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Axis Turn 5


Some naval interdiction and bombing around Leningrad. Axis is gradually losing more planes to operational losses in the bad weather this way. Leningrad has 50,000 supply stored at the start of the scenario, so this isn't causing any immediate problems, although maybe eventually it could over a much longer period of time.



The Axis continues the Demyansk offensive. It is still OK with me if they want to push here into the middle of nowhere.



More Axis troops seem to be gradually arriving around Velikie Luki, so they are a bit less thin now. Here is one attack that may not have been worth it, costing 35 Panzers just to push back an infantry unit by 1 hex. And also all those air losses, all but 2 of which were operational in the bad weather. Also over towards Rzhev, note that with the swamp hex taken, now the German front has 5 clear hexes all right next to each other south of Rzhev. I can batter them here at my leisure.



The pocket was broken again, but hopefully/probably I can re-open it once again and get the last 3 divisions back to relative safety. If so I will be very happy, earlier it seemed like it could have ended up a lot worse here. The main reasons it wasn't were that I:

a) Railed in extra units, mostly from further east.
b) Formed new corps to be able to get higher combat power density at the key points.



Axis is continuing to counterattack my bridgehead across the Don, which is costly in AFVs for both of us. I still don't feel too much of a hurry here, but they have fairly strong forces at least in this part of the front. Less so further south, and I feel like it is just a matter of time before my troops further south catch up more, and supply also catches up.



Despite not eliminating the 6th Army, it really seems like the Axis position in the Caucasus is untenable:

In the Axis action phase, there were another 350 Soviet AFVs lost and 171 Axis AFVs lost. I never like losing AFVs, but to me that seems like a trade ratio that will be just fine for me over the longer run if it continues.



Last turn I also built a bunch of ski brigades. Why? So that I can add them to some units temporarily instead of Rifle Brigades, since Rifle Brigades cost AP but Ski Brigades don't. Although they won't be as useful as rifle brigades, I can use my AP on other stuff this way for now. When winter is over and when I have enough AP to make more Rifle Brigades, I can send the Ski Brigades to theatre boxes.

Soviet Turn 5


I made another successful attack to re-open the pocket. The last 3 divisions then move back into the battle hex and are linked up with the rest of my army. It looks at this point like I won't lose any divisions from this salient, which is definitely better than it seemed like earlier on. The only divisions lost were the two in the other small pocket. But it was a close run thing, and it seems clear to me now that Soviets can't/shouldn't launch Operation Mars on turn 1, because they have to guard this salient before doing anything else, unless the scenario design gets changed so that Germany can't do that on its first turn.



In Velikie Luki, I have brought in quite a few strong troops, including most of the Guards airborne divisions. I am pushing the salient slowly and fairly carefully to the south-west. There are limits to how much I can really do this because of supply, but I am awfully close to Vitebsk now, which is problematic for Germany in part because the front line is long, which makes it tough for Germany to have enough troops everywhere. I am also not leaving significant gaps in my defenses in the wilderness areas, so it will be harder for any "incursion" to happen like what happened in the tyronec - Rosencrantus game.

I also made 3 successful attacks into the clear terrain south of Rzhev. The meatgrinder is grinding meat. I'd like to take Rzhev at some point to get the railyard, but I am happy enough just meatgrinding for now, especially in this clear terrain that is now open on both of the flanks of Rzhev. It is not the worst thing for me to have this salient here, again because it is tough for Germany to have enough troops on a long front line. On the other hand, if they give up Rzhev itself over the next 5-10 turns to protect the flanks and shorten the line, I won't be upset at that either.



I'm mostly resting around the Don, after having advanced a bit. This will restore some CPP etc for next turn. Germany will probably need to withdraw somewhat or else weaken their line somewhat to protect their southern flank in any case. And if they don't, then I should be able to advance more there in the next turn with cavalry etc. So I may as well build up some CPP and lower fatigue a bit. Part of the reason for not doing more here was also just to finish the turn though, and I think I may have forgotten to fully use one of the FBDs. Oh well.



Chaos in the Caucasus. Leading cavalry is getting awfully close to Rostov, without having found any significant Axis forces yet. Possibly the speed of my advance might have caught the Germans a bit off guard, because normally Soviets are still using a lot of troops to surround the 6th Army at Stalingrad. Whereas that is not the case here, and the railyard at Stalingrad is also repairing and gradually improving my supply. Still, the supply is starting to become a big strained, and I will need to be somewhat careful here. There is a possibility Germany might use some of the motorized/armor divisions it has on the Don to swing south and try to counterattack, but I do have a couple strong mech/tank corps around (and on reserve) with pretty good CPP/supply. One german cavalry regiment is isolated in the south, and the German forward position in the Caucasus seems to be a mess with its northern flank threatened, which they need to find a way to stabilize.

