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@Mehring, point well taken... recon and bomb as needed. Think it works through a disruption factor as bombing hexes doesn't seem to yeild enough casuaties to do much.

Heh. Recon spam is a whole other issue of silliness. But I like your idea about leaders, Mehring. You'd have to lift the existing caps on improvement, though, at least for those leaders with high potential. Might have to tweak the improvement rate up a bit, too.

MTs proposal, which I thoroughly disagree with and regard as wholly unnecessary (especially for him) I also think can be completely cheesed by the Soviets to render it a nullity anyways. They have enough HQs to get around this in 1941 where they want to...and can overload in areas of the front they don't care about to cough up extra commands. This will also require overloading Fronts, but so what? They don't matter here, only STAVKA and army (and the airborne HQ) commands do. I'll cheerfully stick 10 army commands per front by Leningrad and Moscow if need be. Down south I'd attach everything directly to Front HQs and run, switching out their army commands to STAVKA. Expensive in APs but doable.

If he really wanted to put a break on reserves in 41 hitting the leadership directly will yield better results. Soviet initiative is bad as it is, knocking it down a bit more will hurt more than an HQ limitation. Shucks. Just dial down Zhukov a notch or two. That right there would make a big difference. That 9 point initiative rating in STAVKA is huge.

recon spam?

Recon spam. Flying a bazillion missions everywhere and utterly removing the fog of war. James was a master of this. It's preposterous. For extra giggles, yeah, lightly sprinkle bombs here and there in the rear area.

It got to the point where I didn't even bother censoring my AARs with him, I'd just post screens more or less real time in the tester's section. He knew where all my crap was everywhere all the time anyways.

They've done some stuff since then to reign in recon spam, but it's still doable. And it does indeed affect to some degree reserve activation.

Me, I just don't buy that anybody in WW2 had this sort of omniscience which would put modern satellites to shame.

Again speaking of Russians in 41, I find it not quite as bad as you make out. Recce regiments get cut to pieces if interceptors are about and low morale reduces flights. Not sure they reveal absolutely everything either. In my current game, a good half dozen of rmonical's Pz divs were disappeared until he sprang his late summer attack on Moscow. Believe me, I was looking for them.


Are we supposed to disband all air units because the air war's broken? What about the land units cos the logistics is non-existent? Then we can just email the map to each other. Like I said when saper was holding my units in a pocket waiting for November 41 before he finished them off, a player has to make use of what the game offers, the devs will hopefully remove styoopid possibilities, and it's crafty play that brings them to light. That's my view, anyway.

Looks like a long wait tho before any big structural improvement are made.

Sovs can't pull off recon spam in 41, they don't have the squadrons. Axis can. I'm talking 500+ missions per turn (not an exaggeration.) Rules were different back then, too. They've lowered the amount of intel that you can gather by air and increased the rate of breakdowns by recon.

Thankfully, nobody else severely abuses recon like James did. It's incredibly tedious to do this, probably takes upwards of a half hour each turn to manually blanket the whole map. And now I have probably let the cat out of the bag and people will start trying to figure out how to cheese this.

Ah, those were the days, brings a tear to my eye. Always found those German recon airbases such tempting targets for my massed Russian bombers.

It can be used multiple ways. They can't see what is under cover, so they don't know if that is a Gds Rifle corps or an AT bde. I've used that to make some areas look heavily defended and others less defended to try and get the enemy to devote himself in certain directions.
I've even used heavy recon as a feint, hoping to convince my enemy that my operational focus was really in a different place. I've seen that work to pull reserves or line depth to another sector.

I haven't seen a problem with reserve activations. They require the user to retain MP from their active turn. They strike me as an effective balance on some of the drawbacks of stack limits and IGOUGO.

MT, are you using reserve activations on the offensive? I noticed an opponent doing that, they were trying to bull into Leningrad and had broken down at least Totenkopf to get the rgt reactions and overcome the stack limitations. Downside is fuel/supply consumption by units you might be trying to save for else...

ORIGINAL: Seminole
It can be used multiple ways. They can't see what is under cover, so they don't know if that is a Gds Rifle corps or an AT bde. I've used that to make some areas look heavily defended and others less defended to try and get the enemy to devote himself in certain directions.

Good point.
The main problem with air recon is in open terrain where unit type can't be hidden.Even then you can use deception to make a pz corps look like a pz army, but you can't make a pz army disappear no matter what.
On the whole though I do think that air recon is too powerful and that's why I use it a lot.The trouble with getting rid of it is that surprise attacks from fueled up panzer armies would be even more lethal than they already are.You can't defend everywhere all of the time.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
Sovs can't pull off recon spam in 41, they don't have the squadrons. Axis can. I'm talking 500+ missions per turn (not an exaggeration.)

[X(] Seriously? Or are you just throwing out that number? Who would even have the time to do such an enormous amount of recon? Sounds like someone is taking the game or winning a little too serious.

I kind of like the idea of have a more flexible development of Soviet leaders, sort of like starting "without or with poor combat experience", and growing to the need. One could for instance think of the present values being a soft caps, and have the leaders start with that number minus random(50%) or so. The soft cap should also give a small chance to get better than the "historical reference" given a different course of events.

The other thing is probably what Mehring implied, one should not look at a character card and see perfectly accurate, numerical values. Some sort of abstraction and FoW so that players would have to rely on own judgement by the number of victories/defeats, average MP rolls failed etc. before trusting these numbers. But this idea would contradict the design goals of the G&G team I guess. Still, some more uncertainty and development of leader values sound like an interesting thing.

