Workshop for the new guys - Barbarossa 41

[Tamas]

Larry has been working on this excellent strategy guide/AAR the last day on the beta forum, I thought I'd move it here.

[larryfulkerson]

So I'm moving units and there appears what looks to be a juicy target but the pending combat dialog says that it's
going to run way long if you include everybody you have assigned to the attack. And I think I need them all so
we'll just postpone this attack for later in the turn.

[larryfulkerson]

456 hits so far. Thanks you guys.

[larryfulkerson]

And for the folks in the south the long term goal is of course, Kiev. I'm starting to run into some rudimentary front
lines such as this one and it's going to take a little longer to get through them but it will happen.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay, I've gone through the OOB again moving those who needed to move still and I'm almost ready to pull the trigger and
execute the attacks but I check the pending battles dialog and find that I have two attacks that have very poor odds of
succeeding and ordinarily I would go investigate them, sort out the problems and maybe cancel the attack outright. But
right now it's 22:13 local, I'm tired, I want to go home. So I'm going to execute them the way they are and hope for
the best. Actually the way I feel right now, I'm ready for T2.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a list of the battles so far and I'm investigating one of the battles where I lost stuff and the Soviets didn't.
It was a strike by my Luftwaffe against a stack of Soviet stuff, armor included and I lost some planes and they lost
nothing. I'm wondering if that's the nominal result or if there's something I need to adjust in the scenario to give
more Soviet losses and less Axis losses. Tamper the AA somewhat and make the combat's more bloody with the slider
in the editor for the variable pestilance or something exotic.

[larryfulkerson]

So I executed the combats and I'm out of rounds and that was turn 1. Now, in T2, I've checked the aircraft, the arty is
set, time to move the units and as I go in OOB order the first formation is the 1st Inf Corps and here's it's situation
up north. It's one of the larger formations with several units, integrated arty, recon assets, etc. It's self-supporting
and one of the more important units. I'm going to use them at Moscow.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how I moved the first formation. I ran some recon up to Riga to reach out and touch someone and moved some infantry
to the NW to block enemy units and moves to surround a pesky Soviet stack on the road to Riga. I need that road
cleared and soon. I'm building a railroad through that hex so I need it cleared.

EDIT: There's an HQ unit between the two enemy stacks and you might question the sanity of putting an HQ unit there
but there's mitigating factors that apply: (1) the two stacks are static relatively speaking, they are defending and
don't want to lose their entrenchment investment. (2) There are other units to move yet and can cover the HQ unit just
fine.

[sanderz]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Okay I've moved a few units and I can't seem to get anybody on the north end of the Soviets so there's nothing to do
but move them hopefully off the road. I manipulated the enemy stack by clicking on it to move the arty unit to the top
so as to maximize the chance of an RBC from that stack.

Hi Larry
Thanks for posting all this help, much appreciated. [&o]

A few questions on what i have read so far.....

[Full disclosure - i have not read the manual and only have very limited experience of TOAW3]

1) Why did you edit the scenario to add rail engineers? Is this something that should have been in the original scenario that you have fixed or personal preference to make rail conversion a bit quicker?

2) In this screen shot how did you get the enemy "Group Composition" box to appear?

3) In your commentary on this screenshot you say you changed the order of the Soviet units - why did you want the Artillery unit to be attacked first and retreat (or did you mean it increased the chances of the whole stack retreating?).

Thanks

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: sanderz
Hi Larry
Thanks for posting all this help, much appreciated. [&o]

I love doing it. Sometimes I get some really good advice and or learn
a new trick from somebody and anyway, it's fun.

ORIGINAL: sanderz
[Full disclosure - i have not read the manual and only have very limited experience of TOAW3]

No problemo. We'll work around that.

ORIGINAL: sanderz
1) Why did you edit the scenario to add rail engineers? Is this something that should have been in the original scenario that you have fixed or personal preference to make rail conversion a bit quicker?

In my opinion Barbarosa '41 is a great scenario but it gives the
Axis player a really rough time. The Axis player is constantly out of
supply and the game feels like it's being played in slow motion. I
diagnosed the problem as "chronically low supply" and thought about ways
to fix it. I increased the supply radius and the formation supply stockpile
and then it occured to me to give all the engineering units some RR
engineers. It made sense at the time.

ORIGINAL: sanderz
2) In this screen shot how did you get the enemy "Group Composition" box to appear?

What you do is run your mouse cursor over the enemy unit that you want to
discover and then press the letter 'c' on your keyboard and voila you've
opened the group Composition for that hex. Whatever is in that hex gets
displayed. Except for the terrain I guess.

ORIGINAL: sanderz
3) In your commentary on this screenshot you say you changed the order of the Soviet units - why did you want the Artillery unit to be attacked first and retreat (or did you mean it increased the chances of the whole stack retreating?).

My aim was to try to give the stack the most chances of a retreat as
possible, which they can't retreat because they are blocked. But that's
a subject for another AAR. To make the stack have to feel like it needs
to retreat. And in my estimation it looked like to me that the arty unit
was the smallest one in the stack. Another criteria could be the color
of their health pie. If they are cherry red they are on the verge of
giving up. And if I could get them to feel like they needed to retreat,
finding themselves blocked they might try to breakout of the envelopment
by attacking some of my units and that will cause massive losses to him.
And my subsequent attack will finish him off. That's the plan.

