Over rated Russian rail system.

[Aurelian]

Should Russian HVY industry really have the importance some think it should?

The Gernmans, for example, in FY 1942, produced 30 million tons of steel - but only 8 million tons of that was directed towards military production efforts (airplanes, guns, munitions, supplies, tanks, etc.).

The Russians were not doing that. They went to total war from the start.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: 76mm
I might have missed the citation among all of the posts, but how do you equate 50% of all industry with any number of armament points? Presumably the Sovs evacuated higher-priority factories first, so the remaining 50% could have been making table-settings for all that we know. So where does this 64 AP figure come from?

Also, I think that someone pointed out that these "captured industry" figures don't make very clear what exactly was overrun--just the empty factory building, or the building and part of the equipment, or what? Even in a critical factory, presumably only a portion of the equipment is really critical, and other things can be replaced. So relying on such percentage figures is simplistic at best.

That's the catch with just throwing around mere numbers. You always have to remember what they actually mean, and how useful they are. It's like saying "...transported 20 divisions per week" -- what size did they have, what equipment, whatever?

I have been thinking a bit more about the estimate above. It is very crude, but at least it leads to the question what capacity is silently allocated to replacement and supply transport, and thus doesn't show up for the player -- or is that neglected for sake of simplicity? Would be nice if a dev or designer could explain a bit the mechanics or assumption behind the part of the rail cap model.

If at all, the above numbers would suggest that the rail capacity for the Soviets seems to be rather underestimated than overestimated. If they used as little as 25% (or let it even be 50%, assuming the case of higher deductions for regular duties and raw material transport in the rear) of the rail capacity available for military purposes for evacs in July, but players presently have to use as much as 75-90% in game and that over a longer period of time, it would look low.
Assuming that it would be right one, i.e. the 75% of the game rail pool would correspond to 25% of the corresponding historical rail cap, then it would look like the remaining 25 in-game% for troop movements would make up for another ~8%, meaning that ~33% of the historical pool is what shows up as the game rail cap available to the Soviet player. The remaining 66% to the total historical freight volume would be the hidden fees for supply and replacement transport the system doesn't explicitly treat. Actually that doesn't sound unreasonable I would say.

If one thing is missing, then it would be having the remaining 66% also being explicitly taken into account, i.e. Cannonfodders suggestion of having a fraction of the rail capacity allocated to movement of replacements -- and correspondingly only distribute as much replacements as remaining rail cap would allow. That would mean that of course any flat deductions would have to be added first to the pool again. And that for both sides.
Then as the fighting progressed, the rail pool might get more strained, likely through the higher need for replacement transports (which was historically one limiting factor for both sides, like the real production rates themselves). In fact, we all know the stories of the German winter clothing sitting in warehouses in Poland and Germany waiting for free rail capacities for delivery to the front. But you can already guess from the obviously surprisingly small strain that the factory evacs caused (judged by the numbers cited from Aurelians soruces), the Germans might have the shorter end of the stick with any of such changes. See Joe Billings post above.
Accurate rail capacity numbers would be nice to compare to the Russian ones, though.

My impression is that the rail is not the problem, and approximately good. I think ComradeP is much closer to the origin of the discrepancies...

[Aurelian]

Changes to rail, like adding supply/replacement costs to the rail cap, will hurt the Axis player more than the Soviet player. (and man will we hear about it.)

I suspect, that the rail cap we have reflects what we have control of. (Rail units/factories.)

I suspect that if the above costs are added, then the rail cap would have to be increased.

And we're back in the same boat.

(This is one of those times where I know what I want to say, but can't articulate it the way I want.)

[wosung]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

The problem is not the system you picked.

1. Hvy is pointless and should have been thought out better and needs to be fixed or removed from the game.
2. It is a fact of history we know that 50% of all the industry in the areas the Germans over ran were destoryed or 64 armerment pts. With the current system it not historicaly possible to hit these numbers, because the rail system is broken.

Its screwed up because someone put next to zero thought into HVY industry.

