Way too many PPs?

[aspqrz02]

Indeed.

"Dirty Little Secrets of WW2" by Dunnigan (one of the key designers behind many of SPI's wargames) has good basic figures as well, as well as a lot of other data hard to find in digestible format elsewhere.

In the case of all the major players there were real world limits, mostly based on training requirements as much or more than equipment requirements, that they couldn't exceed easily ... for the most part ... there should be some flexibility, of course, but anything beyond a certain variable range should probably cost humongous amounts of PP more than "normal" to represent the limits of the possible.

IIRC, off the top of my head, the 1939 Panzer Divisions had around three times the tanks (in raw numbers) than 1944-45 divisions did, but about the same combat power ... which is probably represented by "Unit Level" ... and I am not entirely certain that the late war German tanks being so much better than the earlier ones was the cause of the difference ... so you could probably allow, for example, the Germans to field more Panzergrenadier Divisions by foregoing Panzer Divisions, perhaps at a 2:1 ratio? Thinks like that would be reasonable and believable whereas having 100 Panzer Divisions in a 500 Division Germany Army probably isn't

YMMV [:)]

Phil

[Razz1]

You forget about the most important part... Politics...

You see... my name is Hitler and I am the kindest dictator in history.

We conquer your country but respect the citizens. We incorporate them into the Third Reich.

We do not steal all the food and rape the country like we did in Holland, Belgium, Ukraine, etc... in WW2

The people gladly work for the Reich and are 3 fold more productive. Our army swells as everyone volunteers to be part of one world order.

Our enemy is Communism and Capitalism.


You see we have many more friends and resources. We can easily produce 750 divisions.


It all depends upon your perspective.

It's a game. Unless you have a set OOB for the whole game, Production is king and will always vary from history.

Not saying I disagree with you. Just look at other players perspective, after all, they are the Dictator of Germany and can run the country the way they want.

Fixed OOB games become stale very quickly.

Variety is the spice of life and the people of the Third Reich have spice.

[freeboy]

I will trade for your spice, how about a production run of advanced air to ground attack planes? lol
 

[aspqrz02]

You can't "just" order, say, 50,000 Tank sized things off the shelf, for delivery by the middle of next week, not even today.

If you wanted 50,000 specialised motorised vehicles, even today, it would take, depending on the level of industrialisation of the country, several years to produce that many, from drawing board to finished product ... some countries longer, some less.

That's reality.

How to handle it in ToF? Well, if you read up on the subject of wartime economics (I suggest avoiding Speer, who is an out and out liar, and, if possible, checking out Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" for the German War Economy plus Overy's "Why the Allies Won" for the Allies) you'll find that both sides recognised this, and allowed for it, mostly, in their planning ... though they sometimes fell into "wishful thinking" mode (like the Japanese planners habitually did) ...

Hitler decided on a 400 ship (including, IIRC, 350 Subs) Navy, as the "Z Plan", in 1937 ... but he didn't expect it in 1938 [:D]

He expected it in the late 1940's or early 1950's [X(]

And that wasn't realistic, as he allocated money only ... not resources, which were controlled by Fat Hermann, and, naturally enough, he kept as much as he could for the Luftwaffe after the Heer was supplied and left damn all for the Navy. They wouldn't have had the surface component of the Z-Plan done ... well, ever ... given that actual war continued from 1939-45 or so.

Yes, I suppose that you'll comment that they managed wonders with producing lots of submarines ... probably more than the Z-Plan called for.

That's only sorta true. The late war Electroboats were the ones supposedly designed for mass production at non-port sites, then railed to assembly facilities and put together like giant Meccano kits (a reason why at start German Subs should take no less time to construct than anyone else's subs) ... the problem was simple, Hitler's insistence that they be ready by 1944 meant that the whole process was never sorted properly through the normal R&D process.

The result? Almost all, if not all (records are sketchy), of those produced in 1944 were, sadly, to use a technical term, stuffed.

How?

Well, the Hull sections were found to be out of true by up to several inches in size ... and, well, these are pressure hulls ... being out of true means that they have, to put it mildly, severe problems.

AFAIUI only a handful of the 100 or so eventually produced were without such major flaws ... not a good advertisment for "rushing things" [:-]

So, how do you represent it?

Well, I believe if you look at Grigsby's "World at War: A World Divided" you can see a possibility ... in that game, to build 10 Tank Armies, you have to first build 1 Tank Army in Quarter 1, then 2 in Quarter 2, then 3 in Quarter 3, then 4 in Quarter 4 ... a slow build up. And if you drop back from whatever the current value is, then that reduces the base value from which your next increase is.

