Turn 1 Axis Panzer Group Combat Results

[ShaggyHiK]

And I'm honestly tired of looking at every new Stamb post
where he accuses only the Soviet side of "good logistics", "efficient aircraft". At the same time, they do not understand that the logistics system is common for both sides, and it works the same for the USSR and Germany.
He accuses me of defending the USSR, but in fact he himself is looking for problems only for the Soviet side.

To be honest, his one-sidedness is starting to irritate me.

[Stamb]

ORIGINAL: ShaggyHiK

And I'm honestly tired of looking at every new Stamb post
where he accuses only the Soviet side of "good logistics", "efficient aircraft". At the same time, they do not understand that the logistics system is common for both sides, and it works the same for the USSR and Germany.
He accuses me of defending the USSR, but in fact he himself is looking for problems only for the Soviet side.

To be honest, his one-sidedness is starting to irritate me.

Like here?
Where I actually say that VVS perform too poorly in fighters to fighters battles?
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5140498

I can make a long list of what is wrong with current balance, but it was already said by multiple players, not only me, in multiple AARs.
Yes, I am making posts with this things to bring attention to that problems, as in AARs it is posted only once and then forgotten unless somebody else face the same problem. Like panzer performance, urban hex battles and so on.
Poor panzer performance was mentioned long time ago. And without this thread who knows if it would be revisited.

About "one-sidedness". ShaggyHiK, you are the person that is constantly defending Soviets. In any thread. They are always the best, the greatest. Check your posts on a forum.

While we are talking about supplies.
Yes, Erik, I wanted to say that is possible to use supply priority 4 for the Soviets without any damage to their vehicles pool. They can bring enough supplies to a front depots. And even with supply priority 4 there will be no long range traces to a depots in the back. I will try to find sources that will prove that there were ammo shortages at least in `41, but I'm sure that Soviets were not swimming in supplies like it is right now.

[ShaggyHiK]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

While we are talking about supplies.
Yes, Erik, I wanted to say that is possible to use supply priority 4 for the Soviets without any damage to their vehicles pool. They can bring enough supplies to a front depots. And even with supply priority 4 there will be no long range traces to a depots in the back. I will try to find sources that will prove that there were ammo shortages at least in `41, but I'm sure that Soviets were not swimming in supplies like it is right now.

I, but say that you are wrong that you attribute such a problem only to the Soviet side. The German war machine, already in 41, actually squandered its fuel potential and the Wehrmacht began de-motorization. When will Germany have fuel problems in the game?
Is the Soviet Union able to restore the front in the game if it loses ~500,000 people twice in encirclement after the first move?

The defense of Leningrad in game conditions is almost impossible if the German player does not do absolutely mediocre actions. The front line go far to the East from the real one, because the German tanks and motorized infantry almost do not lose mobility moving away from the warehouses?



The depot system currently gives too good indicators of the supply of ammunition, fuel and supplies, relative to real opportunities. And almost does not give replenishment. And this concerns both sides, and not just the Soviet one. Moreover, the system is more generous specifically for the German player.

To compensate for the good supply, it was necessary to introduce fines for the supply of German units, with payment at double the price.

[Stamb]

Axis logistic is terrible in `41. Just try to play as an Axis. At least once. Leningrad is in a danger if Axis make good progress in first few turns. Later on it is a dead zone. Check AARs. Especially with a running Soviets
Yep. Axis motorized forces always have 50 mp.
Please, just play as an Axis. And you will be ashamed of 50% of your posts about Axis. You are providing fake info.

Edit after your edit:
" And almost does not give replenishment"
And for some reason as an Axis player I have no problems with man replenishment if I am within 3 hexes range to a depot with supplies. Like in the North. Tanks are pretty hard to refit, but I don't have enough in a pool anyway.
Like this. In harsh winter. This is on map units.

[ShaggyHiK]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Axis logistic is terrible in `41. Just try to play as an Axis. At least once. Leningrad is in a danger if Axis make good progress in first few turns. Later on it is a dead zone. Check AARs. Especially with a running Soviets
Yep. Axis motorized forces always have 50 mp.
Please, just play as an Axis. And you will be ashamed of 50% of your posts about Axis. You are providing fake info.

