V1.08.05 Public Beta is Available

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: morvael

IMHO the cavalry bonus for Soviet cavalry is not necessary at all. Time of being elite formation passed, these were regulars like rifles. Especially if one considers the speed with which these formations were wasted, destroyed and rebuilt.

think the problem is they were mixed, goes back to the civil war and Trotsky's 'Proletarians to horse' speech/order. A lot were raised effectively taking recruits from rural areas (who could ride horses in non-combat situations) and expecting them to do so in a complex modern battle. On the other hand, some formations were raised from the Cossack and Central Asian populations to whom going to war on a horse was pretty natural.

Its clear that up to mid-1943 the Soviets didn't especially value the cavalry corps. They were there to offer a bit more mobility and often used to try and disrupt the German defences .. if they failed well so what seemed to be the mindset. With the emergence of the cav-mech concept they gained a clearer role, primarily as an exploitation not a breakthrough formation.

The problem is in the game they are breakthrough formations, those extra MPs plus decent CV makes them too valuable. I have an army in my current game with 4 Gds Cav Corps and by cycling between them I can easily generate an attack stack of about 22-25 with MP of 16+. That will take apart an isolated German infantry division or in combination with other units push back a stack or one well dug in. I actually think they are too strong, but can understand why Chaos45 opted to build a slightly gamey army around them (playing Pelton I can see no reason not to fully exploit the rule set)

[chaos45]

Loki- effectively with the extra tank battalions now turned tank regiments my Cav Corps have been acting as slower moving tank divisions since I formed them.

Every one of my Cav Corps have commonly had 100+ AFVs since formation which is enough to really classify them as armored formations by most games accounting proceedures. Which is why my suggestion is if they want LW cav corps to be mechanized why not just make Soviet Cav Corps count as mechanized from the date you can start to form them. As IMO beefing them up with tanks is the best thing you can do as it then give you a bunch of in effect 16-22 MP move Soviet Armored divisions for the summer of 1942.

This would simplify the AP wastage as Soviet players could just put the Cav Units with all those extra tank regiments/bns in mech commander armies from the start.

This making them infantry for a year+ then magically saying they need a mechanized commander is pure stupidity. Sorry general you have been leading these men to victory for the last 12 months but we changed the organization on paper of your units and your suddenly a moron at using them so we have to replace you....in what universe does that make any sense?????

Just saying Cav Corps are mechanized from inception is the better compromise and removes yet another un-needed AP sink. Plus it would give the Soviets something to start teething their mech commanders on before the summer of 1942.....which makes some sense as well. As right now there is no reason for the Soviets to use any mech commanders for most 1941 and until you have a couple tank armies in 1942.

really think about it.

[morvael]

I ended with 4 shock armies each with 5 cavalry corps stuffed with extra sappers and sp guns. These were monsters. And it was quite natural use for them given how they work and what they have in WitE terms. Seemed ahistorical though.

[morvael]

Since the cost to reattach is now based on number of men, aren't the non-rifle corps cheaper to reassign now? All one has to do is to keep some free cp in some armies. By giving them infantry skill rolls, it means they are more efficient as part of foot armies in 41-42. At the price of being less efficient in foot armies later. Trade off, but in the crucial period you can easily get the most of them.

[Aurelian]

ORIGINAL: morvael

I ended with 4 shock armies each with 5 cavalry corps stuffed with extra sappers and sp guns. These were monsters. And it was quite natural use for them given how they work and what they have in WitE terms. Seemed ahistorical though.

It is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_t ... rld_War_II

Shock Armies had high proportions of infantry, engineers and field artillery, but with less emphasis on operational mobility and sustainability. Soviet Shock Armies were characterized by a higher allocation of army-level artillery units to break German defense positions by weight of fire, and often had heavy tank regiments or heavy self-propelled gun regiments to add additional direct fire support. Once a breach in the enemy tactical position was made, more mobile units such as tank and mechanized corps would be inserted through the Shock Army's positions with the mission of penetrating deep into the enemy rear area. By the end of the war, though, Soviet Guards Armies typically enjoyed superior artillery support to that of the shock armies.

Here's a thread: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... hp?t=64134

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

ORIGINAL: morvael

I ended with 4 shock armies each with 5 cavalry corps stuffed with extra sappers and sp guns. These were monsters. And it was quite natural use for them given how they work and what they have in WitE terms. Seemed ahistorical though.

