Taming the Tiger or Slaying the Bear......loki100 (Axis) vs Speedy (SU)

[Lovenought]

That's some insanely low production rates for Romania. I didn't realise it was that bad.
I am reading that correctly, right? Most Anti-Tank or Artillery guns are produced at a maximum of 1 or 2 per week?

Can you see how much they are getting in imports from Germany? Is that meeting their needs instead?

[loki100]

there is some but not a lot, there is also some scripted production in the event log (this is for the turn after that table but I doubt its much different).

so yes, as Rumanian formations lose their heavy weapons, then its not easy to replace. Given how I'm using them now its not too important as long as I can replenish the infantry elements

[loki100]

T115 – 29 August 1943

In the end its probably going to be meaningless, but that is another +1 on the VP charts.

Weather remains clear, maybe some light rain up around Leningrad next turn.



Anyway, decide to try something different, the heavy bombers of L1 are re-equipped with their largest bomb loads to attack the Soviet railyard at Kursk – my logic is that must be key to their logistics network on the central sector.



Did enough pre and post attack recon to trust the claimed result. No idea if its worth the effort, almost all my losses were flak but if true that is a bit of a mess for a while.



Anyway, decided to remind the Soviets that I still have very mobile formations, really committed my recon assets so had a decent idea of their reserves (I may well regret this statement when I get the turn back)

Elements of 1 and 3 Pzr A struck back around Kursk – in addition to the shown battles a lot of HQ went scuttling off looking for safety. I managed to surround a number of stacks so a normal retreat escalated to a rout.



The rest of 1 Pzr and 17A attacked south of Kharkov. Again, took advantage of the ability to cut off their spearhead first and then generated a set of routs.



Both these are quite a gamble, I've weakened sectors to gain critical mass, so one outcome is a wider collapse of my lines – but as long as its not ending in pockets, at worst I just get chased out of a line a few turns earlier. At best, that might force a pause.

Finally 4 PzrA struck on a very narrow sector and this time I've gambled on a pocket in 'operation lets upset Chuikov' – I think its safe unless my recon has really failed me.




Fairly predictably, losses were high but I either defend passively or take my chances – and regret it badly if I've miscalculated.



Air losses were brutal too.

[Jango32]

You've accidentally posted the ground losses again instead of the air ones.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Jango32

You've accidentally posted the ground losses again instead of the air ones.

ah:

[Stamb]

It would be nice to hear if railyard bombing had any real effect on logistics from comrade Speedysteve. Ofc when he will be in Berlin, not now Or maybe in private message, I promise not to give any info to loki!

[Speedysteve]

Well....Nothing to hide on that part since it's a moot point. I'm swimming in supplies. Only 17 of 298 on map units have less than 75% supply. The amount of freight received at Kursk was almost identical to the previous turn before the damage (c.7K) which is well below it's maximum capacity anyhow. Loki has bombed it again the following turn and it is very damaged now receiving almost no freight. Once more not a problem though since I've lots of other depots which receive all they need to supply my men with what they need....biggest loss was one of the Axis bombs blew up a crate of vodka....swines!

[Stamb]

Oh. I feel sorry for your vodka losses, the most important item for SU!

[loki100]

T116 – 5 September 1943

Well at first glance, that provoked a fair bit of violence in return – on checking most of my 'tank' losses were from SU not the core armoured formations.

No change re the VP situation.

Despite some pressing need, leaving 10 Pzr in the reserve to improve the experience of its key elements, no point just losing the tanks in the first battle.



Sicily surrendered, so the clock is ticking on Italy, this track seems to be pretty much running on schedule.



Decided to repeat last turn's air raids on Kursk, see if I can escalate the situation, reduce the wider recon substantially to avoid running down too many of my assets.

I'd reduced the effort from 3 days to 2 (as last time the third raid was pointless), seems I could have gone to just a single raid.

Add that to the 50% damage from last turn and the railyard is at 100% damage.

Since the VVS doesn't seem to be contesting this, I may as well keep at it, its probably the best use of the heavy bombers and it can't be helping their logistics.



So to the map, a lot of Soviet attacks on the northern sector but those lines are still holding, starting to fray as I pull off to refit etc but broadly even where I give up one fort line I can substitute poor terrain.

The south was a little bit more active.

I gave up ground at Bryansk – while what is to the west is open terrain its also a problem to supply (from the east) so I can control stuff that way – in the end this will force a retreat onto the Smolensk defensive lines but that is inevitable.

South of Kursk I had enough fresh assets to repeat a limited form of last turn's attacks, I can use some of those highly mobile brigades to cut off units and then escalate a normal retreat to a rout. No point dreaming of pockets but this is a good substitute.