Something similar should be possible with ToF.

You wanna build 350 Subs? Then, this quarter, you can only order 4 (two units) a month ... next quarter you can order 6 per month (three units) ... and so on. Similar strictures for all units. And, perhaps, have production go to monthly cycles.

YMMV

Phil

[aspqrz02]

Ah. The "Not Hitler" argument.

Still fails Economics 101.

See, the key limitation to the German War Economy was access to raw materials ... not factories or workers ... raw materials.

Doesn't matter, really, if you're Not Hitler or Hitler, it's the raw materials that are the limiter.

For example, all of Europe, with the exception of the USSR, was a net importer of POL ("Petrol, Oil and Lubricants") in 1939 ... ALL of Europe.

There was some domestic production in all of the main countries, I believe, but nowhere near enough to support even domestic peacetime demand (which, of course, was far, far less than wartime demands).

War breaks out.

First thing that happens?

The RN institutes a total blockade of Germany. No Oil gets in. Except, of course, from Russia.

Problem: Russian production at the time, even if it had all been sent to Germany (which it wasn't) wasn't enough for the German economy to operate at full bore ... not even with synthetic oil production.

So, even in 1939, German operational level movement of military units was directly constrained by the need to conserve oil stockpiles.

The Blitz against Poland resulted in the seizure of Polish wells (nowhere near enough to make up for the Blockade, and, as noted, not even enough for Polish pre-war use) and strategic reserves. With careful husbanding, this windfall enabled the Germans to stage the invasion of the west ... where seized Dutch, Belgian and French minor production sources and strategic stockpiles literally fuelled the invasion of Russia in 1941.

At all stages, German operational choices were directly, and increasingly severely, constrained by the availability of POL.

How does this impact on production?

Well, the Petrochemical Industry consumes, of course, POL, to produce fuel, lubricants, and other chemicals.

What were the other chemicals used for that was vital?

Number One: Explosives. By 1944 the POL shortages were so constraining that the Germans were forced to start reprocessing the explosive fillers in shells from obsolete or captured weapons (the ones that weren't pressed into German service) for use in current issue shells. No other country did this. Which is, I guess, a fairly broad clue that the problem the Germans were facing was severe.

Number Two: Synthetic Rubber. Used in, amongst other things, Tyres (for cars and trucks and planes) and Roadwheels (for Tanks and Halftracks). All rubber was imported. Blockade meant that it all had to be synthesised (or recovered), and that required POL. Lots of it.

Number Three: Fertiliser. This is where Not Hitler has no choice but to be Not Nice to his conquered subjects. The German planners, in 1939, discovered that the Army they needed to mobilise to conquer Poland, then the West, then Russia, required stripping the Agricultural sector of male workers and fertilisers ... which meant, no ifs, no buts, no ands, and no maybes that there would be famine in Germany as a result.

Unless the food was found somewhere else.

Guess where it was to be found?

By stripping it, firstly, from the Poles.

Now, Polish agriculture was even more backward than German ... so, stripping food from the Poles meant that the Poles would starve. Which didn't worry the Germans in the slightest.

Why? because the whole reason for the Drang Nach Osten was to seize Polish and Russian land and divide it up into large landed estates where the decimated peasantry would toil for a Germanic aristocracy.

Nope. Fighting Bolshevism had very little to do with it, except as an excuse.

And, in any case, the only way to keep the German people from starving was to starve the conquered countries.

Germany, by and large, did not introduce severe rationing till 1944 ... but it was introduced almost immediately in all the conquered countries.

So, lack of fertiliser has a severe and ongoing impact.

Now, that's just POL.

What about other things?

Steel: Germany relied on Swedish iron ore, and even that supply was not enough to allow them to operate all their factories at full capacity ... and large scale outside sources were all outside of Europe or otherwise not realistically accessible.

Tungsten: All imported. Stockpiled before the war. Running out by 1942, when production of Tungsten cored AP penetrators for Tank and AT Gun shells ceased as the remaining stocks had to be reserved for high speed maching tools.

Turkey was the obvious supplier, but the British had carefully bought up all existing supplies and tied in all future production at premium rates at the beginning of the war. Oh, and Kemal Ataturk, whom the Turks still think rather well of, who had only recently died before then outbreak of war, had instructed his people to not ally with Germany in any upcoming conflict ... smart guy. So, no Turkish Tungsten for Germany.