Edit after your edit:
" And almost does not give replenishment"
And for some reason as an Axis player I have no problems with man replenishment if I am within 3 hexes range to a depot with supplies. Like in the North. Tanks are pretty hard to refit, but I don't have enough in a pool anyway.

Play as the Soviets and try to replenish the tank division and the mechanized division, even if you have tanks in the pool.
Yes, even just try to replenish regular infantry if it has lost its guns. I'll tell you honestly, neither the 4th warehouse nor the 4th army priority, nor even a good commander, will help.

[Stamb]

Oh. I will play as a Soviets. Who would not like to play them? After I finish my Axis pvp game. No time for 2 games

[ShaggyHiK]

You should have seen the topic and arguments where it was discussed, you seemed to also participate there, about the fact that all replenishments go to the theater.

Where it was clearly shown that in the 2 air defense regiments in the theater there are more replenishments than in the East.

I look forward to your second topic when you finish playing until the age of 44 and raise a similar topic.

At the turn of the year 41, the problem of replenishments for the Soviet player is an order of magnitude more acute than for the German one, the German army does not suffer high losses, but even a slight increase in losses from Soviet aircraft, other than 0. And you are the first to raise a cry that this needs to be fixed, encountering the problem that there is no way to replenish the heavy weapons of your divisions.

[DarkHorse2]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Thanks for this. I've discussed this with Joel and Gary and we agree that some additional changes are necessary. There are already a lot of checks that go on under the hood to disadvantage low experience/morale poorly led units, but there are also advantages to the defender and you'd likely see a very different result if the Soviets were attacking you. From an operational perspective, it's much more ideal to breakthrough/encircle and let them try to break out.

As you may know, we did a major revision of the combat system not too long ago to address some issues and that improved the combat overall significantly, especially for 1943+. However, the added lethality of armor combat isn't working as well in 1941.

With all that said, we agree that this result is outside of what we'd see as historical. We're going to wrap up the current update process with an official update. After that, we'll try a few changes to better reflect the breakdown and coordination issues the Soviets had, especially in 1941 with their mechanized/tank divisions. That will be in a new experimental public beta as some point in the next couple of weeks for folks to try out and give us feedback one.

While history had a very wide range of possible results, we're on the same page as far as continuing to make adjustments where we can to make sure that all cases are giving results squarely within that range.

Regards,

- Erik

Thank you Erik, for your very constructive post.

We're listening and reading, but I think it is very important that Matrix understands that rather than the previous somewhat dismissive generalizations, such as

"that all the historical results are possible in WITE2, including the ones that were outliers. In 1941, the Axis did lose some battles and the Panzer Divisions did lose a lot of tanks, including in battles.

With all that said, although these results are historical plausible and with precedent.."

that it would have been very helpful if you could provide more information, ideally a citing or reference where we can see the precedent you are referring to? For example, a historical instance where a German Panzer Division suffered 277 out of 316 AFVs during the 1st week of Barbarossa, such as hoss has been able illustrate in WiTE2. (additionally, at something like 100 to 1 calculated odds!)

Never-the-less, I am encouraged that you have come around and reached a point of being comfortable in publically acknowledging and validating the current experiences of many of the WiTE2 players. As well as a commitment to make the necessary adjustments to bring these combat results back to within an historical range.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: Stamb
Please fix Soviet logistic system. It is completely unhistorical that they can use supply priority 4 for almost all of their units if not all, already from the start of the game.

Anyone can use Supply Priority 4. If you're saying they are actually getting far more supplies/ammo/fuel than what is historical, we can have that discussion. I'd like to see what you're seeing and some historical comparisons.

Regards,

- Erik

Hi Erik,

Personally I can't speak to exactly what level of supply difficulty is historical for Soviets, but I can definitely speak to having no supply problems basically at all in the game while playing the Soviets, past turn 4-5 or so, and at least from what I am aware it is not historical for Soviets to have no real supply issues at all (for example in the Battle of Kharkov, I think they had some significant supply problems, but I'm not a historian so don't quote me on that).

