Hey LarryF, took your advice & am doing Road to Moscow What If scenario. A masterpiece! Having a ton of fun, thanks for the tip!! I might do an AAR later since I have a save of each turn.
Glad you're having fun. I thought you might like it. And about the AAR....that would be super cool. I usually construct my AAR's as I'm playing the turn.
I'm clipping the range of the bombers so that they just cover the front lines. Going deeper into enemy territory will exceed the range of the escorting fighters and result in higher losses. But I've parked the fighters at the front or right behind the front lines and they can cover a little past the front lines to be able to escort the bombers. Resulting in lower losses overall. I sank all the Soviet ships near Leningrad so I flew all the Ju-86's and Ju-87's down to the Odessa area to be able to reach the Soviet ships around Sevastopol. It's such a long trip to get there that the Stuka's can't shoot until R7 of this turn without burning rounds. All the attacks are scheduled so I'm ready to pull the trigger on the first combat round.
Bomber range arc: That is a lot of range to those bombers, seems to match the operational radius of the B-17!
Cheers
The range arc is at 80 hexes wide and I've reduced it to 80 from 200+ because I don't need to reach targets far away and I want to keep the bombers under the fighter unbrella . The fighters are up at the front and the bombers are further behind.
I have advanced up to Kiev and the fighting is sharp and bitter. A lot of the Axis units are red and need refit. I'm going to have to get organized and separate out the Panzers and send them south and let the leg infantry hold the Soviets in place and maybe launch some probes. It's time to leap the river above Kiev and then move south along the river.
I've lost track of my D21 files so I'm forced to start over. D'oh. My first move was to rail OKH up to Konigsburg to encourage all the tired planes that I'm going to park there for them to rest and refit. I don't have any complex plan...I thought I'd drop some paratroopers along the path to Riga to see if I couldn't accellerate the passage to Riga. I'm trying to decide where to drop the first one now. I'm thinking I need to capture and hold the main bridges with them. I'm going to concentrate on the one main rail leading to Riga and see how far I can get without trying to kill any Soviet soldiers, just concentrate on covering the distance to Riga. I can mop up later.
I've noticed that I've not done any airfield attacks yet but the air losses meter reads 400+ losses for the Soviet side already. The air shock difference is so great that I'm going to set all the fighters on three-dots for a couple of turns. And I'm going to do lots of airfield strikes while I'm at it.
I'm playing with a modded D21 in that I boosted the supply radius by 5 hexes, as I recall, to give the Axis side more of a fighting chance. I saved the GAM file using the editor, ran that GAM file through TOAWXML to convert the invalid characters to 'Z's and saved that. Read the converted GAM file into the TOAW IV editor and saved the result as the final scenario. So I'm hoping there's no invalid characters in any of the unit names now. I don't like the color of the Axis aircraft....I'd rather have them all white on black like the Panzers. So I'm going to produce a COL file to change that. Standby for news...
I've zipped up all the files you'll need for this version of the scenario and posted it here below:
One of the good things about this scenario is that the Soviet side seems like it's set to beserk and during the recent Soviet turn the Soviets made some penetrations of my lines and I'm only just now plugging the holes. I can't use little units on the front lines because the Soviets will find them and make that a weak spot and will take advantage of it. This has been going on the entire game so far. They attack whenever they have an opportunaty and I've had to plug more holes this game than I ever remember from previous games. This is a T7 image.
Sounds historical: there were a multitude of local counterattacks, ordered by an histerical STAVKA, that sometimes had initial success but ultimately just made encirclements easier as well as depleting equipment and decimating units.
Both sides had a limited recon capabilities. Germans were heavily relaying on interrogation of POWs with limited air recon. But the Germans had quite capable and experienced recon troops at Div level which made a real difference in the field (plus very capable officers).
The Soviet also relayed heavily on interrogations and had close to none air recon. Furthermore the Soviets suffered from poor comms, lack of expierenced and skilled officers or recon troops.
Hence the Soviet counterattacks were usually unprepared and uncoordinated and quite often with zero chance of success. Still they were executed as the orders from STAVKA were to ckunterratack at all costs.
Here's a view of the Smolensk area and you can see how my units are getting across the river and confronting the Soviet's line and making progress. The supply level falls off a cliff on the east side of the river so I'll have to monitor the supply levels so that I don't drive my units into an area with few or no supplies. The advance is helped in that there are less Soviet units than they need to defend properly. There's plenty of gaps in their lines.
This is a view of the area just north of Kiev and shows how the Axis units are forcing their way across the river, spreading out and converting hexes most especially on the roads and rails. The number of Soviet units is increasing. Resistance is stiffening. Supply is starting to be a constraint. I feel like I don't have nearly enough RR engineers, because the front edge of the advance is getting further and further away from the railheads.
Anybody out there ever play WITP-AE from the Japanese side? Most games are played as the Allied side against the PO. I'm finding the Japanese side a LOT more complicated than the Allied side in that you must control the production of all the planes and engines and you have to master the logistics needs of the home islands all the while fighting the war. I'm having a blast. I'm attaching a picture showing how often I'm able to get a shipment of oil to the home islands and checking out the level at the start and the end I see that I'm just about keeping up with needs in the oil category but the RES[orces] level is dropping rapidly. I'll have to move some of the transports ( AK's and AP's ) from moving fuel to moving RES. My opponent manages to sink at least one of my transports ( on average ) every turn. I'm down to my last 500+ of them. My subs are getting killed out there so I'm going to have to concentrate on his logistics chain and let somebody else battle his DD's, DM's, APD's, and AM's. He's sunk three times the number of ships I have sunk. We're coming up on June of 1942 and that means I need to put together an invasion TF and take a crack at Midway. I'm down to my last 10 carriers ( CV's, CVE's, and CVL's ) and from what I understand of the game, my opponent has at least twice that. It could get interesting. It might be a shorter war than I anticipated.