Lots more things.

So, basically, Not Hitler and Not Mussolini (and even Not Stalin, Not Churchill, and Not Roosevelt, though to a lesser to much lesser extent) had real world constraints that meant that blithely waving a magic wand doesn't make some things possible.

Like Not Hitler being a good guy and being able to fully operate all the industry he captured.

Phil

[aspqrz02]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

I will trade for your spice, how about a production run of advanced air to ground attack planes? lol

Truer than you realise!

Look at the Axis trade with their minor allies during the war ... they provided few or no advanced weapons, and expected everything (up to and including the kitchen sink, I expect) in return.

Phil

[freeboy]

omg.. seriously? limited to resources?
Begs the ?, why where they limited.. this arguement, either side of it.. is circular... like every time travel paradox... so what if they bought the raw materials etcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetc

[aspqrz02]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

omg.. seriously? limited to resources?
Begs the ?, why where they limited.. this arguement, either side of it.. is circular... like every time travel paradox... so what if they bought the raw materials etcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetc

Doesn't beg the question at all.

It answers your question.

Why were the resources available to Germany limited?

Several (serious, deadly serious) answers to that ...

1) Because God made it that way.

Seriously. God (or whomever you believe created the universe in 4004 BC ... me, I'm an agnostic [;)]) didn't put lots of oil or tungsten or suitable iron ore supplies in Germany. Or in France. Or in Poland. Or in Belgium. Or in Holland. Or in Lichtnstein, Luxemburg, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and etc.

Unless you want to restart the game at the instant of creation (the nightfall preceding Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC [;)]) and distribute the raw materials that will be needed by Germany in WW2 then ... well, short of that, you have a problem.

That is, it's not a circular argument, it's not begging the question, its trying to get some posters to understand that the resources needed to do the things they want, the things that Germany didn't do in WW2, simply did not exist where they were needed.

Get it?

There are no resources to be had where Germany can get them.

2) Human beings can only have so many babies at a time, and they take around 18 years to reach usable military age, and, perhaps, slightly less than that, to an age where they are usable in industrial and agricultural production.

Subset: Human beings can only be in one place at a time and cannot, generally speaking, do two wildly different things (like, say, drive a tank in combat while manufacturing aero-engines)

Or, to put it simply, human resources are also limited ... there are only so many warm bodies available to be turned into cold corpses, and only so many become available to replace the cold corpses become available every year ... and if you want to breed more, now, well, it takes around 18 years for them to become available. And, with WW2 technology, it wasn't possible to breed them any faster.

Yes, you could have special Mad Scientist units with Cloning Tank technologies that magically reduce maturation from 18 years to 18 months, or 18 weeks, maybe even 18 days or even 18 hours ... but they need resources, and those resources probably don't exist where they are needed (see #1) ... so you have to start in 4004 BC.

The real world is a set of choices ... sometimes there are a lot, or a gradation of choices between extremes more likely, or maybe there are only two, either/or ... regardless, the real world limitations facing the Allied and Axis powers should at least be considered.

Now, I get it ... you don't like that ... so, seriously, start the game in 4004 BC, put the oil bearing strata under the entire of the US under Germany instead, and all the Tungsten from Turkey in Germany instead, and all the Uranium from North America in Germany instead, and all the iron ore from Sweden in Germany instead ... and provide Germany with several rivers equivalent to the Nile so they have never experienced significant famine because they produce a huge exportable surplus of food every year.

And allow all the good Aryan women to bear children who grow to adulthood in 18 weeks ... after an 18 day pregnancy ...

Does this sound like WW2?

No?

Damn right.

Look, fine, I get it ... you have no interest whatsoever in anything except a fantasy game played on a map that geographically resembles Europe, but which bears no resemblance to any of the natural resources or human populations or industrial capacities that actually existed or could have been built or fuelled.

Fine. Go for it! I don't have any problem except when you start telling those of us who do not want Tannu Tuva to be able to conquer the world about how what we want is all so unrealistic [:-] ... we get it by now, you have no interest in anything even vaguely resembling realism.

I'm not telling you you have to ... I am merely pointing out what reality was for those who might be interested,

YMOV

Phil

[aspqrz02]

Try reading "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin (available online, do a Google Search) ...