Its a matter of FACT that all Russian player are exploiting this screw up. Everyone including testers.

Which means that 2 by 3 knows about this exploit.

You know someone thought that adding a flying pig rule (1v1=2v1) would be a great idea and we all know how that turned out.

Now we have a rail/hvy issue that was not thought out before release, just like the 1v1=2v1 one rule.

Instead of defending this screw up, just fix it as was the 1v1=2v1 rule.

Its being exploited and everyone knows its being exploited, Russian fanboys, poeple that play both sides, testers, devs and 2by3.

No one can honestly post its not being exploited to death, no ones even tried to defend the fact that russian players are not railing out any HVY and railing out only arm pts.

It is a given that the current system is being exploited.

Pelton

Wow, you really sound like a ... drama queen.

Even if parts of Soviet Industry IRL were overrun, and even, what arguably was more important, parts of developed ressources IRL also were overrun, fact remains that Russia outproduced Germany in every year of the war, regardless that Germany had more ressources than Russia around 1942.

Source: Richard Overy, Why the Allies won, Chapter about economics and production.

Regards

[timmyab]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
Recently Pavel has started to experiment with rules that makes HQ's create depots in nearby cities on a rail line, with the idea that eventually limits can be placed on how much can go through any given city. This might allow us to create some density issues without having to track everything going through every hex.

I'm liking the sound of that.It sounds like a similar idea to one I've advocated on here in the past of having limited capacity rail junctions in towns and cities.This would not only make for a more realistic logistics system but would also make cities, and possibly even some of the larger towns, far more important as strategic objectives.

[Mehring]

Pelton, whatever exploits and faults there may be in the game, and I doubt anyone is arguing that they don't exist, your arguments are based on non-sequiturs. To attempt a remedy based on a non-sequitur is to add yet another layer of confusion into the game rather than resolving the original problem.

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

The problem is not the system you picked.

1. Hvy is pointless and should have been thought out better and needs to be fixed or removed from the game.
2. It is a fact of history we know that 50% of all the industry in the areas the Germans over ran were destoryed or 64 armerment pts. With the current system it not historicaly possible to hit these numbers, because the rail system is broken.

Its screwed up because someone put next to zero thought into HVY industry.

Its a matter of FACT that all Russian player are exploiting this screw up. Everyone including testers.

Which means that 2 by 3 knows about this exploit.

You know someone thought that adding a flying pig rule (1v1=2v1) would be a great idea and we all know how that turned out.

Now we have a rail/hvy issue that was not thought out before release, just like the 1v1=2v1 one rule.

Instead of defending this screw up, just fix it as was the 1v1=2v1 rule.

Its being exploited and everyone knows its being exploited, Russian fanboys, poeple that play both sides, testers, devs and 2by3.

No one can honestly post its not being exploited to death, no ones even tried to defend the fact that russian players are not railing out any HVY and railing out only arm pts.

It is a given that the current system is being exploited.

Pelton

I love your passion bud, but I got to call time out on you.

You have some really heavy duty accusations in here about the game designers and the absolute fact is you don't have proof of any neglegence by the game designers or staff on this game, so I would politely suggest you holster this line of crap you are spewing and direct your considerable talents on other aspects of the game to help it improve.

Now, this issue is not as simple as the 1v1=2v1 rule because the choice there was to remove it or otherwise have it sunset at some point in the game. Very easy to do.

In fact, this issue does not have an easy fix I can think of at all. The rail cap could be ok as it is. The real issue is the Russians don't have to really move any industry other than armaments because of the way the game treats HI and the fact that armaments is the real bottleneck in determining the overall strength of the Russian army as the game goes along. It isn't manpower, tank production or anything else. It is armaments, period.

Now, like other aspects of this game that have had issues (air model for example), players have worked around them with agreements with each other until said issue was fixed. Some issues are still going (air model for an example again) while others have been fixed. I don't think this has to be any different for now and one suggestion by me is to put some ratio on moving industry to help this situation out for now. For instance, players could agree that for every 2 armaments points moved, 1 HI must be moved. If players don't like that ratio, the pick another or come up with something yourselves, but Russian players are kidding themselves if they don't think this is a big issue right now.