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

Soviet Turn 5


I made another successful attack to re-open the pocket. The last 3 divisions then move back into the battle hex and are linked up with the rest of my army. It looks at this point like I won't lose any divisions from this salient, which is definitely better than it seemed like earlier on. ...

you've done well to rescue that situation, a while back I tried the same move and lost well over an army.

I think uts tenpting as the poor terrain protects you from immediate attacks but in turn that really makes a mess if you need to break in/out?

ORIGINAL: loki100

you've done well to rescue that situation, a while back I tried the same move and lost well over an army.

I think uts tenpting as the poor terrain protects you from immediate attacks but in turn that really makes a mess if you need to break in/out?

I am not sure I quite understand what move you mean by "I tried the same move." It was Germany that made the move, not me. Or do you mean that you tried the same thing Germany did when you were playing Germany?

On the first German turn, they did this:



Then after that was just me responding. But it was harder for me to respond because I had done normal-ish Operation Mars attacks on my first turn, so my units which had attacked had lower CPP, higher fatigue, etc, and were not in the greatest condition to help.

The only thing saving the situation was, I think:

1) First of all that the pocket was not tightly closed on turn 1, and had some gaps, so I could relieve it on the first turn. That give me 1 turn leeway to try to redeploy and get more troops in position.

2) I redirected not only most of my troops around Rzhev to deal with it to the south, but also sent a bunch of tank/mech divisions from further east which are really supposed to be fighting around Stalingrad. Without those extra troops I am not at all sure I could have kept breaking the pocket free. But I had no real choice but to send those, since the tank/mech units that were a few hexes away, which would have made more logical sense to use, were all frozen. But normally, actually, that probably would not have been possible, at least not to the same extent, because a good # of those would already have been committed on the first Soviet turn in surrounding Stalingrad. But partly because I let the 6th Army be on turn 1, I had not committed all my tank/mech corps there yet.

Ah, can see what you mean.

No in a test game as the Soviets I tried to extend that salient and got badly caught out

ORIGINAL: loki100

Ah, can see what you mean.

No in a test game as the Soviets I tried to extend that salient and got badly caught out

That salient is a death trap

Axis Turn 6


Axis kept bombing in the Leningrad area. Although I set up an air superiority mission the previous turn, it doesn't seem to have done anything, and I don't know why. Also when I set up bombing in the salient when I kept trying to break out the pocket in the previous turns (around Kaluga), those missions would never fly except for long range air command. This is what I had set up for air superiority. I will try it again and see if it does anything a 2nd time...



Just a few minor counterattacks:





There is a greater volume of counterattacks in the Don region. Here I got a hold with a reserve activation, though given the AFV losses maybe it would have been better to just lose with the infantry.



As I thought would probably happen, Germany withdrew some more in the Don area (and also in the Caucasus). I think my move of not attacking excessively last turn and gaining some CPP was probably good.



cameron88 sent me this screenshot. Unlucky Panzer division in the Caucasus:

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

Axis Turn 6


Axis kept bombing in the Leningrad area. Although I set up an air superiority mission the previous turn, it doesn't seem to have done anything, and I don't know why. Also when I set up bombing in the salient when I kept trying to break out the pocket in the previous turns (around Kaluga), those missions would never fly except for long range air command. This is what I had set up for air superiority. I will try it again and see if it does anything a 2nd time...



....

2 possible reasons.

1) while you have a lot of planes in the AOGs only the Hurricanes are actually available (bold). So that may fall below the % to fly, or will die horribly if they attempted to intercept. You need to shuffle that allocation to improve the % in range

2) you may be too high. From WiTW, high altitude AS won't intercept low level bombers - its one of the cat/mouse games that make up the strategic air war. Also that is a dire altitude for most of the Soviet fighters, I'd try 10-12'k

But I'd suspect reason 1 [:)]

ORIGINAL: loki100

2 possible reasons.

1) while you have a lot of planes in the AOGs only the Hurricanes are actually available (bold). So that may fall below the % to fly, or will die horribly if they attempted to intercept. You need to shuffle that allocation to improve the % in range

2) you may be too high. From WiTW, high altitude AS won't intercept low level bombers - its one of the cat/mouse games that make up the strategic air war. Also that is a dire altitude for most of the Soviet fighters, I'd try 10-12'k

But I'd suspect reason 1 [:)]

Hmm, I thought I had read somewhere that there was an advantage to flying at higher altitude, because if you have higher altitude relative to the enemy, then you have more potential energy (and supposedly this was reflected in the combat system). Is that a thing and is just outweighed as a factor by Soviet fighters being better at lower altitudes, or is it not a thing at all?

