A snapshot AAR

[Tarhunnas]

I attack a number of German airfields every turn, not sure if it hurts them more than it hurts us. Results are mixed to say the least. Here is one of the more successful ones.

[Tarhunnas]

Air losses Turn 30:

[Tarhunnas]

Here is one of the holdout tank divisions. This one seems to have managed to pilfer the lions share of the lend lease Valentines. Apparently, these guys like to drive British!

[STEF78]

Mild blizzard means more fights during the winter



With less than 900 AFV early January, german army won't bite a lot during february and march.

[Gabriel B.]

That is a regular 41a division, but unless you do not plan to use it , do not overload the 1st airborne corps .

it needs 170 suport squads in adition to organic , to repair damaged equiptment, so far it has only received 16.

[Tarhunnas]

The airborne corps is not overloaded, it was a convenient place to put the armor division. Would having the armor division in the airborne corps affect the support?

[Gabriel B.]

A prewar Airborne corps at full toe has 250 support squads , these get parceled out acording to the need to the atached combat units .

a airborne brigade has just 38 organic support squads and needs 180 just as a regular brigade ( it not a self sufficent unit ).
With 3 airborne brigades atached , each get isued 83 to bring them at 67 percent of needed suport .
If you atach more units to the corps, or it is not at full toe, it would drop below 67 %, hence my comment on overloading .

the airborne corps formed during the winter are even worse with only 200 suport squads .

I have 3 regular inf brigades atached to the prewar airborne corps , those have a more generous alocation of suport squads ,
102 , and with 78 isued from corps are actually self sufficent .


that being said, it is a far more simple situation to deal with , than that of combined arms armies .

[Tarhunnas]

Oh, thanks! I had no idea of that! My armies were full so I thought I should use the spare command capacity in the airborne corps. Well, the tank division will probably convert to a brigade soon anyway.

[timmyab]

I've got some spare time so I'll fill in some details from turn 29. This is the first turn of January and the noticeably stronger CVs have come just in the nick of time.

For the first time since the start of the blizzard there seems to be some sort of minor Soviet offensive action in the North. 18th army bares the brunt of it. Von Leeb is concerned enough to order the well rested 41st pz corps to counterattack and to hand over it's 6th pz division to 18th army reserve.

[timmyab]

The fighting is pretty intense to the South of Moscow. Both 2nd pz army and 17th army have taken a battering. 3rd pz army is released from army group reserve to help out and one pz division from 4th pz army is also sent South to become 17th army reserve.
Note both mountain divisions adding counterattacking backbone in this critical area.

[timmyab]

After the Crimean 'incident' the South has become what you might call a bit fluid. In fact 11th corps were probably luck to survive, there were no mobile reserves in the area at all. After the 'incident' Von Rundstedt was promptly dismissed as AGS commander (actually the game engine did it but it seemed highly appropriate). His complaint that 11th corps was actually under OKH command fell on deaf ears.
This combined with a shortage of units to the South of Kharkov has caused a huge hole to open between 11th corps and 11th army. Two pz divisions from 3rd pz army under 5th corps have been tasked with restoring the situation and 13th corps with three fresh divisions will arrive in the next two weeks. 11th corps cling to the marshes on the South side of the Dneper. Luckily the Soviets aren't very strong here either.

[Tarhunnas]

And here is an epic picture from turn 30 when the southern and eastern prongs meet south of Zaporozhye, liberating large tracts of the southern Ukraine at a stroke!
Unfortunately, the offensive out of the Crimea is running out of steam due to supply difficulties (no railroads anywhere near).

[Tarhunnas]

Meanwhile at Orel the 4th Shock army is moving up to the front to reinforce the offensive.

[Tarhunnas]

Turn 31.

The offensive continues. East of Moscow the Volkhov front has been quietly reinforced with breakthrough artillery and sappers. Now they surprise the fascist invaders with well planned assaults that drive the invaders back from the fortifications they have been cowering in. Unfortunately, our troops are too exhausted from the assault to be able to occupy the terrain in force (they don't have the MP:s), so the hitlerites, with their usual callous disregard for human life, will just fill the breaches with new hordes of young recruits brainwashed with propaganda.