[Encircled]

Pelton does know that Germany lost the war, doesn't he?

Hell, if you are going to play an Eastern Front game, you do tend to have at least read some info on it, and even the really basic stuff mentions the Soviet success at industrial evacuation.

I know I take the p**s out of a lot of your posts, but any good points you make (and you do) are buried in a mass of irrelevent or inaccurate information, which kind of destroys your point.

Whatever anyone argues about this game, the big problem is that you are not going to get any Soviet player to make Stalinist mistakes, or a German to make Hitlerist mistakes, so you have to make do with what you have got.

German players will have to get used to playing a fighting retreat from about mid to late '43 onwards (judging by the AAR's we are seeing now). I'm not as learned as some on here, but that seems pretty realistic to me.

Enjoy the game for a while, play it to the end, and then we can see what needs tweaking

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: Klydon


In fact, this issue does not have an easy fix I can think of at all. The rail cap could be ok as it is. The real issue is the Russians don't have to really move any industry other than armaments because of the way the game treats HI and the fact that armaments is the real bottleneck in determining the overall strength of the Russian army as the game goes along. It isn't manpower, tank production or anything else. It is armaments, period.

Now, like other aspects of this game that have had issues (air model for example), players have worked around them with agreements with each other until said issue was fixed. Some issues are still going (air model for an example again) while others have been fixed. I don't think this has to be any different for now and one suggestion by me is to put some ratio on moving industry to help this situation out for now. For instance, players could agree that for every 2 armaments points moved, 1 HI must be moved. If players don't like that ratio, the pick another or come up with something yourselves, but Russian players are kidding themselves if they don't think this is a big issue right now.

You're underestimating the importance of manpower here. The new multiplier in 1942 works out to something like a 10% reduction in replacements. Doesn't sound like much, but this works out to a good half million men over the course of the year, give or take, depending on how much manpower you are holding on to.

I would never agree to your house rule regarding HI unless my German opponent agreed to forego the Lvov opening. Since each HI factory costs 10,000 rail cap to move, your two to one ratio will result in roughly 45% rail being wasted on HI. That is to say, we can expect armament factory losses from overrun to roughly double under such a penalty given the kind of advances being made with the standard openings. Right now, an optimum evac will keep armament losses down to the low 30s. A single mistake could make that go up considerably. With your ratio thrown in, we're looking at best case scenarios of 60ish armament factories lost, and possibly quite a bit more.

So, no thanks.

[Pawlock]

Think you dropped this somewhere Pelton [:D]

[Stoat]

ORIGINAL: Encircled

Pelton does know that Germany lost the war, doesn't he?

Hell, if you are going to play an Eastern Front game, you do tend to have at least read some info on it, and even the really basic stuff mentions the Soviet success at industrial evacuation.

I know I take the p**s out of a lot of your posts, but any good points you make (and you do) are buried in a mass of irrelevent or inaccurate information, which kind of destroys your point.

Whatever anyone argues about this game, the big problem is that you are not going to get any Soviet player to make Stalinist mistakes, or a German to make Hitlerist mistakes, so you have to make do with what you have got.

German players will have to get used to playing a fighting retreat from about mid to late '43 onwards (judging by the AAR's we are seeing now). I'm not as learned as some on here, but that seems pretty realistic to me.

Enjoy the game for a while, play it to the end, and then we can see what needs tweaking

If I can try to answer your general point using the terms I described yesterday, I do not believe Pelton & FlaviusX actually have very different views on what the "mean outcome" of the game should be. If we could observe a sufficient sample of games where the mean result was German surrender around May-45, I think think they would both be happy with that and we all should be.