During the initial few turns of the game, Soviets can have supply issues because they are still in the process of mobilizing trucks, and many new units are appearing on the map and being railed around (initially starting off with low supply until they have a chance to start receiving supply for a turn or two). However, if you simply put the entire Red Army on supply priority 4 and build some depots and set depots near the front to level 4 priority, all of these issues very quickly disappear and essentially every Soviet division will quickly have 100%+ levels of supply/ammo/fuel.

I suspect that part of the issue might be related to how the game treats all vehicles as a standardized single entity. As far as I am aware, the game treats all "vehicles" as a 2.5 ton truck. However, in reality as far as I am aware many of the civilian vehicles mobilized by the Soviets in 1941 would have been random civilian vehicles, not actual specialized military transport trucks, and accordingly probably many of them had much less carrying capacity than 2.5 tons. This might be one part of what contributes to Soviet logistics being so good (at least as long as they are not fighting far away late in the game in Germany or Poland in 1944/45). I have also played Soviets in 1942/43 in the StB scenario and similarly had no significant supply issues outside of a handful of local areas by simply putting my whole army on supply priority 4.


Here are some screenshot from my Soviet game against jubjub as an example. This is a server game so you can look at the saves directly if you want. On turn 12, I have an enormous surplus of trucks, with 66k in the pool:



Having had my entire army on supply priority 4 since the start of the game, by this point I am easily receiving a lot more supply than my units need on any given turn, because of all the supply they received and have stocked up from previous turns. I am receiving 26k supply, and need 8k, so I am getting more than 3x as much as I need to be at full supply, consistently, on every turn.



All of this adds up to basically having all my units be in good supply, basically all of the time. The only time when units are not in good supply is right after they have lost a battle and routed or something, in which case they just need a turn or so to refit (or just air transport supplies to them) and then they are restored to full supply.

How much is this costing me? Am I losing a large number of trucks as a result of putting my entire army on supply priority 4 the whole time? Not as far as I can see. I have lost a total of 955 "Trucks Lost in Freight" over 12 turns of having my entire army on supply priority 4.



If those truck losses cause a problem at all, it seems like one that can be fixed by simply having one or two fewer tank corps later in the game and instead using more tank brigades which I can assign to my Guards Rifle Corps to make them even stronger.



What is even more striking, however, is my supply situation in this OTHER game... AAR here - https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5141454

In this other game, I am trying to test out just how broken Soviets are, especially if they don't waste a lot of troops trying to defend the south. So I am playing deliberately with both hands tied behind my back. As such, among other things, I am not using any army HQs or corps HQs at all, and all units are directly controlled by STAVKA except for assault fronts, which are directly controlled by the assault fronts (with no armies). I am also using bad leaders for STAVKA and the assault fronts, at the moment whichever ones Stalin decides to give me.

That means that I have truly horrendous leader rolls, with all my troops being assigned either directly to STAVKA or directly to my 2 assault fronts. And yet, here is my logistics report on turn 11 of that game:



So despite literally not using generals or leaders at all, and consequently having absolutely horrendous admin rolls, my units basically all have excellent supply, with 20k received compared to 8k needed.

And in this game, my truck losses from using supply priority 4 are even lower, only 158 trucks lost over 11 turns of continuous supply priority 4:



So I guess I must have been doing something wrong in the jubjub game to even lose 955 trucks.

And in this game, I have a truck pool on turn 11 of 116k extra trucks just sitting around:



The 116k is admittedly inflated because I disbanded all my army HQs, so I am saving trucks on those, but still... 116k trucks just sitting around, not even having to use them. While I am sure Soviets had better supply than Germany in late 1941, I am doubtful it was really quite so easy as this.

[ShaggyHiK]

ORIGINAL: DarkHorse2
Never-the-less, I am encouraged that you have come around and reached a point of being comfortable in publically acknowledging and validating the current experiences of many of the WiTE2 players. As well as a commitment to make the necessary adjustments to bring these combat results back to within an historical range.

I'll take it upon myself to give an example. 1300 Soviet tanks participated in the battle (But during the course of the battle their number could potentially grow by 2 times) and 728 German tanks.

German losses of 85 tanks irretrievably and 200 in workshops for long-term repairs, do you know which battle or suggest?

