Lost in scale

[ncc1701e]

Usually in eastern front "grand strategy" games, we are opposing German corps vs Soviet armies.

But, reading few OOB books, sometimes German corps were composed from 2 to 4 divisions.
Sometimes Soviet armies were composed from 4 to 6 divisions plus few brigades.

Could we also oppose in size a German division vs a Soviet corps?
Could we also oppose in size a German regiment vs a Soviet division?

And now the frontline. How many miles can be covered by these German corps of Soviet armies?
There are so many scale out there, 10 miles per hex, 20 miles per hex even 50 miles per hex.

I am completely lost. Still wondering for a corps/army size game if 20 miles per hex is too low or too high?

Any opinion

[Lobster]

This might help a little.
https://balagan.info/infantry-unit-frontages-during-ww2

[Curtis Lemay]

Both of my Corps/Army scenarios (Soviet Union 1941 and Germany 1945) used 50 km/hex.

[Cpl GAC]

My two cents; Understanding that Soviet Fronts were more akin to German Armies, and German Corps were more akin to Soviet Armies; the first "apple to apple" organizational purpose/frontage is probably a division - even though German divisions were larger. So that's the scale I prefer.

Now, having waded into Lobster's masterwork Campaign Barbarossa ( https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... barbarossa) and read myriad books on the East Front since my youth I think that that scale - regiments, 2.5-kilometer hexes, one day turns - is the best representation of operations on the East Front.

I'm currently reading David Glantz's Barbarossa Derailed series and it's apparent that the penultimate levels of command on both sides were fighting and measuring on the 2.5-kilometer daily scale. I believe this scale captures a spacing scale between units that explains things like breakthroughs, and, "leaky" envelopments, and, marching for days with no enemy in site, and fighting for control of a road between a small city and a village taking on such importance one finds so often in the histories. There were just not enough units to have the entire section of a front linked by front-line units and ZOCs.

[Curtis Lemay]

TOAW is actually pretty flexible on this issue, since units can be subdivided by three, are surrounded by ZOC, and stacked up to nine high.

[governato]

I wanted to add a quick commentary, mostly following on what Bob said. it came out a bit long...

But here is the gist:

TOAW's engine is flexible, and with good use of the engine "Force" parametes one can simulate the Russian Front using different spatial/time scales that will work equally well in terms of describing the realities of the East Front.


However, the important question when designing a scenario is: who does the player represent? What is the experience we are trying to replicate? If the player is an Army Group /Front level commander it makes sense that the units represent Corps/Armies for the German/Soviet player respectively as the status of such units would directly inform the commander decisions. Would the commander need to worry about how many MGs a given battallion had* or where a given tank battallion is? Likely not. They 'd worry about how many operational long vs short barreled tanks a corps has, how many air squadrons could provide air support and how far Corps 'd be from the main rail lines after two/three weeks of operations.

Then the natural spatial scale (or hex size) is about 20miles (defensive frontage of a German Korps/Soviet Army) and one week/turn (the typical time scale of a WW2 Corps level operational phase such as attack, breakthrough or exploitation ). With that perspective in mind I designed the Eastern Front 41-45. scenario. Then *for me* designing an East Front game at regiment/2km hex/day scale 'd be detail overkill as I fear I'd lose the forest for the trees when making operational level decisions...and for a 4 years/1200+ turns long war and likely many years of RL.
Another relevant concern I have with Division Level Formations (as typical of detailed scenarios) is that it becomes harder (not impossible) to model Command and Control limitations at the Army Group level, which is a fun part of these battles.

Which brings the question of... what does a player want to play? Just Barbarossa? Bagration? Or the whole Minsk to Moscow to Berlin 4 years long thing? Shorter/smaller scale scenarios provide a rich experience when very detailed, which makes total sense especially if one has a more tactical oriented approach to wargaming. I appreciate that many folks like to have almost complete knowledge of their forces and move around a lot of units...because it's fun! That is why scenarios or games like FITE and GWITE exist and are so successful.


