured is vast but the railnet is so slow and limited. This is the area that the Axis will always have trouble building a supply net. It is possible to grab one of the other FBDs from AGN and AGC but that slows them down in their push towards Leningrad and Moscow. 1st PG has pushed forward as 6th and 11th Army help finishing the pocket and firming it up. There are now two large pockets that need to be reduced along with driving ahead to catch up with the panzers. The Soviets are not able to put together a solid defense line as you can see 1st PG had a breakthrough near the center beyond the new pocket.

[carlkay58]

T04 Cleanup 1:

This is where I move LW AOGs forward and I promised to show some detail on this to help some people out. I get rid of the rail status display (toggle with the r key) and leave the depot display (toggle with the n key) up for this part. I show the AOGs (a key) and get the following display:

[carlkay58]

T04 Cleanup 2:

I first concentrate on moving the Kolufts (recon) AOGs forward. If you left click on the AOG tab you can then hold down the CTRL key and do a drag box to designate one or more airbases. Moving Koluft 18 from Jelgava to Parnu will look like this:

[carlkay58]

T04 Cleanup 3:

On the unit display on the right you can now hit the TRANSFER(4) button. This will allow me to set whether I want to Plan the transfer (it will transfer when there is sufficient supply and support in the target airbase), perform and Immediate transfer (it will transfer immediately while also trying to perform a supply action to get supplies and support to the airbase), or Cancel the transfer. I select Immediate to end up with a message that says none of the airgroups transferred because they were out of miles. But the map now looks like this and it will default to a Planned Transfer. We will check it again at the start of next turn to see if the transfer occurred. I hope this helps.

[carlkay58]

T04 Ground Losses:

The Soviets lost 224K - almost enough to lower them to 3M. 175K captured Soviets are removed from the game permanently. Only the 149K disabled Soviets have a chance to return to the war so the 911K killed and captured are permanently gone.

[carlkay58]

T04 Air Losses:

13 A2A losses and 25 Flak and Ops losses for the LW for a total of 63 aircraft. The Soviets lost 580 A2A in comparison so the LW is continuing to show their superiority in air combat with a ratio of 13:580. Not bad.

[carlkay58]

T04 Files:

[G Felzien]

Thank you for sharing the method of moving airbases. I completely missed the "A" key. I thought all airbase moves had to be completed during the air phase. This make much more sence. Thanks again.

[carlkay58]

No problems. Glad to help you out.

[Jango32]

That is probably the luckiest Baltic rail conversion I have seen so far.

[carlkay58]

I agree. It seems to be roughly double what I usually see. It may be different because I am playing at 100 for both sides instead of my usual 100 vs 110 or 120.

[Hardradi]

Any thoughts on the big German cities on the border of WE?

They need supply for flak and maybe industry, so it seems like a waste to have them on any priority higher than 1.