RE: 1.04.36 KLilly vs Fulkerson T7

[larryfulkerson]

Here's my T28 Soviet moves with an overlay showing my attacks for this turn:

[timmyab]

This game looks to be over already.There ought to be an auto win if the Axis don't hold a certain number of VPs at a given time in order to save people from wasting their time on foregone conclusions.

[KenchiSulla]

Why? Some people obviously want to play it out... Game deciding it is time to quit 2000 km from Berlin would be annoying...

[randallw]

Think of all the work the devs made, having the game go through 1943, 1944, 1945, and few human vs human games get there because people quit so soon. [:(]

[janh]

ORIGINAL: randallw
Think of all the work the devs made, having the game go through 1943, 1944, 1945, and few human vs human games get there because people quit so soon. [:(]

Too bad, indeed, as it is a big part of the war and perhaps the fun part that some Soviet players may be looking forward to. Probably hard to motivate an Axis player to continue in face of sure loss. It surely ain't about the most exciting time since he pretty much cannot do anything but to move around the units he got, and hope to stage some fancy counterattacks -- but ultimately in vain as the red hordes can just attrit the Axis brute force. Just repeating history of course. I guess Soviet players in 41 would be having similar issues, but at least they can look forward to the better days, plus they have some influence in rebuilding their units and formations to stop and counter the Axis thrusts.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: timmyab
This game looks to be over already.There ought to be an auto win if the Axis don't hold a certain number of VPs at a given time in order to save people from wasting their time on foregone conclusions.

I used to think the same thing. But I've recently started playing a PBEM as the Axis player and I'm thinking it's really a different game experience than playing as the Soviet. I appreciate all the comments you guys make and I'm appreciative of different points of view and all that but I'm thinking the game is probably pretty well balanced as it stands. The Soviet experience is something like this: early turns are spent falling back and trying to keep some front line units ahead of the Panzers acting as road bumps and so on. Railing troops to troubled areas and moving industry out to the far east. Then around turn 10 or so there's enough units, usually, to form a rough front line and actually make some suicide attacks to attrit the Axis a little. It's still a strugle of course and the Axis has plenty of bite left. Then around turn 19 or so the winter sets in and the Axis has to defend as the Soviet CV's are high enough to make some serious attacks. The Axis has to survive the winter to emerge in the spring with enough strength to launch their '42 offensive drive and maybe threaten Stalingrad or something. So they are on the offensive again. And the Soviets have another struggle to hold the Axis back. And then the winter of '42 hits and the Axis is on the defensive again. This is the way it happened in real life so I'm not surprized that it's happening that way in the game.

Long story short..........I'm thinking there's plenty of game left to go here. KLilly is doing a magnificant job of falling back slowly so I can only manage hasty attacks in a few places. The deliberate attacks are going fine for the Soviets right now but toward late Feburary KLilly is going to see his CV's climb and the pendulum will swing in the Axis direction. My goal in the winter '41-'42 period is to try to attrit the Axis enough that I might have enough units and fortifications enough to fend off the inevitable '42 Axis advance. If there is one.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T29 front lines before any Soviet movement. No signs of any Axis attacks this turn.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's T29 OOB, losses, destroyed units and production:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a commanders report on the %toe of some of my infantry divisions. Note that most of the units are over at least 44% toe ( and max toe is 105% ), and that most of my units are in good shape. CV's are decent and this is only Jan. '42 and there's about 10 more weeks of good winter weather to go yet. I may make a dent in the Axis manpower with all these attacks. Maybe I can hurt him bad enough he will not have the wherewithall to make any '42 Axis Offensive except in a few specific places maybe. I hope to be able to build enough Rifle Corps and Tank Corps to be able to stand toe-to-toe with the Axis Panzer units and take his attacks without backing up or losing an enormous amount of equipment and personnel. I can live with just being able to contain him for now. Then in late '42 or early '43 I want to try going on the offensive myself. Maybe spring it on him in winter of '42-'43 . Merry Christmas, KLilly. You know.......