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

ORIGINAL: loki100

2 possible reasons.

1) while you have a lot of planes in the AOGs only the Hurricanes are actually available (bold). So that may fall below the % to fly, or will die horribly if they attempted to intercept. You need to shuffle that allocation to improve the % in range

2) you may be too high. From WiTW, high altitude AS won't intercept low level bombers - its one of the cat/mouse games that make up the strategic air war. Also that is a dire altitude for most of the Soviet fighters, I'd try 10-12'k

But I'd suspect reason 1 [:)]

Hmm, I thought I had read somewhere that there was an advantage to flying at higher altitude, because if you have higher altitude relative to the enemy, then you have more potential energy (and supposedly this was reflected in the combat system). Is that a thing and is just outweighed as a factor by Soviet fighters being better at lower altitudes, or is it not a thing at all?

yes, its a thing and true, look at how escort fighters interact compared to those off auto-intercept (patrol) or an AS. But they have to be in the same block of airspace as their target, its one of thoese feng shui bits of the air war, there is no clear rule but it broadly works that way.

Given how the air war works in WiTW, I suspect a lot of this is possibly more obvious if you have played both games. At the moment in WiTE2 I regard AS as a bit of a highly specialised choice and would tend to rely on auto-intercept.

My view is AS is the way to go in 2 situations:

a) the going to look for a fight - so you use the AS to put your fighters over the enemy lines to try and get into fights. In WiTW at the start the British can just get their Spitfires over the edge of the Ruhr and it helps clamp down on the LW. By 1944 and with the P-51s, you can go hunting pretty much anywhere over the Reich

b) defensively you want your fighters to stay in a defined box (auto-intercept they will fly to where needed).

(b) is a classic axis response in WiTW, you don't want to fight the allied fighters, its the bombers you want. An AS box means your fighters don't wander off into the allied AS network, it also means when you do intercept you go in mob-handed.

Not sure that either are common situations in WiTE2?

I have found that the best use of AS is over the enemy airbases. If they use the air they use that hex!

But really my use of AS is EXTREMELY rare. I rely more on spreading out the air groups in fighter AOGs to a wide line of air bases and the auto intercept. It works for me.

Soviet Turn 6



Rather than simply leave regiments sitting in the wilderness alone, I am beating up on them as in the battle shown in the screenshot. German regiments don't hold up well against large scale attacks, even in rough terrain (heavy forest with a level 3 fort in this case). I attacked in this battle with supposedly equal CVs, but in actual fact the regiment just collapsed. This seems to happen basically every time, as long as you attack with significantly superior numbers, the CVs of heavy forest/swamp with high level forts can be an illusion, overcome by weight of numbers. So Germany will either have to send more than just regiments here, or else I will gradually push them. Hopefully this will help make it harder for Germany to have enough troops to defend everywhere.



I'm biding my time in the Velikie Luki area to build up a bit more CPP etc, and creeping forward in places and trying to get the fort levels up a bit more.

And in the Rzhev salient, I make a few more successful attacks on clear terrain on either side of Rzhev. Having lost basically all the heavy forest/swamp terrain, the German defensive position here is getting pretty precarious seeming. In addition to those two areas, I also make somewhat of a breakthrough towards Vyazma with tanks. The Rzhev salient now has a lot of small sub-salients, which I think is good for me.

I also continue to expand back the area of the former salient where we were encircled before, and make the small beginnings of a breakthrough towards Orel:



A few more attacks in the Don area, including this one by Tolbukhin that just barely succeeded.



We have reached Rostov, which is (barely) defended by some Romanians. In the Caucasus, I do an attack against a Panzer division. It retreats over a big river and seemingly as a result takes a lot of retreat losses and loses a high proportion of AFVS. This is the 23rd Panzer. In the previous turn it was the 13th Panzer that had the failed attack, so it seems like he has these two Panzers in the area, but both are pretty weak.

Axis Turn 7


Axis keeps on bombing/naval interdiction in the Leningrad area.

Here is the air I had (and had this the previous turn) with that same air superiority mission. It doesn't seem to have done much of anything, and I also got barely any auto air intercept. As you can see from the screenshot, the problem is definitely not range. I have 450 fighters in range via the range circles (actually some more not in the 13th air army).



The altitude is also not the issue, the German planes were flying at 15-20k feet, and my mission was flying at 18k... For whatever reason, neither auto intercept nor the air superiority mission is doing much of anything against this. If I can't get this working soon, I will have to just send the fighters to reserve, otherwise there is no point wasting supply on them.