[Hardradi]

ORIGINAL: DarkHorse2

3. Target acquisition. AFVs completely ignoring all other non-AFV targets is another issue. Can you imagine an AFV ignoring pioneers planting charges all over to focus on that distant enemy AFV, barely visible?

They dont ignore other targets from what I can see. They shoot HE and AP. If there are no enemy AFVs they shoot HE.

Also if you drill down deeper you can see the weapon they are shooting.

[Stamb]

Thanks for examples Beethoven1.

I am also wondering why Soviet army, which has more men, need less total freight than an Axis one?
Supply need is ~8.5k.
While 2-3 panzer armies might require same amount of freight.
And total Axis requirements are from 30k to 50-60k per turn. It is at 3.5 - 7 times more, despite having less men.

[DarkHorse2]

They dont ignore other targets from what I can see. They shoot HE and AP. If there are no enemy AFVs they shoot HE.

Not aware they shoot at both AFV and soft targets at the same in same round, if that is what you are saying. If that is the case, that is goofy as well. I don't believe that is the case though.

"If there are no enemy AFVs they shoot HE" - now that I believe is accurate. Priority is on AFVs above all other targets until there are no enemy AFVs left. In essence, ignoring soft targets as long as there is an AFV left.

AFV fire is not distributed among AFV and soft targets, even though you have engineers throwing grenades down your hatch.

Ever play Panzer Blitz? You would lose all your armor if you ignored advancing engineers/anti-tank guns and not dealt with them.

In armored-force operations, the Germans stress the need for the concentrated employment, at the decisive place and time, of the entire combined command of tanks and other arms, less necessary reserves. The tanks constitute the striking force of such a command and normally advance as the first echelon of the attack. Their primary mission is to break through and attack the enemy artillery, rather than to seek out and destroy enemy tanks, which can be more effectively engaged by antitank units. The mission of the other arms is to assist the tanks in their advance and particularly to eliminated antitank weapons.

So this concept of AFV vs AFV combat at the exclusion of AFV vs soft targets is absurd.

https://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-German-Off ... k-Tactics/

[DarkHorse2]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Thanks for examples Beethoven1.

I am also wondering why Soviet army, which has more men, need less total freight than an Axis one?
Supply need is ~8.5k.
While 2-3 panzer armies might require same amount of freight.
And total Axis requirements are from 30k to 50-60k per turn. It is at 3.5 - 7 times more, despite having less men.

I believe supply / ammo / fuel requirements are auto-calculated off of the sum of TOE elements.

You may have to go down to the TOE element level in the game editor to get a better feel for the significant difference. It is also possible there exists a data error that needs correcting.

[Stamb]

Erik,
Here are some examples, hopefully you and your team are able to translate it (this is a good translator https://www.deepl.com/translator):
https://mil.ru/winner_may/history/more. ... cmsArticle

В ряду причин, обусловивших размеры потерь наших войск, прежде всего выступают объективные факторы: обеспеченность фронтов материальными средствами, в первую очередь боеприпасами и горючим; степень тщательности подготовки операций, качество боевой выучки личного состава, уровень руководства войсками во всех звеньях — от Ставки ВГК до тактического звена. Так, в обстановке тяжелейших экономических трудностей, которые переживала страна в 1941–1942 гг., наступательные операции предпринимались без достаточного материального обеспечения, что неминуемо вело к большим потерям. Это положение было ликвидировано лишь ко второму периоду войны

Machine translation:

Among the reasons for the losses of our troops are primarily objective factors: supply of the fronts with materiel, primarily ammunition and fuel; the degree of thoroughness in preparing operations, the quality of combat training of personnel, the level of leadership of the troops at all levels - from the Supreme Command Headquarters to the tactical tier. Thus, in a situation of severe economic difficulties, which the country experienced in 1941-1942, offensive operations were undertaken without sufficient material support, which inevitably led to large losses. This situation was eliminated only by the second period of the war

Another website worth inspecting:
https://www.soldat.ru/doc/mobilization/mob/

Ammo/artillery ammo before the start of the war.
They did not have enough ammo, especially for the artillery (but it is already represented in the game):
https://www.soldat.ru/doc/mobilization/ ... er2_5.html

Stockpiled weapons:
https://www.soldat.ru/doc/mobilization/mob/table21.html
Rifles: 490220
Hand machine guns: 6490
Machine gun: 5780

This is what they needed and what they had in September `41.
https://www.soldat.ru/doc/mobilization/ ... er3_1.html

I can not paste table, but in total this is what they had in % of their needs: (probably due to a huge pockets, that are not happening in a game, but should give an idea)
Riffles: 20%
Machine guns: 10%
Mortars: 28%
Guns: 18%

There are many more pages which describes that there was not enough ammo/weapons. It would take ages to copy all of that into this post.

