GC 76mm (Sov) vs Ketza (Ketza Welcome)

[76mm]

M60, I realize that my fighters were escorting the bombers, but since his fighters were after my bombers, and shot several of my fighters and bombers down, I think it is reasonable to think that my fighters should, in fact, be considered to be fully engaged with his fighters. And so they should be shooting some of them down occasionally, but it virtually NEVER happens--look at my past posts, where the same results appear when his fighters intercept GS or interdiction missions--he maybe loses 1 plane for a couple of hundred of mine (this is what I recall, I have not gone back to add up the numbers). I'm not saying my fighters are, or should be, as good as his, but I don't think this is right at all.

I am not saying that air power is ineffectual in ground combat; I tend to suspect that it is, although it is difficult to separate its effects from others. What I am saying is that the Luftwaffe should suffer some losses when it engages the VVS, and from my experience, it basically does not.

Also, I don't think you can attribute the increase in CVs to air power alone. I also had massive arty0 superiority in these attacks, and my best leaders are in this area, so who knows I might have benefited there.

As to his CV deflation, this is little more than pure speculation on my part as I peer into the black box which is combat resolution, but I think what happened there is that my engineers degraded his forts from 4 to 3 (I saw this during some of the combat resolutions), thereby deflating his fort multiplier, and then when he retreated his fort value went to 0.

Flavius, thanks for the artdiv tips. I think for my two key assault fronts, I will give each army one artdiv, and then three more at the front level. For other fronts/armies, I will have to think about it, but will probably concentrate the artdivs at the front level, maybe three each.

[M60A3TTS]

With regard to air losses, I don't think you're suffering a loss rate of 200:1, although it may seem like it at times [;)].  I've tended to sink APs into manual upgrades for the best fighters and am not sure how well spent those APs were. In my game with WarHunter by end of '41 I was losing MiG3s at a loss rate of about 8:1 and with Yak-1s around 9:1.  That includes factoring out turn 1 losses. 

I certainly agree with you that air power alone did not account for the entire CV move.  As you say, leaders and other things do have their own impact.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

With regard to air losses, I don't think you're suffering a loss rate of 200:1, although it may seem like it at times [;)].  I've tended to sink APs into manual upgrades for the best fighters and am not sure how well spent those APs were. In my game with WarHunter by end of '41 I was losing MiG3s at a loss rate of about 8:1 and with Yak-1s around 9:1.  That includes factoring out turn 1 losses. 

When you say you had losses of 8 or 9 to 1, what kind of missions is that in?

When I bomb his airbases, I generally suffer losses ranging from about 3:1 to about 1:1 (with losses mainly including planes destroyed on the ground), which seems rather generous to me. When he intercepts my GS or interdiction missions, however, he basically doesn't lose any planes. I tracked some missions many turns ago, and I think he lost 1 or two planes, I lost several dozen (if not hundreds!). I haven't really paid attention to what air losses he suffers, if any, during his GS missions, I will try to check that in future.

[76mm]

I've got a theory about combat resolution that I'd like to toss out there for comments: when watching "live" combat results, I notice that sometimes the fort value falls by one level, and sometimes, during the attack, I believe it falls all the way to zero. This obviously would shred the defender's CV...I think what might be going on is if the engineering value exceeds the fort level, the fort level might (will?) fall to zero during combat. Obviously, if the defender retreats the fort level falls to zero anyway, so you can't really tell this directly by viewing combat reports from your opponent's turn, although you might be able to deduce what happened from especially large CV deflation when the engineer level exceeded the fort level. You really need to watch your own attacks to tell for sure...

This might account for many of the results which I struggled to understand during Ketza's attacks in the spring. Unfortunately, during my analysis of those battles I largely ignored engineers in the attacking force, so can't really tell at this point.

What do you all think? If this is how the mechanism works, I have to say that I think it is broken.

[glvaca]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

ORIGINAL: glvaca
Just get ride of them or I'll keep pestering you

Aaaiiieee! OK, they are gone. Or at least I won't mention them in this AAR anymore![;)]

[:D][;)]

[glvaca]

Engineers definitely make a difference. How much I can't say.
IIRC, mutiple levels can be knocked down and that can't but affect CV strength if I have the logic correctly...