Interestingly, Germany is trying to push near Demyansk. It is probably a good thing that I had started sending some extra troops towards the southern side of Demyansk, Germany may want to close off my salient on the southern side. Over all I am happy to be fighting in this area.



Germany still isn't withdrawing much in the Rzhev salient. That is fine with me.



I forgot to move some of my troops near Voronezh to their final intended positions (there was not supposed to be an empty hex across the river, lol). Germany apparently took advantage by trying to do some attacks, which fortunately failed.



Germany keeps pulling back, but also counterattacking especially near my little Don Bridgehead (also some counterattacks on cavalry etc south towards Rostov):



One failed attack, and otherwise withdrawal in the Caucasus. I wasn't really expecting it to be this easy to advance here given that the 6th Army is still intact.

re AS/auto-intercept.

Make your mind up and use one or the other (sorry a bit direct but its relevant). Air assets in an AD don't auto-intercept except in the context of a GS action.

Things that may be going on - wrong days? Poor Soviet leader - that affects both the likelihood of intercept and the numbers that intercept. If the latter is below what the AI needs (doctrine setting) nothing happens.

I rely on auto-intercept almost all the time and get decent enough interception.

ORIGINAL: loki100

re AS/auto-intercept.

Make your mind up and use one or the other (sorry a bit direct but its relevant). Air assets in an AD don't auto-intercept except in the context of a GS action.

Things that may be going on - wrong days? Poor Soviet leader - that affects both the likelihood of intercept and the numbers that intercept. If the latter is below what the AI needs (doctrine setting) nothing happens.

I rely on auto-intercept almost all the time and get decent enough interception.

I have (and had) every single day of the week enabled on the air superiority mission, so it shouldn't be the wrong day. The Soviet air leader has a 5 air rating. I could pay 10 AP to switch to a 6 leader, but I doubt going from 5 to 6 would make any difference.

Re: using one or the other, if you can actually only use one, that doesn't seem obvious. Perhaps it says somewhere in the manual that if you are running an air superiority mission, then that for some reason disables auto intercept, but there is no logical reason why that should make things worse. Obviously if you don't have fuel then the planes can't fly any more, but if you are in the right area flying air superiority anyway, presumably that should do something to counter bombing.

If auto intercept only works for ground support, then obviously only air superiority (which I do have enabled) would work. But doesn't seem to be working without anything obvious wrong at least to me, and doesn't want to use more than just that one single group of Hurricanes, despite having large numbers of fighters (and nothing but fighters) on all of the airfields anywhere nearby.

I'd strongly suggest a careful read of 18.1, so, in a AD not for auto-intercept:



why GS is different:



so I'd suggest both are in the manual and there is no indication that "auto intercept only works for ground support"

edit: moving from 5/10 to pass a given test to 6/10 might be worth it, its the sort of small weighting of the probabilities that works out over time

In general, I still wouldn't be using AS in this situation, its not really what the mission is designed for but there are a range of opinions (& my mindset probably is heavily influenced by playing a lot of WiTW)

edit 2 - another suggestion, do those airbases have sufficient fuel, Leningrad is incredibly hard to keep well supplied with just the Ladoga ports, your opponent's bombing may well be consuming a lot of your ammunition making the overall freight situation worse.

It may actually be you have too many fighters in that sector and not enough fuel for them all - there are lots of bits to unpick before deciding the rules are broken [:)]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

ORIGINAL: loki100

2 possible reasons.

1) while you have a lot of planes in the AOGs only the Hurricanes are actually available (bold). So that may fall below the % to fly, or will die horribly if they attempted to intercept. You need to shuffle that allocation to improve the % in range

2) you may be too high. From WiTW, high altitude AS won't intercept low level bombers - its one of the cat/mouse games that make up the strategic air war. Also that is a dire altitude for most of the Soviet fighters, I'd try 10-12'k

But I'd suspect reason 1 [:)]

Hmm, I thought I had read somewhere that there was an advantage to flying at higher altitude, because if you have higher altitude relative to the enemy, then you have more potential energy (and supposedly this was reflected in the combat system). Is that a thing and is just outweighed as a factor by Soviet fighters being better at lower altitudes, or is it not a thing at all?

Think multi dimensional. Fly some at high and some at low that way you have both.

ORIGINAL: loki100

so I'd suggest both are in the manual and there is no indication that "auto intercept only works for ground support"

When you said: "Make your mind up and use one or the other (sorry a bit direct but its relevant). Air assets in an AD don't auto-intercept except in the context of a GS action."

My interpretation of what you meant was that auto intercept wouldn't work if I did an air superiority mission.