Put that win with last turn's damage to some Tank Corps and with some luck that will reduce any pressure on this sector for a couple of turns – really that is all I can hope for now.




On the Kharkov-Poltava sector, pull back, no reason to try and repeat last turn and I can rest/refit a lot of formations this way.

The big choice was what to do in the south – the pocket was broken, so thats a fairly clear hint that there is no point aiming for them any more. But the Soviets seem to be strung out and weak.

Here, I again over-committed my recon assets to try and gauge what they had moved up.

In the end I kept things simple. I doubt I'll be seeing the 77 Rifle Corps for a few turns.




I also cut off and routed another Rifle Corps. So decided best thing was to give 4 PzrA a well earned break. Its an operation I can repeat if the chance arises.

More generally with these cut off raids I'm trying to encourage the Soviets towards rear area security – more that is sat back stopping me cutting things off, the weaker their front line is.



Fairly clearly I can't sustain this level of combat operations, but then I don't need to do this sort of thing turn after turn.



Still just about operating within my trained pilot allocation, the VVS still suffers when it commits.



No sign of Autumn though.



Keeping an eye on this chart at the moment, Soviet manpower reserves are flatlining (despite their gains such as Stalino), if I can keep their losses high, then they really can't divert manpower to expanding their on map forces.



Which is indeed what seems to be happening. No sign their allocation to the active TB is going up either.

[loki100]

T117 – 12 September 1943

Picked up another Theatre VP this turn. Starting to run out the clock on Smolensk (worth a max time bonus of 4 now), so that gives me a bit of freedom on that sector.

Overall tempo slowed a little, no attacks north of Smolensk and relatively limited elsewhere. No sign of bad weather yet.

Air war, swapped the city target to Orel, if this has any payback its not immediate but adds to the problems I strongly suspect are facing the Soviets as their advance picks up tempo – as it has to.

Well could have done the job with one raid on that evidence.



In the end, action (for me) that turn was limited, did the usual poke behind the lines at Kursk with a fast brigade (most of my mobile units have 45+ MP) but decided on no more than trashing an already weakened Tank Corps. I could do with letting my units have a rest (they are a very finite resource) and sort of suspicious that the opportunity for another raid was there. Since I have done it twice, I suspect being presented with exactly the same gap a third time is more a trap than an opportunity.

Losses down on recent turns, ideally don't want to see close to 1-1 so re-organised the front lines to reduce my exposure.



So by my recokoning, probably 4 more turns till the Autumn rains. I'll discuss the specific issues of the 1943-44 mild winter in a later post as it has some bearing.

As an overview (the red lines are the front lines at the start of June), as in the reports, the northern part of the front has mostly been static. I've pulled back here and there to shorten the front or if the Soviets managed to open up a gap. I can't strike back so anything lost stays lost and I have quite a commitment here – which of course has implications elsewhere.



I've recently lost Bryansk and the surrounding regions but given I lost Kursk and Stalino in the late spring, I'm actually surprised how little I've lost here. I know I put a lot of effort into screening the Dnepr bend but generally that has paid off far better than I'd expected.

My redeployments here are partly with an eye to the E-W rail links. As is clear (and to be expected) the Soviets are fine for resources at the moment – they must have a full rail net and I never captured places like Rostov or Voronezh. So this phase its not so much about what they can repair but what they have that can be repaired. This is particularly relevant along the Desna and then west towards Gomel – one reason why I am hanging onto Sumy and Poltava.

In VP turns, as I suspected the short term is about the time bonus for Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporoshye. In relative terms I gained +8 on their capture so at the least I'd like to trade off no more than that. To achieve that I need to hold Zaporozhye till at least T120 or Dnepropetrovsk to 122. T120 also coincides with the likely arrival of bad weather. So if I manage to cling on to there, I may well pick up a net gain on the exchange.




While doing a bit of a catch up, maybe interesting to look at the state of my rifle divisions – this is for German units only and excludes the LW formations.

Some rough and ready statistics. The median (ie the easiest to calculate) morale and experience is 70 (so above the NM), the median %TOE is 83% (which reflects how relatively quiet half the front has been), cv of 15, cpp of 96 (ditto really).

Excluding elite units the highest morale is 81, experience 79 and TOE% is 97. Flipping that around, lowest morale is 54 and experience of 45, by the look of it that unit has been heavily engaged and had a major refit.

Good its going to Italy soon – but its a warning of what is to come.



Some other aspects are a bit easier to describe. This is (again) just German infantry divisions (not LW) so I have 138 with an average manpower of 14,000 men and 149 guns.



Their notional TOE calls for 177 guns, so at the moment not bad (but going to get worse as I take more heavy losses).

They notionally need 336 rifle squads each (so a total of 46,368) and in the divisions I have just under 38,000 (plus 1300 damaged) – so my front line combat strength comes out around 82%.




