Workshop for the new guys - Directive 21 (D21)

[larryfulkerson]

It just got serious. One of the Finn formation had a casualty. The Soviets broke through the lines and attacked the
HQ unit and it evaporated so now there's a formation without it's HQ. Great. Also, there were over 70+ battles
during the Soviet turn and I expect as many next turn too.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T25 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[larryfulkerson]

I was checking out the recent reinforcements and I found the CD guns at Odessa has spawned and just in the nick of time
too. Odessa was the Soviet supply spot and now it's an Allied supply point so I need to extend the rails to Odessa and
now the nearest supply spot for the Soviets is just offshore. So I need to get an engineer unit with some ferry engineers
to swim out there and convert the hex. That's the theory.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some of the losses so far. I've discovered that I'm losing several different models of equipment faster than I'm
building them. It doesn't seem like that can last very long. I'd best monitor the on-hand numbers for a while.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on to the east side of Kiev. I'm spreading out and surrounding the Soviets and destroying them.
I'm not even pushing them back first. I just surround them and destroy them.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the area to the west of Bryansk and you can see me defeating some Soviet defenders. There's a major river to cross
and several minor ones but I have engineers and I think it's doable.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on north of Leningrad. The Finns attacked a small stack of Soviet stuff and it retreated the wrong
way toward Helsinki instead of south or east. So in my turn I movcd a unit to trap it on the "wrong" side because I
have hopes of surrounding them and killing them but there's six of them so I'll have to try to keep them in one group
to be able to surround them easily.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a section of the front lines where I've made a hole in the Soviet lines and one of my recon units volunteered to
go see where the Soviets are behind the lines so to speak and he's cutting off the supplies to the Soviet units on the
front lines for a little ways. Almost. I'm afraid that he's going to meet up with a Soviet division and get killed.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the moves of T25:

[larryfulkerson]

This is me adjusting the objectives and the track for a formation, in this case an HQ unit. I'm perfectly happy moving
the units by hand but I thought I'd try it with Elmer moving them. And since there's no PO for the Allied units I'm
having to add some and adjust some more. A lot of the units I'm going to continue moving them by hand.

[larryfulkerson]

Okie dokie......I spent a couple of hours putting a PO for the Axis side into the game. It's rough and dirty but
utilitarian and workable. I'm going to go through all the formations moving the manual ones and letting Elmer
move the rest.

[larryfulkerson]

I've noticed that Elmer will drive the units until they are cherry red and so I have to go through the OOB moving manually
those units that are red tired and park them somewhere and dig them in. And THEN let Elmer move the units. It's easier
and faster and I can see benefits of doing it this way.

[larryfulkerson]

I let Elmer move all the Axis units and then I thought I'd check out the battles and it looks like Elmer likes to do
really POOR AR attacks whereas I like to have at least as much combat power to attack with, so that would be at least
100 AR so I have to go through all these attacks and cancel the poor and very poor ones, digging the units in so that
they won't try to attack again next round. But that's faster than moving all those units by hand and there's over
a thousand of them I think.

[larryfulkerson]

And before you execute the attacks you might want to check out the status of your aircraft because it appears that Elmer
likes to do airfield attacks. I gotta go through there each round and cancel all the airfield attacks. Maybe I
should use "defend" instead of "attack" on their mission description. I'll try that.

[larryfulkerson]

I stopped the Soviet turn so I could take a look at some of the Soviet losses so far
and I see heavy losses just about everywhere.

[larryfulkerson]

So it's a new turn and I've checked the deployment of the aircraft. I don't need anybody in
Sea Int missions. And I went through the OOB digging in all the units that were red or moving
them to a higher supply area then digging them in. I don't need them to move and get even
redder yet. And then I did a cursory inspection of the formations to make sure they still had
objectives ahead of them, had to add objectives to two separate tracks. And then I let Elmer
move the units and he got a lot of RBC's and made a lot progress compared to what I usually do.
And then the units stopped moving and control was returned to me and I checked out the battles
that Elmer has scheduled and I see a lot of them that I'm going to have to cancel and just dig
the units in where they are right now. End of turn for them. I'm going to have to take a
look around and see who needs an adjustment to their track or maybe just insert a couple of
objectives for a special situation, wouldn't hurt.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T27 front lines before I have moved anybody. Elmer moved them
to these positions. I need to take a look around and see if the objectives
are working and leaving no holes in the front lines. I expect some holes.

[larryfulkerson]

Okie dokie, I've automated just about everything...there's still 5 formations that I need to move by hand and I'll
probably find some more that have special situations. The RR engineers, and paratroopers, the unit in garrison mode,
and two cherry red tired units that I need to monitor for a while.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T29 front lines before I have moved anybody.

Most of the progress is being made in the south still. It's there that the terrain is favorable and
the Soviets are relatively sparse. Elmer has been moving the Axis units for four turns now and has
been making progress. It's a brand new turn so the first thing before moving anybody is to check
the aircraft units. I have the aircraft on manual but I have to reset their missions after Elmer
moves everybody. It's like the Air Assistant is on or something but it's not, I checked.

Some Soviet units got into the Axis backfield so I have to go in manually and help Elmer a little
bit but it's still a lot faster than moving each unit by hand.

[larryfulkerson]

This is what it looks like around Kiev right now. Elmer has been doing just fine in this area and Kiev was cleaned out
and the formations are working their way south isolating and destroying Soviet units.