Why can't German Arty be assigned to DIV!!!

[FredSanford3]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I think that what Andy is trying to say here is that as things presently stand, SU attachments are severely limited. You cannot in fact stuff every panzer and motorized division with goodies, let alone every division in the Wehrmacht. There's simply not enough butter to cover the bread. You might be able to get a few select divisions fully tricked out, but that's it.

However, this changes depending on arty SU availability. He isn't looking at the impact of this on any single engagement or unit, but globally. All of a sudden, it could be theoretically possible to stuff oh, a third of the Wehrmacht with attachments to the rim. More than that if you include the flak attachments, but arty+stug+pioneers certainly is enough to cover all you mobile units with plenty of arty left over.

While this might not seem like any big deal on a micro basis, it's not clear how it will affect the balance on the larger scale.

So it's not just a question of comparing a single division with 3 stugs or 3 pioneers attached to one with 3 arty attached. When you've got 10 stugs and a few dozen pioneers you clearly can't have that many divisions running around with 3 of each. Throw in artillery, and the picture changes.

I will say this from my perspective on the Soviet end: there's a big difference between a Red Army with a bunch of corps and no attachments and the one stuffed to the gills with attachments. This indeed is to a significant degree the difference between the 43 scenario and the 44 one. There's hundreds of APs invested into direct attachments in that 44 army and the weight does tell.

But if you could implement my suggestion to make SU's count as command points against an HQ's allowance, and double the cost if they are directly attached to divisions, it would be hard to 'stuff' all of the panzer divisions and still have them be mobile. You'd only want to do that on rare occasions when you wanted a heavy breakthrough unit, but it's mobility would be severly curtailed, which is a reasonable trade-off IMO. Otherwise, the SU's would usually be under Corps/Army control, like they are now.

And I still think there should be a modifier to the commitment attempt for artillery on defense when fortified that makes it more likely the artillery will participate due to pre-planned fires. There'd still be no need to directly attach to divisions unless you wanted to, but you'd be surrending a lot of flexibility and mobility in the process.

[gradenko2k]

I think the point trying to made is not that Arty will necessarily break the game when compared in a vacuum to any other SU such as Pioneers and STUGs, it's that it might break the game in the context of everything else that is already available to the German player.

That is, if you have x number of German non-Arty SUs, and that number is enough to carry you to historically plausible scenarios, then throwing another y number of German Arty SUs on top of that is going to tip the balance - not because of the Arty's performance in and of themselves, but just because you're getting extra SUs.

Another way to put it would be: Yes, perhaps we could allow Arty SUs to be assigned to Divs, but that would require examining all the SUs as a whole so that the power available to the German player remains net equal anyway.

[ComradeP]

You also need to recount all of the starting support units. There are 95 150mm or smaller German artillery support battalions inc rockets. 140 or so altogther inc larger than 150mm. So I have no idea where you are getting these much lower figures from.

It was not my intention to suggest that the super artillery would be attachable to divisions, hence why I seconded the suggestion that 150mm howitzer units (there are no units using 105mm howitzers I believe) would be attachable. Not guns. That makes for 36 units, with more theoretically possible as the artillery battalions require "artillery" so more could eventually be equipped with 150mm howitzers.

Even if all those guns would be included too, most of them are still ~12 gun units.

So it's not just a question of comparing a single division with 3 stugs or 3 pioneers attached to one with 3 arty attached. When you've got 10 stugs and a few dozen pioneers you clearly can't have that many divisions running around with 3 of each. Throw in artillery, and the picture changes.

36 artillery battalions would allow 12 extra divisions to be fully geared up. Not the end of the world, I'd say.

I'd still say it's important to stress that the Soviets essentially don't have such limitations, they can stuff a large number of corps with big support units with the only limit being production and manpower, which isn't much of a limit early on.

Although I've said it a number of times, I'm still not sure people understand that the Soviets can balance 3 Axis support units with just 1 unit of their own. If you want to talk about balance in support units, the problem is not with the Axis.

[CarnageINC]

What if in 41 there were no arty attachments, in 42 1 arty attachment, 43 2 arty attachments, 44-45 3 arty attachments.  This will help counter Soviet SU 'overloads' and will stop this being such a issue for 41.  That is what Sabre21 keeps focusing on, if there is an adjustment for arty attachments that's progressive then it really shouldn't unbalance the game and allows doctrine for the players to evolve as the years pass by.

[ComradeP]

In that case, a further solution for the current issues with artillery is still required.

[Flaviusx]

Pieter, those corps are a long time coming, and if you try to stuff them early on, they'll be coming slower yet. It costs 6 APs to trick out a corps, and that's a pretty price hefty tag on top of, say, 10 APs to build a rifle corps.

In 1942-3 you have to choose between building more corps without attachments, or fewer with. This isn't a clear or easy choice. 120ish rifle corps (more or less the number you should aim at in the end) is 1200 APs. This is of course leaving aside expenditures for artillery divisions, mobile corps, tank HQs, etc.

The German has to put the Red Army under severe AP stress in 1942 by killing units (no more freebies from the deapile.) If he does so, the Sovs will face many difficult choices. I know what you've done with the Red Army in versus AI games, I've done it as well, but don't read too much into that. A good human player is going to stress your AP situation far more than the AI ever will.

[ComradeP]

As long as you don't waste (too many) AP's, you can optimize a large part of the Soviet armed forces by the end of 1942. With 50/60 AP's a turn, you quickly get to 1200.

The main problem I see at this point, after my limited mid-war experience with the Axis and my experience with the Soviets is that the Soviets can optimize their forces in a way that might have been possible historically, but didn't happen. Playing as the Soviets is a lot more of a "what if..." than playing as the Axis, considering that you essentially customize your army.