On the more technical side of things and if you have read this far, another semi empirical rule I follow when deciding the spatial/time scale pairs for a scenario (otherwise why not using 50km/hex and half day turns?) is borrowed from computational physics...(that's my background and btw wargaming was instrumental in getting me interested in simulations..)

"a typical unit in *ideal* conditions should be able to move about TWO "resolution elements" over the course of a turn"**

This means that the players have enough time to react to the changing conditions of the battle field..under ideal conditions.

For me TWO resolution elements is "about six hexes" (two units and their ZOCs). When violating this design rule using say a week long turn for a 10km/hex scale (aka long turn/snall hexes) one can notice players starting to adopt unrealistic strategies, like "carpets of units" to prevent their opponent from roaming behind their frontlines before they have time to react (GWITE I am looking at you).

So again that is a good validation of the Corps/20miles/weekly turn choice but also of more detailed scenarios at say regiment/day/2.5km x hex scale.


Again, sorry for the long post!


*Well Hitler famously did...
** Here is the reference https://www.simscale.com/blog/cfl-cond ... ndition.

[Curtis Lemay]

TOAW is actually pretty flexible on this issue, since units can be subdivided by three, are surrounded by ZOC, and stacked up to nine high.

Let me just elaborate on this a bit:

It means that you can cover six hexes of front with a single unit divided by three and spaced every other hex. Or, at the other extreme, nine units per hex for a total of 54 units in those same six hexes. So...54:1 flexibility.

[Curtis Lemay]

However, the important question when designing a scenario is: who does the player represent? What is the experience we are trying to replicate? If the player is an Army Group /Front level commander it makes sense that the units represent Corps/Armies for the German/Soviet player respectively as the status of such units would directly inform the commander decisions.

For traditional wargaming, I've always assumed that the player actually represents the entire command chain. He represents the overall commander AND all the subordinate commanders at the same time. Otherwise you would have to take all the subordinate command decision away from him and have the PO do them. You can sort of think of WEGO applying the latter (which is one of the reasons why I find WEGO so unsatisfying).

[governato]

However, the important question when designing a scenario is: who does the player represent? What is the experience we are trying to replicate? If the player is an Army Group /Front level commander it makes sense that the units represent Corps/Armies for the German/Soviet player respectively as the status of such units would directly inform the commander decisions.

For traditional wargaming, I've always assumed that the player actually represents the entire command chain. He represents the overall commander AND all the subordinate commanders at the same time. Otherwise you would have to take all the subordinate command decision away from him and have the PO do them. You can sort of think of WEGO applying this (which is one of the reasons why I find WEGO so unsatisfying).

Yes. Of course in practice one has to actually move all the units (until a clever AI comes along) but I was reasoning in terms of " what problems do I need to focus on/solve first and foremost"...so an army/Corps level game frees me from having to bookeep swarms of regiments ...but other people like that.

"Decisive Campaign Barbarossa' is a Matrix wargame unique in offering a true perspective from the overall commander perspective (Halder was Chief of Staff of OKH to be precise) but there is were "war politics" get mixed in and that is not what TOAW does.

[cathar1244]

Usually in eastern front "grand strategy" games, we are opposing German corps vs Soviet armies.

But, reading few OOB books, sometimes German corps were composed from 2 to 4 divisions.
Sometimes Soviet armies were composed from 4 to 6 divisions plus few brigades.

Could we also oppose in size a German division vs a Soviet corps?
Could we also oppose in size a German regiment vs a Soviet division?

And now the frontline. How many miles can be covered by these German corps of Soviet armies?
There are so many scale out there, 10 miles per hex, 20 miles per hex even 50 miles per hex.

I am completely lost. Still wondering for a corps/army size game if 20 miles per hex is too low or too high?

Any opinion

So, an example from the western front: in January 1945, a U.S. armored division (12th) covered some 10 kilometers of front line. Bear in mind they didn't have every maneuver battalion on the front line, so maybe 4 maneuver battalions plus some mech cavalry were covering 10 kilometers of frontage. And they were spread thin enough in such a deployment that German infantry was able to penetrate their front at points. On the eastern front, I expect that units covered much larger frontages; I've read the Germans set up strong points to control key avenues of approach and covered the rest by fire so far as possible. Frontage gets problematic when it follows winding terrain features like rivers.