[larryfulkerson]

They had so few movement points left over after moving that I just dug them in where they sat. I've noticed that the
range of these LCU's isn't all that great. Baby steps.

[Sniper31]

Enjoying this thread and the information herein. Great stuff! I am new to TOAW, but not new to wargames, so these kinds of threads really help me get to know the game better.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Sniper31
Enjoying this thread and the information herein. Great stuff! I am new to TOAW, but not new to wargames, so these kinds of threads really help me get to know the game better.

You just gave my enthusiasm a great boost. Thanks. I needed that. I'm glad you like it. I'll try to do more
detail yet and see if I can't cover just about everything I can think of. I'm depending on questions from you guys
to let me know if I'm doing anything useful or not. I can answer just about any question. But sometimes I have
to answer "I don't know".

[Theophilus]

Thank you so much for this! Even though I've played every iteration of TOAW, it is very encouraging to see someone go "above and beyond" for those who are new to this awesome (best ever?) wargame franchise. You are to be commended, Sir!

[sanderz]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

I found a good target for the Ju-87's. It's got lots of AFV's in the hex, a target rich environment. Plus striking
them might help soften them up for the Panzer unit that's trying to move those folks.

more questions

first some feedback - it would be good for us noobs if the first time some new screen shows up you could say what shortcut keys you use to get certain displays up e.g. the range circles

in this instance i checked the keyboard shortcuts in the manual and found that "I" toggles the "range circle options" however doing a search for that term i couldn't find anything that explains what the different colour lines mean

i.e.
blue..... ??
yellow.....seems to be the max range as shown on the unit details screen
green/red..... this stays in the same place regardless of the plane selected

many thanks

EDIT :
EDIT EDIT : EDIT deleted due to me being an idiot [:(]

cheers

[jnpoint]

Impressive - I have to have a closer look at this Workshop when I have some sparetime.

[aperfecturkel]

ORIGINAL: Sniper31

Enjoying this thread and the information herein. Great stuff! I am new to TOAW, but not new to wargames, so these kinds of threads really help me get to know the game better.

Absolutely - Larry, these are extremely helpful. Things like the UI, I can figure out, but getting into the thought processes and tactics past the first turn is...where I sometimes falter. This is a huge help.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Theophilus
Thank you so much for this! Even though I've played every iteration of
TOAW, it is very encouraging to see someone go "above and beyond" for those who are new to this awesome (best ever?) wargame franchise. You are to be commended, Sir!

You're welcome. It's a labor of love. I'm obsessed with this wargame. It's
all I do anymore. Eat, sleep, TOAW. So many wonderful scenarios and
so little time.

ORIGINAL: sanderz
First some feedback - it would be good for us noobs if the first time some new screen shows up you could say what shortcut keys you use to get certain displays up e.g. the range circles

Great idea, thanks. Sometimes the crop circles don't show up for certain
units. I don't know why. But I use the 'I' key to see if I can't bring it
up for the individual unit.

ORIGINAL: sanderz
in this instance i checked the keyboard shortcuts in the manual and found that "I" toggles the "range circle options" however doing a search for that term i couldn't find anything that explains what the different colour lines mean

ORIGINAL: sanderz
i.e.
blue..... ??
yellow.....seems to be the max range as shown on the unit details screen
green/red..... this stays in the same place regardless of the plane selected

I'll have to post something about the colors and what they mean.

ORIGINAL: jnpoint
Impressive - I have to have a closer look at this Workshop when I have some sparetime.

You can download the web page to a file and read it anywhere. I've done it.
Thanks for your kind words.

ORIGINAL: aperfecturkel

ORIGINAL: Sniper31
Enjoying this thread and the information herein. Great stuff! I am new to TOAW, but not new to wargames, so these kinds of threads really help me get to know the game better.

Absolutely - Larry, these are extremely helpful. Things like the UI, I can figure out, but getting into the thought processes and tactics past the first turn is...where I sometimes falter. This is a huge help.

I wish I had one of these things when I was learning the game. It makes a
difference whether or not you get frustrated and quit entirely. I went to
WITE a few years ago but soon tired of the same scenario over and
over. I came back to TOAW I guess because of the large database
of scenarios. I downloaded most of the scenarios from Rugged Design and
have them zipped up. I'm going to convert them one at a time to T4 format
and post them in the scenarios section. Do you guys have a preference
which one is first? Anybody got a favorite they want to see?

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the different crop circle colors mean.

EDIT: You can enter different numbers for the different colors but it's got to be a hexadecimal number:
A number starting with 0x and then the number in base 16. So the number 11 in decimal is '0xB' in hexadecimal.
So you would enter "0x00000B" for the value. Like that.

[RufusTFirefly]

Great work, Larry. Absolutely impressive.

I am a wargamer for more than 25 years now and of course now all the basics. Playing Advanced Tactics Gold for years now and always some PBEMs running. But have tried TOAW III only a few time playing the FITE scenario. Guess I havnt figuered out half of the options and mechanics of the game so far. It is very helpful to read about this detailed combat plannings and SFT management.

Will download the game tomorrow. This will be a weekend of a lot of reading, trying and I will surely enjoy experiencing this great game.