I name Pelton & FlaviusX, not to call them out or subject them to any particular deep personal scrutiny, but because I view them as the leading proponents of the Axis & Soviet "sides". Pelton (always?) plays Axis and consistently advocates for changes which would, on balance, benefit the Axis player. FlaviusX (always?) plays Soviet & consistently advocates for changes which would, on balance, benefit the Soviet player. Both seem to me to be capable & active competitive players.

Naturally (or un-naturally), I think about things in my own terms, so when I consider the changes that each proposes, I think that generally, Pelton's changes would increase the dispersion of results whereas FlaviusX's changes would decrease the dispersion of results. While any particular point or feature can be debated on its history, any particular algorithm or dynamic can be altered to broaden or narrow the distribution of likely outcomes. The decision to do the latter is NOT one grounded in history, but rather a game design decision as to what range & likely frequency of results should be possible to make the game pleasing for users.

When I look at AAR's & so many players describing frustrations & failures to finish, sure, from the perspective of an individual game, it's easy to start & finish your analysis with, "well, that guy's a bad fellow because he quit the game", or whatever (I am not btw speaking in favour of quitting here). But with hundreds of thousands or millions of man-hours in development and now, almost a year after release, I don't doubt millions of hours of gameplay, on this board we can observe exactly

[center]ZERO[/center]

games played through to the final turn. This is absolutely shocking to me. Absolutely shocking. And very distressing. After all, this is not some piece of crap we're talking about. This is the Best Wargame in the History of Mankind. I truly believe this. But it's not working for the user base. You can blame any single guy for his shortcomings and may be correct on an individual level, but if that is where you stop, I think that's not good enough. You (not you personally Encircled, just "you" instead of "one") have got to get some perspective. I think the Silent Majority of the user base is speaking loud & clear, and the silence is deafening, even though the messaging of the dominant force on these boards is entirely otherwise. This colossus is FlaviusX and his many supporters, together to whom yesterday I referred as the "Thick Brown Line" and to whom I'll so refer to today, 'cos I think it's nicer than "Soviet fanboys" and is hellafunny. [:D]

The Thick Brown Line (TBL to its friends) is the dominant force due to the energy & zeal with which they congratulate each other on the uniformity of their views and the energy & zeal with which they chasten those who dissent, They dominate through the strength of their numbers, not the strength of their ideas. It's not hard to see who they are: all's ya have to do is check Pelton's head, neck & body for boot prints (& he has fresh ones every day, God love him), & match those to the various guys in this here mess of ours.

Now I think a lot of these guys are pretty smart, and bet they're all actually pretty good fellows, more or less, so I don't really mean to accuse them of heinous crimes or anything really nefarious. But I do not like what they are doing, because I do not think what they are doing is good for the game.

My core belief about the state of this game is that it is frustrating its user base, because it must always turn out the same. Not because it it too complicated, but because it is no fun in the late game (say 1943-1945). I say this admittedly never having seen 1943 myself, never having seen a Panther tank, never having seen an Me 262, never having felt the loving caress of a PanzerGrenadier Division. My 3 CG's vs. normal Sov AI are (or will be) all over in '42. The TBL will respond, "well, this is pretty much the story of the late war, so this is the way it should be".

I say that is not good enough. The game has wonderful, beautiful rhythms in the first couple years, woven together with threads of supply, weather, reinforcements, morale & other dynamics. I sense, without knowing, that these rhythms kind of turn to suck thereafter. I wonder if a lot of players don't feel, "Hey, this is has turned from awesome into suck. Why spend a few hundred hours of my life doing something unpleasant?" I say this not to excuse poor sportsmanship or quitting but because I think there is some truth to it, and as a creator, I don't think your design goal is to inflict a few hundred hours of suck on your users. Maybe this is not the case. But zero, in its own way, is a very big number.

The Thick Brown Line, many of whom play largely of exclusively Soviet, have the natural institutional inclination to defend the interests of their side. Pelton & I, as Axis players have the opposite tendency. Of course, as a single player noob, I play Axis since playing 1P Sov is no challenge at all. Although on top of that, given the current game balance, I do feel it is a character flaw for anyone to play Soviet against an opponent he considers anywhere near his equal.