My own take on WW2 corps (German and Allied corps) level games is that 25 kilometer hexes would not be a bad scale.

As far as relative unit sizes go, I think it more realistic to consider a mid to late war Soviet rifle division as about one-half a German division unless the German division somehow had a full infantry complement.

Cheers

[ncc1701e]

Thanks for all your answers, helpful. But I am still puzzled.

[Zovs]

Thanks for all your answers, helpful. But I am still puzzled.

Different designers (James F. Dunigan, John M. Astell, Frank Chadwick all from the board wargaming era) and scenario creators (just from the TOAW archives) and publishing companies (Avalon Hill, GDW, SPI, and MMP all board wargaming companies) have tried to take their own spin on the Eastern Front.

Essentially it depends on what the designer is trying to say with his game recreation.

There are basically three flavors to try to design; Strategic, Operational, and Tactical.

The following is taken from the Introduction to War Gaming by SPI :

scale. Literally, the number of miles or kilometers represented by the width of a single hex on the game map. More loosely, a game will be characterized as being a certain scale depending upon the size of the military origination represented by a single playing piece. In this sense there are three main scales:

Tactical. Single man, ship, vehicle or aircraft. Also team, squad, platoon, or company sized units.

Operational. Battalion through division sized units.

Strategic. Division through Army and Army Group size units.

Sometimes the above scales may be modified by the adjectives "low", "high", or "grand" to indicate a scale at one of the extremes of the basic category.

Introduction to War Gaming, SPI 1977, page 17

Here is my own take and analysis:

From my board war game days:

Tactical Level War games are primarily designed around small unit tactics. Mostly at the squad and up to battalion level, but some are single man games (a bit rarely in board war games, but common in FPS), but most war games are squad up to battalion level games at the tactical level. The idea is that the tactics fall on the battalion, company, platoon or squad leader and they are implementing a smaller part of one of the operations.

Map scale: 5-250 meters per hex (man to man 5-25 meters, squad 25-75 meters, company 75-250 and battalion 100-250 or up 500 meters)
Time scale: 30 seconds to 1 day per turn (usually for man to man you'd see 30 seconds to a few minutes, most squad level games are 1 minute to 5 minutes, most platoon level games are 30 to 60 minutes, most company level games are 1 hour to 8 hours, most battalion level games are 2 hours to a day per turn)
Unit/Counter scale: 1 man up to battalion per counter/unit (so 1 man, a squad (8-15 men) platoon (20-50 men), company (100-180 men) battalion 200 on up)

Operational Level War games are primarily designed the operational level of movement, combat, logistics and other operational aspects (too numerous to list). Generally Operational level war games are battalion up to division level. The general or most common are divisional level war games. The idea is that operational level war games are implementing the grand strategies set my High Command or Political leaders.

Map scale: 1 km to 50 km per hex (regiment/battalion level 1 km to 5 km, brigade/regimental 1-10 km, divisional/regimental/brigade level 15-30 km, divisional/army level 25-50 kms).
Time scale: 4 hours up to biweekly turns (regiment/battalion 4 to 24 hours, brigade/regimental 1 day to 1 week, divisional/army 1/2 week to 2 weeks)
Unit/Counter scale: battalion up to divisions per counter/unit (each counter could represent a battalion, regiment, brigade, division, corps, or armies, with multiple counters for each regiment, brigade or division and/or pure regiments/brigade/divisions)

Strategic Level War games are primarily designed for the strategic level of command, sometimes involving production, politics, where and how to employ those strategies.

Map scale: 20-100 km per hex
Time scale: 1 week to seasonal turns
Unit/Counter scale: Divisional up to Army Group level per counter/unit

These are generic concepts that have been around since 1958 when Avalon Hill first introduced the first board war game called Tactics II, and evolved when SPI came into being in the late 1960s while being led by John F. Dunnigan one of founding fathers and most prolific war game creator/inventor.