Synopsis: The story takes place entirely aboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) headed for the frontier planet Woden with a load of desperately needed medical supplies. The pilot, Barton, discovers a stowaway: an eighteen-year-old girl. By law, all EDS stowaways are to be jettisoned because EDS vessels carry no more fuel than is absolutely necessary to land safely at their destination. The girl, Marilyn, merely wants to see her brother, Gerry, and is not aware of the law. When boarding the EDS, Marilyn sees the "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!" sign, but thinks she will simply have to pay a fine if she is caught. Barton explains that her presence dooms the mission and will result in the deaths of the colonists. After exhausting all other options (such as calling the mothership, The Stardust), he is forced to eject her into space.

Does that make it clearer?

For a lot of things Germany is faced with the same sort of limited options.

For example, they can try to invade England only if they slight production of Tanks, Planes, Guns and Ammo needed for the invasion of Russia, which was the whole purpose of the invasion of Poland in 1939.

In the unlikely event that they manage to take the UK, it doesn't get them the resources they need anyway, as they aren't in the UK ... and the resources squandered in attempting to take the UK, even if they survive, are not universally of much use for the invasion of the USSR.

The Germans did the best they could, and had an incredible run of luck, but, in the end, it was the Cold Equations that did them in.

Phil

[rodney727]

The Germans never fielded more than 40 panzer divisions. What about the volksgrenadier or the type 44 divisions? The 1939-1941 panzer divisions had more tanks but a lot less fire power than the later panzer divisions. I do enjoy your posts Phil but how would you put this to use in this game?

ORIGINAL: aspqrz

Indeed.

"Dirty Little Secrets of WW2" by Dunnigan (one of the key designers behind many of SPI's wargames) has good basic figures as well, as well as a lot of other data hard to find in digestible format elsewhere.

In the case of all the major players there were real world limits, mostly based on training requirements as much or more than equipment requirements, that they couldn't exceed easily ... for the most part ... there should be some flexibility, of course, but anything beyond a certain variable range should probably cost humongous amounts of PP more than "normal" to represent the limits of the possible.

IIRC, off the top of my head, the 1939 Panzer Divisions had around three times the tanks (in raw numbers) than 1944-45 divisions did, but about the same combat power ... which is probably represented by "Unit Level" ... and I am not entirely certain that the late war German tanks being so much better than the earlier ones was the cause of the difference ... so you could probably allow, for example, the Germans to field more Panzergrenadier Divisions by foregoing Panzer Divisions, perhaps at a 2:1 ratio? Thinks like that would be reasonable and believable whereas having 100 Panzer Divisions in a 500 Division Germany Army probably isn't

YMMV [:)]

Phil

[aspqrz02]

The only way I can see of doing it is to do what a lot of WW2 Strategic Level games have done in the past - have build limits.

So, the Germans (for example) would be absolutely limited to, say, 300-350 Division equivalents, of which 15%, approximately, would be Panzer, Panzergrenadier or Light (Motorised) ... I think ToF could be more flexible than similar games and allow the Germans to build more divisions overall at a significant cost increase for the additional divisions, and allow them to build a bigger percentage of Panzer, Panzergrenadier or Light (Motorised) Divisions at an equally significant cost increase.

And that increase would have to apply not just to the additional divisions, regardless of type, but also to all replacements for all divisions ...

That would represent the massive redirection of resources, which probably wasn't possible historically, to be done in a way that would at least make a nod to historical and physical reality.

I'd suggest at least a 100% increase in cost, with a further 100% increase in cost for Panzer, Panzergrenadier or Light (Motorised) Divisions and a similar increase for replacement points and upkeep.

Alternately, you could allow the Germans to build no more than the 300-350 divisions they managed historically, which is probably close to an absolute manpower/training time limit that really shouldn't be exceeded, but allow them to build more Panzer, Panzergrenadier or Light (Motorised) divisions based on capturing more resources.

So, for example, capturing the Astrakhan and or Baku oil wells would allow a few more divisions (it probably wouldn't have in reality ... it's unlikely they would have been captured intact, the Germans would have been unlikely to get them back into working order in less than several years based on similar Japanese experience in the DEI and Borneo etc.) each, and if they could manage to take Iraq (even less likely to be taken intact, and almost impossible to get back into production and then get the POL back to Germany in less than a decade, I'd guess) allow a few more.

Of course, in reality, there was no chance that the Germans would have been able to do the latter, and such a tiny chance of the former that you could probably say "no chance" and not be far wrong, but at least it would be a nod to reality.

