Soviet New Unit Production should have more build-ups

[Saelon1]

A pretty typical scenario for me playing as the Soviets:
1942--I have a few hundred AT regiments, separate artillery regiments, rocket battalions and so on.
1943--Artillery brigades & divisions, rocket brigades & divisions and AT brigades become available, and I want to build most of those to close to their build limit. To conserve manpower and to make available the ground elements needed to build those formations, I often delete some large number of the separate regiments (at xp = national morale), and build new brigade/divisional formations at xp = 35. There is then an extended period where the new formations have to train up to a reasonable xp level.

Another scenario that doesn't really happen (because of the futility), but--Heavy tank brigades (apparently) are made available in 1945, and one could build some, but with an xp level of 35, the game would end before they get to a reasonable xp level.

There are also support units (e.g. tank battalions, AT rifle battalions, etc) that have high build limits at a time when you don't have many better options, but are a bad use of your manpower later on (e.g. tank regiments just having a better TOE than tank battalions for similar manpower in 1943), but all you can do is delete the separate tank battalions and build new tank regiments instead.

A great (and simple) way to address this would be for there to be many more brigade/divisional units that the Soviets can form by merging multiple smaller units.

For instance:
Heavy rocket brigades formed by combining 3x heavy rocket battalions
Rocket launcher divisions formed by combining 3x heavy rocket brigades
AT brigades formed by combining 2x anti-tank regiments with 1x AT rifle battalions
Artillery brigades formed by combining 2/3x artillery regiments of the suitable type (e.g. 3x light artillery regiments -> light artillery brigade)
artillery divisions formed by combining 3 artillery brigades (possibly any 3 different ones, or a light artillery brigade, ML-20 brigade, and M-30 brigade

etc

This would be a nice quality of life change, that would make for much less need for redundant deleting and reforming of formations.

[malyhin1517]

It would be ideal and extremely historical option. After all, the Russians basically formed new units on the basis of existing ones.

[Stamb]

+1, looks like a good idea

[AlbertN]

That's something down the line I'd like as well for the game.

The game has a 'problem' which is the no memory for trained personnel
Same as there is the plight of veteran formations disbanding and ... losing their status ... here it can be the same.

Say 3 Soviet tank battallions worked through a few battles and have got some level of experience, maybe some notch of morale too ... the moment you disband them to create say, a brigade, that type of training done is lost.
The Soviets will get their brand new 0 TOE, 35ish experience or so Brigade, that needs to start from scratch.

ALBEIT! I say that with reservation - as I've not tested it at all - maybe a fresh create Brigade at 0 TOE or low ToE can get mergings of Battallions for instance, confluxing their trained personnel into it?

But in front of other type of problems - and considering the type of effort in terms of coding this may require (assuming the 'Merge' option is not viable), I'd rather have that well down the line of things to do.

[Saelon1]

ALBEIT! I say that with reservation - as I've not tested it at all - maybe a fresh create Brigade at 0 TOE or low ToE can get mergings of Battallions for instance, confluxing their trained personnel into it?

But in front of other type of problems - and considering the type of effort in terms of coding this may require (assuming the 'Merge' option is not viable), I'd rather have that well down the line of things to do.

As far as I know, you can't merge units in the national reserve, and I don't think you can merge support units onto other support units at all.

[malyhin1517]

As far as I know, you can't merge units in the national reserve, and I don't think you can merge support units onto other support units at all.

Tank brigades are support units and can be combined as a reserve to form a tank corps. Similarly, it would be possible to unite tank battalions into regiments, missile and artillery battalions into regiments or brigades. This can be done at the development level of the OOB for the game and does not require any changes to the game.

[AlbertN]

As far as I know, you can't merge units in the national reserve, and I don't think you can merge support units onto other support units at all.

Tank brigades are support units and can be combined as a reserve to form a tank corps. Similarly, it would be possible to unite tank battalions into regiments, missile and artillery battalions into regiments or brigades. This can be done at the development level of the OOB for the game and does not require any changes to the game.

Yes same concept!

But I'd remove the SU status to Soviet Brigades and have them only as CU. But that's another story relative to stacking problems.

[malyhin1517]

The Russians already have a lot of units on the map, so I like the fact that you can remove brigade-sized units from the map.

[AlbertN]

A matter is 'removing them' by converting them into Corps, merging them or disbanding them.
Another is having a Tank Corp that is made of the Corp itself and 3 more Brigades (so it's like 2 Corps - and virtually doubles the stacking allowance).

That is my grievance with the Brigades working as Support Units.

[Jango32]

Soviet Corps could be disallowed from directly attaching SUs.

[AlbertN]

That could work too Jango.

1 Brigade into 1 Division is not that bad as ... one can stack 3 divisions and 3 brigades.
The problem is 3 corps + 9 brigades in 1 hex (and maybe attacking from 2 hexes)

[malyhin1517]

Soviet Corps could be disallowed from directly attaching SUs.