[ncc1701e]

Thanks, I was leaning towards 7,5 miles per hex i.e. 12 km per hex for divisional/regimental/brigade.

What I don't understand is your link between unit size and time scale? What is the reasoning behind please?

Time scale: 4 hours up to biweekly turns (regiment/battalion 4 to 24 hours, brigade/regimental 1 day to 1 week, divisional/army 1/2 week to 2 weeks)

Thanks

[RedAss]

Thanks, I was leaning towards 7,5 miles per hex i.e. 12 km per hex for divisional/regimental/brigade.

What I don't understand is your link between unit size and time scale? What is the reasoning behind please?

Time scale: 4 hours up to biweekly turns (regiment/battalion 4 to 24 hours, brigade/regimental 1 day to 1 week, divisional/army 1/2 week to 2 weeks)

Thanks

It has to do with realism.

Say you have a a 1km scale map and company sized units. Perfect.
But then you set the turn scale at one month. This means that the movement allowance will be however far a motorized unit can move in one month per turn.
The result cuts into the realism -- the units would have near infinite movement, and the scale each turn would mean that units would have a months worth of movement and the opponent would not be able to react. In reality, units see the movement of the enemy and react appropriately. Units on one side of the map could suddenly appear on the other, surrounding units from out of nowhere with no chance to counter. The realistic ebb and flow of combat is lost.

This also eliminates part of the advantage of airmobile units -- they are designed to do just that, appear suddenly almost anywhere. If all units can essentially do that, air assault and mechanized units essentially lose much what makes them special.

By the same token, a map scale of 50 km and a turn length of 1 day would likely make for a long, tedious scenario because the movement rates of units would likely be 1 or 2 hexes for all units.

So IN GENERAL, the larger the unit size, the larger the map and time scale, and vice versa. Reaction times are much quicker at the platoon and company level vs. the division level, so turns should be shorter to reflect that. A five month scenario at the tactical level would have probably 150 turns, while a five month long scenario at the division level might have 20. This is part of what makes scenario design so frustrating (and rewarding).

[biddrafter2]

"It has to do with realism.

Say you have a a 1km scale map and company sized units. Perfect.
But then you set the turn scale at one month. This means that the movement allowance will be however far a motorized unit can move in one month per turn."

Excellent points by RedAss.

This is why I want to make a game on a spherical hex map that allows mouse roller zooming to multiple levels. The time dimension shrinks in proportion to the X Y scale.

[Cpl GAC]

This is why I want to make a game on a spherical hex map that allows mouse roller zooming to multiple levels. The time dimension shrinks in proportion to the X Y scale.

How does that work? You can play the game at both the Army/Corp level and the division/regiment at the same time?

[biddrafter2]

This is why I want to make a game on a spherical hex map that allows mouse roller zooming to multiple levels. The time dimension shrinks in proportion to the X Y scale.

How does that work? You can play the game at both the Army/Corp level and the division/regiment at the same time?

Yes, that is the thought. Play at the level you prefer. Want to play the winter fast at Army level? Go for it. Want to zoom in, to allow more control during the prep and execution of a major offensive? You can do that.

Before everyone jumps in pointing out all the potential flaws with this idea... I acknowledge them upfront. There is a reason this is an idea and I haven't executed it (yet)!

[Curtis Lemay]

This is why I want to make a game on a spherical hex map that allows mouse roller zooming to multiple levels. The time dimension shrinks in proportion to the X Y scale.

How does that work? You can play the game at both the Army/Corp level and the division/regiment at the same time?

Yes, that is the thought. Play at the level you prefer. Want to play the winter fast at Army level? Go for it. Want to zoom in, to allow more control during the prep and execution of a major offensive? You can do that.

Before everyone jumps in pointing out all the potential flaws with this idea... I acknowledge them upfront. There is a reason this is an idea and I haven't executed it (yet)!

See my "Kaiserschlacht 1918" scenario:

https://crossrl1.wixsite.com/my-toaw-si ... lacht-1918

I made it in two sizes.