Pelton's proposals in general, I feel, will broaden the range of possibilities and make the game more interesting. FlaviusX's proposals, in general, I feel, will narrow the range of possibilities, and make the game dismal. Maybe dismal is actually æsthetically pleasing from the Soviet perspective; I wouldn't know.

So the way I see it, reduced down to the crux of it, Pelton is the greatest champion of making the game better, and FlaviusX is the greatest proponent of destroying the game. I think they're both smart and I like them both. But this is why I stand with Pelton & why I stand against FlaviusX.

[Flaviusx]

You're calling me out, man.

In response: sod off.

[Panzeh]

I think this game shares many problems with a whole lot of other East Front strategic games that won't be solved just by messing around with factory evacuation.  Fundamentally, the problem with most east front games is that the game is decided well before the rules say it's decided, thusly it ends up being a slog where both sides go through the motions.  This one is no different.  In an attempt to make the victory conditions completely 'satisfying', instead the game is made cumbersome and ponderous.

Also, I think 1941 is really un-fun in this game for the Soviets as it is essentially scripted for him, even if it's effective.  The game's swings are really obvious and gamey, there's just not much give and take.  Even when it's time for the Red Army to kick ass the best strategy is really boring and there's rarely much of a choice.  I also think the Germans only really have many options in 1941, afterward they, too, get boring.

And half the reason this game never gets completed is because it's too long for its own good.  Maybe i'm just spoiled by the more interesting game-wise No Retreat! http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68264/no-retreat-the-russian-front

[Stoat]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

You're calling me out, man.

In response: sod off.

Alright, alright, don't get all bent out of shape over it. I just hope you'll consider the broader impact of your efforts. Even if you win all your fights to protect the interests of the Soviet player, and you may very well do so, what really are the victories worth if the game is no fun for the Axis player? That's all.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
You're underestimating the importance of manpower here. The new multiplier in 1942 works out to something like a 10% reduction in replacements. Doesn't sound like much, but this works out to a good half million men over the course of the year, give or take, depending on how much manpower you are holding on to.

I would never agree to your house rule regarding HI unless my German opponent agreed to forego the Lvov opening. Since each HI factory costs 10,000 rail cap to move, your two to one ratio will result in roughly 45% rail being wasted on HI. That is to say, we can expect armament factory losses from overrun to roughly double under such a penalty given the kind of advances being made with the standard openings. Right now, an optimum evac will keep armament losses down to the low 30s. A single mistake could make that go up considerably. With your ratio thrown in, we're looking at best case scenarios of 60ish armament factories lost, and possibly quite a bit more.

So, no thanks.

How about 5-to-1, since as you say HI does cost a lot more to move. Every 40K rail points, 25% go to HI (30K for 5x armaments, IIRC, +10K for 1x Heavy). Or asked another way: what constraint, if any, do you think should be imposed on Soviet players given the hindsight advantage they have in knowing they can abandon HI without repurcussion?

Germany is handcuffed several times for Eastern Front pockets that may never happen (Demyansk, and the withdrawls associated with such) and the inflexible timetable of the western allies. A little lost rail capacity, or required HI movement ratio is not too much to ask to represent the fact that the mathemeticians hadn't yet had 70 years to pour over production data to realize heavy industry isn't important to their survivability.

The Lvov pocket is a separate issue.
Raiding is a separate issue.
Or at least I feel they should be looked at as separate.

[Flaviusx]

Really, I'd much rather be given a positive reason to move HI. I don't feel particularly guilty for skipping on it, frankly, because right now that's the only way to prevent massive overruns of industry in the south given the Lvov opening.

I'll play with one hand tied behind my back if the other guys does: you skip the Lvov opening, and I'll move some HI in proportion to armaments.