It won't be right! Soviet corps had even more support units than is possible in the game. But these were usually self-propelled guns or regimental-sized anti-tank guns. The Soviet player can really abuse the use of brigades as support. It would be ideal if the brigade occupied three support slots, but this is not possible without reworking the game code. It would be easier to forbid giving brigade-sized units as close support altogether. For example, artillery cannot be assigned to a division or corps. Similarly, brigades should be located only at the headquarters.

[AlbertN]

Soviet Corps could be disallowed from directly attaching SUs.

It won't be right! Soviet corps had even more support units than is possible in the game. But these were usually self-propelled guns or regimental-sized anti-tank guns. The Soviet player can really abuse the use of brigades as support. It would be ideal if the brigade occupied three support slots, but this is not possible without reworking the game code. It would be easier to forbid giving brigade-sized units as close support altogether. For example, artillery cannot be assigned to a division or corps. Similarly, brigades should be located only at the headquarters.

That too could work too.

I mean - what Jango said could work as also regimented size AT can go to HQ; or what Malyhin said can work too (Brigades as SU, but limited to HQ level and thus subject to rolls and not guaranteed. Albeit that can lead to still many brigades getting committed).

In the end of the day it will be something related to trial and error.

I think the editor allows to enable a unit as SU or CU (I hope) and if it is a 'HQ only' unit or not.

But it is positive there is some consensus that the Brigade attached directly to units are over the top.

[Saelon1]

Something else I was considering was that the basic Artillery division (not the breakthrough division) should be able to attach artillery brigades as support units. My understanding is that most of the original artillery divisions were updated to the breakthrough artillery TOE, but WiTE doesn't really have a mechanism for only some of the artillery divisions upgrading.

However, if you could attach additional artillery brigades to the basic artillery division, then you could effectively upgrade the selected ones manually by attaching super-heavy artillery brigade, howitzer brigade and, eventually, the super-heavy mortar brigade as well.

Conceivably it could be problematic to attach 3x 84-gun howitzer brigades for example, but I feel like by the time you are forming artillery brigades and divisions en masse, you're limited by the number of guns you produce, so attaching an 84x howitzer brigade as a support unit would likely prevent you from building more artillery divisions, ultimately.

[Tom_]

Can anyone point me in the direction of a good guide on what to build as the soviets and why?

I'm play a GC at the moment as Soviets and cant tell if I should build things 'because I can' or if i should build particular units for particular strategies or situations. Or even if I'm simply over thinking the system.

I have seen the 10 pearls of wisdom for the soviets in the war room but something just focussed on building would be great. Or just some case studies/examples of what people did and why.

[AlbertN]

I suggest you play and learn by yourself.
Especially if you play vs the AI.

Take your time to look at the combats, what hits better what worse - what you produce and what you can fill, etc.

In general it is not only more satisfactory to learn by yourself but one 'learns' more than just to take the golden bible written by someone else.

Anyhow in general there are widely different opinions on things there too!

[Saelon1]

Can anyone point me in the direction of a good guide on what to build as the soviets and why?

I'm play a GC at the moment as Soviets and cant tell if I should build things 'because I can' or if i should build particular units for particular strategies or situations. Or even if I'm simply over thinking the system.

I have seen the 10 pearls of wisdom for the soviets in the war room but something just focussed on building would be great. Or just some case studies/examples of what people did and why.

I agree with AlbertN as to trying to learn what works through experience.

My approach has been going to the production screen and clicking "ground element map", which brings you to a screen showing how many of a certain element are missing, how many you have stockpiled, and how many are in transit. I then build units that match the ground elements I have plenty of in storage, and avoid building things that have a large deficit.

The only specific feedback I have is that ski battalions & brigades feel pretty good to me, during winter they take no penalties from snow and get 2x/3x cv in normal/heavy snow, making them a very manpower-efficient support unit, which take only infantry equipment. I then move them to the Northern front in spring, and return them to the map in fall for re-use. In 1944 when your manpower is low and your gear stockpiles are high, I usually disband them and build other SUs instead.

[Tom_]

AlbertN thank you for your response - I was looking for guides or examples, not answers or a golden bible.
Learning in isolation only goes so far, both in games and real life.
Further to that what's the point of a forum if not to share experience and combine it with your own?
Anyway I digress and thanks again for sharing your points of view.

[Tom_]

Saelon1 good point about the ski battalions - I had not considered building and deploying them in that manner! Seems so obvious now you say it.

[Stamb]

in my games i am building machine gun battalions up to a max already on t1
and then on t2 i deploy them, even low exp, to a map
because its a way i play Soviets, aggressively as soon as possible

then i attach this machine gun battalions to rifle divisions with which i want to attack
and looking on a battle report it looks like this battalions perform terrible, but when the final odds are 2:1 i always believe that this machine gun battalions made a difference