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: glvaca

Engineers definitely make a difference. How much I can't say.
IIRC, mutiple levels can be knocked down and that can't but affect CV strength if I have the logic correctly...

Sure, but fort value falling from 3 or 4 to zero during a battle seems goofy, unrealistic, and wrong to me, no matter what the cause (I'm pretty sure I've seen forts fall from 3 to 0 during a battle, not sure about from 4 to 0. If it was that easy, no one would have bothered to build them during the war, they'd have just trained swarms and swarms of pioneers.

As an aside, I've mentioned that I live in Moscow and earlier this summer received a WWII Soviet "sapper's spade" as a gift. It is pretty cool!

[glvaca]

Hmmm, can't say either way. Don't recall seeing levels drop from 4 to 0 except when you lose the battle as you mentioned.

That is cool!

[76mm]

Forgot to mention that I'll be on vacation from Friday till Aug 22, so no turns.

[76mm]

Back from vacation and recently finished Turn 75. No screen shots because nothing particularly interesting happened; I launched 4-5 attacks with corps stacks, all successful. If this pace keeps up it will be 1947 before I get to Berlin, but I guess things will pick up once I have rifle corps along more of the front, and I have pushed him out of his heavily fortified positions.

[76mm]

Just finished Turn 77; no screen shots because nothing particularly interesting, a handful of successful attacks. This turn, only one of them relied on 1:1 results, but the last few turns I could barely get to 1:1 even attacking with corps stacks.

I've asked Ketza how he'd like to proceed with this game in light of the new patch. It really screws things up that he could build up a massive fortified line under the old rules, and now I've got to attack it without the 1:1 rule. I've proposed to him that we play till the end of 1942 with the current rules (only a few more turns) and then decide whether to patch or quit. At least in 1943 rifle corps are cheaper so hopefully I wouldn't have to rely as much on low-odds attacks anyway.

I will keep you posted once I hear back from Ketza.

[76mm]

About to finish Turn 78, no real point for a screen shot.

I launched six attacks, all successful. However, all of these attacks were serious undertakings, with multiple corps stacks (reinforced with sappers and tanks) conducting deliberate attacks, with serious arty and air superiority. All of his defenses are currently fortified to level 4, or at least 3; I am gradually wearing through his fortified positions.

And yet I was only able to get a 2:1 result in half of the attacks, the others would have failed under the new patch. Most of my attacks were in the Kharkov area, where he has posted most of his best units, but still I doubt it will be possible to continue this game with any hope of success under the new patch.

The overall OOB numbers are intersting: he has 3.2 million men, 35.6k arty, 3.8k tanks, and 3k planes. I have 7.1 mln men, 91.3k arty, 6.3k tanks, and 17.2k planes. His numbers have generally slightly increased over the last dozen turns (when I started keeping track); my numbers have also increased slightly over the same period, although arty and planes have increased quite a bit.

[Erik Rutins]

76mm,

The trend from this point on is in your favor. I wouldn't see those leftover fort values as a long-term obstacle. They'll make things a bit harder for a while and cost you more casualties, but they can be overcome and once removed they can't be easily rebuilt. The decision is certainly up to you and your opponent, but just adding my two cents. I've played several test games that were started with earlier versions and continued with 1.05 without any serious balance problems.

Regards,

- Erik

[76mm]

Eric, thanks for the input.

I want to play a few more turns before deciding, but am not sure that a sustained offensive will be possible through his fort zones without the 1:1 rule. Even if I hack through his existing forts, I'll be moving slowly enough that I don't think he'll have a problem building more forts further to the rear (and presumably German players have enough AP to spare to build the necessary FZs.

As it is, I'm losing 2 or 3 to 1 casualties even when I'm victorious, and his strength has increased over the last dozen turns, so that trend is also worrying.

Would hate to abandon this game, as we've been playing for several months through all of the patches, but we'll see.

[Flaviusx]

Get your artillery divisions and pile on. Just bludgeon him to death. I don't think you've really experienced the full might of the Red Army just yet.

No German fortified line can withstand a 1943 style Red Army massed against it. Not even with level 4 forts -- and once you clear those, you won't be seeing anything better than level 3 behind them except in urban terrain.

