Re: Historical Accuracy posts

[Flaviusx]

I'd rather have historical reinforcements and free rebuilds from the deadpile...saving APs to do only the stuff that it does for the Axis. The AP budget cannot possibly cover unit management and production at the same time and the traffic is much too large to bear as a design choice anyways. APs are being asked to do too many incommensurate things for the Soviets and it's very messy. Yet if you actually gave them budget to do this properly, it'd be huge and subject to abuse.

As much as Axis players complain about lacking build choices and whatnot, it is they who got the better, more elegant and sensible design here. Turning APs into a sort of universal currency that does everything (for the Sovs at least) was a mistake.

If you are going to have player controlled builds, then this needs to be decoupled entirely from army management. They are apples and oranges and shouldn't share a currency. Unit production ought to have its own separate currency if it's going to be under player control...or no currency at all if it is not under player control.

[carlkay58]

I tend to agree with Flav over gingerbread. I think that WitE 2 will see some changes as the way that AP works and is used in WitW has changed greatly. If this carries over into WitE 2 then it will be interesting to see what the unit creation costs will be.

[Michael T]

Historical OOB for both sides is my preference. Always has been.

[hfarrish]

Unlike many grongards I find the force structure optimization process extremely tedious and would prefer historical OOB as well...and God forbid we have to get into production optimization on top of that (as so many seem to want)!

The army build out really gets beyond the operational scope of the game - I understand why it was included for the Red Army (players can find themselves in wildly different situations based on 41/42 and accordingly different needs) but I think the benefit is pretty marginal for the time cost.

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: Michael T
Historical OOB for both sides is my preference. Always has been.

I would agree completely if I wasn't a scenario designer. When I wrote Winter 42/43 and StoB entering the data for the Red Army took about 3 months of work and I had Trey's Red Army Resurgent as a firm basis for almost half already. Having to add to that the arrival dates of each individual Soviet unit would be mind boggling as would the need to balance production as arriving units are free. Imagine trying to do that for the entire war. I'm not saying that it isn't possible but having the player create their own units does have its advantages. At least for the Soviets we won't have the endless 'units destroyed at Stalingrad debate' although I would expect that WitE 2 would have a West Front Control Box like WitW has for the East and the issue will be dead.

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Y'know, when people say that Soviet command and control is better in this game than in real life, I struggle to understand what, exactly Soviet command should look like. From my perspective, Soviet command is pretty awful and ahistorically so. Armies have been shrunk to 18 cap, which is crap and way too small. (Open any late war scenario and marvel at the many overloaded armies!)

I look at it from an entire game balance perspective, in that both sides are relatively overpowered. Is dumbing down Russian C&C by itself a solution? No. But in combination with reducing logistics, unrealistic deep Panzer strikes, etc, I think it will help to add realism. To me, it's more so revamping the whole notion of Admin Points and removing the unit creation element. As it stands, the Russian player can create a smaller more efficient Army than was historically plausible, and in game terms this appears to be the optimal player strategy. How can one re-create the Russian front with essentially a fantasy Russian Army?

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

ORIGINAL: Michael T
Historical OOB for both sides is my preference. Always has been.

I would agree completely if I wasn't a scenario designer. When I wrote Winter 42/43 and StoB entering the data for the Red Army took about 3 months of work and I had Trey's Red Army Resurgent as a firm basis for almost half already. Having to add to that the arrival dates of each individual Soviet unit would be mind boggling as would the need to balance production as arriving units are free. Imagine trying to do that for the entire war. I'm not saying that it isn't possible but having the player create their own units does have its advantages. At least for the Soviets we won't have the endless 'units destroyed at Stalingrad debate' although I would expect that WitE 2 would have a West Front Control Box like WitW has for the East and the issue will be dead.

Yes, the smaller scenarios are much more difficult to build with historical Russian OOBs. I think the Grand Campaigns can be done fairly easily with historical reinforcement schedules. The on map units certainly, and while support units might need a little bit of abstracting, all in all it's doable.

[carlkay58]

Try finding the 'definitive' Soviet WWII OOB! It changes on a day to day basis - even among the same researchers.

[Michael T]

A few Historical glitches are acceptable IMO compared to the current mechanic.

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

A few Historical glitches are acceptable IMO compared to the current mechanic.

If only everyone was so understanding [:D]

[Flaviusx]

Just go to Charles Sharp for your Soviet OB needs and call it a day. But this could be expensive and difficult to track down.

He ought to bundle all those volumes and put them up for sale on Amazon.

[Great_Ajax]

Just to be clear, the Soviets get all combat Divisions and Brigades (Tank, Mech, Rifle, Mountain and Cavalry) either at start or when they were historically sent to the East Front. I see Soviet reinforcements that arrive as late as 1943. What the Soviet player has to spend APs on are combining the brigades and divisions into Rifle and Tank/Mech Corps and any additional support units.

Sharp doesn't have all of those support units accounted for but I have learned to read the STAVKA monthly reports (in Russian) enough to discern a list of the support units and when they arrived. In order to avoid a timely review of production, all additional units would have to arrive as shells and then be filled out by the existing production system. It could be done but would take a lot of work.

Trey

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Just go to Charles Sharp for your Soviet OB needs and call it a day. But this could be expensive and difficult to track down.

He ought to bundle all those volumes and put them up for sale on Amazon.

[Schmart]

ORIGINAL: el hefe

Just to be clear, the Soviets get all combat Divisions and Brigades (Tank, Mech, Rifle, Mountain and Cavalry) either at start or when they were historically sent to the East Front. I see Soviet reinforcements that arrive as late as 1943. What the Soviet player has to spend APs on are combining the brigades and divisions into Rifle and Tank/Mech Corps and any additional support units.

