JAMiAM: the main difference is that your opponent has a line with little depth, and notenome has a depth of 3 hexes in many areas.
Those attacks I should be launching according to you all cost MP's. If your opponent's divisions rout after 2 or 3 hasty attacks, good for you, but notenome's divisions generally don't.
What happens when a Rifle division is attacked in a hasty attack is that it loses, if you're lucky, between 750 and 1000 men, and retreats. Even though a Rifle division (and infantry in general) has very little mobility, and would thus would be under very significant pressure to stage an organized withdrawal, there's no bonus or modifier when facing a combined arms or mobile unit attack. It just retreats. notenome's divisions tend to retreat 3 or 4 times before routing, if attacked by hasty attacks. They do mostly rout when attacked with a deliberate attack.
In both of the screenshots you posted, there are no Soviet reserves or any depth in the Soviet line. No wonder you blew through them.
In my game with notenome, that pile of routed units at the end of my turn rallies in his turn, is back in the line by my turn, and is routed again.
No Rifle division has shattered after the opening turn, not a single one. They all retreat orderly or rout, where the odd thing is that the divisions that retreat often take higher losses as they can be attacked more than once.
Mobility might be the Axis' greatest asset, it's also very easy for the Soviets to limit it, primarily because the Axis can't really destroy Soviet divisions without encircling them or keep them routed.
I also still seem to be facing a bug that was supposedly fixed, as my Panzer corps HQ's are still hoarding fuel dumps. As I drop fuel on HQ's instead of divisions in some cases, that means many of my divisions don't have more than 30 MP's even if the dumps are available.
You need to play againt an opponent who knows what a defence in depth is before you can understand why I'm saying attacks like you've been able to make against other opponents are pretty utopian against an opponent who checkerboards or places a carpet of units in your path.
If a penetration is successful, such as in the center, unpredictably successful Soviet counterattacks have cost me two turns of progress in the center. With the ease with which mobile units get pushed around now, the high casualties they're taking, and the fact that any units you rout will just be in the line again next turn, it's extremely difficult to get through a carpet currently.
notenome's casualties from routing do seem to have increased slightly, so maybe some of his divisions have finally had it, after being routed for several turns in a row.
How do you think the routing/recovery rules should be changed?
I'm currently thinking about something like: routed units that are rallied fight as if unready until the next friendly phase, no matter what shape they're really in. So the sequence would be: enemy phase 1#:unit is routed, friendly phase 1#: unit is rallied and fights as if unready, enemy phase 2# the units that were rallied still fight as unready, as opposed to the current situation where they can be combat ready, friendly phase 2#: the unit, if not routed again and if not unready/depleted, returns to full combat readiness.