That was on the high end to be sure, an average turn might see a couple of hundred recon missions. We gamers as a group are a touch OCD, I suspect, and can wind up doing ridiculous things, not so much out of a desire to win as a desire to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, if the game lets us do so.

Where would the 500 missions be aimed at in the first place? Even just 200 would be enough to hit every single hex of the front line, plus one row back.

He flew as many missions as possible to raise hexes to maximum intel level, and this could require multiple missions on the same hex. And he flew well beyond two lines especially once my own defenses grew deep. Two lines isn't gonna cut it if you want to mess with reserves, good reserve placement will go back further than that.

This degree of intel is no longer possible, though.

Also note the connection between where you fly recon and that increases your chances of interdiction attacks.

What I do agree with is that the mass reserve use is a poor representation of the war from 1943-45. The use of reserves is designed to stop the attack in the hex of the initial attack, meaning within 10 miles of the frontlines. German tanks, however, were seldomly used that way (and especially not sprayed all over the front). The Germans either stopped a Soviet offensive in their defensive lines at or close to the front (this is what happened in Leningrad in summer / autumn 43 and from Vitebsk to Mogilev in autumn 43 / spring 44). Or they stabilized an operative breakthrough using a mobile counterattack (a good example for this would be Manstein's counterattack in March 1943, or Model's counterattack at Warsaw in August 1944).

But in my eyes the reserve use is not the main problem. The main problem is still the combat system. Not only is it very hard to hold the Soviets at the front without reserves (which by itself is not a problem), but the loss ratio is ridiculously favouring the winning side. Very often in a successful attack a German division loses 1000-1500 of their man, roughly 10%. This is still acceptable. Problematic, however, is the fact that the Soviets, even though attacking with 100.000+ men, lose the same number of men. In relation to their strength this represents a 1% loss. Thus Soviet units can knock a German division back multiple times a turn, inflict 30-50% losses, while only losing 10% maximum themselves. Combine this with the problem that pioneers and sappers can reduce a sizeable fort in a single attack and the virtual impossibility of holding in the open field, the Germans from 1943 onward have no chance without reserve use. The very generous supply system furthers this problem, as a Soviet side with reserves will practically never have to organize operational pauses.

Hmmm... 500+ recon missions? Seems wrong. Axis did recon, Soviets too, but cannot imagine it was as effective as is possible in the game-or worth such effort.

Agree that recon effectiveness could be reduced. But, not a house rule for me now.

Both sides can reduce effectiveness of recon by "maskirovka." Not a bad skill to develop.

The game gives advantages and takes advantages. Good example is initial leader ratings and freedom to assign when admin points allow.

The game favors offense, and this makes it exciting. But the definitive skill, I think, for experienced players is defense.

The main problem with air recon is in open terrain where unit type can't be hidden.Even then you can use deception to make a pz corps look like a pz army, but you can't make a pz army disappear no matter what.

Is that a problem?
I don't think you should be able to make a panzer army disappear in clear terrain from aerial recon.

I did manage once in a game to rapidly (two turns) rail in two FRONTS of Gds Cav Corps, Tank Corps, and Gds Rifle Corps and make a surprise pincer attack from woods/rough without the enemy catching on.

ORIGINAL: Seminole
Is that a problem?
I don't think you should be able to make a panzer army disappear in clear terrain from aerial recon.

That's true when units are moving but not so much when they're stationary.A lot of the clear hexes in the game would contain plenty of good hiding places for tanks, add some camouflage nets and aircraft are going to struggle to see them.For that reason I would distinguish between units that have moved and those that haven't when it comes to determining their maximum detection level.

Reminder that in the Kursk Salient, the only non-clear hexes between Maloarchangelsk and Prokhorovka are two Rough hexes and a single Light Woods hex for an in-game area of 11 by 11 hexes.

Well as usual the thread is being derailed by people discussing other issues.

Anyhow for those who are still here to think about the OP.

Consider in the summer of 1941 that Axis units approaching a defence line will most likely be moving thru a few enemy controlled hexes so having any spare units with enough MP for offensive reserves will be unlikely in this context.

Also the Soviets have an inherent advantage with reserve commitment due to the fact that they can shove 12 XX under one Army command and suffer no penalty in realtion to reserve commitment. While the Axis are using Corp, so maybe 3 XX are attacking with one in reserve. Every other unit in reserve mode must suffer some form of command penalty in relation to reserve activation.

Anyone who may take the time to set up a simple test will see what I mean. I have tested a situation that may be considered typical. And the Soviets always get more activations than the Axis.

One offensive XX reserve doesn't make much difference when the defender gets 2 extra XX in to the battle.

Also consider that most Axis Inf XX will have a MP of 10-12 while Soviet ID will have 14-16. Again favouring their rolls for activation, mulitple times I might add.

IMHO Soviet reserve activation is too effective in 1941 for some pretty basic reasons.

1. They can muster enough good leaders (high int) in critical areas to aid activation
2. They have a MP Advantage
3 They have more units so more chances to activate
4. The whole reserve activation system favours the defender
5. Soviet command structure favours them for reserve activation (consider 2 or 3 neighbouring Soviet armies might have up to 25 plus units in reserve, all in range of the battle).

People can choose to do what they like but I will not enter in to anymore games as Axis without some form Soviet reserve limitation in 1941. That will be a matter between me and my opponent to sort out.

BTW someone mentioned bombing potential reserves. My tests indicate it makes no difference in relation activations.