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

ORIGINAL: Klydon


In fact, this issue does not have an easy fix I can think of at all. The rail cap could be ok as it is. The real issue is the Russians don't have to really move any industry other than armaments because of the way the game treats HI and the fact that armaments is the real bottleneck in determining the overall strength of the Russian army as the game goes along. It isn't manpower, tank production or anything else. It is armaments, period.

Now, like other aspects of this game that have had issues (air model for example), players have worked around them with agreements with each other until said issue was fixed. Some issues are still going (air model for an example again) while others have been fixed. I don't think this has to be any different for now and one suggestion by me is to put some ratio on moving industry to help this situation out for now. For instance, players could agree that for every 2 armaments points moved, 1 HI must be moved. If players don't like that ratio, the pick another or come up with something yourselves, but Russian players are kidding themselves if they don't think this is a big issue right now.

You're underestimating the importance of manpower here. The new multiplier in 1942 works out to something like a 10% reduction in replacements. Doesn't sound like much, but this works out to a good half million men over the course of the year, give or take, depending on how much manpower you are holding on to.

I would never agree to your house rule regarding HI unless my German opponent agreed to forego the Lvov opening. Since each HI factory costs 10,000 rail cap to move, your two to one ratio will result in roughly 45% rail being wasted on HI. That is to say, we can expect armament factory losses from overrun to roughly double under such a penalty given the kind of advances being made with the standard openings. Right now, an optimum evac will keep armament losses down to the low 30s. A single mistake could make that go up considerably. With your ratio thrown in, we're looking at best case scenarios of 60ish armament factories lost, and possibly quite a bit more.

So, no thanks.

Lvov opening and these issues are two totally different things. How would you judge if I did not do the Lwow opening? I leave you one hex open not on a rail line and then slam the door the next turn? Too hard to judge.

I was thinking about this and as compensation, I would expect a German to either forgo another issue that is likely to be fixed in the future and that is HQ build up) or to have it limited to a pre-determined amount of times (like 5 times, max 1 per PG and 1 per turn).

[gradenko2k]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
Really, I'd much rather be given a positive reason to move HI. I don't feel particularly guilty for skipping on it, frankly, because right now that's the only way to prevent massive overruns of industry in the south given the Lvov opening.

I'll play with one hand tied behind my back if the other guys does: you skip the Lvov opening, and I'll move some HI in proportion to armaments.

I don't necessarily think the Lvov Pocket and HVY issues need to be conflated. Rather, I would think that if players had to think about evacuating HVY in the first place, and more Armaments were lost as a result, then we wouldn't have been left with a 130% multiplier on Armaments production, since the extra lost Armaments would have been the reduction we're seeing today.

[Flaviusx]

For me, they are conflated. I designed my evacuation schedule with it in mind. I have a very good idea of how far and how fast the German can advance with it, and what needs to be abandoned and what needs to be saved. That's part of the reason I deliberately write off certain areas.

Given a slower advance, things would be different.

Part of the reason I'm so fanatical now about the armament factories is (unlike most people here) I know exactly how production plays out with the new multiplier. Even with an absolutely perfect evac -- no factories lost -- the Soviet is living hand to mouth for much of 1942. There's no slack at all. Once everything is repaired, you will barely met requirements, and have little or nothing to spare for building artillery SUs, for example. You basically have to forego these to have any chance to accumulate the necessary points for building artillery divisions at the end of 42. This is, I stress again, with a perfect evac. Building up a reserve of armament points is very very difficult now.

So anything lost will put the Soviet behind.

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: Stoat
So the way I see it, reduced down to the crux of it, Pelton is the greatest champion of making the game better, and FlaviusX is the greatest proponent of destroying the game. I think they're both smart and I like them both. But this is why I stand with Pelton & why I stand against FlaviusX.

Untrue and unfair.

Though it was pretty clear to me that it (along with much of your overly long and rambling post) was intended as a bit of humorous hyperbole, it makes it rather difficult to pay any credence to some of the more important issues that you do allude to in the rest of the post. Namely, what range of outcomes should we take to be reasonable, and historically plausible?