It is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_t ... rld_War_II

Shock Armies had high proportions of infantry, engineers and field artillery, but with less emphasis on operational mobility and sustainability. Soviet Shock Armies were characterized by a higher allocation of army-level artillery units to break German defense positions by weight of fire, and often had heavy tank regiments or heavy self-propelled gun regiments to add additional direct fire support. Once a breach in the enemy tactical position was made, more mobile units such as tank and mechanized corps would be inserted through the Shock Army's positions with the mission of penetrating deep into the enemy rear area. By the end of the war, though, Soviet Guards Armies typically enjoyed superior artillery support to that of the shock armies.

Here's a thread: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... hp?t=64134

the problem is again, the situation varied. The title was relatively meaningless but some formations stood out and where then allocated extra equipment and so on.

As an eg, 2 Shock Army was rubbish, it often had less equipment than a normal combined arms army. In part it never really recovered from its losses in early 1942 but also, due to Vlasov's defection, it was seen as unreliable (even if under a completely new set of commanders). 4 Shock never stood out either.

Only 3 and 5 Shock became the mid/late war elite armies that players tend to use the HQs for and were the only two to be retained in Germany as part of their OOB in East Germany (which is a good clue as to which formations ended WW2 with a high reputation).

In game, the small bonus they have tends to encourage players to use them as a shell for cavalry or armoured formations. But boosting your infantry from 10-12 MP to 12-14 MP can make a real difference, you can much more often manage 2 attacks or move and attack as a result.

[morvael]

Axis Turn 2: 1941-06-26
North Soviet Zone: Clear (Forecast: Mud)

What a dillema, what to do? [:)]

[chaos45]

Ya the forecast is interesting, Ive already seen it be wrong several times lol.

forecast Mud everywhere----nope snow in half the zones lol.....

[morvael]

Forecast is only 75% accurate... In 25% of cases the weather will be determined randomly once more (so actually it can end identical to forecast).
But it increases tension, so I like it. Do I prepare for bad weather that is forcecasted, losing precious time when it will be actually good weather?

[chaos45]

I like the forecast also u to prepare just like real commanders did

[GamesaurusRex]

Hmm... Well this looks like one of those "good news - bad news" stories...

The good news is that Morvael and company have been hard at work plugging the holes in the dyke.

The bad news is we will all have to learn to swim without water.

The net effect is that Matrix has once again extended the entertainment value and general quality of one of it's more excellent products.

In any event, allow me to toot the horn of Morvael and his fellow coders for all the effort.

[morvael]

It was always so after the big patch, that I had to develop some hotfixes in the month after release. With limited amount of testers it's the public beta that is actually testing phase [:)]

[malyhin1517]

As for the Soviet cavalry, it is valid for the period were elite troops, and not just the infantry. In fact, mechanized cavalry corps began in February 1943, before they had a few tanks and served as an elite mobile infantry. In general, I support the fact that their commanders should have the skill mechanized forces, but morale and training them were above average.

[morvael]

Perhaps once they are treated as mech units for leader rolls purposes they should get mech unit morale modifier after all (namely +5 after 42/9 and +10 after 43/9). So the +5 during all the time may be viewed as compromise.

[malyhin1517]

With regard to the limitations of air strikes against airfields, maybe it was more interesting to do limit the number of air strikes on hex, as is done in a series of games Panzer Campagne? Then it would deal with all kinds of air strikes and it would be more fair in my opinion

[morvael]

This would be good but that would require storing additional data per hex (which I can't do) or looking through recorded battle results each time (which may be slow).

[malyhin1517]

In general, the whole patch 1.08.05 i really liked, but on behalf of the community of Russian-speaking players would like to once again ask for support for the Cyrillic alphabet in the game. I know that we have a little bit and we do not always buy your game , but it would increase the popularity of your game here. In addition, the Germans had already can play in their own language, and it is also good news

[morvael]

Sorry, that's something out of scope of my work and I guess the engine would have problems internally as it uses ASCII only characters. I think doing other language versions was no longer considered for WitW and WitE2 as it's very difficult to keep everything in sync and look correctly. German language can be more-or-less handled with ASCII only, as "Ü" can be replaced with "Ue". That is impossible to do with Cyrillic (unless you would accept a transliterated version). I guess you could use German version file and change it's contents to see what you will get. Whether cyrillic would work or at least transliterated version of it.

[malyhin1517]

In the game you basically use UTF-16, I make myself hand Russification of your game, and it looks quite decent. But as for the names of troops and equipment, there is indeed a problem with the encoding ASCII Replace german translation I tried, did not work

[morvael]

Yes, data stored in game files is ASCII only and should never be changed, because rules in code check those English names to operate properly. So no renaming Rifle Division to Strelkovaya Diviziya (or what you call it), unless it's done via translation file, but some things are not supported that way.