Globally I'm missing around 100,000 men from the rifle squads (remember they are in almost every TOE I have) which clearly I am never going to make up.



So, I think that gives some idea. At the moment, on average my infantry is a decent defensive tool, it can only attack when exceptionally well led, hitting something weak or in support of the Panzers (even then it takes heavy losses). Pity its going to get worse.

[Lovenought]

You know, it's funny. It might seem strange for the LW to be so strategically active at such a late stage in the war. But historically, it was about this time (early 1944) that Hitler threw away hundreds of bombers in the Little Blitz for essentially no Allied losses.

This is a vastly, vastly superior way to expend this aircraft and pilots.

Also, why are you defending that open terrain immediately below Leningrad? Is holding on to your forts better than superior terrain, or do you just want to fight for every mile.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Lovenought

You know, it's funny. It might seem strange for the LW to be so strategically active at such a late stage in the war. But historically, it was about this time (early 1944) that Hitler threw away hundreds of bombers in the Little Blitz for essentially no Allied losses.

This is a vastly, vastly superior way to expend this aircraft and pilots.

Also, why are you defending that open terrain immediately below Leningrad? Is holding on to your forts better than superior terrain, or do you just want to fight for every mile.

as to the LW, yes I think this may have some impact. The front has been stalled for some time which gives us both a relatively easy supply situation, at some stage that shifts and the Soviet logistics problem in 43-44 is very different to the Axis one in 1941. They may not take 20+ hexes in a turn but they have to supply 6.5-7m men with a lot of artillery and tanks (as well as the VVS).

So it can get badly stretched and the only solution is pure capacity, so every feasible depot hooked in and processing. Thump a few and that becomes harder to achieve - especially going into the autumn/winter.

At the moment my logic is that this is akin to the axis on T1, a cut off Pzr division still has a lot of fuel but if it misses one turn of deliveries then its started on the road to needing constant replenishment.

The other bit is that esp with the heavy bombers they are not that great in a GS role, there certainly is no value to hitting Soviet airbases (they have plenty of replacements) so I'll stick on this. As I fall back I'm going to revert to low level interdiction in addition to take out admin movement behind their front. That could add just a bit more a pain in their logistics system - especially on the sectors with poor E-W rail links in any case.

I'm holding at Staraya Russa mainly as not under pressure. Broadly in the north I've been looking for efficiency of force allocation/front line but a few places (such as that dual track running to Velikie Luki) I've held salients just to constrict their options. When I get hit hard then I can't counter-attack so will have to pull back - as you say there is no shortage of secondary lines and I've dug in a set of forts to fill out some of the gaps between the best defensive terrain.

[Speedysteve]

Lovenought did you mean the hexes immediately south of Leningrad?

[Speedysteve]

It's pretty hard for me to update and say much right now as any screenshot I show can give something away to Loki. Loki has summarised what's going on. What I can say is I'm pretty frustrated. I feel behind the curve. I can't get momentum going. My men are well supplied, all in CP limits. Naturally impossible to get all units up to 100% TOE (men are always a shortage (hovering around the 150-200K mark in the pool)). I'm working on a TOE threshold of 60-65% (dependent on unit type) before I try to refit/send to the reserve. VVS still gets obliterated by the UFO's the Axis are flying by Alien pilots with 10 limbs. Loss ratio is beginning to get better on land which is a good sign. Applying pressure where I can as much as I can. Virtually impossible to attempt an encirclement as Loki keeps his Armoured units in reserve to thwart any attempt at that.

If there's anything specific readers want to ask/see let me know[:)]

[Bitburger]

Speedy, looking for your thoughts on infantry brigades,
Earlier you said you had been careful to max build infantry brigades before their cap reduction. With how severe losses are for routs in wite2, i have now started disbanding infantry brigades, preferring the manpower to go towards higher cv and toe of the divisions/corps. Do you think a lower toe corps with low toe infantry brigade attachments is superior to a higher toe corps without attachments? Does that thinking change for offensive/defensive applications? Now that the tide has turned and but soviets are short of manpower, are you combing them out? And would you do the same again in a new game?

[ImperatorAugustus]

Brigades are super flexible and should mostly be used at SUs or to teleport units into areas.

[Speedysteve]

Hi Bitburger. Thanks for the questions. Good ones[8D]so a few thoughts from my side on that.

I would never disband them tbh. Naturally their use changes through the game. IMO pre-Corps their strength lies in 2 areas. Firstly in 1942 to help create a carpet defence to bog the Axis down during their offence. Secondly if it becomes desperate to merge them into a division in vital areas/battles.

Low TOE is never good. The unit is more susceptible to rout with catastrophic losses. Better for higher TOE.