Two general comments about D21.
The most important issue in turns 1-3 is railway conversions. You need to take maximum advantage of the 100% (1-2) and 75% (3) conversions, particularly on your main lines to Riga, Minsk-Smolensk, and as much as possible towards Kiev. You need consecutive main line connections to rail reinforcements up to the front, at least toward Riga and Minsk.
The Germans got their first train through to Minsk the end of the second turn and to Riga the third. You can't do that but with reasonable luck and taking care on your timestamp combats you can do the reverse - take Riga by turn 2 and get fairly close to Minsk (T2) so you can take it and past it on Turn 3. The trains probably won't run through Minsk due to not all conversions working on Turn 3, and perhaps not being able to repair all the bridges, but your trains will run nearly to Minsk and 3/4's of rail conquered on turn 3 won't need conversions. To some degree you may need to rail units to some locations to block Soviet reconversions where you lines go past Red troops and your mobile troops have moved on. You may also need to temporarily leave small rail formations on the tracks to pass reinforcements by neighboring Red units without risk of engagement. You can use railed troops at different locations in different sub-parts of your turns as you have such a big movement allowance (for instances to block retreats after combats to protect converted hexes from Red retreats or help surround a combat target. Then move them later to their final location, further east. You may also need to rail a few engineers to the front to be ready to repair bridges on T2 and 3.
Only T4 and thereafter do I give a lot of concern to other tactics such as cutting off supplies to complete kills of surrounded troops and the like.
I haven't played FITE2 except some brief fooling around by myself, but I would think there would be similar issues there, including using your partisans to converts rails, which means moving hex by hex and switching to a different unit to convert each rail hex and splitting units to max conversions. Not as strong a concern, though because you can direct the rail repair more effectively T4 and thereafter than in D21.
ORIGINAL: wpurdom
Two general comments about D21. The most important issue in turns 1-3 is railway conversions. You need to take maximum advantage of the 100% (1-2) and 75% (3) conversions, particularly on your main lines to Riga, Minsk-Smolensk, and as much as possible towards Kiev. You need consecutive main line connections to rail reinforcements up to the front, at least toward Riga and Minsk.
The Germans got their first train through to Minsk the end of the second turn and to Riga the third. You can't do that but with reasonable luck and taking care on your timestamp combats you can do the reverse - take Riga by turn 2 and get fairly close to Minsk (T2) so you can take it and past it on Turn 3. The trains probably won't run through Minsk due to not all conversions working on Turn 3, and perhaps not being able to repair all the bridges, but your trains will run nearly to Minsk and 3/4's of rail conquered on turn 3 won't need conversions. To some degree you may need to rail units to some locations to block Soviet reconversions where you lines go past Red troops and your mobile troops have moved on. You may also need to temporarily leave small rail formations on the tracks to pass reinforcements by neighboring Red units without risk of engagement. You can use railed troops at different locations in different sub-parts of your turns as you have such a big movement allowance (for instances to block retreats after combats to protect converted hexes from Red retreats or help surround a combat target. Then move them later to their final location, further east. You may also need to rail a few engineers to the front to be ready to repair bridges on T2 and 3.
Only T4 and thereafter do I give a lot of concern to other tactics such as cutting off supplies to complete kills of surrounded troops and the like.
I haven't played FITE2 except some brief fooling around by myself, but I would think there would be similar issues there, including using your partisans to converts rails, which means moving hex by hex and switching to a different unit to convert each rail hex and splitting units to max conversions. Not as strong a concern, though because you can direct the rail repair more effectively T4 and thereafter than in D21.
I agree with all that you have said and I think you're spot on with your analysis. I've played both games you mentioned above and I think FITE2 is more enjoyable but you need an opponent to play it and D21 has been modded several times now and is getting better and better all the time. And it's got a PO. I've got a D21 game going and a FITE2 PBEM game going and it's the best of both worlds. They have the same theme and subject matter but they are really two different games. Different treatments of the same subject. They both are excellent scenarios.
How far is Valdosta, GA from Decatur, GA. I was stationed at Valdosta for about a week for aircrew training [ decompression, in-flight emergencies, old war stories from the instructor ). I volunteered to be the one to take off my mask at 28,000 feet and pass out. The problem was I never passed out. I faked it. The class didn't have to do the whole thing over again until it worked for real, we had a longer class break than we would have had. It was a win-win for everybody. I remember the smell of the involuntary farts.
It's T11 and I'm in the process of reaching Narva in the bottleneck to the SW of Leningrad. This time I brought enough troops to do the job and they are already almost finished clearing out the peninsula. I've been watching the Soviet moves as they perform them and I haven't seen a lot of units railing into the Leningrad area. That may mean that it won't be a major problem getting through the bottleneck and into the Leningrad surburbs. The rails are nowhere to be seen and the supply levels aren't the best. I'm pretty sure I sank the Soviet BB in this area which just leaves the Soviet ships around Sevastopol and the Ju-87's here need to be flown south. I'm going to try to do a left-hook to isolate Leningrad from the rest of Russia despite the lack of troops to actually do so. I'll see if I can't find a division somewhere that isn't doing anything important and send it up here.