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a graphic that shows that the listing for kills has been scrolled down so that the bottom row has at least 1 kill showing. The thumb for the slider is about 1/6th of the way down to the bottom of the list approx. So that means that approx. 1 plane in 6 has had at least one confirmed kill in the air. That means that about 5 out of 6 planes don't have a kill yet which means that most of them are getting shot down before they get their first kill. I could be wrong about that. I need to see the evidence to decide one way or another. I wish there was a "Staff" program for WITE as there is for WITP-AE. The Staff program gives you further insights to the database of information reguarding all the units in the game. And if you read in the "latest" turn to the program it's able to provide you with "time-lapsed" types of information such as how much has the CV increased in Soviet Infantry divisions in the last 5 turns or so. It's badly needed for this type of warfare. NOTE TO DEVELOPERS: what's the chance of getting the layout in the "*.sav" files so that * I * might be able to put together some kind of program written in JAVA so that we could have a "Staff" program for WITE? Just asking.

[larryfulkerson]

This time I did some Axis air base strikes before I started moving the land combat units and I think I got some fairly decent hits.

[larryfulkerson]

The blue hex marks the spot where a Finnish division used to live. I destroyed it ( it surrendered ) to an attack from all the units that surrounded it last turn. I didn't expect to finish it off in one turn but I'm not complaining either. I've got three more Finnish divisions surrounded and isolated but they might fight their way out of the ambush. We'll see.

[randallw]

Those defensive values of the Finns are going make fighting them interesting.

You have three or four glops of units commanded by the Reserve Front spread out, maybe you can clean that up a bit.

[larryfulkerson]

I finally remembered to try to create some Cavalry Corps and this time it wasn't alas, but I really did get a Cavalry Corps built. So I promptly built another. I'm looking around for cavalry units to convert even as we speak.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: randallw
Those defensive values of the Finns are going make fighting them interesting.

I find that I have to take them down a little each turn over a course of like 6 weeks some times. And of course KLilly might object to my handling them thusly and fight his way back to his supply lines which would make my job smewhat more interesting.

ORIGINAL: randallw
You have three or four glops of units commanded by the Reserve Front spread out, maybe you can clean that up a bit.

I looked through the Commanders Report listing all the Front HQ units and didn't come across a Reserve Front. But it did get me alerted to the fact that some Fronts are very overloaded and some of them have yet to carry their share of the load and so I thought I'd do a cut-&-paste of some screengrabs to get some idea how badly mixed up it really is. So the picture I'm going to build is coming soon.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's that picture I promised in the above post. It's worse than I thought. I've somehow gotten stuff so mixed up I may never be able to
straighten it out again. I'm going to start working on it though 'cause it's got to be fixed or I may lose the war. To get this fixed I'm either
going to have to spend some AP's to assign Army HQ's to a new front or move the effected units to the place where the front is
"supposed" to be. And I'll have to figure out some front assignments and stick to them. I'm thinking that in order from north to south I'll
have something like Northwest Front, then Leningrad Front, then maybe the Kalinin Front, then maybe Moscow MD, then something like
SouthWestern Front, then Southern Front, then trans-axel front etc.

EDIT: Sorry about the picture quality. I adopted a style from the beginning and then changed my mind to a different more detailed style
and the result is something that looks like it was put together by a committee. If you'd like to lodge a complaint just call
1-800-scatchewain and ask to speak to the supervisor.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's my Soviet moves for T29 with an overlay for my attacks this turn:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the ground losses screen shows now ( for this turn I believe ):

EDIT: And as a side note........now I know where all the trucks are going. More than 4300 trucks were lost in one turn.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the air losses screen is showing now that all the ground combat is overwith.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the destroyed units screen shows now. I can remember the surrender of the Finn and the fort and the screen is showing that the Soviets lost a cav division but I don't remember that at all. Could the presence of the cav div in the destroyed units column be showing because I built some Cav Corps? I remember building about three of them though. It's possible that I could have lost a cav division in combat but I thought I'd have been notified that such and such a division was wiped out or something but maybe not. I'll look back through the battles and look for this loss.