Are you packing your corps with attachments? Sapper regiments are your friend. Literally every single corps in the red army ought to have at least one, regardless of type.

Your national morale will improve each month after Sept of 42, also.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
Are you packing your corps with attachments? Sapper regiments are your friend. Literally every single corps in the red army ought to have at least one, regardless of type.

I've got pretty much all of my corps concentrated in two "Assault Fronts", and at this point almost all of these corps have 2-3 SUs, mainly sappers and independent tank regiments. I've also got a handful of arty divisions in these fronts, will gradually add more.

The main problem I have now is that since most of my offensive punch is concentrated in these two fronts, he has concentrated most of his best units against them, along with in-depth fortifications, so his lowest defensive CVs are in the 50s, with more in the 70-80-90 range, which are tough nuts to crack. The 50 CV hexes are pretty easy (although still requiring two corps stacks), the others are pretty iffy, although so far I've won almost all of them with the benefit of the 1:1 rule. The fact that I can only launch 4-6 attacks per turn along the whole front says a lot.

Once I start building more rifle corps in 1943 I'm guessing that he will have to start to spread out his defenses, and moreover outside of the Kharkov area his fortified lines look pretty thin (but untouchable without a couple of stacks of rifle corps), so that could make a big difference.

[76mm]

Turn 82 almost over. I am great difficulty getting through his level 4, or even level 3 forts near Kharkov, mainly because he has them stacked full of troops. Moroever, he has positioned powerful panzer forces on the flanks, so now I have to be mindful of keeping decent reserves in the rear, which further limits my ability to concentrate forces on the front for attacks. Here is a screeny:



I am very concerned about any kind of pocket in this area, as all of my best troops are here. I had planned to slog on in this area until the mud, and then redeploy my key fronts elsewhere, but now am not sure.

In the screen shot I've shown possible penetration moves by Ketza, but of course he could attack anywhere in the area. I hope that even if he achieves two penetrations, we won't be able to link them together. Or, if he achieves a shallow encirclement that his encircling troops will be vulnerable to counterattack once they are out of their entrenchments.

[76mm]

Turn 83 over. I launched four multi-corps attacks, three of which failed, 2 because of the removal of the 1:1 rule. Here are screenshots of the battle results (with the relevant units circled on the map), note that one attack was a second attack on the same stack (with fewer units capable of a deliberate attack):





A couple of notes about these results: I can't say that I find them particularly unrealistic, but the presence of some many level 4 and level 3 forts in the absence of the 1:1 rule, is proving a real problem nothwithstanding massive superiority in men, arty, engineers, and airpower. Most of his stacks in this area are north of 80 CV, which means that two stack attacks are generally futile, even three stack attacks, where they are even possible, are only occasionally successful. At least some of the attacks result in a reduction of fort levels, paving the way for a victory next turn. In the last attack however, the attack did not even reduce the fort level, meaning that any future attack will be unlikely to succeed as well.

I am creating lots of new corps now that they only cost 10 AP, and am gradually expanding the area where I can attack with multiple corps, but even so I am not particularly hopeful that I'll be able to continue this game.

I'll keep playing a few more turns and see how things go.

Last turn Ketza launched two successful attacks on some weakish positions, but did not try a massive encirclement attack as I had feared. The more corps I bring to bear, the less the risk of a successful attack.

[76mm]

Ooops, I noticed that I circled the wrong units for the last battle, it should be the battle indicated four hexes north-northwest of the circled units.

[M60A3TTS]

I'd be curious to know how many sapper regiments went into the respective battles either as corps attachments or army committed assets.  I see you have cavalry corps in a couple battles where you're up against these forts and think they'd best be replaced by more rifle corps in the attack.  The attached tank units replaced by more sappers may be more effective at least in breaking down the fort values, and Flaviusx will point out you haven't the artillery divisions committed here.  You should be able to bring 9-12 into play depending on the circumstances.   Also the Breakthrough Artillery Divisions will be available in March and that might improve the situation.  Not saying you will get 2-1 and advance but at least it may reduce the fort value enough that a second attack wave will succeed.