It is really worth reading.
And from what I saw via videos, wite 1 was simulating that situation much better than wite 2 where Soviets do not have any problems with armaments, even if major centers in Ukraine are taken ahead of schedule.
It really breaks immersion and adds even more reasons for a Soviets not to defend in the South.
Nobody is even looking onto armament/resource/heavy industry production in wite 2. As is it impossible to run out of it, no matter what.

You can check my test https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... age=2&key=
post 35

Thanks for looking into this issues and for an amazing support for this game.

Best,
Stamb

[malyhin1517]

I would like to clarify that the Russians have a problem with heavy weaponry due to the limited production of guns in the game. However, heavy infantry weapons, namely machine guns and small-caliber mortars, are produced in the game without restrictions! I have been writing about this for a long time that it is necessary to establish a limit on the production of heavy infantry weapons! Now in the game for the Russians a situation has been created where, for example, militia divisions have 100% infantry and machine guns, but not a single gun! And they won't get guns unless they're placed in reserve! The only way to get artillery for units is to go into reserve. But machine guns in all units are fully available, which contradicts historical facts! There were not enough machine guns in the Soviet army until 1943, so the Russians were forced to start again in 1941 the production of obsolete Maxim machine guns, which they had stopped producing earlier!

[Stamb]

I think I mentioned that in another threads. Personally I would like Reserve TB to be removed, I see no reasons for it to be in a game. Units training can happen far from a front, near depots for example.
But I doubt that it gonna happen.
Now we are talking partially about this issue:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5132514

In my opinion on map units should be the highest priority for replacements. It makes no sense that unit on map that is placed to refit, will not get replacements because there are some units in Reserve that took all of the tanks/manpower/etc.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Thanks for examples Beethoven1.

I am also wondering why Soviet army, which has more men, need less total freight than an Axis one?

No, they don't need less freight. The "need" displayed is a bit misleading since supply priority 4 seeks to get 130% of the need. So they have extra stocked up which was delivered from previous turns. You would see the same thing on the Axis side if on turn 1 you did not attack as Axis and just sat in Germany without advancing, with the whole Axis army set on supply priority 4.

[Beethoven1]

And btw, the fact that Soviets (if played by someone who knows to simply set supply priority 4 and forget, anyway) typically will have up to 130% supply in all their units means they have higher CVs. If the devs are looking at AI vs AI game balance, and the AI is set to not use supply priority 4 for the entire army, that would mean that the AI Soviets has lower CVs than a player would have.

This might be some of the reason why some of the devs seem to think that it is balanced. And tbh if they made changes so that Soviets played by a player simply had more normal supply (up to 100% rather than 130%), then that might well be enough to re-balance the game overall and perhaps even to switch it to being Axis biased, because that makes a significant difference to CV of the entire Red Army.

As it is now, a good Soviet player will always use supply priority 4 for the whole Red Army, at least maybe until 1944 or something possibly (I don't know because I haven't gotten that far), because there is no disincentive from doing so and no drawback to it.

[Stamb]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Thanks for examples Beethoven1.

I am also wondering why Soviet army, which has more men, need less total freight than an Axis one?

No, they don't need less freight. The "need" displayed is a bit misleading since supply priority 4 seeks to get 130% of the need. So they have extra stocked up which was delivered from previous turns. You would see the same thing on the Axis side if on turn 1 you did not attack as Axis and just sat in Germany without advancing, with the whole Axis army set on supply priority 4.

You are right. I did a test. I did not move anywhere and put everything on 4 as an Axis. They "need" 8k supplies. But Soviets are also fighting and using ammo + digging + refitting.