Regarding this part:



I am 100% using auto assign for all missions, so since it says it "*can* be used by using the auto assign routine," then something with that seems to not be working right for some reason. I also have had ground support missions turned off due to the weather.

If it were not a server game, I would send you (or anyone else) if you happened to want to see how it is set up. IDK if you have access to look at saves on the server.

edit 2 - another suggestion, do those airbases have sufficient fuel, Leningrad is incredibly hard to keep well supplied with just the Ladoga ports, your opponent's bombing may well be consuming a lot of your ammunition making the overall freight situation worse.

It may actually be you have too many fighters in that sector and not enough fuel for them all - there are lots of bits to unpick before deciding the rules are broken [:)]

The scenario starts with 50k freight in the Leningrad depots (still in storage now), and I am also continuing to receive more freight via port, so that presumably shouldn't be a problem, at least not yet.

Soviet Turn 7



Another thing I noticed during my turn is in the previous Axis turn, they tried to attack Oranienbaum. It failed, but lowered the fort level, which is troubling. HMMMMMMMMM... I tried to move another rifle brigade in, but not sure how to do it (doesn't seem to be by land, and I guess if it is by sea it takes more than 1 turn).



In Demyansk, I reinforced the southern side of the salient. I want to hold that salient, because they make the line longer for the Axis. I also did an attack against a regiment successfully. That is why I like salients, because when there are salients, Germany won't have enough troops to put in every single hex. And if they leave regiments out like that, even in good defensive terrain with level 3 forts, I can beat up on them.



I wanted to take the hex to the left of Velikie Luki, because I need it so that freight supply can get back from V.L. to the east along the small rail to the depot in Nelidovo. This attack would normally succeed most of the time, but it failed horrendously with a blown leader roll despite overwhelming numbers. That is the thing about playing Soviets, on occasion your leaders will totally screw up an important attack that really ought to have succeeded. This was by far the worst defeat of the turn, which otherwise went very well. The guards division in the middle of the salient is heading towards V.L. so that I can form another guards rifle corps with the other guards division already there, since apparently I will need more there.



I also want to take Rzhev sometime soonish to get the railyard and clear the rail line running west to Nelidovo and on to V.L, to further help improve supply there. But, I saw a target of opportunity, an infantry division that I thought I could pretty easily isolate. So I did, and stacked up very strong divisions in front of it to try to make it very difficult to break the infantry division out. This may not be a massive Stalingrad pocket, but the more divisions I can gradually eliminate like this, the easier things should gradually get. With defensive CVs of 35 and 45, it may be possible to break it out, but not easy for Germany unless they have some strong Panzer divisions around. I prioritized making sure this was well sealed above everything else for the turn in the area, so I didn't do much else, but I did also attack the rail hex at Sychevka and temporarily take it, so the rail to Rzhev is cut.



Meanwhile, I made a pretty significant breakthrough towards Orel and exploited it a bit. All the rails to Orel were temporarily cut. I could have been more aggressive with leaving more tanks further forward, but didn't want to get too crazy quite yet and risk counter-encirclement. I am adding a bit more salient here, which again makes the German line longer unless they withdraw some more. The rail to Voronezh is also cut:



In the Don area, I did a little bit of a HLYA-style trick. I moved up the 6=4 tank division. Then I attacked the hex with the combat delay with my 3=4 stack (was higher before the attack) to get the German 3=7 infantry division to retreat to the west. Then I attacked the 3=6 infantry division to get it to retreat to the east, further into my territory:



And then I was able to move in troops in front of it (sadly, only one fairly weak division had the MP for it):



Final positions in this area:



I think Germany has too many troops around here, which they really need more over towards Voronezh/Orel, and more further south towards Rostov. So I am trying to keep moving units forward to ZOC lock them as much as possible, threaten to get more isolations like this little one, and make it difficult for Germany to retreat these troops and move them back to where they are more needed without leaving some divisions (like this isolated infantry division) behind.

In the Rostov area, Tolbukhin routed some Romanians and got a bridgehead across the Donets. I hope it will be enough to hold, but probably won't be. Sadly the guards mech division didn't have quite enough MP to cross. My rail repair is making pretty good progress.



In the Caucasus, pursuit continues, with cavalry continuing to try to threaten the German flanks. There are a lot of cut rail lines etc which hopefully has some effect on German supply. But soon this pursuit will have to stop.



Overall, I am very pleased with how this turn went, with 2 German units isolated and the breakthrough towards Orel. Germany has a lot of pressure to deal with in a lot of areas, and despite having the 6th army seems to not have quite enough troops to really hold everything back.