There's a few elements missing though, such as the on map Artillery units and the Mech Bdes, and there aren't enough Tank Bdes provided to create historical numbers of Tank Corps while maintaining historical numbers of independent Tank Bdes. While the Artillery Divs are relatively easy to handle, the Artillery Bdes are tougher since many were created by merging existing Regts, and that's a step not easily handled in game.

The difficulty is in getting the right setup for some of the units, which would involve specific programming. Armies changing type/names, Tank Corps becoming Mech Corps, Tank Bdes and Regts converting to SPG Regts, auto disbanding of units, auto rebuilding of many but not certain units (or auto rebuilding only during a specific time period for specific units), etc. Most of the historical reinforcements (even for Tank Bdes/Corps, and Mech Bde/Corps) can be done in the editor to get maybe 70-80% of the way there. Fine tuning some of the unique situations would require some extra programming input that the editor can't do. Even just adding auto-rebuild to Russian units for the whole game would make a big difference in allowing things to be setup simply in the editor. Or at least a toggle option for individual units (like in TOAW).

I think no matter which way it gets done, historical reinforcements for the Russians will be somewhat abstracted for simplicity's sake. Getting the rest of the on map units done and a good chunk of the support units would be close enough, as the remaining is going to have only a minimal effect on game play and overall outcome.

[vinnie71]

I think that its very difficult to come up with real OOB for both sides. For example, although we know which divisions etc arrived for the Axis in the Eastern Front, its very difficult to mimic their ability to combine units into larger units or expand such units. For example, several SS and independent regiments and brigades (like the Croatian one) eventually expanded into full scale divisions. For some reason, before it was possible but now such a move is impossible - regiments are withdrawn and then replaced by complete divisions. They essentially remained in theatre and expanded as the GrossDeutshland does in game.

Furthermore, there are a lot of units on the Axis side that do not feature at all. These are mostly HQs - one only sees them when s/he plays the scenarios. I'm guessing that such HQs were left out given that they were put in place to counter a certain contingency. I'm referring to such HQs as LW Flak divisions or Operational Groups and so on. Although this may have been a design decision to avoid complications (ex not everyone is going to commit WWII mistakes willingly)so such units will not feature in the Grand Campaign.

Another number of small units that are absent are the many local defence forces raised especially in the Ukraine and Baltic States. Most would end up being little more than SUs given that they were normally battalion sized units, but if added to security formations, could actually solve some of the garrisoning issues. Admittedly, it would be hard to synchronize their appearance on the map with what was happening on the ground (I mean the fall of Vilnius or Kiev could be the catalyst for the creation of such formations).

Obviously, the portrayal of all the units that took part in such a titanic struggle in such a game is impossible and given the scale of the game, quite pointless

[rmonical]

The problem with historical production is you invariably end up with a-historical results. In WITE - it is the buildup of thousands of unused elements in the pools.

Part of the AP issue is they are used for too many completely different purposes. It is fundamentally different event to change the leader of a unit and starting a new combat unit in production.

IMHO, leaders are entirely too important in WITE. My understanding is the wide variation in leader effects has been toned down in WITE. Leaders are important, but they only function in the presence of effective staffs. I mentioned this earlier and someone dismissed the comment by saying leaders take their staffs with them. In fact, other than a few key people, they do not.
Take two Soviet armies. One fights the Western battles, Smolensk, counter attacks in August September, fights the Battle for Moscow and fights in the winter counterattacks. The other sits in reserve until June 42. Move a single leader, and the second army is as or more effective as the first.

It did not work that way.

Combat unit production should have costs associated with the "value" of the personnel added to the unit. Maybe AP is the way to do that. If true, then "production" AP would start low and improve as the training establishment grows. Leader change AP is a different thing and has appropriately been eliminated in WITW.

[rmonical]

Y'know, when people say that Soviet command and control is better in this game than in real life, I struggle to understand what, exactly Soviet command should look like. From my perspective, Soviet command is pretty awful and ahistorically so.

IMHO, there should be an enormous improvement in Soviet C&C between '41 and '43. There is not and Soviet C&C in '43 seems to be good enough ergo Soviet C&C in 1941 is too good. This analysis must, of course, be taken in the context of all of the game mechanics [:D].

Armies have been shrunk to 18 cap, which is crap and way too small. (Open any late war scenario and marvel at the many overloaded armies!)

Which would be less of an issue if leader checks were not so important (QED).

My take is the current game mechanics grew around early design decisions which IMHO, will make the 39-41 game an interesting design challenge.
-- Morale vis-a-vis experience
-- Leader vis-a-vis staff. Some of this is apparently fixed in WITW.
-- Production mechanics.
-- Combat mechanics which seem to have achieved a general consensus that attacking is overly important.
-- Pocket mechanics especially as to its impact on the "AP crunch AKA production mechanics". I hope to write a detailed AAR of my fascinating summer of '42 with hoooper which we have spent pocketing, breaking and repocketing large contingents of troops.

And Morvael confirms the code is not as modular as this 30 year software professional would like [:(].

[rmonical]

Armies have been shrunk to 18 cap, which is crap and way too small. (Open any late war scenario and marvel at the many overloaded armies!)

Which can rapidly be improved by merging the many under strength units. It would be nice is stacking and leader control could be more related to element count than units. For example, from a logistics management perspective, there is a big difference between full strength and 60% strength rifle corps.