The Axis are not at their high water mark in 1943, but in 1941 for their infantry. Only their mobile divisions get better, but many also quickly disappear again. Your infantry is going to have, at best, a CV of around 10 for most of the war. We know what kind of CV values Soviet corps can reach, and there's also a thread depicting that. Axis flexibility is in some ways missing.

Many of their good leaders won't get better during the war, and as testing has shown, the Axis benefit less from CV increases than the Soviets. We had lengthy debates about that on the tester forum, but statistically speaking it still remains a fact that Soviet CV's are often increased by a lot more than Axis CV's to get to their modified values, especially in difficult terrain. The Luftwaffe is currently underperforming and the Axis artillery remains to a significant extent either uncommitted (if concentrated) or too few in number to truly change a battle (if committed in limited numbers).

You can't really optimize the Axis forces. You can juggle support units and static units a bit, but that's more or less the limit. What the Axis need is more flexibility, or at least some sort of doctrinal edge over the Soviets when it comes to tactical operations. That edge is currently only present in morale/experience and in some leaders, but the Soviets can get to the same morale/experience level and also get pretty good leaders.

The historical advantages the Axis enjoyed can, at this point, not be fully used within the current system. That is one of the reasons why I'm in favour of at least giving them some flexibility by allowing them to attach some kinds of artillery divisions as a counter to the ahistorical (in the sense that it was never that good, not that it wasn't possible) Soviet army they'll be facing.

You'll be hard pressed to advance to where the Axis got in 1941 and you will presumably never come close to the point where you temporarily nearly cripple the Soviets. The Soviets can barely perform worse than they did historically.

[Flaviusx]

Well, I'm not against giving the Axis some limited ability to attach arty, as I've already stated. Just trying to point out why Andy's instincts and caution have to be taken seriously.

The air war is a work in progress, heh. The pendulum may have swung too far from the beta days where it was bombing the Red Air Force to oblivion as late as 1943. We probably overcorrected that. Pavel is on this, and there's a lot of changes in the pipeline, it'll sort itself out.

[jaw]

ORIGINAL: Sabre21

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Andy, we could always limit the number of artillery attachments to, say, one per division, if we decide to go this route. (For the Germans, anyways. I'm still against arty attachments for the Soviets, period, they don't need this nor do they make sense given their doctrine.)

That should keep it down to a dull roar.

Although for the US I might even be willing to forego that restriction.

I could agree with that as long as the unit that gets attached is motorized for panzer/motorized units. Kind of hard to get horse drawn guns to move as fast as a tank.

A much simplier and historically more accurate solution would be to increase the probability of artillery support battalions adding into a battle.

[Flaviusx]

We may indeed wind up tweaking the code to increase the chance of commitment. There's obviously more than one way to skin the cat. I wouldn't be surprised if Gary and Joel ultimately end up going this route, and the German edge in leadership could make this work.

[ComradeP]

I wonder how much more difficult the game would become for the Soviets if their +1 odds bonus would be removed. That's one thing the Axis can't really counter. As far as I know, they have no hard coded advantages.

[Smirfy]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

We may indeed wind up tweaking the code to increase the chance of commitment. There's obviously more than one way to skin the cat. I wouldn't be surprised if Gary and Joel ultimately end up going this route, and the German edge in leadership could make this work.

I have always felt that this is the most sensible route, direct attachment would go along way to bluring the differences between war in the east and other wargames which would be a real shame.

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: jaw

ORIGINAL: Sabre21

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Andy, we could always limit the number of artillery attachments to, say, one per division, if we decide to go this route. (For the Germans, anyways. I'm still against arty attachments for the Soviets, period, they don't need this nor do they make sense given their doctrine.)

That should keep it down to a dull roar.

Although for the US I might even be willing to forego that restriction.

I could agree with that as long as the unit that gets attached is motorized for panzer/motorized units. Kind of hard to get horse drawn guns to move as fast as a tank.

A much simplier and historically more accurate solution would be to increase the probability of artillery support battalions adding into a battle.

Ok guys. I finally got word back and Gary and Joel decided that they will provide a bonus to commit support units to a battle from an Hq that has not yet moved in the current turn but no attaching arty su's down to division level by the player.

Andy

PS: As for not getting to historical postions as the Germans in 41, the only time I've not been able to exceed those is when I've played on the hard difficulty settings and then I could barely get to Vyzama. Otherwise I've taken Moscow and Leningrad everytime on challenging and in about half the cases took Rostov. I haven't played more than a few turns though since release so maybe things are tougher now than they were a couple months ago.

[Great_Ajax]

Sounds like a reasonable solution to me. More movement and less chance of being able to respond in a fluid mobile environment. Slower, more deliberate actions with more committments, especially in the defense or deliberate attacks. Sounds good.

Trey

[CarnageINC]

Does this bonus apply for both sides?

[Smirfy]

ORIGINAL: CarnageINC

Does this bonus apply for both sides?

I would imagine it is purely for German Headquarters

[Joel Billings]

Both sides.

[CarnageINC]

Will it be tested before being implemented? 

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: CarnageINC

Will it be tested before being implemented? 

I would like to think so but a fix like this can be subjective on how effective or not it may be and it will depend on the timing in when it gets sent out to the testers and when the next patch is available.

We are getting hotfixes or updates on a near daily basis and to try and stay ahead of them is a full time job. Testers are doing what they can.

[CarnageINC]

Thanks Sabre21, I know you guys are working hard at the game.  I'm just glad some form of change happened even though its not what I would of done [8D]  Hopefully it will help use those underused units that everyone has.