I guess as each game will be unique in terms of how players play, the losses sustained by both sides and re situstion will determine how much manpower you have to go around to fill the units you have. If you have too many to fill with limited manpower production then too many lower TOE units which will negatively affects your on map abilities. Obvious I know but I wanted to say. It’s easy to overlook that Soviet manpower production dramatically decreased through 44 and 45. Gone are the days of rabbit like soldier production. On the flip side by 44 and 45 the Axis should be taking a beating for their silly invasion.

I wouldn’t change anything with regard to rifle bde production. There’s lots I would do differently but not that due to their flexibility of defence carpet in 42 and SU attachment to Corps moving forward. Only caveat would be if I was battered and suffered such extreme losses in 41/42 maybe limit their production to not stifle the rest of the war

[loki100]

T118 – 19 September 1943

Soviets gained a Theatre VP last turn so that is down to +4 in my favour. I'd expect us to roughly trade gains/losses there but I've done all I can to stack it in my favour (as a reminder we are not using TB control so anything excess sent cannot be recalled).

So first signs of autumn, basically rain across the front (if I can believe this) and light mud for next turn.



Anyway, decided to stick to the railyard bombing campaign, in fact to escalate it to two targets. Decided to experiment with single day raids as they seem to have been enough on earlier missions.

Kharkov was only half repaired in any case (ran enough recon to trust both reports), no harm in reducing their manpower flow either.




Still gaining small dumps of reinforcements, thats the second batch of artillery regiments in recent turns and very welcome.



On map, some isolated action to the north, blow and counter-blow on the Sumy-Desna sector, for me 3 Pzr A has been relatively rested so can hit back with some confidence – the other two really need a break.



Similar in the south, 1 Pzr is more beaten up compared to 3 Pzr so was tempted to give it a week off.



Which makes this a bit marginal. Yes it trashes a stack of Mech Corps that could well have caused a lot of trouble, but even with a relative improvement in my tank stocks its not that easy to replace 200.

Does seem like the Soviets are using most of the LL stuff that is being sent to them, whether 200 Matildas are of that much value is more debateable.



Still having started on them, I hit the more exposed one again.



I guess that around 2-1 is the current rate of trade and winning the tank and gun exchanges.





Certainly won the defensive GS air missions and still inside my trained pilot pool (just). Operating with the LW, even the Rumanians are of some value.




Soviet manpower not building up – again as good as it gets for now.



And the big numbers seem static, had some extra divisions arrive in the reserve (& now on the way to the map) so more or less emptied mine out, looks like 3 or 4 major Soviet armoured formations tucked away – good idea, its dangerous on the front lines.

I'm due the equivalent of a Pzr corps in early October, which may allow me to rest some of those that have been heavily engaged recently (though they are actually refitting ok on the map).

It might also give me the ability to cause mischief somewhere else on the map – clearly the extent that I have any choice may determine where they go.



Just as an overview checked using the city capture mode – the current front line is almost a perfect fit, I'm doing a little better in the south and a little worse around Bryansk but one way or the other the game and historical events have come back into balance.

Even in the south its a bit odd, doing better say around Poltava but clearly lost the Dombas and Mius line far too early.

[Stamb]

At t114 Soviets had 14 625 tanks in total
Now - 13 663

Looks like even Soviet production can not sustain such losses.
I wonder how many turns tank brigades/mech divisions have to stay on refit and if there are enough tanks in a pool to replace current losses.

Like in the battle above: there were 951 tanks, 833 lost immediately and few more in the next attack. It is almost full wipe.

[loki100]

well as I have been arguing, its all about adapting to being on the strategic defensive and playing to that. In this case, concentrate a lot on a narrow sector, cede elsewhere. And then really hit the enemy hard, in the end you can actually remove a sector of their attacking potential (for a while) or even start to eat into their global resources.

Do this, and for some time the wider force balance can be moved in your favour.

I'm trying not to let the Soviets get a free hit at my armour, can't always hit and run but if they are left in the front its because they have just done some damage, not to substitute for infantry. As the Soviets at this stage, I'd hit a Pzr formation in the front lines with 3+ Rifle Corps just to deny it full MP the next turn. As it is most of mine start the turn with 45 MP+, which means that I can shift the focus and still attack that turn (within limits)

Xhoel has shown how to do this (with a far worse set of resources and overall situation) in his 1945 AAR

The Soviets probably have the replacements but its going to be older stuff, notable the mix of tanks of those battles and ideally I'd not have the Matildas anywhere near the battlefield. But they have to get them into the formations and that'll take time (or a trip to the reserve)

as the IS-2s come on line the heavy tanks get a lot better, but it won't be till May 44 that the T34/85 is in real use and then it takes time to replace them in the existing formations