Actually, that suits us fine. We are not so interested in occupying territory right now, we are just as happy mowing down the brainwashed young recruits. But still, advancing is such a nice way of expressing the inexorable victory of socialism. Note also that marxist dialectic can even triumph over the laws of mathemathics (1:1 > 2:1).

For the record, out of 25 successful attacks, 15 were helped by the 1:1 > 2:1 rule this turn, an unusually high proportion. I think that is a sign that the going is getting tougher now in January.

[timmyab]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

And here is an epic picture from turn 30 when the southern and eastern prongs meet south of Zaporozhye, liberating large tracts of the southern Ukraine at a stroke!

And here is some recently released news footage of the operation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XObGr6CTNYw

[Tarhunnas]

On the central front, the 46th Tank Division swings into action, rolling over a Slovakian security division, managing to lose 22 tanks in the process.

[Tarhunnas]

And losses and OOB turn 31.

[Gabriel B.]

ORIGINAL: loki100

re the fronts.

Remember the load comes from CPs not armies - realise this sounds trite but it took me a while to get my head around it.

I find that to the end of the first winter I don't have enough combat ready divisions to really overload the fronts, but then I do spend CPs on taking low morale and low strength divisions back into Stavka reserve, so I have a sort of conveyor belt set up. Equally, with an eye on the drop of army capacity in early 42, I tend to only load my armies up to 18.

By the time the at start fronts are at risk of overloading due to the returning formations, you tend to get the Volkhov and Caucasus Fronts. Which relieves the problem for some time. The conversion of cavalry divs to corps lowers the CP load, which tends to allow me to absorb the winter arrivals (but remember I'm still spending a lot of AP on rotation).

The next safety nets are the SE Front in spring 42 and the rifle corps. Again that seems to create a bit of headroom.

My final choice is to heavily overload one front and give it to a total numpty. There are a few available [;)]. Let this overload, as it does no harm. In most games, whichever Front you have up north is a good choice for this. Equally the Volga MD is another get out clause in 42 when its likely to be close to the front. Again try and give it a quiet sector and overload.

So, on balance, I find I have about -10 on the CPs for most fronts, and yes I do think you are meant by design to have a problem. Its not a good simulation in my opinion, in that the Soviet doctrine was a front was a single axis of advance or strategic defense region. What I think the game sort of simulates is that overall the Soviets lacked for a command infrastructure, but the reality was they allocated what they had to key commands - hence the infrastructure of Stavka representatives etc. So what you should really have is a pool of front CPs and the ability to package them up - so you could have the late war 1st Ukrainian/1st Bielorussian monsters.

In practice, the only time that formations attached to Stavka were engaged was the Tikhvin battles in late 41. Proved to be a total disaster as army commanders were sending low level requests to Stavka.

After that, Soviet histories frequently refer to armies being pulled into 'Stavka reserve', which to me means detached from the Front structure, but to refit or be redeployed such as Chuikov's 8GA being moved from the Korsun sector to take part in Bagration. The in-game problem is the AP cost is too high to operate on that model, but that leads to the problem that the APs are trying to model too much.

sorry for the thread hi-jack [:@]

The backbone of the soviet army , aka the rifle division has a very stremlined support
structure , and depends quite heavily on army support to function efectively .

Even with only 36 rifle divisions per front (9 in each army) only 73% of the needed suport
squads are available .

Stavka and military districts as well, have 1000 organic support squads , so in fact placing demoralised rifle divisions under Stavka ,is a drain of valuable workforce since
these suport squads are alocated to units that are not fighting the germans .

In practice armies under stavka and military districts get alocated
a fair share of support squads, provided that they are in command range , not enough of course, but another reason not to have aditional divisions diluting it .

[jwolf]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

Note also that marxist dialectic can even triumph over the laws of mathematics (1:1 > 2:1).

[:)] I thought that was very funny! But mathematics will have its ultimate revenge. [;)]

[Wuffer]

Valuable, well written and exciting AAR, thx to contributions by various authors.