FITE2 Is Russia Overpowered?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: fogger

"Well- how far in advance was your training operation planned?"

Not relevant as we were dealing with peace time public servants. At that time Qld rail was part of the public service. The flattops were booked about a week in advance.

"How quickly would the move have taken place if it was in response to an enemy breakthrough that happened on the Saturday evening- and the flatbeds were 500km away with a load of farm equipment headed in the wrong direction?"

In war time we would have driven there. But in peace time we had a limit of how many "track" kms a armoured vehicle could do in one year.

....

I was just suggesting that your peacetime exercise might not be a good analogue for a wartime response.

I think there ought to be some flexibility in how rail transport works. I played Tannenberg 1914 recently and the rapid rail movements the Germans made between the two fronts are not possible in TOAW at this scale. The trouble is there's one rule that applies for all units. Ideally, it should be quite trivial for a brigade of infantry without heavy weapons to travel 100km by train and then march to the front on the same day, but in the same scenario I'd like to see putting a cavalry regiment or field artillery on the train be much more of an exercise, since both would need specialist equipment and planning.

This is much more of an issue in a 1914 scenario than a 1940 scenario; in the former, a brigade could be quite effective with only its man-portable equipment. In the latter, it would be seriously hobbled.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Unit Supply affects how far a unit can move by rail - less supply = less distance a unit can move by rail. Not sure that should really work that way.

Well, the actual rail movement rate reflects loading/unloading as well as time spent sat on the train. Tired units are going to load/unload more slowly- but I agree that this effect is probably overstated.

[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: Zovs

All war games become ahistorical as soon as turn one begins because it’s impossible for any game to mimic history exactly, it’s been like that since 1958 when AH introduced Tactics II. I would not want to play an exact historical recreation because it would be boring and would always end the same way it did historically. That being said all Wargames have some historical aspects to them, but they allow you to explore history and operational warfare.

Hope that makes sense.

There are some things that happened that are not modeled at all.

Pre war planning precisely spelling out the actions each division was to undertake in the event of hostilities. The Soviets were overly dependent on the telephone network for communications. The Germans bombed the crap out of the telephone and communications network plus HQs rendering the frontier units without direction other than the prewar orders telling them what they were supposed to do. And it certainly wasn't 'Run away to the east fast'. For instance the 41 Tank Division of the 22 Mech Corps had orders to move to the Kovel area and protect against attack from the Northwest complete with maps for movement and deployment.

Lack of maintenance facilities and vehicle recovery in the Mech Corps. No maintenance facilities and lack of vehicle recovery isn't a minor issue. The Soviets lost as many or more tanks for operational reasons as they did in battle. But this is never part of any scenario I've ever seen. So yeah, they end up with far more tanks than they should.

It also doesn't help that reinforcements arrive weeks to months too early and reconstitution pumps out divisions faster than the Soviets ever could.

[Simon Edmonds]

It's a quiet afternoon and I am mentally gearing up to play another game of Fire in the East. I looking through the forum and came upon this thread. Is the USSR overpowered? I think that Nigel Askey would answer "It is what it is" The designers of Fire in the East have taken an inordinate amount of time to make sure that the units and Toe are accurately represented so the problem is not there. After reading a lot of Glantz's works I am not convinced that the soviets played really poorly historically. They did the best they could with the forces they had and the limitations those forces were under.
I think "limitations" is the key word here. One of the key limitations the soviets suffered from in 1941 was communications. Think of a fog of war that includes your own units. Imagine for Soviets in 1941 if for every time you tried to move a unit or attack you had suffer a die roll for communication. If the die roll failed the unit didn't respond to your instructions that turn. Or the attack went ahead, but without all of it's strength or participating units. That 5:1 attack you had committed to went ahead as a 2:1 attack.
I think that the communication problems plagued the Soviet defense through 1941 and the Soviet offence through to the beginning of 1943. Imagine that you have broken through the German lines in the winter of 1942 and you are headed towards Dnepretovsk. You want to coordinate your units against Von Mansteins panzer divisions but your communications breaks down and they are left sitting ducks.
I think this is one of the key missing ingredients in any eastern from game. I have playtested this many times using the old Fire in the East board game and believe me it works.

[FaneFlugt]

I suggest lowering the shock value overall. Let the germans have 100 and the russians 85 overall... Not counting offensive operations. Then raise the russian shock to 100 Early 1943. That way you get more failed communications checks for the Soviets, and you never really know what units will respond in the next turn. (RNG that works like the board game die roll)

[gliz2]

That's a reasonable proposal.
Still would keep the shock for Germans for initial weeks at elevated levels. The Soviets were completely unprepared and till August they were extremely chaotic in their actions.

The command and communication problem continued well until 1944. Maybe the Soviets should be starting at 70 and increase per 10 per year up till 100.
Germans on the other hand had superior command and communication up till 1944 so maybe they should start at 110. And if the things go sour for them (X amount of losses) then they should fall to 100.