The other option is to not Division count so much as Manpower count ... which would allow you to field more divisions at higher Tech levels, but at the cost of them being no stronger ... so, for example, a TL5 Tank Division would have a maximum strength of 10 (even with Experience), but have significantly reduced manpower requirements compared to a TL1 Tank Division (and be more fragile - you should rate losses in terms of Manpower, rather than SPs, so the same loss of manpower in a TL5 division would be more devastating to SPs than it would be in a TL1 division).

Probably the former is more sensible in terms of the game as it exists, as I suspect the latter, while it might be codeable, would be much harder to work some sort of reality balance to.

The same, more or less, would apply to the Air and Naval units, which were even more limited in access to trained personnel than the Army was.

It should work, but may not be acceptable to Wastelands or be perceived as acceptable to the majority of their expected customers.

Phil

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: aspqrz
It should work, but may not be acceptable to Wastelands or be perceived as acceptable to the majority of their expected customers.

I would like to have access to a more historical background to the game on the basis of oil, manpower restrictions, or some limit to the total number of units (or a combination). I am already doing that in trying to set up Army organisations, with allocated commanders, no upgrades in enemy ZOC and limits on rail use in captured territory. There will be other times when I just want a fun game.

Build restrictions have been in such games from the beginning, but there is going to be a problem in deciding what the limits might be and how they affect the game, as it is now configured.

However, none of this should dissuade other players, as there should be options left for different styles of play.

CEaW GS 2.0 has options to play with oil restrictions, or without, this does not need to be a point of conflict, as long as any changes arrive as options, so that the player retains the choice of what sort of game they want.[:)]

[aspqrz02]

ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa

ORIGINAL: aspqrz
It should work, but may not be acceptable to Wastelands or be perceived as acceptable to the majority of their expected customers.

I would like to have access to a more historical background to the game on the basis of oil, manpower restrictions, or some limit to the total number of units (or a combination). I am already doing that in trying to set up Army organisations, with allocated commanders, no upgrades in enemy ZOC and limits on rail use in captured territory. There will be other times when I just want a fun game.

Build restrictions have been in such games from the beginning, but there is going to be a problem in deciding what the limits might be and how they affect the game, as it is now configured.

However, none of this should dissuade other players, as there should be options left for different styles of play.

CEaW GS 2.0 has options to play with oil restrictions, or without, this does not need to be a point of conflict, as long as any changes arrive as options, so that the player retains the choice of what sort of game they want.[:)]

Indeed, I agree with you ... sometimes *I* just want some mindless fun, too! [:D]

But, like you, sometimes (more often than the "mindless fun" option for me, anyway), I'd like something that reasonably closely resembles reality ... but I'm an old board Wargamer from way back in the dark days of SPI before it was gutted by T$R and onsold to Decision Games.

The Oil Restrictions idea would work well enough ... the other problems that I see with ToF are mostly organisational and logistics based ... too many PPs (or too cheap units and too cheap repairs), units too quickly produced, supply from captured cities, rail lines repairing far too fast, experience being far too easy to gain for Panzers and not gainable (in effect) by other units, initial OOBs still being wrong (RAF and French AF still being way under strength, for example; I also checked my copy of CWiE and there seems to be no way for the Belgians or Dutch to build the historical forces they actually had ... which is straight out wrong as they didn't actually have to *build* those forces, they had conscript armies, all they had to do was *mobilise* units that already had equipment on hand, which is very, very different), interception ranges being far too high (so that single engined fighters based in Germany at start are savaging the RAF in the UK around London at start, which was/is simply not possible), German Subs being far too effective, Ships of all sorts and nationalities seemingly impossible to detect by any nationality (though this *may* have changed in the patch, haven't had a chance to check comprehensively, but on preliminaries it seems unchanged), weird national builds (all UK Infantry Divisions were Motorised from before the start of the war, and should move at Mechanised Infantry speeds, for example and cost should be somewhere between Infantry and Mech Infantry)

Lots more that I have probably forgotten. None of it insurmountable, I would think ... and it should be possible for a reasonably accurate "historical" series of campaigns to be constructed ... though probably only for "ToF Gold" or, maybe, "Time of Disgust" (I mean, Wrath, Fury ... they're gonna run out of appropriate descriptors soon [:D]) ...

Phil

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: aspqrz
... but I'm an old board Wargamer from way back in the dark days of SPI before it was gutted by T$R and onsold to Decision Games.

aaaaaargh!!! You mentioned the war!
<gives secret handshake and wipes tear from eye>